It worked! I'm not exactly sure what I did, but it worked. Thanks so much, the picture really helped. (Thanks to Zazazu and sloppyhousewife too.)

Haven't encountered your staircase problem but I'll accept my benes graciously. 1946, hysterical mute Dorothy McGuire terrorized by nutcase George Brent. Remakes not worth watching.

 

I get the same effect whether I place stairs or not. In the screenie I posted, no stairs had been placed yet. It is the standard foundation height.

I'm stumped! But it's obviously possible because Hecubus did it. Divulge your secrets, I beg you!

Hecubus, I love the look of the row house backyards. I'm having no luck reproducing the effect. I've followed two separate garage-attached-to-foundation-house tutorials, trying each one at least three separate times. Every time I can't place a door to the yard. This happens:



Can you suggest a good tutorial, or help me understand what I'm doing wrong?

The same thing happened to me in Bon Voyage on a vacation lot. I haven't played any Uni lots yet.

Go to a community lot. Try a park or someplace out of doors. Good witches come in the daytime and evil ones come at night. No pun intended. 

What are you talking about, you mean you want to be sure your computer is free of SecuROM or you want to be sure the download of AL is free of it? If you think you have SecuROM then go through the process described in the SecuROM thread here. As for AL, just torrent it and install as usual, then don't launch the game after installing, choose quit. Go to your mounted disc and choose Explore, and you should find a folder that says Crack. Inside will be the cracked Sims2EP8.exe file, replace the one in your newly installed AL folder (C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Apartment Life\TSBin) with that one and run the game from that file. No SecuROM! It only gets loaded when you launch the game from the original Sims2EP8.exe.

Look for a Reloaded torrent.

It's in Decorative/Miscellaneous about 16 clicks in ($280). There are mirrored and non-mirrored versions. Never heard of a medicine cabinet without a mirror, but oh well.

There are lots goofier townie names (Goopy Gils Carbo, anyone?) but I wondered earlier if Christian Love who used to upload mods at MTS2 has gone to work for EA. They seem to name some of their townies after EAxis slaves employees. Somebody told me CL is back updating his stuff at MTS2 though.

Well, you say tomato, I say tomahto. Didn't mean to imply that El Presidente is well hung. 

I liked your buggy avatar! It fit this thread nicely, don't you think? 

No really, now that I know it's not a real bug I don't have a problem with it. A BIG bug, yes, I'd have problems with. DO NOT WANT big bugs. Or spiders. Or snakes. Not even pixelated ones.

What six months remaining? You mean until Sims 3 comes out? What's that got to do with it?

Is there any fix for this dangling textfiles problem? Not that I have a clue what that means.

I'm with you. I just love it.

People have been walking in my Sims' apartments that have no business there, for example, the paperboy. He's been leaving the paper on the front porch nicely, but recently he walked right into my Sim's apartment, put the newspaper on the floor, then stood around waiting for someone to strike up a conversation before he finally went on his way.

On a related note, I sent my Sims on vacation to see if anything there got borked. I didn't notice anything odd except that my female Sim walked into an NPC-occupied hotel room to go to sleep, instead of going to her own room, and while she was there several other NPC guests walked in. One took a bath while another turned on the TV, waking my Sim up, then they all stood around chatting for a while. This never happened before but I really never played vacation lots that much. Thought I'd report it in case it's related to the AL problem.

Same here. Beat the crap out of my monitor with a flyswatter.

Thanks for the heads up! I would truly miss that wonderful hack. EAxis must hate pregnant ladies, they dress them so fugly. 

I doubt anybody here has SecuROM, it's been too well documented how to get rid of it and keep it away. Just use a no-CD crack. No worries.

Thank you very much!

Haven't been playing long and probably will add to the list later, but...

Like so far:

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I love the AL loading screen music. It strikes some chord in me, I don't know. Very soothing, makes me feel good.

Some of the new outfits are nice.

The paperboy comes right up on the porch and sets the newspaper near the door. I like not having newspapers left out on the sidewalk.

Thought I'd like and don't:

Ceilings. Nice feature for screenshots but otherwise they're an annoyance and cut off the tops of wallpaper.

Don't like so far:

All the bugs reported, and more coming in. Hire some beta testers, you cheap EA bastards. Ever heard of quality control?

Total strangers coming up and hugging each other. I just move a Sim in and Christ! Every friggin' neighbor comes over and hugs him or her. I'd call the cops if people did that to me in real life. Back off, perverts!

New landlord NPC spawned every time a new tenant moves in. One landlord per lot is plenty.

Spiral staircases that only go one way. I'd like left-sided and right-sided ones. I remember the same annoyance in Sims 1 spiral staircases.

Useless roomies. Even if you use a cheat to make them playable, they're buggy. I tried to have a roomie lock her own bedroom door so the playable Sim wouldn't keep trying to sleep there, and the roomie couldn't get into her own room. The only Sim who can lock/unlock doors is the original playable one. Annoying. If I want to make them both playable, that should be my option, and they should be completely playable. Rant rant rant.

Oh good! I love some of his hacks and cringe with every new EP worrying they won't work anymore.

Please explain the procedure, this has been driving me nuts. What globals file and where is it?

I like that their portraits change when they change their everyday clothes. I wish they'd included this feature sooner. Hope they don't switch it back with the inevitable patch, but also hope a hack comes along to satisfy those who don't like changing portraits.

Thanks for clarifying. I didn't realize it was to keep neighbors from complaining. I like that feature, though, it makes it more realistic. I sometimes have to stomp on my floor or bang on the wall to get my own neighbors to crank down their stereo or TV. I'd like a hack that would reduce the frequency of complaints but not totally eliminate them.

Thanks too for the heads up on the other thread. I had checked it out earlier but didn't see the unfurnishing bug addressed. Probably overlooked it or misread it, I do that sometimes when I'm very tired. My eyes go wonky.  I'll go check it out again. But the info in this thread is very good too, I'm going to go back in today and try all the suggestions.

Anyone else noticed that when you move a new family into an apartment, the landlord is different? One of my families has an old lady landlord and the other one has a young guy. I wonder if this might be related to the redundant travel guide problem in BV, where they keep spawning new NPCs every time. It wouldn't get as serious as the BV bug I guess, but it could be an issue. A hack to make the same NPC the landlord for the whole lot every time would be great, also more realistic.

BTW, has anybody else had "Christian Love" show up as an NPC on their lots? He disappeared from MTS2 a while back, I wonder if he went to work at EA? Just a thought.

I don't understand what that means. You're not saying apartments can't have common walls, are you? Cause that doesn't make sense, how can you bang on a wall to complain about noise if the walls aren't connecting? I must not get what you're saying.

About the vanishing furnishings, WTF is up with that? I just spent the better part of the day playing around creating a two-unit duplex in residential mode, then changed the zoning to apartmentbase, saved, went to the neighborhood and came back in. Everything was just as I'd left it, furnishings and all. I moved in some Sims and poof! Everything but the bathroom fixtures, the kitchen counters and large appliances, and the wall and ceiling light fixtures had disappeared. Except, a few decorations in the bathroom remained. All the outside stuff stayed put.

So is it that if you create and furnish a lot in residential mode, then change it to apartment zoning, the only stuff that stays is what you'd expect an unfurnished apartment to have? If that's true, how come some purely decorative items remained in my bathrooms when everything else went phhhtt?

Anybody else experiencing this so far?

Oh gaaaahhh!!! Am I stoopid or what? I still had my hacks folder in my downloads.

I took out everything except the CEP and the walk in closets are working normally now. Though I don't particularly like them and I hate that you can't take them out if you'd rather your Sims have a regular dresser.

Thanks very much for this info. 

I arrred AL last night from isohunt.com, (Reloaded). Very well seeded and no viruses, good serials and a no CD crack included. I use Prevx and AVG Free Antivirus and neither of them made a peep.

I use Vuze and no problems, knock wood. Isohunt has a secure site you can use too, but I always use Vidalia and Privoxy.

I would feel guilty about it if SecuROM on BV hadn't cost me a couple hundred bucks and two weeks to get my computer straightened out.  Screw EA.

Anybody else finding that you can't use the walk in closets they put in every single bedroom on apartment lots? Only options you get are to change into work clothes or to woohoo if there's an appropriate partner available. I had my Sim buy a bunch of new clothes and when I got her back home she had to buy a dresser to be able to change into any of her new outfits. Not like there's a lot of extra room in those bedrooms for dressers, and besides what's the point of having walk in closets if you can't use them?

Hope I'm just overlooking something simple. It seems somebody would have mentioned it by now.