I was really starting to think maybe J.M was just yanking my chain because I assumed seasons read the pets object.package when it needed to do stuff from pets.  After finally finding a message on the offical bbs... it explained that a new ep grabs code from the objects.package of the previous ep and merges it with the new objects.package.  I didn't realize it worked this way.  So apologies to J.M for ever doubting your wisdom LOL.

As for the new seasons patch... It lists 3 fixes, but the file is 45 meg in size. I would assume it contains the latest pet fixes. I can't see needing 45 meg for 3 fixes.  But considering how wrong I was in my understanding of how the game worked, I could very well be wrong LOL.

The more I read this thread the more confused I get LOL. 

If I understand correctly what J.M is saying...   Even if I uninstall Seasons, install the pets patch, then reinstall seasons... any fixes having to do with the pets object.package and/or pets.exe won't be working with seasons installed?

That makes it sound like it's completely useless installing any Ep patches, because the newest Ep installed is going to ignore the fixes anyways.

New Sticky at the tech forum of official bbs...

http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?threadID=5602c28013eeb8045905e21cb2b86ece&directoryID=21&startRow=1&openItemID=item.21,root.1,item.61,item.104,item.41,item.127,item.23

Author:  MaxoidGoonter - Rank: Stammering Sim - View MySimPage Profile 
Date:  Mar-30-07 12:10 PM PDT (updated Mar-30-07 12:42 PM PDT)
Subject:  Patching your game - The definitive answer 
 

You only need to apply the most recent patch for the most recent EP you have installed.
This is because the installation of your most recent EP includes all previous bug fixes, so there is no need to apply previous patches.

EXCEPTION: If you have Pets and Seasons, please apply both patches - some of the Pets fixes were not included with Seasons. Thanks!

 
 

Just to make sure I understand what I've read... Installing the newest pets patch with seasons installed is NOT going to apply all the fixes it mentiones for pets? I need to uninstall seasons, install new pets patch, then reinstall seasons to have the patch work 100%?

The only jeffistani I use are the low food warnings, school hacks and the lazy anims. So I would guess i'm fine.   Is there any difference between the two files in the seasons directory named "moreawesomethanyou-seasons.zip" and "moreawesomethanyou.zip" ? And it is safe to just dump the whole thing into my game? (I do make note of possible conflicts with the few other mods I run though and have already removed 1 or 2 packages from my game)  Your set always has and probably always will be the dominant set


One other question.  I've been able to pretty much tell by the filename what all the mods do, but one in particular I can't "rpshack.package"  what does this one do?

It can take quite a bit of time sometimes for the outside temperature to get to what is normal for the season. This is most noticable when forcing from winter to another season.

That would explain things LOL.  In any case, after reading through alot of the rtfm's for all the MATY mods available, i've come to the conclusion there is no reason why I shouldn't just dump the whole collection into my mods folder.  I used to run with only about 1/3 of the mods thinking that alot of the others were borderline cheating, but I see now it's really all just game fixes/game improvements.  It also makes updating of the mods much easier. I can just download the full seasons pack and dump it into the mods folder.

Does doorbell_quieter fix this?  The rtfm only says it makes the gypsy less annoying.

This is something i've just been noticing, and don't recall it being this way previously.  The front doorbell is waking my sims when they are in bed.  I don't think it was like this before seasons.

EDIT:  I just did a search and found squinge has a mod that prevents this, and it has been around for quite sometime. For some reason I'm only noticing now that the doorbell wakes the sims.  But since installing Seasons I find i'm noticing alot of things that I never noticed previously. LOL

Originally I had alot more information about seasons and community lots. It had to do with the fact that you can/could control the seasons and weather on an owned business lot.  If you've been to the offical bbs lately, you will see a faq sticky in the seasons forum expaining that this is actually a bug in the game.  Patch 1 for seasons is currently in testing and I assume this bug will most likely be fixed in that patch.

This is how seasons and weather works when visiting a community lot in any neighborhood.

Season # (1-4) and Season type (summer, fall, winter, spring) are two separate things.

When sending a sim to visit a community lot, the season # of the community lot will be the same season # as the lot the sim is leaving from.

Example 1. Sim is at home, season 2 summer,  the community lot he wants to go to is in a sub neighborhood that has season 2 as winter. When the sim arrives at the community lot, it will be season 2 winter.

Example 2. Sim is at home, season 2 summer,  the community lot is in the same neighborhood, season 2 will be summer. When the sim arrives at the community lot it will of course be season 2 summer.


Weather on a community lot also works different then a home lot.  Using the ffs lot debugger I kept an eye on temperatures on community lots. A community lot always wants to be at a normal outside temperature of 0 degrees. The weather and temperature you currently have on your home lot when you leave for the community lot can carry over to the community lot when you arrive there.
For summer, fall and spring, temperatures tend to be close to 0 so when you arrive at the community lot, things won't be much different. Rain can occur at 0 degrees, so you will see rain and thunderstorms on community lots.

Winter is very different.  Temperatures can drop to -99, snow will be falling, and there can be deep snow on the ground. If you are coming from a lot with -99, snowing and deep snow on the ground, and arrive at a community lot that is also in winter season, you will see the same conditions on the community lot. It will be snowing, there will be deep snow on the ground and you will also see sims auto changing in and out of outerwear when they go inside and outside. But the game will force the temperature back to 0 degrees . So after about 5 hours or more, the temperature will be back to 0 degrees and because it can't/won't snow at that temperature, the snow will stop falling and the snow on the ground will disappear. Once the temperature gets to the normal 0 degrees you will never see snow on a winter community lot.


There is currently a "bug" in seasons.  If a community lot is a player owned business, when you have the sim owner leave the lot (which saves the lot), the current season and weather it has will be saved as well.

In one way this was a good thing and I had big plans for this bug LOL.   If you saved the lot in winter with snow falling and deep snow on the ground, anytime a sim visited this lot it would have that season and weather when you arrived on the lot.  This was nice because you could have a community lot that was always winter, had snow falling, had deep snow on the ground and had freezing temperatures (It would still go back to 0 degrees after 5 hours or more though).   I almost want them to leave this broken. But I realize this needs to be fixed. It works perfectly fine if you want to leave that lot as a plain community lot that you only use with visiting playable sims. But if you want to actually play the sim owner of that business, the season and weather would be stuck at the current settings everytime you left the lot.

 

In what way is temperature borked?

From my playtesting so far, sims have no knowledge of what season they will be going into. They won't change to appropriate clothing, But from what I can see, overheating and freezing on a community lot has no negative effects. If a sim overheats I don't think they will spontaniously combust. 

You can sort of know what season it will be in a subhood before you get there.  As an example,  If home hood is season 2 summer and sub hood is season 2 winter, it will be winter when you arrive at the sub hood community lot. This is for an unowned community lot. When you visit an unowned community lot in a different neighborhood then your home hood, The season # (1-4) will always match up.

 I will hopefully be posting the guide I promised very soon. It's turning out to be alot of information though.  There are a few variables that affect what the season/weather will be on a community lot when you visit.  Is the lot in your home hood or a different hood, Is the lot unowned, or is it owned as a business by a sim etc. There is other information I would like to include in the guide as well such as how to control the weather on a lot.

Katatonic's list is the correct one. pioupiou in the "Odd things I noticed about Seasons" thread posted with the same #'s.  And in the playing i've done I also get those #'s.  pioupiou also mentioned that it's 6x each ingredient to get the serve juice option.

Here is the list pioupiou posted. It also lists the amount needed for "serve juice" option...
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,7455.msg210057.html#msg210057

If you can hold on for about a day and check back then, I will have a solution for most or all the points you listed.

---Door locked except for family.  I'm going to check out an old simlogical door and if it works it will solve this.

---OFB's Electrono Ticket machine will charge a set hourly fee to use the lot.

---if the sim/family has a car and uses it to visit the lot, it wouldn't be possible to have it park in a driveway, but the car would park out on the street and stay there.

---disable mailbox. wouldn't be necessary, it would be a community lot.  Using the mods you mentioned, sleep and shower on community lot, the sim/family technically would be just visiting and not actually living there.

---I'm in the process of writing a mini guide that will explain how seasons/weather works when visiting a community lot and it will also explain how to set weather almost permanently for a community lot.  (Using Simwardrobes Seasons and Weather controller).

I think that covers all the points you had

I've just done a bunch of testing and have found that it is possible to have an all winter sub hood, and have a sim from another hood which is currently in summer, visit a comunity lot there and have a normal winter with all the winter interactions/content (deep snow on the ground, build snowman, auto changing in and out of outerwear etc.)  There are several quirks to this, but there are also ways around the quirks.

My apologies to Ness.  He/She was replying to a message I had originally posted here, but decided to delete and post in a different thread. 

And yes I since discovered that it comes on one dvd or 2 cd's.

Thank you for clearing up my confusion

How many cd's should there be with seasons?  I only have 1 cd, but on many forums i've seen mention of a cd 2.  As far as I know my copy of seasons installed properly, but i'm a bit confused now.

ML_Craftsman_GLOBAL-MOD.package
ML_HighTech_GLBOAL-MOD.package
ML_Lafenetre_GLOBAL-MOD.package
ML_OpenMe_GLOBAL-MOD.package

MaryLou's "Counter-friendly Windows"

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=214989

There actually is a boolprop for turning the neighbors on and off, but I wanted to find out what your system was first because from what I could see in the graphic rules file, there should have been no reason for it to be disabled.  I didn't realize shaders would affect the neighbors on and off as well. LOL

What are your system specs?   System Memory, CPU Speed, and Video Memory?  Was it enabled before Seasons?

The file you want to look at is called Graphics Rules.sgr  you will find it a folder where the seasons expansion is actually installed.  If you used the default location I think it would be Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Seasons\TSData\Res\Config

Open the Graphic Rules.sgr with notepad and you will see the information the game checks to see what level to set your game at.  I've already found the culprit though,  about half way down there is an if/then check. This isn't quoted exact but it says  if videocard is x1300, x300, xpress 200 then set shaders to false and force low setting.  I'm not exactly sure why those 3 cards are in a specific system check. I have an x1300 and have no issues with shaders on etc.  But there is the reason why you are defaulting back to low when installing a new expansion.



That has more to do with poorly created objects, and with Seasons doing more with the pixel shading/reflectivity of the game, it made them that much more blinding.


I think the Prima Guide may be wrong about the minimum depth of a pond to see fish. I had to make my pond quite deep before I started seeing the fish.

No fish in ponds... As ZiggyDoodle mentioned, ponds need to be a minimum of 4x4 area, and 2 squares deep.

Graphic settings resetting to low...  Starting with I belive Open for business, EA raised the minimum specifications for the game quite a bit.  When you install Sims 2 or any of the expansion packs, there is a setup file that is used to check what your system specifications are. It's a preset checklist the game uses. It has 3 sections to it,  Low, Medium and High, in each section it has checks to see if your computer can use that particular setting level.  Until OFB your system may have been meeting the requirements for the High setting. Now the game considers your system below spec and is setting you at low by default.  (I know it doesn't make sense considering your system, but most likely there is one item in the checklist that your system is low on.)

Pixel Shading is one item in particular in the checklist that if you don't have a very hefty system EA/Sims 2 will turn it off by default.  With Seasons EA has made more use of pixel shaders in the game and I think this may be the reason your finding things more reflective in your game.  (I would need to see a screenshot to know what you consider more reflective ).

To have the game put shaders on full time, you just need to create a Userstartup.cheat file that gets placed in the config folder in your My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2 folder.   Snootysims.com has a quick tutorial on this in the cheat section, but it's simply a matter of opening notepad, typing in "boolprop useshaders true" (no quotes), then saving the file with the filename Userstartup.cheat (there will be a dropdown list box when saving that says filetype and says .txt,  you can change this to all filetypes and the file will be saved without the .txt extension on it.)

Hope this helped.

boolprop useshaders true
is what your looking for

This can be used either in the cheat console (control,shift,c)  or it can be put in the userstartup.cheat file so that the shaders are always on.

With the shaders on you will see the fish in the aquariums and the fishing ponds,  the water in the swimming pools will have better ripple effects and will also be reflective.  It will also turn on the snow cursor.

This may slow your game down though.  If you find things a bit too slow, there are several graphic/performance options you can adjust.

Shadows-         put on medium or off.
Reflections-      turn off. You will loose the reflections in mirrors and water reflections in the swimming pools, but will still have the ripple effects in pools.
Smooth edges- less is better performance.

You can play with those settings until you find a setup that your happy with.

Pixel shading seems to be mostly dependant on CPU speed.  I have a 512 meg video card and only a 1.4 gig CPU and Sims 2 setup insists on turning off shaders on my system, so i put the boolprop cheat in my userstartup.cheat file so that it's always on.

Hope this helps

All items are in my game and working    Many, Many thanks birene