If someone wanted to comine their neighborhoods and retain their family ties, there's really no other way than using this method or lot-binning families.  It'll create a BFBVFS anyway that it's done because of those memories, except for the SimSurgery method which forces you to reconstruct family trees and stuff.

I'm not so sure about "deleting" files to merge neighborhoods either, as far as I know the sim description file is still in the Neighborhood even after you oust the file.

I figured out how to access my BIOS, but it doesn't seem anything I did actually affected it.  The old 78.1 driver didn't work for me, I'm just going to install the newest one and just accept that TS2 is going to take forever to load now.

Is there anything that can be edited in the Graphicsrules.sgr file that would help?

I can't find the 78.1 drivers, I can only find the new 81.98 drivers.  Those didn't help, and there's no conflicts with the card and it works perfectly in other games.  Just not TS2.

My BIOS is "Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG".  How can I access it to change the settings in it?

I think me not having any townies makes OFB harder for me and closes most of these loopholes to be honest.  It's impossible for me to sell any item over $300 to anyone except for the 1 or 2 townies that slipped through the cracks because I nuked them all.  Essentially, Pescado's hack that disallows playables on a lot actually makes the game easier when you think about it.

I just knew OFB would have crap like this, because there's no way to spend 20k if you already have the best of everything.

This is really starting to piss me off.  I got a Geforce 6200 AGP 8x to replace my Geforce 4 MX integrated card and the game loads much slower, like 60 seconds compared to less than 30 seconds with the older card.  Also, the starting videos are really choppy.  Other games such as UT2004 and Civ4 didn't have increase in load times, what's up with that?

The graphics look nicer in the game, but it tends to lag whenever I try placing an object.  I'm just hoping that a solution to this problem just involves editing that graphics rules .sgr file, since I heard that it messed a few graphics things up with OFB.

I don't use townies, I wipe the neighborhood fresh using deleteallcharacters and then use Pescado's "notownieregen" hack.  The friends my sim makes are sims that I've created.  It's the reason why I can't use one of his new hacks which prevents playables from buying stuff at businesses.

Everything except for that attraction system added in NL/OFB can be avoided.  However, the attraction system doesn't mean that much anyway... all it does is change the relationship levels that certain actions, usually romantic, can be commenced.  Everything else though, is optional.  When looking at it that way, TS2 doesn't need to be balanced.

Heck, even RPGs and RTSes usually can't get balances right because they have so many elements.

Have you tried using the FFS Debugger to force errors on all objects?  That tends to fix some problems on the lot such as this.
FFS Lot Debugger 2.0NW - http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=72.0

Yep, definately has food poisoning.  The critical difference between food poisoning and morning sickness is the frequency of vomiting (food poisoning has constant vomiting, morning sickness has less) and the thought bubble (pregnant sims usually have a thought bubble as an indication).  Chances are that if Don's been like this for a long time he will die as soon as you go to his lot because he passed the 10-day limit for illnesses.  I'd reccomend playing him and using boolprop/InSim or waiting his sickness out if you want to make sure he doesn't die or something.

I've had this happen to two sims get food sickness so far in OFB.

It's funny when someone talks about sims and balance.  TS2 is horribly imbalanced, and it gets even more imbalanced with each additional expansion.  Why?  Maxis wants you to use the new method included in the expansion, thus making it superior to previous options.  If a Sim goes through University they get a job that pays more without them really doing anymore work (JM's harder jobs hacks offsets this imbalance, they'll only start at L3 instead of L7).  Nightlife's a tad different since it affects most of the game, but it does encourage dates by giving them easy to satisfy wants sending your sim in platinum.  Let's not forget the mood boosts from successful dates.  The only way a business in OFB helps you out is the fact that a Sim can make friends selling stuff and gets "perks" when they become more friendly with their customers.  This gives them the friends requirements for promotions, which those careers end up giving you more cash... Businesses aren't there for money, which is strange since Maxis tries to make better options....

As to answer your question, I think it has to do with Object advertising in the fact they're not even looking at the objects for sale.  Even if sims pay to visit a lot they'll still attend it like a shop if there's objects for sale.  I ultimately had to remove shopping from my sim's house so they'll actually use his place for entertainment.

Remove any hacks that you cannot identify that have been transferred in lots.  Their names will be 0240923859231850.package or something, but if it came with clothes it's easier said than done.  I believe the clean installer will help you distinguish hacks from clothing if they're named like that.

It also could be a problem with using an invalid version of the kitten killing InTeenimater hack, or another one of those teen woohoo hacks.  There's bound to be problems if you have more than one installed at once, or if it's for the wrong expansion set.  Remove these and see if this condition still exists in your game.

Also, you could have too many sims in the neighborhood causing 0x85 errors.  I've heard that can cause objects to act up, and if that's the case your neighborhood is FUBARed.

I won't be downloading that collection, just because I like forcing sims to craft items.  Heck, I'm not a noncheater in some people's eyes...  I use the Elixer of Life to keep my sims at the adult stage because I frankly don't like playing generations.  I kill townies with the "deleteallcharacters" cheat and use notownieregen.  I use those because I just plain hate maxian townies, and I'd rather make my own.  That's just how I play the game, though I might play generations eventually.

Kicking a $12 flamingo shouldn't be more fun than the best TV.  You shouldn't need a Macro to make expresso actually useful.  You shouldn't need to deal with Sim ADHD problems during repairing something just because they have a crap mood.  Old Ladies shouldn't be punching each other's shoulders.  Kicky-bags shouldn't get stuck, lots shouldn't screw up, and people shouldn't want to aspire to have 10 kids.  Making the Sims robotic helps stop some of these annoyances that just shouldn't happen.

I don't know what the TS2 people are on, but even the people that made TS1 didn't screw up this bad.

I'll see if I can write a boolprop guide eventually saying what works and what doesn't.  There's a lot of stuff there, so if I did I'd probably start with a summary of the objects, generally what it does, etc.

Tom's clothing tester messes up any of my sims that don't have a job.  Heck, sometimes it made them unemployed.  Good thing that there's alternatives such as Motoki's clothing hack(Not to be confused with JM's, his allows you to buy and use NPC clothing) and the addition of OFB to make using this thing unnecessary.

Heck, if the FFS Debugger didn't allow me to reset all on/off world objects then I'd need the boolprop cheat to fix stuck plates in OFB.  Honestly, I probably would be constantly destroying my lots without boolprop or the Debugger.

These are basics, but cancel just doesn't do anything, reset just recreates the thing (Makes a sim "Jump", fixes stuck plates), and delete just gets rid of the offending object/sim.  Kinda like "Abort, Retry, Fail" or something like that.

Sure, there's objects that just don't plain work in boolprop testingcheatsenabled such as the Break Inducer and others that screw with your careers like Tom's Clothing Tester but as long as you are aware that these things can mess up your game it'll be fine.  I'd rather use boolprop then install a file that just emulates boolprop like the InSiminator.  That name of itself reminds me of a TS1 program, but I can't quite remember what it would be.

I don't use maxian townies for the simple reason that they tend to have the same personalities and stuff like that.  I hate how Maxis designs some sims, and if I want a sim to be "homely" then by all means I'll be the one designing them that way.  OFB seems like the only reason to have the townies, but if you can make your own....

They do actually.  One of my sims wanted to get Silver in the robotic skill, then Gold after he got silver.

What I'm planning on doing is having a few people with Robot shops and have them just sell their equipment to everyone else.  Not everyone has the talent to build a "sentient" electronic being.

I guess the inventory cleaning is a price to pay for having almost all your sims controllable.  Oh well, it's better than having a bunch of Townies with the same personality hating my shops.

Hopefully there will be a hack like no20khandout that will stop this silly behavior.  I personally only want sims to keep items that they buy when I'm controlling them, that way they're not getting the item for reduced cost.

I completely underestimated OFB.  I thought it would be a steaming pile of donkey dung, but it ended up being on the same level as Nightlife and University.  I'm just kind of surprised it only had one disk than the usual two.

The wholesale stuff is the most boring thing in the entire game.  You barely make any money from it and people constantly bitch when your sim tries to sell them something from it. Selling stuff your sim makes gives you a lot more money, and I'm still not sure how you can charge people for makeovers because If I want to give my sim a makeover I have to do it for free.

I also think it's better if you don't have about 300 townies in your game, but notownieregen might have to be updated because every once in a while a new townie spawns as a review person.  I usually hire my people in person, they're just working for you a little faster that way.

I saw two bugs in OFB so far.

1)When I bought a new fridge because I needed to make more Hamburgers, the fridge was still empty but couldn't be restocked.
2)Here's sort of a serious one.  When I was playing and shortly after I hired an employess the game crashed.  When I booted up the game again however, I found that there was no trace of the Shop Owner's house.  At first I thought the character was gone and he ended up being "vaporized" like in 1984.  However, he still is at a sim's house and can still be called.  If his house doesn't reappear then I'll have to move a sim into someone's house and have him move out.  Good thing that no20khandouts is updated, and I wonder if this bug is the reason they added the new cheat....

There's got to be more than I've listed but these are the two noticable ones I found by playing about 2 hours.  Also, I can't stand not having J.M.'s Hacks, especially macrotastics.  I believe that all this business crap will get easier when Pescado gets the game and automates everything.

I usually play on Noble, but maybe I should actually try playing the game again since I haven't played once since they patched the thing.  I've actually taken a look at the CivFanatics forums for strategies but when I use those I must be doing something wrong because I get owned even worse than when I just don't use a strategy.

How is suiciding catapults realistic?  They were worthless the last time I played them.

I don't like Civilization 4.  It always seems that when I try to be peaceful the faction next to me always attack and whenever I constantly produce military units I get behind in technology and wealth.  Also, it seems that you have to make 10 million military units to take a base when attacking a computer, and they can take yours with only 2.

I wasn't even aware they were making a C&C:Red Alert 3.

When I get OFB I'll just do what I always do, uninstall TS2 and reinstall with no downloads other than ones that I know will work like clothing, sims, etc.

I don't "pre-order".  What would happen if the store says "Sorry, we're not getting *Insert Game Name Here* until a month after the release date"?  Then your preorder would be worthless, because the fact you do it is to get it the day before or the day on the release.

It's not any less of vaporware than TS2 was during its initial phases.  Supposedly TS2 took about 3 years to make.

One reason why 98 can't read XP's partition is probably because the XP partition is formatted with NTFS while the 98 partition is formatted with FAT32.  Only XP, NT, and 2000 can read NTFS from Windows OSes.  Pretty much everything can read FAT32.

I've got Windows 2000 and ME installed on my other computer at the same time and there doesn't seem to be any problems.  When I installed 2000 there was an option to install a new OS instead of "upgrading" ME and that causes you to run two.  I have no idea about installing other OSes together though.

Well, I haven't seen something that stops the auto-fight but Crammyboy's made something to stop them from having to watch the fight.
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=1308.0

Apparently there's no expansion announcement when it got Stateside either.  Oh well, I guess we'll have to wait for them to announce it now.

Making the main site pay is a really good idea, It'll save them money on bandwidth costs and they'll get even more money.  Even if 50% of the people on the BBS object, there's still more money to be made there.  Chances are, even if they object they'll still buy the expansion and just go to MTS2 or something to get objects.

I haven't really heard that much about Sport until I read that article, and it makes TS2 look like a big pile of crap.  If I can run the thing (It sounds like it'll require more CPU power than TS2, not to mention a faster graphics card) I'll definately get it.  If it's gonna be how they say it is, It'll be possible to create the Zerg from Starcraft, and have them wage war against the Protoss and et cetera...

Wow, that advertisement REALLY wants me to buy the Family Pack now.  Also, doesn't it strike anyone else odd that it's in English and not in the language that they speak over there?  Could easily be photoshopped.

There's still hope for an expansion announcement though.  That picture looks like it's on the back of the manual and not the jewel case.  Perhaps they'll put an expansion announcement on OFB's jewel case when it gets released stateside.