I've always worked on the basis that a square in The Sims or Sims 2 is 60-80 cm each side. I live in a house that is full of Ikea furniture, which tends to come in multiples of 80 cm widths, and I can make my house easily on that assumption. A standard one-tile bookcase is 80cm wide, and a standard chest of drawers (equivalent to a 2-tile chest of drawers in Sims 2) is a little over a metre. The "loveseat" we have (2 person sofa) is 120cm wide and would occupy 2 squares in Sims 2, while our 3-seater sofa is 160cm wide and would occupy 3 squares. I have to say that I've never seen a 3 seater sofa that's as big as 3m wide!

As Inge said, if each square was 1m, then sim beds would be 2.5m long! We just ordered a new bed, and the standard metric sizes for bed lengths are 190 (approximately 6' 3") and 200cm (approximately 6' 6"). A standard single bed is 90cm wide (3'), though we know the sims must have extra-narrow beds because they seem barely any wider than a single, skinny sim. Also sims' standard doubles are two squares wide - and a standard double bed is a pathetic 140 cm (4' 6")! 

Standard kitchen appliances (fridges, washing machines, dishwashers and cookers) and kitchen units in the UK are 60cm wide. Although Sims 2 uses American-style wider fridges, most of the other appliances seem to be the normal size. These things all occupy a single tile.

Also, if each square was 1m - what of the widescreen TV? That would have a screen of approximately 160cm wide. Except that TVs aren't measured along the bottom edge, but instead along the hypotenuse. Standard widescreen TVs have a ratio of 16:9, and by Pythagoras' Theorem, that would give a width of over 180cm - close to 6 feet! The widest widescreen TV that I've ever seen on the market was 60 inches or 5' wide - and that is a brand new freak of nature item. Even a 48" widescreen TV is insanely big. "Home cinema" widescreen TVs are usually around 40". In contrast, if the squares are 60cm each, that would make the lower edge of the TV no more than 1m, making the quoted width ~115cm or 45" - still enormous, but at least realistic!

And regarding the door argument, standard internal doors in the UK are 78" x 30" at most, external doors are either 1981mm x 838mm or 2032mm x 813mm - making a maximum of 80" x 33" for the door including its frame, with most doors considerably less. I just looked these values up on http://www.diy.com .

Perfect for crack whores?

Speaking of which, I saw a most amusing crack whore contest on Insimenator - or more likely, Insimadult. People made terrifying sims and wrote a story about them. It was hilarious!

I'd just like to second, third, fourth, whatever, the suggestion for a science fiction/futuristic themed 'hood. The idea of one where all Service Sims are bots is MADE OF AWESOME! You'd better consult Pescado about whether you could use actual Servos, or if they'd need to be "human" sims with robot genetics... I suspect game b0rkage would occur if you used Servos where it was expecting to find humans .

I know TSR did a Sci Fi/Futuristc theme a while back. While it's an Evil Paysite, some of the files will now be free, while others may be obtained via ARRRnet.

I'm also going to check out your Shopping Lists to see how they work, for a project I've just started...

Thank you! I saw SaraMK & Argon's Templates, but also noticed they only included N001. I'm currently making a new EA Games\The Sims 2 folder for testing stuff separate from my main game, and I need it to be as small as possible.

I seem to have got it down to 252 MB, which is a win .

When I was talking about this on irc last night, Hook pointed out the problem is probably to do with the way the game displays shadows. Based on real world physics rather than knowledge of the game, wouldn't a shadow normally extend past the edges of the lot? This isn't something that would even normally occur to me, because my default graphics setup has shadows off. However, I wouldn't put it past the game to do the computations for displaying a shadow even if it then goes on to not display it!


My partner Richard came up with an idea which may help. Please forgive scanned-in bits of paper, I couldn't figure out how to create an image quickly enough using Adobe Photoshop Mickey Mouse Edition (a.k.a. Elements - it came free with my computer).

Richard suggested that we should not build lots with an overlapping or party wall shared between the houses. Instead, we should build the wall 2 squares in from the edge of the lot as usual. However - we could then use either a real wall or a fence that looks like wall along the front edge to give the idea of continuity.

Top-down views:



Corresponding front-on view:

The black lines show what the player sees, the blue line shows the true start of the house. The green shaded area is "limbo". It is probably ok to place objects into this area as we have done so for years, but players should be warned not to try to move the true walls. Also, placing windows into the true walls would spoil the illusion of terracing.

It definitely seems worth trying this idea, because it might avoid the problem. Consecutive lots would share only a vertex, not an actual edge of wall, and this might make the difference. Someone could try this with the Base Game Starter and the Lot Adjuster, and put their lot up for testing. Even if it doesn't work with real wall, it could be possible to do it with a fence that looks like wall.

Do we have fences that look like walls yet?

Downloaded any new beds recently?

Downloaded any new hacks recently?

Presumably something must have changed between yesterday and before that... the game wouldn't spontaneously break. Well, ok, it could - but not in a way that allowed you to play normally right up 'til bedtime! I'd be inclined to suggest either you've installed a new hack to do with sleeping, or a new bed mesh. Either the hack or the bed is incompatible with your game, or broken.

THANK YOU!! *hits Thanks button repeatedly and listens to the cacophony of bleating*

I knew this really, it dropped out of my head because this is the first time I've ever done "dangerous" testing. OK, problem solved . Will move N005 over to a spare version of the game, where any amount of crap can happen to it .

I suspect I'll delete all of the unnecessary parts of the other Neighbourhoods. Hrm. If, after creating a vanilla game folder, I delete all but one of the Neighbourhoods, am I right in thinking the game will spontaneously recreate them again? So it's necessary to use the Clean Templates to stop 101 random sims from spawning?

One and a half pages, and I'm terrified already .


I agree! To be honest, I think we need to select a "winner" in each category - Eeek-worthy Eyes, Lurid Lips, Bruising Blusher and Freaky Facepaint. Eyeliner and eyeshadow often go together, don't they? At least, I tend to see eyeshadow + liner sets.

Depends what you mean by "real game". I only have one Sims 2 game, because I don't have enough hard drive space to create dummy Windows XP accounts to make multiple, separate copies of the game.

I am testing the lots in a throwaway Neighbourhood, as I said 6 posts up from yours. However, I've just looked at the files within Neighborhoods/N00whatever, and it seems that every single Neighbourhood.package, University.package, Downtown.package and Suburb.package get rewritten each time you boot up the game . In fact, the file stamps on those packages correspond to when I quit the game last night, not when I last chose a 'hood to play.

So I'm really quite worried about the potential for bugginess from the game writing to the wrong part of memory getting into the wrong Neighbourhood file, and corrupting one that I actually care about. Anything can happen to N005, but I've worked hard on N004 and don't want it corrupted.

I'm not trying out any more terraced houses until someone can confirm whether or not the game can get confused enough to randomly write into another Neighbourhood file. Also, having hunted through the 9 pages of the thread for the link (Search on the top of the thread for "Inge" didn't find it), I see it requires BV which I don't have & don't plan to get for some time. (I prefer to obtain EPs only after they have been thoroughly patched.)

I don't have noticeable problems with Plasticbox's original Backdoor Lot 42 as long as I have all my hacks in place, but I'm worried by the potential for corruption to other lots/families within the Neighbourhood. For all I know at the moment, I could play this lot a dozen times without observing anything bad, and then I could open up some other lot to find it full of garbage?

That used to work, but it broke with OFB. Don't think it's been unbroken with any of the later EPs. The problem is what Pescado said above about the townie's family-ID - the game looks in the townie's wardrobe instead of in the family you're playing's wardrobe.

I must admit that I use the non-Awesome for this purpose alone - Danny's DMA Woohoo set comes with a red control panel that can be used to buy townies clothes for $1 and change them. Not sure if it works past-Seasons, though.

Ah. This does actually make some sort of sense. The game is confused about where the lot ends due to the "overlapping" wall (called a party wall in British English), and so is attempting to write to the wrong lot based on that? Yeah, I'd always thought that could be the problem... But damn, that's really annoying . I'd been hoping we could manage semi-detached houses even if we couldn't manage terraces, and that's disappointing. I live in London - detached houses barely exist here! >90% of the houses in my town (Kingston) are either semis or terrace.

I have believed the amount of RAM and/or graphics memory is an issue from the beginning. Did you see the videos I made when the game went completely screwy while I was testing the lots? At the time, I ascribed this to the fact both Sims 2 and Windows tend to leak memory like a sieve; and having booted up the game and quit/let it crash more than 15 times in one session, the memory was a mess.

I am also certain that a game patched with Awesome Fixes (a.k.a. "third-party patches") is far more stable than one without. Prior to testing these lots, the only times I'd ever experienced crashes to desktop were pre-Critical Fixes from Pescado or TwoJeffs, or if I had old versions of hacks after an EP.


I'm not bothered about the lot package corruption spreading to the rest of the Neighbourhood as I've been testing everything in a throwaway 'hood. What worries me is the example of The Sims 2 trying to write into a Word document. Could someone who understands the way the game works please confirm whether it is possible for it to be confused enough to randomly open another Neighbourhood and write into that? I'm under the impression that it only opens one 'hood at a time, while the others remain unchanged on disc, but I now want to confirm that is the case.

Yes, this is Not News. How the hell could pedestrians walk into the lot one level up? That doesn't make any sense!

Basically, you want Autonomous Casual Romance... for pets! Head over to the Inteen forums & try asking TwoJeffs - you never know, he might be bored!

I downloaded & unzipped lot03+04+05+05_post-play.zip. I played:
lot 6 until 10:00 on Wednesday
lot 5 until 14:46 on Tuesday
lot 4 until 14:00 on Tuesday

In each case I moved in a freshly-made CAS sim & added basic objects needed for the first few days. I began each test by toggling Day/Night mode a few times, then proceeded to play through the day normally, without using the Insimenator to advance the hour. I can tell you that a game with no hacks is freaking unplayable - the sims are so unbelievably moronic! None of the "pre-crashed" lots crashed in my game (Sims 2 + Uni + NL + OFB + Pets), with no Downloads and groups.cache removed before beginning test.

I haven't tested lot 3, and I haven't tested the files in lot03+04+05+05_post-shrink.zip to see whether they will crash my game or not. (After all, if the "pre-crash" lots do nothing, then it wouldn't be a surprise that the "post-crash" lots were safe!). But it is officially Too Late in this timezone for me to want to try any more considering I have work tomorrow morning. I'll test the rest tomorrow sometime.

Ah! The MTS2 page says:
I had been wondering why they just appeared as the normal iron stairs in my game, despite my having installed the .package file correctly. I guess that means they shouldn't be included with premade houses, as the installation instructions require tinkering with game files?

Also, the fact that to put anything under them requires moveobjects on explains why the "privacy window" bug occurs - those windows hate moveobjects on! They randomly go buggy in basements anyway, and if you have to use moveobjects to place them, they almost never work.

In my game, this most definitely occurs between 18:05 and 18:09. It's happened every time. I even tried going on the outing in case it was a portal problem, and the arrival of the taxi which was triggering the crash! Sorry .

To everyone:
I'm willing to test more people's lots, but when you post lots for testing, please say what combination of games you have installed - or if you used the BaseGameStarter to make them. I don't want to add spurious data by crashes that occur because I don't have Seasons or BV yet! With the thread being up to 7 pages, it's rather hard to go back through everyone's posts to remember how they made the lots.

Yup, I said that . I was testing the lot for Plasticbox, and by the time the graphics went that wonky, I had booted up the Sims, played for a few minutes, quit or let it crash, rinse, repeat, something like 15 or 20 times in a row. I was also running Xchat and Opera at the same time, and Opera & Sims 2 don't play well together at the best of times. And I had also turned all of the graphics options up to maximum, even though I usually don't play using those options. The videos show what happens when you completely run out of memory. I videoed it because it was funny, not because I need advice.

Once I'd rebooted Windows, everything was back to normal . To be honest, it's quite impressive that you could run the game 20 times in one Windows session before things are wonky enough to need a reboot.

Um... either I'm missing something really obvious, or we've all been missing something really obvious .

If we know that the house can randomly crash the first time you move a CAS sim in - at 7pm, when hitting the day/night toggle, or on the first save - but after that it's perfectly stable... why not have the lot creator move a sim in and save, then move the sim out again? If the crash is due to some artifact of the lot shrinking process which gets fixed on the first save, wouldn't that fix whatever the problem is?

I know that moving the sim out would cause all the furnishings to be lost, but if that process would "stabilise" the house, the lot creator could then simply add furniture afterwards - and then package the "fixed" version of the house.

Thank you! That one was created while I was away from the Sims 2 universe, and I'd been wondering what it did! *hits BAA button repeatedly*

In my not-very expert opinion, it's not portal-related. The portals are invisible squares that are the entrances & exits from the lot. There are separate portals for residents, visitors and NPCs. (I think residents + visitors share two of the portals and NPCs have the other two, iirc.) If the portals were buggered, you would have the same problem with all resident sims.

You say you use the custom career with all your business owners... are any of the others Plantsims? Does the custom career claim to be compatible with Seasons? I'm suspecting there is some sort of code conflict between the custom career and the Plantsim. If giving him the car solves it, go for that option - otherwise put him into a different career path (one of the standard ones that comes with the game).

You could try asking one of our awesome modders for help, but you know what Pescado will say about the custom career! ("It's the work of the Non-Awesome!"). See if you can find a standard career with the same bug, then he'll fix it .

I've been testing Plasticbox's new row or terraced houses to try to find out what's making them crash. This has involved lots of changing the combination of my Downloads, booting up Sims 2, playing for a bit, then quitting. Repeat.

I also have a graphics chip that shares memory with the computer itself. Yesterday while testing the lot I managed to run out of memory to the extent I obtained some utterly bizarre graphical glitches. Of course, I videoed them to share .

The first video seems fairly normal in terms of texturing - the house and sims are recognisable. However, there are strange and random jaggies and lighting effects. I especially like the way the sofa inside the house appears stuck in the legs of my playable sim outside the house ~20 seconds into the video!

The second video is a complete & utter freak of nature. The house has no floors, the sims have no faces or animations - just meshes with the arms stuck out to the sides. There is a strange strobing effect on the meshes, and yet more random jaggies. My favourite part comes at the very end, where one sim walks to the toilet, trailing his arm across the screen - then splits in half!

The videos are hosted on my Sims 2 site on Pescado's Malaysian server, so if MATY itself is laggy, the video downloads will be too. Right-click and hit save to be sure of them arriving... sometime, or click & attempt to stream them through Windows Media Player. In my copious free time this evening (), I might upload them to YouTube as well.

Enjoy!

Tell you what - and this is probably going to make me the biggest heretic on the planet - I am actually starting to develop a bit of sympathy for EA here! I have honestly spent about 5 hours testing the house with every combination of Downloads imaginable, and I am certain that in my game build (Sims 2 + Uni + NL + OFB + Pets), with my graphics card, it's the noteleportpuddle.package that stops the house from crashing. With that hack alone the house is stable:
* with a CAS sim just moved in, and hit the day/night toggle.
* with a CAS sim just moved in, and save.
* with a CAS sim just moved in, play through the day, and get to 18:59.

Without that hack - the house crashes:
* with a CAS sim just moved in, and hit the day/night toggle.
* with a CAS sim just moved in, play through the day, and get to 18:59.
I couldn't get it to crash on save, even when I completely ran out of graphics memory.

But if other people, with a different game build & combination of Downloads, don't experience protection from the hack... you have to wonder what's going on!

The one thing I haven't done is tried the game with every other of my usual hacks except that one. I have to go to work once I've finished this post, but I'll try that tonight. It's possible that another of Pescado's hacks also does "something" to lot portals.

OK. I have done a very large number of tests now - my test Neighbourhood is filled with copies of Backdoor Lot 42, all lined up in a row! Each house with its own brand new CAS family. (I gave up on creating couples as it took too long, and now there are many Family sims with Aries personality, Turn-ons Swimwear and Underwear, Turn-off Vampirism or Stink - these being the quickest options to click ).

During the course of this afternoon:
I pulled out all my Downloads - CRASH.
I put back all Downloads that were not hacks - CRASH.
I put back the Insimenator - CRASH.
I put back the Syberspunk and TwoJeffs folders - CRASH.
I put back the Crammyboy folder - CRASH. (I was really surprised at this one - I thought his Portal Monitor might well be the saviour of the lot, but no.)
I put back the Pescado folder - NO CRASH.
I pulled out the Pescado folder & deleted groups.cache - CRASH.

I looked at the names of all of the hacks in the Pescado folder, and got it down to a shortlist of eight that I thought might be affecting the lot. These were: the Lot Debugger, Anti Watch Out, Door Jam Fix, Manual Navigation, Move Out Bug Fix, No Driveway Shuffle, No Route Fail, No Teleport Puddle.

• I doubted it would be the Lot Debugger as it's an object hack and the object wasn't installed on the lot, but it's Awesome enough that I tried it anyway.
• I wondered about Anti Watch Out, No Driveway Shuffle, No Route Fail & Manual Navigation as they're all routing fixes, and I thought perhaps the problem lay in the sims' routing through the newly-shrunk lot.
• Move Out Bug Fix should be obvious - I thought that if it fixed buggy move outs, it might also fix buggy move ins.
• Door Jam Fix is a new hack that fixes doors that are marked "in use" - again, I wondered if this had anything to do with the problem.
• Finally, I went for No Teleport Puddle on the basis I know it has something to do with portals.

Guess which one it was? Yup, noteleportpuddle.package.

So... I have pulled out all hacks except for noteleportpuddle.package and deleted groups.cache - NO CRASH. I simply cannot make the lot crash even with this as the only hack in my game (no Critical Fixes or anything). The lot is stable to the day/night toggle in Build Mode, it survives the 18:59 time event, and it survives a save straight after move-in. Even when I completely ran out of graphics memory and had the weirdest graphical glitches going on, the lot would not crash.

I have no freaking clue what noteleportpuddle.package does apart from being something to do with portals, but I would recommend that everyone who is testing the lot puts that in their game to see if it makes a difference for them too. I am using the version of the hack dated 2006/12/17, from the 2007/10/15 Pets edition of moreawesomethanyou.zip.

Now I am going to have dinner and enjoy actually playing my game rather than testing this darn house!

Erm... and did the problems persist in a vanilla game? If they all went away, then I agree with your conclusion that it's custom content at fault - but if you were still experiencing problems, it's more likely a graphics driver issue. EA apparently are not able to test the game with every possible combination of hardware & drivers that people have in their real PCs, and it could well be the graphics driver making things look weird rather than any problem with your downloads.

Another possibility is that you have custom content that is incompatible with Seasons. I know that a lot of people have been experiencing flashing blue accessories (earrings etc - things that used to go in the glasses section of Create-a-Sim) when they installed Seasons. I'd root out that sort of thing first.

Right. I have confirmed that it's possible to make the lot crash using Insim's Temporal Adjuster to change the time. This should speed up the testing process considerably!

As the Temporal Adjuster only has the options of Set Hour from 01:00 to 12:00, what you do first is Set Hour to 12:00. This makes it 12 noon. If you then choose 06:00, this is 6pm / 18:00 not 6am as would be expected! Therefore, you must play the lot for a mere sim hour on high speed.

Your idea is rather vague due to the whole middle-of-the-night-ness of it , but I do think it's related to the longstanding lots in the LotBin don't get updated to the new environment problem. Hmm.

Sorry . You'll see from my post on MTS2 that I have little idea about this either. All I know is that I have experienced it since the base game, and it persists even with no Downloads. It seems to be related to houses on foundations. If I'm trying to place those windows in a basement, they position correctly less than half the time - and I have now given up on them, because that the game doesn't use them properly for calculating the amount of light in the basement. (The light level is entirely unaffected by the presence of those windows.) If I'm building a lot with a foundation and put those windows on the ground floor (first floor for North Americans), I experience the bug sporadically - between 10 and 25% of the time.

There also exist two different versions of the bug - one where the "hole" for the glass is cut through on one side but not the other, and a second where neither side has a "hole". The first version can happen on any wall placed above a foundation on any type of lot (house, community, dorm), but the second is unique to basements in my experience. I don't believe I've ever seen this happen without a foundation present - on the occasions when I've made a basement by terrain work alone, the windows will place correctly and have holes to let the light through as long as the square of ground outside the window is flat and at the same height as the floor of the basement. I hope this makes sense?

I always figured this was some sort of unique-to-me problem, because Maxis keep using those damn windows in their houses, and I've never seen anyone else complain about it .

By "overlapping" I simply meant "terraced" - the left-hand wall of the house joins directly to & overlaps with the right-hand wall of the next house along. As opposed to placing the lots separately.