I'm confused...what on earth are you talking about?
Humble? There's a mod to keep him from showing up. No need to go through the dance you are describing here?
The Welcome Wagon? There's a mod for that too...

Well you're not really replaced the game music, you're just adding your own songs to the mix and disabling the default ones. But yes, I do agree it is easier to use Spotify or something similar and play from there then go through the effort of adding your own music. I usually tend to keep the in game music that I add "Simlish" so it fits in better for those times when I am in the mood for Simlish music. Other times I use Spotifty.

You know when I'm playing the sims 2 I can't help but notice how whenever a Sim is in the middle of something, and another Sim is attempting to interact with the occupied Sim, they'll just stand behind them and stare. Their head movements will follow too. It kinda makes me laugh. I feel like this happens whenever I play the goth family as Bella and Mortimer rekindle their romance while Alexander needs help on homework.

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I ALWAYS play with mute on...except when I am anxious to know if I finally made a baby...

I very, very rarely listen to the music or sound-and I don't bother to mute them, because I'd have to put on my ear loop to hear it.
Being deaf does have it's advantages.
What I don't hear, I don't miss.

It looks like I should be gatting into at least my Pleasantview Epic Challenge with a few new additions like that stonemason kit because I'll be time travelling back in time to the turn of the 17th century for my Pleasantview sessions as my first couple of colonists arrive on the sailing ship.

Also, instead of exiting the lot without saving you can just reload the lot from the last save point, saves you a loading screen. CTRL+SHIFT+L

I'm just still so amazed every day when I play either my medieval or modern game-they load up effortlessly, play smoothly and there's no corruption (that I've noticed) to make the game crash constantly.
I credit Mootilda's Hood Checker for that. I'm sure that by now if I didn't have it running, the game would have been dust a long time ago.

It amuses me how many of the universal npcs and unsafe to play npcs have their service type as their name. Like when a social worker lectures a Sim they create a negative relationship. Then sims get the memory "met social worker". Made best friends with social, woohooed with social etc.. Similar to how grim reaper's name has two spaces and therapists full name is apparently Therapist Therapist.

I have often thought I have everything I need in my Sims game - and perhaps I do.
Then Cat overhauls the lot bin and Lamare comes up with 50 new lifetime wants.
I definitely need those - and a lot more

1) I wish you could cancel the cancellation.
2) I can't stand lazy sims. They're late to everything. Hurry is not in their vocabulary.

On that note, it never ceases to blow my mind how the TS2 community is still so active even to this day, and how modders are figuring out how to add features that were thought impossible years ago (like the aforementioned 50 new Lifetime Wants).

I've not heard about that one. Please tell me more.

I hate coaches. The fact that they ONLY target playables is what annoys me so much. And you can never fight them or make them get any kind of comeuppance. They add nothing of value to the game.


What if you could call the "clown catchers" but to catch the coach and take them away?

When I am playing with rules limiting the circumstances under which students skill, the coach may make the difference between passing and failing for students who need a body point to open their bar. So I don't mind them that much. They are very rude, but you can always cancel the workout and influence them to repair things.

What are those rules?

Does the skill increase as a side effect of doing something that needs doing (including increasing the fun bar?) Go ahead and direct them to do the thing.
Is doing something that increases a skill relevant to their LTW or other long-term goals? Routinely direct them to do those things - i.e., wannabe rock stars perform music for tips, wannabe celebrity chefs are primary cook for their households, future artists produce a painting per semester, etc.
Is the sim autonomously doing something that increases the skill? Let them.
Do they fear academic probation or want to complete the current semester? They can be directed to work on a skill enough to open the grade bar to passing.
Do they want to write a term paper? They can be directed to work on skills as necessary to open up the grade bar all the way (otherwise there's no point doing the term paper).
Do they want to make dean's least or graduate with honors? They can do anything that will open the grade bar and fill it full up.
Do they want to gain a specific skill? They can be directed to study it.
Do they want to gain an unspecified skill? They can be directed to study something relevant to their degree/LTW.
No skilling wants? No directing them to skill. At all. You can put them into situations that may prompt them to do things that increase a skill - send them to the pool if they need body points, for instance, and hope that they jump into the pool or roll a want to swim or play marco polo so you can direct them to do so - but otherwise let them make their bed and lie in it. This is why so many of my college students wind up getting parrots. A person who wants a charisma point or has an obvious need for charisma gain (the household Romance sim, say) is directed to teach the bird to talk and after that the other people in the household may autonomously talk to the bird or be directed to do so according to the ruleset. It's the only autonomous way to gain charisma.

Cool! I've recently implemented rules in my previously rules free hood so I always want to be inspired. Rules (and certain mods) make the game not as easy as intended.

EA is having a very bad week..after an update of Sims 4 that was most embarrassing.
I'm sometimes very glad Sims 2 is not updatable by EA anymore.
We don't get these mistakes..

'The Sims 4' Update Accidentally Enabled Incest — And Gamers Are Outraged

Oops...

@FranH -That's about as bad as what happened to one of my TS3 saves when the social worker too my active family's baby away and I even had toddlers wnting to woohoo parents and sibling falling inlove though they weren't registering as being realted anymore and a few sims acting like toddlers or pets though they were young adults.I even had one perent and child romance actually happen between a dad and his young adult son.They were flirting and his wife turned into his sister.The latest glitch sounds like it rivals that nightmare in that old coruppted save.

I love that we can all take the same thing, like, pre-mades and their storylines, and then go off in entirely different directions. You can have 20 simmers play the same households and start with the initial lore and take them 20 different directions. I love it!
I love how much creativity the game inspires.

I love how I can take a terrain from one of the towns shipped with the game and create my own renditions of the ancestors of the residents with the town as it would've been when I feel it was founded like Pleasantview's 17th century colonial oriigins and populating it with the ancestors of the Pleasantview families as the town grows and watching it evolve into the modern day Pleasantview and the families in my modern version might even have different stories and histories than EA's version.

While we're lauding the game (but let's not forget EA, even when they're not having a good week), let's praise the fact that we (more than S3 and 4) can take a blank template of pixels, with a landscape, build them into animated pixels, with entire lives and towns to entertain ourselves with endlessly.
And that no two games are actually alike.
How amazing is that? You can't actually compare person 1's town to person 2's because they are actually not even slightly or remotely alike.
For storytelling purposes, S2 is the tops.

Travels cost a lot more than you'd think! This trip went for a total of $17,260!

Sims 2 sims are such complex creatures in ways I haven't seen in the other sims games. I can't stop thinking about how when Penny and Hamilton caught Rhett and Sandy cheating on them together (Penny being with Rhett and Sandy with Hamilton) Penny literally invited herself over a little bit later, invited herself in, just barged into the house, and kissed Hamilton! And Sandy saw. Like Penny was doing it for revenge! She wasn't interested in Hamilton in the slightest before from what I could tell.

Edit: Ya know, I don't remember Penny crying like some of the other sims (over the cheating). She doesn't cry, she gets revenge. That's interesting.