I use this one: http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=537238.

Does Brainania come with a secret society lot?

@nikel23
Yes, it does.

Essa, is there some way to make dormies members because it only spawned me 8 dormies and none wear the jacket.

Jo I'm afraid I can't help on that one.
AFAIK dormies in my game are all members of the SS. I don't know why. My playables barely interact with dormies.
They only wear their jackets on the SS lot.

Back in the days I had this cheat set to 50. My sim was abducted and my game lagged. Then my sim was on a SS lot full of SS members.

My dormies don't wear their member outfits at the dorm, not sure if it was a game update or caused by a mod. They do wear it when I meet them at community lots though so you might have members already.

If you turn on testing cheats and shift click the mailbox, create townies while in the Uni hood, it creates YAs - 50 I think. I just added to my pool, but I could be off on the number.

mailbox- force create townies, creates 30 townies. I think it creates the same amount of YAs when done in a Uni hood.

The way I found Secret Society members was going to the Uni community lots, watch the zones and pause as a sim just begins to show up. Mine never actually wore the uniform on lots. If you catch them fast enough, you will see the uniform which changes to normal clothes once they fully spawn. Another thing I noticed was a member walking by dorm about 10 PM while in the uniform. This might be a check to see if anyone there has the requirements, then the limo would show up about an hour later. It might be possible to talk to them too. If you happen to know who they are, match their picture to the college option to call any sims, you can gain points talking to them by phone. An easier way to get into S.S., other than cheats, is make friends with adult graduates before going to Uni. Of course, this only works if you have adults who have graduated. (: I haven't played Uni for sometime now, this info I learned in game prior to UC and don't know if things changed when other packs were installed.

@Duine: Actually, those adults don't need to have graduated. They merely need to have been in college - even if they just bummed out or were expelled -, *and* they need to have been introduced into the SS.

Alright, thanks! I'm pretty sure there's a way to turn a dormie into SS member, but it's been years since I last played TS2 so it's gonna take a while for me to figure it out. There's no dormie in my Brainania though. I never met one because it's populated by playable Sims already.

Is there a hotkey to switch through the slot placement on items? I'm watching speedbuilds and I noticed this builder in particular just keeps going through the slot placements, so there must be some sort of hotkey, I'd imagine.

'M' is the key you are looking for. I watch speed builds too and someone asked about it and the person said it was 'M'. Starting using it myself

P.S - thanks for the follows on tumblr!

Thanks for the help!

And you're very welcome. Your gameplay is... might I say... charming?

Thank you and you are welcome! I hope to see more posts on yours in the future, and considering your spring breaks schedule...I think that may be true!

Here's my random/stupid question. I went on a search for eyeglasses to download and was surprised at how few I found. Are they hard to make compared to other cc, or do other people just not like to have glasses-wearing sims?

party questions::
can a party type be changed in the middle of a party (through any means)?
party Wants; do they get fulfilled regardless of who hosts the party or would the host need to be a specific sim for the Want to be fulfilled?
can 2 or more parties occur at the same time (through any means)?

Party type can not be changed.
Only the person making the phone call to call the party gets the aspiration points for it.
You can overlap parties with dates and outings (even by the same person) so you can probably overlap parties with parties called by other household members. I've never tried it, but they should each get their own party meter, only seen when t he person throwing the party is the active sim.
You might as well try it.

Speaking of parties, what exactly is a "sports party"?

Just as it sounds. Sims watch sports on TV, their friends grab snacks from the fridge, and they watch the box and cheer a lot. Doesn't always work like that for me, but really works well with uni students.

Thank you.

Another quick question: I'm considering upgrading my Windows 7 installation to 64-bit. Does the Sims 2 have any problems running on this?

Plenty of us use Win 7 64 bit, so no, but of course your millage may vary depending on what else you have set up.

Thanks. Might take a little longer than I expected. External hard drive's power adapter just went kaput.

Years ago I downloaded a lot with an arch in front that the creator made with CFE. The triangles on that arch drive me crazy but I can't tear it down. I've tried all the normal delete functions and used the sledgehammer on it, but it doesn't move. Is there a trick to getting rid of something built using CFE?

Is there a general way to change things made with CFE? I have lots that were built using CFE that I'd like to modify but cannot figure out how.

Try turning CFE on and using the level terrain tool on it to level it, once level you can delete it. Or if level terrain isn't working, with CFE still on grab a floor tile and see if you can place it someplace on the CFE work, that may also level a piece. You need a level square so you can flatten it and once flat it can be demolished- if that makes sense?

Otherwise just turn the ceiling tile off and the triangles will vanish. They only show when the ceiling toggle is turned on.

Thanks! I'll try leveling it and grabbing a floor tile. I hope one of those works!

It's hard to get shots with that CFE created structure in the way. The buildings sit on either side of a walkway and both buildings are 3 stories tall. If I want a shot down the walkway, either I get no ceilings in the buildings or I get triangles. I've managed by taking shots very carefully and by finding a couple of double sided floor tiles I could place on overhanging balconies, but I dread dealing with it. I like the lot. I spent a great deal of time modifying the original and turning it into something I can use and that fits my neighborhood. It's frustrating to deal with that major limitation. Example: You can see pieces of the structure hanging up in in the air at the end of the walk and standing in the way with green fences on top. The shot was taken with ceilings off and double sided tile on the balcony floors so I could get just that slice. I carefully avoided the interiors of the buildings. I think it looks strange.



Shows structure from the front looking back. It includes fences that don't work with the lot design - can't delete them. I took the shot very carefully and still got part of the triangles.


Overall lot from the rear which shows the general design. The arch does not work well.

These, these, and these are ones on MTS that I've found to work really well. They already have a variety of colors that come with the downloads, so you don't have to scour the interwebs looking for recolors & what not.

I use glasses in my game pretty typically, but I can't speak for the rest of the players out there...Although I've always assumed they've been used frequently. I don't see why they wouldn't be.

Some time back, I asked if you could put the pirate ship in a Three Lakes-variation neighborhood. I am trying to finish up my test custom vacation hood, which actually does have some beach area. I was concerned I'd get Captain Dregg with the package if I stuck the ship in there. I don't want the Captain anywhere near. I just want my Sims to clamber around on the boat. No ghosties, thanks. Pirates visited areas other than warm-weather ones, such as Newfoundland, Canada. Hardly very tropical up there!

I'm presuming that either my question got buried among many, it was so stupid a question that people wondered why I would ask it (well, I DID put it in the right section!), or people didn't know themselves.

Oh, well.

My second question though, is even more stupid than the one before, but I want to make sure before I stick this in one of my strip-mall stores. Unlike the good captain, food stand chefs are not usually matters of NPC concern unless they roam your lots or call you (in which case, you DO have a huge ... and fortunately very rare ... problem). You can stick any food stand in a regular hood. You can stick any one in a Uni hood. You CAN stick any of these in a vacation hood, right? I think my Sims in the Three Lakes-variation custom hood might fancy a bit of Asian cuisine now and again, but I'd prefer not to blow my hood up after working on it for a month and a half if my presumption is incorrect!

As for the glasses ... didn't some creators have issues with the glass? I know at least a few CC glasses don't even have glass in them. At any rate, there are glasses out there with glass, but admittedly, they aren't always easy to find.

You can place the pirate ship on any community lot that has the beach/water space for it. What subhood it's in doesn't matter. Ditto for the food stands.

edit - as for the pirate ghost, my sims have never seen him so I'm guessing you can easily avoid him.

my question about making objects gender-specific (version 3 of this thread); figured it out for arches. would upload them to the Download section of this site after a while.


unrelated to that::
hypothetical; if a sim was engaged to 2 or more characters, would all of them be available on the wedding arch if each of them was on lot?
if fiance/fiancee was present through phone/computer, would that character be available on wedding arch?

I didnt think that sims could be engaged to more than one sim

Oooooh, that would make sense. Thanks for the link, @Gremily_ -- I really like those Hofstadter ones and use them a lot. I went looking for similar styles, thinking SURELY someone has created a bunch of the Warby Parker glasses for sims -- I can't possibly be the first person to have that idea, right? -- but came up mostly empty other than a few standbys I've had in my game a long time. And then I thought it was weird that people made 86 bajillion lipsticks but not all that many glasses. And THEN I thought, maybe I should learn to make things and make my own, but not if making glasses is way harder than other types of cc.

Yes - the food stands can go anyhwere, all of them, @Gazania

@gazania: Don't let your sims explore the captain's cabin and you'll never see him.

@mdsb759, @Fearless Butterfly: There's a ring box at Simslice/Booty that makes it possible to get engaged to as many sims as you want. I'm not sure if they all show up at the regular wedding arch but there's a custom arch at MATY that allows polygamy.

Another question.

At last. I finished my vacation test hood except for the Bigfoot secret lot. i back up the hood just in incase Bigfoot goes horribly rogue.

So far, so good.

I checked a few characters in the character file. OK ...

But I notice that the game very occasionally uses a .1 number. I'll have a User 0381 and a User 0381.1, for instance. They almost all seem to related to server NPCs, such as the food stand chefs and waiters. I don't see any photo I can access for the .1s via Sim PE. None at all. But the .1 files do refer to the corresponding non-.1 files. it's almost like these servers have extra data that wound up stuck in another file. Sims PE does not have this numbering system, so no help there.

Let's take Hanka P, who appears to be a food stand worker for the Asian food stand. If you want to access her file in Sim PE, the game refers to the .1 file, and asks you if you want to commit to changes. I didn't MAKE any changes. I was just trying to access the file, so I clicked "no", since I have no idea what I'm committing to! However, you can look at both individual files from the game file with no problem.

(EDITED because the "EP16" text bit applies to several characters, not these odd ones.)

Is this some sort of glitch on Maxis' end? I'm presuming so, since other characters' normal (not .1) files read "Sims 2 EP 6" or whatever EP they came from. I KNOW I haven't done anything weird in the neighborhood ... at least nothing that would generate an "EP 16"! I'm so wary of VBTs that I recite all of them in my sleep!

This is of no concern. I hope? I resolve to close the file, leave both parts in there, and never mess with them in the future. I HOPE that's a solid idea.

Not sure if it helps any gazania, but I have those files in my character folder too - I opened it up and peeked just for you.

My gut instinct is still that there are a few glitched Maxis characters out there. When I had that massive implosive hood corruption years back, my Sims disappeared; NOT wound up with an .1 extension. The number with the .1 is the same Sim as the one without. And after looking over the Wiki again, I KNOW I haven't done any of the things on there, my files are read-only, etc. I've bulldozed community lots and hotel lots, sure, but not any with an Asian food chef or any other of the .1 characters on it, and as far as I know, unless there are graves on the lot or the lot is owned by a Sim (and this was not the case with Hanka or the other .1 character in the hood), getting rid of a community lot, dorm or hotel lot is OK, once you are sure you haven't done anything that the Wiki proclaims is a VBT (and use the Cyjon ball for good measure). I haven't even touched an lot with an Asian food chef in months. More than a year, at the least.

According to Hoodchecker, other than the usual stuff you get, I see absolutely nothing odd. I specifically looked for Hanka there, since she was the character I noticed first. She's not even listed. It might be a similar situation to those three servers with the odd IDs that drive people crazy when they run Hoodchecker ... someone at Maxis goofed, and we have a few more glitched characters than we thought.

I believe the proper action is to enjoy the game and leave well enough alone.

Thank you for checking, BTW. I presume you know you haven't done any VBTs, either.

I downloaded a beach lot here from MTS (no CC). I was unable to place it in my neighborhood, so I used the LotAdjuster to make it fit. It turned out fine, but I discovered a piece of land hovering above the ground. It's not possible to remove it by any means I know of. Has anybody else experienced this? Is it a bad sign? The game doesn't seem to mind thus far.

maybe try and build over it to see if it'll go away

Second attempt since my first one was buried.

I ran Hoodchecker today a few days ago and fixed the few memories errors I had.

How do I fix those? I added the sim as subject, hit commit and saved the file. It seems the changes didn't stick.

I've already tried that, I'm afraid. The game doesn't allow me to do anything with that tile - cheats or without.

I suppose you didn't keep the pre-shrunk copy of the lot? Can you open it in a test hood to see if some item was near that patch of sand, or if that glitchy patch was around before you shrunk the lot (perhaps not as pronounced)? .

WIll the game do something horrible if there are two food items with the same name? Some time ago, I downloaded some Greek food, and never realized that for some reason, "Moussaka" is coming out as "Hamburger" in the menu, so now I have two "hamburgers" at two different prices. I am guessing (and hoping) that the game records just one "hamburger". I would be reluctant to simply delete the CC hamburger. I've learned to be a lot more cautious with food now and always test first, but I rarely used this menu item over the last few years, so honestly, I didn't notice it.

Look at the text strings in SimPE. The food is probably cloned from hamburgers and the creator forgot to rename all strings for all languages properly (or forgot to delete the strings for all other languages but the default US English).

I had one or two like that. I just deleted them (the memories) in simpe.

I have utterly no idea what to do with this. I never touched the food files before!

The troublesome food is the moussaka from simaddict99. It came out quite a while ago, and I'm sure simaddict has long gone on to other pursuits. The TSR profile seemed to be updated around 2009 or so.

I see a couple of things that, while looking at it and from what I know about CC food now, makes me realize I shouldn't have downloaded it. It's allegedly group only. Duh. (Could THAT be why one reason why the menu item showing up as hamburger when my Sim orders a single plate?) I probably thought at the time it simply wouldn't show up at all unless as a group meal. (Wrong!) I actually don't see it on the dinner menu directly (makes sense), and only as "hamburger" on those single plates. (Ditto.) If I click on the hamburger menu item that corresponds to it (it's only 7 Simoleons), I do get the moussaka, and it functions perfectly well. The Sim eats it just fine. Strangely, the gyros and baklava from the same set have worked great all this time. No problems. So I'm not quite sure why this menu item is a pain.

When I look in the moussaka text file, I see references to turkey, not hamburger. Nothing like confusing things further! I wonder if the hamburger is a default food if the game is confused, just like certain outfits are in CAS if the mesh is missing. Fortunately, all my other menu items, which I apparently researched a whole lot more, work fine, so I couldn't tell you that. I'm not sure if the game actually considers it a hamburger, though, and would be reluctant to remove the food unless I knew for sure.

I'm thinking that because I'm so clueless about how to fix this to work as a single plate (after all, simaddict99, who had more experience with CC food, must have had trouble doing this, so I doubt I could learn in five minutes unless someone wants to sit with me and work through every step!), I should leave well enough alone. If I do an across-the-board reset, I can get rid of it then. From the various posts here, I'm understanding that you don't remove food items once the Sim has made them.

I've had two platinum tombstones recently, both of them showing the wrong aspiration. Should I be worried? (Didn't find anything useful upon googling.)

Did you move the tombstones? http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=511011

Also Free Time Aspiration Critical Fix http://www.simbology.com/smf/index....pic,6.0.html--- Although acording to that, that is not needed any longer and I do seem to recall that getting fixed.

Are you fully patched?

HoodChecker:

I've been getting inexplicable crashes for the last couple of weeks that have defied my attempts to troubleshoot them - they don't occur with any real pattern, they continued after I removed the cc added within the last month, and hoodchecker hasn't been showing anything new or unusual aside from some dormie's having keys to a lot that doesn't exist (from what I've read, that shouldn't be a real problem, it's just irritating). I had removed the dorm keys by a combo of SimPe and moving the dormies in - that got rid of the messages on hoodchecker but didn't stop the crashing, so I reverted back to the pre-dorm key removal version of my game. Then I thought the problem could be the university sub-hood, so tonight I played a different sub-hood - I was able to play about 4 hours before the game crashed, which is longer than I've been able to go recently, but normally I don't have crashes unless a lot is huge and has 30+ sims on it. I don't think it's the university.

Anyway, today I noticed that hoodchecker had fewer messages in it than it normally does when I check this neighbourhood - I usually have a bunch of notices about the Tricous, but now those are gone. What happened to the messages? I haven't resurrected anybody so I thought I should still have those messages, and hoodchecker wasn't able to clear them before. Only one of the Tricou teens has been made playable and that was long before the messages in hoodchecker disappeared. Could the disappearance of the Tricou memories be related to crashing, or should I be looking into something else?

...Uhhh...

Is there any reason why the penguin just visited my Sims in the autumn? With no snow, and therefore no snowmen?

Should I be worried?

Do you have fish on the walls? or even in your sim's inventories? He likes fish, and I've noticed the penguin on my fisherman's lot even when it's not winter.

No fish on the walls as far as I know. My Sims don't tend to fish a lot - I don't think any of the lots in this 'hood even have a pond to fish out of, anyways! Maybe he just wanted to stop by and say hello...?

No, not from the lot. Um, no. Definitely not, now that you mention it. Thanks for answering

Nope. That penguin is just weird sometimes. The game doesn't always know what its code is doing.

Penguins can smell fish in inventory too. My sim was fishing at summer when penguin appeared. It walked to my fisherman and walked around him. I took one fish from my sim backpack and put it to ground. Penguin went and ate it. And returned. I was laughing "Do you want more?" and repeated. Penguin ate second fish, mumbled something like thanks and left.

Can sim move from diferent districts... like can i move nina caliente to downtown or to my shopping district?

Yes, moving Nina out will put her in the family bin, and then you can put her in any sub-hood except university.

wont corrupt my game right?

Nope. Your game will be safe doing that.

Thank you both! :D

Amora, the subhoods are part of your main neighborhood - they are dependent on it. You could empty them out, sell all the old businesses, and delete them (except for the final University subhood standing; once you have one of those you must always have at least one) and it wouldn't hurt a thing.

Look at your main menu. All those hoods are separate, complete universes. Everyone inside one can move around freely from one part to another. However, if a sim travels from one universe to another, the process is traumatic - bits and pieces of the sim are left behind, desperately seeking a sim to belong to, and the sim who arrives is not a whole sim, but a weakness in the fabric of space-time who will, however innocently, eventually tear it apart.

The existing subhoods - stealth templates, vacation destinations, universities, downtown, Bluewater and any custom subhoods you've downloaded - are not truly neighborhoods, but templates for neighborhoods. You don't add Bluewater Village; you add a copy of the original, static Bluewater Village, whose denizens are whole and complete but have only just been created when you added the subhood.

I have 2 elder sims, both knowledge, both are lazy (0) and shy (0), yet they're on every single community lot, even before my playables are fully on the lots. They constantly interrupt other sims in activities, dates or whatever they might be doing. I thought shy and lazy sims didn't appear so active and friendly. What determines which sims are more apt to appear anywhere other than their own homes? These 2 sims, I thought, would be great to have for babysitters when other sims go to work. I do have no social workers but having a sitter seems more normal.

Sometimes crashes can be your computer showing signs of being over-worked, and not Sims 2 in itself. Try the things mentioned in this thread over at digital perversion.

You might also want to try running the game on one core, if you have a multi-core processor.

The way to tell is look at your main hood menu and you will see all your main hoods. EG Plesantview, Strangetown, any custom hood that you made. When you load up a main hood you can attach any sub hood to it. So you might have Blue water added to Pleasanview, but you might also have Blue Water added to Strangetown and also to your custom hood. Each time you attach Blue Water you get the same sims and same shops. Your sim can move to Pleasanview main to Pleasantview-Blue water or pleasantview- down town. That is safe because each one is attached to Pleasantview. What they must not do, as peni said, is move universes. So a sim from pleasantview-Blue water must not move to Strangetown-Blue water. Jumping from Pleantview to Strangtown is jumping universes and will corrupt both.

Duine - how many nice points do they have, and how playful are they? I found that my playful Sims are quick to arrive at community lots, even when they are shy or lazy - guess they are just looking for a game to play!

They have 10 neat, so the rest are shared with playful and nice, more nice though. The thing is, they aren't bowling or using any objects on lots, just annoying others like they're starved for attention or want to be the center of attention. This particular lot I've been having a problem with has bowling, darts, chess, video games, books and a snack area. They don't even talk to each other, just interrupt what the other sims are doing. Everyone is busy having fun, while they seem more intent on stopping it. I swear they have ADDH. Do sims have a treatment for this?

When Sims are eating out at a restaurant is there something i need to be doing to be able to order food i've downloaded or is that just not possible? I'm tired of ordering fried chicken, lol.

Thank you. Having the game recognize more memory definitely helped.

I figured out that it was memory related yesterday morning - I finally thought to check the rest of my system when I noticed another program was sluggish. I had updated a number of applications and my OS a couple of weeks ago, and things I had removed from my computer startup were suddenly back; I had more running in the background than needed. I got rid of the clutter, did a bit more to clean up my system, and tried the first thing mentioned on the thread you posted, and my game ran quite well last night. It handled two large university households for two semesters each, with parties, snow, and three visits to the over-crowded secret society lot with barely a hiccough and I left the game running over dinner so it was open for about 7 hours - a big improvement over crashing every hour or so.

So, note to self - next time the game starts crashing all the time don't just assume that it's the new cc shirts or eyes, but take time to do some basic cleanup and maintenance with the rest of the computer system.

I would like to have two (or more) copies of my new hood in at the same time (once I finally get it finished). Is re-numbering a hood (all the files) and changing the name, enough?

Downloaded food would need to be added to the menu and to do that you will need a sim to buy and own the restaurant Easy enough if you make a rich sim that you don't play and have them hire and assign staff to every position, host, chef and waiter.

I'm glad it helped stitching. I hope it continues to run decently I view my PC has a living being, and sometimes it's just grumpy. Those periods, the game will become crash-prone and crash at the smallest provocation, and then one day it runs fine and does not crash at all. I've learned to just roll with it, and keep toe load light when it's being grumpy.

SleepycatDSL, I feel like I've read that you can't copy your hood like that, but I don't recall who said it and why it didn't work.

Sorry to double post, but I have a question of my own. I'm installing Sims on my laptop, and I want to set it up so that my home pc hood works if I ever want to play.

So far I have
- Installed all EPs/SPs
- Patched
- Installed scriptorium + added the CC I use in my main game that requires scriptorium installation
- Installed CEP and SEP
- Installed SimPE
- Replaced default user files with the folder from my main pc

I'm going to wait with installing a light mod, I want to see how much maxis lighting bugs me first. I can't think of what else I might have edited in installation files that I should replicate. Can anyone think of anything else that goes in the installation files?

EDIT: Made installation files read only.

Do you use a userstartup.cheat file? Edited cameras?



Yes, I thought I once read something like that too but then I've seen others tell people to just rename to hood files, which has left me all confused.

Config and camera are both stored in user files (the stuff that goes in documents), and I replaced those with my main pc folder, so all that is automatically fixed.

I could try googling tomorrow to see if I can anything. You could backup your user files (The Sims 2-folder in documents) and then give it a go. Won't help confirm that it works, since it may be something small and slow to notice, but if the problem is something big and obvious it may help confirm that it's a bad idea.

I did google and apparently just re-numbering all the files is enough. I guess I just can't get that old post out of my head. :p

I have stuff in the bin folders and a few things in the Light folders, neither of which will be picked up by scriptorium. My graphics.sgr file has been changed, too.

If you have enough space on your hard drive, you can have multiple accounts (log-ins) on your computer and a complete set of neighborhoods in each. It's a bit less work then renumbering all those files. I have one gaming account with a mega-hood set up and another with stand-alone versions of the same Maxis hoods. Each also has its own version of Widespot.

There's nothing wrong with renumbering all the files to make a duplicate hood. I just thought I'd offer an alternative for other people as lazy as I am.

I'd shared one version of my new Megaheaven hood (mega hood where I bred all the premades myself, from my own versions of the Ancestors) but after continuing to work on it (got so much done that I didn't think I would actually do), I plan to share the second (and last) version and I'd considered re-numbering it. I plan to use different copies for different story ideas but it's easy enough to switch them out like I do with others so I'll just keep doing that.

When I last started a new hood (used Tarlia's cleaned hoods) and the Newson family were in the family bin. I didn't want to play them, so I created a Kill-Lot, aged them all up and committed mass Simicide. I left the gravestones on the lot, and there they remain, Resting In Peace.

Now I've changed my mind, and want to play them. Would it be ok to go to the lot and resurrect them? Do I have to have a Sim that knew them do the resurrecting? (None of them knew any of my current playables.) Or would it be easier to download a new Newson family, or would that screw things up? You just never know with this game what might fuck things up... I would like them back, but not at the risk of buggering my hood up. Any advice appreciated!

I have renumbered my hood with all of its character and lot files renumbered as well. The only problem I noticed was that any food or paintings in the inventory were basically unusable and worthless. So my guess is that anything "crafted" in a Sim's inventory at the time of the renumbering is not a good thing.

If the graves are still on a residential lot, you can move in a new sim and use Cyjon's modded Resurrect-O-Nomitron.

http://www.cyjon.net/node/115

With this version, your playable doesn't have to know any of the dead, but the graves do have to be on the same lot he/she lives on.

Such stories once passed the cameras on Simbology as well, if memory serves. I believe there was a mention of the need to rename/renumber all the lot- and character-files, as well as edit corresponding references in neighborhood files and such.
I seem to recall that miros1 had a specialized text editor for that.

Yes, it did come up at Simbology years ago, BO.
Maybe one day I'll try it, if I can get my brain working enough to figure out one of the renaming programs. Not interested in renaming 1000something files by hand.

OK, I'm sure this have been up before but...

There is a cafe in the Uni subhood and they have this very large espresso machine (and a barista). But where is the machine under "bay mode"? I can not find it.

Community lot- appliances I think.

How do you get fish in a pond you make? I've never successfully made a pond that had a fishing option before.

You just make a pond, perhaps you have a mod stopping it?

Make it deeper in the middle and shallower on the sides. You need a minimum depth to get the fish, but if the sides are too steep the sims can't find a good place to stand.

It you make a medium pond or a large one, it should have fish in it - sometimes they only appear a bit later.
If Sims cannot fish, it may be a mod problem - not necessarily a conflict; you just may miss a mod that makes another one work (because when my Sims could not fish, it was due to me using NoSimLoaded without having the SmarterEPCheck in my downloads - which is needed to make NSL work).

And that had to do with the fact that NSL checks all fishing spots to delete the invalid ones. When you leave a lot where sims are fishing, most of those sims may "error out", leaving a fishing spot that is marked "in use" while it really isn't. The result is that less fishing spots are available, until the whole lake is blocked from fishing. So NSL tries to identify and delete those "in use" markers, also known as "lost fishing spots". Sadly, an undesired side effect is, that every time you load a game where sims were fishing, they may all lose their spot and need to re-cast.

Try having No Sim Loaded, no Smarter EP check and giving birth, oh my oh my that was my first fun introduction to the mod- all because I didn't read through all the description.

BO, why does it need Smarter EP check?

I am a bit confused about BOs kiss cheek mod, offered are 2:
kiss cheek
kiss cheek - lean

which one do I need to take? or should I download both?

He says right there in the description. Lean does not have a Super Duper Hug fix. Since no sim loaded is on the list of essential mods to prevent the Super Hug you should have it already and only need lean of the kiss cheek mod. If for some reason you do not already have No Sim Loaded you would need the full version. I would also suggest you look over the essential mod list in case you are missing anything else. http://modthesims.info/t/532696 (the directors cut contains many non essential mods, but contains some essential mods)

That is a valid question, so I'll dignify it with as clear a response as I can give.

First the general question: why does anyone, or any mod, require something like the Smarter EP Check???

Not all games are the same: one person has all the EPs and SPs, another has only a few, and some have none at all. And one person that has only a few, will probably not have exactly the same as any other person that has only a few. The fact is, even though *we* know what we have, and the game can figure it out, the MODS that you install have no clue! There is a way to find out if a certain EP or SP is present, but it's sloppy and longwinded, and also not very precise. Some SPs are based on this EP, and others on another. So it can be very difficult to check if you can safely call a specific Maxis BHAV. Adding an EP-identifying procedure to every mod that needs it, becomes a drag too, and all mods would grow longer if we did. So Cyjon made a special Global BHAV - yes, the Smarter EP Check - that he or anyone else can call whenever their mod needs to know which EPs/SPs are there. The only alternative would be to make many different versions of every mod: one for NL, one for Uni, one for OfB, etc... And that causes another problem: people constantly not knowing which version of a mod to download... So a unified checking system is much more convenient for all.

And then more specific: Why does the NSL mod need this Smarter EP Check???

Well, my mod cleans up things that are related to certain EPs too. For example, there are references in my mod that relate to pets. But those should ONLY be done, if Pets or a later EP/SP is actually installed. Otherwise, they would cause one error after the other, sometimes dozens at a time. That would only increase the amount of problems, while I designed it to decrease them.

Now I *could* of course, have done the same as dickhurt/dumbfuck (sorry, but those are names he calls himself) or Cyjon, and make my own version of the EP checker. But why would I? If you had some of my mods, some of Cyjon's and some of DH's, you would need to have all three checkers, because they are all different, and both of them only use their own version. So I decided to use one that already existed. And since I'm not very much a fan of dickhurt, I chose to side with Cyjon and use his version in stead of the "Game Edition Addon" (what dickhurt calls it).

I hope that this answers your question sufficiently, @joandsarah77 ???

And this also explains something else. Some people often wonder why dickhurt's mods all need the Game Edition Addon: that's for the same reason why I use Cyjon's mod: to find out what EPs/SPs are in your game. Really, there is nothing fishy about the Game Edition Addon. It is safe and harmless, and will NOT destroy your game. He also has another addon that many of his mods require, especially if they deal with simoleans. THAT mod is also perfectly safe to have, because it adds just a few new Global BHAVs that are ONLY used by his own mods, and therefor will NOT interfere with anything else. Perfectly safe!

So does that mean every mod that doesn't require Smarter EP check has some long messy code to check itself?
So why did the birth not happen? My sim tried to give birth, jumped and had no baby, four times before I realized what was causing it. Giving birth wasn't added in any EP. These are probably very silly questions.

Can someone be kind enough to boot up their SimPE, open a neighborhood, click on Sim Description, select a random Sim from the list, open the FreeTime tab and take a screenshot of that?

Because mine looks like this, and I can't read what it says here under Decay Modifiers. Changing the theme in preferences didn't help either. Stupid Windows 10.

Not necessarily... Some mods don't need to know anything, because they only use code that already existed in the BaseGame. They can safely run without having an idea what EPs/SPs are there, because they don't need those to work. And some mods are ONLY for a specific EP, so they warn you that you should not download if you don't have that EP. Ignoring such messages will only cause you problems, but that is not the responsibility of the modder. They have already warned, after all. But I know that most of Pescado's mods will indeed each have their own routines for checking which EPs are present. And alas, sometimes his routines even make mistakes.



It is not a silly question at all. But this is the hardest to answer, and even if I do, it will probably be hard to believe or even understand. Even I myself do not always exactly understand why some errors have such widespread consequences.

You should know that the NSL also clears out expired pregnancy controllers. Those are controllers of pregnancies that have already ended. But the game is sometimes a bit slow to adapt. When the baby is born, and you still need to name it, technically, the pregnancy controller tied to that specific birth is no longer required, but it still ties in with the naming subroutine. NSL doesn't realise that, and there is no way I could make it understand. So in newer versions of the NSL I *only* clean those controllers at the beginning, as quickly as possible after loading a lot, so it only clears controllers that were invalidated in a previous session. Any birth that's in progress at the moment that you load the lot, takes longer to complete, so that controller is still in use, and will therefor not be touched.

But now if the NSL runs into an error because it cannot find a BHAV that it needs, the whole procedure becomes invalid, and the game just cancels everything that is currently going on, in an attempt to minimize the damage. So your sim mother resets, the pregnancy is deleted, the birth process is canceled. Hence, bye-bye baby!

I hope this helps??

As BO said, some mods don't need to check for EPs, and some modders prefer to make separate versions when there are EP differences. Me, for example Slightly more confusing for people to download, but I prefer to keep the code simple.

@gummilutt: You may be surprised at this, but from my perspective, using a single call to a specific BHAV to find out so much about the game and to make decision for several distinct games is simple as well. And if I need to update or to correct a bug, I don't have to run through multiple versions of the mod, trying to find and fix the bug in a different location in all of them. THAT is what *I* find simpler.

But it's good that we are all different persons with different preferences 't would be boring if we all agreed on everything.