Likes:

I *love* the new playground equipment!  I've been wishing for this ever since the base game came out.  Why it took them so long, I'll never understand.  I especially like the "play on playground" action...looks quite realistic.

The portraits regenerating on "change appearance".  Personally, I got very tired of constantly having to find either a mirror or the lotdebugger/clothingtool every time I sent them to Plan Outfit.  I will gladly put up with the occasional random ugly pose in exchange for not having to deal with that hassle.

I like the spiral staircases.

Neutral

Apartments seem fine so far, for playability (but I've had the game only a day, so I haven't run into any bugs yet).  I like being able to split up some of my overcrowded households into multiple apartments. 

New Study options on the bookcases are interesting, but I haven't tried very many of them so can't say for sure if I like them or not.

The "Knock on Door" sounds good in theory, but I have yet to see it actually result in the desired Sim coming out.

Dislikes

Absolutely HATE the inability to build on occupied apartment lots (I haven't tried the cheat method yet, will do that tomorrow, probably).  I can't stand those tall rectangular hedges, and routinely take them out of any pre-made lot where I see them.  Can't do that with apartment lots.    

The new phone harassment times.  Why they decided it is rude to call a friend after 10pm, I'll never understand.  Would love to see a hack for this one.

Witches.     I have zero interest in the witches, as I prefer to keep my game as realistic as possible.  How can I ensure that I never, ever have a Sim turn into a witch?  (I would love something like jfade's No Plantsims Under Any Circumstances hack, only for witches.)

The Murphy bed seems rather pointless, as it takes up the same amount of space when closed as it does when open.  If you can't place objects in front of it when it's closed, what good is it, except as an extra path to get from one place to another?

I don't like not being able to automatically drop the outside wall of the apt.  I play almost entirely in cutaway mode, and it annoys me to have the walls get in the way when I'm trying to see what's going on.  Particularly in small apartments.

Karen

That's ridiculous.  (And definitely something I would love to see fixed!)  But thanks for the tip.

Karen

I just installed AL and I haven't been playing with it very long yet, but one thing I noticed already:  The "phone harassment" time seems to be set much earlier than it used to be.  I've tried it on several lots, and attempting to call another Sim (whether on cellphone or regular phone makes no difference) after about 10 pm will result in the "Phone harassment is bad, m'kay?" message.  I tried once at about 10:15 pm, and on another lot around 11:30 pm.  Same results.  FWIW, it was a Monday night on both lots, not that the day of the week should make any difference.  And these were adults trying to call other adults...not that it matters.

I am running the latest version of the AL director's cut (phonehack dated 9/1/08 6:30 am, autoyak dated 8/30/08 6:08 pm) plus a couple of Twojeffs' hacks (ACR and Smart Beds), but that's it at the moment.  Have not played long enough yet to risk putting any non-awesome hacks back in.

I can't remember if the phone harassment code is part of autoyak or the phonehack, but thought I'd post it here just in case.

Karen

Thanks for the tip!

Karen

I attempted to install the patch last night.  No errors on the patch installation, but any attempt to actually run the game (either via the launcher or the Sims2EP7.exe -- I never use the launcher normally but tried it this time just in case it might have fixed it, no luck) just gave an error message, something about a "conflict with the emulation software".  This was before it even started up the game, let alone got to the neighborhoods, so it can't be hack-related.

I ended up uninstalling FT and reinstalling it.  Fortunately I managed to get a current backup of my hood from SimPE prior to uninstalling, so I didn't lose anything. 

I'm running Vista, all EPs, and several of the SPs including the KBID one.  I have never had the slightest problem installing a patch before, but I'm not going to try that again.  What a waste of time!   

Karen

How about posting your fixed version, then?

Karen

I agree.  A few days ago, I had my first-ever alien birth in the game.  I knew the guy had been abducted, of course, but forgot that I'd taken out Carrigon's no-pregnant-man-from-UFO hack when I installed FT.  I've been playing TS2 since the initial release, and *never* had or wanted an alien baby before.  Rather than leaving the alien spawn in my game, I quit without saving, then went back and killed off the father-to-be a couple of hours before the birth was to take place.  (This being the only solution I could think of, since I'd saved the game already with him pregnant.)  Then, of course, I went and grabbed the FT version of Carrigon's hack, just to make sure that never happens again

Karen

I patched, and have had no problems so far.  But I'm not running a no-CD crack.

Karen

This is a little misleading.  While I won't deny that occasionally a lot can become "buggy" or corrupted, simply playing that lot frequently and saving the game regularly doesn't cause the lot to become corrupted.  It's possible to play the same lots for months or even years (real time).


Well, I suppose you could use the familyfunds cheat to reduce the amount of money that the richer families have when a poor family moves in nearby, if you want to simulate something like that.  But your Sims have no awareness that there *are* houses nearby, let alone whether the neighbors are rich or poor.

Karen

Well, if that's the only conflict, I think I can live with it.  Thanks for clarifying.

Karen

I don't think that's true.  I finally put this hack back in my game today, deciding I didn't want to wait any longer for an update that might never materialize.  In one of my houses I have a teen who seems obsessed with the exercise machine (the stationary bike from FT), and he often uses it autonomously.  He went from 2 fitness points to 3 in a few hours, and I did see the message indicating he had gained enthusiasm.  Macro...Hobbinate also works fine with this hack installed, as far as I can tell.  So it is definitely possible to still gain fitness enthusiasm with this hack installed.

If there are "major conflicts" (as someone stated above), I haven't run into any yet.  Does anybody know for sure what it might conflict with?

Karen

Well, I have been playing like that for a LONG time.  In the days before ACR, I used to have a pretty stable population of 135-145 playables, and that number had been very consistent for a long time.  Now that I let ACR decide when my Sims will spawn, the total is a bit higher (I have 166 playables at the moment), but as I said, it's spread out over 30+ families and some of those families are pretty small.  I also happen to have a relatively high proportion of elders at the moment (and will have 8 more in the next day's rotation).

Talk about "culling", though:  I had that "realistic sickness" mod in my game a few months ago and it did wonders for culling the excess population   I might have to try that again at some point.  In the meantime, I mostly don't cull the population deliberately.  On the other hand, I had a bizarre death in one of my families yesterday:  It's fall on that lot, so there were leaf piles everywhere.  A tree got struck by lightning.  By the time I noticed it, the rain had stopped, but the tree was still on fire.  There was a fire alarm in the house but naturally it didn't summon the fire dept for an outside fire.  I decided to just let it happen.  After a few minutes the fire spread to the leaf piles under the tree.  One of the elders got too close, and burned to death.

Karen

And I'm not disagreeing with any of that.  I have been using macrotastics, skillinator, BUY, etc. since they were first released, and couldn't play without them.  All I was trying to say was that if the point of this EP is to acquire enthusiasm points, visit hobby lots, etc, then setting your Sims to Macro...Hobbinate will make that process more or less effortless.  (Nothing wrong with that, of course.)

I should know better than to make general statements like that about an EP that's been out less than two weeks.  I haven't played it enough myself yet to really decide whether I like it or not.  Of course I realize that everybody's playing style and reasons for playing are different.  That's one of the strengths of the game, that you can play just about any way you want.  I don't usually play with specific goals in mind (although I admit that the BV "uncover all the vacation secrets" thing was way more appealing to me than I expected it to be).

I imagine that as time goes on, I'll fold the "hobbinating" into my normal gameplay and it will become just another thing my Sims do as part of their everyday routine.  Right now I'm still getting used to it, just like everybody else.

Karen

Hey, you're not the only one!   I have been playing like that for ages.  I play one day per lot, or two semesters on my Uni lot, then move on.  I have 30+ families in my hood, so a single-day rotation through the entire hood can take a week or more to play through, particularly if any of them go on vacation.  (I only let them go to the vacation lots if somebody actually rolls a want for it.)

Karen

But the latest version is MUCH smoother than previous versions.  I'm not getting errors anymore.  From what I've seen so far, I think Hobbinate is going to make this EP trivially easy to play.

Karen

Really?  Thanks for the update.  I have been checking his site for updates daily since FT came out but I must have missed that one. 

ACR works fine with FT.  It didn't need any updating, according to Twojeffs.  So don't let that stop you.

Karen

Seems to me in that case they get what they deserve.... 

Karen

Thanks for the info.  As for the rest, I guess we'll just have to wait.  Pescado replied in the other thread that the "hobbinate" code isn't finished yet.

Karen

Is the "Macro...Hobbinate" working without errors for *anybody*?  I haven't seen anyone (yet) who says it works in their game, regardless of what other hacks they have loaded.  I posted an error log yesterday in the Macrotastics thread (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,208.msg317244.html#msg317244).

Karen

Which is why I made a point of explaining exactly what "guarantee" means.  Even people who supposedly do understand English perfectly seem to have a hard time grasping the point of the cheesecake/twins thing.  It was beaten to death -- thoroughly -- back when OFB came out, but some people apparently still are not aware of it.

Karen

From my observations it seems the Hobbinate is *always* triggering the Call Friends.  Something's definitely not right there....

Karen

Oh, God!  LOL.  I'm having really unpleasant flashbacks to those days right after OFB came out. 

Bottom line:  Unless you have a hack (like Twojeffs' Triplets and Quads or Cheesecake Fix hacks) that prevents it, if you have OFB installed, EATING CHEESECAKE WHILE PREGNANT WILL GUARANTEE TWINS.  Note the word "guarantee".  That's 100% chance.  Always.  Every single time.  If you don't want twins EVERY TIME, do not ever let your pregnant Sims eat cheesecake, or else go find a hack that will prevent it.

Karen

I'm getting errors when I try to have kids use the new Macro...Hobbinate (love the name, btw  ).  In this particular case, I selected Macro...Hobbinate...Nature, with an ant farm on a table in the same room.  It threw the attached error.  I clicked on the very same ant farm to queue the action the usual way and the kid had no problem using it (in fact it triggered his One True Hobby).  The errors seem to happen when any kid chooses Hobbinate, no matter what option they choose.  I am not sure if it's an issue for any other age groups.

I am running the latest versions of macrotastics and skillinator, both dated 3/2/08 12:18 pm. 

Karen

EDIT:  It's not just kids.  I'm getting the same thing with other Sims too.

What about Crammyboy's nudist hack?  It was updated and working fine in BV, but I don't know if it needs an update for FT or not (I haven't tried it in FT yet).

Karen