Link

Request 'request' thread updated and moved to Podium where it might be more obvious, more easily found, and more blatantly ignored.   

Looking like Yoda he may be, if doing lots of drugs you are.  Hmm?  Yes!

Aargh!...Of course you are correct.  I certainly had no expectation or intention of people playing that way.  I was aware of this 'feature' and had included it as an emergency restart if someone realized it, but the 'evolving combination' was meant as a sort of one way street.  Going back to what was before or retuning to the same place is not really quite evolving.  Will amend to be clearer and squash this exploit.

I was certain I had stipulated somewhere that outings must go to University lots, to keep the time flowing.  I see that this will need to be made clearer.  I was not overly concerned about the date point issue, since you only get one per dream date, but it is better to just restrict them to University lots as well.  Good point. 

Well, this does bring up a potential exploit that I had not considered thoroughly.  I will say definitely yes, you can, but now I can see that I need to edit the challenge to prohibit changing majors.  Good eye.




Indeed, and it does not sound like that item would violate the challenge rules.



Yes, this is a problem that I considered, but was unsure how to handle.  In the end, I left it to the player to scale the penalties associated with this problem.  Thus, for instance, if you can have only two guests, and you fail to invite one or one does not show, then you should lose 7 points, not just one.  Not an ideal solution, but I did not want to craft this challenge around the limits of a sub-standard system.  Your suggestion, while interesting, may not be practical.  If the game limits the visitors to two because of weak hardware capability or performance, and someone forces more visitors with a cheat, the game might not run properly.  (I don't know, my system allows eight normally)

The College Daze Challenge (University and Nightlife Required, Dude!)

The basic object here is to party your sim through college without going to class and graduating with perfect GPA.  Not so hard, you think, but since this is a challenge there are certain requirements.

Basic startup:

You need one teen sim with two parents and no skills.  Your student can be played as teen as long as you like, but no skilling until college.  This obviously means no skill scholarships, but any others are fine.  Both parents must be best friends of your student before moving him or her away to college. This challenge can be played on any livable University lot of your choosing:  Dorm, Private Residence, Greek House, or evolving combination of two or less moves.  The choice is yours. 


Major Prohibitions:

1.  No going to class except finals!  Your main concern in college life is parties and outings.  If your sim goes to class that is not a final, you fail!
2.  No romancing professors!  That is just wrong, dude.  Don't do it.  They may be invited to parties and outings, though.  Professors that are not in your major are exempt from this, you sicko.
3.  No day goes by without a party!  If at least one party is not completed per day then the challenge is failed.
4.  No doing homework, studying, or term papers during parties or outings!  Influence is okay, but if your student does his own work during a party or outing, you fail!
5.  No pause button!  The fast pace of college life goes on, no stopping the clock!  Okay, you can stop the clock if real world issues are pressing or to save game for later.  Also Build and Buy mode can be used for build and buy only.  No cheating!  In addition, stopping the clock by taking a trip off-campus is forbidden.  Time must march on!
6.  No changing majors!  Your major is not important, and since there is no 'Party' major, why would you change it?
7.  No moving in and out!  Only one move in allowed per University lot type:  Dorm, Private, and Greek.  If you move out of any type of lot, you must move into a different type.
 

Minor Prohibitions:

1.  No day goes by without an outing!  Home is only good for parties, everything else is about going out.  Qualified outings must be scored and go to University lots, to keep the time flowing.
2.  No lame parties!  Not all parties have to raise the roof, but none can leave a negative (red) memory.
3.  No lame outings!  All outings must be scored and must be enjoyable for the group.
4.  No skilling during outings or parties!  Well, coincidental skilling that keeps the theme, such as in playing guitar at a party or swimming on an outing, is acceptable, but just barely. 
5.  No sleeping!  Sleeping is for pencil-necked losers who go to class and do not party!  Passing out is normal, and can even earn some points, but your passed out student must be awakened as soon as possible.
6.  No cooking!  Pizza and Chinese take-out are the only appropriate foods for hard-partying college dudes and dudettes at home!  No eating that slop a Dorm Chef prepares either.  Influence and dining out at a restaurant during an outing is acceptable.
7.  No parents at required parties or outings!  That is not cool.  Graduation party is exception.
8.  No aspiration rewards!  This basically means no energizers and no skilling rewards.  Use sunglasses rack if you want, no one cares.


Basic Requirements:

1.  Minimum one party and one scored outing per calendar day.  Extra parties and outings get extra points but no carryover credit towards the next day.  Note:  Parties and outings count for the day in which they are initiated, if they happen to extend into the next day.
2.  Parties and Outings must include the maximum possible number of guests.  This should be eight by default, but if your system can not handle it, or if other unforeseen or unknown environmental factors restrict the number, you may scale the scoring accordingly.
3.  Big (so and so) on Campus by graduation should be a given, but it is a requirement nonetheless, unless you think you are a Party Ninja.
4.  Must keep up best friend status with both parents.  You need to keep up good relations with the parents since realistically you would constantly be calling home for money to keep up your high-flying lifestyle.


Primary Requirements:

1.  Graduate with a GPA 4.0.
2.  Move back to reality with a great graduation party and platinum aspiration.  This is the only required party that your parents can attend, in fact, both must be invited.
3.  Finish challenge with a score above zero.


Sub-Plots:

A.  Drink up dudes and dudettes!  Hard partying is all about hard drinking, and you must drink enough to float a small fleet of whaling vessels around!  A juice bar and/or a pineapple keg is required fixture at home.

Drinking rules: 

1.  Minimum one drink per party, one per outing, and one per day that is not during a party or outing.  None of these can be fulfilling any other drink requirement.
2.  One drink for every invited guest who fails or refuses to show up to a party or outing, and one for every open guest slot not filled during the invitation.
3.  Initiate a negative social interaction? (Rejection!)  You must immediately take a drink!
4.  Pass out from too much high life?  Proceed immediately to take a drink after regaining consciousness.
5.  Have an accident during a party or outing?  You need another drink!
6.  Feel like engaging in some romantic interactions?  Better take a drink first!  Just one beforehand, not between every separate action.  Doing anything else, including simple non-romantic interactions resets the drink requirement, though.  Similarly, you will need that drink before asking another sim on a date, whether in person or over the phone.
7.  Score woohoo with some lucky dude or dudette?  No sleep for you, you need a drink!  Proceed directly to take a drink.
8.  Want to get in a fight or just give someone some abusive treatment?  Better have that drink first!  Like romance, just one before will do.  Breaking the chain of abuse means another drink before resuming the punishment, however.
9.  Want to use influence on another sim?  Not without taking a drink first!
10.  Get caught slacking by the Coach?  You need a drink if he/she sets a workout action in your queue.
11.  Your professor stops by for a visit unannounced?  You definitely need a drink!  Also need a drink if you answer the phone and it is one of your professors calling.  Drink before and after deliberately calling any professor, because you need to.
12.  Calling the parents?  You will need a drink before and after.  Answering the phone and it is a parent calling means needing a drink immediately after hanging up.
13.  Going to finals?  You will need to cancel every automatic 'Go to final' action, take a drink, then go to finals.  Take another one as soon as you get back also.


B.  Get lucky!  Hard partying college life would be sort of pointless if you can not get some action!  All woohoo conquests during parties/outings worth points towards final score.  At minimum get some action every semester or suffer the penalty.  See scoring for details.



Scoring:

Challenge ends with move back to home neighborhood.

Breaking any Major Prohibition means failure;  Go directly to Fail!  Do not pass Go, do not collect $200!  All Primary Requirements must also be met to win.


-10 points for each instance of breaking any Minor Prohibition.
-5 points for every bladder accident at a party or outing.
-5 points for not getting lucky during a semester.
-1 point for canceling any drinking action from the queue.  Also, an aborted drink does not count as fulfilling any drink requirement.
-1 point for each rejected woohoo proposal during any party or outing.
-1 point for any rejected date proposal.
-1 point for losing best friend status with a parent, each infraction.
-1 point for losing friend status with a parent, each occurrence.
-1 point for every guest shortfall during any party or outing if you just don't invite them.  (i.e.  You could have invited more, but you did not.  If you just don't know enough people, that is still failure.)
-1 point for every guest absent to a party or outing that refuses or fails to attend.
-1 point for not drinking when required to do so, each infraction.
-1 point for answering any phone call and it is a parent or a professor.


+10 points for every extra party or University lot outing over the base requirement.  (Combined with the Minor prohibition penalty, this essentially means you can swap outings for parties freely, but you will need a third occurrence during any day to get the extra 10 points.)
+1 point for each new woohoo conquest during any party or outing.(First time memory)
+1 point for any other new woohoo memory icon acquired during any party or outing.
+1 point for every drink that does not fulfill any of the drinking guideline specifications.
+1 point for passing out to the ground, or taking a face plant in your food.  Maximum total points in this category equals the number of parties/outings you throw.   
+1 point for any party that is a roof raiser, or outing that is rockin'.
+1 point for every dream date.  Must not be during a party.

Special score:  -100 points for not achieving Big (so and so) on campus.  +100 points for not getting Big (so and so) memory, yet finishing challenge with Secret Society and no penalties to final score!  (You are Party Ninja!)


Use of cheats, hacks, and mods permitted, provided that they do not break the challenge or make it significantly easier.  Use your judgment, you know if you are cheating.

Currently in play testing mode.  Seems okay, but further tweaks may be required.


Extra-Super-Awesome College Daze Challenge:

You drink whenever your challenge sim must drink!


Super-Duper-Extra-Awesome-Mission-Impossible College Daze Challenge:

Drink when your challenge sim must drink and get lucky when your sim gets lucky!

Um, okay.  I would never have guessed.

I have a prototype challenge drawn up, and will be play-testing it over the next few days, as time allows.  After a bit of testing and tweaking, I will submit it for proper mocking and burnination.   

Small point of clarification.  Since there is no multi-player TS2 that I am aware of, this requirement means playable by one character?  As in, only one sim is the target of the challenge requirements and scoring?

Most 'Crash to Desktop' issues are the result of inadequate hardware that does not meet minimum system requirements to run the game.  Sometimes operating system conditions can mimic inadequate hardware issues, like with background tasks consuming a lot of memory and leaving not enough left to run the game, for instance.  Faulty or defective hardware would do the same thing, like if you had a bad RAM stick that should have enough memory but can not perform to the rated capacity anymore.  Overheating and viruses might also be issues.  Scan for viruses and clean the cobwebs out of your computer case, especially the fans and heat sinks.  If your CPU overheats it may slow down and not be capable of running the programs. 

Yeah, you're right, and that little part I quoted here should be the official motto of EA Games.  It just needs a Latin translation to make it sound pompous and they could stick it right under the logo.

I would not say it is any weirder than sims having real names, or real job description titles, or catalog entries with readable details, or 'chance card' scenarios with real words, or telephone message boxes with actual speech implied.

I have used real music MP3's since almost day one.  In my opinion it is one of the best and most easily customizable aspects of the game.

In my custom neighborhood it is the first sim I created there.  I wish that I had known about this effect way back then, because I later created a sort of 'neighborhood bully' character whom I wanted to be be the one.  But alas, no.  Even emptying out all 'nice' and 'playful' points was not enough to make it happen.

I don't like same sex pregnancy among sims either, but for me the alien pregnancy for males is different.  It is alien, after all, and hilarious.



I have had early morning abductions also, but the stargazing in those instances started well before 3 AM as I recall.



I'm glad I thought of that!  But almost embarrassed that I had not thought of it before.  Now I have something new to try.  Can plantsims even get pregnant by 'normal' methods?   

Are peasants not allowed to start topics in the War Room?  I have never sought to try it.   Well, I just checked, apparently I could not start a new topic there if I wanted to, but I could start a poll.  Very strange...


When the TJ's 'higher odds' hacks were hosted here, I am almost certain he stated in the description that abduction odds do not increase with time in a unmodified game, but that his mod made it so that they did.



The one I have been using for a long time is by Smonaff at MTS2.  It seems reasonably stable and apparently plays nicely with TJ's hack.

It is my understanding that CRT monitors do not suffer from native resolution issues, since CRT monitors do not have a native resolution.  Although, 1024x768 does seem a bit low for a native resolution.

SecuROM is a hidden folder, so you would have to specify to search hidden files and folders before searching, under advanced search options.

You tried the instructions as outlined in the TS2 'readme' that I quoted?

I would assume that the resolution would definitely have to be lower than the overall monitor resolution, otherwise you would not be able to see the whole game in the window.  I could be wrong, but I don't see how Windows or TS2 would automatically scale the game to fit in your window.  Maybe someone who uses windowed mode can give you an idea of a good resolution to use?

I do not use windowed mode, but presumably would you not have to run the resolution of windowed mode at less than the monitor's native in order to have the whole game viewable in the window?  The task bar takes up space on the screen, for one.  As far as I know you can force the game into virtually any resolution you want to without permanent damage to the game using shortcut tags. 

I actually didn't think about it much at all, although I did make some assumptions.  And no, I do not think they tested these things much, if at all, obviously.  I don't use attics much, and I had one house that I noticed this problem with.  Cutting the corner of the attic space cleared up the issue, and that was it.  Also, it snows through all of the roofs in my game.  Maybe this is not the way it was supposed to be, but that is the way it is as I am seeing it.  If this is not the case for you, then I can not explain that.  Do you always cover the top level of a house with a floor, even if there is a roof over it?  If there is no floor, then presumably you would not see the snow accumulate on it.  I can not explain this, only observe it.  The snow does not accumulate and get deeper, like it does outside, for some reason, but it does cover any floor built under any roof on the roof level.

I believe that may be giving mEAxis a bit too much credit.  I don't think they actually came up with that idea on their own.  I think it has to do with the accidental and rather arbitrary nature of dimensions used in the game.

It is the walls built in the attic that intersect the sloped roof walls that are the root of the problem.  Previously, assuming no change of slope of the roof, one could construct a wall three grids from the edge of the floor plan so that they intersect with a sloped roof wall and create usable space in the attic, even without a dormer.  The joint of the sloped roof wall and the regular wall is not a perfect fit, but it used to work well enough because there were no graphic anomalies of walls protruding through the roof.  Somehow, it must be related to the stretched and arbitrary nature of the vertical dimension in the game that was more than likely done by nothing more scientific than 'eye-balling' to make it look right.  If walls were truly three grids high and the roof slope is actually 45 degrees, and we know the Pythagorean theorem, then the walls built three grids from the edge of the plan would make a perfect fit.  They do not, if one were to do this in 'walls-up' mode the roofs removed, it is plain that they do not, and there is a slight gap.  This is where the outside temperature gets in, even if the ceiling is tiled as it apparently must be for Seasons, because roofs have no effect keeping weather out.  It snows through the roof, requiring floor tiling above any usable interior space, which I think is proof enough that this was not an intentional feature.

In short, walls must be built to join sloped roof walls four grids from the edge, instead of three, in order to eliminate the tiny gap at the top of the wall junction and for them to make a weatherproof seal.  This can be done by deleting the last grid section of wall and then building a diagonal wall from the third to the fourth row to make the junction with the sloped roof wall.  A bit of a hassle, but normally not impossible to do.  Another demonstration that this is an accident and game anomaly and not intentional, since such a basic fix would not even be a fix if the attic being cold or hot was on purpose.

Why?  Greek houses make University almost tolerable.  Here is the program:

1.  Found Greek House by using the phone.  I recommend at least three or four residents before founding, to start.
2.  Throw parties constantly and ask for pledges.  Order pledges around to clean/garden/write term papers/etc. while in pledge period for no influence cost.  If they leave, call and invite them back.
3.  Invite new members to move in after pledge period.  Any resident of the house can do this regardless of relationship level.  Build house to maximum resident level, which is 8 without cheats.
4.  Did I mention throw parties constantly?  Keep hands off pause button, don't sweat the details, and do your best.
5.  Try to keep the maximum number of residents as much as possible.  When one graduates and moves back to neighborhood, ask another to move in.
6.  Throw lots of parties and repeat, ad nauseum.

By using the above program, I can have graduates from University almost every game session that I play a Greek House.  Plus, if you do it right, not every single student will pass with a 4.0 GPA, and some might even be put on academic probation.  Resist the urge to micromanage and don't bother with aspiration until a sim graduates.  Do to the slowed decay of motives, I have found that University students manage their own basic needs better than typical sims.  University sims can survive on pizza and espresso, and in Greek Houses they don't even need beds, they can sleep on the floor if they just have to.

(Cheaty Tip:  Using Ingelogical shrub or other such device ensures the sims you want to join can meet the house members.)

Yes, I realize now that I did forget part of the description.  It has been quite some time since I last did this.

For the outfit as top conversion you have open another suitable top project and overwrite all of the first project files to the new top project file names, then import.  As far as I know it only works because of the way the game prioritizes bottom separates over tops, and because otherwise you are not actually altering the mesh files at all.  Any part of the bottom mesh that would otherwise show skin, like the legs under the skirt in your example picture, or is partially transparent, will instead or in addition be rendered with information from the top, as long as the alpha for the top is long enough and there is graphical information there to render.

Presumably, if you wanted just the top part of a full outfit, you could edit to black out the bottom part of the alpha and that portion would not ever be rendered.  Note the top will always be 'tucked in' to the bottom by the game, though.

That type of thing shown in the pictures can easily be done without any special tools or complex editing.  Just take a full body outfit, like an underwear set with stockings for example, open it as a new project in Bodyshop, then save it as a top.  The type of thing you are describing should be very easy to do assuming there is no overlap of the top and bottom portions of the full outfit being used, but overlap with other normal tops or bottoms you might want to use them with could be problematic.   Overlap is where things get more tricky, and is why clothes with overlap are much better as full outfits.  It seems as if typical game behavior gives priority to the bottom part of the split sets over the top, which is why the underwear as tops works and is perfectly stable and easy to do.  In contrast, a dress simply saved as a top would display underneath the bottom normally by the game, so a new mesh would be required to get it to show above.  Therefore, any top that would need to overlap the bottom would need to be somehow re-meshed to function correctly.  The whole dresses-as-tops fiasco sort of passed me by without much notice, so I don't know what went wrong there, but I can not see any way around some sort of re-meshing, at least for tops that need to always overlap the bottoms.

Unfortunately, it was the only link that referenced 'spanking' that I had readily available.  Besides, it is considerably more hilarious than an actual fetish site.

You mean like these grown adults?

Christian Domestic Discipline