In this tutorial I will show two ways of successfully installing ReShade in Sims 2 without using any sketchy DLL injectors that have to be run every time you run the game.

Method 1: DXVK

This method is best suited for modern systems with proper Vulkan API support.
You will need to download DXVK binaries, as well as the ReShade installer.

First, download the newest DXVK binary archive, the one that has the .tar.gz extension. 7zip will open it just fine. In it, there is another .tar archive, which contains a folder, in which we will find the binaries for all kinds of DirectX versions.
We will have to extract the "d3d9.dll" file found in the "x32" folder of the DXVK archive to the same folder where the Sims 2 executable is located. You will easily find it by peeking at the Sims 2 shortcut settings.
As a sidenote, DXVK helps with stability of older, buggier games, such as Sims 2 or GTA IV.

After that, we will have to install ReShade for all Vulkan based games. To do it, we will simply run the ReShade installer and press the "Enable/disable ReShade in Vulkan globally" button. After that, Sims 2 should run through the Vulkan API, and have ReShade injected into it.

Method 2: Ultimate ASI Loader

This method is more clunkier, and should be used only if your system is too old to support Vulkan.

You will need to download Ultimate ASI Loader and ReShade.

As with the first method, we will have to locate the game's .exe file by peeking at the Sims 2 shortcut settings. In that folder we will add our .dll's.

Start off by installing ReShade to Sims 2. For ease of installation, choose "Direct3D 9".
After you've finished installing it, you will have to rename the "d3d9.dll" file to "ReShade.asi", so that it will get loaded by the Ultimate ASI loader

Then, we will have to install Ultimate ASI Loader. Download the latest archive called "Ultimate-ASI-Loader.zip", and extract the "dinput8.dll" file into the same folder where the game's .exe file is. We now have to rename it to "d3d9.dll".

After that, ReShade should be properly injected every time we run the game.

Depth buffer tweaks (thanks to @lazlo-curious for showing this)

Note that Sims 2 is a coding mess, and the depth buffer will act weird, which will make shaders utilizing depth buffer useless. We can fix it by doing the following tweaks to the "Graphics Rules.sgr" file. We can find it by going back to our main .exe folder, going up once, and then going into 'TSData/Res/Config" folder.

In it, we will have to locate the following values and adjust them accordingly.

Search for the seti Low parameter, and change it's value from 1 to 2.
Then, locate the option DirtyRect section, in which you will find another section called setting $Low. There, you will find the intProp dynamicRenderStrategy parameter, of which we will change the value from 1 to 0.

Another tweak we will have to do will be in the in-game settings. We will have to completely turn off anti-aliasing, as it blocks off the access to the depth buffer. Since The Sims 2 is a mess, you will have to set it to the "highest" value to completely disable it.

After that, all depth buffer related shaders should work flawlessly, without any flickering.

Does the depth buffer work? Like can you use AO and depth of field?

The depth buffer is accessible, but for some reason it's flickery and doesn't sync up with the actual image in real time, resulting in effects like MXAO looking glitchy.

Hey guys. AO and depth of field works in the sims 2 just fine, although it's handy to put this in your downloads folder first, then install reshade to sims 2. Use direct3d10+ as your rendering API since DX9 causes crashing on NHOOD screen. To stop flickering and have your AO work, firstly turn on smooth edges and tweak your graphics rules as shown in this post here .

I only know this to work with Origin version of ts2, but if anyone has gotten it to work without it, lmk bc it'd be greatly appreciated.

In-depth tutorial here .

Those Graphics Rules changes did in fact improve the depth buffer behavior greatly. I've also found an easier, and more beneficial way of installing Reshade in Sims 2. All you need is to add DXVK to Sims 2 and install Reshade for Vulkan games. DXVK also improves the stability of the game. Note that if you have a really outdated graphics card, you might not have any Vulkan support. I'll edit the main post accordingly.

DXVK did not fix any of my game problems so I will not recommend it for others.

Just because it didn't work for you doesn't mean it doesn't work for others. It's helped several people I know fix their games.

I came across this method thanks to a Tumblr post that has since apparently been deleted. I wanted to ask if it was possible to use this to apply Reshade to an Origin Ulitmate Collection version of the game, but one where the game launch .exe file had been run through the 4g Patch? Thanks in advance.

I successfully used the method 2 (ultimate asi) to install reshade d3d9 to my UC version, although I use a no-cd patched exe to bypass origin completely. I have also applied the 4gb patch.

I tried the first method and I got Reshade to work. The problem is, d3d9.dll turns my game into a pink soup in lot view.

Yes, any of those two methods should work on any Sims 2 .exe and version, from basegame to fully patched Ultimate Collection. Just keep in mind that the location of the main .exe changes depending on how many expansions you've installed. The trick with peeking at your game shortcut is the best way to locate your .exe file.



That's weird, as usually DXVK is used to solve the pink soup issue. But in any case, you can just add ReShade with the second method, with which your game will still render through DirectX 9 and shouldn't cause any issues, as no API wrapping is done that way. Maybe updating your drivers might help, as mentioned in this tutorial.

Is it possible that installing Reshade edits graphicrules? I replaced my graphicrules and launched my game (still with d3d9.dll) and the pink got better, though there was still to much for my liking. My drivers are up to date, I made sure of that. I might try the second method, but I found out that I have hard time finding a preset that I actually like. So right now I play without Reshade.

I do not think so, Reshade is a generic post process hook, so it shouldn't edit any game specific configurations like the Graphics Rules files from Sims 2. This might be an issue with Sims 2 not liking having a .dll hook on it for some reason. And as for the presets, I always make my own. At the very least get the default shader library, the SweetFX shader library and the QUINT shader library. SweetFX has stuff like Contrast Adaptive Sharpen, and QUINT has stuff like Ambient Occlusion, Screen Space Reflections and Depth of Field effects.

Before I try this I need to know how to get rid of it in case it will not work correctly. Will moving the dll from game directory do the trick? Thank you

Yes, moving, or even just renaming the .dll file will disable it. And in case of installing ReShade through Vulkan, if you want to keep Vulkan but you want to get rid of ReShade, just use the ReShade installer again to toggle it off.

Perfect! Thank you

https://herpixels.tumblr.com/post/6...sims-2-ultimate

Hi there!! I'm the creator Mortia discussed in earlier posts about the resahde tutorial post being deleted. I've found a newer way to install reshade that uses the binaries folder discussed in version one. I've updated the tutorial for you guys!!

I tried out the first method, but when my game loaded none of the shaders showed up in my game. The shaders folder is in my game folder so I'm not sure what I did wrong. Does anyone have any ideas as to how to fix this?

I had same problem too because the one step is missing: you'll need to actually install shaders. Simply checking "enable Reshade in all Vulkan games" doesn't do this.
Load Reshade installer, select your game exe and choose "Vulkan" in the dropdown. Then you can choose which shaders to install. When all of them will be downloaded you'll see settings box where you can choose screenshots folder, default preset and something more.
After that check reshade-shaders folder, there should be some .fx files and textures subfolder. It's good idea to download some presets as well to see if it works at all.

Method 1 doesn't work for my game, it says "The code execution cannot proceed because vulkan-1.dll was not found. Reinstalling this program may fix this problem."
So I went to try method 2 but there is no "d3d9.dll" file in TSBin if I am only doing method 2.

Method 1 worked on my ati radeon rx470, but there were strange noisy glitches. I followed @lazlo-curious instructions, the glitches were almost gone, they still were present in cutscenes. Method 2 didn't work, reshade didn't activate.
Edit: my stupid head didn't rename original d3d9 to reshade.asi
Now it loads perfectly! Thank you for this tutorial!

"Then, we will have to install Ultimate ASI Loader. Download the latest archive called "Ultimate-ASI-Loader.zip", and extract the "dinput8.dll" file into the same folder where the game's .exe file is. We now have to rename it to "d3d9.dll"

Extract the dinput8.dll to TSBIN, and then rename it d3dp.dll

Reshade 5 is out now - IT WON'T WORK for TS2.Edit: it seems to work sometimes.
I couldn't make it work at all and I know other ppl also have issues with it, so I still I recommend version 4.9.1

Another update: Since I wrote this post I've changed my GPU to another Geforce and still couldn't enable DOF without Pine's SSAO mod,
which still causes pink flashing for me.
BUT after updating Reshade to 6.1.1 yesterday depth buffer magically started working in my game. I'm still on win 10 btw.

It took me a while to figure out how to make DoF (depth of field effect) and AO (ambient occlusion) in Reshade work, so I though I'd share what I've found.
(It won't work for everybody, that's for sure )

I'm on Win10, Geforce GTX 1050 Ti, UC (that one particular version of UC that's missing IKEA files ;P ). I've installed Reshade using Vulkan & DXVK without issues,
even though I should've read this documentation first !.
And if you're about to install DXVK, you should read it (author of this tutorial didn't stress it enough IMO).

I applied all tweaks that were supposed to make DoF work properly, but no, it didn't work. When I tried to tweak Reshade buffer settings, I got some patchy, random blurriness.
Then I dropped Pine's custom post effects mod (SSAO version) ) in my Downloads. Both DoF and AO in Reshade started working.
You don't need to enable their mod via console, you just need to have the files. And also: read the instructions!
Unfortunately, as I discovered, Pine's mod has the potential to cause pink flashing. That's pretty clear in my case, I never got pink before I dropped that mod in my Downloads.
But it can give me DoF, so I'll keep using it . I'm usually able to take a whole bunch of pretty screenshots before I start getting pink.
When it happens, I remove the mod. Sometimes I still get a bit of pink when I run the game again (and that's weird) but eventually my game goes back to normal.
(If you're still getting pink after removing Pine's mod, you might try to delete .dxvk-cache file )

To make Reshade's DoF work, I needed to edit global preprocessor definitions. Here's my configuration.


And here are Vulkan buffer settings that work for me.
I only need to tweak it for Hood view.


Maybe somebody will find that useful.

I would like to add that if you are having the same issues I was having with the in game camera in TS2 Ultimate Collection, where the camera was uncontrollably spinning around and going out of control, it took me a while but I found the solution! Very simple fix, just follow the tutorial in this video.
The tutorial is for the Sims 4, but it worked for the Sims 2 for me!
Hope this is useful :D

Just dropping by to say 5.1 works fine for me. Just wrap to Vulkan with DXVK, disable dirty rect rendering and in-game anti-alias (actually the lowest setting for my card, not the highest, as intended, may replace it witih FXAA), all as mentioned by the OP. You may wanna disable reflections as they can slow down immensely. Some effects overlay the UI. The sim shadow went light blue for me so I disabled it in Ctrl+O (not needed witih AO).

Sorry for the bad weather and derpy sandbox neighborhood in the screenshots :D