Just wanted to drop a note of thanks to everyone who contributed to creating the possibility of empty 'hoods. Re-installing the game with clean templates is the only way to go for me now. I was so sick of all of those ugly and annoying Maxis people after so many years of playing Sims 2!

I am glad there are still those around who, like me are still playing and enjoying Sims 2, rather than Sims 3.

Hi Theo,

I've had a chance to try the new version now. The good news is the option for "Alt Sims Surgery" now shows up when loading Sim Pe, so that is great - thanks! The bad news is for some reason not every neighbourhood NPC is loaded as a candidate for Sims Surgery. The regular Sims Surgery loads every NPC, but your version doesn't for some reason.

For example, I wanted to make over a waitress but she does not appear in the list. The only NPC's that appear in my list are:

The reporter
The break dancer
One waiter
The delivery guy
The human statue
The firefighter
The gypsy

There are three others but I am unsure of their roles. I will try to note what they do next time. Maybe they are just random townies - though I don't think so as this is a clean neighbourhood and I have the no townie hack regen. by Pescado.

So your plug-in is partially working which is a lot better than not at all, but not every neighbourhood sim is listed.

Hi Theo,

The problem I am having is that the option for Alt. Sims Surgery does not show up at all as an option in the Neighbourhood menu. That's why I was wondering if I had installed it correctly. I would be so grateful if you can look into this for me!

Thank you!!

I have used and loved this plugin right through to Mansions and Gardens and even though it hasn't been updated in a long time it still appeared to work.

Now I can't seem to get it working with the latest SimPe. I hope there are still some Sims 2 fans out there that can help me get it working again. I admit I am a bit puzzled about how to install it. I tried throwing all the files into the Plugins folder but this didn't seem to work.

I know many have moved onto Sims 3 now, but I am sure there are other Sims 2 fans out there, like me who have no interest in Sims 3 and are mainly interested in playing, and perfecting their Sims 2 games. Please help if you can!!

Does anyone here know if these instructions still work okay if you have all expansion packs installed up to Mansions and Gardens?

I followed the instructions to the letter right now, and it completely stopped my game from working. I got an error message saying that the game was corrupt or had been uninstalled.

Any tips?

I am amazed to find this thread! I was just trying to puzzle out in my own mind how to change the appearance of a sim who lives in a different neighbourhood to the archetype sim without creating a new family in CAS.

This might be the answer I was looking for. I will try it and let you know!

I would love to do this to the spare 150 or so repro men I have in Pleasantview!! In your Awesome opinion what is the best (safest) method to do this? Using Simpe or SimEnhancer perhaps?

I have NL installed and wanted to use one of my fave hacks on my townie uni students as some of them are wearing the strangest outfits. So I made the townie students and dormies selectable and got them to pick new clothes with the clothing tool. The first part of the tool worked fine - you could buy a new outfit, but when it came to actually dressing the sims the only option was for a naked body! I chose this for one sim just to try it out and he remained butt naked walking around the dorms as though there was no problem.

I have never played UNI before installing NL so I was wondering - was the clothing tool ever intended to be used on young adults or am I just messing way too much with game code trying to select dormies and townies then instructing them to use it?

It's so great to see a Maxoid here listening, answering questions and providing reassurance. Thanks so much for taking the time to do this.

I would like to list a few problems I have that are not (I think) so far been listed.

- The spawning of massive numbers of NPC's that take up an enormous amount of space in our games. In my original Pleasantview neighbourhood for some reason I have over 50 Repo men!! They show up when I open an editing program like SimPe. I thought we should only have three NPC's per type, but clearly sometimes the game sometimes goes haywire. Others have had the cafe baristas endlessly spawning as well.

- There must be some better ways to enable the community to better manage custom content. We were all sooo greatful and glad when we learned we could delete custom content directly from the game, but the system is pretty slow and unwieldy so I know many simmers like myself find it time consuming and frustrating to try to clean out unwanted stuff. Here are some of the main reasons:

1) When you delete something the game defaults back to the beginning of the catalogue. This is by far the most frustrating aspect of trying to manage custom content. If you only had ten or so custom items it wouldn't be a problem but some simmers play with hundreds or even thousands of downloads in each category. When you default back to the beginning of the catalogue not only do you have to scroll back through many pages, but it is hard to find where you were to begin with. You end up spending more time scrolling and squinting at the screen than actually deleting.

2) It would be great to be able to click and highlight more than one download at a time to delete. This would speed things up greatly.

3) Efficiency would also be increased if you could scroll both forwards and backwards through the catalogue in an endless loop (ie - the catalogue would not get to the "end" but would automatically keep scrolling if you kept going forwards back to page one)

4) It is extremely difficult to locate downloaded content when it is thrown into the game in the present unorganised way. I am especially referring to the wall and floor content which has no organisational system at all. At least in Sims1 we could recategorise our walls and floors to show in order of ascending price which helped things a great deal.

5) Thumbnails in my game at least are TINY. I play on a high resolution and it is very difficult to see what each thumbnail is representing.

6) Hair would be more accessible if we could sort it into hair colours genetically speaking.

7) It would be great if skin meshes could be deleted entirely out of the game like the object meshes are when you delete the entire object set. At the moment you have to remember which hair or clothing mesh you wanted to get rid of and find and delete it manually after closing the game.

I think this has been fixed in NL but it would be great if skins could be organised into subfolders like objects are able to be.

9) Being able to delete hairstyles etc while the sim is changing their apperance at the mirror would be a huge plus. Same goes for being able to delete clothing while shopping. Once you are into several generations in a neighbourhood you rarely have to visit CAS anymore as most sims are born in-game.

10) I never use the "collections" system as it is pretty clunky and inefficient. To start with I found it generated extra copies of the walls I was trying to catalogue. The more collections I catted a wall to the more times I found it replicated in my wall catalogue overall.
Also - when placing objects into the collection it would be great if the specific texture you wanted only would show up as part of the collection not the default object appearance. Then collecting together custom textures created by users as a matched set would make a lot more sense.

Bodyshop/CAS issues

As a skinner I would also like to take the opportunity to note some Bodyshop and CAS frustrations that are rarely mentioned by the community.

Number one concern by far is that BS is TOO DARK. I get up close to the screen and squint but I still have the feeling of looking into a room with all the lights turned off. Not the best way to do very intricate and detailed skinning! Also there is another problem with the lighting in BS - because it is so very different from the in-game lighting in CAS you never truly know how your creation will look in-game until you load up CAS to check. Then you have to exit and re-load several times in between adjusting things in BS to get the right amounts of saturation and contrast in your creations. Very time-consuming!
I realise BS was released ahead of the actual game but I am still hoping that one day Maxis will get around to updating BS with similar lighting levels as the game one day.

Another question - would it be an idea for the future to update the facial sliders in CAS so that they have as much variety and subtlety as the BS sliders? BS takes a long time to load and if all you're trying to do is create a sim with a certain look it would be far better to be able to do this in CAS which has much better lighting and then you could put the sim directly into your game without cluttering up the saved sims folder. Many simmers, especially those who don't create custom content would rarely ever open BS at all, so including all BS sliders in CAS would make sense for the majority of simmers.

The way deleting saved sims and custom content in BS takes AGES just like it does in-game so if Maxis can update the deleting system to allow for more player efficiency I am hoping they will remember to update the deleting systems in BS as well.

When you download a sim and look for it in BS it does not appear at the beginning of the catalogue. You have to scroll through, scanning page after page to find your sim. Also, some organisation of sims in BS into age and sex would be great (just as the pre-made sims are in the game).

Sorry for the LONG post. I just wanted to say that despite minor frustrations every now and then, Sims2 is absolutely my DREAM GAME! I love and appreciate the caring and attention to detail included by Maxis in the base game. I become sincerely attached to my little sim characters and can assure you am a fan for life!