More Awesome Than You!

Hey guys

I was wondering if anyone ever experienced the same problem. I am quite desperate to invite more than 2 Sims over for get-togethers, and despite going to the neighbourhood, and typing in the cheat code as in the topic line, I am not able to invite more than 2 Sims over at any given time. Very frustrating. Any suggestions? Not very exciting throwing a party for 2 guests, how ho-hum.

Seen this. Could be anything from "you already have too many losers present, or at least the game thinks you do", to "your computer is messed". If it afflicts only THAT lot, try nuking all the schedulers and off-lot loiterers.

By that he means, go download the Lot Debugger.

Also, try putting it in your userstartup.cheat file -- I have it in mine (stupid game doesn't think my video card is powerful enough, even though it is) and it works fine.

Okay, kindly bear in mind that you're dealing with a humbled novice here.

So I find the Lot Debugger, which I presume is somewhere on this site, or at least relatively easy to find. And I take this file, and 'put it in my userstartup.cheat file'. I'll try doing that, but back up my game first.

No, he meant put the intprop thing into your file. Not the Lot Debugger. Don't put that in another file. That would be bad.

Okay, so I can skip the Lot Debugger strategy if I can figure out how to follow the tactic that deals with my userstartup.cheat file.

I've been searching for said file in the My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2 directory, but to no avail. What is an incompetent novice to do?

Maybe if I make fun of myself enough it'll ensure a steady stream of help, at least on this site.  ;)

Also, Pescado, I've seen you make fun of an individual who is described as being of the ESFP type, or some similar variety. I myself have measured as a Healer Idealist, consistently scoring INFP. What do you make of this relatively scarce group of people? I'd be interested to hear your take. (I'm assuming we're talking Myers Briggs Type Indicator here; if not, kindly ignore this potentially humiliating paragraph.)

Just make the file.  Open notepad, type in the cheat, and make sure to pick save as type: "all files" before saving the file in the config folder as userstartup.cheat

If you have the file, it will be in the "Config" subfolder. And I'd highly suggest getting rid of the blur. Whose innocence are you protecting?

I'm seriously thinking about increasing my maxNumOfVisitingSims to 40. Need bigger house parties!

Heh.  I did that once, and suddenly ALL of my dormies were in the SS (since I only had custom dormies at the time, and only about 25 all told).  I reduced to visiting sims to 10 and had to go one by one and remove dormies from the SS (the SS lot slowed to nothing on my system).  Apparently my video card can handle any number of sims up to about 15, but after that the lag is too annoying.

@DrKeith:  In case more clarity is needed, there may be a "userstartup.cheat" file in your \config\ folder.  This is a text file.  If it does not exist, you can create it with a text editor, such as notepad.  Simply type in the intprop line and save the file.  Make sure it does not save with a .txt suffix or it won't do anything.  I would also suggest doing a search on "userstartup.cheat" to get ideas on other lines you might wish to include.

Modthesims2 is a good place to start with questions like this.  They may not be awesome, but they have the basics covered - with screenshots in some places.  Here's the bit on userstartup.cheat .  You should definitely build in some aliases and turn down the sound on the tv while you're making one!  Poke around and you might find answers to questions you hadn't thought of yet! http://hideki.modthesims2.com/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Userstartup.cheat

Hey guys

Thanks to all of the people who offer their tips and suggestions.

I did a search on the file in question, created it, and put it in my ///Config folder ... and I still have the same problem. Who would want to throw a party where you only invite 2 guests? The irony is, whenever I move in a new family onto a lot, about 3 or usually 4 people pitch up to welcome the new residents. Whatever, Maxis.

I also downloaded the Lot Debugger but have little idea as to how this is to help me with my problem. I think Pescado made this suggestion in the case that only one lot offers this problem. I've had this problem for a while, and while I haven't checked, I'm pretty sure this applies to all of the lot, because I had that problem at other times when I played the game. I guess to give it more credibility, I'd have to go and test it on other lots just to be sure, because I haven't done so after creating the cheat file.

Dark Side of the Moon has no SS members that I can see (and it has the default Sim State attached) and about 100 dormies, generated. Queen's Cove has no SS at all. I know Addison can handle it...I currently have it set at 20 and have brought one of my larger (15 family members) families to a large community restaurant.

Dr Keith, my only thought is that either the cheat is not formatted correctly or you aren't saving the file in the correct format (ridiculously easy to do when you don't already have one in existence. This is the best thread (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,8763.0.html) to look at for tips.  It has pictures. The correct format for the cheat should be "intprop maxnumofvisitingsims 15", obviously without the quotation marks, and changed to the number you want.

Depending on the specs of your computer, it may do odd things here and there on loading the game.  I have found, in my game, that it may not load all parts of the userstartup.cheat file, or may ignore maxnumofvisitingsims on loading.  I generally check to see how many sims my playables could invite to a party on startup.  If it says 8-10, I know I'm OK.  If it says 1-2, I know it has not loaded correctly.  Usually a restart takes care of this.  I probably need moar RAMz.

It also may depend on the order of the lines in the .cheat file.  I think someone mentioned that the boolprop lines go first, followed by the intprop lines, etc.  Or am I just dreaming?

I had trouble with the userstartup.cheat too. I had it in the diseased computer, and it was working like a charm. I tried to put it in the newly installed TS2 in my new computer, and it wasn't working. The new computer has XP, so it couldn't have been Vista related. I did it the same way I did the old, working one. I'll try again, maybe I missed a step.

Great visuals from Elfie. They will be most helpful. I'm a visual person too, meaning I find it easier to follow visual instructions where computers are concerned. That's an area where I'm not too secure...yet. Thanks for the link, Zazazu.

Just double check the file is named correctly. Text files usually put .txt on the end of files. If your userstartup.cheat is called userstartup.cheat.txt it won't work. You need to turn on the option in Windoze Explorer to see the file extensions. Don't know how to do that in Vista.

In XP it's under Tools/Folder Options/View/Hide extensions for known file types. Take the tick OFF that option.

Or you can just use the attached as a guide. You'll want to tweak it to your needs. Put it in the Config subfolder and then open and edit, Save, don't Save As.

Would have attached earlier, but ..ya know... work.

If you are lazy like me you could try the Throw Massive Parties hack from  Sims Wardrobe.  (http://www.simwardrobe.com/)  So far it seems to play nicely with BV, and I've had as many as 20 sims on a lot without any problems. Supposedly it allows up to 250 visitors to your party, but my poor sims don't have enough friends to test that possibility :o.

That would be the step that I missed. I had it turned off on my dead computer, but I completely forgot about it on this new one. That was pretty dense of me.

I downloaded your start-up to see if that was truly all that was wrong. Being lazy (or frustrated), I used yours, Zazazu. It has what I had, except that I always have controlPets on. I don't mess around with their own decisions much (free will - all the way), but I don't like not having the possibility of controlling all my simmies.

Thanks, now I have almost everything back, except a few things from obscure websites that have since bit the dust and are nowhere to be found in the graveyard. I have been playing since 2004, so that was not something that surprised me.

I just thanked a poster for putting a link to a thread elsewhere on this site, and I got a bleeting sheep as thank you to my thank you! Haha.

Thanks, again, for all the help and trouble, guys. Turns out my problem was silly and very random. I typed in the teach as following:

intProp maxNumOfVisitingSims[8]

as the cheat is indicated as such:

intProp maxNumOfVisitingSims[number]

The poster I set out to thank, posted a link that contained a thread which shows the exact wording of the cheat:

intProp maxNumOfVisitingSims 8

No spaces before the you're supposed to input the number, no explanation that the brackets are not necessary. Very silly. I swore I played around with this in the past to see if the way I input the cheat is faulty, but I couldn't figure it out. Well, I had a birthday party and all of the invited Sims pitched up. Yay!

Anyway, maybe someone else have erred in the same way and they will also be helped.