More Awesome Than You!

So, I've picked up playing Sims 2 again after about 8 months away. I have Uni, NL, OFB, FFS & GLS, and I'm thinking about getting at least one more EP/SP. Thing is, I'm not sure which one(s) will be worth getting, based on how I play the game.

In a nutshell, my sims tend to spend virtually all their time on their home lots. I take them to community lots only about once every month or so (real time, not sims time), if that. My current family has a home business, but again, I find I can't be bothered to attempt to own or play a community business. My sims also haven't actually gone to Uni in forever, I just use hacks to add their extra want slots, etc. In light of my "homebody" tendencies, I doubt Bon Voyage would be of much added value for me, but I would like to know what people here think WOULD be worth getting, taking into consideration my playstyle.

Your suggestions are greatly appreciated, and if you have any questions about what hacks I use, ask away. Thanks!

P.S. Not sure it makes any difference, but I also tend to play a single family at any given time, working them up through generations, rather than skip between families. With my current family, I'm really trying to stick to allowing only one child from each generation to have kids of their own, moving any siblings out sometime between the Teen - Adult stages. Right now the decision on who gets to have kids is based on which (if any) child inherits the custom green eyes I gave the family's founding female :-)

As you mentioned Bon Voyage would probably be the EP that you would get the least enjoyment from playing. IMO, Freetime sorta sucks, but perhaps I haven't given it enough of a chance yet.

The one EP which I loved right from the outset was Seasons. I like the farming/fishing aspect and the fact that some of my sims have become self sufficient by selling what they sow and catch. Being able to sell crops and fish for profit is fun!

I agree with aussieone, Seasons has been the only EP that I enjoyed from the start. The others have grown on me, FT included, but Seasons is definitely a cut above the rest. I was especially disappointed with BV because Vacation was one of my favorite TS1 EPs but I have really come to love Twikkii Island and beachfront properties. You could always ARRRR! the EPs if you wanted to "try before you buy".

ARRRR! ????

As in, choose not to pay for. *ahem*

Seasons is a definite must. Totally and completely changes the game's feel and fishing and farming can mesh well with OFB. If you're considering a second, I'd get BV. I haven't actually had vacation sub'hoods linked to my last two 'hoods, but I love the beach lots to pieces, so even after you get bored with the vacation portion it's not like you'll forget you have the EP.

FreeTime....eh. I like some of the craftables, but the badges take so dang long to get, and honestly I find myself ignoring sim hobbies more and more.

Ok, so Seasons is a definite at least :-)

Anyone care to speak about the relative merits of Pets (which I haven't seen mentioned yet) or any of the SPs I don't have - which I believe are: Celebration, H&M, Teen, and K&B?

If you like animals and/or the notion of playing a simulated dog/cat breeder, Pets is a great addition. I like playing with breeding characteristics and I personally like animals, so Pets hasn't been a waste of hard drive space for me. If virtual animals aren't your thing, then the expansion is of debatable worth. Strays are highly annoying and require you to take some precautions to protect your yards (and are irritating regardless). Werewolves I haven't really gotten to test yet, but they seem more interesting than zombies and less high maintenance than vampires, so take that for what it's worth. But, really, if you don't put any animals into your households, you won't even notice Pets is installed until some stray comes and makes himself at home in your yard/garbage/front porch. (I highly recommend getting the cleaned templates to rid yourself of strays if you do get it.)

Oh, and I do believe it was the Pets expansion which added the option for Custom Paintings on the easel, which allows you to add your own artwork into a folder and have Sims paint it in-game. I play a lot of artist Sims, so I love that option to bits.

On the SPs, I know nothing about K&B. H&M is good if you aren't someone (like me) that downloads 8183491 pieces of custom clothing, because -- for EAxis -- a lot of the clothes added are decent, and are a definite step-up from the base game stuff. Celebration is something I "acquired" recently, and what tinkering I've done, I don't know how I lived without it. It's possible make a presentable weddings and birthday parties now. Teen, predictably, adds some new stuff for teens, though all I've seen so far are the new collections and furniture. I'll use it, I'm sure, but it's not something I'd say is worth buying.

Just my lurking two cents. Though I'm on the bandwagon touting Seasons as easily the best EP. It really does alter the whole game, rather than being a tinker-and-forget like most of the rest.

I'm sort of in the same boat as Jennydee, since I arrrr'd a bunch of stuff, but haven't installed Pets, Seasons, or FT yet (the FT zip turned out to be broken, so I guess I have to buy it.) So I have a question, which I'm sure Jennydee will be interested in as well: what are the performance effects of installing Pets or Seasons? I specifically skipped those when I installed OFB and BV, because I wanted to see whether the system would slow down with OFB/BV and a couple stuff packs installed. No visible difference, but I figure Pets might be different because of the extra animated creatures on the lot, and Seasons has a lot of extra visual effects. Are there noticeable performance drops with those two EPs installed?

Pets is just all about pets. I agree with SimWitch, it really depends on your preference. I like the futuristic furniture set and floor dividers (I believe it's from Pets), but that's about it. No new clothes at all. Custom painting option will be carried onto later EPs, so if you get Seasons you'll get it as well.

Until I acquired subsequent SPs, I didn't realize that GLS was actually a decent SP by comparison. None of later SPs is up to GLS IMO. They're too specialized. For example, if you don't care about wedding parties, you would not find much use for Celebration. As for Teen pack, the so-called "Elite" theme is more suitable for nursery IMO. I have little use for stupid GothEmo stuff. Teen hairs are quite nice though. As for K&B, Holy Simoly's donation sets totally PWN it, both in quality and quantity. Seriously, only 3 similar black shades for the new shower, which is near identical clone of base game shower in itself?

Go look at official homepage (http://thesims2.ea.com/about/index.php) for items and screenshots. WYSIWYG. Nothing more.

If I have to pick just one SP, I'd choose Celebration. Before Celebration, I hardly bothered with wedding parties. Now I find myself throwing wedding parties more often.

On my old computer, which hated anything and everything I ever ran on it more complex than a web browser, I eventually had all the expansions up to and including Seasons. My install order was funky... it was something like base game --> Uni --> Nightlife --> Seasons --> Pets --> OFB. My system performance remained about the same (albeit crappy) until I installed OFB. It made the game damn near unplayable for me. I don't know if it was OFB's fault, or just stacking it on top of everything else that did it, but I had serious performance issues after installing it. For reference, my old specs were a 1.2GhZ AMD processor, 896 MB RAM, and 128 MB video card.

On my new computer, I have all EPs and SPs save K&B, and on max graphics settings I have no system troubles. I'm sitting at 2.2GhZ AMD processor, 2GB RAM, and a 512 MB video card.

For neighborhood start-up, Pets and Seasons will both add some time to the load screen when playing a neighborhood for the first time, but should load normally after that. Winter in Seasons can be somewhat stressful when it snows, but you can change around the seasons how you like in a neighborhood, and remove winter if snowfall causes too much terrible lag. (Which I do anyway, because I freaking hate winter and its useless bonus.)

From what I've observed, Seasons is a lot more system-intensive than Pets. I've had six pets on a lot (on my old PC) with several Sims, and performance stayed the same even after I whittled down the pets on lot to two. I've also never noticed my lots with pets responding any slower than my lots without.

Individual mileage will vary. OFB was my personal downfall, but I'm guessing most people didn't have issues with it. :)

I say seasons and free time.
Pets and BV is utterly useless in gameplay.

The only reason I keep Pets installed is because of the floor dividers.  If it wasn't for those, I'd probably uninstall it.  I do like some of the furniture as well, but not enough to keep it installed just for the furniture.

If I'd known FT would have BV's "walk to lot" feature & expanded range of turn-ons & turn-offs, then I'd probably have skipped BV.  I've had BV since it was released and am only now starting to play beach lots.  I was a bit slow to get into them because I don't build much and I've heard downloaded beach lots can be finicky about where they're placed.

My recommendation would be to go with Seasons because it adds a lot to the gameplay - more than any other EP does.  Free Time is growing on me.  I wasn't sure I'd like it, but I like the new objects and the tiled kitchen floors & matching walls, and the hobbies give my bored perma plat sims something to do.

I've just installed all EPs plus a number of stuff packs on my laptop.

Sad story, my motherboard's RAID controllers and audio and networking and stuff is failing, so the board is off to electronics hospital. ONE DAY AFTER THE WARRANTY RAN OUT! Ahem. /end whinge (I might get lucky with the warranty anyway).

Anyway, I knew I'd be on the laptop for several weeks and I despaired of being able to play the sims. A 4400 dual core CPU, 2GB Corsair RAM, 2 Raptor drives in a RAID array at 10,000rpm versus the poor old laptop. I thought I had no chance of running the sims. The laptop is 2 Ghz CPU, 1GB RAM - with 128MB pinched for graphics - and a normal speed drive, possibly even 5700rpm rather than 7200rpm.

Being a tryer, I went ahead and installed anyway. (After I followed some web tutorials on how to tweak my machine and turn off all unnecessary stuff). I did all the EPs in order, plus patches where they fit. I even slotted in some of the stuff packs, GLS, H&H, Teen style stuff and the bathrooms and kitchen one. I installed the no cd crack so I wouldn't get securom and booted the game. The screen went black. I sighed. Then it started loading, the game loaded! Yee haar!

I entered an average sized lot - movement was smooth and and there was not too much loss of detail, though I couldn't run it at full anti-aliasing of course. I ended up adding my 1.5GB of downloads just to see what would happen. Glory be, that worked too! I'm so rapt, I totally didn't expect to be able to do this.

So my advice to you, is just try loading what you want and see what happens, you might just get a pleasant surprise.

If you have to pick and choose, I agree with most of the posters, Seasons is the best EP so far.

PS That's odd, they've missed the Holiday Party pack off the official stuff pack list. I didn't install that or Celebrations or the Family Fun stuff.

They're specifically designed to do that.

Do you know, I bloody thought that when the guy said I bought it on 29/4/06. 'Your warrant ran out yesterday', he said. 'Ah ha ha', I went, 'you are joking with me, right?'

And I'd spent the last four days reinstalling windoze repeatedly, swapping from the nforce RAID controllers to the Silicon image ones. And begging, pleading, whining etc. to any spare deity that might be listening.

Speaking as a notorious EP avoider, myself, and noting your gameplay style is homebodyish, I would suggest Seasons (which I am planning to get as well) because of the gardening/fishing possibilities, the penguin, etc.

Pets is the least attractive for me.  It's needed if you want, well, pets.  As a home-body sims person, you might like that.  I tend to send my sims out all over the place.

BV, as mentioned already, has beach lots which means your sims have beach activities at home, which is nice, and there are some additional build/buy additions.  "Walk-to-lot" is great (avoids waiting for the taxi) and it might just take the sting out of community lots for you.  This is important if you ever do decide to take your sims on holiday, because holidays seem to be all about running between community lots to find different things for your sims to do.

FT is not everyone's favourite, and I tend to ignore the hobby obsession unless my sims really want to do something.  I like the new activities (sports, ballet, contests, etc.) and these would be suitable for a homebody type gaming style (i.e. set up a basketball court so your sim teens can shoot hoops).  Walk-to-lot would also be available with FT, so if you really want to avoid BV, and want this feature, you can just load FT.

I like Pets, but I'm in the minority. The only annoyance is strays, and Inge has a sign over at Simlogical that keeps them away if you want to go to the extreme. Really, all there is to Pets are the actual pets themselves. But I like breeding them...I've gotten some freaky combos and some adopted puppies that have turned out really odd.

For SP, I don't have Celebration (blah, my sims rarely have parties) and Teen Stuff (ooh, crappy princess and goth stuff I have better cc than). H&M isn't too bad. I like the jeans, and there's a couple dresses I like. K&B is a definite skip...very light on content and very high on bugs/lack of past EP features enabled, etc.


Also, make sure you get no-CD cracks from GameCopyWorld before running any new EPs. You don't want SecuROM. See sticky.

I've heard that, at least in Britain, if you kick up a fuss about the whole thing they may be legally forced to fix it for free. Warranties are pretty much useless and just something to trick the customer into thinking they have no rights once it's run out. The law says things have to work for an acceptable amount of time so it really all boils down to whether 2 years is an acceptable amount of time for a motherboard to work before it breaks.


Also on the original topic I'd say Seasons is definitely the one to go for. It adds the most new home lot features and some good gameplay (particularly the fishing and gardening). I can't imagine the game without it now, it's the one I'd really miss if for some reason I was forced to play just the base game again. After that I'd say Freetime just because it adds quite a few new activites, unless you really really like the idea of animals in your game (I did and still got bored of it after a couple of weeks so even that's no gaurantee). Seasons is definitely the top priority I'd say.

I have to second (third? fourth? how many times has this been suggested?) the Seasons idea. It's by far my favorite EP and, IIRC, the least buggy. Also, the gardening/fishing thing is a blast, and if you like keeping your Sims at home, it would probably appeal to you quite a bit. I lost interest in Pets pretty quickly and BV entertained me for about one vacation. After that, I was at a loss what to do with it.  ;) FT, while it has a sort of nice idea, didn't seem to match up with what they *could* have done with it. (Especially since you don't get that many instruments, and would need University for full potential, I think.) Though if you enjoy keeping your Sims on their home lots, the ability to do hobbies might appeal to you.

Must have: I'll agree with the majority and say Seasons, especially since your Sims are homebodies.
I have Pets, but that is one EP I could easily do without. I don't have BV or FT, but I am considering FT sometime soon.

Thanks so much for all your input! I'll be picking up Seasons soon, and then will look into FT some more after I get used to it. Don't want to blow my whole new EP wad at once :-)

The hack upgrade thing is the part I'm most dreading, I hope I can track down versions of stuff that work with Seasons but don't also require later expansions to function as well. Oh, and not that it has anything to do with this topic in particular, but has anyone made/seen a hack that lowers the attractiveness of the bubble blower? I only buy them when sims who want them are really in need of an aspiration boost, but I generally end up deleting them a day or so later to keep sims on the lot from obsessing over them. Also, are there any hacks that people find especially useful for Seasons? Thanks!

I'm gonna be totally original and say... Seasons. Honestly, if your style of play is more centered around home lots, it'll open up more activities for your sims to try without having to leave. I also love Pets, especially as an EP your homebody sims can get something out of. You'll need to adopt strays or add via CAS if you don't want to fuss with a pet shop (though you'll want to "go out" to buy some collars if you want to retrieve runaways... I've never had a runaway, though). If you want to add dogs & cats (or a werewolf) to your family, you may want Pets, but that's the extent of the EP. (If you decide to get Pets, you might consider adding "boolProp petActionCancel true" and "boolProp ControlPets on" to your userstartup.cheat file.)

With Seasons you have weather, and each season has a corresponding bonus. "Accelerated" romance in the spring and bonus family soc in winter don't really do anything for me, but the "faster friends" bonus in summer is very handy, and the faster skilling in autumn is wonderful. Also, you get the ability to grow crops and fish in ponds, both of which can be very profitable, especially if you have the garden club come over and judge your yard every few days. The juices you can make with your produce are kind of neat (both as an alternative to cooking and for their different effects), and there are some new fish dishes to grill/cook, as well as a couple of new desserts. Building snowmen is fun in winter (if a bitch to quit out of) too, and Plantsims are very low-maintenance. Plus there's the fun of seeing sims getting fried by lightning, which is always a hit, even though it's not deadly enough for me (^_-).

Seasons is not without its drawbacks, however. Managing your sims' body temperature can be a hassle, especially if you go it hackless. Don't go it hackless ;). Sim kids who love to jump on the bed can have their body temp skyrocket quite quickly, which will bring the social worker. The skating rinks are cool, but despite their constant wants to go skating, my sims never manage more than once around the rink before they're bored and on to something else. And without "antiweatherreaction" in your DL folder, every time it rains, every sim on the lot will drop what they're doing to run to the window and gawk.

As far as the SPs go, Celebration does add some cool stuff for your parties. Holiday has neat decorations, plus Santa and holiday cookies/roast to cook. H&M adds some nice clothing (though you can easily to better than with CC); most of its benefit is comm lot store stuff, which probably won't thrill you. I don't have Teen and suspect that I'm not missing much (I'd only get it if there were lots of CC things out that used the meshes). And I've bought but not installed K&B. Bought it because it was cheap, just to have the meshes for future CC, but it sounds like a bug-filled mess. Only just started playing with BV and FT, and now I get to diagnose a wacky new graphics snafu that's crashing my game (and locked my computer a couple of times), but once I get that sorted (please just be my card drivers!), I expect I'll quite enjoy the new home activities.

Enough ramble - hope that helps!

Ha, I just missed you, jennydee! Hope the ramble was a little useful anyway - I did mention a couple of hack bits in there. Regarding the hookah, jfade has a Less Bubble Blower Obsession hack on pg. 2 of the Global Hacks at http://www.djssims.com (http://www.djssims.com).

I've found that pets are great for single sims with low outgoing points. A shy sim shouldn't need to talk on the phone every time its social motive gets low, because a shy sim is, well, shy. Having a pet or, better yet, two (to keep each other company when the human-sim isn't there) really helps with this. Seasons is definitely the best EP, IMO, for the reasons that others have mentioned, but the Pets EP is also good for the homebody sims. There are hacks to fix all the annoyances (TJs' visitor controller is a must), and pet-breeding makes for a very lucrative home-business. Cyd Roseland made a fortune running a puppy-mill. A pet with a few skills (being housebroken, learning not to destroy furniture, etc) can fetch (forgive the pun) over §1000, and it can all be done from home. Also, if you sell the pets to townies, the pets end up as strays, and this is a good way to populate your 'hood with only the strays that you want, as long as you use an empty template for your neighbourhood.

I also love how my sims with dogs or cats will occasionally come as walk-bys with their pet in tow. I'm eventually planning on starting to breed pets again, this time making matches between animals in the neighborhood by inviting their families over and putting them in a playpen to socialize.

As Gali would say, I am outrageous cheater. I just use Christianlov's baby animal creator thingie. :-[

I have Nightlife, Pets, OFB, and Seasons.  I've never been interested in actually sending my sims to university, but I'm starting to wonder if I should get Uni for the other stuff.  Are the extra want slots the only thing in Uni you have to actually educate your sims to receive?  The main plusses are musical instruments and zombies, right?  Is there anything else important I don't have automatically with the later eps?  Any input is appreciated.

I agree with those who like Seasons and OFB -- my sims often can't advance in their careers, if they even have any, since they are always pregnant and raising maximum spawn.  Fishing and the ticket machine save the day.  (My eight original sims have crash landed on an alien planet and as the last remaining humans, they must reproduce like the wind to avert extinction.)

A uni degree helps to boost a sim's career, and offers new jobs, as well. When finding a job with the newspaper or computer, an educated sim has options that aren't available to uneducated sims, and an educated sim also starts farther up the ladder, in any job, than an uneducated sim does.

Jfade made Less Bubble Blower Obsession (http://www.djssims.com/index.php?category=1&subcat=2&skip=10).



antiweatherreaction and warmthfixes are essential for preserving your sanity.
Numenor's Invisible Water from Sprinkles (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=222748) and antigardenlag to avoid insane lags from garden sprinklers and ladybug houses.
fishandharvestfix is useful if you're planning a home business with gardening and fishing.
eggjuicememfix (in DC only) for avoiding false "maximized XXX skill" memories when drinking eggplant juice.
Juice tray mods (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=226764) by mike_1102. I'm using all except for NeverBecomeSpoiled, and haven't experienced problem so far.

I really like the career rewards that come with the University careers...especially the cowplant. 

I don't send my sims to community lots much, and still haven't sent any of them on a vacation since getting BV--it just doesn't seem that interesting to me. However, I really enjoy the new objects BV added to the game, and I've been wishing for beach lots since day one. They really made a big difference in my coastal and island neighborhoods, if only for the ambiance. I love the waves and being able to have my sims swim in the ocean.

If you are worried about bugs, however, get seasons, and then STOP. Seasons was very stable, but the following EPs much less so. Pets doesn't really add much to the game, but the pets can be nice to have around. I like the birds.

Well, today I managed to get out to Best Buy and pick up Seasons, but I'm not going to install it until I track down Seasons-compatible versions of pretty much all my hacks (argh!). This'll probably take me a few hours, sigh. Wish me luck!

Remove your Downloads, back up your hoods, make sure you don't have a no-cd crack where an original .exe should be, then install Seasons.  Patch Seasons.  Find a no-cd for patched Seasons, but only if Seasons is your latest EP (i.e. you're not running BV or FT, which I believe you're not).  I know Seasons doesn't have securom, but a no-cd makes it easier to load and saves wear and tear on the disks. 

Run the game to make sure it works - run tests in a throwaway hood.

When satisfied, install awesome hacks from the Seasons director's cut.  Run it again to test.  When you're satisfied, reinstall your downloads and your "in-play" hoods.

If you don't do it that way, good luck.   :)

Well, I was too lazy to test the game with no downloads before trying out Seasons, though I did backup my neighborhoods before install, and tracked down updates of every hack I have installed. The game loaded fine, as did Veronaville and the Somerset family lot. Everything seems to be in working order, with one glaring exception. My sims body temperatures do not change, regardless of season, activity, weather, or if they are inside or outside. I checked the temperature stats of one of my sims with the FFS Debugger and it gave me the following info:

Outdoor Temperature: 23
Personal Temperature: 0
Warmth Delta: 0

This is while the sim was indoors, but I get the same reading when he is outdoors as well. I did install the warmthfixes hack, but tried disabling it and restarting the game, with no change. Any thoughts on how to get my sims feeling the cold (or heat)? Is there some option on the debugger that would reset their stuck temps that I'm missing? I know this is probably my own fault for not starting "clean" and adding back my downloads bit by bit, but it just seems like such an odd bug to have when everything else works just fine.

23 is the "normal range" temperature. Between -30 and 30, sims have no temperature effects. Between -70 and 70, nothing interesting ever happens. It is only when temperatures reach +/- 70 that any effect happens. Also, indoor temperature always moves to 0.

Ah, thanks for clearing that up! On a side note though, speaking of glitches...

I noticed that my noroadpillows hack hasn't been functioning for some time (even prior to installing Seasons, that is). I didn't realize it wasn't working until I re-read all the descriptions of the stuff I had installed and saw it should be preventing my sims from pillow fighting unless there is a bed in the room, which is certainly not a restriction they seem to be bound by. I have the latest version of the hack installed, but it just isn't having any effect. Thoughts?

It should be functioning. However, the lock is now purely on autonomous behavior, and allows the player to order it anyway if you really want to.

Nope, my sims run around pillow fighting every 5 minutes in every room of the house, as well as outside on the deck. Is there anything known to conflict with the noroadpillows hack that I should try tracking down and removing? I've also noticed a major upswing in pranking behavior since installing Seasons that I wasn't getting before: VentriloFarting, Joy Buzzering, and Water Ballooning are once again rampant on the lot.

Once again, I point the blame squarely at tight pants.

So if I remove my pants, that might help?  ::)

A case of tight pants indicates you likely have a previous (outdated) version of a hack still installed. Also, if you want to check out your sims' body temps in flux, either send them to work out on a treadmill outdoors, put 'em in the hot tub for a while, or tell them to go build a snowman in winter. You can also see their temps jump into the red while taking a long shower or making out with their simnificant other. A temporary, short-term spike or plunge isn't necessarily a problem, but if left untended your sim can suffer frostbite or sunstroke, sometimes with amusing results.

Of course, if you think taking your pants off might help, it might be worth a shot (^_-)

"Tight pants" means "run your game through Hack Conflict Detector". You can find that at Paladin's Place (http://www.simwardrobe.com/) under Sims2, then Programs (2nd listed item). It will show conflicts if you have the same hack in two places (I've done this) or downloaded hacks that are editing the same functions and most likely fighting amongst themselves, causing undesirable behaviors in your game.

I feel like the method of removing everything, and slowly putting the game back together, is way too much work for a game, and mostly unnecessary. And there's no point in running a clean game with no CC if you have updated hacks. I propose a simpler procedure, especially when installing an EP that's already been out for a while:


1) Only backup your hoods if you would mind losing them if you uninstalled the EP. I think you can do it easily with SimPE (not sure)

2) Update your hacks first.  Don't remove hacks that have been updated for the EP, just replace them with the newer versions.

This is especially important if you play with inteen, because removing it can actually make things screwy if you have currently pregnant teens, etc, and it just isn't worth the trouble. There's a Seasons version, so install the new version of inteen before running the game.

3) Identify potential problems. Remove hacks if you suspect they might cause problems.
Hacked objects with unique GUIDs that don't replace maxis content, or hacks that are very simple and only effect one (simple) aspect of the game, are less likely to cause problems than complex hacks with multiple functions, like the phone hack.

4) Leave custom objects, sims, recolors, walls & floors, and clothing in place. In general, they shouldn't cause problems. If you have problems with recolors, and are using the CEP from MTS2, this indicates that you need to update the CEP. Problems with non-hacks are very specific, and can easily be fixed should you find you have them. It's a short list: custom fridges won't have all the functions of the Maxis ones in Seasons, and custom furniture won't be properly "used" by pets (as if you'd want that). Custom skilling items, etc. need to be updated for FT. That's pretty much it.You might have trouble with CC like stairs or custom pool wall, because they modify core files of the game, but those problems are identifiable right away and easy to fix, IF you have them.

So, now you should have a downloads folder that is more-likely-than-not problem-free, and there's a good chance you won't have any problems at all. IF you have a problem, first look at your "questionable" hacks and hacked objects, check for conflicts with the utility second, and then do a binary search. Chances are your problem might not be related to the EP at all. Procedure for a "binary search" is in the stickied FAQ (I think it claims to have spore torrents). This will help you pinpoint the hack causing your problem.

This method is MUCH faster than slowly replacing all of your CC 10% at a time and testing the game over and over again (and IMO safer and more useful, since many conflicts/problems might not be obvious until you've been playing for a while and the initial test won't tell you anything meaningful). Minimize possible potential problems first, then do damage control if you actually HAVE a problem. Assume that if you've updated your hacks properly, the problem lies elsewhere. Removing everything only makes sense at the time the EP first comes out, before most creators have had a chance to update their hacks.

O HAI, jennydee!

I think you'll enjoy Seasons. You made a good choice.

I have all Eps and SPs up through SEAS (well, I have BV, but don't feel like messing with the SecuROM hassles right now...maybe this summer, when I have MOAR free time...and Free Time EP) and my game is pretty stable. Most issues I have are "too much CC"-related, as I really need pare down my stash by about 80%. (My kingdom for an "I'm not using it anywhere in the game" program. I could zorch a mess of stuff in one blow if such a tool existed to check my lots and Sims against the Downloads folder files. :P)

Paladin DOES have a handy tool called SimCat, which shows thumbnails of some stuff, but it is not too helpful with BodyShop content.

Get Pescado's Director's Cut for Seasons first. Run the Hack Conflict Detector program. Anything non-Pes that conflicts with a Pescado hack, quarantine it outside of your Downloads folder and get your game stable before attempting to squeeze into any kind of tight pants.

Jolrei you have far more patience than me if you go through that every time you install an EP! My method is to take out my neighbourhood and downloads and install the new EP. I then reinstall downloads (after checking for relevant hack updates) and run the game in order to turn on custom content (at this point I might have a little play if the new pack has installed a neighbourhood, like Freetime did, but more because I'm impatient than for any testing purposes). Finally I exit the game, put my neighbourhood back in place, run the game again and play!

Basically the game gets loaded once in order to turn custom content on (I hate that every EP turns it off by default) and after that I just dive in and play as normal. The game takes far too long to load to mess about testing everything step by step. So far I've had no major problems and only a couple of minor ones due to missing a hack update. Maybe I've just got lucky so far.

Jennydee, antiprankhack was the one which stopped the stupid pranks from happening, double check you've got the Seasons version of that installed. Also check through your downloads folder for any other hacks which affect autonomous socials or autonomous playing (since pillow fights are a play interaction) and try playing without them if they are none-awesome or updating them if they are JM's. If not then the hack conflict detector program is probably the way to go.

Ah, but my game is also remarkably bug and hassle free, compared to many others.  8)

That being said, no, I do not necessarily do every single step I mentioned, but I feel when giving advice, that I should give them the "fail safe" version, as much as possible.


My personal method is actually similar to yours and to the "alternate method" proposed by Ellatrue.  I remove my Downloads\Hacks directory, back-up my hoods, and then reinstall.  I don't bother removing cc content, because I do not use cc objects that have "special functions" (i.e. no fridges that dance, terlets that double as bookshelves, cribs that teleport babies to cow plants, etc.).  My method for backing up a hood is to copy the neighborhood folders to a backup folder using Windows Explorer.  Why be fancy? 

I then install the new EP, install the no-cd crack if necessary, and run a vanilla game for an hour or two to see what happens.  Then I download all new awesome hacks (keeping my old versions in back-up) so I'm sure I don't have any old hacks in my game at all.  Then I gradually add other hacks, if I want them, as I go along.

I just copy my Downloads and Neighborhood folders to my D: drive and my memory stick (I once accidentally deleted the Downloads folder from the D: drive while cleaning, so I learned to double-backup on that thing). Then delete the Downloads folder from My Documents. Install new EP & no-CD crack. Put everything but my Hacks subfolder back in and play. I keep a tab on what hacks I have are cleared for the new EP and download new versions as needed referring to the backed-up copy. Delete hacks from the backup as I get the shiny cleared versions, so I know what I still need to look for updates for. That's about it. Never had a kablooey yet.

I agree with most of you all -Seasons is really the utmost considering you have previous EP along - pets are an asset with seasons turning the game in a nice homely game with a lot of true to life possibilities. As to BV and FT I decided not to have them owing to the mass of negative information gathered everywhere. ::)

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.

Yes, the essential question is: does EA deserve $20.00 for a handful of objects that aren't even fully compatible with their own products? I'd think not.

I agree wholeheartedly. IMO Stuff packs are never worth $20.00 even when they're fully functioning anyway. ARRRR FTW.

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.)