Right now I feel like that if I will install the game back in a few months when I’m calmer and have got over my trauma and live more in the real world, I won’t install sims 3, but I will install sims 2.

I feel like that when I play sims 3, I get all dazed and more childish and angry. 😡 I think 🤔 this influence from sims 3 is what made me always pick weird names and colors for my OCs. I need to attach myself more to reality.

You know what's interesting? If it wasn't for a fire back in 1991 in Oakland, California, Will Wright likely would have never been inspired to create The Sims series. Funny how we have a fire to thank for this series.

I'll have a "TEST" folder (for stuff I'm actually testing) in the "test" folder (a quite messy Downloads folder with stuff I need for a photoshoot, if I'm taking pics of the stuff in the TEST folder, or just taking other pics on the side)

You see how things get messy very quick when I'm around? You don't even want to know how my computer looks like (if anyone else than me can find a file in there, I'll be impressed. I'll probably even let them use the search function - it likely won't help - even I have issues with it on a good day)

I'd been away for the better part of 4 weeks from my game (yes, that long! An eternity!) so when I loaded up the towns I was not quite sure what would happen, but I got my notes out (now I see the value of writing it up every single session) and it was like, "Hey, girl, where you been? We've been waiting for you to come back and play! Now sit back and watch this stuff!"

It was a relief to find that nothing had changed whatsoever in any of the assorted towns; Arundel was still having a snow storm in spring, Tinsel Town was blooming with new graduated college grads, and Thalia still had the old people cheating on the young people.

And that's why I never moved on to the other two iterations-I daresay that this kind of situation would not have happened. Saves would have been corrupted or completely wiped out. I can't get over how anyone can play a game that unstable.

I always wondered why Maxis reused the SimCity4 police car for the neighborhood automata. I can understand why they used the SC4 trash truck, since there is nothing like it in the sims 2 as Sim trash just disappears into the abyss, but there is a police car with LODs that they could've used already in the base game. So why do we see nothing but old school '50s police cars and not the evasion-based one seen in the game? It's just one of those inconsistencies that make you take a second quick thought.

Apart from some cache issues in my very early days of simming (and probably some problems I created on my own ) I've had precious few scares with my TS2 game. The one time was finding my story hood pink-souped when I fired it up (it never did that - it would sometimes pink soup at the end of a 2-3 day session if I was playing a couple particularly heavy lots, or threw heavy snow at it, but NEVER at first load). So I panicked and loaded up a backup. These days I'd probably try fixing it in other ways, but I was genuinely afraid something strange had happened.

What I appreciate most about TS2 is how stable everything is. The lot is still going to be in the same state you left it in, even if you've played other lots in between. Sims don't change status unless you decide they should.

Anyway, with TS3 I had so many saves turn to dust for absolutely nothing at all. If I'd used Testingcheats for a minute to cheat some motives, you could bet that save would head for its demise (not even sure if it was the cheat - I just had the feeling leaving the cheat on made the game seem more unstable. I had pets and sims trying to walk through floors, and all sorts of weird things happening. If the save was more than a week or so old in playtime, straight to the graveyard. I also kept forgetting to turn story mode off, so suddenly I'd notice the 100+ "baby born, somebody died, got married, etc." notifications. I barely even had any CC. Probably should've looked around for mods to fix the issues, though...

TS4 is just plain annoying. If you try playing rotational - or at least just jump between families, even if you've got story progression and aging off, everything has moved around, and nothing is even remotely in the state you left it in.

Neighbourhood automata?

from context, I'm guessing the cars that drive around in neighbourhood view?

Correct. It's a term in used in the SimCity 4 modding community to refer to the traffic that spawns. Figured it was an applicable term.