For people having technical issues, I just wanted to mention a few things that are probably obvious to most, but still might help some people:

--Make sure you're using the latest video drivers for your video card. If you've had the card a long time, used a lot of different driver versions or 'rollbacks' it may be worth using a driver cleaner and starting from scratch. If you're using a laptop with an ATI mobility chipset, you may want to check out Mobility Modder, they may have newer ATI-compatible drivers than your laptop manufacturer has available.

--also try to find updated drivers for any other hardware (audio etc)

--It's probably a good idea to let Windows do its update thing and get the latest service packs and hotfixes

--Defrag your harddrives if you're not doing it automagically

--Run a full virus and spyware scan

--Speaking of virus and spyware scanning, if you're running anything hardcore, or with real-time scanning, you may want to try temporarily disabling it during gameplay and see if it improves anything

Again, I know this is probably basic stuff to most, but it really can make a difference.

I'm actually more of the usenet binaries persuasion than torrenting (the first rule of fight club...), but thank you for the information.

If I wasn't sitting in a cabin with dialup speeds I'd have it going now.

After looking at the TPB torrent that mentions mac (thanks jolrei), I'm gonna theorize that the disc image they ripped contains the installers for both PC & Mac, so probably any of these ~5gb releases will work for either. I won't be able to verify this till tomorrow, but sharing the theory for info's sake.

Thanks, I'll check TPB. I'd been reading the comments on another site instead and they were more of the OMG IS THIS REAL!? content level. 

I know that disclaimers won't earn me jack here, but I'm pretty sure I've read all posts (definitely the long one before the split, then did text searches in this thread), and have not seen this asked:

Does the arr'd version/image that seems to be the main release (the reloaded one, have seen it anywhere from 4-5gb on various places) also include the mac/OSX version? I'm pretty sure I've seen one person talk about the performance on their mac, but I do not see a separate release for it on torrents or usenet.

Not crucial, just curious. I'm on vacation and pretty bandwidth-free so cannot arr yet.

How the hell do you get a witch to teach witchcraft?

Rock!

Downloaded.

Putting Twyla's BDSM outfit back in the dresser.

Edited to add: Athena's wants and fears! They have sanity now!

Sigh.

She's gotten over it for now, but I'll screenshot it next time.

The Want icon is just like the pet command want, but with the girlfriend's portrait. "Twyla learns to come here", etc.

I don't know how to delete Sims in-game? Unless you mean from the family bin? In which case, no. Tired of looking at Malcolm Landgraab VIIIIII, btw.

This is a 'clean' neighborhood (well....I think it got BV and FT townies, ultimately) and all the Sims in question were born there.

That's the one.

I hadn't changed anything else in a week or two...just nabbing the director's cut updates as they come in. I suppose the Sim could have been 'broken' before and it took the right circumstances (obtaining a pet) for it to happen.

One of my Sims has some bizarre wants. She wants her girlfriend to learn pet commands. While semi-amusing in a BDSM sense, it's not a Want she can actually fulfill.

My only theory is that this was caused by using an older 'create a baby pet' object. Yes, I broke it. But I've gotten rid of the pet in question, removed all hacks, used various mods including FFS lot debugger to reset the Sim's wants, and it doesn't matter, she still keeps at least two want slots dedicated to having her girlfriend learn pet commands.

Any ideas how I can fix this?

It seems like all my employed sims are having this happen, even those not at top of career ladder. I guess I could remove my hack dir and test it, despite the fact that I am extraordinarily lazy.

I was wondering if there was any way that would be remotely feasible without it being immense. I did make somewhere in the realm of 30+ Discworld characters (some of which I turned into NPCs), and I've slowly been converting some lots into Discworld sites (although architecture and decor is really not my forte, and I've had a problem with many of the medieval lots being really pretty but totally unplayable from a flow standpoint...I've got to figure out what to do with my Unseen University because if I actually try to play the lot I get motion sick, heh).

I probably do have an early copy (I've only had the neighborhood up and running for a few days in any case), I think I made a backup with TS2 Enhancer pretty early on. Would it just be a matter of zipping up the N00# folder and sticking it somewhere? Hrm, almost all the characters have custom hair of one kind or another, though, and I have a lot of clothing/outerwear from AAS (and probably other stuff) that wasn't on your shopping list. So it wouldn't be perfect (and I don't think I have the wherewithal to catalog and list all the CC they have).

From what I gather, packaging sims themselves is evil?

Er: short version...I'm totally willing to give it a shot, don't mind sharing, upload/hosting not a problem for me, but it would probably not be as neat or... done correctly? ... as your stuff or the typical shared neighborhood.

Let me say so far that, despite careful planning, Angua has an immense and unexplained crush on.......Nobby Nobbs. It makes my head hurt to think about.

(I'm going to try, for the first time, to actually accumulate enough screenshots to do a real story mode; if I get it done and upload it somewhere, I'll post again here or PM/email you.)

(Just out of curiousity--I wasn't sure if you were still here in the thread and whatnot--if I spawn any subhoods, I will be subjecting myself to bad NPCs being spawned? You don't have any medieval templates for any of them, correct? Not to sound ungrateful--I'd always planned for the Discworld hood to function without subhoods for that reason, and you've already done an immense amount of work.)

Just wanted to say I've been playing a lot with your neighborhood and spawned townies, and I really appreciate all the work you put into this. Lots of little touches keep surprising me. The townie kid named 'Beastiality' was good; I can only assume this was a Discworld reference (which was awesome because the reason I got your neighborhood (and the attendant shopping list) in the first place was to start up a Discworld 'hood.)

I haven't had any glitches so far.

For posterity's sake: in the end I had to reinstall the game from scratch. (Bottom line was that I couldn't open any clean neighborhoods (my own generated via clean templates, or downloaded clean lots) in SimPE or make edits with TS2 Enhancer.) My best guess is that I somehow screwed one of the steps in my initial clean-template setup.

I think I've used up my edits or something. In addition to the error above, I forgot to mention that the neighborhood .package file is fatally corrupt afterwards.

I use TS2 Enhancer. It's unusable on clean custom neighborhoods, either ones I've created myself via the steps here and empty templates, or 'empty' neighborhoods I've downloaded from MTS2. It returns an "index out of bounds" error on just about any operation.

It doesn't happen on any of my old/non-'clean' neighborhoods. It happens whether or not Townies have been batch-spawned or NPCs generated.

I'm not expecting support here for TS2 Enhancer, obviously, just curious if anyone has any theories about what might be different between a 'clean' neighborhood and one that has auto-generated its own townies etc that would make the program choke on virtually anything I try to do (usually minor operations on individual Sims..."index out of bounds (-1)" upon attempted save.)

Thanks for any thoughts. I understand that the answer is probably 'don't use SimEnhancer', I'm just curious.

Ah! Thanks, this makes perfect sense as I usually have at least one Knowledge sim per family, and the telescope is frequently the first miscellaneous item to be bought.

(I looked in Cyd's memories, but his only note of these altercations is "Met XX".)

I'm thinking about just killing him off, since he's being such a bastard.

I think he's one of the default Pets bin families. I recently moved him into a lot in a new custom neighborhood, and he keeps showing up to whatever lot I'm playing and running up to one of the sims and pushing them, trying to start a fight. Then my sims spend like the next day thinking how furious they are with him. This has happened with brand new families I've just moved into a lot. Is there some story behind this?

And thanks for the link, Khaki. Going there now.

(Tried to edit the above post to add that; I can find no evidence that it stuck. Sorry for spam.)

Thanks for all the responses. It seems likely that it's the problem mentioned, adding all my DL objects (rough guess based on the average bloat factor), but I'll check out a package with Clean Installer.

To answer a couple of the questions: I am saving to file, and "usual amount" of CC = I keep it well under 1gb due to incredible impatience with loading screens.

Earlier in the thread, people talk about compressing their base game files or "EA GAMES" folders. I'm not sure if they're talking about the Program Files\ stuff (including going into each xpac's directory?), or the Documents and Settings stuff, or both. Would anyone be kind enough to tell me some good candidates for base game compression, or point me to a place I could find out?