No worries, you can do everything within the game. When you're playing a house, click on the ... button on the bottom left hand corner and then click on the picture that looks like a monitor (the first one). From there you can turn on and off reflections, shadows, graphics details, etc. Once you've made your changes, click on the "Apply Changes" button. It may take a while for the changes to be made, but a window will pop up asking if you want to keep the changes you've made or not - click "yes". Depending on your system specs, setting everything to high may slow down your game considerably so play around with them and see what works for you. If you don't like any of the changes, you can click the circular arrow in the corner and reset the option to default. Hope that helps!

You may want to check your settings in the game again, I think the patch resets them back to being off.

Toddlers can also interact with one another playing with the dollhouse and (if I remember correctly) the toddler skill objects, too. I usually stick my twins together on the dollhouse to get their relationship into the positives since one always seems to hate the other when they're born.

I laughed for a good 5 minutes at that question. What the hell does that mean anyway? Some of those multiple choice questions really needed an additional text box so I could add comments like "I find legwarmers and jelly bracelets and Jams to be cool, FYI". I spent most of my dislikes paragraph bitching about how the Pleasure Sims are just like Romance Sims except they get paid in flowers and fountains to sleep with the neighborhood (unless I'm doing things all wrong, I can't score a dream date without woohooing at least once). I guess I was expecting something more out of Pleasure Sims and not just Romance with a different name. Nightlife is by far my favorite EP of either Sims game, which kinda amuses me since I really disliked Hot Date, but the whole dating/Pleasure scene really bugs me. I may be the odd (wo)man out on that one, though.

I am playing a custom neighborhood and am going on my fourth generation with only one fire and no burglaries. I started off the neighborhood by deleting all the chars but regenerated all the NPCs. The theives' file are there, they just haven't come around yet.


I thought burglaries weren't supposed to happen at Uni either, but in my pre-NL neighborhood my Greek house Sims were robbed. It shocked the hell out of me and the whole scene played out very strangely - the cop came and handcuffed the burglar but he still got away - and my Sims didn't receive a memory of it happening.

Same here vecaroonie, if I delete the N001 folder my game restarts sans a Pleastantview until I copy the folder over from the Program Files.

The handheld problem with falling in love with oneself has been there as long as the handhelds have AFAIK and aren't related to the weird makeout sessions in the hot tub (although if I remember correctly, Sims could roll up the wants to romanticize themselves with the handheld). It's been a long time since my Sim made out with himself but I think it happened even before Uni + handhelds.

LOL had he had a memory of that, I would have kept it for future mocking but alas, he had just made out with himself which isn't nearly as amusing.

I had the same thing happen with my Sims in the hot tub and have no idea either what caused it. They were in the expensive in-ground hot tub on a community lot when my male Sim evidently got intimate with himself and as soon as they got home I went and deleted the memory in SimPE. I thought it was a fluke at the time and haven't seen it happen since then, but I also don't let my Sims do much in the hot tubs now. Did yours happen under similar circumstances or is it a weirdo thing that can happen in all hot tubs?

JM's baby controller has the option to test a Sim's IQ.

You can download it from here: http://www.djssims.com/sims2hacks.php

Yes, they still meet themselves when they play alone. 

I was finally able to install the patch. Someone on the BBS suggested not overwriting the Graphics Rules.sgr (which is what I was doing) but to remove the old one and replace it with the original. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me why that would make a difference, but for whatever reason it worked.

fasterbuyclothes may not be necessary anymore, according to the Uni patch notes they have "Sims no longer play the extended browse animation when purchasing an item from the clothing rack" listed. I don't know how long the animation is now though.

Isn't everything hilarious after having too much whiskey? :-P

Is it possible to just uninstall NL and reinstall it without having to start from the beginning? I'm not at all anxious to do it, but I'm running out of ideas.

*sigh* even replacing the Graphic Rules.sgr file with a clean one from the NL CD didn't work. I removed my downloads, stood on my head, did a jig, would have drank a fifth of whiskey if I weren't pregnant and I still can't install the patch. It's a shame about the whiskey too, it would have made this funny.

I did mess with that file, refresh my memory though - what folder is it in again?

EDIT: nm, found it. Thank goodness I'm a backup freak!

That's what I thought of immediately after I got the error, but I checked the file and the "read-only" tag was already removed.

EDIT: Are we having fun yet? 

EDIT AGAIN: My friend who has never modified a game file in any way says she gets the same error.

Has anyone had a successful patch install yet? I got the same error message as Motoki.

Is that the root of the missing portal bug or just one instance?

Is moving a lot with tombstones on it between neighborhoods safe or are the ghosts' character files added to each neighborhood (and does that matter)? I tried numerous times to package Gothier Green Lawns and now this house to peek at what gets moved with the lot file but they error every time. Should the tombstones be removed before shuffling between neighborhoods or am I just being paranoid/stupid?

Wow, was I barking up the wrong tree!  I'm glad you got it resolved! The testingcheats always occur to me after I've done something stupid, like saved after the problem happened or bulldozed the lot.

Hit the TAB key, it'll put you in the cameraman mode or whatever they call it. You can use the arrow keys and your mouse to zoom, rotate, etc. Just hit TAB again to go back to the regular view.

I use the TS1 program SimCamera so I don't have to flip between the game and Photoshop or PSP. You can save either jpegs or bitmaps and choose which button you want to use to capture the images. You can download it from here, it's 8th on the list.

But the in-game screenshots don't include the UCP do they?