There's BO's mod, which uses a different method to allow more sims: https://www.leefish.nl/mybb/showthread.php?tid=2139

Should hopefully get around your issues (if not tied to streakers or other potential adult sims).

Try BoilingOil's version (though that "does not conflict with ANYTHING" kind of makes me skeptical): https://www.leefish.nl/mybb/showthread.php?tid=2139

I believe you actually need the mod as well as editing the userStartup. They each seem to address different methods of increasing number of sims on lot. BO's mod does mention it at the bottom.

I edited the userStartup while having Cyjon's mod, it didn't work. The 6th member still could not join. I will try out other versions, but for now I just took the mod out and played normally.

Has your Sim actually rolled that fear? It sounds like that wording precedes the repoman/is a hidden fear. I've never had it roll in my game at least, and I've been testing quite extensively lately just how little money Sims can get by. It's insane how much free money is thrown at Sims all the time, I wish RL was like that!

Greek Houses have levels - do the levels limit how many sims can move in? It seems strange the message would be about 8, though, if that is the problem. And the wiki actually says this isn't an issue. Hmm.

My guess is a mod conflict - you could probably find it by doing the 50/50 method on a throwaway copy of the hood.

Edit: Oh duh. Sorry. You found the problem mod already. Well, I'm tired and not reading correctly.

I have just had a look at Cyjon's mod and his mod simply replaces the entire calculation of whether or not a household has space with an operation which always returns true no matter what.

So I'm guessing, the Greek House joining process probably refers to this process but isn't expecting to get a "return true" result.

That would make sense, because the original BHAV reports three values - the total number of members, the number of sims and the number of pets.

BoilingOil's mod reports these three values each as 1, 0, 1, bypassing any calculation. That might be why it works where Cyjon's one doesn't.

You don't need to add the lines in UserStartup for BO's mod to work on-lot (like for several similar mods), but adding it allows you do add families from the neighborhood window (comments section, pg7).

Has anyone heard from @AndrewGloria recently? I haven't seen him around for a while. I hope he is OK.

Considering he loved this post, I assume he is!

I'm more or less OK, though at the moment I've got a cold that might be COVID. I'm writing a fairly long comeback post in the Sims 2 Thoughts thread, but, quite honestly I'm too tired to finish it tonight. I'll try to post it tomorrow.

Does familyfunds not work in apartments?

It does work in apartments, I've used it myself.

Oh, no pressure to post. I just was worried because you usually post a lot. Glad to hear you are OK Rest up.

Quick question... you know the LTWs Popularity, Romance or Family sims can get where they need a certain number of a relationship type? What happens if one if those Sims dies or they drift apart? Does the Sim with that ltw lose permaplat status?

I thought it did, but it wasn't working for me. Jessica Peterson got a 75k bonus, so I tried to edit the Peterson household's funds to -75k, then move Jessica out and then change her funds to 75k.The cheat did not work, I couldn't change anything at all. I tried every possible combination, household name between quotes, fixed amount, +/-, proper capitalisation, nothing. After I moved out Jessica it did work and I could set her funds to whatever I wanted, so I moved her back in with no money and tried again. Both inside the household and from neighbourhood view it never changed their funds. The workaround I found was to move the entire household out, edit their funds as I desire while in the bin, move the household to wherever I want Jessica to live and move out the others.

Thanks for your understanding @simsfreq! I'm still trying to post, but I keep falling asleep as I try to type. I'll leave it another day.

Once they have gained it, they have gained it.

Cool, thank you!

So apparently familyfunds just doesn't work specifically with the Peterson family, I don't know why. I tried to change the funds after I moved Jessica into her new house and again it didn't work, so I had to go with the good old terrain paint method to bring her down to 1000 simoleons. Is there a hidden space in the household name?

Do you have another household with the same surname? Sometimes the game thinks you mean the 'other' family.

Get allmenus installed so you can use the Money [amount | +amount | -amount] cheats. Barring that, Sim Manipulator has the option in the menus.

Not that I know of, no, only the Peterson household that comes with the game.

In residential houses if Sims don't pay bills the repo man comes... does this also what happens in an apartment? What about DORMS? Nothing?

You can't use familyfunds to make family funds negative, regardless of the family or where they live. I ran into this with the apartment fixer.

Yeah, but it should be possible to subtract an amount and still have a positive balance, especially if there's only one household with that name in the neighborhood. Unless there's hidden households somewhere - I can think of the townies household being named after the first townie that could be Peterson. Better check in SimPE under Family Information.

Problem making separates of Newsea Gold Shorts
 

WARNING: You may consider this picture NSFW! Nothing actually indecent, but quite revealing.

I have a problem making a separate bottom version of these metallic male shorts by Newsea. The Sim on the right is wearing the original full body adult male version by Newsea.
The two on the left (one teen, one adult) are wearing separate bottom versions of them that I've made (or tried to make) myself. For the purpose of illustrating the problem, I've paired them with nude tops. The problem is that brown band above the waistband of the shorts. I do conversions like this all the time, and I've not seen this problem before. To make the separates I use the Full Invisible Clothe Set by Drachenfels ("Drachis" in tooltips) on Sexy Sims. This gives me access to all the Maxis nude meshes. I used the textures from the Newsea shorts with them. This method has worked well for me for a lot of other skin-tight clothing.

Two possible clues to what is going on occur to me:
1) The Newsea original uses a bumpmap, but the Drachenfels nude bottom doesn't have one. I've seen a couple of tutorials on adding a bumpmap to an outfit that doesn't have one, so I think I should be able to do this, especially as the Drachenfels texture uses a Maxis mesh.
2) The Newsea shorts don't use the original Maxis male full body mesh, but use a slightly slimmer mesh of their own. I'm not sure I'm able to deal with this myself - I suppose I'd have to edit the Newsea full body mesh in Milkshape to make a bottom mesh out of it, and I've never done anything like that.

Can anyone suggest a way for me to get rid of these ugly brown bands? I recall seeing a tutorial somewhere on MTS about removing the black line at the waist that you sometimes get when using separates, and I think this may a related issue, but I can't find that tutorial now when I look for it.

I suppose this properly belongs in the creation sections, but I feel a bit lost there. I don't really think of myself as a Body Shop creator -- more of just a tweaker! If anybody can point me to tutorials that might help, I'd be most grateful.

TBH I stopped using Familyfunds a long time ago, it's too buggy. I use Pescado's Money Order and just get them to send money to a random townie if I want it to go nowhere, and Cyjon's Loan Jar (and then just delete the jar if you don't want them to pay it back) to add money.

I wasn't making the funds negative, I was subtracting funds. Regardless, it just doesn't work at all with the Peterson household, I can't add, subtract or set a fixed amount.

Your alpha isn't lined up with the texture. It will be because you aren't using the same mesh as the original underwear. I'd imagine that just above the part of the texture that's supposed to show is a gold bucketfill and that's showing up because the alpha is set too high. The bottoms of the undies are also cut off because of this. Move your alpha down.

Is there a way to set a sim as the Mr. Big/Diva or is it like an NPC generation thing?

You don't use familyfunds to add or subtract an amount. You just type "family funds $whatever" and it sets family funds to that exact amount. If you put a negative number there, you're telling the game to set family funds to a negative number, which is not allowed.

I don't like to disagree with someone as knowledgeable as kestrellyn, but I've been regularly using the FamilyFunds cheat for years, and it can be used either way: either with just a number, in which case it sets the named family's funds to that amount, or putting a plus or minus sign before the number, in which case it increases or decreases their funds by the amount specified.

The old modthesims Sims wiki:
'familyFunds "[familyname]" [amount]

Sets the chosen family's funds to the given level. Addition and subtraction of the desired amount is achieved by placing + or - before the amount. If the family name doesn't have a space in it, you can omit the "quotes." If there are two or more families with the same family name in one neighborhood, only the most recently founded family will be affected by the cheat.'

The "Fandom" Sims Wiki:
'familyFunds [family last name] [number]

Sets the funds of the specified household. Add + or - before the number to add or subtract the number typed. If more than one household has the same family name, it will only affect whichever one has most recently been added to the Neighborhood. Note: The maximum amount of Simoleons a household can have is 9,999,999.'

I use it regularly with the plus sign so that larger CAS households can afford to buy the house I intend for them. I don't like doing things to my Sims that they won't like, so I've only used it with the minus sign once; so that Chandler Jackson in New Desconia could only afford a basic hut to live in, rather than a fully fledged house, I reduced his funds from §20,000 by §12,000 to §8,000. It worked with no problems. Fortunately for me, Chandler is a fully paid-up member of the "We woz poor but we woz happy" brigade, and he's never complained about having to work harder than any of the other Sims in his neighbourhood.




Thanks a million! That fixed the problem. If I'd looked at the Texture Images in SimPE, I might have spotted what was wrong.

It looks like I may still have a small issue with quality (which doesn't really show in this picture) so I may try remaking them in Body Shop.

Though you're not completely wrong @kestrellyn - I definitely remember familyFunds sometimes (not always) indeed having problems with the addition and subtraction. In those cases, I just use the cheat without +/- in order to set the amount to the sum I came up with in my head.

It's the allmenus 'money' cheat that lets you use addition and subtraction, not familyFunds. It only works when the household is loaded.

Had experience with it on clothes myself. If you open it in Photoshop and paste the texture over the alpha and make the top one 50% transparent, then you can see where it's badly aligned and fix it.

That blue top really does look awful with it lol. Maxis waistline.

This really a supplementary question to my last one. Although the problem doesn't show in the in-game picture in my last post, I noticed a significant loss of quality in those outfits that I altered. This higher definition picture shows the issue better:


The boy on the right in the grey crop top is wearing the version of the shorts with the issue. These were made by editing the previously exported file in SimPE, selecting the texture image, right-clicking on it and selecting Import Alpha Channel. As you can see, his shorts and shoes are a little darker than the other boy's. and there's a lot of distortion around his groin. The shorts worn by the boy on the left on the other hand -- the boy with the red crop top (by Charity -- Thanks!) were a new export from Body Shop to the game. Both boys' shorts use the same textures. I would have thought that importing the alpha channel in SimPE, would give the same result as a fresh export from Body Shop to the game, but clearly it doesn't work that way. I have a vague memory from the distant past, that I should be using some NVIDIA utilities rather than SimPE's Import and Export actions. But I haven't a clue how to do that. Could anyone explain to me what's going on?


FamilyFunds does work with the plus sign! :







Well, it certainly works in my game! I use it frequently!

Good stuff, Andrew. I do recall using FamilyFunds to add or subtract funds. I even done it while in a household.

I've experimented a bit with this, and it seems importing the alpha channel that way downgrades the quality (similar to DXT1 or regular "Import"). When I'm replacing a texture that uses the alpha channel with SimPE, I replace the whole texture, using DXT5 (for best result with the alpha channel, especially the edges). Bodyshop also works, but you may notice a slight quality loss there, too. DXT3/5 has a slight quality loss, but less than DXT1 or "Import", and most of the time it's not enough to notice ingame (and if it is noticeable, it's likely the texture wasn't the best quality).

However, the more you extract and edit a texture, the more quality loss you can expect (extract from one already made, make into file, extract from that file, edit, make new file, etc.). If a texture goes a few rounds through Bodyshop and/or SimPE, there is going to be some visible pixellation in the end. If at all possible, use the least edited texture for your project, and not one that's gone through Bodyshop/SimPE a few times.

Open the texture file in SimPE and right-click on the image and choose Build DXT to get the different DXT options.

IIRC, DXT3 is preferable where there is no alpha and DXT5 is preferable where there is an alpha channel.

The wiki says you can add/subtract amounts with familyfunds, I think I have done so in the past but I can try again when I have my computer back to see. Regardless, this doesn't address the fact that attempting to set it to a specific amount instead of adding or subtracting still doesn't work specifically with that household. It works everywhere else.

There might be some issue like a non-breaking space with the family name, or one of the hidden townie/npc households has the same name. As mentioned, the allmenus 'money' cheat will work around this. Or SimPE.

Why are you editing it in SimPE at all? Why don't you just use Bodyshop?

SimPE gives better textures.

The idea was so that Sims who already have an outfit, would have it upgraded to the corrected version. Making a new export to the game from Body Shop, adds an new item of clothing to the game, meaning I have to get each Sim wearing the old version (including townies) to buy the new one, before I delete the old one. I'll probably use Christianlov's Gussy Up, so they don't actually have to pay for the corrected version.

It won't really matter in this case, as I only did that separate conversion at the beginning of June, so I think there's only one Sim wearing those separate gold shorts, but I can think of some other clothes I'd like to update/correct (like some of my tie-side white briefs), where there must be dozens of Sims with them in their wardrobes. Even some straight boys in my game wear them!

I think it looks much better with Andrew's pale blue shorts.
Andrew thinks so too!


I'm afraid I don't really understand the stuff about DXT1/DXT3/DXT5. I don't know what they are. Could somebody please explain them to me, or point me to somewhere where it's explained? Thanks in anticipation.

Explanations on the difference:
https://episims.tumblr.com/post/743...-dxt1-dxt3-dxt5
https://pforestsims.tumblr.com/post...dyshop-vs-simpe

Enabling DDS + links:
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/moo...impe-t1197.html

Old but quick tutorial on how to replace a texture (disregard that it's shown for a default file, essentially it's step 4 to 6)
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/moo...simpe-t526.html

The S3 Texture formats differ in transparency, or level at which pixels can be seen through.
DXT1 - no transparency, basic format
DXT2 - 4-bit direct transprancy giving 16 shades, color is premultiplie by alpha, rarely used
DXT3 - 4-bit direct transprancy giving 16 shades, not premultiplied
DXT4 - gradient transparency with a similar encoding to color, color is premultiplie by alpha, rarely used
DXT5 - gradient transparency with a similar encoding to color, not premultiplied

These codes are unfortunately named, giving an impression that the formats get progressively better as the number incraeases.

The compression works by splitting the image into 4 by 4 blocks, picking two most representative colors and allocating the remainder on a gradient between them. There is some search involved in choosing the two colors, which is why there is a quality setting in good software like Nvidia Texture Tools. Some free software produces poor quality images, and gives a green tint. You usually get better results by directly importing a file produced by Nvidia T exture Tools. Artifacts appear where 3 or more colors meet, for example a road sign where black, red and white come together at corners.

Premultiplication makes the color darker with lower opacity values. Because it makes compression work worse with black around the edges, it is not used, and you can forget about them. It makes other forms of compression work better.

With DXT1 there is a form of single step transparency, which reduces the color quality. DXT3 works better for hard cutouts, and DXT5 works better for smooth gradients.

Repeatedly encoding textures will reduce their quality. It is also important to use good software that doesn't impart a color tint when opening a texture for editing.

It also gives much higher file sizes though.



I thought that you were making a new separate, so I presumed that noone would be wearing it already.

And agree to disagree lol. I think that top looks awful not tucked in properly.

It's because changing the texture decompresses the changed resource (TXTR). You'll have to compress the file again, and it should go back to roughly the same size it was (depending on the texture/quality).

It didn't for me!! Compare the shorts on the two boys in my post #34036 above. The one made by a fresh export from Body Shop is much better. (Though it does seem I could do better in SimPE if I used DXT3/DXT5 instead of importing the Alpha channel.)



It was quite a new separate, originally made on 1st June, but I'd already made one adult wearing it. And, since I'd "townified" the adult and teen versions with shoes, there was a faint chance some else might pick up the outfit.


But Andrew wants to show off his bare midriff. He thinks it's one of his best features!

Well other things matter too, old meshes (I am assuming an old mesh) could be badly mapped. Anything old was made on old graphic cards where we didn't see things as clearly vs new cards that show up every crease, shading and flaw. Somethings can't be made to look uncrunchy.

Using Import (or importing a new alpha channel) is similar to and sometimes worse than the result you get with DXT1, so definitely try with the DXT3 or 5 import.

A fresh Bodyshop import can work fine, but it too can cause some artefacts on the texture, especially if reimporting textures from other CAS items. It depends on the quality of that texture, but also what you do with it. Bodyshop is also known for causing texture artefacts, especially around large areas of color.

If/whenever you make textures yourself, keep the workfiles (PSD/GIMP workfile, or similar layered format) and use those when making new versions or recolors, since that's the best base texture you'll get for that project.

Andrew, if you open the file in SimPE and find the texture file you want to replace (so you see the texture in the plugin view) - right-click on the preview picture of the texture itself. If you have the DDS utilities installed, this brings up a menu from which you select "Build DXT". That then shows a window where you can choose from a drop-down menu which includes DXT1/3/5 and a load of other options.

I don't think it's important really to understand what DXT is or what it means - unless interested - the above is what I have done previously to change textures within SimPE rather than BodyShop. For example, to update a skin tone to make it anatomically correct, without losing other aspects such as the genetic values.

If when you right-click on the texture image, you don't see the "Build DXT" option, I think that means you need to download and install the DDS Utilities.

What does happen to townies wearing an outfit that gets removed? I think they just revert to Maxis clothes rather than getting bugged or anything?

Tell Andrew to wear a top intended as a crop top then lol. That one is meant to look tucked in, so it just cuts off weirdly if the shorts are too low.

I dunno, I think he can carry it off, it would look stupid on me but on him, it looks like it's meant to be that way somehow.

If I use Argon's Alien arch fix (that unhides the Alien face template in CAS/bodyshop), will that face template start showing up on townies? I really don't want random aliens suddenly spawning in game, but I do want the template unhidden. I know the elf face template does not randomly show up on townies, so is the Alien one the same?

Yes, the elf one does show up on townies. I haven't used the alien one for a long time, I seem to recall that this was why I removed it (the alien face is very noticable on NPCs and townies).
Ignore that, it seems that the Terrakosmos mods here are needed to make them show up, so you should be okay.
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s....html#msg247798

I added a coffee bar to the Jacquets' bakery. However, all the customers ignore it and instead looks at the items marked for sale. Is this expected behaviour?

I have the memory of some speakers that were connected to the DJ table on community lots. Is it true or did I dream it? XDD

With the coffee mod?
If you don't have the coffee mod than yes that is expected behavior. It's why the coffee mod was made, its on here somewhere if you don't have it, made a year or so ago.

I tested it myself and, like I thought, familyfunds works just fine with adding/subtracting funds:

Wendland family on 4079 simoleons -> familyfunds Wendland +1000 -> Wendland family on 5079 simoleons -> familyfunds Wendland -1000 -> Wendland family on 4079 simoleons again

I seem to remember there being some glitch where on business lots, your playable sims can't sell coffee but you can have employees sell coffee and it works.

Does an off-world loiterer spawn when the phone begins to ring, or only when your Sim picks up and begins to talk?

No idea, sorry!

... then... why answer?

I'd say they definitely spawn after the Sim picks up. I notice sometimes a small hang between picking the phone up and the Sim beginning to talk on the phone (with a thought bubble showing who's on the other side), and I think they're generated during that hang.

Yes, I delete custom clothes all the time and it just reverts to whatever it was cloned from.

38 Greaves Avenue, Downtown
 

I was going to start a Help thread, but, as I seem to have done most of the work myself, I don't think it's necessary. As I posted earlier in another thread, I have a problem with 38 Greaves Avenue in downtown Veronaville; every time I tried to open the lot, even after I moved the resident Sims out, the game crashed. When it became clear to me that I could not edit the lot, I bulldozed it, and replaced it with the Nightlife bin lot "Small Home", which I started to edit to make it look as much as possible like the lot I had deleted. It was only when I was doing this that I realised that, although 36 and 38 Greaves Avenue look very similar to the "Small Home", the house is in fact two tiles narrower! I suppose I could make the new house two tiles narrower, the extra space will make the lot decidedly easier to play, especially as the resident Sims Micah Vincent (Popularity) and Noah Hatherley (Romance) really like inviting guests over.

Since the house is now wider, it will never look exactly like their old house, but I have been using in-game pictures to try to make it as familiar looking as possible for Micah and Noah when they move back in. As I had only played them for three days, I don't have all that many pictures to go by. I know I had made significant changes to 38 Greaves Avenue, to try to fit two bedrooms into it. By the time it started to crash, they both had become double bedrooms. But, apart from removing the driveway, I had made few changes outside the house. I only have a couple of pictures of the outside of the house, and one of them was taken at night. So it would help me, if anyone has 38 Greaves Avenue in its original, or near-original state, if you could share pictures of it, including a top-down one showing the original floor-plan. I have no pictures showing the back garden or inside the bathroom.

Thanks in anticipation!

Here you go.

Sometimes it's just nice to know someone has read your post, even if they can't solve the problem.

Still, there are the reaction buttons. But I do agree.

It's kind of frustrating, because you get tagged that someone replied and get excited and then ... lol.

What's the mod that always deletes your cache files before starting the game?

AFAIK, there is no 'mod' that deletes the caches before you start your game-however there are 2 empty caches that you can place in your game folders that when you delete the game caches, they will replace them with empty cache holders-you set them to 'read only' and they won't grow appreciably when you run your game.

You just delete the ones in the game and unzip these every time you wish to clear the caches. I keep them in the main folder.

I can't remember where I got them from but I've put them up in my files.

I can't seemingly upload them here.

They're named "Accessory. cache" and "Groups.cache".

https://www.mediafire.com/file/n65h...essory.zip/file
https://www.mediafire.com/file/lzua.../Groups.7z/file

Not sure you'd need that...

My fingers.

RPC can be configured to always delete your cache files.

RPC can do it. Alternately, I use the Playnite game launcher and have it execute this PowerShell script before game launch.

Do you not need the stuff that gets stored in the cache file while you're playing the game?

The purpose of a cache is to store something that you have in an ephemeral location (in this case, RAM) into a more permanent location (your hard disk) so it can be reused once the ephemeral location disappears and doesn't have to be regenerated the next time you need it. The permanent location isn't necessary for anything, it just makes loading faster. If there's nothing in the permanent location, or nothing can be saved there, the program can always just generate new data in memory and use it from there.

I've also checked off world loiterers with batbox before and after they pick up the phone and I can confirm! It also makes sense from a programming perspective, the sim on the phone isn't needed until you actually pick up. It'd be a waste of resources to generate a caller in vain.


I absolutely do. More often than not, if I forget to delete those before starting, I'll have startup problems. The game either won't start at all or take forever to load. I think something's broken. I decided to just delete cache every time now rather than take the chance it won't fail this time.


It also crashes my game. Uninstalled RPC long ago! But it had some nice features had it worked.


Thank you! if I can't get it to work, I can also try to make a code in java. Thanks for the idea.
Edit: I'll try to make my own custom launcher since I always open fraps and sound settings before starting the game, maybe I can incorporate it all...

Yes, you do-but when you allow the cache files to get so large that they start affecting the game, then it's time to empty them out-and they can get too big to be useful.

it's like the thumbnails that the game stores-it does not hurt to delete them once in a while-although I will admit that if you delete the objects thumbnails you have to start all over again when you start looking for things in the catalogs, which can be a real PITA after a while.

This article in the Sims 2 Wiki explains why you should delete cache and thumbnail files once in a while:
https://simswiki.info/wiki.php?titl...ct%20thumbnails.

"Deleting cache files can help with:

Sims 2 or Body Shop being slow to close.
Body Shop, Sims 2, or Homecrafter never starting when you attempt to run them.
Body Shop, Sims 2, or Homecrafter crashing while loading.
Corrupted or incorrect thumbnails.

Deleting cache files is perfectly safe. The game will generally generate fresh new ones when you load it the next time."

(This is if you haven't deleted the files and run the game with the old files)

- Deleting cache files can help if you've edited CC files (meshes, recolors) and they show up wrong.
- It can help with laggy CAS meshes after removing CC (the white background/black+red text on mesh, for CAS items).
- If you experience crashes after compressing files.
- If you experience crashes after editing buy/build files (mostly related to OBJDs or compressing, but potentially other resources too).

(I just delete the files. No fancy program or empty files )

Just made my own program (in java) that deletes cache files, opens sound settings and then launches the game before it terminates itself. I was also going to make it open fraps automatically but that requires admin privileges so that was more complicated and I gave up on that. I suppose I could've just downloaded one of the premade things that was suggested here but I wanted my personally tailored launcher.

Would anyone be interested in that? If I were to upload it I'd probably adjust it so that it just deletes cache files and then opens the game, I'm guessing people don't generally open their sound settings all of the time. I do that because my tv that's connected via hdmi doesn't disconnect itself after it's turned off so I have to switch audio settings from the tv to the computer all of the time and if I forget before starting sims, I'll have no audio.

Yeah, my game/Bodyshop often doesn't like to load if I haven't deleted the cache files. I delete them every time I shut down one of them. I just thought that if you replaced them with empty files then the information that would be generated in a game session to use would not be available while you were playing.

I think at least one person replaced the cache files with 0-byte dummies and set them to read-only so the game couldn't change them. I don't know if it worked, though.

I've been using a zero-byte read-only groups.cache file for years (it's dated 2010 so for around 14 years!) and have had zero issues with it. I haven't changed any of the others.

If I remove the road with lot adjustor but leave all the necessary portals, will my sims be able to travel to the lot with cars?

I could swear I saw somewhere that someone had made buildings that stacked together (ex: two separate houses on top of each other) but I've never been able to find it again. Does anyone know if this is actually possible or did I just hallucinate it?

You are not hallucinating it, here you go.

Thank you! I was sure I hadn't dreamed it.

I was wondering if anyone can help me? I have issues with CC turning blue while being in gameplay. It's the automatic pet feeder by Jacky93Sims and the swing from Back To Nature Playset (10 Year Anniversary) by Lina @MTS.
I can place them on my lot just fine but during play game the feeder and the sitting part of the swing turn flashing blue. Any ideas what causes this?

It most likely means that the item was reset probably due to an error, which caused it to lose its texture because it's not coded with a fallback texture in that case.

Best thing would be to put testingcheats on and look at the error log that gets created. Custom swings caused an issue for me with the mod NoBogartSwings by Pescado.

The Bat Box has the "Fix flashing blue" option when that happens. I usually get it with CC jewelry.

HL fixed the swingset here.

As for the other item, it's likely a similar issue. Blue-flashing usually occurs when there's a "bug" somewhere between the mesh- and texture resources. It's usually a forgotten, wrongly named or wrongly input resource string somewhere in the file. It can behave in many ways depending on where the "bug" is (always blue-flashing, blue-flashing after error, recolors OR mesh blue-flashing, thumbnail flashing but fine when put on lot - or opposite, throwing errors or crashing the game when in buy menu/loading game or placing object. Probably a few things I haven't listed, too. I've seen a lot of weird ones...).




I think that option only works with accessories/jewelry, not furniture. It's also not a permanent fix. Blue-flashing accessories usually happen because there's a mismatch between the subset names in the MeshOverlay and the GMDC+SHPE+GMND (common one is that the lens subset has been removed from the GMDC but is there in the other resources - here's a way to fix that particular problem, in case anyone needs it)

Why will the game sometime remove entire albums? What's the logic behind this mechanism? My friend just realized she lost hundreds or even thousand of pages worth of text from her neighborhood she's been playing since 2008. All of her XML files completely disappeared, and she has no backup. It's happened to me before too, but the XML files didn't disappear, they got decimated. Only way to restore is through backup.

Does anyone use the Dirt terrain type, and if so, what kinds of neighborhoods do you use it for?

I've never used it. I've used Desert and Lush quite often. Concrete makes sense for urban environments. But I don't think I've even tried Dirt.

In the past I've used a beach default for the dirt, never used it as is.

The story albums have a size limit, and when that hits is that it starts a new one. The old one is still readable if you have an XML reader - roachandlazygirls Storybook program is probably the easiest.

The old one is gone permanently unless you have a backup.

Well, yes, you do need to get it from your last backup, and anything you did since the last back up will have to be recreated from the pictures, which don't go anywhere. And you'll need to rename it if you want to keep it in the neighborhood storytelling folder; or copy all the pictures to the folder where you keep the backup if you don't want to hang on to the whole backup storytelling folder forever.