Yes, it is the UC with Lazy Duchess's RPC and lighting tweaks that is available through Github: https://github.com/voicemxil/TS2-Starter-Pack

The neighborhood is Arundel, complete with the entire folder dedicated to the medieval time-all my downloads, etc are in that folder.

The reason I had to switch to the UC was that my copy of NL stopped reading half-way through the new install on the computer, and I knew that if one disk doesn't read, the game itself is going to be affected.

So I took a chance-because someone else had recommended it-I think JoandSarah..her daughter has Win 11 and the Starter pack works very well with the Win 11 set up.

I was running with all EP's and SP's, with M&G being the .exe (I was using a cracked one too.)

The Starter pack has all the folders for all the games and you can choose any or all of them to be in your configuration. IF you decide to get it, you should get the web installer, because its fast and painless.

Oh sorry @FranH I was thinking when you mentioned that 'I hadn't cleaned out the templates' that you needed to know where the folders were in the UC install (which was why I linked that article as it has folder layout). Glad you have it all going well!

When I mentioned the 'templates' I was referring to the empty neighborhood templates that I've been using for 10 years-they're completely empty of all the townies in all the neighborhoods and the residents of them all.

I don't like having a lot of townies, so that I had to do after the mess I'd made trying to play Arundel before.

But: I have successfully loaded it up with the town and the medieval folder, and it's looking beautiful. One just has to make sure the folders are the correct ones for whichever neighborhood/time period you want to play.

One very distinct advantage of having brand spanking new computer: the game loads in 1 minute! I timed it. Unbelievable!

Ok so Arundel is working now? That's great.

My apologises, I meant no harm and did not mean to offend.




I agree to both of these, but sometimes it's nice to collect other peoples thoughts on the matter.


If I had saved, I believe it would have. Though, I didn't save so it didn't stick.


You raise some valid points. I've never thought about rolling a dice before, interesting idea.

I think my problem is that I am a self confessed control freak, admittedly. I also do somewhat get 'attached' to my sims as sad as that sounds, I think it's happening more now because I've had to build the whole neighbourhood, from the families to the buildings they live in (started as a blank map template). So I 'know' every sim, and their families. Like that mother was born to the first family in the neighbourhood, albeit later as her parents were almost elders (she's second youngest, and the result of auto-woohoo risky pregnancies).

The problem is, I know and accept that 'these things happen', but I kinda didn't want it for her (It didn't fit the story, the plan, or anything). On the other hand, it has happened once before in this neighbourhood but for a different playable sim and I accepted it and built a little memorial in the cemetery for it. (I forgot to watch the mum!)

Hence my dilemma.

Anyhow, thanks for your input everyone, it's good food for thought!

You don't have to apologize for being a "control freak' over your neighborhoods-I think everyone here is a bit like that-or we would not be still talking about a game 20 years old!

It's always up to the player what is is within their level or zone of comfort in the neighborhood. I've had miscarriages and deaths by childbirth-as sad as those things are, they do happen in real life and we can't always ignore them (as much as we would love to have them never happen)-the same goes with our created neighborhoods.

I guess it all comes down to what level of reality you can handle in your game. Some cannot support real life instances of hurt and suffering, and believe it is too close to comfort to put it into a game that you are ultimately in control of.



Oh, lord, it is working great and looking beautiful all at the same time! I did as suggested (swapped out folders) and it's exactly like it was when I last left it!

At bottom are two new pictures of one of the neighborhood houses and residents.
Here

So my Sim's neighbour just tried to set her up with the Pollination Technician...? I play using a multi-PT mod and it seems like one of them has become a townie (I found them under the "townie" menu using the SimBlender). Now my sim is furious at the PT because her hubby got abducted and came back pregnant. Should I be worried about this? I know you're not supposed to add PTs to a household so it's kind of worrysome that they're hanging around the neighbourhood waiting for dates.

I don't think it was so much the reality aspect as it was the "wait, that wasn't my plan!"

Regarding control freak, oh that's not just over sims, that's pretty much everything for me. Why do you think I go through the trouble of using Gentoo as my OS? Because I want to control every single minor detail in how my computer is setup and configured.

And I'm currently waiting for simantics resource finder (takes ages) to finish searching for the overtime stuff from hatches mod - I enabled it and it said it paid the family "1,575" for overtime work, where in reality it added "1,575,000" to the household funds[1]. So, me being a control freak is going to go find where and why it is doing that, and fix it to give the correct amount that it said it was going to give. No one is allowed to cheat money.

[1] Edit: Found reason and fixed Sorry simmies! I think that sim hates me now, they can't become millionaires anymore by cheating.

==

I actually tried it: teen seemed to run away- but he just "ran away to home". The community lot closed and he showed up at home.

Multi PTs should be in the default household, not sure why yours is in the townie household!

The Sim Blender also doesn't list a family as "townies" unless you specifically change the name in SimPE, so it's also possible that they just renamed the Default family.

Rolling the dice still works if you're a control freak. XD You roll the dice, then when it hits the 'wrong' number you realise which one you really wanted to happen!



Except you can totally ignore those things in your game if you want to. XD

Three of the PTs show up in the Default family but one shows up in Townie. That's why I'm confused, it doesn't make sense for just one to show up there, and I haven't even touched them in SimPE. Is there a way to put them back into the Default family?

I have a weird thing where a hair shows up fine in bodyshop, the adult version doesn't show up in CAS, but the teen does. Anyone know what might cause that?

Can think of a few reasons (thumbnails messed up, YA/A issue, issues with binning/familying or similar...), but it's difficult to say exactly what without looking at the files.

Which hair is it?

As for getting fond of sims - well, after controlling them from birth until death - that is why I have a retirement subhood

Question: Since I updated my GPU driver, I've been getting pink flashing a bit more than usual. Has anyone else ever had a specific version of their driver be flaky when it comes to the game?

If you make a teen with it in CAS, and then change them to an adult, do they still have the hair?

If the PT is in a non-Default family, then some corruption of the PT files has already occurred. If you don't have any other active neighborhoods, it's fine, though - just move the PT character files into your neighborhood's Characters folder, and then you can move them into whatever family you like and it doesn't matter at all. If you want them to appear in other neighborhoods, you'll have to get a fresh, unmodified copy of them from wherever you downloaded them from and add those files to the new neighborhood's Characters folder, etc.

FWIW, I set the character files of NPCs to read-only after a similar mishap.

It's a Sims 4 hair that I converted. I am entirely willing to believe that I messed up somewhere; how could I tell? The hair isn't binned. It's in the custom bin.



Yes. That's how I knew that the adult mesh was still working.

Yes, that's entirely possible! Check your graphics card settings, maybe something there has been updated with the new driver. Otherwise, you could try rolling back?

Agree with simsample. There have been times when I don't update my graphics card driver for the very reason you describe Bulbizarre! (I mean, it's not like whatever improvements they made are for TS2.) If I notice that a particular driver seems to be bad, I roll back and wait a another release or two before trying to update again.

Just to be clear, I take their characters out of my Downloads folder and into the neighbourhood Character folder and then replace the old Download files with a copy of the existing characters from a fresh download?

Could you explain how this corruption might have happened so I can avoid it in the future?


Thank you, I'll try that next time.

No, you move them out of your Downloads folder entirely and put them in the Characters folder. If you want them in other neighborhoods, too, you will need to put them in the Characters folder of those other neighborhoods. If you have an extra copy in the Downloads folder, there will be extra copies of those sims in your neighborhood, too.

Probably this happened due to messing around with the Sim Blender or another teleporter.

Good to know, thank you. It must have been SimBlender, I just starting using it recently. I never have before, and have never had an issue with the PTs before either. I also set them to read-only just in case. Thanks for the help.

Post a help topic here (+ mesh and recolor), so it doesn't get drowned in everything else: https://modthesims.info/f/555/

Random question : Do any of you who like to build, take your inspiration from photos or real life ?
I found a cute little three story store ... that I am going to try to recreate.

Following is the link and a photo.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmon...ality-show.html

Absolutely! I have Pinterest to save pictures and house plans I find interesting. My building imagination is not all that great so when I want to build something but need ideas, I look at house plans online and other real life buildings to help get ideas. Sometimes I try to recreate them exactly and other times I just use certain elements and themes.

How does the game manage custom walls/floors when they're duplicate? I always assumed two packages containing the same object override each other as the have the same GUID, but I swear I've seen the same wall covering appearing twice in the catalog (same texture, price, description, just different placement in the catalog).

Two things having the same GUID doesn't necessarily mean they override each other, and I don't think walls and floors even have GUIDs at all in the first place.

Walls/floors don't have GUIDs in the same way objects have. They're more like recolors for the wall/floor mesh.

Generally, it seems the Clean Installer won't change names or anything like that for files, so when you're installing lots with walls/floors you already have in your game it should (in theory, anyway) keep them as the same files.

The Default installer (the one the game ships with) will change names for most files, and also will mess with walls/floors when installing lots (random strings for names), causing the game to not recognize them even if you already have instances of them, so they'll show up double. Not sure if it's because an internal string also gets edited in the process, but I suspect so.

Oh I see - I've had it in the past when I had an object twice in the download folder but showed once in the catalog anyway.

That's quite interesting, then I guess I might have downloaded a set twice and put it in different folders - to be fair, very rarely I install walls/floors from lots but I do tend to rename some things if they've got special characters in their name. I might try to figure out how to find duplicates and take them out, hopefully the Download Organizer should do the job.

Thank you so much simmer22!

Downloading a set twice shouldn't cause the issue (the game would register those files as the same files). However, if you make a lot and then install the CC from that lot, including the walls/floors, those could count as double - at least if you use the default installer.

There is also a chance that the installers will pick up several instances of the same floor/wall, and rename at least one, which could cause them to be seen as double. The default installer usually completely renames walls/floors to random strings and often adds extra ".package" endings to files, and both count for double walls/floors.

Have you seen my builds???
That looks like a nice building to copy too! Have fun with it!

What is this blue fog that appered on the lot? It looks like water but sims just walk throught it. Does it have something to do with a neigbourhood what is able to have beach lots?

I just realized I have never once had Mr Big or The Diva spawn in any of my Downtowns in any neighbourhood. Would antiredundancy or notownieregen be stopping them from appearing?

As I have noted elsewhere, I'm now playing the UC with the Sims2 Starter Pack with RPC and while I'm very much enjoying it, I do have a couple of questions about it if anyone else has that set:

In my original game, I cut out all the EA intro movies-this version has it. I'd like to eliminate it but I don't know how. I've looked in all the game folders but I can't locate the "logo movie" that is in this version.

I also have the 'special occasions' cut scene (IE the birth sequence) and I'd like to remove it from the game.

Otherwise it's working very, very well and I'm happy with the game. I even figured out that I could add the holiday pack that I had in my previous set up.

Any hints would be much appreciated!

I will have to go and take a look.
Thanks !

I think it's water ?
This can occur if the lot is below sea level or a large body of water level.

Also, you can use the game tool to temporarily move the lot, then go back and type in the cheat bar: modifyneighborhoodterrain_on , (where the underscore___ is a space) and raise the area where your lot was, then move your lot back.
The water should be gone.

Thank you for the insight simmer22, I should really tidy up my download folder anyway - I guess I will pay extra attention to the extra .package extension as you said

To disable the intro you'll have to remove several files from several folders:
https://modthesims.info/t/599380

To remove the special occasions there's a a toggle in Camera Option > Special Event Camera which can be turned off.

I don't know why someone disagreed with a question I had asked-because you can remove the intro movies and disable the 'special events' sequences from the game.

You can also remove all of the "Locale" settings except for the language you play in.
Also, you can compress all of the game files in the installed game if you need to save space.

The game will run fine without all of those items.

I was just asking about where to find the items I knew we can remove from the game without it being affected because I'd done it before.

I knew it was possible-I'd just forgotten where they were. It had been a very long time since I've had to do that.

Thanks for the info, too! I had forgotten to check all of the folders!

Never heard of them before and they've never posted, so I wouldn't worry.

That's life, people will always fine some reason to disagree with you. Don't worry so much about it, just enjoy your game.

(Which is now free of those sequences, I assume the above advice worked?)

Oh, yes! It has been an treat to see my game back in its old form! All the neighborhoods are there, just perking along and the pixels being pixels. It was a very long month for me to not have it at all because I had to select and buy the computer.

It's so nice to finally have a top notch rig that can play the game flawlessly without any problems! Especially since I'd been very wary of getting a computer with Win 11 and if I could even play it!

This is actually the first time I've ever played in the houses themselves without cutaway walls! Quite immersive.

The biggest problem is the fact that now I have so much space for so many downloads! Temptation abounds!

Nice! Glad it's working out for you. :D

What happens if a recolour is removed while it's being used? Will the object revert to another colour?

I have a sim that already has an A+ report card, yet they've rolled the "Get A+ Report Card" want. Is this normal behaviour?

Yes. Annoying, though.

Odd. It's just I noticed a vampire had the "Be a vampire want" in the past and then I noticed this. I recently edited my wanttree package (To cut down on hobby wants), so I was curious in case I messed something up.

Just make sure you got rid of One Drive!



What, you think that you ace one test and your grade is set in stone? Get back to work! XD

One of the very first things I did when I first powered up the computer:

Looked in the apps- promptly located and uninstalled One Drive and McAfee completely.

I've read enough horror stories from others about how they together ruin a game.

It will revert to the Maxis colour. You can't remove it with the swatch tool while on the lot where its being used however, the game will say 'it's in use'.

If I want to replace a family's house with a madeover version of the same lot, do I need to move the family out and then back in again, or is there another way to do it without moving the family?

You should move the family out and move them back in, mostly because that's the best way to keep them from getting borked. Memories and all that. Just get the day setter and reset the day to when you moved them out instead of it being Monday when they move back in.

Thanks, that's what I thought. Figured it's better to double check then screw things up completely.

What is the significance of the day of the week, and why can't it be Monday?

I think it's just so the family can continue life from where they left off. You could also use the SetHour cheat to set the time to the time they moved out. Though I don't know how you account for the sudden transformation in their house. I suppose it's just one of the advantages that Sims have over ourselves. They don't have to wait for their new furniture to arrive, or for the builders to make alterations. Not to mention the dust and disruption we would face.

When you move a family into a new house it always starts on a Monday. I just always change the day of the week/season to whatever it was when they moved out. Like AndrewGloria said, it's nice for them to continue where they left off.

I know that feeling, as I sit here with half decorated walls, the strong smell of gloss paint (skirtings). Meanwhile my sims: Pause life, wait, resume it's done.

Though, I think for a normal human if everything suddenly stopped (unknown to you) and resumed with everything around you changed entirely... you'd be confused as a madman.

Make a townie playable, move them to the new house, and then teleport the other Sims over to move them in?

Would that give them a new "moved in" memory?

All the time!

Me too!





https://modthesims.info/showthread....221#post5972221

No, I don't think so. But you can use the Memory Commander to nuke the unwanted move-in memories if that's your only concern.

You could play it realistically where they move to a temporary housing while theirs is being rebuilt, and have a good memory of moving into a great new house.

Damn it.

I've been doing it wrong all this time! I sort of just start building, leave half empty building move sims in, change a bit for what they need, change a bit more.. eventually I've got a house (same process for community lots). I've never really considered looking up real builds.

Well....


https://modthesims.info/d/677777/paternoster.html
https://modthesims.info/d/681552/cl...ation-hood.html
https://modthesims.info/d/666159/little-church.html
https://modthesims.info/d/636567/li...he-bo-kaap.html
https://modthesims.info/d/635783/a-...tury-house.html

Yes, me too. For Service Area I use some reference photos. And for Aberon Garden I'm also collecting. Although I don't have much practice in building castles and I haven't built a decent one yet. xD At the moment I only have discards. XDD

I was thinking about Sims like the Goths, where I want them to stay in the family home but give the whole thing a lot makeover without them having memories of moving out. It would be cute for younger couples moving to temporary housing though.

You do that by swapping out their old house/lot with the new one in the neighborhood folder.
Rename/number the new lot, so it matches the old one. Remove the old one (keep a copy in case it goes wrong!) ...and put in your new one.

When you open their house, they may be confused until they find where you've moved things. But their little lives will continue without issue after that.

I actually use this a lot when building downtown because I like the aesthetic of older downtown areas where each building develops independently overtime and has unique building styles side by side. So I get a Google Streetview and find something that I can recreate into a unique apartments that look cool and aged with different price points (this lot has a §700 studio over the bar and the §1500 yellow townhouse) versus a cookie cutter modern apartment. I have a whole section of my downtown like this.





ETA: And let the record show I built this lot before the Patagonia was built in the real life building; my version used to match it better :D

That's good to know. I was worried about confusing (ie. corrupting) them if their entire house was swept off it's feet and replaced with a new one. They're not in Kansas anymore!

And here I go and break down walls, remove walls, use the sledgehammer on stages, replace windows, build new rooms - all around my sims carrying on with their lives.

Not that all of them have been impressed. Mrs Doyle was quite upset when she discovered snow inside and made gestures, best described as less polite, at the builder. Mr Evans nearly missed his car to work because he had to leave through the back door and walked all the way around the house. The builder did not realise Mr Evans, who had just been promoted, started work at 5pm. And young Daniela Silke was sulking when she was accidentally left without a bed.

Oh, well...

No I don't think those should affect the Diva and Mr Big--but if you have empty templates to make sure no townies spawn, that would affect them.

If you use the Visitor Controller frequently, I would check and make sure you didn't accidentally set some settings that would ban them. And then make sure you're looking when your sims are actually Downtown, not just in a shopping district or on a community lot in the main hood. If you checked all that and still nothing, well, it's just chance that they haven't shown up. A bit unlikely, but not exactly impossible--especially you have a bunch of other townies and downtownies.

You could also check and see if the hood created them; like you can check in simPE because that would list/show all the sims in the hood.

Normally I do use empty templates, but right now I'm playing an integrated hood I downloaded here with an attached Downtown (also from here) and I still don't have them. I've gone through SimPe as well but there are no character files for them. That's why I was curious whether the antiregen mods could be stopping them from appearing.

I think that Diva is not created as an NPC. She should exist as part of the downtownie family. If she does not then she won't come. A new Diva is only created when an existing one is removed from the family like when you marry her.

Thanks everyone for sharing your lovely ideas and creations !

I'm currently playing between my long-suffering post-apocalypse Strangetown and a newer, smaller hood that's set in the 1950's-60's (Think "Pleasantville" the movie ) with as little CC as I can stand.

Trying to make a sim un-furious. Just because they get a divorce, that doesn't mean I want them going over and kicking the trash can every day. Don't want roaches! So anyway, what's a good way to do that? Juice seems like a lot of work. I could run down the time, but that could take a while. I know people can hold grudges in real life, but it feels like fury in TS2 lasts an entire adulthood!

This is what Couples Counseling is for. A mutual friend with the skill invites them over and counsels both of them, erasing the fury. The relationships levels remain where they are.

I thought when a Sim finished college, they could invite their love interest who was still IN college, and they could get the option to Move In. And the other WOULD -- they would quit college. But when a Sim flunked out, he moved into a house with a bunch of other losers. He invited his fiance over (she was flunking anyway) but there was NO OPTION to have her move in. So how does that work?

Theoretically, apologizing might work too, but I don't know what determines its success rate.

The existence of the Apology Fury Fix indicates that it didn't work properly.

That's interesting. I do have empty templates and I wondered why I never saw them. Thought they were created separately from regular townies.

It works with townies. I don't know that it works with playables.

Doesn’t SimBlender or the Bat Box have an option to remove furious?

Move the trash can behind the perimeter fence. Around here it is normal to push them out at collection time.

The only sims that are unaffected by empty templates are the objects.package NPCs, because they are in objects.package rather than in the template. Other NPCs can still be generated later if the game needs them, but the game doesn't actually need the Diva and Mr. Big for anything.

Does the Diva or Mr. Big always spawn with the same appearances/clothing? The wiki isn't really clear on that so my thought was that perhaps they did spawn but @pinkdynamite couldn't recognize them.

At some point in Drama Acres, I got a new Diva, whom I could ID because she primped and wore the same gown, but her face was different. I never did get a second Mr. Big, though, even though I married him in first.

Find, I'll just make her flunk out!

Same gear, but usually different faces. Sometimes very different personalities, though they are always Wealth sims.

I've played in several hoods. The game will always spawn a new Diva, but sometimes will spawn a new Diva instead of a new Mr. Big.

Then they definitely haven't spawned in this hood, I've never seen any sims wandering around with the Diva/Mr Big clothing. Any guesses as to why they haven't appeared?

This is incredibly random and unlikely, but has anyone ever come across an index of the color tone of all the Maxis lights in game? I was trying to find a soft white tone when decorating for a wedding last night and I had to go through every single overhead light to find one. I know the Ikea candles and tiki torches are orange

Not as an overview, but there's these two lamp-light mods that have a "before" overview of the ingame lamps, one without any fixes and another for if you're using a version of the Radiance mod. Maybe it can help?

https://modthesims.info/d/325490/mo...-base-game.html
https://hat-plays-sims.dreamwidth.org/18044.html (scroll down)

Odd one: So, I decided to use the in-game pictures functionality a little more, but by adding external screenshots. I wanted to make a photo album.

If a picture is taken in game, I can see it, add to story, order the pictures and can use the "add to album" button just fine, it moves over into the column, no problem.

If an external screenshot is added, I can see it, add to story, order pictures just fine, all working. However, I cannot use the "add to album" button, it simply does nothing (it gives the click sound, but doesn't move the picture into the album column.).

I've checked permissions, all match. Any ideas?

Edit: Oh and pictures are all sized correctly at 600x450, 128x96 respectively.

Picture size (in kb) too big, maybe? Or wrong picture (JPG) format/codec?
You can try to take some "standin" photos with the C-button, and either paste over your picture, or use the picture names from those (delete the stand-ins if you use the picture names).

I just tried resizing and what not using as 'default' jpeg as I could, and no dice. But I did find a solution in the end, for anyone landing from searches: The comment gave me another thought, I noticed albums make an xml file, and upon inspection it has info as to which pictures to use, they also share the picture id, so I ordered an album with just one picture to allow the game to create the book + album data. I copied over the pictures (leaving the original intact) and added the album id to the file names, and deleted the newly added album pictures the game created.

Since it's just XML, I edited the first "<Entry>" to point to the first picture, then duplicated the entry for the number of pictures, editing each one to point to each picture, load the game read the book[1], and sure enough there's the album!

I swear, I do too much for my sims.

[1] Don't send a sim with full fun motive for this, it will trick you into thinking the book didn't work (opens book, then just closes it), worked fine with a sim without a full fun motive.

Thank you, this is exactly what I was looking for! And I had that same WTH reaction to the Chinese lantern, that lighting is horrible!