Graphics Card of Suck? No Pond Fish & Snow Cursor

[Ellatrue]

1) So, I can't see the fish in the pond with seasons (no word yet on the fishtank, as I never use them because of the puddles/cleaning/dead fish, but I assume it's unrelated).

My graphics card is decent, but old- until now it's generally been good enough for most things in the sims, and I don't get the red water. Do the fish require the mysterious "pixel shading" to show up?

For those of us who can't see the fish, is there a file we can try tweaking to make it work?

2) How do we use the cursor to reveal what's underneath the snow? Hold down shift, etc? Or should the game do that automatically when you have a non-suck graphics card? There are roaches on the lot,  still alive in the winter and somewhere under the snow (I suppose they are hard to kill), and since I can't see them I can't have the sims spray the infestation.

[KatEnigma]

2) Yes, the snow cursor is supposed to happen automagically. Did you check your graphics settings to see if you can turn it on?

[Kralore]

boolprop useshaders true
is what your looking for

This can be used either in the cheat console (control,shift,c)  or it can be put in the userstartup.cheat file so that the shaders are always on.

With the shaders on you will see the fish in the aquariums and the fishing ponds,  the water in the swimming pools will have better ripple effects and will also be reflective.  It will also turn on the snow cursor.

This may slow your game down though.  If you find things a bit too slow, there are several graphic/performance options you can adjust.

Shadows-         put on medium or off.
Reflections-      turn off. You will loose the reflections in mirrors and water reflections in the swimming pools, but will still have the ripple effects in pools.
Smooth edges- less is better performance.

You can play with those settings until you find a setup that your happy with.

Pixel shading seems to be mostly dependant on CPU speed.  I have a 512 meg video card and only a 1.4 gig CPU and Sims 2 setup insists on turning off shaders on my system, so i put the boolprop cheat in my userstartup.cheat file so that it's always on.

Hope this helps

[ZiggyDoodle]

Is your pond deep enough?  Guide says about 4 x 4 x 2 tiles deep.

[KLGFCG]

I tried the useshader cheat but still no fish in ponds. I don't really care - as long as they can catch them (they can) they don't need to see 'em.

I'm a bit concerned that it's a symptom of another minor issue I'm having, however. Before Seasons, all my graphics were on high by default (except shadows which I turned off - personal preference) with no problems. After Seasons, everything had been reset to low. I changed it all back and there are no obvious lagging problems but why would that happen? My computer is waaaay more than adequate (specs: 3.4 GHz CPU, 2046 MB RAM, Radeon X300 series with 128 MB memory) for the game. Also, many of my objects now look "shinier." Like more reflective or something. Finally, the fish in the tanks disappeared for me without the useshader cheat - again, never an issue in the past. None of these issues are huge or uncorrectable, but I'm a little worried as to why my game suddenly thinks my set-up is poor. The weird thing is this only happened on my desktop - my less-good laptop (specs: 3.0 GHz CPU, 766 MB RAM, NVidia GeForce Go5200 with 64 MB memory) didn't reset and doesn't have any of the shaders/reflectivity issues. Any thoughts or anyone having the same experience?

By the way, since I'm obviously having a problem with the whole shaders thing, how does one go about setting up a startup cheat file so I don't have to type the cheat every time I play now?

[KatEnigma]

Your settings reset because EA always re-sets them whenever you install something new to how they think you can run. They are wrong a lot. LOL Yes, things are supposed to be more reflective. I assume you now need the usershader cheat because your card doesn't have enough pixel shaders to make EA think it can do it automagically.  It didn't reset on the laptop because it already was probably running in the lower DX7 settings.

To set up the startup file, open up notepad and put in all the cheats you want to run with all the time, one per line. Save as userstartup, and then go back and rename the file- instead of userstartup.txt, change it to userstartup.cheat and ignore Window's dire warnings about changing the extension.  Place it into your Config folder inside My Documents/EAGames/TheSims2

[Kralore]

I tried the useshader cheat but still no fish in ponds. I don't really care - as long as they can catch them (they can) they don't need to see 'em.

I'm a bit concerned that it's a symptom of another minor issue I'm having, however. Before Seasons, all my graphics were on high by default (except shadows which I turned off - personal preference) with no problems. After Seasons, everything had been reset to low. I changed it all back and there are no obvious lagging problems but why would that happen? My computer is waaaay more than adequate (specs: 3.4 GHz CPU, 2046 MB RAM, Radeon X300 series with 128 MB memory) for the game. Also, many of my objects now look "shinier." Like more reflective or something. Finally, the fish in the tanks disappeared for me without the useshader cheat - again, never an issue in the past. None of these issues are huge or uncorrectable, but I'm a little worried as to why my game suddenly thinks my set-up is poor. The weird thing is this only happened on my desktop - my less-good laptop (specs: 3.0 GHz CPU, 766 MB RAM, NVidia GeForce Go5200 with 64 MB memory) didn't reset and doesn't have any of the shaders/reflectivity issues. Any thoughts or anyone having the same experience?

By the way, since I'm obviously having a problem with the whole shaders thing, how does one go about setting up a startup cheat file so I don't have to type the cheat every time I play now?

No fish in ponds... As ZiggyDoodle mentioned, ponds need to be a minimum of 4x4 area, and 2 squares deep.

Graphic settings resetting to low...  Starting with I belive Open for business, EA raised the minimum specifications for the game quite a bit.  When you install Sims 2 or any of the expansion packs, there is a setup file that is used to check what your system specifications are. It's a preset checklist the game uses. It has 3 sections to it,  Low, Medium and High, in each section it has checks to see if your computer can use that particular setting level.  Until OFB your system may have been meeting the requirements for the High setting. Now the game considers your system below spec and is setting you at low by default.  (I know it doesn't make sense considering your system, but most likely there is one item in the checklist that your system is low on.)

Pixel Shading is one item in particular in the checklist that if you don't have a very hefty system EA/Sims 2 will turn it off by default.  With Seasons EA has made more use of pixel shaders in the game and I think this may be the reason your finding things more reflective in your game.  (I would need to see a screenshot to know what you consider more reflective ).

To have the game put shaders on full time, you just need to create a Userstartup.cheat file that gets placed in the config folder in your My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2 folder.   Snootysims.com has a quick tutorial on this in the cheat section, but it's simply a matter of opening notepad, typing in "boolprop useshaders true" (no quotes), then saving the file with the filename Userstartup.cheat (there will be a dropdown list box when saving that says filetype and says .txt,  you can change this to all filetypes and the file will be saved without the .txt extension on it.)

Hope this helped.

[KLGFCG]

Thanks for the replies. I knew about the OFB changes but I'm just a little confused by this new default low level because I didn't have even a hiccup with Pets (I have all the EP's and stuff packs) and I can't find any significant system requirements differences between Pets and Seasons. Is there any way to know what criteria I'm failing? It wouldn't bother me so much except I'm just not sure how I can go from high default levels to absolute bottom of the barrel when there aren't any major new requirements. As I said, I manually reset everything to high without my computer going 'splodie so right now I'm telling myself that the game is just confused. I should probably update my drivers at some point, but I'm on dial-up at home (rural living is fun) so 30 MB files just don't happen. Time to borrow the connection at work, I suppose. Or, I guess I could look into a new graphics card, I toyed with the idea a while ago but figured I wasn't having problems so why bother.

As for the reflectivity issue, the biggest problem was on three custom objects from MTS2 - they were decorative laundry detergent boxes. They were so blinding that the wording couldn't be read and I just deleted them (they were fine before). On everything else so far it's not bad, just a bit shiny. On some objects it even looks nicer so I'm not too concerned.

I'll double check the size on my ponds but I think they were meeting the requirements (they were huge ponds-- I'm not sure on the depth but they didn't look shallow). Again, I don't really care and in fact, in some screenies I didn't really like the look of the fish.

In all, none of these problems are earth shattering, just a bit baffling. I really appreciate the info on the startup cheats though... I've never needed it before so I never really paid attention. Ah well. Thanks again for all the pointers though-- very helpful and informative!!

[ZiggyDoodle]

Well, I just got EP5 loaded and played one lot in Pleasantview which has a large and deep pond.  Fishies galore - big ones.  Noticed that the EP automatically fancied up the family pool with neat tile edging.

Had some issues with CC, so I applied the Bodyshop tip (move your downloads folder out of the game folder, start up Bodyshop, close Bodyshop, move downloads folder back in) and everything is fine and dandy.

My graphics settings remained the same as with Pets (am running an ATI Radeon X850XT card). 

Winter will arrive in Pleasantview tomorrow, since there's a blizzard pounding against my house right now.  With any luck, I'll be snowed in and unable to get to the office. 

[Kralore]

Is there any way to know what criteria I'm failing? It wouldn't bother me so much except I'm just not sure how I can go from high default levels to absolute bottom of the barrel when there aren't any major new requirements. As I said, I manually reset everything to high without my computer going 'splodie so right now I'm telling myself that the game is just confused.

The file you want to look at is called Graphics Rules.sgr  you will find it a folder where the seasons expansion is actually installed.  If you used the default location I think it would be Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Seasons\TSData\Res\Config

Open the Graphic Rules.sgr with notepad and you will see the information the game checks to see what level to set your game at.  I've already found the culprit though,  about half way down there is an if/then check. This isn't quoted exact but it says  if videocard is x1300, x300, xpress 200 then set shaders to false and force low setting.  I'm not exactly sure why those 3 cards are in a specific system check. I have an x1300 and have no issues with shaders on etc.  But there is the reason why you are defaulting back to low when installing a new expansion.

As for the reflectivity issue, the biggest problem was on three custom objects from MTS2 - they were decorative laundry detergent boxes. They were so blinding that the wording couldn't be read and I just deleted them (they were fine before).

That has more to do with poorly created objects, and with Seasons doing more with the pixel shading/reflectivity of the game, it made them that much more blinding.

I'll double check the size on my ponds but I think they were meeting the requirements (they were huge ponds-- I'm not sure on the depth but they didn't look shallow). Again, I don't really care and in fact, in some screenies I didn't really like the look of the fish.

I think the Prima Guide may be wrong about the minimum depth of a pond to see fish. I had to make my pond quite deep before I started seeing the fish.

[KLGFCG]

Thanks for the info, Kralore. That's a real bite. Well, I guess I'll play a bit more and see if it really does make a difference.

[Persephone]

I have the x1300 video card, and seasons has disabled the button for showing neighbors.  Is there a code for that?

[Kralore]

I have the x1300 video card, and seasons has disabled the button for showing neighbors.  Is there a code for that?

What are your system specs?   System Memory, CPU Speed, and Video Memory?  Was it enabled before Seasons?

[Persephone]

Actually, turning shaders on fixed this option too I just didn't notice, so problem solved.  Thanks for trying Kralore. 

[Kralore]

Actually, turning shaders on fixed this option too I just didn't notice, so problem solved.  Thanks for trying Kralore. 

There actually is a boolprop for turning the neighbors on and off, but I wanted to find out what your system was first because from what I could see in the graphic rules file, there should have been no reason for it to be disabled.  I didn't realize shaders would affect the neighbors on and off as well. LOL

[Persephone]

I didn't either, but that was the only thing I changed before the option became clickable.

[cyperangel]

well, i only got two screen size options when playing the sims. and apparently it now also killed my shaders. Ive been trying to check the graphicrules file for my card, but it does not even seem to be there. I gots me a radeon x1950pro card, which apparently aint supported in any way or form.

Guess im stuck with userstartup.cheat to get my shaders back, and see if i cant tinker enough with the file for me to get my differnt screen resolutions back.

[Ambular]

Oddly enough, since Seasons I seem unable to set my shadows to anything except medium. Which is irksome, since I'd really prefer to turn them off completely.  I have a GeForce 6800 Ultra, which by all accounts is supposed to be a pretty damn good card, and I seem to recall I used to have the option to set shadows to high, so I don't know why it's locked me into that particular setting...

[ZiggyDoodle]

Guess im stuck with userstartup.cheat to get my shaders back, and see if i cant tinker enough with the file for me to get my differnt screen resolutions back.

What OS are you running that card under?

[cyperangel]

win xp.
And the card i got is a radeon x1950pro thingy. with the latest catalyst drivers.

[Ellatrue]

Okay, stupid question- does enabling neighbors actually require pixel shading to work? I thought my card didn't support pixel shaders at all after the cheat didn't seem to help. Does this mean that is actually does? And if not, why on Earth would enabling shaders solve the problem? It looks like I have an NVIDIA GeForce MX 420. Which sounds like crap, but I don't really know.

[prattle]

I have an old graphics card (GeForce 4 MX 440), that does not know what a pixel shader is. I don't get the snow cursor or any option to toggle on or off the snow cursor, I don't get fish in ponds (though my sims can still go fishing), and I don't get fish in aquariums since EA broke it around Nightlife. :/
I've heard people claim that some of those come back if you use "boolprop useshaders true" regardless of whether your graphics card can actually use pixel shaders, but I don't want to stress my poor custom-content overloaded Sims 2 game any more by trying to do it.