Thanks for that info Sleepycat.  I'll try it out.  I need to reduce the size of my hack folder.  I find that it significantly reduces load time.  But I have less hacks than you it seems.  I might have to be selective about which of Pescado's hack I keep.  Right now I have everything he listed in his NL directory.

Thanks for the info too Zephyr.  That whole terrain paint thing is weird.  Unfortunately some of the better designers at TSR insist on using terrain paints on their houses.  Hopefully Maxis will fix, but I wonder if they are aware of the problem at all.

BTW, that's how I always install a lot, remove everything but the segment, install the lot segment, and then extract the rest of the files to a subfolder in my download folder.  I hate those random file names and won't stand to have them in my folder.  This allows me to quickly get rid of a house custom content if I decide I don't want it.  I've occasionally loaded up lots with the custom paint missing.  They load up fine, but all the area where custom paint was, shows as blue, and you can't really remove custom paint, as you well know, so you have no choice but to use it in the lot if you want to keep that house.  I've never tried to package them however, so I'll take your word that they crash if you do so.  Here's hoping that Maxis is aware of the bug.

But I have no intention of reinstalling my lots in this case. My neighbourhood is fine, it's only my download folder that's bloated.  My plan is to package all my lots, remove the download folder and create a new one and then extract the content of the lot files, minus the lot itself and use those files as a basis for a new download folder.  I'm hoping that this give me ONLY the files that I am currently using in the game.  I'll have to hunt down the meshes manually though, there is no help for that I think.  Anyway, I'll try it and report.

There is one thing I never tried and am wondering about.  What if you load a house with custom content but with the content missing and then save the lot.  Does it keep pointers to the missing content or does it now points to the substituted content. 

Oops sorry Zephyr!  This site is sometimes sluggish.  Victim of it's own success !

My download folder is my achilles heel.  Even though it's barely a 2 months old and I tried to keep it organized, I already feel I have lost control somewhat.  I feel like starting  over from scratch.

How good is Maxis's packaging of lots?.  If I package a lot, will EVERY custom item be included ?  I'm thinking of maybe packaging all my lots, extracting them to a new folder, and recategorizng the items and using that as a start for a new download folder.


Sleepycat, I'm interested in your method.  I'm having some problems with mods not appearing in my game, and I'm pretty sure it's a question of load order.  However, I have NO clue how to starting debugging which can overwrite which.  I have too many mods I'm afraid.

My link on the first post is from MTS2, so it's free.

Also Sussissogood has some nice victorian hairstyle, updated to show in the correct bins at , http://www.sussissogoodsims2.com/Hair2.html, also free.

They aren't animated though, but that doesn't bother me for the updo's, as there isn't much animation there anyway

Let's keep the suggestions coming, maybe we can come up with a best of list

You're welcome Coffee lover

Thanks for that link Bluesoup.  That is the one paysite I subscribe to (other than MATY ahem) so it's not a problem.  It gave me the idea of searching for genetic in the hair category and I discovered a few modders who do categorize their hair.  I'll have to check the hair out.

I'm trying to resurrect an old animated custom hair thread.  The previous thread was very informative, but mostly OT.

I'm looking for high quality custom hair that is

1) animated
2) doesn't have crappy texture or gapping holes (high quality in other words)
3) Shows in the correct bins instead of the custom hair bin.

The hair here is a good example of what I am talking about : http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=101133

Any other candidates for Officially MoreAwesome ?

EVERYTHING is in subfolders for me.  I have nothing in my download folder.  Stuff is nested fairly deep at times.  I have a folder called genetics, and then one folder each for eyes, hair, skin, and then a folder per creator. 

Hacks are two folders deep in hacks/creator.

So I am not sure why it's not working for you Zephyr.

the following quote from Sir Walter Scott comes to mind   Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive ...

I've had that happen but only when I used Inge's teleporter.  If you teleport the same sim twice, two "copies" are created.

So a portal problem sounds about right.  I don't believe they are duplicate files, only duplicate instances of the same sims.

Nothing to understand really.  I think the file name is randomly generated in order not to overwrite existing files.  They probably did that predicting a flood of custom content all being dumped into one folder. The game doesn't care about the file names anyway since each object is identified by a unique number that's imbedded in the file. 

However clean installer lets you see what is inside the file, so you can use that program to move the file to the appropriate folder.

I've had your problem quite a few times and it was always either caused by custom objects being off or my download folder not having the capital D.

One thing to remember, if your simmies are not showing their custom content in the bin (I think) or on the splash screen of the lot, that's normal.  It will not be updated until you actually load the load with the content present.

Silly question.  Do you see your content in Bodyshop?

I had one of my girls roll a love potion want.  That was just part of my "Will you get married already!" saga. 

I took some hours to find and customize a nice chapel for my sims on a community lot.   Then I used it to marry off one of my girls, and that went fine, apart from the fact that there was always one sim that didn't get in the car.  I just teleported her in.  In that case I had the groom move in first, so that explain why it went smoothly.

The second girl I wanted to marry, I decide to have her meet her groom at the chapel.   There is the caveat, that I want all the sims from my household to be there, so I need to find a time when they are all there. I decided to see if I could combine this with a date.  So I ask my groom for a date.  How many people go on a date and end up married I wonder Everything goes smoothly, they have a dream date and I culminate it with the vows at the end.  Except that right after the "I do", my sims start running everywhere. I look for the groom and he's stuck at the altar, literally.  He can't move.  At which time I realize that my sims aren't running, the game actually switched to high speed (even though it still says speed 1).  All my sims needs are getting critical and I'm running the risk of them dropping dead soon as they get home.  I decide to bail out.  I couldn't even go to the neighbourhood, that option was grayed out. I had to kill the game outright.

Reload the game.  Decide that maybe there was some weirdness about my community lot.  Load it up and tweak it a little bit.  Try the whole scenario once more. Same result. Bail out and reload my lot.  At which time, I decide to call it a bad job and use the regular Invite sim to community lot.  By this time it's too late to call, so I put it off to first thing in the morning.  Forgot it was too early to call and my groom hangs up on me, pissed that I woke him.  Got too used to Pescado's hack shielding us from our own stupidity.  Unfortunately his hack doesn't cover that particular option.  So no biggie I think.  I try again after 7h00, the groom accepts my invitation.  I have everyone put on their finest and pack them off to the church.  Lead the groom to the altar and lo and behold he runs off!!  Looks like that early morning phone did some serious damage to the relationship.

Bail out, once again and load up my lot.  Invite the groom over, and try to repair the relationship.  My girl is still hot for him, but he is decidedly cooler.  Thus the want for a love potion.  Maybe I should go that route.  I build that relationship back to a crush, but I am waiting for the red heart before proceeding

In the meantime, I have Liz's lovebed installed and all my sims are like freaking horn dogs on that thing.  I might just take them out, because one of these days my boyfriend is going to walk in on me and say so THIS is why you play this game.  They will be no convincing him afterward that I'm not some kind of sim porn freak lol.

Anyway, what had to happen happened and I heard the little tune.  So now my sim is pregnant and still unmarried, and it looks like she will have a difficult one, so dragging her to a community lot is a bad idea. I think I heard it's not even possible.

Poor girl, she is almost an elder and still not married.  And she has a marry 6 children off LTW.  At this rate I doubt she'll even have 6 children.

That's my pet peeve!.  My boyfriend complains about me "wasting my life playing that damn game" but he spends his free time surfing or watching TV.  How is that any worse?  And realistically, if I wasn't playing TS2, I'd probably would be watching TV or reading Sci-Fi.  Not especially worthwhile.  Our Comedy network here has a motto "Time well wasted" That's a good one to apply to TS2.

The only thing I feel a little sorry about is that I put aside my feeble art efforts.  But I can only have one obsession at a time, and as I said, my talent is pretty limited.

Another thing that bugs me is that he says only teenagers play this game.  I got news for him (not that he would listen lol)

I wonder if some modder will crack the turn-on system.  There are soooo many possibilities for various turn ons, as was illustrated in this thread.  I know it's only a small part of the attraction equation, but it's rife with possibilities.  I just love this new attraction system.  Now I let my sims pretty much pick their partners autonomously, by seeing if they will get crushes on their own.  Sometimes I'll just help them along by navigating through the initital meeting.  Otherwise they often start off on a bad foot. 

That's a good point.

It's true that the costume makeup and glasses are wildly misrepresented but those are all custom objects, so you are in control of what you put into your game.  I've managed to rationalize this into a turn-on turn off that makes sense.  For example, my only custom costume makeup are mostly freckles and birth marks.  So I just need to think that if I use that as a turn-on or turn-off that my sims are attracted/repelled by freckles or birth marks.  Which is entirely possible.  Same for accessories, but it's more strained  You could have sims turned off by piercings, or earings etc.  In a way it makes the turn on/off system a little more varied.  The only one I avoid entirely is makeup as every single one of my female sims wears makeup of some description

You get the hearts before they have  even met.  It's enough for one sims to be walking past another sim to get the effet.

Actually this is kinda funny, because my sim was on the sidewalk when the postman came to deliver a letter, and at the same time, another sim walked past.  I got the heart effect.  I thought she was reacting to the postman so I had her say hi and "scope him out".  She shrugged.  Nada.  So it was the other walking by.  I didn't have time to make sure who he was.  So now I'm stuck with my popularity Sim wanting to be friends with an butt ugly Maxis NPC while the mystery sim has vanished into the mists.

No we're not !!!


Well it's not so much a question of age as a question of long familiarity.  There are a few exceptions out there, but  most couples see their relationship die down to slow burning embers over the years.

But that's what I don't get.  I have Sim A and Sim B with the fart hearts (lol) and 2 bolts each.  Then I have Sim C and Sim D with 2 bolts, but no hearts.  So hearts and lighting bolts must not be exactly equivalent

lol, I knew you were building up to something.


But I don't agree.  Your vampire can be cured, your beefy boyfriend can get fat and out of shape, and you can put your fat wife on a exercise program and get her in shape!

I've started to automatically put in a turn-on, turn-off based on hair color for my red-headed and blond sims.  I want them to express that hair color in future generations, so I don't want them to mate with darker hair sims.  When they become elder and loose that bolt, it will makes it more realistic, as how many people do you know that still have the hots for each other when they are old and gray

I have a question regarding something that has been puzzling me.  I'm trying to match up my three roomates with 3 potential husbands.  All 3 found suitable 2 and 3 lighting bolt mates.  (God I love that they fall in love autonomously now, once you get them past the akward critical first meeting when all they want to do is annoy each other).  Anyway, 2 have the hots for each other (little pink hearts everytime they see each other) but the last doesn't, even though she has 2 lighting bolts. 

So what determines wether or not you get the little pink hearts?

It's always amazing when someone expresses your thoughts so exactly they might have plucked it straight out of your head.  Except you said it so much better than me. 

It's hard to get an essential list.  I've played with hacks so long, I probably forgot about most of the worst annoyances of the game.  I think trying to play with an almost empty hack folder will quckly reveal what is absolutely essential and what is not.

This being said, i would start my game with these three absolutely essential hacks (for me)

1. no censor blur
2.  CEP3 package (which is only essential if you use custom content really)
3. Then I'd add all the critical fixes that were implemented by our excellent modders here, although I think they belong in a different category of non-optional hacks. 
4. no dormie regen and no townie regen as  I'm keeping a tight leash on my dormie/townie population.

5.  Then I'd just add hacks, as I become exasperated by the game.  Less whiny would make it back into my game pretty fast, as would the non-autonomous fridge, babies sleep through the night.  Not sure about the rest since as I've played with them so long, I forgot how annoying the base game can be!

You mean charging 5,000 simoleans for a so-so match isn't robbery enough for you?

I never bothered much with sending my kids to college.  I only did it once, long ago, before my hiatus. I had forgotten how dull it was, and how incredibly loooooong it takes. 

I started a new neighborhood and wanted to make my new family more rounded by graduating them from college.  I want them to have access to the LTW, multiple wants locking and new careers and rewards.  Blah, is all I can say.  It's even more boring that I remember.  I finally resorted to locking the needs decay and just having them do assignments, essays and research at triple speed and then having them take the exams soon as their bar if filled.  Even then it's boring and too long.  So that took care of that, but I don't look forward to having to do it over and over again

Any tricks on either speeding up the process, or making it at least more bearable? like in oh, I don't know...fun??

 

RTFM
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Jump to: navigation, search

RTFM is an initialism for the statement "Read The Fucking Manual". This instruction is usually given in response to a question which the responder knows or believes can be answered easily by reading relevant documentation, and suggests that the inquirer may be wasting people's time.

In computer technical support it also commonly refers to "Reboot The Fucking Machine," an aptly prescribed first line of troubleshooting that has been widely recognized to solve a great majority of computer problems. It implies exasperation at minimal problem-solving initiative.

To avoid the use of the expletive "fucking" in the statement (which is offensive to some people), the "F" is often translated to another adjective, such as "Freaking", "Full", "Fine", "Friendly", "Fabulous", or "Fascinating". Alternatively, the "F" can be dropped entirely and the initialism rendered as "RTM" (Read The Manual).

We need an acronym for annoying people who likes to insert quotes from the wikipedia

That sounds like a welcome addition (correction) to our game.

Any chance apologizing could be made to influence the state of furiousness, as in accelerating the furious state decay or something like that.  That would make a lot of sense that apologizing has an impact on how furious someone is.  At least it does to me

Here you go.  A really must read for anyone considering upgrading their system.  And still interesting if you are not.

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6133243/?type=tech

One note however regarding their methodology.  They tested the game by doing the same thing over and over again under different hardware conditions.  That's valuable, but not the entire story I believe.  We all know how performances will drop when with an overstuff lot, or on a large residential or community lot.  That doesn't seem to have been accounted for in their article

Thank you all for your suggestions. It's always reassuring to know someone's personal experience with a graphic card, as it relates to sims.

I'm still pondering the choice of cards.  I don't want to make a mistake.

I read a hardware review on gamespot that tells you what hardware and what setting has the most impact on the game.  I posted the link.  I thought it was awesome and am surprised it generated zero interest, but then that must be the geek in me talking lol.

Turns out that a video is NOT the single most important element in running the sims.   You just need a modern middle-of-the-range card.  You also need a decent amount of memory, but 512 is actually enough.  No wonder you are satisfied Wishy-washy.  The reviewer said " With the game set at high quality on a 256MB machine, it'd be an overstatement to call the result a slide show". I got a laugh out of that.  I have 512 + 256, so I should be ok.

So it turns out a huge factor, and the actual bottleneck in my system is CPU.  I only have a 1.6 MHZ and that is slowing the game. 

Also, getting a faster hard disk can improve performance, if you have a slow 54000 RPM.  They recommended a defrag as well. (wow something free)

Not to worry Ivy, technical headaches are my bread and butter, since that's what I do for a living.  I'm tech support.  So anything, including gutting my computer and putting it back together does not scare me. Just the price tag lol.

Hey Guys, sorry to keep spamming with new threads, but I found an article that might be of interest to everyone.  It's a hardware performance review for the Sims.  I think it's fairly recent as wel,l since I think they are using Nightlife.  It's also useful to find out which setting affects performance the most

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6133243/?type=tech

I was surprised to find out that you didn't need a kick-ass video card to make TS2 run well, just a modern one, and that after that you are just throwing your money away.

Hi all,

I have a shiny new 250$ CDN  gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket and one week to pick a video card and take advantage of the boxing week sale.

Which among the following do you think would rock for playing TS2: (or which one would suck

ATI Radeon 9200 128MB AGP Video Card
ATI All-In-Wonder 2006 Edition Video Card
ATI Radeon 256MB AGP Video Card (X850XT)
ATI Radeon 9600SE 128MB Video Card
ATI Radeon X700 Pro ViVo AGP 256MB Video Card
BFG GeForce FX 5500OC 256MB AGP Video Card
BFG GeForce OC 128MB AGP Video Card (6600GT)
BFG GeForce OC 128MB PCI Express Video Card (6600GT)
Diamond Radeon X300SE Stealth H-M PCI Express