Using new pagoda-style roof causes random lots sharing the same 'hood to somehow spawn pagoda-style roofs as well, like a plague.

 

Here is my submission for Building Contest of Awesomeness.  Normally I would rather build on uneven terrain and my neighborhoods are virtually devoid of flatness.  For myself, a flat lot distorts the terrain in my 'hoods as much as any other.  Except for the flatness, this house is fairly typical of the architecture found throughout Idylleville, my main custom 'hood.  The Lair of the Wyrmkhan is a workhorse 2x3 lot with three full bedrooms and three bathrooms on two floors with a single-car garage.  Features include a sun/moon-room with in-ground jacuzzi, two dark, cozy coffin chambers right off the garage for sun-fearing sims who still need to go to work/school, and additional storage in a small third-floor attic.

The scenes:

Exterior:





Exterior:  Street-level view


Interior:  Ground floor



Interior:  Second floor



Interior-Attic



Although there is not excessive amounts of open space, ample design consideration has been given to minimize broken paths and whiny stomping.  Extra consideration was given to reduce the need for rotating the camera to control the lot, sims, and contents.  The main camera control view is from the rear corner where no trees obstruct the view, like in the screen-shots.  I play-tested this lot for one sim-week with a 7 sim family plus one sim-dog with no significant problems.  I created it for the challenge in a clean user account and a clean 'hood that has never seen a hack or piece of custom content.  All furnishing and decoration is MEAxis-original for all expansion packs up to and including Pets.  It is rather ostentatiously furnished for a mere 188,904 simoleons, but stripped-bare to walls, floors, doors, and windows it is a paltry 40k-something.


Now for the bribe:

Will create and submit self-sim for your sadistic pleasure, plus detailed instructions on how to make it as voodoo-like as possible in TS2, for your morbid amusement. [Edit: bogus bribe and now invalid]

Plus, one acre of RL property...on the moon! 

And a sandwich.

Ech...not this bit again...

*Khan of Wyrms is in the process of submitting entry right now so as not to be disqualified by being made a judge.*

I'll just edit bribe later if it seems appropriate.

Tiresome *and* annoying question here:

Can it be disclosed who the 'judge(s)' are so that we may attempt to contrive the most effective bribe?

Good non-actual answer.  It definitely gives me the message that the process is more convoluted than I would want to tackle.  They couldn't have just used a software sequencer to track the parts and applied a 'humanizer' effect algorithm to make the parts sound bad for unskilled players?  No, that would make too much sense for EA.  Alas.

An interesting question...although I suspect it would involve some form of core-file hack, since the package files for that music are located in the main game directory, not 'My Documents'.  I have always wondered how the game handled the different tracks and the syncing of them for different instruments.  I wonder if they use a proprietary scheme or a common one, like midi.  Since I don't use SimPE I am not likely to find out.  I wonder if someone here is intrepid enough to crack one of those package files open and find out just what is in there.

I, for another one, would certainly like to see more detailed explanations of exactly why certain things have been blacklisted as dangerous to the game.  You can put me in that category of people who have done some of these things a long time ago without serious consequences, so far*.  I am not going to claim that I don't believe these allegations, but I am very interested in more specific details, for obvious reasons.  Generally speaking, tossing platitudes in the manner of, "Doing 'X' is VBT, m'kay," and pointing people towards other forum topics where many others are posting the same is not really useful or making a point.  Forgive me and others for not having read every single post in every topic here since the site began, but I do believe that this information would be most useful to be organized in one place with thoughtful clarification.  Then someone could say, "Doing 'X' is VBT, m'kay, read the FAQ," and link the relevant information.

I have never been one to accept statements like, "'Such-and-such' is true because I/<someone> said so, and I/they am/are right because I/they am/are great/awesome/God (et.al.)."  MATY heresy perhaps, but I am certain there are others who feel the same way.  Having all of the information on the VBT's located in one handy FAQ would certainly be most awesome, and most useful for poking people who are too stupid to read it.  Belittling someone for doing something the game allows without even activating a 'cheat' before they have been clued in that it might be bad is not awesome behavior, in my opinion, especially if the only reason given is 'because'.  If the information is located and explained in an obvious FAQ, then let the abasement and condescension begin.

Then again, helping people or being friendly is something I am only inconsistently capable of, with some effort, so I am unsure why I would think anyone else should undertake this endeavor.  It would still be awesome, though.


*No serious consequences with TS2, however, SimPE is completely unusable.

Perfectly clear...I do not think separate topics would be appropriate or necessary given the fact that they are supposed to work together, but maybe the first post could get an edit to include the explanation provided above, to avoid further confusion.  Your last post explains it all, so even this might be considered superfluous extra detail work.  I will continue to use only the version for 'downloads' though, as it provides a decent amount of extra functionality without messing with the core file. 

Somehow it seems reasonable to me for adults to be obsessed with woohoo while teens are more focussed on other, more casual romantic interactions, anyway.  This is probably yet another thing that shows how old and out of touch I am, however.  A few 'real-life' teens around here are getting pregnant in middle school and the local high school has twelve pregnant girls by last count, and those are just the ones that are going to keep their babies.

I hope you continue to develop these mods as usable standalone even though they go together.

Thanks for the clarification and keep up the good work!

Balls of confusion...I thought I had deduced the proper procedure, but now I am back to confusion.  I too was unsure which version to use and where I should put it, because of the same issue trudy brought up.  I decided after reasoning the evidence that the file linked at the bottom of the first post should go into the downloads folder because of the filename;  It is not a 'WantTrees.pkg'.  Then I see the last post here which seems to point to MTS2 for the proper packages, I fetch the one I need just to see if it is the same, 'MTS2_396480_syberspunk_PETS-teenenabledwoohoowants' and open it up and it has a 'WantTrees.pkg'.

So...

My question is, if I have all expansions through Pets, should I be using the MATY 'download folder' version or the MTS2-version core-file mod?  I would rather be using a hack for 'downloads', and the file I swiped from here called 'teenenabledadultwants.package' with a date of 10/20/06 seems to be working for me thus far.  If you need feedback on the function of this version, I could possibly provide some, but if it seems to work fine I'm not sure it will help much.

Back up your game, stick them in, and find out.  Feel the empowerment of taking your own destiny into your own hands.
Feel the fire that comes from a flame of your own making!

Did I mention backup your game?

nVidia and ATi graphics are both decent and comparable quality and both run TS2 adequately when all things are considered, from my experience.  Be careful not to fall into the assumption that so many people have made that video cards and/or graphics drivers are the root of your problems with TS2.  Independent testing has been done by several sites which show that TS2 is not particularly graphics intensive, surprisingly, and that CPU muscle and RAM capacity are far more important.  In fact, the tests showed that even systems with basic on-board graphics were able to run TS2 well with sufficient CPU power and RAM.  This means that CPU or RAM issues should be considered much more of a factor when troubleshooting problems with TS2 than graphics cards/drivers.  Also realize that Windows may seem to put the blame for a system crash on the graphics driver when the actual offender may very well be another piece of hardware, or a problematic system setting.  In some ways, what you get to see in Windows' 'error reporting' may only be the end result of your problem, the consequences, not necessarily the root cause.

Of course, your problem could actually be with your graphics adapter/drivers, but from my own personal experience I think it is unlikely and would look elsewhere first.

I have been using this for a few weeks now and I have feedback.

I am wondering if the endless dormie fighting day in and day out is a feature or bug.  Everything seems to work with perfect transparency save for this.  Incidents of dormie fighting seem to go on almost constantly, and nowhere else does this happen with such regularity.  It is always the same story:  First some sorry, dormie goober-sim tries to admire another sim who is too grumpy to accept a compliment.  Then comes the poking, then the shoving, maybe some slapping, and then finally, the inevitable fight.  Over and over this happens until every dormie is enemies with every other one, I'm certain, I just can't keep up with them all.  Also, at least one fight was over as soon as the cloud appeared and one other went on for what seemed like forever, I'd say 8 sim-hours plus or minus.  Everything seems to be otherwise working fine, it is just working fine all of the time, in the dorms.

It seems like someone else here hinted at this before, but I thought I would add my input as well.  It's not a serious issue, I don't believe, but the contrast between the fighting activity at the dorms and the overall incidence of fighting in all other parts of the game is like night and day.  It could always be just my game, which is apparently horribly corrupt beyond all repair yet continues to function in spite of the ever-present lurking fiery doom.

Kaspersky is anti-virus, I presume, it is for me, and anti-virus messes up everything, including viruses.  Make sure it is not enabled before installing anything, especially drivers.

Just thought I would throw this out there since I use Kaspersky as well and it has sabotaged graphics driver installation for me in the past.  Just closing the program seems to be not enough, one must actually open the 'settings' panel in Kaspersky before closing and uncheck the box labeled 'enable protection' and also the one that says something like 'load Kaspersky on startup'.  Both of these issues ruined my graphics driver installation on subsequent occasions.  Maybe you have in fact done this, So I don't know if it will help. 

You should already suspect the correct answer in this, if you had not apparently already lost complete control of all of your intellectual faculties.  I am open to judgment, though, and I won't even bother to say 'I told you so'.

Congratulations to all of the winners!

Excuse me?  That is an unbelievably presumptuous and wildly slanderous assumption, not only against me, but spambi as well.  I won't be offended, though, and I was indeed just having a little fun, but I think you owe spambi an apology.  I will leave it to the host of this forum to decide who is breaking the rules, and I am confident the evidence will be more than certain in this matter.


Thanks for the support spambi, it is too bad that others here were not having as much fun as they should or could have.  It would be unfortunate if anyone continued to identify you with a cagey cretin like myself in the future, but alas, I cannot fix this.  Maybe someone more awesome than I might see fit to clear your good name.

Hey, I was just making a point, and I do not pretend or assume any position of authority in this matter.  The challenge said 'whore clothes', not 'disturbing body meshes'.  No one has to agree with me, and I certainly can't make anyone here do anything about it.

However, just to say something in the nature of 'you are just you, and you are nobody, and nobody asked you anyway' is certainly not a very impressive line of argument.

Objection!  Point of order!  I think we need a recount here!

Disturbing as the kids with boobies might be for some, the clothes themselves were not 'whore clothes' at all.  Am I misunderstanding the challenge?  The object was to find ugly 'whore clothes', not tasteless, questionable, or objectionable body meshes.  It was pointed out previously in this very thread that not only were the clothes in question not that bad, but that actual people identified with the boobed kids in real life.  Also, I had personally read somewhere on the vastness of the web and discussed with my mate, who works in education, that teachers and educators can sometimes see signs of early development in young girls as early a second grade.  Are we to say, then, that all young girls who bloom early are whores?

I say, nay!

If someone had found some genuine 'whore clothes' that had been attached to that mesh, then I could easily see that they would have to win without any question.  As it is, no way.

Just to show I am not just a whiny sore loser, and in all fairness, as of now I respectfully retract my own submissions from further consideration in the children's category and request a recount.

Why is it that I seem to have had every computer problem under the Fat Old Sun at one time or another?  Your troubles certainly sound familiar, so here are some points I would consider:

First, overheating may still be an issue.  Get inside your computer case (No, don't actually get in, just open it up!) and make sure your CPU heatsink is not clogged with dust and debris and physically make certain it is still snugly attached, and that the fan is still working.  Also, CPU temp software can be notoriously uninformative about the temperature of critical areas of the core.  Temp values can swing widely based upon CPU type and motherboard manufacturer, as well as from one part of the CPU to another.  In fact, if you don't have one of the very newest, shiniest motherboards and processors, you are not likely getting an accurate or even remotely usable reading at all.  The actual temp in critical areas of your CPU core may vary by, I don't think anyone really knows, there are too many variables, but 40 or 50 degrees or even more would not be unusual.  Also, CPU failure can occur on processor-intensive applications, like TS2, at temps well below 145 degrees.  You should never, ever have your CPU get anywhere near that 145 degree 'slowdown threshold".

Second, does your Windows recognize your new monitor?  Check your Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager for monitor properties and see if it gives you an explicit description of your particular monitor, or if it says something generic like 'P-N-P monitor' or some such.  Different monitors can scale graphics in slightly different ways and some monitors operate at certain resolutions better than others.  In order to ensure sleek operating efficiency, your computer needs to know about the exact capabilities of your hardware.  This is not as much of an issue with older monitors, which may work just fine as PNP, but newer ones, as a 21" LCD flatscreen likely is, can have particularities.  Don't underestimate this, I know from experience.  I was having problems that Windows was pointing at nVidia drivers with errors.  One day I checked Windows Update 'optional' downloads and saw a patch to make WinXP recognize my new 19" Samsung monitor.  I downloaded the patch and suddenly said goodbye to the problem.

Third, graphics drivers are terribly finicky little SOB's.  There are some conflicting theories about them and I advocate a bit of unconventional wisdom in this area.  Almost every source you can seek when having problems will ask you, "Do you have the latest drivers installed?"  My humble opinion is that this is not always the best idea.  For one, the newest drivers are never free of bugs, and for another, unless you have one of the newest video cards, the bug fixes included in the newest drivers will likely not apply to your card anyway.  I recommend getting your video card drivers from the maker of your video card, not from nVidia, the maker of your GPU.  All graphics cards are not created equal, and it is not reasonable to assume that all cards would function equally well with any given drivers.  It may be naive to think so, but if the graphics card maker is reputable, then they ought to know if upgrading the drivers would help your card, and they should have the best possible drivers for your card available for you.  Also, GPU overheating can cause problems as well.

And finally, I realize this has become terribly long-winded and probably over-boring, but a word of caution about graphics driver installation.  Anti-virus software is evil and it ought to be destroyed, but you can not dare do it, as it is very necessary evil.  If you use 'Safe Mode' for driver installation, you should maybe be able to avoid the problems associated with anti-virus corrupting your driver installation.  I, on the other hand, loathe 'Safe (I)M(pl)ode' and refuse to use it.  If you don't use it you need to make absolutely certain that anti-virus will not interfere with any part of the installation, or driver instability is almost certain.  For some reason which completely escapes me, anti-virus software manufacturers do not want you to be able to disable the virus-protection easily.  You must check your software settings very carefully to ensure that the virus-protection is not going to be running even when the program seems to be closed, that it will not boot up automatically when you restart Windows, and finally that the program itself is indeed closed.

I'm sure that somewhere, someone would like to dispute some of these points, but I have in fact demonstrated positive conflict resolution on my own systems at various times with all of these considerations, and others. I am not a computer professional, however, as may be plainly obvious to some, but I do know how to swing a hammer and I'm not a carpenter either.  If you have any questions or need further help, feel free to ask.  I hope this helps, I've been there and I know how frustrating it can be.

I have this problem sometimes too, but since my game is powered by a BFBVFS, I'm not sure I can help.  As for 'slopping the stuff on', is that not the best way to terrain paint?

As with most things TS2 since it was released, I have a general guideline I follow in this situation, if it helps:  If it basically works except for minor glitches, just be thankful it actually works at all. 

Okay, so after seven pages of barfing and laughing and pointing hysterically I totally forgot the rules so I will try again.  I chose to go direct to the root of all sims evil, and I became so bogged down with the sheer enormity of the selection I think I damaged my brain, and ultimately gave up after browsing but just a tiny portion of the site's wondrous offerings.
I hereby submit, for your horror and amusement:







This one said swimwear but could also be worn as everyday.  I for one would very much like to see that in reality someday, or everyday.


If this one is not a perfect whore, then, well, I guess I just don't get it:


And this one is just shameful:


I have more, but I must just stop this now before my head explodes.

I would just link the whole site, but the challenge is not for sites, so here is the pick of the litter...

http://www.xs4all.nl/~jcvh/down4sims/sey%27z_leopard_drezz_2.jpg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jcvh/down4sims/sey%27z_slutty_outfit.jpg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jcvh/down4sims/sey%27z_horny_black_outfit.jpg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jcvh/down4sims/sey%27z_slutty_leopard_drezz.jpg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jcvh/down4sims/sey%27z_naughty_beach_outfit_V1.jpg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jcvh/down4sims/sey%27z_amsterdam_ho_outfit.jpg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jcvh/down4sims/sey%27z_slutty_outfit_2.jpg
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jcvh/down4sims/sey%27z_white_stars.jpg

All from "Sey'z Down4Sims.com"  http://www.down4sims.com/

Ugh...all disqualified from the challenge, of course, but what fun anyway.

I had this same problem ages ago just after Uni was released with one family.  I have no idea what caused it but I had a suspicion it was corruption of the file that holds the clothing data for the dresser.  I guessed this because that family had the largest assortment of clothing of any I had played thus far, including a huge number of Maxis items inherited from inviting Bella Goth to join the family.  Moving the family to another lot did not fix the problem, because they took the clothes with them, but moving them again fixed the problem when they did not transfer the contents of the dresser.  It has been so long ago I don't remember exactly how I did this, but I didn't use any hacks or hack-objects.  I may have invited them to move into another lot with a family friend, or I may have just moved them again.  When they got to the new lot without the clothing file being transported the problem was resolved and has never shown itself again. 

You could be right on there...I really had no idea who had done it, and I thought it was possible it was at MTS2.  Did TwoJeffs never post hacks there in the past?  I do believe there were some there at one time.  I could be wrong, though, it has happened before.

Once I thought I was wrong, but I was mistaken.

I'm sure this could be, or at least it could be argued, in which case it would make the falling even more likely.  I don't remember using 'breath weapon' in such a way, but then again I don't remember much from the '70-80's with any clarity.  I think we used the 'paralyzation/poison' save as generic because it was easiest to roll.  Back then, everyone seemed to have their own ways of doing things, and 'house rules' were the 'rule of the day'.

Just to stay on topic, I think that somewhere, someone, a long time ago made a fix for the Uni-walk that a lot of people hated.  It might have been on MTS2, but I'm not sure because it did not interest me.  It might be worth it to check.