That cheat wouldn't work for me either. I had to finally use the dormer trick to be able to finish off my highest level.

Oooh, that looks great Havelock.

Now, if I understood what you guys are saying, even with this fix, it won't really help any of the recolors I've got issues with. Fooey. Ah well.

BastDawn: Believe it or not, I found the recolors on the exchange. When they did that H&M design contest this summer, there were some really nice recolors done of a bunch of meshes. I downloaded a few of them and there were at least two I got for this mesh. Both had the same problem, though. The necklaces looked odd and caused the neckline to be all freakish. I finally deleted all but one of them.

http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/sim_detail.php?asset_id=995514&asset_type=sim&user_id=626454 was the one I hung onto. I love the jean texture of the whole thing. Unfortunately, I can't get pastt he neckline.

My main neighborhood is mostly residential with a few owned businesses on one commercial strip. There's also an unfinished graveyard. The only deaths have been in the main line of the legacy family, so those tombstones stayed on the lot. I'm about to have my first non-main-line deaths, so those will be moved to the graveyard, so I'll have to finish that.

For downtown, I've mostly done extensive remodeling of the existing businesses rather than building my own. I rearranged the default layout so that most of the businesses are all close together, making it actually look more like a downtown, in my opinion. I've got a few nightclubs I downloaded and added in (Merkabah from HolySimoly - careful it deforms the terrain, Gothika and PURE West from Cireking).

I've also done some extensive remodeling of Sim State.

I believe that the .bak files are just back-ups, correct? So they should be safe to delete.

Ooh. Thanks, Spooky. I'll give that a try and see if it works for what I need. I'm hoping it fixes the other outfits I have that use that mesh.

I love the look of the rock god outfit on women from afar, but if you get close, there's this hideous line on the neck and the necklace is just really strange looking. I remember this being discussed here way back when Seasons first came out. I was hoping to find a fixed mesh for the outfit, but after some searching, I've come up empty. I've got a few recolors of the mesh that I'd like to use, but every time I put them on a sim, I see that line on the neck and get irritated.

Here's what I mean:



So has anyone ever heard of a replacement mesh for the rock god outfit for women? (I seem to recall the male version has issues too, but not as glaring.)

It's been about a month since I checked to see if any of these had updated or changed, but it's also been about a month since I had a chance to do any serious playing.

antiredundancy
antivacationactions
antiweatherreaction
autosoc
autoyak
businessrunsyou
carpoolfix
commstereofix
darwincowplant
dramafix
ffsdebugger
frontdoorhack
ltwvariety
macrotastics
marriage-postmortem
nobogartswings
nobuskers
noeatcrap
noinstantlove
noservochores
nosmartmilkdrag
nossresawn
notelepathy
notownieregen
nounneededcoats
novelprogress
nowhatsthis
phonehack
phonehack-talkmodule
primpfix
romancemod
romanceurnstonefix
sandcastlefix
scannergunhack
skillinator
snseldercareeroutfitfix
sshack
stuckobjectremover
synctimer
togafix
uni_ltws_sns
vampwerefixes
warmthfixes
wfsanity
woohooltwfix

I recall hearing that seeing it once or twice is harmless and just a problem with the sim dealing with too much data and not being able to translate it. If you start seeing it ALL the time, then it may be a sign of impending doom.

Thanks for the info, Inge. I had a feeling it might be something like that. The extracted sims all seem to work just fine, but occasionally something gets borked with the sims themselves. Thank goodness for valid back-ups.

I really hope someone over there gets on the ball and starts posting some information on when we're going to get an update or let people who actually want to do it DO IT. I get irritated every time I check out their forums. I understand not wanting to have to answer every 'OMG I need SimPE NOWZ!' post, but the community really does depend on the damn program. Most of us are screwed without it when it comes to saving our games if something goes wrong.

Fah. Thanks for at least trying, Inge.

They're either full of shit, or as you suggested, looking for a reason to cause drama, Inge.

I'm going to note something that happened with my use of a beta version, but it may be irrelevant, since I  a. don't really know what I'm doing with SimPE most of the time, and b. may have been using an already replaced version of the beta. Either way, the only thing I had used it for was to extract some sims using Sim Surgery.

Essentially, I went into a lot that should have had eight playable sims. Only seven where in the panel and two of those were invisible and uncontrollable. The only thing I had done to this neighborhood in weeks was some building remodeling downtown and extracting sims, so my conclusion was that SimPE somehow ate my sims. I had this happen once before ages ago, so I've learned to back-up before I do any extracting. I lost my remodeled buildings with the back-up, but those are easy enough to get out of the old game.

Any way, thank you so much for working on this, even if you're getting some sheep bleating at you for actually trying to help out the simming community.

Double posting. Sorry.

Someone on another board found one at MTS2, but it's just for cats.

http://modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=229120

Unfortunately, I specifically needed it for dogs. But I'm going to poke at this one to see how well it works.

That would be awesome, Brynne. I don't need to use the pet animations very often, but I have a fairly complicated scene I need to shoot that I was hoping to find this for. I've looked on all the usual suspect sites for hacks and mods, but never seen anything.

I've been looking for an animation hack that works on pets. I've got plenty that work on Sims (Hula & More, Decorgal's talk paintings, etc.), but nothing that works on pets. I've also never discovered anything within game (using boolprop cheats) that will work in such a way for pets either.

Has anyone ever heard of such a hack? I don't need one that's too extensive, just something to get a few animations without having to jump through hoops (I'd rather make the pet do that).

Go ahead and shoot me if this is in the wrong spot.

Okay. I'll take your word for it. I tested it on some other sims and it did seem to be working as expected.

I've been experiencing some oddness with this one. At least, I'm pretty sure it's this one. I have both the phone hack and autoyak, as well as the phone hack module.

Anyway, I've got a popularity sim who just went to Uni and aged up as a young adult. She has a cell phone and has had for a while. There are two weird things that are happening:

1. Sometimes the 'Call ... Friends' option does not appear for her. I haven't figured out if it's random or associated with anything, but sometimes when I send her to call Friends, the option isn't there. I keep forgetting to test it out on anyone else, but she's the first one I noticed this problem with.

2. The priority in which she calls her friends is completely messed up. She will call those with the highest LTR/STR first. When the option to call friends appears and I click on it, she invariably calls all the folks she's already 100/100 with and ignores the folks that she's 70/42 with. She is a pop sim, so I've been working on the 30 best friends want, so this is killing me that the phone isn't working like I had become accustomed to. She has enough best friends with high relationships now that by the time she gets through all those high ones to get to the ones I need her to be calling, she needs to hang up and go pee.

Anyway... Not sure what might be going on here, but it seems directly related to this hack.

My observation has been that they tend to go towards the door that they deem on the 'ground' floor. So, if I build a house on a foundation, but have a door coming out of the basement at the back of the house, that's considered to be on the lowest floor, therefore must be the main entrance. Every single time I've placed a door out of a basement, that's where the delivery folks try and go. Also, the one time I built a separate garage, the delivery folk would go to the side door on the garage, because that was lower as well.

I'm going to give this frontdoorhack a try. I like having walk out basements, especially when I'm building on a slope.

I've got an odd problem in a couple of my lots. There's probably some easy explanation for it, but I seem to be too dumb to find it. Either way, it basically sounds like someone is playing SSX on a sim computer even if there's no computer on the lot. In the latest house I had the issue in, I deleted the computer, but still got the sound effects at odd times. I'm not sure if it's associated with an area of the house or not, since it's definitely not the area where the computer used to be.

Anyone ever heard of this? Anyone heard of a solution?

Thank you, Sleepycat! That will make life very easy when the new SimPE comes out.

Back on topic, I found another little thing that I like. When you use the 'pose' feature to get your sims to pose, they're not static like they are in Squinge's Hula & More. They  will actually track the camera as you move it around, or look at new people who enter the room. I was very pleasantly surprised at this when I was trying to get a couple of specific pictures today.

Y'know, I wouldn't be surprised if that's a hairstyle they're going to include in the Teen Style Stuff Pack that's coming out soon. There's a whole surfer theme in that, so it would make sense.

Sorry I can't offer any advice on how to do what you want, though. :}

I've never mucked around with the terrain surgery tool. Do you have to remove all existing lots before doing it (send the families to the sim bin, then move the empty houses to the lot bin), or will it just relocate the lots to the nearest road? There are some features to the neighborhood terrain I have that I like, but in addition to their being no ocean front property, it's just too big.

Obviously, this would have to wait until SimPE comes out anyway, but still. My interest is piqued now.

Thanks for the links, Zazazu and Sleepycat. I will be definitely making use of a couple of those terrains. I like what you've done with your neighborhood so far too, Sleepycat. It looks pretty nifty. If I weren't almost halfway through my legacy, I'd consider switching neighborhoods for it to get some beach terrain. I may consider adding a ocean based shopping district since I haven't had one added as of yet, but we shall see.

And thanks for the info on CEP. That makes me feel less feebleminded. I was going crazy because I knew those stalls were different colors, but couldn't figure out how to get them. The odd thing too was that my stall recolors from Piggisims weren't working either.

I'm curious which terrain you'll use. I was looking through my terrains and there are really only a couple that offer good beach locations. Isla Segundo is actually disappointing for how little beach front property it offers. Or are you going to be making your own terrains, Dizzy? If so... share?


Forgive me for being dumb, but I couldn't find the public toilet recolors. I can see them on the public lots, but I couldn't figure out how to change the colors. The design tool wouldn't work on it, which was most frustrating.

As for the ep itself...

I'm really happy with the beach lots and a lot of the new building options. They make me a very happy simmer. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with this pack. I don't know how often I'll actually use the vacations, but it's still a very cool option. Beyond that, there are lots of smaller additions from this pack that I will be using all the time.

The serving of room service annoys me as well. And with buy mode controls being disabled, there's no way to pick up the serving tray and just move it someplace else. I wondered if there were another table available, if the bell hop would put it there instead of at the seating table. I haven't tried this yet, but I do wonder if it might help.

I'm not sure I like restaurants in the hotels either. I'm not sure if this is normal restaurant behavior or not, but I sent a family of four on vacation (newleyweds and her parents). I had one of the sims go to the restaurant and ask to get seated. No one else in his family could join him, meaning they all had to ask to be seated and were seated at separate tables. That sucks. Is there something I'm missing here about how to get a family that's not an outing to sit together in a restaurant?

I'm wondering if it's worth it to try and put a banquet table in a hotel. I might try taking out the kitchen and podium in one of the fancy hotels and replacing it with a buffet table and see if that helps at all.

I'll be keeping an eye on Decorgal and Aikea. Both of them have some pretty solid animation hacks, though they're not quite as easy to use as Hula & More. Decorgal has the talk paintings, which are very well laid out, but the animations don't loop, so they get tricky to coordinate shots for. The Aikea paintings are a little haphazardly laid out, but they offer more animations than Hula & More. I was able to use their punching bag animations for a fight scene in my latest update, WITHOUT dealing with the automatic change into gym clothes.

Still...I hope someone picks up the torch for Hula & More and runs with it.

I had the honeymoon problem too. Sims were engaged in Uni, before BV was installed. Playable sim moved home with her parents. Invited fiance over and had him move into the house. She then booked the vacation. Immediately afterwards, she invited the wedding guests and had the wedding party. The wedding went fine and was even a roof raiser. When it was over, though, the bride and groom stood there for a moment while all the guests left. Suddenly, I had another party timer up in the corner of the screen. It had started the timing for the party over again. They had the wedding memories, though. I don't know about wants being fulfilled or not, since neither had the want locked.

I ended up canceling the honeymoon and booking a normal vacation. That worked fine.

Oh, and I also had the problem where the speed of the game jumps to x3 when entering a community lot.


In answer to this question... Ultimately I think it's going to depend on a person's playstyle. People who never use community lots are probably going to find this one to be a waste of money. While Nightlife added a whole bunch to the game in addition to the downtown area, BonVoyage's extras are more peripheral. The big fun is actually going on a vacation and exploring the various community lots. If that's not your thing, than it probably is a waste of time.

I do think I like Bon Voyage better than I liked Vacation. I poked at Vacation a bit when I had sims1 installed and I really wasn't impressed with it. Bon Voyage seems more robust and better thought out. I like the different flavors of vacation destinations. Some of the new interactions are nice, as well as some of the social objects. I thought the MahJong table was cute.

I think, in a way, Bon Voyage will be a bit like OFB. To get the most out of it, you actually have to use its features. There's a lot too it, but if someone doesn't like disrupting their sims routine, they'll never really get much out of it. For me, OFB was useless until I finally decided to try fulfilling that annoying 5 Businesses want. Now I know how much is really in it. Bon Voyage will probably be the same for most people.