More Awesome Than You!

I'm a SimPE-o-phobe with the best of 'em, and refuse to buy TS2Enhancer because of a little issue where if you get a new computer, HD, or just do a wipe and reinstall you have to buy it again. For character editing, that leaves me with DatGen's CHARrED.

Obviously Nightlife fubared Charred quite spectactularly, but they updated it. I have a latest version, with the appropriate patch installed, but my copy still errors when I try to load an NL Sim for editing.

Their forums are all closed for posting, so I can't post an error report... does anyone know why this is, or another way to get in touch with them? There's nothing on the site about the project stopping, so I assume they're still going... I just can't get in touch to get my problem fixed.

I think Delphy has closed up shop on that one.  He posted this on MTS2 in October:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=98240

Charamei,

concerning SimEnhancer, I bought it a while ago and don't really use it any more since I prefer SimPE. However, I've been able to reinstall it every time I rebuilt my system. You will need purchase email address and invoice number to regenerate an unlock code on Rick's site. So, it is not true that you have to buy it again every time you change something on your computer. Those who say otherwise are wrong, I had a new code generated just a few hours ago.

From what I understand, Darkmatter quit working on Datgen. He sounded rather discouraged like he wasn't getting the help and support he expected.  :-\

SimPE is not so bad. It doesn't look so user friendly and can be kind of scary at first but you can do a lot in it and it's not too bad to use once you get the basics of using it where to look for what down.

Ah, thanks Brynne and Motoki :) Would've helped if he'd mentioned it on the site, but never mind :P

Oh?  It used to be that way; I bought TS1E twice before deciding on the second full-system crash that it simply wasn't worth shelling out again. Perhaps he's changed it, no doubt because of people complaining. Thanks for the info :)

I still don't think it's terribly wise to buy a product that leaves you at the mercy of people who may arbitrarily decide that you can't use your product anymore.

There was more support on offer had DarkMatter handled things differently.  For instance, Peter started initially intending to help with DatGen.  After a couple of interactions with DM, Peter swapped to coding for SimPe.   I don't think Peter was the only example of someone who was unable to continue work under DM's leadership.  Some of the people who stayed loyal to DM weren't experienced programmers, so he seemed to spend more time having to mentor them than being able to get on with his own parts of the project.

I think the biggest mistake DM made was forgetting that everyone working on Datgen was doing it for interest and pleasure.  They were not getting paid.  Therefore if it wasn't pleasant, they were likely to down tools.   Sometimes Quaxi is more laid back than is ideal in a development process - we're somewhere in the middle - but at least it stays fun and friendly on the whole.

I know it's not wise, and I hated shelling out money for SimEnhancer2, but I just can't understand SimPE. It runs slow, it's got a terrible interface, and it's not very user-friendly. I'm not a modder; I don't understand technical stuff. SimPE is just too complicated for me.

Bah.  That program never did work on my computer, anyhow...