Yes, but that doesn't address whether there are reasons not to install the pack if I already know about that particular issue. Which is what I was asking about. (It's already installed, but I have no functioning neighborhoods right now, I'm still doing setup, so if something were actually broken in the BFBVFS way I could remove it. Not that it sounds like anything is.)

K&B had content I wanted, light or not... what's the issue with bugs? I'm aware that there are objects missing functions they should be rights have and will be nabbing the fixes.

My hardware cluelessness tends to mean that I am VERY careful about making sure that all the funny words I don't know the meanings of match exactly between "what someone tells me to buy and/or what matches what's already in there" and "what I am actually about to buy". Especially since I once managed to miss some fairly important funny word that meant I had to return and re-order some RAM I bought for a computer I was upgrading at my then-workplace. (I was instructed to do some data entry on the middle of the store machine instead of the front desk machine, while bossman worked up front, for the first time. Sat down at it, started to work, and inside of five minutes was running two different spyware scanners and a virus scanner because it was so slow; when they found nothing I realized that it was running Windows XP with 128MB of RAM. My boss kindly permitted me to order another 256MB for my own sanity.)

(And noticing the DVI connector is important too, since the hard drive story involved... well, basically, I bought an IDE drive thinking that was pretty safe, because what else would I need? Got it home, opened up my box, and discovered the existence of SATA. Whoops! Apparently my monitor death was not such a bad thing, since it got me looking at other upgrades, and the dead one did NOT have a DVI connector; I just checked.)

Thanks to both of you for the advice. Assuming no one gives me any dire warnings in the near future about Dell not knowing their ass from their elbow when it comes to what my power supply can handle, I think I'll go with the XT.

I want to stick with things that I can be reasonably sure will work in the machine I have, but the specific card you linked is indeed on Dell's list (that model and the one I linked myself are the only 2 cards with 512MB RAM on it, and said list does include some nVidia cards) and is indeed cheaper, significantly so after rebate. Damned if I know what the actual difference is (although I imagine it has something to do with the DDR2 vs. GDDR3 part), but it looks very shiny and my pretty new monitor has one of those white connectors on it (I am the worst hardware geek ever, I should tell the story of what happened when I tried to add a second hard drive so you can all point and laugh -- but I am capable of putting reasonably straightforward parts into my own box and I know someone who can help me with less straightforward ones).

Ah, yeah, that thread definitely mentions the same card several times, as well as its close relatives. The second link you included doesn't work, however.

ETA: The bottom of the BBS thread has people stating (within the last 2 days or so) that upgrading drivers fixed the problem.

http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?threadID=cbc06e3a3b9b316ab112190df9995b76&directoryID=21&startRow=51&openItemID=item.21,root.1,item.61,item.104,item.41,item.127,item.23

Since the old PC upgrading sticky seems to be long gone. Feel free to migrate elsewhere if needed.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8538843&type=product&id=1188558584689

The recommendation came direct from Dell when I let them scan my system (3 year old Dimension 8400) for compatible upgrades. The price is right, and it certainly looks like something TS2 would appreciate. Any caveats? TS2 compatibility issues, power/heat issues despite Dell suggesting it themselves, etc.?

(I'm running WinXP, apparently 2.99 GHz processor if my System control panel is to be believed (I thought it was somewhere between 2 and 2.5), 1GB of RAM about to be upgraded to 2GB because it was omgcheap, current graphics card is a Radeon X300 (128MB onboard RAM, seems to also be PCI Express). I just finished installing all the EPs and SPs I was missing (and yes, I'm cracked to keep Securom off my precious) and am thinking that a shiny new video card would be a nice complement to the extra RAM and the new 19" widescreen LCD that I just shelled out for because the monitor that came with the box died an ignominious death today.)

Most of the things in this thread fail bigtime at meeting the stated criteria -- especially rebecah's stuff, which is largely perfectly normal, whether you approve of her level of expertise with animation or not. (I think some of it looks worth downloading to decide whether I like it and some of it doesn't.) There's nothing WTF about children's rideable toys which mostly resemble real-world children's rideable toys. (Oh, and the "wheelie" looks EXACTLY like the picture posted by the person who requested it -- the request thread is linked right at the top of the post, it's from a video game.)

Many of the items posted thus far are also intended to be weird, and therefore serve a purpose for people who want weird neighborhoods or weird families. Some of it I've downloaded or bookmarked, because I am interested in sci-fi landscapes (eyeball tree), urban dystopia (homeless guy -- actually, I have a large collection of grungy/trashed/industrial district/high-tech but seedy/etc. content just for one project I'm toying with), goofy Knowledge Sims (couch car -- totally looks homebuilt by a crackpot inventor), and so on.

Not that I can think of a good WTF to share, mind you. Maybe if I browse around some; I know I've seen things before (besides FeeEssen, who doesn't count) that just made me say "WHY?".

I still don't understand how LB's house could simultaneously get good marks and bad marks for the SAME FEATURES: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,8691.0.html

I certainly don't believe everyone needs to BUY them -- I do, because I prefer to have the information on paper, but if the prevailing attitude here weren't that the guides are worthless, then more people might have the information to share, or be inclined to link to said information offsite. BV seems to be particularly non-intuitive (at least, I've never noticed so much confusion over how things work, period, by people here before, only on other sites where the average clue level is much lower), and the guide therefore particularly useful.

Yeah, I wondered why they didn't do that one too -- I can't imagine it wouldn't have been possible for them to key it to the green skintone.

You know, I realize that people are down on the Prima guides here, but while they may not always be correct because of the design document issue, they do a pretty good job of explaining how things were INTENDED to work. A lot of the questions people have had in this thread and others have been covered in the guide -- like how the ninja answers are random like chance cards, or how hotels are supposed to work in non-vacation hoods. Lots of otherwise clueful people have spent a lot of time trying to figure out "how the hell does this work?" instead of "does this work the way they say it does?" when the latter would probably have been simpler.

I tried copying the voice from a Servo over to a "human" Sim once and nothing changed either.

We should probably consider ourselves lucky that there aren't any air travel delays programmed into the game based on weather.

Shoreline lots are a new blank lot template type in the lot catalog. They can be placed in any neighborhood that has a road close enough (but not too close) to the water -- the lot must be able to touch the water, but at least half of its area must be on dry ground.

Prima guide, btw, makes a point of stating that 'Home' means, well, home, when you are staying at a hotel in a non-vacation neighborhood -- you can set up a community lot with a hotel in your own hood, and stay there, and then go somewhere else, and then go back to the hotel by choosing it specifically, but when you're going around your main hood, or downtown, or something, the hotel does not become your "home base" like it does on vacation. Whereas on vacation you have to use a much more deliberate command to end your vacation earlier than the number of days you booked.

The easiest way to change turn-ons is still going to be the potion (unless someone's made a mod that just lets you change the things without bothering with the potion), but they're not handing out a new batch as far as I know. That's what buyable versions are for.

Oh, surely there'll be a hack to let you smooch with Bigfoot, unless the animations look too ridiculous.

I'm really looking forward to putting this in my game ones all the kinks are worked out and the annoyances stomped, actually. I'm lukewarm on the vacation concept itself, but it's got a bunch of features that I just plain WANTED, and some of them are core-level changes, plus it's full of interactable objects that I think sound really neat and can't wait to play with. Most of the things that seem likely to irritate me even when working as expected are specific to the vacation minigame, and some of those should be fixable.

Of course, it's the Hobbies EP I'm really looking forward to -- first one that just the concept has really made me want to see it, even though I know from experience that every EP will have something that I want. Stupid having to wait 6 months.

Huh. I bet that'll be in the patch, then, since aside from the fact that it causes overcharging and loss of vacation days, time in vacation subhoods is supposed to be continuous, like it is in Uni subhoods.

Please do share the results when you're done, NVA.

I use this replacement skintone, which has eyes by pinstruck: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=223598

But I really should get around to adding my preferred eyes (which I've already made into contacts) to my plantsim and werewolf defaults.

I still say zombies should find other zombies attractive and robots should find other robots attractive. But then again, if the latest L&P is true, then the next romance mod should take specific "creature" turn-ons into account.

If someone comes along to ask a perfectly reasonable technical question and no controversy follows, odds are that they aren't a troll.

Actually, the Requests section (in the Gifts forum) at SFV is also a good place to ask about this sort of thing. Someone there even fixed that one really atrociously badly animated Peggy mesh -- the one that has slightly eh animation for most ages, but flops around all over the head on teenagers. (I downloaded it, but last night discovered that XM's newest hair is similar and way prettier, so I deleted all the other hair I had in the same vein.)

Any Sim aged teen or older can be abducted (but only adult males get pregnant).

My procedure for mods is to redownload everything from scratch, so I always have the latest version of the mod even if it didn't need an EP-related update. (This is especially important for Pescado's mods.) I put the old mod folder somewhere else on my computer so I can refer back to it if I had anything that cannot be redownloaded, so I can look around for compatibility info or test it out myself.