More Awesome Than You!

I just can't get the desire to play the game lately. I think about it, I sort of want to sometimes, but I just can't do it. It's not working for me right now. I'm bored to tears with it, I feel like it's the same tedium humdrum treadmill and I'm also sick to death of them bitching. The latter I had fixed with hacks until NL came along.  ::)

The sick part is, I still download crap for the game and haven't played it except to test files for weeks, but I can't stop looking for stop and downloading because I worry I'll miss something nice that I might want to use when I might feel like playing the game again at some hypothetical future point in time.

I also can't stop coming here. I'm so bored sometimes I hit reload lol. And I check this place at work too. But why do I want to hang out somewhere for a game I have no interest in playing? The game just feels like bland milktoast for me right now. I find it far more interesting to read about the outrageous thing of the day that Rentech has done. :P

There, that's my confession.  :-\

Aww.  I get like that sometimes too, and turn to MW (which I'm not even halfway through!  :o) or something and inevitably I wind up coming back to the Sims.  I usually start with something different, like building community lots--which I hate--doing the college thing-which I hate--or just starting a new neighborhood entirely.  Mebbe that's why I can never get past gen 2 LOL.  I'm determined one of these days to actually do a challenge.  The idea of playing entirely hack free is daunting though.


I did that for Sims1 until University came out.  At that point, I figured I really really wasn't going to reinstall and play it ever again, and deleted it all.  ;D

4 words: Play the email challenge.
Usually if I don't want to play sims it is because I am coming down with the flu. You could take a break and play Civ 4, or you can come over to my place and help me mark the 90 essays that are sitting on my desk.

I haven't played for at least a week. Homework and such. But I did have a four day weekend . . .

At any rate, whenever I get really bored with the game, I spend some time just torturing sims. Often I'll come up with some little story for it, too. Like a semi-demonic couple who went through a new incarnation every time they'd killed a certain number of sims. Coming up with creative ways to make electronic people miserable is something that I find breaks many a mental block.

E-mail challenge is good for this reason.

Feeling your pain, Motoki.  I just bought AOE3, and I'm not happy with it so I'm back to my Sims.  I created a really nasty family since I haven't played one before to see if that will peak my interest again or maybe I will try the e-mail challenege.  We'll see!

I had the same problem, I stopped playing for 5 months and only until recently when Nightlife came out did I return to the game. I too, had found myself constantly looking for downloads for the game but not playing it either. It got to the point where I finally noticed that since I hadn't played the game in over a month I might as well  remove the Sims game from my computer and go cold turkey on the downloads too. It was hard at first but I quickly started playing some other game and I temporaly forgot my "downloading" habit lol .


I haven't gotten bored with Nightlife  yet but I am getting frustrated with how buggy my game has become  :(
I love coming here and lurking though  ;D
 

Oh Motoki.......

I know how you feel. Sometimes I get extremely bored with the 'groundhog day' like repetitiveness of playing. I have a MATY addiction too. I'm more of a lurker than a poster though, but still, the overwhelming desire to come back again and again is too hard to ignore. I'm also finding the ongoing Rentech saga more fun than loading up the game these days too!  :P

Also........oh...I've lost my train of thought......boredom..... creeping.....in *zzzzzz*  ;)

Didn't Inge take care of the bitching with a new hack for NL? I was sure she did... check her site (for some reason it won't load for me right now).

It only takes care of some of the bitching about needs, but the noroutefail doesn't seem to work, either Inge's or Pescado's. I'm not sure if there are any more sources of bitching besides routefail and low needs, but I definitely notice the difference between how I had it pre-NL and post NL.

I'm not sure about the email challenge thing. I mean people running around and peeing on the floor, I've had all that with my nannies.  ;D

Whenever I've gotten bored with the game, I always come here and read the Podium, because it never fails...I will find some kind of fascinating thread that will kickstart me back into wanting to load my game up! 

Oh I know exactly how you feel, it seems for the last months all I did was doing test and preparing my neighborhoods for Nightlife, unfortunately (or hopefully) I have a back-up that I keep putting back for some odd reason.  :-X

I redesigned my Sim houses, downloaded a lot of starter houses which I rearrange, redesign downtown and University lots but did not really played with my Sims.  It seems I don't know what to do with them anymore.

I created 7 families and decided they all had to find the perfect match right away and all needed to be pregnant now!  I don't really like having babies in my game (well not that many) and to my absolute dismay I ended up with 3 set of twins out of the 7 pregnancies, I never added so many twins at once, it was too much for me I add to put my back-up back in which all my lots are not the way I like, so back to redesigning I am.... an eternal loop right now...

I used to spend a lot of time on the Sims 2 website at work and back home but lately I prefer to hang in here mostly because you guys rocks and know what you are talking about and I learned a lot here (yes yes, I changed my mind on many things, mea culpa I was a sheep before).

I never really tried doing some challenges since I do play a little like some challenges anyhow and never was really into cheating in my game.  Maybe I could give it a shot and see.  I am bored with my Sims and would love to give them nice adventures but raising generations of families do not appeal to me, maybe a romance challenge would be more appealing... and of course the holiday pack will defenitely not solve that problem lol.

I'm not bored with NL, yet, but you've seen how crazy my sims are! I throw everything at 'em. I think I would be bored if I played the way the game was meant to be played, though, and just created generation after generation of sims, letting the older ones die off, etc. But since I have just the one family being the center of my game, I've gotten attached to them and they've become well-fleshed-out characters. Of course, that also requires a lot of imagination, on my part. I ignore the "why the game does what it does" aspect. I find it disturbing to think that my "wonderful parents" are only succumbing to the advertisements of their babies and usually trying to fulfill their own needs in taking care of the baby. Or something like that. I hear those explanations and do the fingers-in-the-ear thing, "Na na na na na..." Bleah.

I've become a genetic junky and I can't control myself.  I like to create certain genetics and then mate them with townies or others I have created just to see wheat they will end up looking like. I'll have the same couple have a bazillion kids to see if I get repeats and I try to use unique looking folks to mix and match.  I do this over and over….

And yeah, hi, my names theisz and I am a genetic junky.  :o

Well there, you've just described me in a nutshell. I have been doing the same exact thing and wondering if there is something wrong with me, lol. I spend an ungodly amount of time reading MATY during the day while I'm at work (winter is an extremely slow time of year in my office) and when I'm at home and finally get some computer time after dinner,dishes, kids, etc., I find myself downloading stuff, searching for more stuff, reorganizing downloads and have about zero desire to actually play the game I'm doing all this downloading for! And now, as you can see, instead of searching for downloads or playing the game, I'm back here at MATY :-[. I read Ancient Sim and Brynne's posts and think I really must be lacking in the imagination department because their games sound like so much fun and mine at the moment are like, "meh".

Motoki and other quitters -

It only proves the EA thesis to issue an EP each 3 months...:). After 3 months play, the simmers get bored, and want something new...:).

It can point too to the high inteligence of the simmers: "OK, I've  got it - what's new?"... ;D

Heeeeey, I'm smart... ;)

I have gone through many such stages so I know exactly how you feel. The downloading is an attempt to try to find a reason to go back in. If you found something really cool, you may want to go back in and play more, but it doesn't usually happen until you have thousands of new things, most of which you'll have forgotten by the time you go back in to play...

That's why I still don't have the EPs installed, though I've had them since mid-September.
I've been trying to go through all my neighbourhoods, make sure everyone's at home, no visitors or npc's etc... and it's getting so boring. My neighbourhood's are so big (over 100 lots combined and probably 1,000s of playable sims) and I have so many backups of the first one that I've been going through versions to see which I want to keep (they're all screwed, I should just toast them all, but it was my first and there are a few families I really like)
I'm starting to think I'll just keep the few families I really can't do without, teleport everyone else over and turn them into townies, then delete their lots. Thanks to the no townie regen the neighbourhood only has 5 natural townies left, so it could work right?

I don't think I could maintain my interest in The Sims unless I was also creating stuff for it.   And I can't play for longer than about an hour an evening because my computer gets really noisy when I have the sims loaded and I end up with a headache.

Having said that I usually find that when I am reluctant to start the game up for days or weeks at a time it's usually because I am playing in a way that doesn't suit me.  Like trying to age all the families at the same rate and playing each house a day at a time.  I found I wasn't getting really involved with any family and so I didn't care how they got on or want to go back to check on them.   Currently I am trying with aging off, and sticking with one home and family while they play out a particular scenario or story.   I also just leave some by the wayside if I am not finding them interesting.   When their siblings get old, I can just delete them if they weren't interesting enough to keep in the family tree.

I go through phases where I don't play for a week or so...sometimes longer..b/c I get bored.  Then I come back to it and it feels more refreshing.


Right now I am on a kick though.  I recreated myself and my fiance quite accurately to the point where it is slightly creepy lol..so making us reproduce and then seeing my 'spawn' grow up has been entertaining me lol

I 'recreated' myself once and got 'married' to a 'famous' Sim I have a crush on and created. It was a lovely fantasy *sigh*  :P

Must be the time of the year I guess. Truth is, I became less and less interested in the game over the past couple of weeks, but I still joined MATY to check out the threads and post an occasional reply. Since last week though I've completely abandoned the game. A friend of mine brought over his PS2 to show San Andreas to my girlfriend and the next day I got the PC version. Guess what. She played once or twice, then I took over the computer...again! Bye bye sims, welcome CJ. It's not the first time I abandon TS2 for another game either. First time was before Uni, when Sid Meier's Pirates! hit the shelves. I got it, even joined a forum for the game, played my socks off, and a couple of months later I got Uni. All the hacks were Uni compatible by that time (it had been out for some time), so I completely soaked it in. Until last week. I still haven't gotten NL (for reasons I've stated elsewhere), so maybe in a month or two (after I've squeaked the bejesus out of San Andreas that is) I'll get started with the game again. I still join MATY though, and I still join the forum for Pirates (it's called hookedonpirates btw, former Cutlass Isle), and the reason is I enjoy it. I like Cutlass Isle because of the completely flame-free environment and the laughs I get from many guys over there, whereas MATY is more of a learning-in-progress-along-with-a-few-laughs-and-mishaps kind of place. Oh, and it's got some pretty handy hacks to boot!

I used to get really bored with the sims.   Until I started playing it while doing my school work.  Result, I last longer doing my school work and don't get bored of the sims, because when they are doing something I absolutely don't care about, I ignore them, until some major event occurs that interests me.  (The only bad thing about this is that I had to stop bringing my laptop to class, because I was always trying to play it in class.)  The bulk of my downloading now is focused on hacks that make my sims smarter and more independent, so I can ignore them more.   I guess you could say I want to play them like SimCity when you could build it so that the city was making money, then leave it overnight to discover you have a gazillion dollars the next morning. 

Well I guess I just have no imagination sometimes. Either that or I get tired of just making everything up in my head. :P

I wish there were stories and mini-scenarios. Sort of like how the default neighborhoods were setup except that it would actually let you play out to some sort of conclusion or goal where the outcome actually gets resolved one way or another. I think some other people must want this too because that's probably why so many people were fascinated with the so-called Bella mystery. People were looking for a story in a game where quite frankly it just wasn't there.

I do realize they intentionally did not follow up on those stories so the game would be open ended and we could choose our own paths, but I think it would be nice if there were some kind of way that us users could set up stories and scenarios and then maybe share them with each other.

Maybe I am just looking for roleplaying in a simulation game and looking in the wrong place, but I don't think games have to stick to one particular genre and I see some potential there for another way to keep the game fresh because there's only so many clothes and furniture you can download before you just feel like been there done that. :P

When I get fed up of TS2, it's usually because the bugs, annoyances and niggles are getting me down. I haven't bought many games recently, because everything looks the same. I borrowed Civ III ages ago and finally got around to buying my own copy because I sometimes go over to visit my mum and when she hits the soaps, she's gone for ages and her PC won't handle TS2. But Civ III is pretty boring. So I end up falling back on C&C (various versions). Last week I bought SSX On Tour for my PS2. It's good in the early stages, but I prefer racing to trick competitions and I currently have a screen full of trick missions and no new race options. But I love free-riding from the top of the mountain to the bottom. It's very relaxing and takes about 25 minutes to complete - longer if you find one of the hidden half-pipes and stay there practicing tricks. Then I go back to the top and do it again, this time taking a different route. It's pretty much no-brainer stuff, but sometimes that's all you need.

I know what you mean about the nastiness though. The new 'furious' feature is a complete pain in the arse and I have Sims that do nothing but fight. In one family, the two kids were forever fighting and then mum got pissed off with dad for being in the toilet when she wanted to go. It started with poking and ended up with them continually attacking each other. Even after I worked the relationships back up, one would still poke the other and the furious state would return and it would plunge into fighting again. I just couldn't cope with two pairs of Sims doing nothing but fighting and eventually the parents had to break up. But have you noticed that the reverse is just as annoying. Sims in Love now do nothing but kiss, cuddle and flirt and ignore all other needs? They don't eat, pee, bathe or sleep and then end up in a right state. Kids don't get fed and the threat of the social worker is always there. Send a Sim to serve a meal and they cancel the action and return to the kissing.

And is it just me, or when the game first came out, didn't Sims move around much more intelligently? If another Sim was using the stairs they also wanted to use, they just followed on behind them. Now they stamp their feet, whine, point around and then cancel all their actions and head off to kiss/fight their lover/partner/sibling. I'm almost at the point where I'm about to turn off free will and that's something I've never done with this game or the original Sims.

I have periods like this as well - in fact, I'm having one now.  I know exactly what you mean about needing storylines and I think maybe between us we can work on that.  I've been thinking maybe I should create a dysfunctional family, something along the line of the Pleasants, but up to now I've not been able to bring myself to do it. 

How about if a group of us get together and each come-up with a 'start-off' storyline - i.e., we each provide one family.  We could either choose for ourselves who the family consisted of, or use dice to roll the family members and their aspirations, signs, etc., rather like in a challenge.  Once we had our family we would set them up in a certain way, which could be anything we want from battling teens (a la the Pleasants) to a couple who are absolute opposites with nothing whatsoever in common.  Each of us would create a different type of family. Once we'd done that, we could either upload them in their houses to the official site and put them into our games (they'd have to be created in brand-new neighbourhoods to avoid any extra character files), upload just the characters individually, or simply describe the scenarios and re-create them with characters of our own choosing.  I'm more inclined to the first one myself so we'd all have the same families and lots (would make it easier to compare stories, I think), plus we'd get to see each other's Sims and compare them, maybe get some halfway-decent genetic mixes coming through as well.

If there were around half-a-dozen of us doing this, we could have a separate neighbourhood for it and play each family the same amount of time and see how differently (or the same) they develop for all of us.  Something like that anyway.

Not sure if this is a good idea or a crap one, but I'm just trying to think of ways to break the monotony.  I could do with a new EP every couple of months or so to be honest.  I think a lot of the problem is that once one comes out everyone is going on about the next one and you start thinking "Should I be fed-up of this one already, then?"  I wish they'd shut-up about the next one until nearer the time.

Oh and 10/10 for the word "Simpotence".  Wish I'd thought of it (grrrrr).

Well like everyone else here I go through phases as well.  When it gets really bad is about a month before a new EP.  At first I fought it and tried to do different things like make a movie.  Which provided to be more frustrating because I couldn't think of a good enough plot and then when I thought of a halfway decent one I couldn't get it the way I wanted it.  (obviously that project was abandoned)

I have yet to play one challenge all the way through.  I try, I really do but mostly I end up online with the game on permanent pause.  I know it sounds like I have ADD but it's actually more like SADD (Sims Attention Defencency Disorder), I get interested in something and then it gets tedious and I abandon it.

Ahem <reloading>

I have to admit, I get really annoyed at the way sims are losing their queues now - you can't queue them to do anything if they come home from work by car, if you send them to the toilet with the queue use/clean/shower, they forget the use, clean the toilet and take a shower!  As for the stairs, it depends on the stairs - some staircases always had this problem, others have always been ok.

What I do to stop boredom setting in, which it does eventually, is to rotate between Downtown, Uni and Pleasantview.  I guess, with further EPs, we'll have more places to go to, so the interest will stay high for longer.

I definitely know how you feel with that one, I feel the same way.  I pretty much hate the BBS now, although I was more about helping than finding help.  The things I do need help with, I find here.  :)

And the game is a little boring now, so I am no longer playing to make stories, except the Email challenge, which I haven't played for about a week now.  I find I have to gear myself up to play that lot, since it involves some concentration (and ruling with an iron fist, as opposed to letting the Sims call some of the shots).

I like this idea. To carry it a bit further, we could have a  "monkey wrench" option. By this I mean that each family's creator would come up with a wild card option to the storyline. Say my family is John and Debbie Sim, a married couple. At any time, I can post a wild card story point that everyone would have to work into the story. For example, I could decide that John and Debbie should have a baby. What, they just had one yesterday? Oops. Guess you'll be busy for a while, then. ;) Or maybe I decide that no Aspiration rewards can be used for 3 Sim days. Your kid just became a toddler? Guess you'll be busy again. Or I could decide that John buys a winning lotto ticket and the family gets $10K. You get the idea. The wild cards could be scheduled or could be totally random.

That way, we would be playing and planning, but then the surprise element would be there, too. We could be benevolent or evil in our wild cards, or a combination of both. Then we could compare notes on what we did to resolve the issue, or how we let it play out.

That would be awesome. Bring on the evil wild cards!

I like the wild card idea1 Whatever happened to the phone calls in sims 1 that encouraged you to have your sims pick up the phone?

How long does the original storyline need to be?  And do we all start out with the same custom neighbourhood?   And presumably we deleteallcharacters?

Intriguing ideas, Ancient and Reggikko...
Although I'm not bored with my current game, yet, I guess I could create another neighborhood for this and switch between the two... 

This sounds really interesting. I get bored too, and haven't played properly for any length of time recently. Mostly I've been setting up a RPG on another forum, doing research for my job or wasting...spending valuable time at MATY!  ;D

I like the sharing of storylines/wildcard idea a lot. I've been feeling a bit bored lately when I've been playing, too, I've had to think up some 'rules' for myself to make the game more interesting, and considered starting up a number of challenges. Not that it's been a huge problem since I haven't had any time to play since November started, and won't until December...

Here's a twist on this:

I say we let Supreme Troglodyte Pescado give us family perimeters.  He says:  "Family Number One Shall Have..., Family Number Two Shall Have...., etc."  We build the families using his guidelines in a brand new neighborhood.  Every day he throws a game a bit by putting some restriction on one (or two, or three...) of the families.  This would be an interactive way to bring the element of the "hand of Pescado" into our game.


Sorry you're bored, Motoki.  I suggest that you play your game only as means of punishment and then see how you react :D  Now THAT could be an interesting psychological experiment :)

cheers~

Has anyone ever figured out how to create the little text pop up with background info when you first play a lot like Maxis does with the default neighborhood? It might help to create a little story if we were to say share custom neighborhoods and such. Of course those files if they included terrain, houses, neighborhoods, characters etc would be huge. :O

Isn't there an option when you single-click on the house to add information?

You can, and you can do the same with custom neighbourhoods.  And rather than downloading one huge file, I'd suggest everyone uses the same neighbourhood template to create their neighbourhood.  Where the lots go would be up to individual players, but I think it would be good if we had to create our own Downtown and University!

That's precisely how I'm feeling right now.  Like you, I'm bored with the standard game, yet I still visit MATY hoping for ideas.  Now and then I see something and try it out, and inevitably it's some odd restriction or goal that makes the game tougher.

For example, I recently started playing an "I'm Surrounded By Idiots" game.  I enjoyed having to deal with managing several other Sims indirectly.  I had my first unintentional starvation death, my Sim's wife passed out while hungry, and I couldn't figure out how to wake her up and get her to eat fast enough.  I could have put a stereo in the room, of course, but I felt that was outside the boundries.  My Sim won the ensuing "plead with death" roll, which was another first, but I could have used the Resurrector career object if I'd failed, which would also have been interesting.  To make it tougher, I had 3 kids, which is a lot tougher when just one Sim has to prod them to do homework.  Getting A+'s was actually a struggle, which was new.

Alas, I'm losing interest.  The big problem was sending my heir to college.  College is really, really boring with just one playable character.  Particularly since she'd maxed out her Creativity skill while brainless, and kept rolling both the Painting and Novel wants.  Watching a Sim paint is about as interesting as, well, watching paint dry.  Now that she's back, I should send the other two kids to college to fulfill the original Torch Holder's LTW, but that seems really dull.

The problem with ISBI is the same as the Legacy game - it's long enough to get repetitive.  ISBI's main redeeming features are that it can actually be hard in places, and it gives you a reason to use the otherwise-useless "influence" actions in a creative way.  I normally play with at least 5-6 Sims in a household to keep from getting bored, and ISBI is a lot like that because you're trying to take care of several Sims while issuing commands to only one.

We need more ideas for house rules or mods that make the game harder for those of us who are bored.

 - Gus

I have an idea for a story. It's called Whatever Happened to Baby Pam.

Two elder sisters Pam and Inge live together. Pam was once a well liked and respected star but has now become quite deranged and jealous of her sister. She's locked Inge up in her room putting her on 'moderation' preventing her from having contact with the outside world.

We could use Windkeeper's wheelchair from MTS2 and Inge's lockable doors and prison stuff. All we'd need is a dead canary custom food. LOL

It has to be something about why various people play computer games.  I don't usually play games at all apart from tetris and solitaire.  I have a couple of rollercoaster games where I get into the car and sit there as the thing runs round the tracks, and I have Trainz, where I nagged and nagged till they added passenger mode.   I don't want to have to learn to drive the wretched engines!

So when I play my sims it's mainly just for the pleasure of sitting back and watching how they deal with the houses I have given them.  I hate the aspirations system and being challenged to fill their wants.  The wants could be realistic but only if Sims make some sort of attempt to fulfill them given the opportunity.   I resent the fact it was bolted on just to give gamers a challenge to play.

Lol Motoki!  You don't have the evil nanny avatar for nothing, do you? :P

People really do approach the Sims differently.  The aspiration system is the only reason I play The Sims 2.  I stopped playing The Sims 1 after about 2 weeks and never purchased any of the expansion packs because there were few in-game goals, and I ran out of my own goals for the game rather quickly.  The Wants gave me hundred of goals to pursue.  I don't even like the aspiration rewards, and in fact I refuse to use anything but the Smart Milk.  Simply keeping each Sim's aspiration meter topped up is enough.

Watching the Sims do their own thing isn't very interesting to me, and not just because they're terminally stupid.  If I'm not taking an active part in the game, I'm bored.

 - Gus

I get this problem quite often, which is usually when I take a break and do something else. Or, I'll improve a community lot, or make a new one ... I made one modeled after the Bronze that has a stairway to hell in the middle of it. Did you know the underworld is filled with marshmallow roasting flamethrowers? Now you do.

I write a story thread on World Sims, which helps with my creativity when it's low. I also have rules I've made for myself based on my experiences with the game. First and foremost is, never have too many sims. I have one main family and only create peripheral characters when the story calls for it. My total sim count (including a beautician I invented for the purpose of helping the NPC fashion victims in the game) is 21 right now, and that includes three generations, three husbands that married in, a fiance, a live-in biker nanny and the frat and sorority sims that came with Sim State. Since I altered/incorporated the "greeks" I count them as players, now. (The girls are vamps, the two remaining boys are nervous ...)

Second rule? Never do the same thing twice. Each sim's story should be unique, otherwise I agree you're heading for Groundhog's Day. That's not to say that some of the things can't be the same, but variety is the key to keeping things interesting. I like to try different aspirations and combinations of aspirations, and if a relationship is getting complacent it's 1) time for them to become elders and be put out to pasture or 2) time to shake things up.

I like the wild card idea, though I'm a bit too much of a goat to do what I'm told. Ever. I admit it's a problem.

However, if someone comes up with something really diabolical I'd be tempted to try it.

My current story thread? A knowledge sim who's a bit too interested in vampires is heading for trouble ...

Oh, and I'm a control freak. I choreograph their every move. So once in a while, just for fun, I let them do their own thing, as long as it's not stupid. Sims in love, for example, can be really sweet to each other, left to their own devices ... my vampire couple is head over heels and are always after a smooch or a cuddle if I let them.

Of course, if I have a sim who clearly has to pee who then goes to use the easel the hand of goddess must intervene.

I hate cleaning up puddles.

There needs to be a window, though, so she can "watch" what's going on.

Every game I've ever cared about has times when I feel like I'm just going through the motions. I've put something like 400 hours of my life into the various GameBoy Advance Pokemon series, and I still don't have all 386 Pokemon, even though I'm an obsessive completist. I get obsessed with it for a while, and then put it down again. I don't see this as a problem.

The fundamental point about gaming is that it's supposed to be fun.  It's supposed to be an escape from reality - something to occupy your mind and entertain you. This means it's pointless to carry on playing a game when it's ceased to be fun. Doesn't mean it won't ever be fun again, just that you need to do something else for a bit - pick up another game, or a book, or a TV series.

I don't think it's strange to still want to download objects for Sims 2, because in a way the downloading is part of the fun - looking for interesting new furniture, or whatever. Frankly, if it was as easy to change real life decor & furniture as it is in the Sims, I'd have completely new furniture every couple of months ;D. You can still be a fan of the game & its community/ies while you don't feel like playing it. Right now, my partner & I, big kids that we are, sit & watch the Pokemon anime when we have dinner (I bought him a cuddly Wobbuffet for his birthday today, and he loved it!) - but I'm not playing the games at all.

This post is a wee bit incoherent, but I have to leave for work now :-\. Sorry.

Not incoherent at all.

You're absolutely right. If it's not fun, why do it?

Eventually it will pull you back in, or it won't. Life goes on.

I play mine kind of like a soap-opera. Or even like playing Barbies, I guess.  I was never much of a barbie-player, but I think many can relate to the doll-house style of playing. My characters are all based on characters I created as a child, except back then Joe was a mouse named Nutmeg. He had a brother named Cocoa, who is Joe's brother, Gary , in my game.  ;D And Nutmeg was also not at all sexual like 'ol Romance Joe, since I was just a little kid and wasn't interested in anything mushy and didn't know anything about sex. He just always got himself into silly messes at school, etc. and was a very mischievous little mouse. He was also not-so-loosely based on me (yes, Nutmeg was a male mouse and I'm a girl. A girl, dammit! But I was a real tomboy. I preferred my tonka trucks over silly girlie dolls. Now I collect dolls. Pretty funny how that turned out. But I digress...). Because since I was a baby, "things just happened" with me.  That was what my mom said as she shook her head. "Valerie, Valerie, Valerie. Things just happen with you, don't they?". Now my husband says the very same thing. lol

But back to my original point, I think it's the fact that Joe's been a part of my life in one way or another for over 25 years that keeps me drawn to this game. Joe's just who Nutmeg would have turned out to be, except probably not as ..."romantic". ahem. He's also hot and not a mouse, lol. I just like to see how Joe gets himself into, and out of, every situation I can think of. And any little "surprise occurences" in my game will have to be written in and dealt with just like the "surprise occurances" I have to deal with, still. Joe's son Josh has tried to die on me twice, now. I had to exit without saving. I have my limits. There will be no Bayfield deaths!

LOL, Brynne. I used to have a live pet mouse named Nutmeg. The other one was named Kate. (I'm a Shakespeare fan.) Nutmeg was, well, nutmeg-colored and Kate was black and white spotted. They were adorable. (Don't ask what happened to them. That wasn't so adorable.)

I too have a rule about not quitting if something happens I don't like, including death. My first Buffy Summers lasted exactly two minutes, real time, before being hit by a satellite. And my favorite sims had a boy for their only child when I really wanted a girl, but I dealt with it and now I'm glad I did. It wouldn't have felt right to just delete him.

The only time I quit without saving is if I really screw up a remodel or if the game gets glitchy on me, like the time my sim walked in circles and wouldn't get into the @90! cab. Or do anything else, for that matter.

Oh, I definitely have to agree, Motoki....
I have those periods alot!  In fact, I only recently played a few days ago after my whole re-installation fiasco.  I simply couldn't bring myself to play for quite some time before that...I really wish there was a way to keep it all fresh.  I am not very imaginative, and all of my familys end up living the same types of lives, lol.  Even when I try to think up different scenarios, it ends up turning into the same old thing.  We definitely need to figure out a way to freshen up the game.
Sadly, even when Nightlife came out, I was exceedingly bored with it. I haven't played it much at all, even though it's the most fun I've had since I first got my copy of the Sims 2 awhile back.
So, I too suffer from Simpotence and feel your pain.  You have my shoulder to cry on if ever you need.   :'(

I was kind of starting to get this way, too, and decided to play a sim I'd been ignoring.  I picked Kristen Singles, and decided she needed a mate.  Her turn ons were blond hair and fitness, so I paraded every available sim past her and she went meh at all of them.   My granddaughter was on my lap (she loves to watch, she's 4) so I said to her that Kristen didn't like any of the boy sims.  So my precious little grand daughter looked at me and said "Well, Flard".  Guess you could say I play this game a little much...  She helped me make a sim for Kristen and she ended up with 3 bolts for him.  Haven't been back to play, spent about 4 days just deleting ugly hair and crappy furniture.  So now it is time to download more. 

The only time I quit without saving is if I notice a glitch (I've had a lot of disappearing objects lately, a sim who was sleeping is suddenly in the pool and their bed is just gone!?)
I used to have the InSiminator in a subfolder and would accidentally kill Sims all the time (usually by flies) and though it was a while before figuring out why, I refused to change history. It made for far more interesting story lines than I'd have come up with myself and actually made the game more appealing. The best such incident being the mother of quadruplet toddlers and a newly transitioned child son in a brand new neighbourhood where the only other Sims were 1 nanny, the paperkid, mailman and one bus driver.

Ancient Sim- I love the idea, the wildcards would certainly add an element of interest, but we'd have to figure out the best way to package. It would probably work best if we created our 'lot' in a new neighbourhood with no characters and got them far enough along to have a home without having made any 'contacts' before packaging them.
I think lot packaging (with all the characters) would have made more sense if a family who knew say Amy the papergirl and Kaylynn the maid could be transferred to a new neighbourhood and still know the Amy and Kaylynn (because they're probably in the new hood too)

First I was bored
I was petrified . . .

Started the Prosperity Challenge a few months ago and I love it love it love it!
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/prosperity_challenge/

I haven't played in weeks.  I really want the phone and romance mod hacks first.  I have a fresh new hood with new charatcers waiting to be played.  I have been too busy with other things as well.

Well, the good news is that the next truck arrives next week. Maybe Nightlife will be on it.

HUZZAH!!

Now that's bizarre, LOL. My character Nutmeg was based on a stuffed animal I got for Christmas one year. And he was a Nutmeg-colored mouse! My dad named him for me. I didn't even know what Nutmeg was.

One example of a twist I worked into my game was with a popularity sim I have, named Bradley. His dad is Joe and his mom is Brandi Broke. He is married to a romance sim, and I was so proud of the fact that I kept them monogamous (Dayna did have a fling with Bradley's older brother, but that was before she and Bradley began dating). She went for (real time) months without cheating, just occasionally sprang up a "makeout with 3 different sims" want. One day I caved, and had Joe take advantage of TJ's casual romance mod. They did a *bit* more than kiss, but it was over when it was over . They never did it again. But Bradley had never even kissed another woman. He has, to me, taken on this personality of a man very much in love with his wife; they flirt and kiss autonomously more than any other couple I've had in my game (although Joe and his new wife are right up there, now), and back before I had NL and was still able to use the Romance Mod, he would absolutely refuse to accept any flirtations from any other woman. He'd get downright pissy about it, too. He's a hothead, and I love him for it lol. So anyway, months after Dayna's one-time thing with Joe, I had a roomful of sims doing various things at the Bayfield house. Bradley's younger brother, Josh, had an affair a while back with a sim I created, named Monica. She was married, and is a romance sim. She's my avatar, Giles', mom, btw. Josh and Monica had triplets together, but the romance faded and Josh went on to marry his old flame, Meadow Thayer. Anyway, Monica was at the Goth-Bayfield house, too (visiting), and I decided to stir things up. I had her "caress" Bradley. They were friends, sure, but I was positive he'd push her away, since "caress" is a verrrrry dangerous flirt to do. It's almost always rejected if you're not at a certain relationship level with the other sim. Dayna was not at the house, so I went ahead and instigated. I figured I'd just get Bradley pissed off, and he's funny when he's mad. He accepted the flirt! My jaw dropped. So, after not a whole lot of deliberation on my part, I went with it. They had a little fling, and she became pregnant. Bradley already had two grown kids with Dayna and I hadn't planned on him having any more, but with the Risky Woohoo option, I took the chance. Monica gave birth to their son, Cam, three sim-days later. Dayna did catch them at it one day (did NOT know she was on the lot at the time!) and slapped Bradley silly. Bradley and Dayna spent all night and all the next day getting their relationship back on track. (Wish it was that easy in real life to repair a rocky relationship. "Look, Honey, I know you're angry, but check out this great dance move!") Set them off on a date, they made "dream date" status and woohoo'd in the photobooth, the car, then back at Bradley's place, in the hot tub and bedroom as well. Dayna adopted Cam. Josh and Meadow divorced, and he and Monica are now engaged. It's weird, though, that Cam's half-brothers are also his cousins. And Josh's future step-son is his nephew.  All kinds of stuff like that in my game!
I photo-documented the whole thing, of course. Here's a brief portion of that:
 
Started here. Monica is dressed in huge pink dress for comedic purposes. I find it entertaining.
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/BadBradley1.jpg)

Then moved to the couch:
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/BadBradley2.jpg)

Next stop: Bradley's room!
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/bradmonica.jpg)

And Bradley's feelin' a little frisky...
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/friskybradley.jpg)

I was as surprised as Bradley was. I didn't know Dayna was there!
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/daynabustsbradley.jpg)

A lot of talking went on (once Bradley dressed himself. Not a good idea to apologize for having an affair while still naked from said affair) And you can see Dayna is thinking about "the other woman" here:
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/tryingtotalkitout.jpg)

Still trying to make nicey-nice with the wife, and Dayna's warming up to it:
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/bradleykisseshand.jpg)

...and everything's just peachy-keen between Bradley and Dayna, now.:
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/braddaynadance.jpg)

Well, JM, if it isn't, guess you'll have to take a helicopter trip downtown!

As to the original idea, what kind of rules will thre be about custom stuff?  (Obviously some paysite stuff is out, per se, but what about things which allow file-sharing etc.)

Ok, I figured it out. JM either lives on a satelite or Antarctica.

Or Nebraska......

So did you guys all go off to play without me? I feel so unloved!!!

I just had an interesting situation happen.  I recently had to reinstall my game as the computer went down.  I was luck to still have most downloads on disk.  I started to play again, from the start, Pleasantville - today.  I decided to start elsewhere than the Goths this time.  So when I went there and started them up, I had Cassandra sent Don home so I could get some new clothes and other things downtown.  To my surprise when I checked her chemistry, she had none with Don!  None at all I tell you!  This is the first time breaking up with Don will be totally easy for Cassandra!  He can tramp around to his hearts content this time around!
Anyway I just thougt this might make those who are bored amused.  On another note I kind of think it would be fun to play with other peoples designs and storylines, instead of just my own.  Since I do have to admit my imagination just isn't that wild.

It's a great idea.

I swap whole neighborhoods with other players, and it certainly puts a new spin on playing when you aren't the only one controlling the sims. So I am generally of the opinion that any kind of collaboration makes the game more exciting.

Personally, I wish people would create their own entire neighborhoods and upload them. Many players love messing around with the Maxis neighborhoods, and I think that's precisely because so many things are already set up for you and you are not starting from scratch. You have to work with what was given to you. Heck, I'd do one myself except I'm terrified no one would like it.

Anyway, this has nothing to do with your idea, I'm just saying there are various ways of playing a "joint" neighborhood, and your idea is as good as any of the ones I've already tried.

Here is one thing to remember: If one person has all the EPs and another person does not (or has only one EP), the person with no EPs will be unable to download and install anything the person with the EPs creates.


When my friends and I swap neighborhoods, custom content is not uploaded. We just give each other the locations of the things they should download. It makes a ton more sense than having to pay attention to "fire share policies" and such.

As for those popup thingies, I've been trying to figure out how they're done for a long time. Pescado once said they might be inside the lot files themselves, if I recall right. I think I'll go look for them.

If only families and not the whole neighborhood are being shared, then it makes more sense to use Sim Bios to tell the family story. Each sim has their own bio, and you can fit quite a lot of info in there. Plus there's the Family Bio as well, which shows up in neighborhood view.

What I would love to see in the Sims is something like the technology trees of 4X games.  Examples:

If you don't teach your toddler to speak, then the adult sim is mute - no phone conversations, no jokes, etc.  Can't even propose marriage.

If you don't potty train your toddler, then they won't use a toilet in adult life.  This might actually be desirable in the email challenge.

Only sims that can speak and have a playful attribute greater than 5 can tell jokes.  Only sims that can tell jokes and have at least one affair memory can tell dirty jokes.

The basic premise is that a sim's personality and experiences (memories) determine what actions are possible for that sim to perform.  A mod like this would be huge and ungainly, as it would modify a lot of the global interaction files, but I think if done correctly, would add a lot to the game.

I can kind of compare the way I play my sims game to a hobby I used to do a lot: scrapbooking. I found that scrapbooking was less about your creativity in the initial work,  and more about your creativity with working your mistakes into the picture, since it's all done in ink with expensive pens and paper. I tend to play my game the same way. Except that I won't let my Bayfields die ;)



Agh, I thought I posted this a while back, but here it is still on my monitor with the stupid "warning! while you were typing 2 new replies have been added..thing at the top

Posting again...

Where do you go to do this?  I really like the idea of playing someone else's neighbourhood, one that's already set-up.  I've started a new one now but my heart just isn't in it, I miss my Pleasantview Sims too much.  Trouble is, there are far too many of them and a lot of them I have no desire to play.  But I really do want to see how some of the younger ones grow-up.  I need to find a way to cull the neighbourhood without having to resort to mass killing.  I'm hoping the SimPE Deleter tool will work properly eventually, so I can get rid of the ones I don't want cleanly, as if they never existed.

I met some other players on MTS2 way back... in January, I think. We first did a Legacy family together, and now I'm doing Prosperity with them. And I'm doing a second Prosperity neighborhood with another group. I also had a friend that I've done several swaps with, but she seems to have vanished from the community.

I met almost everyone by word-of-mouth. Probably the easiest way to meet people is just to make a post saying you're looking for that. I don't think there's a lack of people who would be interested. Just make sure that everyone has the same game specs (you all need the same game in terms of what EPs you have installed), and that everyone is comfortable with the process of installing a neighborhood they receive from another player. You'll absolutely need the notownieregen hack, do everything possible to limit the number of sims and lots, and be able to use 7zip to zip up the files. As for actually sending them to each other, we always do it through Yahoo Mail.

Like I already said, I think it is high time for some Maxis-like neighborhoods to be created by players and made available to everyone. I'm just not up to doing one all by myself. ;)

Well, I deleted a lot of townies with SimPE, and any memories of having met goopy Gilscarbo and co seem to have gone.  But I'd be wary of sims that I'd been playing for any length of time - you have all those invisible memories, and they aren't, as far as I can see, deleted when you delete the sim.

Referring back to Cassandra - she has no chemistry with don in my game either - but it didn't stop her getting furious when she saw him downtown with Kaylynn!  she does get two lightning bolts for Darren Dreamer, but if you resurrect Darleen, they have three LBs for each other, and in my game they get the special event camera every time they woohoo!  And dirk seems to get at least 2 for every sim teen female he scopes except one blonde!  I dread to think what will happen when he goes to college!

I had some ideas for handicaps which I suggested a while ago in my "more challenging challenge" thread. I'd love to play a neighbourhood that everyone contributed too. I have to confess that I have never played any of the maxis hoods - I just delete them and make my own. I think it would be really cool if we did stories, or a chain story.

I've seen many, many threads like this in the past and often contributed to them with my own woes, then one day I thought of asking myself this question:

"Just what is it about The Sims that make us feel like we HAVE to play this game constantly?"

I mean seriously--here just about all of us go through this thing of feeling like we need to play with these little bitty pixelated people on a daily basis.  Doesn't this make you ask something about our mental states?  As in are we all in need of serious help?

To be perfectly honest, it's a normal thing to get tired of doing something after a while and/or to run out of creativity for that particular thing.  There's nothing wrong with us other than that we should move on to another interest and perhaps broaden our horizon for new ones.

I really think we start to feel a responsibility to these little computerized people, much like we do to our own families.  They become entirely too real to us and we feel that if we're not playing with them it's some sort of neglect because their lives can't move on without us.

Last night I was reading an article in our local newspaper written by one of its regular contributors.  The fellow was going on about how his teenage son won't go out hunting with him every weekend of the season.  His son wants to have other interests in addition to hunting while the dad wants to spend all hunting season out every chance he gets.  I thought about it for a minute and realized the son had a very healthy attitude and the dad was completely obsessed.

One question I have is how many games do you folks own?  Do you own more than one or two?  How often do you play those games in comparison to TS2?  I personally have an entire CD tower full of games I only play when I get tired of my simmies.

So, in summation, you all have my permission to get tired of playing with your little people for a while and go off and do something else.  Walk away from the computer and watch a movie, hug your loved ones, go out to dinner or what have you.  You're under absolutely no obligation to play with those sims.

In the meantime, I'm going to go fiddle around with my re-make of Ophelia whats-her-name in Strangetown--just might even put Motoki's afro hair on her too! :D

I own very few other games. I'm very picky about what games I get and only like certain types. I like role-playing games but they are few and far between these days. I know there are Japanese ones on the consoles and I used to be really into those but in recent years I've found most of them trite and too simplistic.

I do like other sort of sims-ish type games but there really aren't many of those I can think of either. I liked Animal Crossing on the Game Cube. If you can get over the cutesiness of it, it's not a bad game and it does a little better job simulating personalities of the 'townies' but it gets old after a while too.

I don't really like most standard simulation type games. I just find them boring plotless and too much about numbers.

I wouldn't mind doing some sort of neighborhood share thing if we could establish a reasonable method to do it in.

I'm playing Nintendogs every day. It has quite sim-tational qualities. However, unlike sims, Nintendogs has all kinds of limits built in for how much you can play in a day - this severely limits the addictiveness.

I REALLY want to do neighborhood share...I have been watching and thinking about this thread all day...and trying to think of a way to share a hood among a small group...

So if you guys want, I we could start with my Whimsy Valley layout. if we can figure out a way to send it back and forth, I am in.

How is that? It kind of seemed like Unleashed with just the animals and no sims. ;) They had it up on a little station for demo at the local Electronics Boutique. Scratching the pixelated puppies with a plastic pencil was certainly interesting, but it's cute. :) Having a limit on how much time you can spend on it daily can be both good and bad, but mostly good I think. I've spent way too many hours on TS2 sometimes. And this kind of evens the playing field a bit so you can't get an edge on someone else by being a couch potato and scratching your puppies all day long lol.

I just wasn't really sure I wanted to buy the DS just for that one game. I know they were releasing Animal Crossing for it too, but it looks like it's more or less the same as the Gamecube version just with some more interface options.

I own hardly any other computer games, although I used to in the good old days of the Spectrum (anyone remember that?!).  I was even paid to review them.  Anyone remember the Lords of Midnight trilogy (well, the third one never materialised)?  The Hobbit?  Valhalla?  I used to love those games and what I used to wish would happen in the games is basically what happens in The Sims (i.e., autonomous behaviour), which is probably why I love it so much - been waiting for it for years!  Anyway, I still have all my old Spectrum games and several Spectrum computers, although I don't think any of them work now.  The kids have 3 systems - PS1, some sort of Super Nintendo affair and Wotsit Dreamcast.  They prefer those sort, but I don't like them.

Of course, I do have TS1 (with all expansions), but it's on the PC before this, so I don't play it anymore.  I do have SimCity4 on here, but as I bought it just before I got TS2 I never really got into it.  In fact, I couldn't fathom it out at all, I prefer SC3, which is on the other PC.  I enjoyed that and played it quite a lot.  I also have Scrabble & Risk, both of which I played a lot before TS2 came out (after I got fed-up with TS1).  I used to play them both online on The Zone as well as on my own.  Now when I want to play a different game I either play Scrabble online, or a card game.  I used to be one of the admin team on a crib league and I still play quite a lot of crib.  I admit that I stopped being an admin because I was spending too much time playing TS2 and not enough helping to run the league and host tournaments!  What a sad person I am.

Anyway, on another note - that hairdo on Motoki's avatar is hideous.  If I could delete it from my hard-drive, I would.  In fact, I'd delete most of the Maxis hairstyles (and clothes) if I could.  And I've also just realised that it's sitting on top of a nanny's head.  If a nanny looking like that went to one of my Sim's houses I'd burn her alive. (assuming it is a 'her', looks more like a 'him' to me.  In fact, I'm sure that hairstyle is only available for men).

Oh and Jade (just seen your post appear while I was typing this), your Whimsy Valley layout would be fine.  I have a lovely one I use that I found on MTS2 (it's got brilliant views in the lots), but it's quite large and it doesn't need to be large for this.  We wouldn't need to 'share' the hood, would we?  Well, not in terms of uploading anything.  We could all download the hood individually and get it into our games, it would be the families we'd need to download, which is why I suggested we each put our chosen lot & family onto the official site (I don't think families on their own can be uploaded, only families in lots).  If we made them, put them into their houses and left straightaway, they wouldn't have the chance to encounter any paperboys or whatever.  We'd probably have to agree to use Maxis-made lots (or downloaded lots with no custom content) and the same for clothes/makeup/accessories, but once we had them in our game we could customise them to suit, obviously.  

This is going to take some discussion and planning, but first of all we need to ascertain exactly who wants to be in on it and go from there.

Jade: I'd love to download Whimsy Valley, even if I had to leave my computer on all night to get it all. :)

I think I'd want everything the way you set it up though, including custom content heh, but some of it's from pay sites. :(

Ancient Sim: Yes, she's a woman. My nannies are all mean and hideous. Don't mess with them! ;) And the hair isn't on your hard drive. Well not the exact mesh. It's a rework of the male afro mesh to fit on the female heads. It's based off a Maxis mesh, but slightly modified. The texture is all Maxis though so I can't take credit for it, which is probably a good thing. ;) CocoKisses at TSR did do some recolors for the mesh, but I don't have them. I guess I should have nabbed them on free rotation. :P

Well, it was a while before I realised that particular style was hair, I always thought it was a hat.  My mother has a hat more or less exactly like your version, at least she used to (knowing my mother, she probably still has).  It was made of that poodle wool that was all the rage decades ago.  She went everywhere in it and it was highly embarrassing if I happened to be in the vicinity.  My mother has always embarrassed me with her hats.

LMAO, My mother has a big fuzzy hat like that too. Hers is this tan color with dark tips.

Damn, now all the sudden I want to make tacky assed fuzzball hats from the 60s for my sims.  ;D

And we can see your nannies peeing while wearing them!  that should be fun. 

This has me all a-titter with excitement.

All a few more suggestions on the table:

I could make a "clean" Whimsy Valley. I would use the terrain and lay out the houses just like you all saw...without any custom content, but most of the lots I use in that terrain are ErwinSims lots and he did not use custom content.

It would have no sims, just the lots. Then we coud share it through email or perhaps upload it somewhere?

Some of Whimsy Valley is undeveloped, just trees and we could keep it that way for expansion as the hood and it's story grows?

As for play, would we all play the same house, passing it about...or each have a house of our own and play the neighborhood story as a whole? I would vote for the latter...so that we control-freaks can have our houses unfold the way with want with the family story, but contribute to the neighborhood story. The hood story needs to be something wide-ranging...

...the only thing I can think of is which family will rule or govern somehow and get to move into the best lot...a power play thing...based on aspiration points perhaps?

I can think of more...*taps forehead* think, think...think, think....

But you can count me in, that is for sure.

Added:

Here's more...we could have all our houses on the same street, like High Street, so that it is easy to find all the families.


Some thoughts:

You know, I think what we all yearn for is a bit of the "holodeck" experience from Star Trek...a way to live in our own stories and have control over them to some degree (not so much to make it boring) but still be able to share and co-experience that with others so we are not playing in a vacuum. We may like this forum because it provides intelligent discourse, but also shared experience. Without other people,  most activities get boring after awhile, no matter how fun.

Or is that just too lofty? lol

My vote would be the latter, as well. I think it'd be fun for all our families to intertwine. And I don't wanna see Joe or Justin, etc there, either LOL. Confusing enough as it is.
How would we work out the logistics as far as EP compatibilities go?

Could we trade sims or sim templates too? I think we should have a set of nice looking townies. I am tired of looking at monstrocities. :)

We could have a base set of sim templates too and then each of us could do an alternate reality with them or we could each choose a family or create one and upload the templates.

Hmm, so many possibilities. :)

In order to keep from a logistical nightmare I think we would all have to have every EP...or it would just get nuts.

We must keep it simple, or it will fizzle, IMHO...

Motoki, I think making our own townies is a great idea...If we had all used the Sim templates, the genetics could be wacky and it might be a little wild to see the same sim you are playing walk by the house...

If we each create our own family, then we would all have very different people walking by and at community lots, but they would be the sims of the other players...

Just brainstorming...let us know more what your idea is...this could be very fun!

Edit: These are just my opinions, I am open to whatever brilliance you guys come up with...

This is sounding really exciting guys.

I like the idea of the one house for each player and a neighbourhood story unfolding with everyones quirks and personal touches shared with all. Also the idea of a patriarchal/matriarchal type family is appealing....sort of like the Ewings of Dallas or the Carringtons of Dynasty with all the other families well off but socially just below the 'main' family.  :P

More aesthetically pleasing townies is a good suggestion too Motoki....though I personally wouldn't want a whole neighbourhood of beautiful 'Stepford' types. Perhaps a small percentage of 'fuglies' just as in real life?

Gee... I really wish imagination was my problem.  Mine's RAM.  The lovely thing about getting a computer for one's birthday is that one doesn't have to pay for it... however, the Sims doesn't run too well on only 512.  All these challenges sound great, though, that's for sure.  Definitely have to mess with them if I can ever afford more.

*resumes lurkdom*

Well I would be more than happy to participate in such a challenge but the thing is I don't have SimPe (but can learn fast how to use it), I don't have hacks in my game since for me they take all the fun away (that is just MY opinion) on the other hand some mods sounds really interesting and I am thinking of adding some in my game.  

Except for houses, I don't have any custom stuff in my game, not even clothes or genetics or even Maxis made ones (except for the scissors, I just love them)... I know, I am pathetic but I never was in that kind of stuff, having 20 colors of sofa instead of 10 do not excite me, sorry. So I guess it will be hard to please everyone...  :-[

For me downloading houses with Sims in it is definetely not an option unless you can assure me it would not come along with extra stuff I am not interested in adding in my game... and since not all of us have the same hacks/mods installed it can surely be a problem.  *sigh*

Aussie:

I agree, but they should be ugly made by US!! Their GODS and GODDESSES... So if we all make up to 5 or 10 townies, as many or as few as we like, then put them on lots and use Inge's bush (I always feel a tad dirty typing that.) to make them townies, we should have plenty, depending on how many people are in...

You all notice how I just invited myself to the party? :-)

Heh.

But it is a good idea and I am excited. *blush*


I also really think that having a overall neighborhood goal, such some prize or power that each family is trying to aspire to claim as their own keeps us from getting waylaid and everything getting all messy. It could also gives us lots of opportunity for intrigue, scheming, spying and sleeping around, and trying to get our famiy's kids married to the most powerful family's kids (or at the moment the most powerful...until they are toppled)!

Oooo....the ideas...

Okay, I am going to hush up now and let others give input. Down, Jade. Sit.

Motoki, you crack me up with your ideas and your crazy-ass nannies. That fuzzy hat discussion was hilarious too.

I am so glad you posted this. I am so burned out right now. I am spending way more time here than on actually playing. I think maybe I have been playing for too long...it is so frustrating now. I was a lot more forgiving of the Sims 1, except for the bugginess that was Unleashed. And that was before I even knew what "move objects on" was. I had to go on the official site's chat and ask a bunch of 12-year-olds, who were like, "use the cheat, DUH!" Ah, nostalgia.  ;)

Motoki: We actually won Nintendogs in a competition; I wasn't going to buy it. I'm a cat person, but I do find it quite fun and addictive. It has elements of pokemon and elements of sims. I don't know that I would buy a DS just for that game, but now that we have 2 DS in the house we are really looking forward to Mario Kart and Animal Crossing. I think the real issue with the DS is going to be that it is WAY more fun if you have more than one DS in the house, or you have a friend who has one, because the really great looking stuff is multi-player. I am such a nintendo addict anyway; we have a gamecube and a regular gameboy SP as well.

What if everybody started from scratch in an empty (delete all characters empty) neighbourhood and created 2 families. One would be your 'lot' family, the other would be a small assortment of 'townies to be'.
Ie. If my family was 2 adults and a child, my second may be a single parent with a single child. The first family I would play, the second, only as required (family to be exported needs a friend or two, kid needs same)   I would play the family long enough to establish a story, but before uploading, would move in the second family and put them say, in a doorless room.
Anyone uploading it would use Inge's shrub to make the 2 in the room townies and set them free.
Maybe I'm completely misunderstanding this whole thing, but I'd prefer to download other people's homes and have mine living in one according to their means.
Yes? No?

I know exactly how you feel Motoki!  I go through my sims stages, which usually consists of playing only sims for a few weeks, then I will get bored and do something else with my spare time for another few weeks.

I haven't played for about 10 days now (even though I come to MATY almost everyday to read) which keeps me a lil occupied and sometimes I'll read something that will give me ideas to start playing again.  Brynne's sims stories anyone?  :D

The last time which made me plays lots was when I downloaded Lizzlove's bed, I had so much fun with that it was way cool.

I really like the wildcard idea, would love to play/share any lots or families, count me in too please  :)

Well, I think I said at the beginning of the thread that I'd like to have a go at this - I've never played any kind of challenge before, but this intrigues me.  Personally, I like the idea of each player contributing one house to the neighbourhood - I like neighbourhoods with multiple styles in them, which is probably why I don't play Veronaville!  I already have an idea for a house and a family, and I'll reload my game without custom content for as long as it takes to make it!  (It's so easy to do that now!  - but it means all the characters would have to start off with Maxis everything - is that what people want?)

Add me to the list of people interested...how many of us have all the EPs? It may be that two 'swaps' have to be organized, one for Nightlife and one for Uni, if lots of people don't have Nightlife.

(Uni + NL here, for the record)

That sounds like a great idea ZephyrZodiac.  It shouldn't be too hard to create families/homes with just maxis content.

I'm looking forward to playing a new hood if this works, Yay!

I would find this interesting too. I'd like to contribute a house & family. Maybe not a nuclear family of course. ;)

Well, I wouldn't have a "normal" family - I find them boring!

Pity about the custom content, of course, I love my Juniper sun walls!

Just to reiterate what my original idea was - we each create a 'family' (nuclear, roomies, couple, whatever), establish them in a house (Maxis-made preferably - can be changed afterwards) and after checking in Clean Installer for hacks and removing same if present, we upload it to wherever (I suggested the official site mainly because it seems the easiest method).  We all download each other's lots with families in situ and place them in our specially created neighbourhood.  Once we have worked out the finer details, we start to play.  We'd probably need a Yahoo group or something to discuss everything (in fact, we might be able to download the lots from there, or maybe even the families on their own without lots, I don't know).  Preferably all our families would start-off the same in terms of how much money they had and so on, but it probably wouldn't be necessary for them to follow the same careers, these are details we'd have to decide on.  Anyone wanting to join later could do, as this would simply mean a new family had moved into the neighbourhood.  We wouldn't want too many, but there'd be room for expansion no doubt.  As far as Uni goes, personally I'd rather skip that side of it (too BORING), but maybe we could speed through it with mods or something.

My only rule is that if Motoki uploads a family containing someone wearing a fuzzy hat, I reserve the right to remove said fuzzy hat immediately the family is installed in my game.

I didn't necessarily mean beautiful, just more realistically human proportioned. Like not with lips so wide their busting out of their face etc.


Aww, darn. ;)

I wish I had your mindset about the game right now, Motoki, cause I can't keep my hands off the game and it's keeping me from doing what I really should be doing.  I go through streaks where I can be satisfied with just a few hours of playing to where I can't stop and it feels like an addiction.

Coolness? So when do we start? lol

I'm not bored at all with my sims either. I'll have to learn to adjust to a whole new way of playing this way, and I'll have to divvy up my time between the two neighborhoods, but I still think it sounds like fun.

I know what you mean about the addiction thing. I've had entire days spent playing TS2 non-stop, and I'll say to myself "This ain't right". Then I tell myself I can stop myself any time I want to and I just need to get off my back about it.  ;)

Well, maybe the first thing we need to do is start a Yahoo group to get the discussion off here before we block the site.  Motoki should probably be the one to start it as it was his thread (hard to say "his", I still think of him as an old nanny) and maybe make me a Moderator as I came up with the idea of the neighbourhood thingy and maybe you too Brynne because you're nice and sort of official.  Then we can decide what we're going to do.  One thing's for sure, just prattling on about it in here ain't gonna achieve much.

As for the name of the Yahoo group, everytime I try to think of one I keep getting the word "fuzzy" in my head.  "The Fuzzy Nannies" is so ridiculous it would probably work.  No, forget that, it's silly.  How about something with "awesome" in it, such as "The Most Awesome Neighbourhood Group" or something.  Or perhaps "The Most Awesome Fuzzy Neighbourhood Group" ... see, that word again.  It won't go away.

How about More Fuzzy Than You? Err...Fuzzier than You?
Nevermind.  :D

A Yahoo group would be fine for uploading and downloading, just that the person starting the group would need to enable all the players to upload and download.  I have great difficulties with my Yahoo group, so please, don't axk me to do it!  (I think there is still a limit on file size, but as long as all custom content is removed before creating the families and putting them in a (small) house, that shouldn't be a problem.

Bah. Why can't you sort it all out on this site? I want to read all your waffle here, not have to chase about looking for Yahoo! groups.  :'(

Yeah, my groups have a 20mb limit each for total files, and I think 5mb per file.
Doesn't go very far at all.

I am so excited over this whole idea! Yahoo group or whatever you all decide, please just keep posting to let the rest of us following this idea know what is going on (if Ancient Sim, Brynne and Motoki are the "official" leaders of this) as far as where we could upload/download families, stories, etc.,

Just so you know, my friends and I tried the whole Yahoo Groups thing and it was a huge pain in the butt. You can't imbed pictures in your stories. There's a limit on how much you can upload. Etc. Now we use a Livejoural community alongside of having our own Photobucket/Image Shack accounts. It's much more like a message board, you can use HTML and imbed pictures, and there aren't any imposed limits.

Yeah, I agree with that. I'm thinking I may have to move all my files to somewhere else soon. I'd like something with a message board, as well, for my own groups, and I'm not crazy about how the messages are formatted in Yahoo Groups.

It's the same with every game you play a lot, I suppose. I've usually got about three on the go, so I switch around as the mood takes me.

Playing TS2 has always been very samey for me, mainly because I just play to waste time. I'm not usually interested in making exciting stories, just want to load the thing up, make a couple of houses, have them drop some sprogs and get rich.

I recently started to build some starter homes, moving families into them to depreciate the lot value and then killing them off, and that's where things started to get interesting. Because I don't CARE about these sims, I can molest and torment them to my black little heart's content. I didn't know until now, for instance, that if a sim really hates somebody who then dies, if you try and tell them to "mourn" said sim, they'll actually roar with laughter instead (see picture of Jan Tellerman "mourning" ex-husband Remington).

[attachment deleted by admin]

When Lilith died in one version of my game, I told angela to mourn, she also roared with laughter at the idea, then autonomously kicked the urn into pieces!  In my present game, it was Angela who died (unintentionally, I'd forgotten to put in a fire alarm!) and Lilith went into hysterics at the thought of mourning her!  However, they started phoning each other up after Mary-Sue split up with Daniel and moved out, then resurrected her on another lot, and now they are really good friends, which really surprised me.  I tend to think they got that way through bad parenting by Daniel and Mary-Sue!  But I changed Daniel to Knowledge and Mary-Sue to Family, and they are both much more sensible!  (And Daniel was the one who saw both girls off to college!)

I'm thinking that maybe I could use one of my websites for all this uploading and downloading, because I have huge masses of spare space and bandwidth on both of them.  I also have another domain name space I've never used, so at a pinch I could start the Sims site I keep muttering about and use that.  It's about time I started a site for all my weird goings-on and this may be the excuse I need.  Will need to think of a good name for it, though.

What I would probably do is put it all onto a secure server and password it, that way only those involved could download the stuff.  I'll need to speak to one of the guys hosting my server though, because at this stage I'm not totally sure what I would need to do.  It's ages since I updated my sites and I don't even have the ftp stuff on my system anymore. 

Will leave you all to ponder on it some more, I have to go out to buy shoes for my kids.  Poor things are going to school barefoot.  Well, not quite, but my daughter's have holes in and she was told-off good and proper for going in trainers. 

When Joe's second wife, Debbie, died, he and his son mourned all day and into the night (they both ended up with simultaneous thought bubbles of bladder desperation/mourn debbie), but Joe's, brother, Gary walked over and nearly busted a gut. He was not horribly fond of Debbie...

Joe and son, Joey Jr. mourning...
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/eveningmourn1.jpg)



...and Gary thinking it's hysterical as hell.
(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/garylaughs2.jpg)(http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y62/Brynne14/garylaughs.jpg) 

Hey, Ancient, will you let me know more about this when you find out? I'm looking to make a website for all my downloads and other sims stuff, and that security issue has been my major concern. I still want only those I approve to download the files. For reasons I've stated elsewhere, a billion times. To avoid redistribution of other creators' stuff that I've used on my sims being the main reason.

I'm not the biggest fan of yahoo groups either though I will use them if I absolutely love something to death and view them as somewhat of a necessary evil in the TS2 world. It's at least better than having to deal with moody site admin's drama and having them kick you off their site and all that nonsense.

We could probably organize most of it here or at the Peasantry forum. I'll also see if my ISP lets me have some webhosting space, I'm fairly certain they do.

Ancient, thanks for trying to pull all this together...I also do not like Yahoo Groups as much...

What Sara proposed sounds really excellent...a blog shared among the players.

This is great - I am not a fan of Yahoo groups, I just can't make websites - I did try when I first got Freeserve and had the option to have a website, but I am just not technically capable of understanding what I have to do.

It's august when I played my own custom sims for the last time. I am playing Call of Duty 2 more.  :-[

So you update the allinone npc but you don't play anymore? ;) I do that too. I updated my afro hair and made the elder clothes file even though I haven't played for weeks. Hell, I modded for Morrowind for a year after I stopped playing it.

Right. I just test on Lothario's and Broke's for a couple of minutes, and then check if items are working, then quit. I repeat it everyday. ;D

But I am clearing several missions and battling hard in Call of Duty 2.  ;D

Wow! You guys have really moved on this idea in the last day. 

Count me!  I'd really like to play a group neighborhood. Sounds like we have several people here that would be interested. Maybe we could break into smaller groups based on system configuration / EPs installed and get a couple of smaller groups with more compatable system settings.

Also, I was thinking, those of us that have XP, we could create a separate user log in and put the neighborhood under that ID. We'd only have the mods that the group agreed to in that particular download folder and we'd keep our regular game downloads separate.

I would be interested in joining this venture myself. I seem to be in this rut of playing a family, having them get to platinum, raising 6 children, sending them to college so that they can raise 6 more, blah, blah. I need to stir things up a bit.

I'd also like to participate, usually I play the sims in sporadic bursts as I get tired of it after a few weeks, and wait a month to play again.

Hopefully some other way can be found than yahoo groups, as the forum thread set up there gives me a headache just trying to mush my way through it.

I would be interested in this if I understood the "rules"

and i hate yahoo groups too. Generally I hate mailing list type things.

Yes,  boo Yahoo Groups!

I would love to join so I don't go out and spend a bunch of money on Civ 4 and "The Movies." I hope I am not too much of a noob here to participate. :)

Even the biggest oak trees grow from tiny acorns, and this thread is beginning to grow!  I can't see why, if people want to play, there is any reason why they shouldn't join in.

 :P  I just blew $50 on Civ4.  Like it much better than Civ3, but my little simmies are starting to call to me....
Will also probably buy The Movies as I really like the making movie aspect of the game.

But, none of this will keep me from the neighborhood game.....(assuming I'm invited).

What's involved in setting up a board? I'm no teckie, so I don't know how to do it. I wouldn't mind contributing to a set-up fee for it if someone was willing to do the actual set-up of it.

I'm curious about Civ 4 myself.

I'd probably suck at it though.

Bu this is derailing the thread.

I think I want to watch your Neighbourhood from the sidelines. I can't do the legacy thing or the aging thing (kill my sims! NOOOO!!!!) and I rarely bother with children.

But if you tell some interesting stories with lots of pictures, I'll be here reading & cheering for you :).

Well, I am pretty good at that...

First off, I want in on this "challenge" you guys are cooking up. Sounds cool.

Second, I have a crazy on/off relationship with my sims too.
Sometimes I'll be so happy to be home so I can play my sims but when I load the neighborhood I just stare at it not knowing what I was so anxious to do.
Right now though I have just created a new family and am interested in what will happen to them.
I often seem to create single moms. Don't know why. I am trying to resist the compulsion to invent an entire town of neighbors for them to associate with (cause the townies suck).
I think that is where I went wrong when I first got Sims2. Although that first neighborhood Harbor Mill was great fun and fascinating don't get me wrong. It's just overwhelming eventually to have so many playable households with inertwined stories and it gets difficult to keep things moving smoothly for everyone. I had over 15 houses. One had met the 10 kids want and therefore was going to increase the household count quite a bit and soon. And I really Wanted to play them All. I loved almost every one of them. Even the ones I had invented as throwaway charachters ended up evolving into integral parts of my towns on-going saga.
 It only came to an end because for my birthday I got both nightlife and a new computer at the same time and it was to big a hassle to move every house over. I still think I will end up packaging each lot and bringing them over (because silly as this sounds i "miss" them and it makes me sad that i will never see some of the babies grow up) although I plan on using memory in a bottle to give them all amnesia first. I can't just bring the neighborhood file over without taking out Veronaville because of a glitch that occured when I originally installed the base game on the old computer or I woulda done that. I used deleteallcharachters on the Veronaville over here so I could keep the prop set up but build my own people there.

Brynne, I enjoy reading about your sims far more than I enjoy playing with them right now. You and Ancient have the most entertaining playing style I have ever come across. Well, Ancient Sim's stories are more weird happenings than intentional, but it's still extremely funny.

I wish I had the time to join you all, but I don't. Please, whatever you guys do, don't make us sit on the sidelines, green with envy. I want stories, pictures, etc., and don't forget to tell the rest of us which site you end up choosing to play on, so we can follow your progress.

Well, I'm working on a new site right now, as a matter of fact, because the Yahoo Groups thing is just kinda...bleah. It's going to be all about those crazy sims of mine, but I'm putting out feelers first to see how much interest there is for this. I have my pics going up on the group right now, as well as files and other random stuff, and the blog going on elsewhere, and I just want to consolidate it to a nice pretty package so I'm not jumping around from place to place. Plus I want feedback from people who've actually downloaded my sims. I want stories! But I don't want people thinking, Brynne, you're nuts. No one cares about your stupid sims so go away!  lol 

It's a good thing I know you're kidding about that Brynne ;D

But seriously, I think your sims are fabulous, and your pictures have me in stitches. Bad mood? Feeling blue? Go look at Brynne's pictures, specially the one with the kids doing the shmustle (SP?). That one picture alone is priceless, and I absolutely love Joe. I hope he lives a long and productive life.

Joe is immortal. All of my Bayfields are. My great-great-great-great grandkids will be playing them. Probably in hologram form, no less. :D
 

Ahem...holds hand up! I don't post much, I just lurk!
Anyway, we did this on TSR. Zythe came up with the idea and asked for contributions.
Our neighborhood is called Maple Vally. We have about fifteen houses and various people made families and houses and we uploaded to the exchange, Zythe downloaded them, we all put storylines and things we'd like to do with them in the thread in the challenge forum and he put it all together in a neighborhood, did the SimPE work to establish family ties and added some odd memories to make it more 'real'.
We had a few teething troubles. Some of the families made had been played, which he said should not happen, and some included custom content, which we also had decided not to include so as not to annoy any creators by passing things around.
Anyway, somewhere along the line something made a few of the families not age. I found while checking on something else that by giving them new houses they were fixed, so I rebuilt (as close to the originals as I could get) all the houses and it's working very well. It really does give playing that extra something...I had a hand in doing it, so I actually care what happens. Some like to torture and that's fine, some are breaking everyone up...it's just funny to see what other people do with families you yourselves made.
It's been around since the weekend Nightlife came out. I don't know how many have it...at the moment it's being temporarily hosted by someone who had downloaded its boyfriend. Before that we (not everyone could stay around, so it dwindled to three of us) each took turns and uploaded it to yousendit.com and had the link in the thread and also our signatures. yousendit.com's download lasts for seven days or 25 downloads and it's a little bit tempramental at times!
TSR offered to host it if it we made it into a challenge, but we didn't start out with that in mind, and coming up with one after wasn't so easy.
At the moment it's the only neighborhood I'm playing because I got bored with the others too.
It's not perfect, there are things we'd do differently now 'we know'... it's had it's moments but I've really enjoyed it and had fun learning.
I made some University lots for it, they're on my Simpage, some others have done 'add on' lots for it. At the moment we're in the process of making a downtown family for it. They obviously won't have any connections with the main neighborhood.
We've gone with ‘Maple' = syrup/sweets/food as street names (Zythe's choice) with some random 'whacky' characters.
Zythe made a custom screen menu image for it and a story was put together to come up at the start.
He made it N004, but we put up instructions for changing it to another number if that was used already.
We're not all playing it together, which is how I thought it was going to go, but still there are a few contributing to the thread.
Good luck with it all… The chance card idea looks interesting.

Hologram form? Now that I really would like to see. Brynne, you're priceless :D.

That thing about re-numbering a neighborhood is possibly the coolest thing I have ever been told how to do. Thanks so much for mentioning it! I haven't tried it yet but I plan to.

For anyone else interested the page with the directions is
 
http://forums.thesimsresource.com/showthread.php?p=3060820&highlight=command+prompt#post3060820

post #1304  It is 4 or 5 down.

Mmmmm...new and improved pixelated hotness...now in full 3D.

Y'know, if you're still feeling dumpy about TS2, you could try taking a step back. I don't get bored with the game, but I need to take a break from playing and creating once in a while...so I reinstalled my old SimCity 3000 Unlimited. Yeah, that old thing!

There's something mighty satisfying about the sounds of laying pipe and running power lines, etc., in that old game, especially at top volume with the sub-woofer kicked to 100%!  ;D My neighbors hate me at 3 a.m.! Mwahhahahahahaahaaaaa!

A livejournal community sounds like a good idea. I've worked with them before and they're easy to set up, easy to moderate, etc. The one thing is that everyone would need to sign up for a livejournal, but it's free and easy, so that wouldn't pose a problem. I like the livejournal idea better than the yahoogroups idea, because I think yahoogroups are hard to navigate. Plus, I don't think anyone really wants their email spammed with messages from the group -- much easier to have a livejournal community. Plus, threaded comments = very good.

One thing I'm confused about is that there appear to be several different ideas floating around that everyone is talking about at once. The one I like most is the idea of each participant creating a house with a set-up, everyone who wants to downloading it and working with the creator's story, and then the creator of that house periodically having wildcards that everyone has to abide by. That sounds fun, like there would be some parallel play but you could still do your own thing. Also, this circumvents the custom-content and hacks issues, as you could upload the lots with no hacks or custom content and when you download them you can switch it all up. Also, wouldn't you be able to use Merola's painting in order to get people into the jobs you want, etc? I wouldn't know, as I only downloaded it about thirty minutes ago.

So like, as an example of what I was talking about, in case my explanation wasn't clear, I could upload a house that has John and Jane Doe, Jane's mother Mary, and Jane's very-distant-cousin Smurfette, who lives with them. Smurfette is a romance sim, and John has a crush on her, which Jane doesn't know about, etc. So then I could have it set up so that Smurfette is about to kiss John (and pull him from a crush, to love) while Jane is making dinner, and Mary is in the den watching TV. You download it, play however you want for a while (you could also then add custom content, play with hacks and mods, etc). A week later I put out a wildcard that says that you have to have Jane catch John woohooing with Smurfette. Well, whoops, John currently is angry at Smurfette because she got married to someone else. You've then got to get their relationships back up, have them woohoo, and have Jane find out. There is, of course, also the possibility now of Smurfette's husband catching them as well, and thus you having another whole drama to deal with. And so on.

It sounds complicated when I type it out, but I think the logistics would be a lot easier to figure out than switching neighborhoods, or having a neighborhood where everyone has one house and they only play that one house, but everyone's houses are in their game (I just don't get how that would work at all -- if someone does understand it, please explain).

I think whoever makes the website for the downloading etc. should have the final say in how the game should be organised, taking the best/most workable ideas from everyone.  Then someone could help with a set of rules for us all to follow.

Now, about the killing of ones elders?  If they are platinum and can keep drinking elixir, do they need to die?

Oh wow, our little Maple Valley project got mentioned. I'll tell you now, when you get to modifying your characters, don't even bother with the new GUI for SimPE. You'll have to do so much of it that it will practically pay to use the Classic GUI.

I mostly use Classic SimPE, I only really bother with the new one for deleting townies etc.  It takes even longer to load than the Classic, and seems to get stuck on a page after you've used it, and won't always return to the main one.

I'm normally very good with software, but I can't figure that PE out at all, and use Classic.

I realize there are problems with sharing people's work, but Maxis content? Urrgh. I don't use it at all, I find it very difficult, nearly impossible to create a decent comfortable home with it, and what about Sims? Sims made with maxis content are hideous compared to what they could be with custom content. Skin and eyes, not to mention hair are genetic, the coolest Sims look just blech without custom stuff.
I know the Louis skins from simscribbling can be shared on the official bbs (only) Can we at least use those?

edit: Renaming neighbourhoods.
I used Oscar's file renamer  http://www.mediachance.com/free/renamer.htm and replaced N004 with N009 on the folder and subs and it worked with no problems.

I absolutely hate the Maxis skins and hairs. I know some people don't want to include hacks / mods in their game. At this point, I'm not sure how many that is (majority/minority???). If people don't mind generating sims with custom content that can be shared, I don't mind importing those sims. Once we get close to uploading the lots and sims, we will get the group to make a final decision about using custom content. We can always change their haor and clothes once we get them but you're right, we'd be stuck with those ugly eyes and skin.

I agree a billion percent. The person who actually puts the challenge up should have the final say about it, in my not-hugely-important opinion. The thing that makes it a challenge are the rules, and they aren't going to please everyone. I think, for example, JM would have a good obnoxious laugh if we all started trying to get him to change his set of rules for the email challenge.  :D


edited to add: Again in my not hugely important opinion, Ancient would have a huge part in the rule setting, even if she doesn't actually host the thing on her site. It was her initial idea...I see this as the Ancient/Motoki challenge lol. 

I use replacment eyes so no ugly eyes for me. ;) There are replacement skins too.

I guess it kind of makes the most sense to make all the sims without custom content to start and then let people change them later because some people are really anally anti-custom content and it honestly does make the download a lot larger to have the custom content.

However, having just gone through a neighborhood and giving every damned sim surgery, new clothes, makeup and hair etc including townies and service npcs, I'm not looking forward to going through all that again. And changing skintones is a pain in the ass and can only be done via SimPE, but I guess we've no choice. :P

I was thinking, in terms of custom skins and eyes, if there's a set that everyone can agree on that we like, I can make them into replacments for the defaults. Then we can put them up as an optionally download. Those who want them will have all their sims' skin and eyes replaced with them, those who don't will just have the Maxis skin and eyes, and then we won't have to create our sims with custom skin and eyes and they'll also always work normally with genetics.

For other stuff, maybe we could have a small list of approved custom hair and makeup etc. Those could be optional too but with the disclaimer that if you don't download them you may get some sims showing up with odd hair or makeup and may need to use a mirror to change that.

Personally, if we make such a list I would very much like to put Hairfish's eyelid folds and middle age wrinkles on that list.

Personally I don't think custom skins/eyes/hair would be a problem for most, is there really anyone out there that doesn't have custom skins etc for their sims?  I can understand houses perhaps cos you could accidently get a hack or two in if ure uploading a house.  That shouldn't be too much of  a problem if you use clean installer either. Just my humble opinion of course.

I certainly don't mind any custom content on any sims, and I can always change some of them after I get the families. I think it's actualy better to try and use the sims as is, cos everyone has different tastes, and I would actually prefer to play different looking sims etc.  I thought the main idea was for this to be different playing experience for all.

I agree with Motoki/Ancient being in charge somehow, I certainly don't mind, I'm in for whatever you guys decide on.(That's if you guys think it's OK for most of us lurkers just coming out of the blue like this :P ).

*looks in Missdoh's direction* LOL ;)

The only request I would like to make, if we do decide to go with cc, is that the characters I put up for download on my Yahoo group not be used. Not because I'm a big meanie-head or am ridiculously full of myself, but because I am being careful as to who downloads those guys out of respect for the creators of cc in used in their creation, and don't want to lose sight of that. Plus it would freak me out seeing them when I can't play them LOL. But 99.9% of the reason is the former.

That's it from me.

Here's my feeling on the custom content, and ya'll can throw tomatoes at me if you disagree. :P

I say we establish a PRIVATE board, group whatever. Everyone MUST absolutely agree to NOT distribute anything posted on the private site anywhere else. EVER.

It's not that I give a flying fig, but I don't have time for the drama and I am really not up to hunting down a bazillion different creators and begging for permission for something that I consider more for fun and personal use. I also have some content that I've frankensteined from multiple sources or modified myself.

Oh and Brynne, I think we can live without your hunks lol. All the sim women will be dissapointed but they'll manage. Besides you can make new hunks, we're going to put you to work as a sim designer. But I get to design the nannies. :P

I like this idea. There are a lot more things that I'd share but am so paranoid someone is going to get upset because I didn't realize I had some of their content in it. I'm doing better about keeping track of where I get stuff but still.....

Not to single you out Missdoh, but I only remember you posting about not wanting to use custom content. Is there anyone else out there that wants to participate that doesn't want to use custom content (not mods - but custom content like eyes, skin, hair)?

Okay, lol. My reasons are the same reasons you stated concerning not wanting to beg for permission. I'm really wanting to remain drama-free, too.

I hope I didn't give any the wrong impression by that request...

No, you didn't. So stop apologizing! :p

I'm sorry. I won't do it again. ::)

Sorry didnt't mean any disrespect for Missdoh.  I just think that maxis made sims look utterly horrible, so please feel free to throw those tomatoes my way if you feel the need to :P

I'm up for whatever you guys decide on :)

You know, that's the one thing I keep scratching my head about. I'm new to modding and the sim internet community. I've been really floored at how helpful and generous some people have been. Now that I've actually started using custom content, I can't imagine playing my game without it. BUT, on some sites and some modders have a three paragraph dissertation about "you cannot" do this, do that, or do the other, with "their" creation. I don't get that. If you've created something and want to share it, great. If you don't want it shared, don't post it. I understand the courtesy aspect of acknowledging that something isn't yours and giving credit where you can, but Judas Priest, I have so much content that if I have only one item from a modder amongst the thousands of items I've downloaded, I might not remember where I got. I can of course acknowledge that it's not my own creation which any decent person would do. /rant

But I agree. It's best to try and avoid drama where possible.

Hairfish's eye-fold things are a MUST. My male sims look so stupid without them!

I personally use Lyran's default replacement eyes. They're so pretty. I use her eyeshadow and eyeliner a lot as well. I don't know offhand where most of my custom lipstick comes from, but I think a chunk of it comes from Around the Sims.

And I don't think it would be hard to upload the houses, but I don't know. I think it would be absolutely fine if everyone started off with Maxis stuff, or fine if there was custom content (as long as it's allowed by the creators of said content, and so on). A private board or group does also sound good. If you have a livejournal community, you could set it so that no one could join without the approval of the moderators, and then posts with downloads could be friends-only, so just the people who joined and were approved could get them. Seems a bit easier to me to use livejournal than for someone to set up a whole board for it.

I already explained in a previous comment what I think the easiest way to set all of this up would be, because a shared neighborhood with each person playing one house, or a rotating neighborhood, or any of the other suggestions really seem like logistical nightmares. (And the shared neighborhood with each person playing one house just seems kind of boring to me, as well. It would be just like playing regularly. That's what we're trying to avoid!) That's why I think the little setup + background story + wildcards is a good idea. I don't think it would be that hard (with the use of hacks and mods and simPE, of course) to set it up in a way so you could play a little before uploading without meeting any outside the family characters (because, if I understand correctly, they bring some character data with them into a new neighborhood, which then aggravates overpopulation, and could lead to BFBVFOS issues.)

My previous explanation of what I think the easiest way to do this is here: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=1369.msg47801#msg47801
... In case you somehow read the rest of the thread but missed it.

I've downloaded the Maple Valley neighbourhood mentioned earlier in this thread and so far it looks quite interesting.  Lots of set-up situations (which is what I like - for some reason I find it hard to deliberately set-up warring families and other negative situations, but I'm quite happy to play them if they're already there) and some interesting characters.  Haven't played it yet, am still correcting DNA and the usual stuff I always do to make sure all the details are as they should be.  I probably spend more time doing that sort of thing than playing the game.

Is there any way to make sure that it is there?  Is it possible to get telephone confirmation in advance of the delivery? 

He could, of course, threaten the truck-driver with ripped lips if it isn't!

I think I am getting sim impotence too,   I had a family who were moving in slow motion and I had to move them out and back in to fix the problem,  then I looked at my sims and said "what's the point????"   
 Then I just started killing some of them off.    I think I will take away all their maids and hacks and just let them do their thing and see how many die off or get the kids taken away by the social worker.   
  The few sims that I really like,  I am going to put them to sleep in  Numenors'  hibernation chamber.   ;D  ;D

ANYTHING on my site can certainly be shared among friends.

LynnMar, why not just put the whole neighbourhood into hibernbation (ie save it elsewhere on your hard drive) then let the game generate a new one?

Tad late here, with this whole shared neighborhood thing, but figured I ought to throw out this random idea. Probably a seperate thing, but I'd rather float it here than make a new thread.

You know how there's that series of stories on the TS2 website involving all the moderators, in a BBS based neighborhood? And there's something about making all the moderators as superheroes on MTS2? It would be really, really funny to make sims of the more vocal characters here, and on VS, and put them all in a neighborhood togethor. Maybe set up the initial relationships in SimPE. Rentech would hate everyone, but mostly Pescado and the other MTS2 people, the VS people would all idolize Rentech and hate Pescado, Inge, etc.  We could even have a couple of random idiots (max playful, min nice, max outgoing, min neat) who wandered around annoying people. (Ferret1, Ferret2, and Ferret4, perhaps?) And, of course, we would have to use all FFS hacks. Mostly the Fight Club. And give Pescado several "Won A Fight With Mystery Sim!" memories.

If anyone wants to upload a self sim for it . . . no reason why it actually has to look like you, of course. Just reflect your internet persona. Like I said, though, just a random idea. It's my hobby.

Oh my... move over Captain Janeway, you diirrrty hussy, we're gonna get down and down with the holograms. Ah, Trek. It always comes back to Trek.  ::)

I'm really interested in the ideas that are being put forward here, and am anticipating something of interest happening soon. I'll be watching, and who knows, I might even brave the water and jump in.

Interesting read this thread as I am abit the same too.

I have actually been inspired by JadeElliott and I have started on the long process of making my own yummy neighbourhood. I have designed it on paper and named all the streets etc. Normally I just plonk a house down and give no thought to house numbering or street names. I am enjoying it immensely. Plus like Jade and Brynne I am focusing more on slow game play and aging off in some instances. Just play the one family.

I am enjoying it alot more - for the moment anyway.

It is really nice to play the game slowly like that. Your characters really seem to take on lives of their own, and develop fully-fleshed out histories. I love it. I can't imagine playing any other way.

For the first time I am really seeing my Sims personalities and have actually been changing their aspirations based on whats happening in their life at the time.  For example, Alec is a knowledge sim and is living with my popularity sim Makayla. She is all about freinds and parties and has never had a job want. Rich parents gave her a small apartment and some cash. Alec just studies and has now reached the top of his business career - CEO. So I changed his asp. to Money sim as he is getting quite used to the highlife money brings.

Makayla has a younger brother James. He is knowledge too and meet his girl Roxie Sharpe at Uni. They are madley in love with her changing her romance asp. to family after meeting and falling in love with James. Roxie is pregnant, to my surprise, by Risky Woo Woo and no pregnancy sound (thanks TJ  ;)) and so James decided that he should marry her, being the good boy and favourite son that he is.

So his and Makayla's parents just recently moved to Pine Lane to spend their retirement in a flash townhouse (Uptown 4 I think from the TSR - Jade has them in her awesome neighbourhood). I made a whole street of them with lots of trees and they look fab. Its for wealthy sims, career couples etc. and its in the center (Main Street if you like, in my neighbourhood). All my streets are named after flowers or plants.

So James asked his parents if he could marry Roxie at there new townhouse. It was a magic wedding to cut a long sroty short and so now I think older more reckless Makayla would like to settle down and have a baby too. So I have recently changed her to Family asp. but because she played the field at uni, I'm getting marriage wants for Waylon (that guy who wears likes a red smoking jacket and has Elvis type hair) and not Alec! Oh well. I plan to have Alec take her to dinner and pop the question tonight. Alec is hot after a make over at Uni and all the girls swoon over him so I think Makayla better snag him. I swear she looks forlorn when she sees all these girls fanning themselves around Alec. Makayla didn't turn out as pretty as I thought she would (parents are CAS father and townie mother). James is stunning on the other hand and got all the good genes. I have a soft spot for him.

I haven't been playing Roxie much now as I want her pregnancy to last longer than 3 days. So she gets invited to all the parties etc and nice to see her pregnant and content with James while I swear Makayla is looking envious.

Roxie is the girl from the Maxis house at one of the Uni's. Can't remember which one. She is a punk chick and is dating that really ugly dude who lives in the house too. My James has dreadies and funky clothes but he's sweet and a good student. He became very good friends with Roxie's nerd brother (name escapes me...). But she took to James (three bolts) and so cleaned up her act abit to win him. So now she is woddling around in pink maternity gear and has soft blond hair and delicate makeup. She is very pretty.

Anyways, hope I didn't bore you guys. Just thought I would share a story as I love reading other peoples. No pics though. I never take them. If you want to see my sims I will get some pictures tonight.

Yeah. I hate the way that "aging off" is a cheat, rather than a normal option that can be found with the rest in Gameplay Options. I wish they'd "legitimise" this form of play by making it a proper option.

My oldest Sims 1 family were still going strong at 280 days. Other families of mine were well over 100 days. I hate that according to Sims 2 logic, they should've been old & dead & buried much earlier. I like the minutae of people's lives, and building friendships day by day. If you only have 20 days of adulthood, how on earth do you get anything done?

Mind you, I am also the person who loves University - because there's no aging, and no kids - just lots of time to enjoy being a young adult with no responsibilities. Exactly the reason why a lot of other players hate it ::).

I love the generational aspect of Sims 2. I got bored of Sims 1 after a while because once they got to the top of their careers there really wasn't much else to do with them. And you always saw the same sims walking by and nothing ever changed. Kids stayed kids forever and they couldn't even build skills.

So now I love the fact that things change, they grow up and they die and pass the torch to the next generation. And if you play all the families in a neighbourhood then the sims that walk by are different (except the townies and you can remedy that by moving townies in so they can be replaced by new ones).

Sims 1 just got so damn boring after a while, I could never go back now to play that way. It was so pointless.

I'd love to have in on the shared neighborhood, but I can't guarantee any amount of gameplay.  I usually, but not always, get some time on the weekends, but I've been suffering from Simpotence myself a bit, and the main reason is probably my own fault.  All my downloads make the load times so. slow.

But, I'd like a new idea if I can play at my own pace (slowly!   ;))

C

Same here.  I wish that I would get bored with it but day in and day out--here I am.  I guess it is because I used to spend hours playing Barbies when I was little--pretty much the same thing.  I can watch movies over and over till I have them memorized.  I guess I am an obsessed person.  But on the upnote,I don't drink,smoke,or swear--does that count for something??

It should.  ;)

I am also addicted. I've wanted this kind of game since I was a little girl. Barbies are so static, and they can't have babies, or grow old and die!

I'm hoping the charm will wear off soon, and although there are periods when I (gasp) don't feel like playing, it always comes back.

I just have to see what happens next ...

I think what I want next is a combination of SimCity and The sims, so you can build your neighbourhood, watch it grow, but any house you build you can enter and either put your own family in, or let the game do it!  And the Schools and Hospitals and Ball Parks etc. should all be playable!  Am I shooting at the moon?  Or will they make something like this before I die?

I think that's what they were aiming for. I know in SimCity4 you can import your sims (Sims1 - I think) into the game. They act as little advisors - don't like the crime, commute to work too long, etc. I would really like that also. When I try and design a terrain in SimCity for use in the Sims, the terrain isn't a perfect match (tile width between streets is not equal) and you have to know the street layout you will eventually need for your neighborhood as you can't go back and re-edit it. I like in SimCity how you can start small and expand as your city grows.  I'd like to play a Sim neighborhood as a small town that grows into a city.

I think that would be good, and I'd like the idea that you could choose beteen going into a house and playing the family, or going into the house and observing them do their own thing, including things like taking a trip to the ballgame!  As it is, they can't even autonomously decide to ring someone up to chat!

I just want them to be able to visit the neighbors, and take their toddlers with them on outings. I think after the "in business" EP a "family" EP would be really cool. One that added a lot more interactions to do with family members, like multitask while holding baby. And new ways for people to get body points, like rollerblades, jump ropes and bicycles.

Oh, and here's what I think would really be cool: A better neighborhood design tool, that lets you add roads, hills, whatever to an existing town. I've had towns get so developed there was nowhere for my sims to live. And I noticed that downtown has a lot of empty space around it. Why not let us add some streets?

Also, I downloaded a cool spooky house but it looks so dumb in my neighborhood because it has terrain with mountains, etc., and my town is flat (I've learned that flat works best, much less annoying to build houses on ...)

It would be great if I could add a hill (without resorting to drastic measures) so that house didn't look so dorky sitting there.

I had one of those, and finally bulldozed it. I forget the name, but it was a lovely mountain home, three stories on split levels, with bridges over a river, and a waterfall...beautifully done ~ it must have taken the creator days to build it. But it was completely UNPLAYABLE. I would have had to remove half the trees to see what my Sims were doing. I hated bulldozing it, but it was just taking up space, slowing load-time, and looked very strange sitting there on its wooded peak in the middle of my flat, green Neighborhood.  :'(

Isn't that what "Simsville" was supposed to be? I reinstalled my old SimCity 3000 not long ago, and watched the promotional video at the beginning for "Simsville." It seemed to suggest that it would combine the city aspect of SimCity with the more up-close and personal aspects of The Sims.

What happened to it?

I think "Simsville" morphed into "The Sims 2." From the video, it looks like "Simsville" was going to retain the pseudo-3D look of Sims1, so my guess is that the city aspects got dumped so they could develop the 3D engine, genetics, memories, etc.

In that case, there's a chance of a revamped simsville?

I dunno. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere since they started talking about Sims2. The SimCity 3000 disk that the promotion is on is ©2000.

Simsville is and was a seperate project from the Sims 2. It was announced several years before TS2, and died remarkably shortly after that.

Well, it was probably too complicated back then, but now, who knows?

Wow!  This neighborhood idea sounds really interesting!

I think it's tough staying interested in the game at times.  I'd love to participate in anything that would liven things up.

I could swear blind that half of Simsville got dumped and the other half became Hot Date, but my references for that would be many years ago on the TSR Forum, and I don't think I can be bothered right now to do a search. 

...Oh, alright then. Simsville becomes Hot Date (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/simsville/news.html?sid=2813720), from GameSpot. There's also an interview with a Maxoid (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/simsville/news.html?sid=2814094), and screenshots & stuff here (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/simsville/).

So yeah.

Now worship my fantastic memory & my forum search-fu, go on ;D.

Actually, reading this (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/simsville/story.html?sid=2805353) - I have to wonder whether the other half of Simsville has been revised & revamped to make Open For Business? Hmmm...

Well, I should think that any usable objects etc. would have been kept to be used elsewhere, after all, it would save someone else repeating the same work.  And after all, time is money in anyone's language!

In case anyone cares I did use this method and it worked like a charm. It was easy as pie.

BTW has anything concrete happened with this shared neighborhood idea or is it still being talked out? I did look over the thread but was afraid I missed something.

*worships baratron*

*offers old computer parts to the altar*

don't have Uni or NL, so I'm not in.  willing to contribute though...  Really enjoyed the thread.
will you take suggestions or lots or sims from non players?  you don't have to use them...  on offer are :
1. 11 starter homes plus 5 community lots in a themed set - some look better than others, but they are all maxis content and are playable.  They are on TSR, but I have the package files - guaranteed clean.  They are all 3 by 2 lots around 1k in size with water and willows designed to load fast even on a slow PC - that was the whole idea...
2. a few challenging households
3. ideas

You'll need some community lots for the 'hood.

Are you thinking of a sort of postal chess?  send someone a lot you've been playing with a challenge - pass it on after 1 week with a new challenge (or the same one and  :-[ if you haven't had time).  or will you all download the 'hood and try all the lots?   Do you try and put the 'hood back together after you've all played lots? wouldn't like that job - imagine if you make two sims friends and someone else makes them enemies... How do you reconcile it without upsetting people?  Are you all going to get sims in business? 

What do I do when my sims get boring?
move the townies into lots and play them.  my sims are all similar.....
visit Maty
go and help other simmers on the old sims1 board.  The sims2 thread helps newbies and are a nice crew.
try someone else's idea hence
1. the teen & child townie orphanage
2. faithful romance sims!  (if violetkitty can do it, so can I)
3. play a house someone else made - especially if they didn't do it too well (no lights etc)
download some more things I'll never use
organise the downloads and clean up files
make a collection from downloads from 1 site
refurnish a house with content only from that site.  (had to go back for more)
download clothes and make a few new sims.
design something to fill a niche gap eg small community lots for graphically challenged PCs in my case

Is Sims in business going to open up a whole new world of sharing? - some of the things I read on Snootysims sounded like that.  This was in the unsure bit "Earn Simoleans for your Sim online When an item your Sim has made is downloaded by the community, your Sim gets a royalty! Some Sims can become incredibly wealthy, as well as famous."  Surely Maxis have to be thinking about moving us all towards online simming in the longterm.

Haven't played any other games in a while.  Own a rack or two though they won't all run on XP.  Former addictions feature Colonization,  Alpha Centaurii and Dungeon keeper 1&2 with Railroad tycoon, Pizza tycoon 1 and 2 plus simcity 1 and 2 plus not to mention Sims1 and Colossal cave.  I played Civ a lot, but I never got on with diplomacy.  Oh and Heroes of might and magic 3.  I never played consoles apart from the ATARI 80XL.

Everyone is welcome to contribute.
What I am envisioning is having a completed hood available to download but also have the components (the terrain, the sims, the lots) available as separate downloads for people like yourself that can snag certain lots / sims / terrains if they are interested.

I should point out the obvious - anything I make is base game only.  Someone has to make it Uni/NL compatible...

Anything that is made with the base is compatible with the expansion packs. It just doesn't work the other way (meaning something made with NL won't be compatible for someone with just the base.)  ;)

I'm thinking pre-patch aren't I....  I've read problems caused by playing pre-patch lots & hoods.   Anything pre-EP is OK in theory then.  Of course the base game hasn't got all the relevant fixes from the Uni patch, so it might still be an issue.

I downloaded Maple Valley last night to take my mind off my buggered Veronaville.  sounds fun.  Does it need Uni?  Thread was too long to read and I didn't notice anything on the pages I went to. (tired.. & cross)

Sorry, but yes Maple Valley does need University to play...

yeah - I began to suspect that when it crashed!  Still I'll keep it 'til I get Uni.  did you notice that Motoki got Maple valley and was fixing up some genetics?  Might be worth asking what was wrong and fixing your versions.

PS I didn't see many community lots - If you want the little set I have on TSR, you can have them. PM me there. They aren't millionaire lots, they're small, functional and look interesting as a set on the 'hood screen.  Basically they are good meeting places with some shopping thrown in.

I saw Ancient Sim say something about fixing genetics as well.
Maple Valley started out as Zythe's project, people went into the thread and ideas were put forward, some were kept, some not.
I went in late with my stories and wasn't really a part of it until one of my own families in our testing version messed up and I had to get them sorted.
Just after that the age thing stopped any progress and by sheer accident I found a cure.
We had been trying to work out at the time whether to scrap it altogether and start over or fix it as best we could.
I'd come here over something, and J.M himself seemed as if he was advising 'another route'.
It wasn't 'my thing' to say 'stop' and no real or definite decisions were made...I said what had been advised and left it to 'the group' to decide, but that was hard.
Not everyone had stayed around and it would have meant a few of us redoing other peoples sims and Zythe putting all of it together again himself.
He was in the middle of Exams at the time and we didn't know if it would be possible for him to do.
We'd dwindled to three main people and just a few others dropping in and out. No one really knew what to say for the best. We wanted it to work, but Zythe was then under pressure.
Maple Valley was something we really wanted to play have and keep as something we'd each made as a group.
I felt guilty for making over other peoples houses...I knew those buildings pretty well after I'd finished but was very aware that people might be upset with any change I made...but they weren't around and it had to be done, so I took it on.
Having cured the non aging with new houses we still had odd LTW inaccuracies, quite a few $ value lovers and such and also $ signs in some memories.
A few people said they had played them before sending and I think some had SimPE alterations done as well before they were uploaded, I suppose people not knowing the possibility of fiery balls visable from space, and Zythe had to do a lot of hack sifting as well.
In the end with the aging sorted we decided it was ready and as good as it was going to be without starting completely over.
It was a nice fun idea, and it's grown to have taken over a fair chunk of my playing life!
I truly love it and thoroughly enjoyed *most* of my experience with it.
As to the DNA/Genetics I wouldn't know...I'm not a SimPE user and not very technical.
We'd love to know what is wrong with it...just 'because', unless this 'fixing' is just altering custom skins over our Maxis ones or something?
Some of it might have a bearing on future play even if it isn't.
As to lots, Zythe calls me the architect, but I *think* that's because I'm the only mug to have stayed around to bug him, so he asked and I said yes! ;)
It started because I showed my pictures of some of my redone houses, and he liked them...others later made 'Add on lots'.
No, there weren't many community lots, there's my Mall and park and babajayne's Coffee Shop. I offered a gym but I think Zythe wanted the file size limited as we didn't know where or how it would be hosted.
No one else gave any at the time of putting it together...
I made a set of Uni lots because someone wanted them and my sims are about ready for Uni too. They were on my Simpage but EA tidy up regularly and now if anyone wants them I've said to PM me over at TSR and I'll either upload them again or package them up and send them probably via yousendit.com again.

Thank you for the offer of the lots though. It's 'out' now, so no new things will be added to the file.
I think the idea was that we had the basics and anything else was part of the fun of getting a new neighborhood. The same with the houses, I know even though most of them there are now ‘mine'…I've still made them over now I have them for real and added my own things, because nothings ever quite how I like it....that's the fun in playing.
It's had a bigger response than I thought it would (even though we don't have exact numbers) and the response has been very positive.
I like people to saying what they're doing with it and not many do, so anyone's input from here would be welcome!
If we were doing it again, there'd have to be definite rules...A house made by someone with only Body Shopped sims...and anything else either redone if it's suspicious or not included.
I hope you play it if you get Uni…hope you like it as well!
I'll have to go look for Motoki's post now…
Edit: Our host has just agreed to keep it until the New Year!

If you want a real design challenge, how about a wholly alien neighbourhood? Alien landscape for the map, alien house designs and alien families in the houses.  Humans as the sub-class i.e. townies and service personnel.  Playing it would be just like playing any other 'hood, so set up the same challenges in the houses.  In addition to those challenges, you could work towards human domination by making them all marry townies!

PS I think the map should be really watery - which would explain why they like strangetown!

I've thought about doing an all alien neighborhood before. It sounds interesting. You can use testingcheats in the CAS to create alien sims so it's certainly doable.

Perhaps, but I get bored with my Sims looking the same even with custom content, and so far, the aliens in all my neighbourhoods are pretty similar regardless of what I do. Those big eyes look pretty ghastly with pupils!

I love the alien idea.

You could have some houses that are just strange houses, and others that are more like spaceships...

You could try out every whacky design idea you ever had!

Heh, you know, the squarelike, blocky nature of TS2, combined with some of those new teleporter pads, makes this a ripe opportunity to recreate the various alien ships of X-Com: UFO Defense....

You guys are all describing my current Strange Town!

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v177/Hairfish/RendezvousInStrangetown.jpg)

It's definitely more fun than the "regular" Neighborhoods.

aww, that girl looks so sad, then again, if all the men in my world looked like that, I'd be sad too.
Bet the toddlers are great!

Well, except for the ones whose eyes are on stalks, they're a cute bunch.