#ts2 guide

[celestialspritz]

Why Sims 2 has been so broken the last ten years

This is down to my own research, and I'm not saying it is the one and only reason why the game is so broken these days, but I have some points worth mentioning.

So, you're bored one day. You remember this game you had so much fun playing a few years ago, or maybe as a child. It's The Sims 2!

The game has a few issues than from when you last remembered playing, so you search on google for some fixes for the tiny resolution, and among the countless posts you may find, you may find this:

Or this:

(to the creators and players mentioned here this isn't me making a dig at you, i'm just pointing out some cc that could affect the game from working properly. your stuff is all beautiful :D)

Lesya's game is gorgeous!!! Oh, how can I get it to look like that?

So you, with a clean, vanilla (ugly) game you decide to download a few mods she listed, such as:

Skylines by GCKP (you can get optimised ones by me here)

Skies by Lowedeus (you can get optimised ones by me here)

Trees by Criquette (you can get optimised ones here)

No More Blurriness by Voeille (you can get optimised snow only here)

Cool! And then you notice some cheats than can give the game that open-world, interactive feel. Even better!

And you shove them into your folder and you boot up the game. Everything's going great!

Until...

You search hundreds of posts looking for the fix. Some recommend 3rd-party tools, but they seem to make the problem worse. You reinstall, finding you only wasted your time. Something has to be causing this, but you'd never guess it'd be the mods everybody swore by.

Well, in fact, it is. Partly.

I've struggled with pink flashing since 2019, when I reinstalled Sims 2 after I got a decent computer for once. I did everything above, searched for fixes, found Lesya's blog which was my primary inspiration. It was through Lesya's guide that I was able to make my game look pretty!

These mods, which are a staple in the modding community, are beautiful indeed... but what if I told you that the reason they're so beautiful, is because they're high-quality. With textures soaring up to 4k, when, hang on--

In 2004, 4k resolution was... probably unheard of. With the leading monitor size being 1024x768, what would be the point of using such huge textures on an engine that was designed for monitors of at least this size? Would you be able to see the detail of 4k on a monitor of that size? Definitely not.

The max visiting sims, okay, a little hit or miss. If your sims are all wearing high poly alpha CC, then it's a problem. If not, good luck.

Then comes the cheats I mentioned. The lot skirt cheat expands the view distance a significant amount. With the mergenhoodflora cheat, that displays more trees. Combining the two, what do you get?

A massive view distance, blinded by trees.

With skies and skylines with large textures up to 4k, and trees with textures up to 2k, The Sims 2 will collapse. It's like forcing an old man with health conditions to do 20 situps, again and again.

It'll overexert him, by the very least. And you're overexerting the game by cramming custom content that is not optimised for the engine TS2 was built on.

So please, next time you encounter the pink soup, please check your CC folders, and research changes and cheats before you put them into your game. You will enjoy the game much more if you do this, and won't encounter this problem so often.

Don't use Graphics Rules Maker

Instead, opt for a maxis original Graphics Rules uploaded here by Veronavillequiltingbee. It's essentially a rewrite of an old tutorial I made a long time ago.

Once you download the file from VVQB, open DXDIAG by pressing WinKey+R and typing 'dxdiag'.

This value I've underlined is what you need to put after seti textureMemory. Open the sgr file and do CTRL-F and input seti textureMemory.

Add the value from DXDIAG and then save it.

You can use GRM for adding your GPU to the game, but I do not recommend it for anything but that.

Optimising the game... inside the game

*shoves GRM off the table*

We're going to go into TS2 in-game settings for this one.

These settings are optimal if you play CC-heavy households. It will ease the load on your game to make space for the heavy CC you have in your current household. You can tweak these when you want to take photos outside, but for playing I recommend them all to be off - especially at community lots as there are lots of sims there.

I never see anybody talking about Object Hiding.

Object Hiding hides objects from floors that aren't in view. If you're playing downstairs, objects upstairs won't be rendered, thus minimising the load on your game.

I have reflections and smooth edges off because I use ReShade.

Snow on Ground is optional. Sometimes snow can cause pink flashing, I believe it's due to texture replacements that are huge in size too, Voeille's is 2k. I've linked a resized one above.

This post will be updated with later findings. I hope you all found it informative :]

[c0smodrom-sims]

Making your own career/NPC outfits (and attaching them to custom and default careers)

Tutorials I’ve used that helped me understand this a little bit more: SuperFly’s „Attaching custom clothes to careers” @rio-sims „Adding extra options to NPC and Career Outfit Templates” @itsdiamondeyesuniverse mini-tutorial on random clothes and hair and some general knowledge from Hat’s Simpe Tricks

I’m just compiling them and adding results of my own experimenting. It will be pretty long, so everything is under the cut.

Download Template files [SFS] or [Google Drive]

First step is to understand what makes an outfit template.

Looking at my empty template (OutfitTemplate-Empty.package), you can see 4 files. You don’t touch the BHAV and OBJf, they control the behaviours and functions and such. Good practice is to change the name of the OBJD and NREF to something unique. For custom outfits, you will have to change the GUID in the OBJD, but I will touch on that later in the tutorial.

But that’s just an empty template to fill with your own outfits. Every variation of an outfit is made of 2 files:

3IDR (3D ID Referencing File) - This one contains skeleton resource and hair/clothes property sets. AGED (Age Data) - This one pretty much contains instructions on how to read the 3D ID.

In my 3D ID template files you can see the first line is a Resource Node - that’s the skeleton. It always has to be there, don’t delete it. Second line is a property set - that’s the outfit that you will be replacing. 3D ID can have many lines of property sets in particular order, depending on what Age Data is saying.

(My SimPE shows Age Data in CPF, which reads hexadecimal, but sometimes can also show it in XML, which reads decimal. If some lines are different in decimal, I will put it in brackets.)

If you open up any of my Age Data templates, you can see a lot of lines that may make sense intuitively, and some that make no sense at all. Here are lines that are actually useful and how to change them:

AGE 2 - Child (also 2 in decimal) 4 - Teen (also 4 in decimal) 40 - Young Adult (64 in decimal) 8 - Adult (also 8 in decimal) 48 - Young Adult + Adult (72 in decimal) 10 - Elder (16 in decimal) 58 - Young Adult + Adult + Elder (88 in decimal)

I think it’s better to always include Young Adults with Adults. If for example you don’t use mods that enable jobs for YA, then nothing happens and nothing breaks. But if you do, then your YA can wear their job uniform.

GENDER 1 - Female 2 - Male 3 - Unisex (only for children!)

STRETCH It’s only important in teens - they use adult skeleton, but smaller. For adults/elders stretch will say 1, for teens - 0,94. Children use their own skeleton, so their stretch is also 1.

VALIDPARTS 3e4 - If you want to add hair to your outfit (996 in decimal) 3e0 - If you don’t want hair in your outfit (992 in decimal)

LISTCNT Number of elements in your 3D ID. Technically counts from 0, but as the first item is always a skeleton, for ease of counting - it’s the number of property sets used. For only fullbody outfits it will be 1, fullbody + hair or top + bottom = 2, hair + top + bottom = 3.

SKELETONKEYIDX Position of the skeleton in the 3D ID. Always 0, as it’s the first item, counted from 0.

LS, LK, LE All 3 needed together. They are counted from 0. So the first 3 lines will be named ls0, lk0 and le0_0. If you add another item to your outfit (eg. hair + fullbody clothes), next 3 lines will be named ls1, lk1 and le1_0, then ls2, lk2 and le2_0 etc.

LS Always 1.

LK The numbers are already in decimal, so the same in CPF and XML. From what I’ve tested and I’m sure of:

65537 = Hair/hat 65544 = Fullbody 65540 = Top 65552 = Bottom

LE Which line in 3D ID corresponds with this item, counting from 0. As line 0 is always a skeleton, and dealt with in the „skeletonkeyidx” line, you can just count property sets.

If you use my Age Data templates - you don’t have to worry about all that, but I made this tutorial only because I really wanted to know that. So maybe someone else would want to know too :P

Now that you can understand what makes a working outfit, lets make one! This will be split into 4 parts: part 1 - making a new, custom outfit; part 2 - replacing existing outfits; part 3 - attaching outfits to careers; part 4 - testing if it works.

Part 1 - Making a custom outfit

In this example I will make an outfit for adults only, for the sake of shorter tutorial :P

First step: Open „OutfitTemplate-Empty.package” in SimPE. I will change my OBJD and NREF names. In the OBJD you have to change the GUID (the one with all zeroes in the template) - how to make a GUID? Click here to generate 8 random characters in hexadecimal (refresh for a new string), delete any spaces, then put „0x” at the start. Then check with this spreadsheet if it conflicts with any Maxis objects. My new GUID will be 0x1234ABCD (only for tutorial purposes, yours should be more random to avoid clashing with CC objects too). Save the file as a copy.

Now we’re going to add actual outfits. First, one for female adult sims. You have to add a 3D ID template (in this case for teens/adults/elders) and an Age Data template that includes your preferred combo. For this one, I will get AF-Hair-Fullbody.

If you look at the Age Data, you can see here that it’s for Young Adult and Adult female sims (age = 48), it has hair (validparts = 3e4) and contains 2 property sets in 3D ID (listcnt). In the ls/lk/le lines you can see that it contains hair (65537) in the first property set and full body (65544) in the second one. (Though the order of the property sets is in the names of the template files, so you don’t have to check every time!)

Now we go to the 3D ID. If you want to attach Maxis clothes or hair, use Scenegraph Resource Finder. Set it to Property Set Search and type your hair/clothes name there (found through the default database or the debug mode in CAS). I’ve chosen afhairupdoweddingveil_black. Doesn’t matter if you choose _black, _blond, etc, your sim will automatically wear the hair in their own hair colour (for CC hair - only if it was binned correctly). Let it search. When you’ve found what you’re looking for, note the group and instance. Now open the 3D ID. Select the property set in it and change the group and instance to the ones of your chosen hair/clothes. Commit and save.

For the fullbody outfit, I’m gonna use CC clothes (AF Lolita Dress and Boots by animera at MTS). First, make sure you have a mesh and a recolour in your Downloads folder so the game can access it. Then open the recolor and find the corresponding property set. Write down group and instance and close the file. Open up your outfit template file again and go back to your 3D ID. Click on the property set line that you set up before and click „add” to clone that line. Now change the group and instance as you did before. Commit and save.

Remember that any hair and clothes used in an outfit has to be enabled for Everyday!

That’s all for the female sim, now onto the male sim.

As before - add the 3D ID template and Age Data template. I will choose AM-Hair-Fullbody.

As you can see, my new 3D ID and Age Data have the same instance as the previous ones - they will clash. So we have to change each new 3D ID and Age Data’s instance to one higher. So change instance to 2 and click force commit on both.

Next steps are the same as before - add property sets. I’ve added a propeller hat and a fig leaf, classy! Commit and save.

That’s pretty much it. If you want to add other age/gender combos? You can, just each new 3D ID and Age Data pair need to change their instances to one higher. You want to add like 20 options for every age and gender? You sure can, same thing as before - instance number goes up (remember, it’s hexadecimal so after 9 you got A - F, then 10 etc). You can have one outfit with hair, other without hair, one top and bottom and one full body, one for female adult and 10 for male adult, doesn’t matter, all combos work, as long as the property sets in the 3D ID are in the same order as in corresponding Age Data.

But right now, my custom outfit is done.

Part 2 - Default replacing existing outfits

While you can attach custom outfit to any career, default replacing outfits is the only (known to me) way to change NPC outfits without digging into BHAVs (which I don’t understand lmao).

First step is to clone the outfit you’re replacing. Open Object Workshop, click Start and wait a bit as it loads. Then go to Other > Outfits and find your chosen outfit. I’ll use „Outfit_NPC_Maid_test”. Click Next. Then if it says Recolour, change it to Clone. Uncheck every box!!! Click Next. Save the file.

If you look into the Age Datas and 3D ID - they almost always look like a mess, so we’re going to replace them entirely.

Doesn’t really matter which age/gender combo you replace with which, but I’m going to check. In my example, instance 1 is for an adult female, instances 2, 3 and 4 are for an adult male.

Right click on the 3D ID, instance 1, then click „Replace” and choose my 3D ID template. As you can see, group and instance remained unchanged, this is very important! Now right click on the Age Data, instance 1. Replace it with an Age Data of your choice. I will use AF-Hair-Fullbody. As I explained the process in part 1, I won’t go into detail here. I will also replace instance 2 with a 3D ID template and Age Data AM-Hair-Fullbody. I will replace female outfit with pink gorilla suit and male outfit with diver suit, because why not.

If you want to add more options: as stated in part 1 - when you add new 3D ID and Age Datas, instance numbers go up, but in this case you also need to change the group to the same as your default (in my case, the maid outfit has group 0x7FE81E93).

Maid outfit has 1 version for an adult female and 3 for an adult male. Of course you can add more, but what if it has more, and you want less? I want to have only 1 version for each gender. How to go about that? You need to replace all of the 3D IDs and Age Datas, but nobody said some of them can’t be identical. So I will replace my instances 2, 3 and 4 with the same outfit - diver suit. If I only replaced instances 1 and 2, I would have a chance to get a diver sut man maid, but also a chance to get 2 variations of vanilla man maids. Now I have 3 variations for male sims but they are identical, so all of them will spawn in diver suits.

You don’t need the OBJD, OBJf, NREF and BHAV, as we didn’t edit anything there. You can delete them from your package.

Save the file and you’re done!

Part 3 - Attaching outfits to custom and Maxis careers

If you replaced a default career or NPC outfit, you don’t need to do anything else, it just works. But for a new, custom outfit - you need to attach it to a career. Remember the GUID that you set in the OBJD? Mine was 0x1234ABCD. Write down yours somewhere.

For a custom career, open it up in SimPE and open Bidou’s Career Editor. Choose the level you want. On the bottom left, under the description, you can select some of Maxis outfits, or just type your own GUID. Do that, and your selected outfit name will change to Other. Close the Career Editor and save your file. You’re done :P

For a Maxis career, use Object Workshop. Choose Other > Sim Type, then select your career. Be sure to pick the one you need, as most careers have an Adult and Teen/Elder version, and in Object Workshop it just shows 2 identical names. I’m choosing the adult version of a Criminal career and clone it (with all boxes unchecked!!!). Save the file!! Now the steps are identical as in custom careers - open up Bidou’s Career Editor and change the outfit GUID for your chosen level to your own GUID. Close the Editor, but don’t save the file yet. Now you can see one little file that has been changed, as indicated by the italicised name. This file is named „Outfit GUIDs” and it’s the only file we need - delete the rest. Save the file and you’re done!

You can also edit the „Outfit GUIDs” file manually (if you, for example, don’t want to clone a career and start from scratch every time you need to make an edit). Lines 0x00 and 0x01 have to stay empty (0x0000), as they are reserved for Unemployed. Level 1 is represented by lines 0x02 and 0x03. You put your GUID there, but split in 2 halves and in reverse order. My GUID was 0x[1234][ABCD], so it will look like this: Line 0x02 - 0xABCD (level 1, 2nd half of GUID) Line 0x03 - 0x1234 (level 1, 1st half of GUID) Next lines work the same - 0x04 (2nd half) and 0x05 (1st half) for lvl 2, 0x06 (2nd half) and 0x07 (1st half) for lvl 3 etc.

Part 4 - Testing!

When all your needed files are in your Downloads folder, open the game and choose a testing hood. Make sure your boolprop cheat is on! Open a lot with at least 1 sim (we will be spawning more of them).

For testing careers, make sure you have enough sims to see your desired results. My career outfit had 1 version for adult females and 1 for adult males, so I only need 2 sims. If your outfit has more variations for the same age/gender combo, you will have to spawn a lot of sims to make sure you will get all of them! As you know, this game is famously not very good at being random, so you can have two variations of an outfit and you can get 10 sims with the first version and only the 11th will spawn with the second :P For spawning new sims, shift click on a sim and select Spawn > Tombstone of L and D. I clicked „New Adult Male” and got a random dude.

Now to get them jobs easily, I shift click on a newspaper and choose a job. You can also set their job level. For my sims, I need to test Criminal career level 1.

Now give them a wardrobe (or a few, if you have a lot of sims to change) and make them dress for work. As you can see - my sims are wearing their new pretty outfits! (Excuse my "I use lowest possible graphical settings so my laptop doesn't explode" ass screenshots)

To test NPC outfits, shift click on a sim and select Spawn > NPC and Townie Maker. First choose a gender, then find the EP of the NPC you want to create, in my case it’s the basegame, so I select Make NPC > Maid. It will spawn a random NPC of your chosen gender. You can cycle it a bit, clicking on the NPC maker again and selecting Repeat Last. If your outfit has many variations, cycle as many times as needed to make sure all your options appear correctly. When you’re done, click on the NPC maker and choose Kill. Now choose the other gender and repeat. Cycle as many times as needed. I only needed to see 1 female maid in a gorilla suit, but I needed to cycle a bit to see if nothing slipped through the cracks with the male maids. Everything works great and they were all divers :P

After all that testing we’re done! Have fun with making all of the outfits your heart desires! ♡

[squaretable-sims]

Make your own UberHood with all the townies!

Yes! You!  At this stage, to my knowledge, you can only do this the lazy way when creating an Uberhood new, from scratch. It may well be possible - but IDK. The ancestors... well thats a hard job which I dont think anyone wants to tackle. Not all of these subhoods add the NPCs, but most do. Its hit and miss. But thats part of the fun I guess!

Base Game

Pleasantview This is easy, meetme already did the work for us. Thanks Komei, Goopy, I guess you were too iconic. Their Simblr Here.

Strangetown Sunrader has subhoodified Dorsal Axe’s Fixed Strangetown. Dorsal Axe’s is a dream for purists who merely wish to not borkify their games. Find Sunrader’s Website here. 

Veronaville

Once again, Sunrader comes to the rescue. They used A technique of their own invention to extract Townies and NPCs, added them to MeetMe’s template, and then converted to a subhood. Once again, their website is here.

University

Introducing ZachJohnUnlimited on MTS. While he has gone through the process of adding Townies and NPCs to MeetMe’s Bluewater Village, Riverblossom Hills and Desiderata Valley using CAS, this is their work from scratch, and includes all of the Dormies plus extra lore.  Find Sim State University, La Fiesta Tech and Academie Le Tour on their MTS Post here. 

Nightlife

Downtown Did you know all the Downtownies were made in CAS? I didn’t. Yes, that includes Joy Despret Lakshmi Byall. Find them on Meetme’s Livejournal, the place which started this all.

Open for Business, Seasons and Freetime

Bluewater Village Zach has manually recreated the townies which werent yeeted by meetme, here in Bluewater Village. Get it from MTS here.

Riverblossom Hills As above, plus a version with the RBH NPCs. Get it from MTS here.

Desiderata Valley As above again. Get it from MTS here

Apartment Life

Belladonna Cove I did the work of converting TheNeonPlumb’s CAS work myself. Get the deetz on that thread. This and Downtown are the only ones with no NPCs. Get it from my Simblr here. 

Bon Voyage

I don’t think there are clean templates. Can someone let me know if there is one? Twikkii Island and especially Takemizu Village are diabolical. Three Lakes gets a pass (a mountain pass, hahaha). Just use the ones that ship with the game, god. Unrelated, ProfesionalPartyGuest has done a good job at making Locals which are less terrible. click on the hood names earlier to find em.

Thanks to @knut-rocketman who helped me with putting this list together over discord when I was off my face on Vertigo medication (I made my game into a BFBVS several times). Jawusa’s empty hoods might also be of use.

[osab]

Hii, Osab. I have a question. Why do you not recommend to play on fullscreen for modern windows? I am playing on my laptop and I have Windows 11 and fullscreen is more high quality than borderless.

It says in the guide but it's mainly because on a lot of systems it causes the DirectX 9.0c error when booting the game for some reason. It can also cause issues/delays or crashes when alt-tabbing off and back to the game. But if those issues don't affect you, there's nothing wrong with using it.

Fullscreen isn't any higher quality than borderless at the same resolution. maybe you were using a lower res on borderless and windows was DPI scaling it?

[iowafashionweekbegins]

hi, i just want to let everyone know, if any of you are frustrated with the state of TS4, i've compiled several different tutorials and made an all-in-one guide for playing TS2 on modern computers. it has all the fixes necessary to prevent crashes + pink flashing, and tips to make the game look just as nice as TS4, if not better!

please let me know if this guide is useful for you, or if anything needs to be changed/added/removed. i've tested it myself on multiple computers, and, while it works for me, there are many possibilities for error, considering that everyone's computer is different.

thank you for reading! i hope you like it :]

last updated: september 21, 2024, update info in the replies.

[belladovah]

Every Cheat you need for The Sims 2 + a userStartup.cheat File

I've just released a tutorial on all the cheats I use for The Sims 2 as well as how to make or install a userStartup.cheat file!

Check Out the Video:

✨Check Out the Website Post✨

Includes a downloadable copy of my userStartup.cheat file!

[sonqgmi-sims]

SIMS 2 • Custom Neighborhoods (4 Part Series COMPLETED)

Hey everyone! I think I forgot to share, but I finished my 4 Part Creating Custom Neighborhood series for Sims 2 on my Youtube Channel! All videos are linked below if you missed it!

I also have 2 separate tumblr posts with Map Templates and a quick Masterguide to plan 'hoods!

Best Neighborhood Templates | Links to Templates Planning Your Neighborhoods | Masterguide Creating Unique Sims Creating Custom Maps

[plumbtales]

Casually reading the Prima Guide (as one do) and like, why do Ophelia like that? 💀

[thesims2psp]

good advice

[shinki26]

The Sims 2 Disc Installation and fix guide for Windows 10/11 PCs

I’ve been seeing around the internet people demonizing the discs and saying they are “bad” “old” “unsupported” “buggy” “ancient” and a bunch of other bad words and also outright refusing to give support to disc users.

I’m writing this guide to hopefully instruct people on how to properly install, fix and run their disc based The Sims 2 game and also educate you on why the discs are not as bad as everyone makes them to be.

Just a warning: I’m a Windows 10 user, I don’t know if exactly everything is going to be 100% accurate to Windows 11, but the game SHOULD work the same on it.

First things first, some clarifications about common misconceptions of both the Ultimate Collection and TS2 disc games I’ve been seeing being tossed around:

1. The Ultimate Collection has compatibility patches for modern hardware: 

This one is actually kinda true? The UC did have some patches made to it compared to a fully patched disc game but no one has been able to tell what exactly it did.

A fully patched, fixed and correctly installed disc game should work the same as the Ultimate Collection, with no difference in compatibility or game performance.

2. SecuROM doesn’t work on modern OSes so you can’t run the game off the discs: 

Totally untrue. People who says SecuROM doesn’t work on Windows 10/11 haven’t actually tried running a game that uses it at all. It 100% works even on Windows 11. What doesn’t work on modern OSes is SafeDisc, which all packs released before Bon Voyage used. So if you install BV and any pack released after it, the game IS going to run normally as it’s using SecuROM instead.

3. But SecuROM makes the game lag: 

True, for some machines it does happen. But as I will explain in the guide, you can uninstall SecuROM with the official removal tool and just use NoCD executables to have it not install itself again.

4. The discs requires Flash and it’s been deprecated:

No, the discs DO NOT require Flash. The only thing that uses it in the setup is a pop up that used to ask you if you wanted to register your game. Since of course you can’t register it anymore, you can just close it and it WILL NOT affect anything.

That out of the way, let’s get to the guide!

What you are going to need:

-All original TS2 patches released by EA back in the day: They’re all hosted HERE on ModTheSims. 

Please, be aware that there may be multiple variatons of a patch. You need to pick the right one for your game. If you have The Sims 2 Base Game DVD version, you will have to download the second option where it says “DVD Patch Notes”, for example. For Pets and Seasons the “DD” patches mean Digital Download, so if you have them on either CD or DVD them both are going to use the “Disk Patch” If you seem to be not able to download them, right click the download link and choose “Save Link As”.

If you have The Sims 2 Deluxe / Double Deluxe / Holiday Edition / Other compilations you’re not going to need the Base Game patch as those versions are already updated!! You also don’t need the Nightlife patch if you have Deluxe or Double Deluxe!! The same thing applies for the Collections: You don’t need to patch their EPs!!

-Grumpy Loader: Get it HERE on ModTheSims.

-If you have Bon Voyage and/or packs released after it... SecuROM Removal Tool: Get it HERE.

-If you have Mansion & Garden Stuff... Sims2RPC: Get it HERE on ModTheSims by @lazyduchess! If you DO NOT have this pack, you’re going to need to source a NoCD executable of the game based on your latest installed pack.

-If you DO NOT Have Mansion & Garden Stuff... 4GB Patch: Get it HERE.

-Graphics Rules Maker: Get it HERE.

Having downloaded everything, you can start inserting your Base Game disc one! Or your Base Game DVD!

Installing the Base Game:

There’s no mystery in this part, install your game normally as you would back in 2004 following the instructions of the setup.

Three of the biggest problems I’ve seen people have when installing the Base Game is:

1. I get a red pop up saying “This app has been blocked for your protection”

This happens usually on Double Deluxe games and later EPs such as Bon Voyage, FreeTime and Apartment Life.

There’s two ways you can circumvent this. First one is the one that I personally prefer:

-Open the Task Manager -On the top left, click “File” -Click “Run new task” -Click “Browse...” -Now go to your disc drive in your PC and open it, select Autorun.exe -The target box should be pointing to “D:\Autorun.exe”. The “D” letter changes depending on what letter your disc drive is set to in your PC -Check the “Create this task with administrative privileges” box -Now click OK.

The setup is going to run normally now. When you are installing EPs that show you this error, you can do the same thing to every one.

The other way is just to change your PC’s date to somewhere before 2020. This is going to work too, I can’t explain to you why though! Something about licenses expiring!

2. I get a Flash pop up when I try to install!

As I explained earlier, you can just close it and the installation will continue normally.

3. The setup just hangs at a specific percentage and won’t progress anymore!

This is mosty probably the setup asking you to swap discs! DVD users do not have this problem. What happens sometimes is that the setup GUI is supposed to make a pop up window appear in front of the GUI asking you to swap to disc 2, but on modern OSes it doesn’t appear sometimes. Actually, it does. It just is in the background, if you minimize every open window on your machine you’re going to see the little pop up! Just swap to disc 2 and press “Ok” on the pop up and it should resume installing. The same thing can happen when having to switch to Discs 3 and 4.

After installing the Base Game:

Yay, you did it! See how the discs aren’t the devil??

So, after installing the base game you are going to need to patch it.

Open GrumpyLoader, on the top left select “Load...” and on the window that opens, choose the Base Game patch’s executable you’ve downloaded and open it. It’s going to automatically patch your game, if you are on the 4 CD version of the game you may have to swap discs. Sometimes GrumpyLoader throws errors when updating, especially when it ends. But you can just ignore it.

After patching, your Base Game is FULLY installed and properly patched, congratulations!!!

But if you didn’t already try, you will see that you can’t run the game as it doesn’t open. That’s because the Base Game uses SafeDisc that doesn’t work on modern OSes as I said earlier.

Installing Expansion and Stuff Packs:

It’s the same process of installing the Base Game. Follow the setup instructions. After installing each one, PATCH them with GrumpyLoader. For example: you just installed University! Do NOT immediately install another pack right after.  Follow the same GrumpyLoader patching process you did on the Base Game but choose the University patch instead. Do the same thing to ALL EPs and Family Fun Stuff.

Also, there has been some info online about installing packs out of release order can mess up your game.

I personally don’t think it’s true as I never had any problems but I prefer to be better safe than sorry.

If you want to, Install them in this order:

-University (or University Life Collection) -Nightlife (skip if you have The Sims 2 Deluxe/Double Deluxe) -Christmas Party Pack (I don’t recommend if you have Happy Holiday Stuff or The Sims 2 Holiday Edition)  -Open For Business (or Best of Business Collection) -Family Fun Stuff (or Fun with Pets Collection) -Glamour Life Stuff -Pets (skip if you have Fun with Pets Collection) -Happy Holiday Stuff (skip if you have The Sims 2 Holiday Edition) -Seasons -Celebration Stuff (skip if you have The Sims 2 Double Deluxe) -H&M Stuff (skip if you have Best of Business Collection) -Bon Voyage -Teen Style Stuff (skip if you have University Life Collection) -FreeTime -Kitchen & Bath Interior Design Stuff (skip if you have Best of Business Collection) -IKEA Home Stuff (skip if you have University Life Collection) -Apartment Life -Mansion & Garden Stuff (skip if you have Fun with Pets Collection)

If you’ve installed all packs, great! You can even launch your game from SP9′s (Mansion & Garden Stuff) disc and executable as it uses SecuROM which WORKS on modern OSes.

Getting your game to work properly:

Your game is fully installed, patched and even running if you have Bon Voyage and later released packs!

But you probably noticed very heavy lag, crashing, bad graphics and things not running as they should. That’s because, just like the Ultimate Collection, the game is a PITA to get running properly on Modern OSes! If you have Bon Voyage and/or later released packs: I HIGHLY recommend you to uninstall SecuROM from your machine. This is going to help greatly with game performance. Use the SecuROM Removal Tool I’ve linked earlier and remove it from your PC. Do NOT open the game again as it’s going to install itself again if you do so.

If you have Mansion & Garden Stuff: After uninstalling SecuROM, you’re going to need to install Lazy Duchess’ Sims2RPC Launcher I’ve linked earlier. Follow their instructions on the download page and be sure to apply the 4gb patch in the launcher as it’s going to GREALTY help with the crashing.

Or... if you DO NOT have Mansion & Garden Stuff: Get an appropriate NoCD executable for the pack you are using to launch your game and apply the 4GB patch to it. Open the 4GB patch executable and use it on your game’s exe.

After doing all that, all that remains is fixing your game performance, resolution and graphics!

Install Graphics Rules Maker and open it. Firstly, you’re going to have to add your Graphics card to the game’s database. To do that, go the “Device Info” tab and add it there.

Back to the “Settings” tab, be sure your game is set to “The Sims 2″ and is properly recognizing where your game is installed, if for some reason it isn’t, click “Browse...” and point it to your latest installed pack’s folder. For example: “C:\Program Files (x86)\EA Games\The Sims 2 Mansion & Garden Stuff”.

-Force Texture Memory: Use the auto-detect button and it should automatically calculate the best value for your graphics card.

Check “Disable texture memory estimate adjustment” and “Enable driver’s memory manager” boxes. If you have an AMD Radeon HD 7000 series, also check the “Fix AMD Radeon HD 7000 series recognition”. If you have Intel integrated graphics, check the last two boxes. Now you can set your resolution! Choose your default (which one the game is going to start with) and maximum resolution your game is going to support.

After doing all that, you can click “Save Files...”

And... Done! You got your disc-based The Sims 2 game fully working, properly patched and fixed!!!

Any Feedback on how to improve this guide is very welcome!

Happy Simming, y’all!!! :)

[picknmixsims]

Maxis GUIDs Spreadsheet

Maxis GUIDs Spreadsheet

A resource for modders.

A spreadsheet of all Maxis object and want GUIDs.

[andrevasims]

TS2 Quality of Life Mods

idk what else to call them... Mods that make sims slightly less annoying to deal with, or slightly more self-sufficient, or tweaks that help reduce risks of corruption or otherwise avoid less than ideal problems/situations.

It’s not 100% comprehensive, just a list of mods I personally use or have used. Even then I have way more mods than this total, but I just wanted to focus on one specific aspect.

I intended this to be more like a personal archive than anything, so don’t take it as guarantee that every single one works together without conflict lol

SuperDuperHugTest (instantly removes Super Duper Hug Bug from any infected lot as soon as it’s loaded)

Mods by TwoJeffs

• Visitor Controller (you can allow/ban sims from a lot based on tons of things)

• ACR (Autonomous Casual Romance)

• Same Sex Marriage (no “Joined Union" for gay couples just “Married”)

• Stinky Dormies & Assignments Fix (dormies never shower or complete assignments because Do Assignment advertises Hygiene fulfillment??)

• Smart Beds (enforces bed ownership, but I don’t really use it because townies or sims you've never directed to Sleep will never autonomously sleep in a bed)

• Have-Adopt Child Want Fix (adopting a baby fulfills Have a Baby want & vice versa)

• Sim Blender (modify motives, skills, relationships, skills, personality... everything basically. also the fastest way to do the Good Genes Challenge because you can choose one sim to get pregnant by another sim and accelerate the pregnancy to only take 3 hours instead of 3 days)

• Preg for All Genders (AF sims can impregnate AF/AM sims, or AM sims can impregnate AM sims, stuff like that)

Mods by BoilingOil

• No Trash Memories (removes “Met [Sim]” and “Moved In/Out” memories so they don’t clog up the memory panel, also removes “Met Mystery Sim” memories from CAS sims so they can have a First Kiss with a real sim lol)

• No Sim Loaded (removes “Sim Loaded” tokens from sims, which apparently do nothing anyway, and whenever a lot is loaded it automatically clears/resets things that are otherwise broken or could possibly cause corruption, also suppresses the Super Duper Hug Bug so you don’t see it in the game)

• No Lecture Baby (stops sims from lecturing babies for being stinky)

• Less Toddler Annoyance (toddlers ask adults for stuff based on needs/skills)

Mods by Pescado

See this post and this post for mod descriptions/compatibility

• Batbox (clear gossip to reduce chances of corrupted memories, make sims stop doing the silly dance face if it gets stuck, delete all rain puddles, make dormies stuck as transparent from being in their room normal again, etc.)

• Stuck Object Remover (place it on a square to delete everything in that square if you can’t otherwise see/interact with whatever’s stuck there)

• No Unlinkage On Urnstone Delete (prevents shredded character files caused by deleting tombstones or when moving them to community lots)

• No Corrupted Death Memory (reduces the chances of seeing the corrupted memory that we all know as the “squiggly lines” - btw it’s a corrupted memory NOT a corrupted sim/hood. still not great, but also not the end of the world if you do end up seeing it)

• Creature Fixes (random fixes for supernatural behaviors/wants/appearances)

• AL Fixes (fixes related to things from AL that the EP broke or came broken lol)

• Vacation Fixes (fixes related to bugs from Bon Voyage)

• Anti-Redundancy (prevents tons of new NPCs being needlessly created)

• No SS Respawn (limits new townies being created to fill Uni Secret Societies)

• No Stray Respawns (prevents tons of stray dogs/cats being created)

• Garden Club Townie Fix (makes the game treat Garden Club members as townies, because it didn’t before, which prevents issues that may have caused)

• Door Jam Fix (fixes doors getting stuck open by a light or stair tile)

• Warmth Fixes (prevents zombies from getting frostbite or sims exercising indoors spontaneously combusting)

• Drama Professor & Met Self Fix (prevents useless memories related to the drama professor and “Met Self” from happening)

• Front Door Hack (the door a deliveryperson considers the “front” door makes more sense, instead of a garage or a door in the back of the house)

• Smarter Cashier (makes it faster to earn the Register talent badge, because apparently by default it otherwise takes 50 checkouts to get to Bronze)

• No Humble (Rod Humble doesn’t visit new families but you can buy his PC)

• No Eat Crap (sims stop eating when they’re full or if food spoils while eating)

• Anti-Foodnapping Hack (sims won’t fall asleep in their food if doing so would cause them to die of starvation)

• Less Whiny (sims whine less about “stupid things” - idk what that means but I’ve apparently been using this mod sooo yeah lol)

• Don’t Wave At Me (if sims are having a problem they just have the problem instead of yelling at you about it first)

• Anti-Weather Reactions (prevents reacting to weather from becoming a thing sims have to do immediately even when they’re doing other stuff or sleeping)

• No Servo “Do Chores” (removes autonomous “Do Chores” self interaction from servos)

• No Baby Harassment (stops sims from constantly interacting with babies, which is annoying because then babies never get a chance to sleep)

• No Route Fail (stops the complaining/yelling when sims are blocked by something, leaves only the thought bubble telling you what’s causing the blockage)

• Local Walkbys (walkby sims are from the same hood the lot is in)

Mods by Cyjon

• Smarter EP Check (many of Cyjon’s and others’ mods require this to work)

• Lot Inspecter (place it on a lot and it tells you if it’s safe to delete a lot or not because of tombstones, offworld loiterers, owned businesses, etc.)

• NPC Maker Fix (improves functionality of NPC Maker that can be spawned with TestingCheatsEnabled)

• Breadfruit Tree Fix (stops tree from burning forever after lightning hits it)

• Bug Collection Fix (sims literally can’t complete the bug collection without this)

• Call to Meal Fix (doing “Call to Meal” won’t include servos/babies/toddlers/plantsims/NPCs in who comes over to grab a plate)

• Dance Advertising Tweaks (different dances are preferred based on personality)

• Dance Near Stereo (sims doing the smustle get closer to the stereo first instead of just suddenly dancing outside in the corner of the lot alone)

• Dumb “In Use” Test (sims won’t go all the way across the lot to use an object if it’s already being used by another sim)

• Fake Townie Sales (NPCs/townies buying from a business don’t get tons of objects piled in their inventory, it just disappears)

• Fewer Tourists (allows smaller/fewer Vacation Destination tourist families, because otherwise the game expects 12 families with at least 4 members each and will not generate any tourists at all if there’s less than that)

• Floor Sleep Fix (fixes bug where a passed out sim stops gaining energy)

• Ghost Hack (set of mods you can pick & choose from for ghost behavior)

• Less Naked Freakout (sims in Love don’t get shocked seeing each other naked)

• Meet Professors Fix (fixes bug related to sims in Uni meeting professors)

• Memory Fixes (fixed bugs related to a few memories and associated gossip)

• More Dishes (sims pick up more dishes to clean at once than originally)

• No Table Platters (sims can’t put serving platters on eating surfaces)

• Pool Ladder Autonomy (sims autonomously enter pools using the ladder)

• Relationship Decay Fix (fixes bug related to daily relationship decay involving larger sized families/households)

• Self Preservation (sims prioritize satisfying Hunger over Bladder or Energy)

• Smarter Chair Selection (sims choose seating more sensibly, based on location/proximity/activity)

• Smarter Food Serving (sims decide how many plates to serve based on who’s on the lot without including people like babies or ghosts)

• Townie Apartment Residents (empty/unplayed apartments are filled by townies instead of social groups, which you might not have/want in a hood)

• Townie Enthusiasm Seeder (gives townies hobby enthusiasm if they don’t have any, usually when they were made in CAS then turned into a townie)

• Vampire Walkbys (more nighttime walkbys involving different supernaturals)

• Yoga/Meditation Fix (you can put Yoga/Meditation in a sim’s queue multiple times so they resume after falling without it disappearing from the queue)

Mods by Nopke

• Random Dormies (dormies that move in are picked randomly instead of being the lowest numbered, also if a dorm a dormie lived in is demolished or no longer has a playable sim in it then their old dorm room key is removed so they can move into a new dorm)

• Inventory Inheritance (the inventory of a sim who died gets moved to another sim based on their relationship with variances you can choose from)

• Food Already Available Fix (if food is already on a lot then sims won’t autonomously cook, get a snack, or “Stuff Face” with some variances you can choose from)

[melsie-sims2-finds]

This is so interesting and worth the watch!

As a mostly wants-based player, I have come across some of these issues while playing premades, and even in my own custom hoods where sims are a bit more "original".

Here are some things I've started doing to spice up my gameplay and still have a more or less wants-based play style.

Aspirations are not based on my Sims' zodiacs. I assign aspirations based on personality, which includes 3t2 traits, as well as the general vibe of the Sim. This means shy sims may end up with the Romance Aspiration, and playful sims may still be Knowledge. I also only assign secondary aspirations when my sims have lived through part of their adulthood (with my aging system, this happens when they hit 30 years old). This means they will have some life experience under their belt and their secondary aspiration usually reflects that.

My ACR is tuned waaaay down. I might make cheating a bit more likely when I hit gen 2 and have more Sims in my 'hood to cause chaos with, but at the moment I keep my couples pretty faithful, just so that I don't end up with a lot of cousins and half-siblings. I don't want everyone to be related by gen 3.

Allow yourself wiggle room for a lot of storytelling! I make sure my Sims (those I made in CAS) have backstories, motivations, goals, that don't have anything to do with their in-game wants. Giving them more in-depth personalities means I can decide which wants feel more realistic for them and will make them feel more unique. It also helps me decide which romantic partners to give them, which friend group, which jobs, etc.

This is a big one!! Use the chemistry system to your advantage! Not all couples are a match, so have your Sims date one-bolters, or try to flirt with someone they DON'T have chemistry with! Do this with teens who are still figuring out romance and what they want out of a relationship!! It'll make it more fun, and it might mean they won't find their special someone until later in life if they keep running into all of the incompatible sims. You may also realize one-bolt relationships are nice too. Not all couples are super physical all the time, and that's okay. You can also use this for cheating Sims. If my sim has more chemistry with a sim that's not their partner, I may be more inclined to have them cheat.

Use a Random Occurrence Scenario generator! But don't feel obligated to actually go through with it if it'll ruin your storyline or make you not want to play! If you're bored of a family, it may be a good way to spice up the gameplay and come up with new and exciting storylines. I did make my own ROS a while back and you can use it here. The really bad/tragic scenarios are less likely to pop up as the more "tame" options. You can also google Sims 2 ROS and find popular ones that other simmers use.

Use the hobby system! If you know your sim's OTH, try to incorporate it into gameplay. Personally, I rarely ever get wants related to my Sims' hobbies so I have to nudge them in the right direction. Give them items that can help develop their enthusiasm, have them go to community lots where they can meet like-minded Sims, etc. This can lead to some pretty fun gameplay and help make your Sims feel more unique.

I really hope this helps someone with their game! If you haven't checked out baddymaddy's video, I highly suggest you give it a look and a like!

Happy simming! 💚

[simblreenofficial]

FAQ

A pinned post for mobile users and newbies

WHAT IS SIMBLREEN?  

Check out our About page!

HOW DO I PARTICIPATE IN SIMBLREEN?

If you'd like to participate this year, please check out our Visual Guide here! After that, you can sign up via the link below.

➡️➡️➡️Sign up HERE

If you have any more questions after the guide, check the answered asks or just ask us

WHEN IS THE EVENT?

We post a Schedule every year around the first few weeks of September. You can find all the past schedules here.

2024 dates:

Weekend 1: October 18-20 Weekend 2: October 25-27

WHERE CAN I FIND A LIST OF THE PARTICIPANTS? HOW CAN I ANNOUNCE THAT I WILL PARTICIPATE?

Usually people will simply announce their participation directly on their blog, with the tags - #simblreen, #simblreen participant, or #simblreen2024. Tag us directly and we'll boost your post.

DO NOT USE THE SIMBLREEN HASHTAG IF YOU PLAN ON PAYWALLING YOUR "GIFT".

Official list of participants (2024!)

Frequently asked questions

[theplumbobguide]

How to Make Your Game More Interesting:

you're so... ~interesting~

Intro: Hello all, Really quickly, I'd like to introduce myself. I have been playing the sims 2 since release when I was quite young, and still play 20 years later. In playing for 20 years, I have read the prima guides like they were the guides to my personal religion. I have deep dived into all the lore, and gone through more than a person who is not a dev should in this game. I've played too much. I've done too much. I also regularly peruse sims 2 subreddits, watch the sims 2 on youtube and generally seem to have made the sims 2 my life (writing this out, I'm feeling a little sad but... worth it). The main thing I see REGULARLY when reading comments and posts on reddit or the youtube comment section is that people generally don't know how to make their game interesting. Why? Well, it seems like generally people get very attached to their sims (same tbh) and don't want to cause chaos, or don't know how to cause chaos. My fun fact: I used to be just like you. Yes you, the person reading this is who is stuck in the loop of creating one perfect family after another and getting bored. I chronically made families of sims with the LTW of Fortune and Family who loved each other deeply, who had perfect A+ children, who succeeded in everything they did... sims who became stale. (how boring!) That was until I decided to use the skills I have learned through reading books, watching soap-opera-y shows, intense movies, and attempting to write my own novels to good use. This is where we come to part of what you came here for. Golden Rules: Rule #1. No good story has a main character who isn't flawed. Creating flawed sims is my main rule; if you had to leave this blog with one thing it's this: make flawed sims. Now, this doesn't mean all sims should be Romance sims or have a Romance secondary aspiration, but rather giving your sims "human qualities". Example: A sim with "anger issues", a sim who always chooses the wrong type of sims to date, a sim who is struggling with their sexuality, AN EVIL SIM. The list can go on. You can do this with your imagination and interactions in-game. You can also download wonderful mods like: Traits Project. This mod will help you create more dynamic sims without needing to think too much about it (OR thinking a lot about it, and adding the traits manually to really build your character). As you can see, there are tons of ways to create flawed sims. I ask you to be inspired by characters from the entertainment you enjoy consuming. You'd be surprised in how many little ways you can make a sim interesting and build a story around them. - A side note in this section: never underestimate a good "mid-life crisis". Quitting a job, gambling addiction, a new romantic interest, shopping addiction, arguing with a partner etc. The possibilities are endless. Rule #2. When in doubt, don't be afraid to take a sim out. No, I don't mean for a night out on the town... Here's the thing, sometimes your sim rolls boring wants regularly, seems to serve little to no purpose, and gives you the general feeling that there isn't much going on behind those pixelated eyes. Regardless of whether or not you like the sim you're thinking of in this moment, it's time to use them to drive the plot or create character development for your other playables. *Grim enters stage left* Never underestimate the storytelling tool that involves making your sim a ghost. Now, with that being said - we all enjoy occasionally letting the intrusive thoughts win when it comes to introducing your sim to the grim reaper; but we can't forget one of the main rules in storytelling plot drivers. You cannot off a character "just because". We must have reason, and this is where we can get really creative. Maybe your sim secretly really dislikes their so-called "perfect life". Maybe they just happen to hike in the desert, during the summer, with their needs really low... Maybe they fall asleep while making family dinner... MAYBE they take a little nightly swim while tired and seem to forget where that pesky pool ladder went.

There are tons of ways you can use these ideas and use it to drive your plot forward. Subjecting their loved ones to the reprocussions of their loss. It is here that I can't fail to mention that while random death can be important; as well as heart breaking. Here are a few ways I make random death possible in my game that I think are great: - Death By Childbirth - More Dangerous Fire - Real Sickness

The big thing I would like to reiterate, is to make sure that if it is not random, and completely your choice as the player, either send them off to the simulated great beyond for passion or pleasure. *Passion would be to move a plot forward, cause chaos, create a character arc for a sim or family, etc. *Pleasure would be just because it makes you happy to have more graves in your cemetary. you're a tad evil aren't you, you little minx. Rule #3. You Can't Always Get What You Want... but if you try sometimes, well, you just might find *you get what you need* Now, as you might have guessed: I am a semi-wants based player. You may be wondering "what that means?" What that means indeed, little friend. Semi-Wants Based Playstyle essentially boils down to: I try to achive almost everything my sim wants to do - but only if I like it for them. Also, sometimes your sim may not "want" something per se, but you've decided that you want to do it and don't want to wait for them to tell you they want to do it. This means, if my family sim decides that maybe they are more or just as attracted to their neighbour as they are their spouse and run a want to flirt with them... we may ruin a marriage or keep a deep dark secret, OR I will feel like it is too far out of left field for this particular sim and chose to ignore it completely. I go off ~vibes~ and suggest you try that too. Story time: I have the "Death by Childbirth" mod in my game. Two of my sims that we're romance sims lived together as a polyamourous couple sharing the sims they brought home. One day the female and male sims did an autonomous woohoo (thank you ACR), and fell pregnant wups. During that pregnancy, though, I noticed them be cute and close and... not have wants for other sims? I thought it was interesting and intended to maybe make them secondary family sims... until my female sim died during childbirth. Now, I could have gone two ways: 1. let the game be as it was and have the male sim be a single dad, or 2. use some cheats and get the resurrect o nomitron. The female sim who died was in the paranormal career, so I figured "why not! DO IT FOR THE PLOT." I resurrected her and decided that both sims underwent such a significant change that they may have also changed their outlooks on life, and changed their LTW. However, I always made it part of their story that while at first things would be good... at one point they would begin to feel like maybe family life wasn't really what they wanted or thought it would be. 3 children later (he wanted it), my female sim is going stir crazy; just wants to make friends and go to work and find the *more* that she knows is out there; my male sim is feeling very alone and like his wife isn't really there for him and his eye is beginning to wander... Who knows what will happen. What I'm trying to (and hopefully) get at here is this: The sims is YOUR game. Your sandbox. While it is fun to create chaos for chaos' sake, don't be afraid to do what YOU want. That's what makes the game enjoyable overall. So yes, maybe something bad happens to a sim, you have the complete ability to turn it around, as long as it what? Say it with me kids: "PrOgReSsEs ThE pLoT." That is what makes interesting gameplay/storytelling. you can really tell my creative writing teachers drilled something into my brain... but what was it? Rule #4. Jump Around! I know not everyone is a rotational player, nor is playing rotationally for everyone. I do, of course, think it's great (however you do it). I don't think it's a *must* to enjoy the game, though. I do stand on the hill that believes that some amount of "changing it up" is important. Once again, everyone is different, so find what you need or speaks to you in this section; but here are some things I do to make sure that I don't get burnt out.

Part 1. "Traditional" Rotational Gameplay: I play for the full EA/Maxis length season (5 days) with each family. You can do more or less. I also play in a pretty regular rotation that only gets changed based on circumstance. For example, if the family breaks apart, the moved family gets played after the original family.

Part 2. I build and/or upgrade all my lots slowly. Whenever I get the itch or inspiration to build I run with it. I usually get the feeling when it's beginning to be necessary in my game. Sometimes you need a coffee shop for a date… then a restaurant… then you think: wow my sims can meet more people at a bar. I build based off my wants and my gameplay needs. With that being said, I also love making my own hoods and slowly building up the town are more sims join the rotations (kinda like a BACC, but not really).

Part 3. I am never opposed to moving sims into a different house/location or simply sending them off on a vacation. Maybe even making sure they leave the house for more mundane reasons. When was the last time you took your kid to the park, you monster? You'd be surprised on how refreshing it can be. Also, how realistic. Gone are the days where your sim lived in the same home from College to Elderhood. Gone are the days where your sim never used their vacation days. Gone are they days where your sim only ever knew the four walls you built around them. Hopefully with doors and windows... but maybe not.. Rule #5. Remember Who You Are, SIMba. Keep in mind that the sims truly is your game. Your imagination. Your little world. You can make it as perfect or as chaotic as you want. As someone who's roots are in "the perfect sim/family" type gameplay, I always allow at least 1 if not 2-3 families who fit that bill somehow, to keep my little heart happy. (Another great idea for you comes from the movie "Don't Worry Darling": think of a town where everything is the 1950's vision of perfect - but everyone *is* happy... until... and fill in the blank as you go.) I digress, you can try out any/all these rules. You can even take inspiration from my game or ideas I layed out in this first ever post here, but at the end of the day, you will always be you. The Sims will always be your game. Don't be afraid to try things, don't be afraid to be your real and truest self. For some of you that means a town of insane sims wearing chicken costumes, and for others that might be trying to actually create the perfect town/family (I challenge you to make sure they have not 1 bad memory). Either way, and all the ways, I hope that this post at the least gave you joy and at the best gave you inspiration. More to come in the future! Have an exellent day, meaghanplumbob xox

[baticeer-sims]

I'd like to hear your soap box about romantic standards! I use ACR at the moment but reading that "unpopular opinions" post got me curious about other options 👀

Hiya! Thanks for asking. I absolutely love Romantic Standards, I could NOT play without it these days. I used to use ACR in the past though, so I tried to make a balanced list of the pros and cons for me. But then it got REALLY LOOOONG because I'm a wordy person sorry, so it's under a cut.

The quick TLDR of it is - I feel like ACR creates romantic chaos that's often unpleasant/nonsensical to me, while I feel like RS creates romantic drama that makes sense and also allows for a lot of variety in how different sims will feel about their relationships.

By the way, I use Midgethetree's edited version of RS because it's modular (you can pick which parts you want) and the documentation is way easier to understand lol. If you have any trouble with mod conflicts or with getting RS set up the way you like, feel free to ask me about it and I can help you out with what exact files you need.

The full soapbox under the cut!!

One thing I want to say is I think a lot of people have been playing with ACR for so long that they don't know what their game will be like without it? And they underestimate how much autonomous romantic interaction will still happen between sims. A key here is that sims can't autonomously interact romantically unless they have compatible gender preferences, and townies or CAS sims always start with 0 preference, so a vanilla hood without ACR will feel low on the random flirtations unless you use something like the Sim Blender (or similar) to randomize everyone's gender preferences! (And ACR gives out random gender preferences automatically, so you might install ACR, see a lot of people interacting romantically for the first time, and assume you can't get that without ACR when all you needed was the gender preference setting, yknow?) But I can assure you that with ACR removed, my sims are definitely still getting into plenty of unexpected romantic entanglements and exciting drama.

To my mind, these are the biggest features of Romantic Standards that I just can't get with ACR:

Random chance of crush/love status: I could never play without this now. As you probably already know, normally two sims automatically get a crush or love when they interact romantically with 70+ shortterm or longterm relationship respectively. It's kinda predictable and boring to me. RS, specifically the "slower feelings" file, makes it so that crush/love flags are added randomly with the chance being based on the sims' chemistry with each other. This also allows for some amazing Drama Potential where you could have 2 sims interacting and one is completely in love with the other but the other has no feelings for them at all! It's otherwise impossible to do that. This makes crush/love flags actually feel meaningful to me, like they represent real human feelings, instead of just being able to know that if I decide one day to smooch my best friend they're guaranteed to fall in love with me.

Simple jealousy system that makes sense: I could never get my head around ACR's jealousy system to make it work the way I wanted. I felt like sims would have their token values changed even when I set them to be static, and stuff like that, and it just was so complicated to figure out what values I wanted... OTOH, this is how jealousy works in Romantic Standards: If a sim is in love or in a committed relationship (steady/engaged/married), and they see their love/partner interact with someone else romantically, they get mad about it! Unless you put a "no jealousy" trait in their inventory (then they won't get jealous over anyone) OR if they also have crush/love flags for that 3rd sim (this, allows for you to have polyamorous relationships). I find that easy to understand and to work well for a majority of situations. There's also an option where they won't get jealous over love, only committed relationships -- but I prefer the also-in-love version because it combines really well with the previous point about crush/love being randomized! You can frequently get situations where A is in love with B but B only has a crush, so B will be willingly flirting with other people and A might get their heart broken over it because they thought this was serious... It really generates a lot of interesting storylines.

Sims don't cheat on their partners if I don't want them to: I know ACR is supposed to have settings that will make sims stay faithful, but I was unable to get it to work consistently, and I feel like I've often heard other people say things too like "I didn't want this sim to cheat but 🤷 ACR just did that". With RS, if a sim is in a committed relationship they can never do autonomous romantic interactions with someone else unless 1) they're Romance aspiration or 2) they already have crush/love for that other sim. You can of course still direct sims to cheat if you think it makes sense, but I don't have to worry about anyone's marriage falling apart if I want them to stay together. (Also, you can override this for specific sims by giving romance sims a "hopeless romantic" trait, or non-romance sims a "commitment issues" trait.)

Midge's version of RS is modular so almost all of the stuff I listed above is separate if you only want part of it.

On the other hand! Here are the things that ACR does that I've missed or that you might miss:

Autonomous woohoo and try for baby: Your sims won't woohoo on their own anymore. I found that I didn't really mind this? The woohoo timer in ACR feels kind of mechanical to me, and a lot of times they'd be starting to do it in situations that were really inappropriate (like other people are in the room and they're stripping naked on the sofa at 9am). And I don't mind the lack of try for baby either because I prefer to decide when my sims have a baby based on if they roll a want for it, or if it just happens from risky woohoo. I've noticed that simler90's original version of RS has an optional plugin that allows for autonomous woohoo but I don't know if it works with Midge's edited RS. I haven't tried it yet bc I don't mind not having auto woohoo. If anyone has, let me know.

Can't woohoo on the sofa and can't woohoo in one menu-click: My god it's so much easier to be able to click "casual...woohoo" than relax on bed, ask other sim to join, wait for them to get there, cuddle, then woohoo. Something to note is that there is a "stripped down" version of ACR which only retains the Casual Woohoo interactions and was made to be compatible with Romantic Standards. However in my experience (and that of a few other people I've talked to) the jealousy aspect of this so-called compatibility... still doesn't quite work correctly? So the "casual woohoo" option, if you have stripped-ACR, I think it will still go off of ACR-jealousy (which is impossible for me to understand lol), instead of RS-jealousy like everything else in the game? It can definitely cause situations with jealousy reactions that aren't working how they're supposed to. So um... the crazy thing that I do, personally, is keep that stripped down ACR in my game but with all the autonomy completely disabled in global overrides, at which point it is doing literally nothing other than letting me tell them to casual woohoo if I want them to woohoo on the sofa. And I just make sure to never use that option in a situation where jealousy is a possible concern, in order to avoid the issue where it doesn't work correctly. It's kind of overly complicated a thing to do just to get sofa woohoo but I'm just saying it's an option 😂

No autonomous First Kiss: This is it! The one thing I truly do miss from ACR and would really love if someone made a mod for it one day! I love when my sims do stuff autonomously and surprise me. But First Kiss is a non-autonomous action, and what's more, sims can't roll the want to "Kiss so-and-so" if they haven't already had a first kiss, so I find it kind of hard to decide when my sims will have their first kiss. I'm always like, why can't you do it for me!

The other major difference is that the "Casual" romantic interactions from ACR have lower thresholds for acceptance than the default Maxis interactions. I personally don't see this as a positive because... well... I've been playing this game for so long, I kind of know how to get sims together at this point, I really don't need to make it even easier 😅 I'd rather have RS making it a little harder for sims to fall in love. I use a lot of other mods for other aspects of the game that make it harder overall because it's more fun for me.

Also! So, I was going to give you a list of other romance-related mods that I use in my game along with RS, but then I realized I could be lazy and just give you a link to my friend @alice-in-strangetown's mods list, because she & I have pretty similar taste in how we like romance to work in this game and I use basically all the same romance mods as her :P because I started using RS after finding out about it from watching her TS2 livestreams.

If you want to try RS on a neighborhood that has ACR but you're not sure if you'd like the playstyle, I recommend temporarily replacing it with the "stripped down" ACR version (and disabling autonomy), because that way your sims will keep their ACR tokens if you decide you don't like RS and want to switch back to using ACR. Of course, it's technically possible to have both of them at the same time, but the key thing about ACR is that all of the "Casual" interactions in it are completely separate from the vanilla maxis interactions so mods that affect default maxis interactions or maxis jealousy (like RS does) won't interface with ACR interactions and vice versa.

I hope all of this was helpful, and that maybe it convinced you to give Romantic Standards a try! Like I said, if you need any help getting it set up I can give you advice or a more detailed guide on how to install it (I think the documentation's pretty straightforward tho).