Cool, but Windoze already does that...?

The contest is still in the works! I just have been busy with personal (you know how things tend to happen that you can't plan for) stuff, but I still plan to host one. There is quite a number of newer builders around, and I hope that they will take part!

Yes it's that so-called "feature" of moving files by "drag and drop"! I have hated this feature ever since Microsoft introduced it in Windows 95 -- long before I started playing The Sims. I especially hated it when I was doing "support" and working on other people's computers, because I had no idea how other people might arrange their files. It was all to easy to pick up a file or a folder and drop it somewhere without knowing I'd even done it, far less where it had "landed". I never intentionally use drag and drop to move or copy files. I always use cut and paste or copy and paste. I know I can undo the last action if I know I've moved something by mistake, but often I don't know, and "Undo" is another place where I'm working blind, as Windows doesn't tell me what it's undoing. I'd love to disable this alleged "feature", but in 29 years of looking, I've never found a way to do so. Does anyone know a way to disable it?

Maybe this really belongs in the Grrr! Pet Peeves thread!!

I don't think there's a Group Policy for disabling this as such, but a workaround I used to use when trying to stop this on a school or college domain was to make the drag minimum greater than the screen resolution.
https://www.top-password.com/blog/d...-in-windows-10/

Undoing can occasionally cause more problems, especially if it's moving a large folder, or you don't know what it's undoing (depending what it's trying to undo, I've had warnings about deleting permanently - especially if it's a very large folder).

If I accidentally "lose" folders or files this way (happens from time to time), I tend to search for the folder/file name, or check if a nearby folder has been recently changed (meaning it probably has the folder inside). Usually I can find it that way.

I would rather not play in the registry, and besides in my Windoze (7) there is no easy way to get into the registry.

Sure there is- Win key+R, type regedit. But my reply was really aimed at AndrewGloria who I know is well versed with the Windows operating system; I certainly wouldn't recommend editing the registry for beginners, or those who don't know how to backup the registry.

also for god's sake stay away from the registry "cleaners"

Thanks simmer22 and simsample. I do feel confident about making that small edit to the registry. But I'll probably leave till after I've run my weekly computer backup tomorrow night. Just in case!!

And I won't be using a "cleaner". I'll just make that small manual edit myself.

I do use a registry cleaner, only because I find that using browsers such as Mozilla and windows does leave cruft in the registry. It's tracking stuff, and I don't want it doing that. Also, DRM keys.
I've been using the same registry cleaner for 20 years and it's never screwed up the machine yet.

But you have the chutzpah to share them! I've convinced myself anything I want to do has been done before or is too niche for anyone else to care about, so I don't even share. Why would anyone want a bunch of variations of the City House lot so I could create streets of row houses, community skilling lots for rabbit hole jobs, or the orchard lot I built solely as a wedding venue? Lately I've been making a bunch of teen careers and a chain of coffee shops. Clearly such things are of use to no one but me


Well if you like to see that, hope this helps I'm good at interiors but pretty rubbish at architecture (especially modern), so when I had an idea to build community lots for the majors at university, I used a few of your builds as inspo for exterior shells. This is the science lab and the art building.

I tend to agree; most users would not really understand what was safe to delete and what was not. Many entries that are left over from uninstalling programs are harmless, and a lot of damage can be done by giving a third party program administrator access to your registry.

Update to the missing files.

I've got some real bad news.
It appears that my computer is dying literally as I speak. Went to power it up and a beep beep beep issued forth from it. It is not starting up and from what I can gather it's probably either the motherboard or the video card or both.

This is a very serious complication that means that I'm going to have now probably buy another system. However, it does appear right now that my brother is going to finance it.

All I have to do is figure out what I want in the box (tech guru will be helping with this) and order it.

I really did treat the system ok. I don't know what happened, but it looks like the end has come for the box. Hopefully I can save the hard drive and have it cied.

When I told sister in law about this, she told me to find out whatever I want to have for a new system and order it. They're covering the costs, even when I can pay for it myself. All I need is literally the desktop itself-the monitor, keyboard and mouse are fine.

Merry Christmas to me!

Personally I think the computer planned to do this. I've been talking to them every week for the past 4 months and I guess it decided that it needs to be updated so it decided to die on me just before she called.

Arrgh! What a complication that I did not need. Thalia was getting interesting, too!

PS- I can use some input into newer video cards that will run the game. I'll be sticking with Win 7, (hopefully) but I have NO idea if the newer cards (Nvidia preferred) are good for the game or not.

@CatherineTCJD In the end what counts is success with the public in addition to influence, and it is clear that your downloads have it. ^^ Awards, as in real life, are never something very rigorous xD. I think most of the selected MTS downloads are good, but I do think they are pretty random. So I don't give it much thought, there are a lot of great things that don't get recognized. Although it is clear that you deserve more!

Regarding custom hoods, I would like that when I finish my hoods, I am taken into account to assess if I deserve recognition with at least some of them. Since my creative process with things as laborious as this is based on feedback to improve it, in addition to the amount of time and dedication I have given it. So I hope that not having published it perfectly at the beginning is not a reason to not consider me for recognition.

Okay, brushing the dust off my Published Professional hat here:

Most good and worthy things are never read/seen/used at all. I guarantee you that there are many, many unsold/unpublished manuscripts, paintings, sculptures, games, movies, music, sim lots, and other creations out there that are as good as and better than ones that have won awards, gotten wildly popular, been downloaded thousands of times, and become widely known or at least influential within some subculture. Either the creator never desired publication enough to attempt to get it a wider audience than their own home or even their own eyes, or they strained every nerve after it and never quite made it. I've got several of those myself and I promise you, the lesbian western and rest of them are as good as and better than anything I ever persuaded anyone to pay me for. It's true in all fields. Many great chefs only ever fed their own family. You don't have to be a famous designer to make you niece a quinceanera dress that makes her feel like a queen from a pattern of your own drafting.

Meanwhile, among the works that have made it to the public - whether the small public of a 20-year-old videogame, or the larger public of a place like AO3, or actual major professional platforms like Hollywood movie studios - both critical acclaim and popularity are total crapshoots. Not only is there a "lowest common denominator" factor that tells against higher-quality creations (for much of the best work is difficult to appreciate without a certain level of experience in the medium while much that is flashy and shallow on closer inspection dazzles even experts at first sight), but the number of elements that aren't related to the work's quality at all come into play. How much and how effectively is the work promoted? What uncontrollable topical factors help or hinder the potential audience from finding it? Do any Influential People come across it and make more people aware of it? What is happening in the surrounding industry? What else was going on the day it dropped?

On top of this - most people don't ever think of doing the things that let a creator know that they're even encountering the work, let alone loving it, using it, returning to it again and again; and if they do think of it, they're often too tired, or too shy, or too pressed for time to do it. When was the last time you hit the Thanks button on a download, or commented on a fic, or sent fanmail? We all like too many things to go out of our way to say anything about the bulk of it to anyone at all, let alone to the creator.

And this is a problem, especially with amateur work like creating for Sims 2, because at least in a professional context you get money (theoretically; almost never enough, in practice, and always later than makes any sense), but an amateur is "paid" with appreciation and not getting any can starve them as much as not getting royalties in a timely manner can starve a professional.

There is nothing a creator can do to solve this problem (except to lead by example and be audibly and publicly appreciative of other people in the field and hope that what goes around comes around), so they must cope with it as best they can, by learning how Not to Starve and to make what they do get go as far as possible. We have to separate our ego from the Work and realize that the audience we can see is but the tip of the iceberg. There are always more people appreciating the work than are visible to us. Always. Even those who become visible may not surface for decades, and then only do so by accident. I sometimes console myself with the thought of some kid, fifty years after I die, running across one of my books by accident in a library, or a used book store, or his grandma's spare room, and reading it, and having some thought I never could have had, that the kid couldn't have thought without the book. Because that sort of thing happens all the time. I've been that kid for someone else, fairly often.

No one can decide for you whether this is worth it, or not. Every cost/benefit analysis is personal. I always told people who told me they wanted to be writers not to do it for publication unless it was the most important thing in the world to them, because the writing is great but the publishing is so, so hard. Writers gonna write; modders gonna mod; artists gonna art. But they don't have to share it unless they want to. And there's no denying that appreciation is one powerful motivation for doing so.

But consider this - you can't sell a manuscript you never submit, and you can't get featured with a lot you never upload.

Fellow San Antonian and award-winning but still mostly midlist author Bob Flynn used to (and probably still does) tell a story about how, some months after the publication of his book North to Yesterday, he was wakened by the telephone in the middle of the night. In those days if that happened you picked up because it was probably an emergency. But instead he was greeted by: "I just finished reading North to Yesterday and that ending is horrible! Why'd you end it like that?"

So Bob sat up in bed and answered the question, and he and the total stranger at the other end had a long conversation about the book. By the end the caller was much mollified, and was about to hang up when he suddenly realized that they weren't in the same time zone. "Oh, my God, it must be two in the morning where you are! I am so sorry."

"That's all right," said Bob. "I'm just glad to know somebody read the thing."

There's a song from the Broadway musical [title of show] that goes "I'd rather be 9 people's favorite thing than 100 people's 9th favorite thing."

I think of that often

@FranH

That is frustrating - I hope it is solved quickly! (Of course, when my pc packed up, it was the hard drive not that long ago).

Does anyone have any recommendations for video cards? I'm in the market for one, because the computer is dead.

I have no idea what I'm supposed to look for?

Any suggestions would appreciated.

@FranH Sorry to hear about the computer, but very glad you will be getting a new one! I'm going to have to do some research for myself too because I'm going to be buying components and building a new setup soon. I have no idea about graphics cards yet, need to do some reading there myself- but I do remember there was a recent processor that was causing problems for sims players Anyone remember which one that was? Perhaps people with recent new builds could post here what they have (processor and graphics-wise) so that we know what works.

Here is an interesting argument for a LINUX/Fedora set up - over on Osab's Discord Channel: https://discord.com/channels/912700...730558088777729
To sum up (it's a looooong thread of everything they tried first, if you scroll up from the starting point I linked to...)
So, to sum up. Ky, who is a TS2 creator many of you probably know, was having pink-soup problems. They did ALL the tricks, nothing worked; but they didn't give up!
Finally, they switched to LINUX - and it works better than ever before! Ky has 30Gb+/- of CC, and no pink, no stutters, no lag, etc. It is amazing!
I'm seriously thinking of converting. To play with all the CC-goodies and no worries sounds like a dream!

I have several things that I've made that I decided that noone else would want as well. XD Mostly 'small' clothing alterations like shoe swaps or stuff that satisfies my OCD (e.g. I liked Rebecah's custom pet food, but hated that it didn't ever look empty, so I changed it).



Since I became a creator and realised how often I checked the thanks amount on my own creations I've made certain to thank everything I use (even if the creator is long gone lol). I've noticed that thanks amounts are always a very low percentage of the actual downloads, on both MTS and SimFileShare, so most people don't seem to care. I also started liking or leaving comments on Youtube videos.