Latest posts of: Stitches

In case all the other stuff doesn't work, you might want to monitor your video card's temperature. nVidia cards have a neat "feature" that causes them to shut down if they overheat to prevent total frying, especially as they get older. I've been dealing with what you describe for about a year and a half now due to poor ventilation in my laptop which is exasperated by living in dusty hills with three longhaired cats.

There's standard PC maintenance type stuff you can do to help if that is the problem, and you should do even if it's not. Clean the case out regularly with pressurized hair, keep pets out of the room, vacuum the room frequently, don't place towers on surfaces that readily conduct heat or in areas with direct sunlight, don't leave your computer running for prolonged periods, and keep an airfilter near by. There are other less standard stuff like replacing fans, applying thermal paste to the CPU, and installing heatsinks.

The thing about Enayla is that she wasn't really creating skins for others in the Sim community. She made the skins so that her game can mimic her art, which has very feminine, ethereal men. She only started sharing them because people asked after seeing her pictures on the MTS2 social forums.

What I don't understand is why people that don't like a certain aspect of a skin, feel that the creator should change it for them. If I really wanted to use a skin and didn't like some aspect of it, I would edit it myself. For instance, if I didn't like the pink lips, I would copy and paste ones from a skin I did like.

People that like masculine looking sims should check out KSK's tasty skins over at insimenator or mts2. She put a lot of effort into them looking perfect.

Quote from: Jordi on 2006 May 29, 18:13:47

dac isn't really enough though, you also have to remember to wipe the DNA and SWAFs before starting a new hood.

How precisely does one do that? I'm assuming this is a SimPe process, but I've never bothered with SimPe because the idea of installing the .net framework makes me very unhappy.

I'm one of those people that ALWAYS uses DAC and imagine my alarm when I read three separate threads in one day about the dangers of DAC and SWAFS.

Quote from: starrling on 2006 May 11, 18:16:02

Question:

My poor, lonely legacy sim finally found a mate. Only problem is it's Dagmar and she's wearing that ugly uniform. Despite buying her new clothes and the likes, I keep seeing her in her Postal uniform on the control pane and the pic when the family is loadingl. Does that ever change?

Almost makes me want to nuke her and let him suffer. Well, maybe not.

If you change have her change her appearance in the mirror, it will reset the thumbnail.

I wouldn't say that EA is unethical just because it doesn't have the ethics that you think it should. Please cite your "evidence."

Quote from: jsalemi on 2006 May 08, 21:44:39

I don't know -- my secondary/travel system is a Dell Inspiron 6000 with an ATI Mobile Radeon card, and it plays TS2 and all EPs just fine.

You mentioned it as a secondary system, though. How often do you actually play the game on it and for what periods of time and is it the same quality game that you get on a desktop?

I ask because of the wear and tear factor. Laptops don't have sufficient ventilation. If you play for prolonged periods of time, you're dooming your laptop to a shorter life. The heat generated in the machine contributes to accelerated hardware failure. In laptops, this is often fatal as they aren't made to be repaired easily or cheaply.

I'm not saying don't get a laptop. I got mine so that I COULD take the game with me when I travel, but mostly I play on my PC and reserve my laptop for work. However, I did want to warn people that laptops are not meant for gaming because, believe it or not, many people assume they can get the same quality game play from a laptop as from a desktop. Then they feel like a jerk six months later when they realize that laptops are not "desktop replacements."

Quote from: jenwarren on 2006 May 08, 20:59:16

I understand where Ste's coming from, but working in the computer industry myself and working closely with programmers (and married to one!) I know that these deadlines are often set by people with no real idea of how much work is involved in the product. These executives promise things to their superiors, often with unrealistic timeframes and then it's up to the lowly programmers to meet these dates. So guys like Tom work weekends and 16 hr days to make sure execs get their bonuses. Of course, being a gamer and consumer myself, I also want games that work and are as bug-free as possible.

So I can see both sides of the story here, and it's a really unfortunate situation any way you look at it.

And add that people don't realize how complicated it is for a team of programmers to all work together as a collaborative effort. Programmers are just people. They make mistakes, they get disorganized, they have ego competitions, and they can't predict every scenario.

Quote from: holly on 2006 May 08, 19:45:10

ok i havent read this thread before but i think its time to have my say

bugs in games really piss me off , its as lazy as sending out shoes with holes in , or a book with pages missing and in my mind totally unacceptable , and its the poor sods who for whatever reason dont have internet access but who do play the game, what about them? they cant download patches or other fixes. so they put up with maxis half finished shell of a game ,

and quite frankly you can ~~fuck~~ stuff your many many late nights exactly what is it do you think your being paid for ?, cause its evidently not to put togeather a bug free ep that my god acutully works. and no its not nice to hear people bash your work but be honest its not like ffs is exactly anything to be proud off . and i like many others would not have gone beond the base game had it not been for people willing to "fix" the game for me ,

having to patch a game admits its faulty and once or twice i could probery cope with this , but its every fricken time an ep is sent out its lazy and amounts to poor workmanship , or sheer greed from maxis,

and as for marking 12year olds its not a good plan long term cause kids change there minds all the goddam time about what they like , and have no money of there own , people like me on the other hand have there own money and no commitments such as husband kids ect and are old enough to have lasting intrests so come on maxis make your next ep worth our while

and yes im feeling irratable today ,

Clearly you should be in charge of EA, Maxis, and the next EP.

</sarcasm>

I wouldn't recommend a laptop for TS2 at all. Undecided

I've got a high end Alienware laptop and it really doesn't like the game.

I ran TS2 on a 7800 for several weeks before I had the money to buy a second card. Now that the 7800s are in SLi config, I don't notice much difference for TS2. The game wasn't written to take advantage of it. I get major boosts in games like Oblivion and Doom 3, which were written with dual cards in mind.

I prefer nVidia to SLi based on personal experience. My ATi cards always overheated, no matter what cooling configuration we rigged up. It was frustrating to play for an hour and then crash. I'd put a similar power nVidia card in the same rig and it wouldn't reach the same high temps and wouldn't crash. Yay. However, it's undeniable that nVidia has certain flaws. They don't render 3-D as well as ATi, and the drivers are sometimes a bit buggy. That can usually be repaired by rolling back to a stable one.

I can understand being unhappy about severly bugged games, as this pack seemed to be. On the other hand, the developers were very prompt about addressing many of the issues. Whining about the issue seems rather pointless at this point. What hasn't been said a million times over? BlueSoup has the right attitude. She politely explained her problem and asked for a solution.

I can't abide the people that complain about the pack even existing. These packs make perfect sense to me. People that want the extra stuff can get it. Those that don't want the objects, don't have to worry about it. It's not like an EP, where you'll miss out on new gameplay features if you don't buy it. I approve of this system. I wish they had done it earlier. Imagine if they had put the tacky "retro" stuff from Uni into a pack rather than the EP! Now I can look forward to the next EP, knowing that it won't have a horrible nautical theme in it because, no, I don't like the nautical stuff so I did NOT buy this pack.

Quote from: holly on 2006 April 27, 20:45:39

i like sims connection , however they are another of those sites where everything looks better than it is esp the hair

The male hair tends to be very good though.

Quote from: sagana on 2006 April 27, 18:09:19

How do you all like SimsConnection stuff?

<is seriously pondering a sub - they have a lot of things that look like they'd be fun with OFB>

Some of the hair styles are amazing. Rabig Angels clothes are amazing. The houses are pretty neat. The object sets aren't the best looking around, but they're pretty neat in that you can download the set and the building and plop it down and begin playing your beach or sushi restaurant. I don't like building community lots so it's perfect, especially with OFB. I miss their Starbucks set because in real life, I am always at Starbucks. It's sort of the local hangout. Which is sad.

Quote from: Riez Forester on 2006 April 22, 18:14:25

Quote from: Stitches on 2006 April 22, 15:22:09

Quote from: ness on 2006 April 22, 14:20:17

I'm afraid that if you have OFB installed, that is the case.

The alternative is to uninstall OFB, start your hood, deleteallcharacters, spawn townies and then reinstall OFB - probably take as much time as doing it manually.

I just did this a few days ago and it only took about an hour.

The waiting time does not bother me. The changing all those disks are.

You don't have to uninstall everything. Just OFB.

Quote from: ness on 2006 April 22, 14:20:17

I just did this a few days ago and it only took about an hour.

Quote from: Ellie on 2006 April 20, 20:40:43

even with the norespawn hacks? i have visited uni community lots and the NPCs are generated, but I haven't seen any townie sims there.

You would have to get rid of the norespawn hack temporarily.

They automatically create themselves when you play Uni.

Quote from: Jysudo on 2006 April 18, 04:05:53

You don't need that much for air mail! Wink

well, I figure you might as well pay me if you wanna pay Peggy lol...

Hey, seriously, wait a couple more months for more stuff to accumulate. Then you get more bang. Perhaps you can hold out till it reach 500 hairs or something. In meantime, if you need someone to hold your dollars, feel free to send them to me Grin

besides April's special gift is ugly Wink

Ugh. So true. It was more of an incentive to not subscribe. However, as her latest hairstyle is fairly close to what my hair looks like, I couldn't resist.

A good step by step is impossible until this feature of OFB is fixed.

If you really want to have it done by the game generator, uninstall OFB*. Create a neighborhood. Add the UNI + NL hoods. Delete All Characters. Create a sim and put them on the lot. Use the testing cheat to spawn NPCs, Townies, and Downtownies. Go into Uni and let it spawn the Uni characters. Exit. Install OFB. At this point, decide whether you really want the OFB subhood or not. I didn't bother adding it because I didn't want the ugly OFB characters.

Of course, this doesn't work if you like your current neighborhood and would like to keep it as OFB uninstall will make your current neighborhood incompatible or some such nonesense.

Quote from: iLLusion on 2006 April 13, 13:29:43

Quote from: radiophonic on 2006 April 12, 23:23:09

Thank you for playing: Too Much Information.

LoL, poor radio, did ya get some wicked visuals there? I know I did... Owies!

Quote from: Stitches on 2006 April 12, 22:23:57

I won't deny the political angle but I'm not concerned about it so much. Politics change with the wind. I'm more concerned with a culture that has for over 300 years, promoted the idea that there is something terrible and sinful about the human body and sexuality.

Well, US politics haven't really changed since it's inception as a free country. The names & faces have changed, but it's basically the same. Thing is, these days, the politicians just have a lot more ways to screw things up.

Now on to the "puritan" attitude. Yes, it's true it's been going on for a while, but once again, it's not everyone as a whole. The US is such a mix of all cultures that you can't pin this on America. Now, at the risk of beiing flogged by any of the "English" (as in England/Britain), users, if you must point a finger, the "puritans" came from there and settled here. LoL (maybe cuz they got ran out, which is what we should do too, but that's another issue...) America is like a big huge melting pot of cultures. There are a lot of goods and bads, it's just the BAD's always stick out the most since todays press has a flair for finding everyones deepest darkest secrets and posting them up on billboards..

anthony <-- I suppose I should make a signature eventually, eh?

Everything you're saying is very true but it misses my point. My point is that I'm really tired of people, especially women, hating their bodies regardless of the huge melting pot. I've lived here my whole life. I've been all around the country in my travels and I've met many different people with different values and every where you go you find the same self loathing. All I wanted to know was if it was any better off in "western" cultures because I desperately need some sort of clue that it's not IMPOSSIBLE for America to move forward.

Quote from: iLLusion on 2006 April 12, 20:58:09

It's not "America" as a whole Stitches, it's called politics. It's all about getting votes. People raise enough stink about something and threaten the politicians of being ousted and shit happens. Where I live breast feeding isn't an issue. I've seen it many times. Yeah, theres still the few people who take offense to it, but you stil lsee it.

anthony

Quote from: Jelenedra on 2006 April 06, 16:57:34

Well, no one said anything about necrophilia, with the zombies and the vampires, so I don't think anyone will get up in arms about werewolves.

Although, if they DO put it werewolves.... then I will finally be able to have my Anita Blake sim with her harem done right....

I've already been looking for the appropriate eyes for Nathaniel and hair for Michah so it better not just be wereWOLVES. Wink

Erm. Does that make me nerdy?

Anyways, I'm easy to please. I liked all the original packs and I've liked the TS2 packs so far. I think that pets could be an interesting addition to game play. However, I hope they leave strays out of it. Annoying. The only hack I ever downloaded for TS1 was an anti-stray type thing and it went on every lot.

Quote from: maxon on 2006 April 05, 20:11:50

Quote from: Stitches on 2006 April 05, 17:24:45

PS- I'll support public breastfeeding when I can take my top off at the beach!

Come and live in Europe

I've been considering it.

I'm a little tired of America's strange dislike of the human body. I understand people that don't want to see breastfeeding because many, many people have been raised to believe that their bodies are disgusting things that should be covered up. If it's any better at all in Europe, I'd like to know.

I've always been puzzled by the debate over public exposure of breasts, breastfeeding or not.

It's socially unacceptable for exposed breasts to be shown on national television, at the beach, or a popular teen rated video game.

Yet.

It's okay to breast feed in the mall food court, sell comic books with artistic depictions of breasts to youth, and hang reproductions of Boticelli's "Primavera" in junior high art classes.

I guess you could argue that the last bits are "nature" and "art" but I'll keep them firmly in the "anatomy" category.

Related to the main topic:

This raises a lot of questions concerning the original intent of the game, and how much was changed to pander to people that find the human body offensive and evil. For the sims to breastfeed, wouldn't they need nipples? Might they have had them originally? If not, but I suppose we can have suspended reality for the game. And then there is the question of the social interaction I miss most from the promo shots: the sim woman flashing her husband. I found that hilarious and would like to have seen it stay in the game.

PS- I'll support public breastfeeding when I can take my top off at the beach!

Quote from: liegenschonheit on 2006 March 27, 04:31:04

The few I've made have been named after Nick Cave songs. So far I have Stagger Lee, who made Henry Lee, and the female is Lauretta (she prefers Lottie).

I figure the next ones I make will be named differently, but I will probably go along in a theme till I get bored with it. Like have Molly, Case and Armitage, then go a completely different direction and have Integra and Walter. It's really just whatever fits my mood.

I went with Nick Cave names as well. I have "Cannibal's Hymm" and "Tender Prey." I expect that the next one will be named "Murder Ballads."