CAP doesn't have a V-Sync option ( just like Sims 3 itself ) , but you could add CAP to the list in the application I posted here ( http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,15585.msg571257.html#msg571257 ) to enable V-Sync with that .

I've changed it successfully ... hopefully  I've barely ever used S3PE so modding isn't something I do . Hopefully it's worked though . Thanks again for the advice .

Thanks Anach .

Is your ' Interaction tweaks ' mod a tweak to make the Ask to Move In interaction more autonomous or less autonomous ? Since installing Generations my playables get automously pestered by their best friends , who keep asking them to move in and that's without this mod in . So surely a mod isn't needed to make it more autonomous ?   And if it's supposed to make it a little less autonomous then it doesn't seem to be working because my sims get pestered just as much with this installed   Anyone who is in either the ' Best Friend ' category or ' Old Friend ' category keeps nagging my sims about moving in  

There are links for disc versions too ( http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/175477.page ) .

This is a stand alone version of D3D Overrider ( which is usually a plugin for RivaTuner ) and some may find it useful as another option instead of FPS Limiter ( and forcing V-Sync through your graphics card drivers is often unsuccessful ) . With this you can force V-Sync AND Triple Buffering with it if forcing the V-Sync brings your performance down a little too much ( Triple Buffering compensates for it ) . You have the option of turning on V-Sync with or without Triple Buffering though with whatever game profiles you may wish to add to it ( or just load it with the global option ) . It's also easy to use in that you just load it up , select your profile , minimise it if you wish and then load your game as normal . No adding files to game directories involved . I'd suggest unzipping it to your normal Program Files folder for ease of use but I guess it should run from almost anywhere . I wouldn't suggest leaving it running permanently because it has compatibility issues with some programs ( as you can see by some of the profiles that are included with it that switch it off automatically for certain programs ) .

Works for XP upwards and both Radeon and NVidia Graphics .

And here's some discussion about it ( http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=208499 )

( PS . I take no credit for either this program made by the makers of RivaTuner nor this standalone version that was made by someone . I'm just posting it here for the benefit of you guys to help with your game ) .

Is there no way of overriding it ( for a specific game ) in the Catalyst Control Centre ? Mine's an Nvidia so I'm not too clued up on game specific over rides for Radeons but it may be worth poking around inside the Control Centre . 

  Try using this little prog ( http://www.borngeek.com/software/sims-launch/ ) . Personally I don't use it for launching Sims 2 but use it as an application launcher instead of using the Start Menu . But as it's name suggests it can be used to launch Sims or Sims 2 and , more importantly for you , can launch them in a window as long as you set the launch target to the latest expansion executable you have installed . It only alters the shortcut so I don't know if it'll work for you or not , but it's worth a try .

  I suppose you're right . It's not his fault he's an untrained chimp  Games companies though , especially ultra-rich games companies like EA , shoud have dedicated games testers and support dedicated to each individual game . And these people should spend hour upon hour every day doing these tasks so any major problems would be inevitably picked up before release . Of course though , they wouldn't do that because it would mean they'd have to make less exorbitant profit and those greedy rich corporate bastards at the top might have to go from having 4 Bentleys to 3  So yeah Gwill , you're right . It isn't the tech guys fault really , it's those selfish greedy shitholes at the top who're to blame 

That just shows you that either a) The tech support guy was an unintelligent knob who shouldn't be doing tech support for anything and you probably disturbed him while he was having his sandwich so he said any old shit  , b) fortunately for him his 'any old shit ' was right and EA have made an unholy fuck up of this pack as many of us fear or c) both of the above . I'd say C personally 

For now the Auto Bill Payer object from Sim Wardrobe might be a good workaround for you ( http://www.simwardrobe.com/ ) . Look in the Home Life improvements bit in the Sims 2 objects section there . The bills are pretty much automatically paid just a moment or two after they've just arrived which hopefully won't even give a sim time to queue up an action for the mailbox 

Start/Control Panel/Performance and Maintenance/Administrative Tools/Event Viewer   

I can read fine thanks  and I know the original hack is by Dizzy . But I also know this amalgamation of the hack and the no cd exe is by Xiomberg so that's why I'm asking him . Dizzy's hack itself may barely need updating , if at all because it may patch the patched AL exe just as easily and successfully as the unpatched AL exe . However , a new NOcd part of Xiomberg's amalgamation of the 2 hacks will DEFINITELY be needed and that's where the pitfalls are . Because there are so many No CD's for games that for those who have hardly ever used them it's hard know which are the reliable sites for the good genuine ones and which are the sites that carry the virus riddled pieces of shit . Xiomberg obviously knows his is reliable though , or he wouldn't have posted it here so I put my trust in him and I'm prepared to do so again if and when he makes a patched AL version of this   

And thanks Xiomberg , for combining the two hacks for other people and thanks to Dizzy for the hack in the first place 

  Is there any chance of making a new version of this that has been patched with the new Apartment Life patch please Xiomberg ( that's if you want to patch that is )   

  If you're really , really bored ... maybe you can do the dogs and cats for us too please  Just kidding    . I'm grateful for the hard work you ( and Bastdawn for her help with your tutorial ) have done to identify these portraits because it must have taken you ages , and along with your tutorial I've been able to make a couple of packages so that my male and female sims just stick with the same portrait pose I most like all the time which I'll upload here if anyone wants them .

The MaleUIThumbHack makes it so that your male sims just use the number 2 pose , and the same goes for the FemaleUIThumbHack . Yet again the number 2 pose . With the other ones you've just posted for the kids I'll also be able to do some for them now thanks and I'll post them when I've done them too ( F05 and M02 will probably be my choice for the kids , although I'm not sure about the toddlers yet because they have a better quality variation of poses to choose from so the choice is a bit more difficult )

Obviously you can't use these with Bastdawn's because they'll clash , but hopefully more people will chip in this thread with some more variations of their own of these hacks so that there's eventually a wide selection of single poses or collection of poses to choose from

  Here's a little application that can give you a screensaver ..... without actually having a screensaver . Just drop the folder inside this zip into your program files and then make a shortcut to it on your desktop . Then when you want to spend a bit of time away from your computer without changing it's state or leaving your work then just double click on the shortcut you just made and voila , the screen goes all black and all you have to do is click the spacebar or whatever to bring your normal screen back . Being just a black screen this little application uses far less resources than a ' proper ' screensaver but does it's job equally as well ( ie saves the screen ) . Credits and permissions are in the zip with the app 

( Of course , it's just as easy to turn your monitor off while you're away from your computer  )

  It seems it WAS a bug with Pes's Yellow Pee hack from what I've read here in the Hack Directory thread , but the latest version of the hack has apparently fixed it , so I'll give this hack another go ( I'd taken it out , which had then of course solved the spawning piss problem ) 

  The bvchildanimfix may have also been the cause of my ' dog piss ' bug . I sent a sim kid to mop up a puddle of dog piss and not only did she not react to the order , her newly built playground then proceeded to flood with said dog piss out of no where  Originally I thought Pescado's new Yellowpee might be to blame but I've put the second update of that in now to try it and taken out the child anim fix so I'll see how it goes 

 :)Likes

The new Bathroom Medicine Cabinets ( one is a mirror too ) with the new Face Wash and Teeth Cleaning interactions ( which should have been in from the base game considering Sims could clean their teeth in Sims 1  .)
The kids playground stuff . Makes a nice change for the kids to get a few decent items 
The new pool table is far better than their previous efforts and more like a classic American Pool table .
The ceiling looks fine to me and the default white one goes with pretty much any colour walls anyway , Maybe the problems of the ceiling not disappearing with the walls are down to when you repaint the ceiling and/or use a custom flooring on the ceiling because the default ceiling disappears with the walls when needed to in my game  And surprisingly the ceilings don't seem to cause any lag at all . When I tried custom ceilings ages ago I got lag in my game and expected the same with this , but these don't seem to have any affect on game performance at all 
Being able to move some official items higher and lower on the walls is pretty cool , although I was surprised that the Maxis plasma tv couldn't be moved like that ( I didn't expect custom objects to be movable in this manner though , which it seems they aren't )
The new vending machines seem non autonomous , which is good considering sims often flock round items like this like flies round shit if they're autonomous 

 :-\Neutral

Witches ain't my bag really so I don't really have much of an opinion on them . I hope those that wanted them like them , but it won't be something I'll be using in the game .
The same goes for the apartments feature itself . They're just like glorified hotel rooms in my opinion so I'll be sticking to my sims having their own homes , although I can see how this feature might interest some .
The reputation score thingy is not something I've really taken much notice of yet either , so I'll reserve judgment on that too .

 >:(Dislikes

The new auto-generating character thumbnails . Changing it in the mirrors was perfectly fine before . Using the ' batman box ' to change it whenever needed was even easier . So what do EA do ? Make it so it changes every single time they get dressed etc . It wouldn't bother me if it wasn't for the fact that a number of the character poses for the thumbnails are awful sort of contorted grimaces . This new feature makes the thumbnail generating feature of Pescado's Lot Debugger redundant at present because it automatically gets changed too often anyway so if you currently used that to change it to a preferred thumbnail you'd be doing it constantly  I hope someone , anyone , makes a hack to override this feature so we can go back to the ' Batman box ' and the mirrors for selective thumbnail regenerating because this new feature is crap .
The paperboy now seems to leave the newspaper outside the front door rather than the garden gate , which was pretty annoying at first seeing as I thought he'd not delivered one at all . No great shakes now I know where he leaves it though . I just didn't want several of them going ' missing ' cluttering up the lot , that's all .

  Installing new graphics drivers often resets the graphics options to minimum . Something like Inteen ( which modifies bhav's etc ) should have no effect on your graphics . The only hacks that can probably have some bearing on graphics are most likely lighting and/or camera mods . And yeah , the ' Smooth Edges ' setting has probably the biggest performance hit in the game out of all the graphics options . Some people with old or low end graphics cards ( Integrated chips for example ) might even have the setting greyed out meaning they have no choice but to have ' smooth edges ' ( which is basically just an anti-aliasing setting in other games ) set at minimum . And on the other end of the spectrum those with the expensive hardware might be able to ramp it up to full no problem . Those of us ( including myself ) with average , medium range systems though often have 4 or 5 levels they can set the smooth edges at . Mine has 4 , and I find setting it at 2 has a minimal effect on performance while looking pretty good with barely any jaggies . Setting it at 3 looks barely any different to 2 but has a noticable decrease in performance by comparison rendering it pointless . Setting it at 4 looks a bit better but is a no go performance wise . Setting it at 1 gives a little performance increase over 2 but the jaggies seem to be a little too noticable for my liking . So the 2nd setting ( maybe 2nd or 3rd for those with 5 levels ) seems to have the best compromise between looks and performance 

I bet you use and abuse it constantly 

  I can't say for definite that taking out your custom defaults will fix the newspaper look because I'm not totally certain that's your problem , but a default override or a corrupt original game file/s would probably be the main suspects because that would explain large swathes of your townies being affected . Just a normal corrupt texture for a basic custom outfit would probably only affect a small number of sims  Once you get your new card up and working then take out your custom default overrides ( you didn't say eyes were affected by a problem so you should be ok to leave those in ) and see if it clears up your newspaper look . If it doesn't then you may have to do the dance of the discs again . If it does clear it up then slowly , but surely reintroduce your other default overrides until the problem happens again . Then if you find out what the problem is using that method ( if it is indeed a crapped out override ) then just jetison it and use either the games own version of whatever or a custom override that does the same thing by someone else 

  Graphical Artefacts are often caused by the graphics card overheating or being pushed beyond it's limits by a high spec game or application , although a bad set of graphic drivers can account for it too . So hopefully the new card will clear the problem up for you although it's impossible to be certain . The ' newspaper look '  is often caused by a corrupt or missing texture though and should be unrelated to the artefact problem . A corrupt or conflicting default override possibly ( default replacement skintone etc ) ?  If it's one or more of the original game files that's corrupted though then you'd probably need to reinstall the game 

  It's not Direct X that's the problem . It's ATI's Catalyst drivers from 7.9 onwards that have given a lot of Direct X error messages and won't let you play your games for a lot , if not most AGP cards . I use a 9600 Pro and use the last ones that worked before that and they work fine , so find a copy of Catalyst 7.8 and install that and it should clear up your problem hopefully 

http://www.driverheavendownloads.net/ati.htm

  Use Carrigon's teleport mod instead which is specifically for FreeTime ( http://www.sims2workshop.com/viewtopic.php?t=2830 )