It doesn't matter whether it's pure apples/watermelons or as an ingredient - the effect is the same.  5% additional chance per eaten item, up to a maximum of 15% (max chance 65% for a particular gender).

Delphy's CTU contains no propert support for hair right now - what it outputs if you try to use hair just screws stuff up.  She couldn't have used it to do anything for hers.  Delphy's been working on updating it for hair meshes as I've got replacements working just fine.

Lower LOD meshes aren't just used for zoom in TS3 but also for the portrait image: right now I have a hair that replaces the highest LOD but the portrait images are unchanged.

(Not specifically to you) ...Someone asked upthread why she would replace so many resources.  Not only are there LOD things to replace but if you use a different mapping/textures, you have to replace those too.  Basically like having a mesh + textures for a TS2 hair but ya gotta do all of 'em.  The one I'm working on needs a -lot- of stuff replaced so the file's actually kinda big.  Files tend to be big for TS3.  I think it'll balance out in the end though since you won't need umptyjillion recolours of the same mesh.


If you were having problems with Peggy's and you're willing to be a guinea pig...  Can you please PM me here or on MTS?  I have a hair that's nearing completion (enough to be tested) and would like to get at least a couple other people confirming it doesn't crash their game before I put it up for the masses.

The tooth-in-chin thing isn't due to skins, but face shape.  The same thing can happen to sims older than toddler if they have a small chin and/or narrow mouth.  Tends to happen a lot more to toddlers in general due to their relatively similar face shapes, but it is possible to have a toddler face sculpt that isn't affected.

Good lord, that's supposed to be a My Little Pony?  I thought it was some sort of bizarre Spongebob ass tattoo.

Maybe it has to do with the difference between apartment lots and normal lots.  Mootilda has done some great research on this and discovered that the game sort of "clones" an apartment lot.  Each apartment lot gets copied to make the separate sub-lots for each apartment so you can play them separately.  Because they're not handled as normal lots, the attachment process might just go weird with those lots, to use a very technical term...

Which, now that I read it, is basically what sigi said in different words.

The moving out and moving back in is relatively simple, if a bit of a hassle...  I didn't notice any difference between any of the lots before merging and after merging...  But the Cho and Riley lots are known to be kinda weird anyway so if it comes down to a couple missing pieces of furniture, I'd call that overall not a big deal at all to fix.

Hellyes - The only real difference between the original BDC apartment-dwellers and the moved-out-and-back-in versions is that they won't be standing exactly where they were originally when you first load the lot.  If you rent furnished and fix their family funds as advised, it works just fine.  They're still the same sims with the same memories, relationships, etc..  I'd call the difference between a sim standing in one place and standing in another pretty minimal.  It's not like anyone was doing anything too amazing that it's a big loss to have them in a different spot the first time you load the lot.

The 8600s are part of the series of nVidia cards known to be defective (8300-8700, specifically).  They are particularly prone to overheating.  This is a problem in both the laptop versions as well as the standard PC versions - it's just a lot worse in laptops because laptops tend to have heating issues to begin with, and because there's little you can do in terms of aftermarket cooling to reduce the problems.

I've heard of them releasing driver updates but really all that does is ramp up the fan speed to try to alleviate some of the heating.  The cards themselves are doomed to failure.

Turn down graphics settings and resolution if you insist on playing high-graphics-strain games like TS2.  Get yourself a temperature monitor like SpeedFan to keep track of your temps and shut down before they get too hot to minimize damage.  Update your drivers to get the fan to run a little faster.  Get a laptop cooling pad to cool the laptop in general.  And don't be surprised if the graphics card fails.  AL does appear to run a lot harder than the previous EPs for some strange reason - I've got a very nice, shiny new PC and it's sluggish on mine.  I'm not the only one reporting it... so something must've changed between FT and AL that causes it to run harder.  If you're not a big player of other high-strain games you probably won't notice a whole lot of issue - and the damage that heat does to your card is a cumulative thing, so it's probably been building up to this point anyway.

If you can exchange your laptop at this point, do so.  If you can't, look into whether you can extend your warranty - the nVidia cards with that issue are already failing, and it's just a matter of time till yours does too, and in a laptop, that means the whole thing becomes a large, expensive brick.  And watch out for class action lawsuits about it, because I would not be surprised if there's one upcoming.

Funny that you post that now, because I JUST got the Uber-Megahood working with proper apartments.  It's a -stupid- workaround but it does work and it's pretty easy.

- Let the game generate a fresh Belladonna Cove (BDC) like you do the rest of the neighborhoods.
- Before removing Belladonna Cove from the Neighborhood folder to attach it as a downtown/shopping district template, go into BDC and move everyone who is currently living in an apartment into the sim bin.
- Attach BDC to your neighborhood as normal.
- Reassemble everything - BDC and whatever other 'hoods you've added with the proper ID numbers and whatnot.
- Go into the freshly-attached BDC and move everyone back into their apartments (see notes below) - make sure to use boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true... walk an adult to the apartment door you want to rent, shift-click the door and choose "Rent Furnished" - all of the furnishings they had before will be there.
- Once everyone's moved in, go back to the neighborhood and use familyFunds (familyname) (amount) to fix everyone's monies (see notes below).

My notes - I made notes on where everyone lives, and which apartments, and how much money:

Cho - 16,221 - Sentinel Apartments, lowest floor
Riley - 32,785 - Sentinel Apartments, apartment above Cho on 1st floor (2nd if you're American)
Patel - 25,976 - Ocean View Apartments, front right apartment on lowest floor (I think there's only one floor anyway)
Peterson - 14,325 - Main Street Mobile Homes, mobile home in the middle with pink walls
Cleveland - 42,768 - Bella Park Condominiums, 1st floor (2nd if you're American), on the right.
DeBateau - 227,933 - Cornerstone Condominiums, top floor
Baldwin - 58,297 - Tech Terrace - 1st floor (2nd if you're American) with balcony out front.


Also, a big note when adding stuff with stealth neighborhoods that is not specific to Apartment Life but all EPs - to prevent duplicate NPCs you need to do a little fancy footwork with empty templates:

- Create a fresh copy of your base neighborhood.  Enter it to let it create the stealth hoods as normal.
- Rename Pleasantview's template in Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData from N001 to N001-bak to prevent it from generating new Pleasantview-template sims.
- Put in empty templates for ALL stealth 'hoods that your game may create (Pets, Weather, Exotic Destinations, Hobbies, and Magic)
- Generate fresh copies of your neighborhoods to attach*
- Attach these fresh copies to your base hood the same way you normally would - they'll just be cleaner and more compact than they would have been otherwise, and you won't end up with duplicate sims you don't want.

* Pretty sure that if you don't need to enter the neighborhood before attaching it (like you do above for BDC to fix the apartment-dwellers) you only need to do N001 - not the stealth hood templates as they won't be generated till you enter the neighborhood.

Edit: New Uber-Megahood, with working apartment-dwellers, is here: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=301194  ... I will cry and have a hissy fit if it's somehow otherwise broken but it seems to be fine.

ST Bella didn't get renamed the first time I did this so I'm thinking I must be using a different template than I did with the first Megahood (I'd switched after the first stupid try thinking I was using the old one but apparently not).  And I'm -not- willing to go through and note down everyone's names from all of the attached 'hoods and verify that everyone is correct and fix them if they're not.  It'll take ages and drive me absolutely bonkers.  So I'm gonna see if I can switch templates to what I must've been using originally and see if that helps since ST Bella was fine the first time.  Ugh, what a giant pain Apartment Life is turning out to be.

I don't think it's a SimPE issue because all that's changed is one resource, and the ONLY sims that get borked are the ones in apartments - everyone else in the 'hood is fine.

I'm starting over... AGAIN... with Belladonna as the main 'hood.  I guess it makes some measure of sense for the AL version, and at least that way I hopefully will get less people on MTS2 sobbing about "Why didn't you make it an addon!!!!111" etc.

Edit:  Ugh, well, it does work attaching things to Belladonna, but for some reason now some pretty important characters (like Bella Goth) have the wrong names.  She's called Allyn Kim for some incredibly strange reason.  I'll start over...  yet again, tomorrow.  Ugh.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to do Belladonna as the main 'hood and attach everything to it, I guess - I just tried it again and as soon as you attach Belladonna as a sub-hood, even if it was working fine before attaching, all the apartments go boom.  Grrghfhfhgnnngh.

Bumblescum.  I'd thought I'd checked that but I guess not... Bah.  Okay, lemme fiddle and see if I can get that fixed.  If EAxis has done it so Belladonna Cove -can't- be combined and keep everyone in their proper apartments, I'm gonna strangle them with my mouse cord.

Just don't use the cleaned/fixed neighborhood templates if you want the premade townies.  It's not required - just recommended in the first part of the tutorial, but it doesn't change the way you do the tutorial at all.  The new Uber-Megahood is, well, much less clean than the Megahood as there were some simbin sims and such missing with the Megahood that I kinda missed a bit myself.  You still don't get Goopy Gilscarbo, Joe Carr, or Meadow Thayer and the like, but for example, in Belladonna Cove, you'll still have folks like Christian Love.

Edit: Thinking more on it...  if you don't use the templates at all, you -might- end up with duplicates of folks like Goopy, I'm thinking... so it might be worth plopping the template for Pleasantview in and letting the game regenerate fresh files right before Part 3, Step 2 where you copy the needed neighborhoods, and then restoring it before Part 5 so your new Pleasantview has Goopy, etc., but all of the sub-hoods you'll be adding won't have copies.

I've finished a new Uber-Megahood for Apartment Life that includes all of the Maxis neighborhoods to date and requires OfB, Seasons, Free Time, and Apartment Life.  It will be up on MTS2 as soon as I can get all the files uploaded (god it's gonna take a while)...  It is not perfectly clean as I didn't want to lose any simbin sims like last time, but it is Goopy-free.

If ya want my version now, you can get the whole file at http://www.demusedsims.com/uploads/N373.rar - 284 mb (yes, I know, I am committing atrocities against your hard drive) or you can get the split rars - http://www.demusedsims.com/uploads/N373.part01.rar  ... 01-32 (just change the URL). 

I also kind of rewrote Sara's tutorial as I went along as I had found the initial version terribly confusing.  Maybe it's just me, but I learn complicated things much moar betterer when it's explained why I'm doing each step - especially when I want to do something slightly different than the actual tutorial is showing.  My version is here: http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?title=Tutorials:Combining_Maxis_Neighborhoods  ... again, thanks to Sara for the original... maybe it's just my stupid but I figure if a different wording can help others, then that's a good thing.

That was covered in the readme - said not to make apartments from beach lots.  Not that it's not stupid that you can't do that, just that... we were sort of warned.

The magical invisible living room: http://www.modyourpanties.com/hosting/3090_080829052038wtf.jpg

This was with some architecture that I now know fucks things up - an additional entrance in front fenced only with that little edging fence and also used to divide the living room from dining room... but what the hell?!

I think I'm going to have to redo the whole fracking lot and change some of the architecture.  Which pisses me off as it's based on a real life place.

Aside: The "rent furnished" option on apartment doors in debug mode just falls out of the queue when I try to use it.

I used the same furniture in all, yet it only disappears in some.  For example, the exact same mission bed in all three apartments... yet it only disappears in the one bedroom and three bedroom apartments, but is fine in the upstairs of the two bedroom.  This occurs even after I figured out to take out that damn (used to be useful, now just fucks things up) stepover edging... Two bedroom apartment's upstairs stays furnished, three bedroom's upstairs doesn't.  Same stairs, same beds, same doors... only difference is the two bedroom has a split stair using a stage.  If -that's- what is causing it I'm going to have to kick someone's teeth in.

Oh, AND - my favourite part.  The disappeared furniture seems to still be there... somehow.  I had a sim come in to check out an apartment who autonomously walked into one of the apartments, into the disappeared living room, sat down on the disappeared-couch and started watching the disappeared-tv.  I couldn't click on anything there, but he seemed to think it was there.

So.  Very.  Pissed off.


I spent most of the day building a lovely 3-family townhome, nicely furnished, only to find that the furnishings disappear seemingly at random once I move sims in to rent the place.  One apartment, the couch and tv are there - the other two, they're gone.  One loses a bed, another doesn't.  Some decor disappears, some doesn't.  Anything divided with those little step-over room dividers disappears.  Basic stuff like lights, counters, etc., seem to stay universally, but anything beyond that, who the hell knows.  I had everything adorably furnished, different paintings in each apartment, exactly how I wanted it and the #*$&ing thing won't work.  ARGH!!!

I do have a saved copy of it before I moved anyone in, but I am getting ready to uninstall this crapsack of an EP.  I've got -no- hacks and only the minimum custom content (a few windows and fences) I needed to build the damn thing and it still won't work.

... pic, as requested.  Not perfect but... better.  None of the rest struck me as too fiveheaded - that one was awful.  Also, the part on it has been reduced too - I dunno about you, but when I part my hair, you see a tiny line of scalp between two gentle rises of hair, not a raging torrent of Scalp River between the sheer cliffs of Hair Canyon.

(Covered elsewhere)

I used the version re-uploaded by Sysa - which I assume is the same as the one SaraMK had linked to, but the link has gone dead.

http://www.demusedsims.com/uploads/N372.rar

Okay, there's the completed version, done as N372 so you can have your regular Pleasantview or whatever else you want and it shouldn't interfere.  Plop in Neighborhoods and begin playing.  As mentioned, all the other Maxis hoods are done as shopping districts of Pleasantview (with one Bluewater Village included as well) so don't add shopping districts, but feel free to add whatever else.

It is, however, 177 mb in size, rarred.

I'm currently uploading a multi-part rar for people on flaky connections, and I will be uploading it to MTS2 as well (with alternate links to Demused Sims for downloading as it tends to have a very nice fast download rate which MTS2, well, doesn't).

All Maxis playables and lots are included - most random townies are not.  I used the Maxis-only original hoods so you do have the Maxis simbin sims, but a minimum of random garbage townies.  Goopy Gilscarbo and Joe Carr don't seem to be included - yay!  669 characters total which seems about right for everyone and their dog's nephew's cousin from all the hoods.

I've tested a lot in each 'hood and everything seems to be fine but I make no guarantees.  Use at your own risk, your mileage may vary, remove nutmeats from shell before eating, do not insert into anus, etc.

FINALLY, after like seven tries to do this... I've gotten Strangetown, Veronaville, Riverblossom Hills, and Desiderata Valley attached as shopping districts (gave up on downtowns).

The problem I was having was... well... weird... I was following the steps just fine but when I would get to the end I invariably had the one-on-top-of-the-other thing.

In making the backup of the D001 folder (or in my tries to do them as shopping districts, B001) I simply copied the folder so I had 'D001' and 'Copy of D001' as folders - so when it would go to generate the IDs it would have 'Copy of D001' in the Subname blank that shows up on the IDs in SimPE.  Why this was, I don't know, but as soon as I put the backup in a RAR file instead of leaving it in a renamed folder, it worked perfectly.

AND I did it (hopefully) fairly cleanly, with the AnyGameStarter, so the combined hood I just made should just require Open for Business, Seasons, and Freetime.  I'm going to do a bit more testing and then maybe look to sharing it so others don't have to go to the trouble.

Smells very very fishy... If this were truly Norton related then the useshaders cheat wouldn't do a damn thing to change it - yet in many cases, that resolves the problem.

Perhaps it's two (or more) unrelated causes resulting in the same or similar symptoms... but if this is a Norton issue, why would it only effect computers with nVidia graphics cards?  Surely having an ATI doesn't automagically protect you from memory leaks...

I agree with the previous poster whose name I'm too lazy to look up... it's irresponsible for them to release this info while having tested it on one and only one computer, and ignoring the other fixes which are known to work or at least help.

Kristalrose - Heh, well, I suppose it's an understandable mistake, but it still had me forehead slapping and swearing. 

Inge - I've heard of Very Bad Things happening as a result of deleting sims from the sim bin.  I'm a little afraid to use that method in case those rumours are true.  I'm assuming that because you advise it, you either denounce this rumour/don't know of it, but I'm wondering if you or others can confirm/deny that.  I did get confirmation that severing family ties with InSIM and then using Pescado's method with SimPE and the debugger will work okay and I'll probably do that, but hey, since we're on the subject...