Ok, so, first thumbs-up report: Installed the patch, loaded the game, loaded a couple of lots and played for a few minutes each -- no fireball so far.

What did happen:

- Patching failed initially on C:\Program Files\Games\Sims 2 Seasons\TSData\Res\Config\Graphics Rules.sgr. I had a .bak version for that, so I swapped it in, and patching succeeded without further hitches. (Went back and checked changes to Graphics Rules.sgr: it re-set my maxnumofvisitingsims to 8 for High, so I put it back to 24. Otherwise, it mostly seems to have replaced "forceLowResolution" with "defaultLowResolution" in several places -- sounds good to me, mind you I don't understand much about these settings...)

- As usual, the Sims on the lot were reset by the patch -- they're standing there doing nothing (including the ones who were asleep in bed when I saved) and their motives are reset. Not a worry to me because I'm always careful to wait until everybody is on the lot and nobody is on the phone or doing "dangerous" things before I save+exit, but for those who aren't as anal, take note and be anal just this once before you patch :-)

- My graphics/gameplay settings don't seem to have been changed from what I can see in the in-game Options screens. Good.

- My custom neighbourhood camera file hasn't been replaced. Good.

- Neighbourhood decoration trees definitely visible from the lot now. (Not a big difference in my game because I don't have a lot of them to start with.)

- Primping is indeed enabled without the awsome hack.

Further reports later if warranted, but so far it looks moderately safe :-)

Ok, so I'm downloading the patch and backing up the full Sims 2 folder under Documents. Meanwhile, here is a list of the hacks I'll be removing because they should be made obsolete by this patch (at least as far as *my* reason for using them...) I expect I will report later about the results...

Officially declared obsolete by El Presidente:
pettempadfix
primpfix
snsp0nrgizerfix

My own culling:
antiweatherreaction (and we'll see what happens...)
indoorplantfix (I don't mind weeds, they're good for building badges -- I did mind the soaking)
pianofix
warmthfixes (I know it fixes more than the patch claims to fix, but I want to see what happens)

Hey, at least this time they don't say they've fixed the maid/fishtank thing... :-)

In winter, gardeners and Sims who are macro-->gardening get stuck in a dance between flowerbeds (inactive, nothing can be done with them) until it's time to go home or until I slap them, respectively. Is there a way to stop them doing this? (I had a search here and on MTS2 and found nothing about this.)

Thank you! The Ctrl-RightClick didn't work when buying clothes, but it worked in CAS :-) I'd never heard of it before...

I suppose deleting the file would have been quicker (I had several outfits with the same problem), but I prefer in-game solutions when I find them... plus I needed to prune some clothes out anyway, so a visit to CAS was overdue.

I have a few custom outfits that I downloaded and they work fine, but the in-game preview (when you buy clothes for example, or in CAS) shows the "default" outfit for the category instead. When selected, the preview mannequin on the left shows the correct custom outfit, so it seems to be a problem solely with the preview "icon".

So they're usable, but hard to find in the list because of the wrong icon. I'm sure there must be a way to get the correct icon to show, maybe using Body Shop or SimPE, but since I do almost no customization myself other than downloading custom stuff, I have no idea how. If anybody could point me in the right direction (or to the right URL), I'd be very grateful. (I've done searches in a couple of places and come up with nothing, but maybe I'm not that good at searching...)

Syber: thanks for the detailed explanation -- I might actually give the hack a try now that you put it that way... :-)

Dea: Do Not Want! I don't haz kitten killer. I can haz haxx?

Thanks Scratch, that sounds easy enough... I'll try it before I play my next session.

Starrling: unlike the OP, I'm not looking for a way to shift money around -- just a way to rename the household so I won't have a ton of households with the same name just because I had a very prolific couple two or three generations ago... That makes it easier for me to keep them straight, for example when I check the Lot Synch to see if there's a family that needs bringing up to date.

Ohhh, now this is a nice trick that I could use! Is it easy and safe to do in SimPE? I'm nervous of messing with it without detailed instructions, but I might just try...

Syberspunk: When I want to grow up a townie, I make him/her selectable with the controlcheat menu, age them with the same menu, then make them unselectable again and send them on their way. Is there some advantage that I'm missing in using your hack?

(I have moveinall, which I mostly use for simulating adoption of children or teen, and thanks for making it :-). I'm not slamming your mod, just genuinely wondering if there's something I'm missing.)

Hey! Funny misprints are good, no need to apologise. Only boring misprints are bad.

I am stoopid and I need more coffee.

I had seen the option "Make into townie...", which opens a radial menu of names, but I hadn't noticed that it does not include any playable Sims. It seems to include townies (strange) and *dead* sims, for some peculiar reason.

Anyway, feel free to nuke this thread and so destroy the evidence of my subcaffeinated stoopidity. I'm off to get Inge's shrub.

A bright new future awaits you on Insiminator!! 

I'm full of questions these days...

I have a few Sims I've got bored with. Rather than smiting them, I thought I would turn them into Townies, so they'd still be around but I wouldn't have to do anything about them. So I've searched this forum for some tips, and I found various references to making townies in the "empty neighbourhood" tutorials.

All of them suggested using Inge's teleporter shrub for turning a CAS-made sim into a townie. My question: is there something wrong with using the NPC and Townie Maker (the dead tree that spawns with testing cheats and Ctrl-click)? Does it cause fireballs, hairloss and/or impotence? ...because it looks simpler, and doesn't require installing extra hacked objects...

Thanks Zeljka, that worked a treat! It turned out that she had 70 days left. I changed this to 28, and once back in the game she was aging normally again (turned to "27 days left" at 6pm). (Well, she was probably aging before that too, but it wouldn't have shown for another 40 days or so...)

Oh, and Gwill? The headmaster is creepy. Marrying him is definitely a mistake.

Yes, I do have a few "immortals" -- either vampires or through the Elixir method. This sim isn't <i>meant</i> to be one though :-)

(BTW, the force error/reset method didn't work. Now I've tried force error/delete, we'll see what happens...)

Tried forcing error and resetting. Will try the other ways if this doesn't work, thanks. Of course this will take a while, since I can only know if it's worked next time the day changes....

One of my sims is stuck on the first day of Adult age ("Becomes an Elder in 29 days). Everybody else in the same house ages normally. This really became quite obvious when her 2 sons came back from college and they immediately showed as older than she was (higher up in the tree on the left).

I know that this is a Maxis sim that became playable (married one of my sims); she was almost certainly a college student and I <i>might</i> have aged her by using the cheat Ctrl-click menu, but since she has a diploma hanging on her wall I think I just made her playable and played her through Uni. (Sorry, this was all a long time ago and my memory is crap.) I really don't think she was a cheerleader though, I had made that mistake in a previous game and regretted it, I'm pretty sure she was simply a dormie.

Basically I'm asking if anybody else has had the same problem and/or knows how to get her aging normally... (I could advance her to Elder by the same Ctrl-click method, but I'd rather have her aging instead.)

Count Four: I thought the beds problem was due to the SmartBeds hack (which would make some kind of sense), but I haven't checked. Just throwing it here so people can laugh at it.

I use the Sims2 Categorizer by Paladin for this. Dead easy. Same for changing object descriptions and/or names. Though in my case it's usually repricing ridiculously cheap content... I like Tarox's stuff, but most of it is priced between 10 and 100 simoleons. I wonder if he's poor, or if he likes his stuff to be listed first...  He also often doesn't rename his recolours, which keep the same name as the original Maxis object, despite being sometimes completely different in the case of decorative items. S2Cat sorts that out too.

I think there are explanations of how this works on  Genensims: http://genensims.com/new.htm. Or you can just copy what they do for their "special" skins. (Me, I don't know nothing, but I saw the page the other day so I'm passing it on...)

So, it sounds like if we want to kill our Sims we just have to take out noeatcrap...

...That's what the Low Food Warning hack is for...

The game is not letting me make eggplant juice. I have stocked the juicer with lots of mouthwatering eggplants, and the option doesn't appear.

I will try on other lots once some more of my sims manage to grow eggplants, but meanwhile I was curious to know if anybody else is having the same problem...

Indeed. The awsomeness of Pescado is truly remarkable. Now it is not even necessary to install the hack, mere mention of it is enough to fix the problem! 

(Thanks!)