Sims 2 Random Thoughts
 

For some reason TumaSims has deleted her TS2 Random Thoughts thread. It was too good a thread to be without, so here's a new one. I promise I won't delete it!

The purpose of this thread is for any random thoughts you may have about The Sims 2, that don't justify a thread of their own. It's similar to the Stupid/Random Questions thread, but for thoughts that don't require an answer. You can of course respond to anything interesting that another user posts here.

[EDIT 4th March 2016] The original thread TS2 Random Thoughts has now been reinstated as a locked thread, so you can read all the old posts in it.
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I'll start it off by trying to continue a discussion that Charity, joandsarah77, myself and some other members were having in the old thread about Sims greeting each other with a kiss. Both Cyjon and gummilutt have written mods to stop Sims kissing inappropriately. When I think about it though, I don't think I've ever seen Sims use a kiss as a greeting unless they were in a romantic relationship. So I got to wonder if it only became a problem with an EP.

So I did a little experiment. Andrew Jones is best friends with Jack Gill. Both are gay teens. Andrew (Knowledge) is in a long term monogamous relationship with Julian Moltke. They've been going steady for nearly 3 years now. Jack (Romance) is in relationships with about half a dozen boys. Andrew and Jack have in the past had romantic wants for each other, but they both resisted the temptation. Andrew really values his relationship with Julian, and Jack respects that. So I got Jack to invite Andrew round for a chat to see how they greeted each other. They had one bolt, so there was some "chemistry" between them. Their relationship was very good -- about 96/96

Well, Jack greeted Andrew with a friendly hug, which I think is fine between good friends who aren't interested in each other romantically. But... when they hugged, the bolt disappeared! It didn't come back even when I got Jack to give Andrew two more friendly hugs and admire him. Andrew accepted all these interactions and their short term relationship quickly went to 100 both ways. But the bolt didn't come back. Then they both went round to the back of the house, and got into the hot tub (which is actually a love tub with the candles long since burnt down). I left them there to deal with Ravi who was "entertaining" Gordon Cornton in the house. Eventually Gordon went out and joined Andrew and Jack in the hot tub, leaving Ravi playing with his radio-controlled toy car in the house. Jack and Andrew were chatting and splashing each other in the hot tub. I'm sure they weren't doing anything actually romantic but somehow the one bolt had come back. Sometimes I just don't get this whole "chemistry" thing! Andrew left of his volition at about 2 a.m. because it was so late, so I didn't get to see how they would say goodbye.

Anyway I still haven't seen any inappropriate kissing as a greeting in my game, and I still wonder if it's EP related.

I would have been interested to see how they did say goodbye, as that's been when they're more likely to kiss in my experience. On the other hand, part of me was saying nooo, don't screw up your relationship just to test something for us, Andrew. :O

Kisses of greeting and farewell aren't perceived by the game as romantic, so they're no danger to the relationship. I never noticed it happening till after I added M&G, when I also started getting a lot more autonomous flirting between unattached sims.

When bolts come and go it's generally down to a turn-on/turn-off that is conditional. When Rhett Hart and General Fizz Grunt meet, they have no bolts; when she puts on a swimsuit, they have one bolt, because that's one of Rhett's turn-ons.

The hello and good-bye kisses have never bothered me (and I am quite sure my Sims are not bothered by them, they seem quite happy to kiss or be kissed ) -
As for turn-ons and turn-offs - I try to go for long-term ones that will suit most of my Sims. Since they all learn to cook at some time, cooking is often chosen.
Cleaning sometimes gets chosen when I have a lot of single neat freaks - and it works.
I also go for beards, because I kind of like them myself (so, yes, all my male Sims walk around with facial hair ).
That is why I do not use formal, swim- or underwear as turn-ons or turn-offs - because the bolts come and go. And I want the bolts to stay

Too bad about the thread being deleted. Had some good laughs over people's thoughts.

Random thought of the day ...

... I really need some male body hair and facial hair. *Goes to the WCIF forumn*

Will be back with more random thoughts. *Peace*

Yes Peni, that explains it. Andrew and Jack are both turned on by swimwear. Andrew of course arrived in his everyday clothes. Jack had been working out with the TV, so he was in his gym clothes. So they lost their bolt when they greeted each other. And when they changed into swimwear to get into the hot tub, it came back. It's a relief to know that they didn't have a furtive cuddle (or grope!) when I wasn't looking! It might also explain a real oddity on my game, when I've had two Sims with 3 bolts, but it's dropped to 2 when they've started flirting!

I appreciate your concern for Andrew's relationship, Charity. That relationship is pretty important to Andrew, to Julian, and to me! So it's a relief for me to know that the game won't see it as romantic if they do kiss when they say goodbye. So I think I will play Jack's lot for another day, ask Andrew round again and see what happens when they part. All the same, if there's any chance at all of Jack starting to French-kiss Andrew, I'd rather that Julian isn't there to see it.

This is a random thought I have every day. I love this game! With all its quirks and hiccups, it's as close to perfect as we are ever likely to see. And thanks to all the great creators who allow us to make it even more perfect in our own individual eyes.

OK, I'm finished, or nearly so, with several of the projects that've been taking up a lot of my design time, so I've decided I'll make another pass at making a decent bar.

First step? Go to my RL kitchen and get a double bourbon! (apparently I'm a method designer today...)

I could really do with a neat Sim in my kitchen right now. And a double bourbon
And a new bar for my military Sims!

I have a Pleasantview in danger of being 'flooded out' by 'climate change'. Well, obviously poor sims are stuck til the end, get evacuated by the government, stuck in shoddy housing--but they have nothing much to loose by leaving when they see the news. But would they? Wealthy sims of course have ages of family history they're loathe to abandon, and nice homes . . . but they have the resources to leave early and comfortably. But would they abandon the family graveyard and go? (Of course, I'll handle graves properly.) So maybe middle class sims would be the first to flee. But it's not a sudden disaster, and actually, they will take the biggest whammy to their standard of living, leaving their nice homes for whatever, not much, they can find available.
Well, I'm going to go ponder that while running clean installer through all the Katrina Cottages by Phaenoh. What makes people see what's coming down the pike and react appropriately, what makes others wait until the last moment, and which sims are which? (The Pleasantviewies are a particularly traumatized bunch, actually, a lot of them have to leave their homes with all their memories of a lost beloved.)

I have that same thought too nearly every time I boot up the game. Another frequent thought is, how long will we all be here? If TS2 can still be run on computers in 2020, 2025, etc, what changes (if any) will we see in the community? My thinking is that as long as another life simulation game as good as TS2 hasn't arisen, people (or at least I) will always flock back. I hope that's the case anyway.

I don't think I've ever taken a break from playing due to boredom. It's always been because of technical issues and such. For me the game is too diverse, unique and hard worked on to ever get bored with.

Well, I am not bored and I have been playing for 10 years now, so let us see if we can do 10 more

Agreed Petro

Hmm, another random thought. I was just watching a doco about a ghost town and thought, has anyone made a hood based on one? Just to clarify, they are different from apocalypse hoods. They are towns that were once abundant but gradually residents moved out for whatever reason, bar a handful or even one person that stayed. There's quite a few in Australia that happened mostly because the local mine was exhausted.

Could be interesting to make a hood on them. Lots of buildings but only a few sims. Could even make it a tourist location for daring sim teens that vowed to their mates they're not afraid of ghosts.

It would need an abandoned mine, which would be tricky but not impossible to make. That's where ghost towns mostly come from in America, too - the mine makes a boom, the place is flooded with prospectors and the people who fleece them, the vein plays out, and there's nothing else to base an economy on, so everybody runs off to the next big strike. Decades or a century later, the houses attract tourists, hippies, survivalists, and the occasional criminal, all of whom make use of the abandoned infrastructure for their own purposes.

I still play games even older than the Sims 2. The new ones just don't match up.

Wouldn't necessarily have to be an abandoned mine... just an abandoned something that was pretty clearly the main industry of the town- something that, when it folded, the town went with it. A factory or a powerplant would probably be easier to realize in TS2 than a mine would be, and it's certainly still fitting- there are entire sections of manufacturing cities that have been abandoned- Detroit seems to be getting famous for it! Could be interesting...

Former railway towns - we have some of those. Obviously connected to mining, but these towns closed down because the train is not running through them anymore. People working for the railways were mostly transferred - the local businesses and schools had to close down - you get the idea.

Yeah I just gave mining as an example. Could be an abandoned old west town, something similar to Chernobyl, Atlantis on land, the list goes on.

What about the base game 'hoods? Not so much Pleasantview perhaps, but Veronaville and Strangetown both have a bit of a ghost town feel to them. Veronaville because of the sheer number of empty houses -- complete streets with nobody living in them. I've been playing it for 3 years now, and there's still no one in Poet Place. Strangetown too has a real ghost town feel. You only have to visit the community lots to know that the place has seen better days. Not so long ago it was a busy military base. General Buzz can clearly remember when the place was heaving with soldiers and he longs for the order that was part of daily life when the army ran the place. A general without an army, he tries to put his family in its place, and is increasingly failing. I actually have considerable sympathy for him, as a man whose world has fallen apart. He could restore order to the place, if only the authorities would give him the military resources he needs. I think Strangetown may have been a mining town before the military took it over.

I would say it has more to do with education than how much money they have. Granted, money often comes hand in hand with education, but not always. Education gives you the tools to get the information you need to make the call, to understand the information and it's implications, and pick a course of action to deal with it. Perhaps less so the case with areas that have a recurring problem, since people have more experience, but if it's the first time something of that magnitude happens, I would imagine people with educations will have an easier time understanding what's about to go down and what consequences it'll have, because they can inform themselves.

Of course there will always be exceptions, but if I were in your situation, I would go by education in order to determine how likely people are to get moving. I'd also look at their interests. Someone with a high interest in environment may be well informed about things like natural disasters, for example.

Strangetown certainly qualifies as a ghost town - people left, in my opinion, when the aliens started landing!

Economy ; the railway towns I mentioned above. If the one and only industry that keeps a town going vanishes, who will be left to buy cake from the bakery or have a drink at the bar? So businesses close down because their clients had to move. I think that could be enough of a motive, even though there was no big tragedy.

There have been attempts to restore some of the older towns in the Northern Cape, SA - I am not sure how successful they really are, but some houses were restored and sold again.

Highly-educated people can get caught by pending disasters, too! They'll just deny that it's really going to happen if they're sufficiently motivated; or if there've been enough false alarms in the past for that jaded "boy crying wolf" effect. Look around you (especially if you live in the US). We have high politics based on denial of all kinds of slow-moving disasters.

A more or less politically neutral example is flooding. People insist on building in flood plains, sometimes quite expensive houses, too. In San Antonio, we have an entire high-end historic district in the flood plain of the Olmos Basin, and our entire downtown is in the flood plain of the San Antonio River. But when the flood of the century came through in October 1998, no one died. Why? Because we have serious flooding almost every year, and we take flooding seriously. So we always vote for flood engineering projects, we have experienced high-water rescue personnel, and we have year-round reminders of how bad flooding can be, in the form of poles at low water crossings measuring the height of the highest known water for that crossing. There's one on the Olmos Basin that's 20 feet high. So when the River Authority started putting up barricades and notified businesses and homes along the San Antonio River that they needed to open up the flood gates on the straight part of the river, and close the ones sealing the bend where most of the Riverwalk businesses are located, everyone cooperated. When the police knocked on doors in the Olmos Basin and told the people in the million-dollar houses they needed to evacuate because water was slopping over the dam and it would have to be opened, those people did not say they'd ride it out, they did not go back for the family silver, and they did not delay - they packed up the kids and the dog and they left for the high ground. Meanwhile, in other parts of South Texas - including places where flooding was less severe - people weren't warned, or shrugged off the warnings, or they drove through low water crossings (sometimes going around barricades), or they decided to wade into the water to rescue the JetSki that had been whirled away in the rising water, and they died. Flooding was less of a constant presence in their minds, so they didn't take appropriate precautions even when they had a reliable authority warning them - which not all of these places did.

So consider the nature of the disaster. Is it something that has happened before with no negative consequences? Is it something unprecedented and scary but visibly real? Is it something nebulous that people have been warned about for years before it got to the crisis state, so that a warning that crisis has arrived sounds like hysterical alarmism? How big are the emotional and economic investments in the place and things that would have to be left behind? Is it something that the family in question is used to taking precautions against? Is the authority warning of the disaster a trusted one? Are they universally trusted or is there a segment of the population that has, or thinks it has, a reason to believe the authority corrupt or in error? If General Buzz sent out an alert warning of hostile aliens with ray guns, I doubt the Curious-Smiths would follow the protocols he'd laid down for the situation, though they would bear them in mind when devising their own protocols for protecting PT9, Lola, Chloe, and Pascal's baby from trigger-happy alien hunters like the Beakers.

I'm in that annoying funk where I have time to play the game, and I've been looking forward to playing, but when I open the game I don't really want to. It's such a good opportunity, but I guess not today.

I don't think I'll have the chance to finish my current rotation before leaving for vacation in a few weeks.

Wishing all of you who are going on vacation a highly enjoyable time! I am working. I will have some Sims Christmas celebrations, I think, since I have not done that for a while now

I tested it again the next day.

I'm also inclined to believe the kiss greet problem arose from a later EP. Years ago I played with only the base game and Uni, and I can't recall ever seeing the kiss greet. Going by that and what AndrewGloria says, it would seem maybe Apartment LIfe is the cause? I'm fairly sure we can at least eliminate Uni and OFB.

And Nightlife, which is supposedly the romantic EP. When did we get all the fancy greetings?

I think it was Bon Voyage

AL added the group greetings - High five, Fake out - they are indicating to which social group a townie belongs. BV added the local greetings (for the vacation hood).
That romantic good-bye kiss - no idea. But it has no consequences, as far as I can see.

I should mod the sh*t out of my game to make it more Sims 3-like (in the gameplay sense) and enjoyable. But with no WiFi going to the computer for some really strange reason, its hard. Stupid WiFi dongle, has to be such a xenophobe to new computers.

Download stuff from the computer you're using to write that, put it on a USB. That's what I do.

and Sims 2 is plenty enjoyable as it is give it some time to grow on you.

@Aaron4Ever, For the benefit of those of us who don't know TS3 at all, can you be a bit more explicit about what features of TS3 gameplay you'd like modded into TS2?

Sims 3-like ? There was a reason why I went back to Sims 2 - actually there were at least two,,,,, or three...... or five hundred .... Was it the single family in the hood that I was allowed to play? Was it that staring at the outside of a building (work place/ theater/ hospital/ whatever) was quite boring? Was it all that running/ driving around on roads that I have seen enough of in the first three hours of play? Was it my one twin being thrown into jail after doing NOTHING wrong?.... And then came out completely useless later? Was it looking around for that stupid fruit of life and get almost no extra time after all the trouble? Was it the neighbours moving away in the middle of the night just when my young Sim has fallen in love with the pretty daughter? Was it because the Sims were so boring?
And then I even tried Sims 4!!!!
Let me go and count the ways; I mean - reasons - of why I love Sims 2 again

I was talking on skype with one of my friends and he wanted to know what he and another friend of mine (lets call him Bob)'s love child would look like so I quickly made them in CAS. I showed him and he was amazed that sims 2 could make genetic offspring. He had no idea, he's only played Sims 3 and 4. I'm not sure why he presumed that it couldn't (and also that Sims 2 has toddlers). I thought it was kinda funny

For the record, their love child was cute. So then all my friends wanted me to see what their babies with Bob would look like. Poor Bob

I thought that it was considered cheating if viewed by a significant other and/or created crush flags?

It definitely came with M&G, because I had AL from Day 1 and never saw it till then. And the kiss of greeting/good-by that started then has no consequences, no matter who witnesses it. No one knows why, but if you don't want to stick in yet another mod to get rid of it (and there is one) it doesn't affect your storylines.

Kisses not generated by this bit of weird code do have consequences, regardless of when they're given.

I don't understand how you can make Sims 2 more like Sims 3. Explain?

The only two improvements that Sims 3 had that I can think of was open world and casT and you can't mod those in. Changing shoes was nice and you can get bottom only cc outfits in sims 2 to do shoe changes. That's all I can think of.

I've never touched 3 (won't let it near my computer) and I swear with the new graphics card and extra zest, it does look similar to 3, but it plays much nicer.

Why would one switch games if it is more fun but the graphics are different? Never saw the need-even with the open neighborhood. Too many other problems to contend with before I'd even consider it.

Oh well, to each his own.

Want to make a yellow room in Sims 3 : go through one thousand and three very pretty sofas; find one. Now go through one thousand and three very pretty chairs to find the matching one - oh, hell, went to fast - start over - pick up the matching yellow chair on the 24th try.

Sims 4 - pick up the whole room and slap it down, the only affordable one - and it looks kind of boring. No yellow.

Want to make a yellow room in Sims 2 - nice matching stuff by either Michelle or iCad - five minutes later, have a pretty (in my opinion) yellow room

Unpopular and unsolicited opinion, coming through! Boopedeeboopboop.

I'm not really sure it's quite fair to be so negative about the later iterations of the game. Each game has its own charms, quirks, and disappointments. But that doesn't mean you should bash it.

Most of the things Petro pointed out about TS3 are easily fixable with a few mods. And TS2 is the same; you need mods in order to prevent your game from imploding in on itself! Let alone all the other mods that make all of our playstyles different from one another's.

Anyways, I'm tired as all hell and can't be damned to stay up and write an essay about this, but the point is... All games are with fault. Doesn't mean you should grouch about one being worse than the other, though. See the positive in everything. And if you absolutely hate one game, don't talk about your hatred for it. The world's filled with plenty of hate as it is. Because honestly, there's no point, and all it does it spark arguments. And I surely wouldn't want to see Andrew's remake of TumaSims' thread get deleted because a couple of folks got a little too passionate about the whole TS2 vs. TS3 debate.

That is perhaps true. Yet I have played Sims 2 without ANY mods or CC for around 6 years. For around two years, I only had the base game and I started my custom hood after playing Strangetown and Pleasantville for a while. My custom hood lasted for FOUR AND A HALF years before vanishing into space - and in all those years, I loved playing the game. We had a horrible internet connection back then. When I started playing Sims 3, I also played without any mods at all. And, although I could easily download stuff for Sims 4, I just do not want to. So my comparisons are perhaps unfair, since I pointed to CC re the decorations.

And, yes, the Sims 3 is a pretty game, as is Sims 4 (which I actually prefer to 3, because the Sims, with all their stupid emotions, are actually quite charming - but no mod on earth is going to put a toddler in that game. So mods cannot fix everything).But I kind of missed Sims with actual personality in Sims 3.

The day when I find somebody who plays Sims 3 WITHOUT any mods - and enjoys it - I may change my opinion.

I'd like to know what the 2 disagrees are for. You don't think open world and casT were improvements or...? Those are the things I see mentioned by people who play sims 3.

The thing is, Jo, I have a pretty good computer and TS2 scales very well, but TS3 does not. In TS2, I spend a couple of seconds waiting on a loading screen when I go to a community lot, in TS3, I watch them drive, and then I got to load the venue anyway (without a loading screen, but I gotta wait anyway).

Also, in TS3 I can control multiple people at different spots in the neighborhood, which is very nice, but I hardly do so, because of the constant load times when switching between two or multiple sims. And while it seems nothing like that is even possible in TS2, we do have community time and sethour to regulate time spend away, and we have teleporters and make selectable/add to family so we can still simulate our sims visiting one another (something which due to travel times, other sims not being at home and routing to doors is, again, quite a hassle in TS3).

The only thing we definitely cannot do in TS2 is visit the space between community lots and watch our sims drive around. But I don't really miss that.

Cast is another thing that is absolutely amazing in theory but horribly executed. It is a lagfest, even on an amazing computer, and if I give two objects the exact same color, for some reason, they usually still don't match at all (While, in TS2, if I have a pink lack-colored chair and a pink lack-colored table, they always do).

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy TS3, and if I had to chose between the TS2 base game, unmodded and the TS3 base game, unmodded, I would pick TS3. But TS2 is much more flexible, both when it comes to performance as well as moddability, and after all these years, many of the plus points of TS3 got less and less interesting to me (like cast, which I hardly use, even on a very good computer, because it is super slow with all EPs, and the open world, and story progression, which is so unusable if you play generational that you might as well not have it at all), while TS2 has only gotten better over the years, thanks to mods, big and small, wonderful lots and beautiful cc.

Sorry about that rant. XD I have a lot of feelings about this.

The things I like about 3 are:

-Open world
-Ambitions Professions
-More detailed face meshes (mainly around the nose)

I actually go back and forth between the games based on what I feel like playing. Right now I've been on a major TS2 binge.

I actually hate CAST because I feel that its presence gave the devs the excuse to be lazy and not put in good, matching recolors of everything or a big variety of objects in general. Plus, bedding besides uniform patterns is impossible, which I dislike. Most of all it slows down the game. CAST was a great, great concept, but I feel it was poorly implemented.

I don't think it's so much as that we hate the game, it's more that Aaron is trying to make one game into another. Like ordering a cheesecake off the menu and then telling the waitress he wants it more 'apple pie-like'. Just order an apple pie. Unless I'm mistaken and there's some reason Aaron can't play Sims 3?

Either way, they're both different games. I own both, but I get easily irritated by sims 3 because it has a lot of glitches I don't like, and I hate the graphics. Sims 2 is a lot more sandboxy and I know my way around the game well enough to do whatever I want. I can't even work out how to make new neighbourhoods in Sims 3, and I don't really buy into the whole 'pay to play' new neighbourhoods and DLC clothing collections.


Aaron, I hope you don't take that as me being angry at you. I'm just saying you should keep to a game you like. Maybe if you want to play sims 2, try to enjoy the game for what it is, instead of what it isn't.

It can't have come with M&G because I had romantic-yet-consequence-free hello and goodbye kisses in my Mac game, and Mac games only go up to BV. If you didn't have it in AL and you did in M&G, there are three possible explanations:
1) You had it but didn't notice, because it is dependent on chemistry and you had incompatible chemistry
2) You had a mod that suppressed the behavior, possibly as an unintended side effect, and that part of the mod got broken in M&G (or fixed, if it was unintended)
3) EAxis broke it post-BV and then fixed it again in M&G (Given their track record, this is pretty highly likely)

But I know for a fact that those kisses existed well before M&G, because I spent four years cussing at my screen every time that code kicked in.

Hm...Let's see...I started with Deluxe, University, Seasons, Pets, and AL. I added Freetime by itself and didn't notice greeting kisses although I always have lots of good chemistry going on in Drama Acres. I added OFB, BV, and M&G all at once; but Andrew has OFB and he doesn't get them; but Macs don't have BV and you got them, so - argh, I'm so confused!

BACK TO THE TOPIC OF RANDOM ...

Still hasn't found more body hair for my male sims, found some facial hair though.

But still need MORE... MORE ... MORE... MORE...

Also, needs to introduce more sims into the neighbourhood! Hmm... ideas ideas...

One of my biggest issues with rebuilding Cedar Hollow is the fact that I need to create a bunch of varied, unique Sims to populate it. I killed off the social group townies (which was a LOT harder than it should have been), and there weren't any normal townies to start with. Also, I stink at making unique male sims as well, so if I'm not careful, I'll end up with a neighborhood full of girls, which would be great for the local womanizer, but not so great for my more traditional family play style. Even if playing a womanizer can be fun. I just want to populate this hood before I want to go back to the Kaye family and have Ana activate Servo.

Oh, and there's also having to furnish some of the houses; I rarely want to build, so I usually stick some resized Maxis lots in the hood and call it done. Well, except for the fact that those lots need furniture.

Build all the women you want in CAS, then turn half of them into guys.

Solicit donations from other people.

Hunt for sims online. Ditto houses. There's lots of both available for upload.

Oh my last post on here? My wifi dongle works now! Yay!
Also, full neighborhood modding looks to be in the consideration progress. Stuff like INSERT UNSERNAME does to his 1984-esque world. Yet I'm thinking 1890s neighborhood.
Ouch, this is going to be hard.

Lost all of my CC for Sims 2 and had to restart all my neighborhoods because I had a few items that couldn't be deleted without the game imploding. Time to plan out a new neighborhood idea. .-.
Anyways as a side note, redownloading CC for Sims 2 made me wish CAS had the same option for recolors and Sims 4 where the different colors of the same clothes item stack. I have to decide if it's worth it downloading the recolors of the same object when it will take me forever to scroll through all of the pages.

Random thought: I think Sims 2 is the greatest PC game ever made (with the exception of Sims 4 I've played every iteration) and the best of the Sims. However, that doesn't mean someone else can't feel the same way about Sim 3, Sims 4 or even Sims 1.

We all like what we like and should be able to express that without issue.

"Wow, Belladonna Cove's Flythrough video looks so much smoother compared to the BG hoods..."
"Why do all the pretty houses have to be all-EP-and-SP only or pumped full of CC?"
"I'll never forgive myself for not taking up on the UC deal." (I didn't know about the I-LOVE-THE-SIMS code until it was too late.)
"Oh, so 8.1 can't render high-quality indoor sim shadows, but 8 can? WTF?"

Apparently they still give it out, as long as you whine at the tech support people enough...

...true, but for some reason I don't feel right doing that. I don't really know why.

Actually, Peni, you've just solved the puzzle. Macs DO have BV -- it's the very last EP that was ported over. Therefore, it must be BV that causes those particular types of kisses. Teamwork -- yay!

An argument is not a fight, and I certainly don't have anything about people having different preferences. In my hood lightning has struck with proper might and it looks like half of the townies have turned into coal. (Looks funny, every second Sim turning up at the bar a lightning victim ) No deaths, fortunately.

All the mods and cc I put in Widespot Only Folder are the same as in Megahood Folder. Except I left out a ton of clothes, furniture, etc. But there is nothing in WO that isn't in MH. So why does the love bed (from Apartment Life) in WO have blue bedding only, instead of the normal three colors, while in MH it has the normal three? So far as I know I don't have anything that touches that bedding in any way, shape, or form, and the few custom beddings in WO are all in MH, plus a bunch more.

Custom Content is weird. I'm not trying to fix this: that would require more motivation than I have for one item that maybe two sims, at most, would use. But why would it happen at all?

"Cedar Hollow now has a bowling alley! Even if it does look like a big ol' box!" I am not the best builder, but oh well. I wanted a bowling alley, so I built one!
And,
"Am I ready to have Ana turn on Servo? Wait, no. Everything has to be *perfect*!" I don't think I've ever put this much thought into setting up a hood before I officially "begin" my primary family's story (which begins with Ana activating Servo).

My random thoughts
"Should I put the Polgannon murderer to death or just life imprisonment?"
" I think I should build orphanages in all my hoods. Give all those townie kids and teens a chance to grow up"
" I wish I could play more but I need to work on this [expletive] paper

The Mann family tree in my Widespot is now worse-tangled than the Curious/Smith one. Just...don't ask.

Really? I was advised to get W8.1 instead of 7. I finally get used to no shadows under sims but I'm envious to those who get them.

I wish I could play more but I need to clean my flat.
I'm thinking about starting a new hood. I'm still debating.

I solemnly promise that I won't delete the thread no matter what y'all post in it!

If you insult my Sims, they may very well come out of the game, come out of my computer, and come and poke you. And I must warn you that some of them have lots of Body points and a very short fuse. But that's up to them. For my part, you can post whatever you like in this thread, and I won't delete it!

Oh my goodness I'm sorry. I didn't realize I was derailing the thread like this.

ahhh.....so if I don't invite 20 sims to a wedding, plus the 10 that already live on the lot, plus the 3 sim the teens brought home from school my game won't crash! yah!

hmmm which hood shall I play next....Tubman Dunes or Empteton. There's Aaron and Katrina's wedding in Empteton or Romana's endless cheating on Mr. Big??? Endless cheating of course-- wait they have triplets. Screw it I'll just delete some CC instead.

My computer stopped working and I'm praying to the plumbbob that it can be fixed with everything on it intact. My dear sims is one of the things I'm most worried about. I mean, of course I made backups in case the game would crash - on the computer. It never occured to me that the computer itself would crash. Silly, silly Kligma. Worst case scenario, I still have the files I started with this time around, so the families themselves still exist in a safe place, but then there's the progress I've made this time around, and the three sims that were born on the damaged computer. Ah, hang in there, my darlings. Hang in there.

I feel your pain Kligma. I've been there, and I was devastated. It's very upsetting, even if non-simmers might find that weird. I got mine back and I sincerely hope you do too

Thank you, gummilutt! Yeah, one really does come to care a lot about the Little rascals ^^

So my Pleasantview-Strangetown combo hood has kept my interest 5 days. 5 DAYS. This is sadly a record for me because I never finish anyth

I understand Kilgma's pain, too. My old hard drive died, and while it was dying, I was most panicked about losing my Sims. That, and I was disappointed that my 'drive chose to die right at the start of Thanksgiving break. I did retrieve my Sims, though.

I see someone disagrees with my post above (#67) where I promised never to delete this thread.

What's that "Disagree" supposed to mean? That they don't believe my promise? Or that they hate the thread so much that they think I ought to delete it?

Well, Ms/Mr Disagreeable, I'm sorry. I'm NOT going to delete the thread. And you disagreeing with me isn't going to change my mind!

I think they are disagreeing with you when you say your sims are going to come out of your computer and poke them. Everyone knows it's the other way around- humans pull sims out of the game to poke them.

That's how it works for me, anyway!

To me, even without ever having tried, just the idea of playing only one family, and having real control of only one sim in that family, is too confining. From what I heard and saw, I was quite charmed with most features of the new implementation of Plantsimism. And the idea of the entire hood loading as a unit - deminishing load times - sounded good as well. But when that results in only a few dozen sims per hood, and having to relocate them all the time as many players seemed to need to do... Nah, TS3 is not for me.

TS2 is the only version of Sims I've ever tried (and I was late to the party at that), and it was the first game in my life that I didn't put away after playing it for 3 months tops. Sure, there is a lot wrong with the game. But there is also a lot right. And the wrongs actually strengthen the community of modders, mod-requesters, CC-creators, recolor artists, etc. I cannot think of a game that does that much better, even after all those years.

The first time I started playing Don Lothario's lot in PV, he was still engaged to Cassy Goth. I had him throw a party, and invite all the lady friends he had. Cassy appeared first, and saw the Caliente sisters come in. Don stepped up to greet Nina with a romantic kiss, and Cassy just stood there looking and not responding. Howeve, not a minute later, as Nina decided to play some tonsil-hockey with Don, all hell broke loose and the engagement was ended then and there!

Clearly, when it's part of a greeting, kissing is no problem at all. And this all happened when I did not have AL/M&G yet, so those packs aren't responsible for it, either. I hope this helps

First - thank you for the mods, Boiling Oil - I use some of them and am very happy with the way they improve my game

Then : I have to go and wonder about this hello/goodbye kiss now even when it has never bothered me before! If it came with BV, maybe it was intended to say good-bye to the Sims in the Far East/Mountains/Islands to whom your Sim was attracted/made friends with/ had a bit of a holiday affair with - and, from what I have learned from reading about things - maybe EA never intended it to go over to the general hood, but we know by now how they sometimes did not do what they had intended to do in the first place.

I know why I downloaded and installed gummilutt's mod . Because my young sims used kiss greeting and got "Kissed (sim) first time" memory and it disabled "First Kiss".

@Justpetro, you need not thank me for my mods here, you know? I made most of them because I wanted them myself I *would* be most appreciative, however, if you would not put a space in my name, thank you. Sorry to be a stickler, but it's one word

Anyway, that's most certainly true: EA/Maxis often had plans/ideas that in the end they seemed unable to deliver. They've made bunches of mistakes which never got fixed. At least not by themselves. I'm not sure if that was the case with this one, though.



Ah, yeah, THAT is true. Teens do get a First Kiss memory from this greeting and lose the opportunity for a proper Very First Kiss! That's a very good reason to mod it away... I may have to have a look at gummilutt's mod. Thanks for the link, Annaminna :lovestruc

Make a mental note to spell BoilingOil correctly in future.

I have not realised that teens get this memory (my poor teens are so busy that they do not always get that first kiss before going off to Uni ) - going to look at Gummilutt's mod.

That kiss did come with BV. Peni helped me work it out. It showed up when she installed OFB, BV, and M&G all at once. It can't be a problem with OFB, because AndrewGloria has OFB (but not the other two) and does not have that kissing problem. It can't be M&G because I had the kissing problem in my Mac game, and M&G is not Mac-compatible. However, BV is Mac-compatible and I had the problem in a game with BV installed. Therefore, the kissing problem showed up in BV. Logic and teamwork!

Smooching directly on the mouth is how you say goodbye to a casual acquaintance in the far east/mountains.islands, I'll keep that in mind.

You know how there is an effect for hot air balloons and a flying pig that is triggered by a water tower? How come there is no Santa sleigh effect triggered by winter season? Or some sorta Jack Frost effect that acts similarly to the UFO.

Also, why not some christmas light 'landmarks' that you can connect like the telephone pole? That sparkle in colors? That way you could decorate the neighborhood in neighborhood view.

With the above, you'll probably need a pine tree with christmas lights as well, and criquette-like neighborhood deco to make a sorta 'park' that is not a lot.

Is anybody planning on making a christmas card with their sim game? Especially is you get that sky box thing for the neighborhood, the game can look quite scenic:

Because in some places Christmas falls in the middle of summer! Oh yes, Santa goes surfing here.

Nice picture though, very pretty,

Ah, I'm always forgetting. I seem to be having short memory these days

Lovely picture Rinchan. :lovestruc

Jo, I never get used to that about Oz. I've only lived here 3 years, so the reverse seasons thing still throws me off.

I didn't realize you were new to Oz. Hope you are liking it.

@NewSimgirl2011, if you're still needing body hair for your sim guys, Quinctia has a fixed overlay box on her Livejournal here.

I started playing TS2 again while waiting for Get Together to be released, and now I'm kinda hooked again lol. Playing legacy style (as always) and realizing I've missed it a lot actually! Here are some things that I've thought about while playing:

The lights are BRIGHT! Were they always this bright? In TS3 and TS4 you need 3 or 4 lights per room just to get decent lighting - in TS2 I find myself having one light per room and even that's too much sometimes (right now I play with most of the lights off because I don't like how saturated everything becomes when they're on, lol).

I don't understand how the graphics of an 11 year old game can be better than the most recent installement of the franchise? Seriously

I missed the little cutscenes - they're so cute!

The chance cards are great too (even though I got the same nature related hobby question 3 times and no matter what answer I gave, she lost her interest in nature. Mess.) I remember being extremely lucky back in the day and getting a chance card with an answer that granted like 50,000 simoleons - goodbye cheap furniture and living in a shoe box

The needs decrease hella fast. My legacy founder was pregnant and had food poisoning at the same time - I spent the better part of her pregnancy keeping her from falling asleep in her food

So many public lots and there are actually sims there.

One thing I haven't missed is the friends requirement for job promotions and the fact that they're all clingy and dramatic af and disown you as a friend if you haven't called them in a day and a half lmao

@Pelouse Always that bright. As a Sims 2 player the darkness was one of my beefs with TS3.

Remember to tick the perks related to needs, they really do help.

You can mod out the friend requirement. http://www.simbology.com/smf/index.php?topic=15.0

It's more the style than the colour of a Sim's hair that makes it pleasing to me. I like Andrew's hair, and it's pure base game Maxis. Generally I like hair that covers the ears, and that is combed forward onto a fringe, or partial fringe covering at least part of the forehead. (They seem to be called "bangs", but I never heard of them before I came to MTS.) That goes for both males and females. On average my female Sims may have slightly longer hair, but the styles are similar. You can get an idea of what I like by looking at the pictures of my CAS Sims I've posted here.

Maybe it's because I play in low-resolution graphics, but I don't think I really get the point of Pooklet recolours. As I see it, they offer a wider range of hair colours, similar to Peggy's, but with more exotic names. As they're standardised and used by different creators, I suppose a Sim can change her hairstyle and it will still look like her hair, because the basic colour is the same. And maybe they're just higher quality. Personally, at the resolution I play at, Peggy's and other colours always look realistic enough. Maybe some of you devotees of Pooklet can "sell" her hair colours to me. Why are they so good?

I prefer to Ignore the hobby-related chance cards; too little gain, too much risk and no way to rig the odds in your favor. If you win, you almost always gain one measly point of hobby enthusiasm...which you can gain easily enough from actually doing the hobby. Whoopie. If you lose, you might lose a point of hobby enthusiasm, but you could just as easily lose money or get demoted, maybe even fired. No thanks.

But those Career Track chance cards? I usually take those...or always take those if either A) the Sim has the second aspiration perk in the Work column ("Business Instinct") or B) was lucky enough to Save the lot shortly before the chance card came up. Carmilla von Carstein (one of my vampires whom I won't shut up about) used to live in a crummy three-story tower right out of college. She reached Mad Scientist, went to work one night, came up with the chance card, beat it and pulled in $45,000. She lives in a hilltop manor now.


Just get them up to max Short-Term Relationship (and perhaps even Long-Term Relationship as well) each time you see them, and they won't be so much of a bother. A few suggestions for accomplishing that:

• Popularity as your primary Aspiration, with all four perks. Invite them over and Chat the blazes out of them.
• Romance as your primary Aspiration, with all four perks. Invite them over, Smooth Talk, Backrub, Smooth Talk, Romantic Hug, Romantic Kiss, Make Out, Make Out and WooHoo them once or twice.
• Throw a party with the low-relationship Sims as the guests (but try to keep them to three guests or fewer) and get them all in the hot tub with you. Even if the party tanks, you'll still pump your relationships back up quite nicely.
• Invite them via phone invitation or party. Plunk down a bubble machine. Seriously, why do Sims love the bubble machine so much?
• Buy Love Potion 8.5 from the Gypsy Matchmaker or a High Witch; if you're a witch yourself, save some money and brew it yourself. Invite them over, drink the potion and get your WooHoo on.
• Build your Mechanical skill, take a vacation to Twikkii Island and get a Voodoo Doll from the Witch Doctor, then come home, invite your nagging friends over and hit them with Voodoo...Friendship or Voodoo...Romance. Keep the bathroom and the kitchen open, and be ready for any voodoo backfires.
• Take a three-day vacation to Twikkii Island with plenty of money. Come home with oodles of souvenirs. Pick the Je Ne Sais Quoi vacation perk. Smother your house with souvenir shelves full of Tropical souvenirs. Invite them over and get your WooHoo on. If the season is Spring, bonus!
• Take a three-day vacation to Three Lakes with plenty of money. Come home with oodles of souvenirs. Smother your house with souvenir shelves full of Mountain souvenirs. Invest in some Cool Shades if your Charisma sucks (or if you're overflowing with Aspiration points, screw it; just buy the shades anyway). Invite them over. Get your Mood up to Gold or Platinum, clap in the Cool Shades, Chat, Chat, Chat, frickin' Chat, turn on a stereo, Slap Dance, Chat some more.
• Take a however-many-day vacation to Takemizu Village, find the Pagoda in the Shadows, make tea for the Wise Old Man, get the Dragon Legend, come home, invite them over and sit them down with some Dragon Legend. One telling of the tale is usually all it takes, but a second telling couldn't hurt.
• If your home has a fishing pond, just invite them over, start fishing and invite them all to join. If their moods seem to be tanking, cook up some of that delicious, sparkly fish that you just caught and call them to dinner. Then it's back to fishing. Sims love fishing, possibly even more than they love bubble machines.
• If you're a Good or powerful enough Neutral Witch/Warlock, invite them over, blast them with Compello Acceptus and do whatever you want with them. They have to accept.
• If you're a powerful Infallibly Good Witch/Warlock, invite them over (or cast Appello Simae if they're being stubborn) and blast them with Mactoamicus.
• Wait until your Social is low, then call that Sim just to chat on the phone. Just make sure that you have a Simmy hour or two to spare.

Some of these ideas may or may not apply, depending on whether or not your Sim is hardcore Popularity, hardcore Romance or a compromise between the two. Carmilla (the vampire/witch with the big house back there) is a perfectly bisexual Romance Sim. WooHoo is just her way of saying "Hi, how have you been?". She blew through her "20 Simultaneous Lovers" Lifetime Want and attained Permaplatinum about 20 Sims ago; she has racked up around 36 to 40 lovers from both sexes (because being a vampire means being able to go on lots of dates every night), and her phone rings almost constantly. She has no trouble snatching up job promotions.

There are mods for that! Inge Jones made a "More Realistic Relationship decay" looooooong ago, and it's still available right here at Simlogical. I know that some others made similar mods, but I can't for the life of me remember what these mods are called, or where to find them. But Inge's mod, I can tell you, works miracles!

Thanks guys, I'll take a look at the mods!

Also, kinda unrelated, but is there a way to stop the showers from leaking water everytime the sims take a shower? It's not broken, but the floor gets soakin' anyway.

Are the Sims taking the showers Sloppy? That's just one of a Sloppy Sim's drawbacks. The only way to stop the shower water from spilling around the shower room is to somehow make the Sim not Sloppy.

But Sloppy Sims can also save time by using the shower to satisfying their Bladder Need along with their Hygiene Need...peeing in the shower, you know? So they're not all bad.

(...but maybe that's why the shower overflows. Ew.)

What if there was some sort of shrub that has 2 options (start and stop). Click on start, and then until you click stop, it would remember the placement of deco items for a specific season or party type. That way we could bring to TS2 the TS3 seasons decoration feature. Dunno if possible though.

@Pelouse: Pizzatron-9000 is right about the cause of the puddles. But there is a mod to drain away leakage water, pee puddles, rain puddles and the likes. It's a drain (duh) available here on MTS, somewhere... Let me go have a look where it was again...

ETA: Yeah, HERE it is!
And there's an invisible recolor for it here. That should do, right?

I do not have such a big problem with my Sims keeping their friends. Regular outings just for fun and a number of small house parties seem to do the trick.