Does your neighborhood look like this?


Are you tired of those choppy shores? Bucket fill ocean? Or, does your concrete downtown look like this? By following this tutorial you may restore the high quality neighborhood terrain textures in your game.



WARNING: You should only follow this tutorial if you have a supported graphics card. Following this tutorial while running on an unsupported or underpowered graphics card will result in an extra strain to your graphics card, or your computer. Read this if you want to be more informed. Most newer computers (especially laptops) come with an integrated graphics card (i.e. the CPU handles both regular and graphics processing). For the most part, the MTS recommendations is out of date, and the newer integrated GPU units handle Sims 2 graphics just fine, and changing this setting won't affect your performance.

If, however, after following this tutorial, you do notice significant lag, or your fan spinning way faster, or pink/purple/any color flashing, note that this may be because your GPU is not strong enough to handle this. In such case, revert the changes as soon as possible. If you run your game anyway while the system struggles to keep up with the advanced graphics, you may degrade the overall performance of your computer in the long run!

1. Make sure your game is not running, nor is The Sims 2 Body Shop, HomeCrafter Plus, SimPE or other software that needs access to game files.
• If you don't have The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection, go to C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 [newest expansion pack]\TSData\Res\Config\ folder. The part in italics might be different depending on whether you've chosen to install the game to default location.
• If you have The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection, go to C:\Program Files\Origin Games\The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection\Fun with Pets\SP9\TSData\Res\Config\ folder. Again, the part in italics might be different for you.
2. Make sure you've created a safe backup of the Graphics Rules.sgr file. It's the file we're going to modify, and if something goes wrong, you can easily restore everything back.
3. Double click on Graphics Rules.sgr and choose Select a program from a list of installed programs. Choose Notepad (not Wordpad), and do not tick the "Always choose the selected program to open this kind of file."
4. Go to Edit, and select Find (or simply click CTRL+F). Type in simpleTerrain and you should see something like this:
   
   
   
   
   SimpleTerrain command makes the game load the low quality neighborhood terrain textures. Those textures look worse, but make the game perform better and faster than with high quality textures.
   To make the game choose high quality neighborhood terrain textures over low quality ones, set the command to false by renaming it. The final line should read:
   Code:

   boolProp simpleTerrain false

5. Bring up the Find window again and continue looking for simpleTerrain. There should be around three of them. Make sure you change every single one of them to false.
6. Save the file. If you run into issues when saving, try saving the file to your desktop. Once it's on your desktop, copy it and paste it over the file in the game directory (...\TSData\Res\Config).

And congrats, you finally have a decent looking neighborhood! Hope you find this tutorial useful.



(If you run into any problems, send me a PM (topp @ MTS). I usually get to those quicker than to the replies here.)

OMG! Thank you sooooooooo much!!!! I just spent a lot of money on a graphic card and when I looked at my neighborhood I just wanted to die!! You're my savior!!

I'm so desperate to try this, but I'm scared my computer will do horrible things. 3:

You seriously made my day!
I was desperately searching for a way to run sims 2 without problems on my new laptop and now it finally works out perfectly!

1000 thanx

I'm trying this right now. What are the effects you noticed? I will be happy to provide my computer specifics and discuss the changes I see.

Hm... let's see.

I've tried doing the tutorial while I had an old Intel integrated chipset. It wasn't a good idea.

What was happening, is that the flythroughs didn't play at all. It was very difficult for the chip to handle, so therefore it was just 'a lag' while the flythrough should've played.

Second, it was a bitch when it comes to scrolling through the neighborhood. Small dots would flash all over the hood as it would move (so therefore, 'Neighborhood Camera Drift' should never be on in my case) - and it looked like this - on random spots, and around 20 of them in a shot.

Then, if I've been in the hood for too long (or I've played the game for couple of hours and then exited to the hood) the grass would get all blurry. Which I believe is a sign to shut down your computer immediately if you have an integrated graphics.

---

To conclude, follow the link I gave you in my first post. If you find your graphics card there (under Yes-Yes-Yes, of course), there shouldn't be any problems. If your graphics card is not listed, feel free to ask if it's okay to run the game in the Computer & Software Help forum. If you have an integrated graphics, almost everything could/should go wrong, unfortunately.

ETA: Oh yes, feel free to include your specs! Although I might not know much about that, I'll show my best.

Brilliant worked like a dream thanks so much

Has anyone else tested this GraphicsRules.sgr with ATI Radeon HD 2400 series? I want to see if this is working or not working for me.

You have no idea how much this helps! I always wanted the terrain to be like this, and I knew somehow it could be because of the pictures custom hoods come with. But now I can have a beautiful, gorgeous neigborhood to be proud of.

Edit: So the computer I play Sims on is a desktop. Do graphics cards only refer to laptops or desktops as well? Sorry I just have no idea D:

My laptop also has a graphics card. If you see names like Nvidea or ATI Radeon , you have a graphics card. There are dozens. If you see integrated graphics , it's a processor built into your motherboard.

Well, yes! Of course! Usually (if not always) desktops come with a dedicated graphics card. While, on the other side, laptops usually come with an integrated chipset, which would pretty much get destroyed after using this for awhile.

TTN, I'm not really into techy-stuff. Try asking if your card is good at the Computer & Software forum.

I wanted to try this just to see how it looked (I have a laptop with an integrated chip) so that I could one day use it when I get a better computer. When I try to save the file, I leave the file extension as .sgr and choose "All files", but it still saves it as a TXT file and my game can't read it.

Edit: Nevermind, my computer is stupid (or possibly me). It looks...AWESOME. I have never played my neighborhood any other way except with the hay grass and blue water!

After you've seen how it looks like, please revert it back to the original.

Why don't people take the note seriously? It will damage your computer! I'm tellin' ya! Wanna see my old desktop?

^^ LOL I did! I just wanted to see how it looked. I don't think 3 minutes of it did *that* much damage. But I didn't have any issues like you did with lagging, side scrolling, or flyovers or anything. It was pretty awesome!

But like I said, I have been playing with the simple terrain ever since I started playing TS2 when it first came out, so it doesn't bother me. I saved the info in this thread for a time when I eventually get a new computer.

Sooo.. I tried this. For step 2 first I tried this in my Apartment Life EP folder. Didn't change a thing. When I play Sims, the loading screen is for Mansion & Garden stuff. So I tried it with that. And nothing changes, my towns are still ugly! What do I do?

Are you saying that you modified both AL's and M&G's Graphics Rules.sgr file? And it still doesn't work?

Did you follow the step 6 - did you replace all "simpleTerrain true" to "simpleTerrain false"?

Are you sure you have a decent graphics card that can handle the fix? In other words, did you happen to have the 'good' neighborhood before, then say, did something to your computer (installed a new component, updated the drivers, installed a new EP) and now the 'good' neighborhood is gone?

Also, there was this discussion on these forums - about what games are considered EPs, what SPs and so forth... and since M&G modifies the game engine on some sloppy way, it's considered as an EP but is unstable if run without Apartment Life.

Once you get a new decent computer you won't have to do this, or you shouldn't. I've never done anything but install the game and seen things look pretty, but I've got a good graphics card. I think the only thing I had to do was go and put setting like sim detail all to high and make sure smooth edges was all the way on as a new install sets things to medium with pictures to small. However I'll be getting it upgraded soon so I'll be looking at this thread incase soemthing borks up.

Yes I changed both.
I backed up my game and I am going to change all of the files, for each EP.
And then I'll check to see if it worked.
No, I never had the good neighborhood before.

Edit: I'm such an idiot! I was for some reason thinking that my Mansion & Garden stuff pack came with the Best of Business Collection, but no, it came with my Fun With Pets Collection! So I changed all the files in my pets collection and I HAVE A BEAUTIFUL HOOD! Thank you!!
Edit #2: Am I still supposed to have ugly grass when I play in an actual lot?

Yep, ugly hay-grass seems to be standard in lots.
I don't put up with it, though, there are some lovely defaults here on MTS.

Unfortunately I guess graphics card can't handle this because when I tried it, the ground texture turned up black and the water was still light blue and untextured (though it was not blocky anymore). Oh well, I can live with that ugly texture, I have for over a year already anyway! Though I do miss when the neighborhoods did look nice like this, darn the new computers!

You're right. I installed on my husband's desktop and didn't have to change a thing.

First, if you are still playing on an old machine and don't have a better HD video card and a high speed processor, then you don't know what you are missing. You won't have to do any of this.
Secondly, if you want 'pretty' grass in your hoods and in all your lots...then get the 'greener grass ' grass terrian here on this site. I couldn't play my hoods without it!

http://linna.modthesims.info/download.php?t=171302

Well, it did not work, i changed all the '' simpleterrain '' from true to false and not a thing changed

OMG OMG OMG IT WORKS NOW! I went into every graphicsfile and turned it to false, and then i tryed again like '' well it won't work but what the heck '' AND THE WATER IS BLUE OMG THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU <3

But i had to turn it back to '' true '' since the simpleTerrain false slows down my gameplay