I suppose I'm getting TS2 confused with other games that do choke if their video files are removed entirely, and require the 0-byte 0-frame file to not bitch at you. It's not like a single MFT entry takes up a ton of space, anyway, or like creating a 0-byte file is hard to do.

It's not worthwhile to do unless you're in dire need of disk space, which I am not. I just tested it by removing my Seasons CSBin and TSBin directories (I picked an EP at random); the game doesn't care, still starts, and has weather and Seasons objects. I know for a fact that the only thing the patch routines check outside the registry keys are the versioning structures on the executables; they do not do any sort of intelligent binary examination, so at worst a stub executable with a forged version data structure would be enough to satisfy the game. The Seasons binaries were only 32MB anyway (before UPX at that), so it's not like this is terribly useful.

This is a brief guide to some ways you can reduce the size of your Sims 2 installation. I didn't look around for other such guides, but I'm going to guess no one has gone to the same lengths I have and so I'm just going to post this anyway. I'm going to go against my worse nature and try to keep it brief; this means among other things that things will not be explained in detail. This is good, since it means idiots will not even be able to start following these instructions, which are most decidedly not for idiots. I've tested these tricks on my own installation, and haven't noticed anything terribly bad happening, but your results might be different. If you break something, you don't get to bitch at me, because you broke it and it is your fault that you were too stupid to realize that what you were doing would destroy your installation. None of these steps will destroy user data; at worst you'll have to reinstall. Which is bad, but not the end of the world. If you break something and reinstalling can't fix it, you didn't follow my instructions.

Once more: if you follow these instructions and break shit, you are on your own.

Most of this guide will be about compressing your actual installation directories, not your custom content. You can compress custom content with the aptly-named Compressorizer. If space is a priority for you, Compressorize everything. Custom content, neighborhoods, downloads, everything. It is quite safe to just run the Compressorizer on your whole EA Games folder and let it sort out what it can and can't compress. Be warned that the Compressorizer will reset file modification times, so if you like me rely on them to manage your hack versions, you will be in trouble. The solution to this is to only download hacks from people smart enough to Compressorize anything they post. The Compressorizer is somewhat slow, but it has never been observed to damage anything.

Okay, on to the meat of this guide. Every Sims 2 product has the same basic directory structure for its installation: CSBin contains content creation set binaries, TSBin contains game binaries, TSData contains game data, and Support contains a bunch of boring stuff about how to contact the useless serfs that EA calls "tech support". If your version is, like mine, the international version featuring "UK English" content, there will a lot of stuff that's both useless and uselessly duplicated in multiple languages. This version is fairly widely arrrvailable, but yours might be different.

Follow the following steps for every single expansion or stuff pack you have, since, guess what? EA keeps making the same fuckups with every single one!

Step 1: Delete the "Support" directory. The only thing worth saving in there is the readme file, and even that just barely. This saves 10MB per EP/SP for me.

2. In the TSBin directory are a whole bunch of executables with names like "TS2UPD.EXE". These are patches that were run once, when you installed the EP. Yes, some idiot decided that required copying them to the hard drive, not just running them off the CD/DVD. Whatever. Delete that little fuckup, and you can recover up 150MB per EP/SP installed, with absolutely no drawback. Goddamn morons.

3. In TSData/Res/Movies there is an annoying abomination named "ealogo_audio.movie". It is annoying, but should not be killed entirely as this may make the game unhappy. Replace it with a file of the same name but containing 0 bytes, and all will be well. Delete them, the game doesn't care. 2MB per EP/SP.

4. TSData/Res/Locale contains a whole bunch of locales, plus the one you care about. Destroy all but one of the subfolders here, and you can save about 50MB.

Those are the easy ones. Now for the potentially destructive. Do any of the following, and you may not be able to ever patch the EP/SP you mutilated. Which isn't exactly a concern, as EA shits on customers and drops "support" for all releases as soon as it can get away with it, but it's worth noting.

5. Get UPX, the Ultimate Packer for Executables, and use it on the game's files. The primary target is, of course, Sims2EPn.exe: the latest Sims2EP9.exe that makes up Mansion & Garden Stuff's bloated core is 44MB on its own (if you're using the right version, that is); after packing with UPX it's only 9.3MB, 21% of its original size. The command line you want to use is "upx --lzma --best [EXECUTABLE]"; on EP9.exe this was only 0.14% worse than the agonizingly-slow "--ultra-brute" and took only seconds. The resulting UPX-packed executable is functionally identical to the old fat version but tightly packed. It does take a couple milliseconds to decompress, but TS2 is so bloated anyway that even for a bloody gigantic 44MB executable you cannot possibly notice the decompression time on any machine able to run it to begin with.

Other good targets for UPX are GDF.dll and Sims2Launcher.exe in TSBin and PackageInstaller.exe and TS2BodyShop.exe in CSBin. Body Shop uses a shared writeable section which gave UPX pause, but the resulting executable was fine for me. You may experience different results. Also, I don't use Body Shop and so I don't really care about it.

If you're really hard up for disk space, you can probably just delete the binaries of old expansions. I haven't tried this, but my impression of the game is that it's stupid enough that this would work fine. Since the smallest TS2 executable is 15MB, there's quite a bit of space available for the harvesting here.

6. Compressorize the game package files themselves. The game doesn't care how they're packed (patches might, though), and EA packing is not as good as Compressorizer packing. But the Compressorizer is slow, and EA packing is not all that much worse than Compressorizer packing for most of the files. Still, it's easy: point the Compressorizer at a directory, let it figure out what it can Compressorize, and wait while it does the work for you. Low-risk and low-reward.

Sounds like you're looking for Inge's mortgage shrubs (amongst other, similar objects): http://www.simlogical.com/sl/Sims2Pages/Sims2_MovingHouse.htm

The interest scheme doesn't work quite like you've described, but I imagine you'll find it satisfactory enough.

A thread like this probably belongs in the Podium. Peasantry is really more for posting stuff you've hacked yourself.

There is an executable for it, but I just run the FT executable since that's what my shortcuts point to. Not to mention the fact that it's nice and SecuROM-free. The game doesn't seem to care that I do this.

And the elder file... damn size limit! If only I weren't too lazy to find proper hosting....

I've fiddled around in SimPE and managed to apply Annan's alpha file to the five original textures. 7Zip archives are attached below, split into two parts only because the five textures together in one file is 45kB over the damn filesize limit for this forum. My package just overrides the original textures for these hairstyles, so if you drop the package somewhere in your Downloads folder, all Sims who have this hairstyle will now not have their faces covered by hideous bangs.

Feel free to distribute these files as you wish, as long as credit is given to Annan for creating the alpha replacement in the first place.

Thanks for all the comments everyone; I'll try to address all them below (hopefully I don't miss any). Sorry it took me so long to get back to this thread (work got busy last week...).

Yeah, the bottom third is the core of the challenge. The other crap is just there to give it a little more structure, and so you can't just let the little bastards spend their lives in misery. Anyone can do that--but keeping them happy when they have nothing is a little harder. Especially if they're greedy, materialistic Fortune sims.

The scoring is bean-counting, but I couldn't think of any better way to enforce the condition "you can't just let the little bastards spend their lives in misery." These rules are quantitative and objective, at least. If anyone has suggestions to make this part less beancounter-y, I'm all ears.

I agree completely, and I've added some new rules below to reflect this. I'm very open to better ideas than just flat-out, boring penalties, but there's nothing that strikes me as relevant to the core idea of the Challenge and at the same time worthy of daily reinforcement. "Don't buy shit" is a pretty simple, straightforward maxim, and so explicitly bringing in other stuff like skilling dilutes the flavor, I think. Oh well.

Your challenge is pretty much more interesting on every level than mine. But this one's mine, damn it, and I came up with it on my own! You can pry it from my cold, dead hands, and if you're going to be prying stuff from dead people's hands, you may as well start with Charlton Heston's guns. Because, you know, they're guns, and guns are useful. Challenges are not.

Now for some general responses and clarifications to the Making Do With Less Challenge:

• An "object" is any non-transient thing (i.e., not a Sim, or a dinner plate, etc.) on the lot. That includes trees, and just about everything else. A quick rule of thumb: if it sells for more than $0, it's an object. If Sims can interact with it, it's an object.
• Anything in the Inventory counts exactly as if it were on the lot; this was a big loophole I just forgot to mention. Cell phones in the Inventory are almost the same as regular phones, except that you don't need someplace to put them. But having one for each Sim incurs the duplicate object penalty....
• Businesses are, as far as I'm concerned, "community lots." Jobs (and schooling) must be at a Maxis-style career where the Sim just up and vanishes for the day, and should not be at hacked careers that pay out ten times the usual rate, etc.
• Now for the big one, plantsims and their ilk. Damn plantsims. I've never played with them, and have no desire to, so I'm not at all surprised that I've totally missed the way they blow this challenge wide open. I suppose the best way to deal with this is just to ban the damn things, along with werewolves and Bigfoot (I don't even know what they do; having encountered something else I do not understand, I shall do the American thing and just ban the hell out of it). Servos aren't really Sims, and so were never allowed. Zombies may as well be allowed, since I don't think they provide any benefit; vampires are also OK, since if you can manage to become a vampire and not die, you deserve your reward. Plus they're blood-sucking monsters, which are always fun.

Anyway, it's obvious that, like most of my brilliant ideas, this one doesn't really pan out as BEST CHALLENEGE EVAR, so I don't think I'll be going through and updating the rules in response to further criticism, unless someone comes up with something terribly insightful and/or destructive to the Challenge, or if people actually play the Challenge and find it interesting, or something like that. As Ella said, the game just makes it too easy for you, throwing money and free motive boosts at you, and most of them just have to be flat-out banned. That tends to be boring and smacks of a poorly-designed challenge. A good challenge should be simple, elegant, obvious, and Pure Evil™.

---

The revised rules, in full:

The Making Do With Less Challenge

The goal of the challenge is to raise a child from birth to death on a single lot... a lot with as few objects or buildings on it as possible.

Rules:
Create an adult sim in CAS, any way you like. Move this sim into a 5x6 "Huge" lot, leaving the poor bastard with only $1500 to his or her name. (The lot size isn't important at all, just the starting money; if you like, you can achieve this condition using a smaller lot and your choice of cheats).

The parent Sim must, sometime prior to their death, spawn a child. The child Sim must never leave the lot he or she is born on. The child must not attend college. The challenge ends with the death of the child. If the child dies before reaching Elder, you automatically fail. Neither the parent nor the child may leave the lot except to attend work at a standard Maxis career (i.e., not a player-owned business) or school; in particular, they must never visit a community lot and raise skills or motives.

You may move in as many additional Sims as you like, so long as you wait no less than 5 days between move-ins, and each move-in contributes at most $1000 to the family's funds. You may have as many additional children as you like. If either the parent or child Sim attains permanent platinum mood, you must use the Lot Debugger to remove such immediately after gaining it. Failure to do so will forfeit the Challenge. Neither the parent Sim nor the child Sim may ever become Plantsims, werewolves, or Bigfoot. Failure to cure them immediately will also forfeit the Challenge.

Garden plots must be built inside a greenhouse.

Scoring:

• +10 points if the child attains platinum aspiration level as a toddler and never dips back into gold (except once at each age transition)
• +5 points if the child attains gold aspiration level as a toddler and never dips below gold (except once at each age transition; does not stack with +10 for platinum)
• +2 points if the child is admitted to private school
• +1 point if the parent dies a platinum death
• -1 point if the child does not die a platinum death

• -1 point for every hour the parent spends at least partly in red (i.e., below 0) mood
• -5 points for every hour the parent spends at least partly at red aspiration level
• -10 points for every time the parent enters aspiration failure
• -2 points for every hour the child spends at least partly in red (i.e., below 0) mood
• -10 points for every hour the child spends at least partly at red aspiration level
• -20 points for every time the child enters aspiration failure
• -1 point for every 4 hours either the parent or child spends meditating, totalled over their entire pathetic lifespans. Round up!
• +4 points if neither the parent nor child ever meditate (+2 if only one mediates)
• -2 points for every date either the parent or child ever goes on
• +4 points if neither the parent nor child ever date (+2 if only one dates)

• -2 points for every object on the lot* at the end of the challenge
• -10 points for every object that you acquire and later get rid of
• -5 points for every linear stretch of wall, halfwall, greenhouse wall, or floor divider on the lot (no matter what its length; a normal rectangular room, composed of 4 sides (as most rectangles are), would then be -20 points)
• -5 points for every tile fully enclosed by walls, et cetera (a 4x4 rectangular room would therefore suffer -20 + 16*-5 = -100 points total; by dividing it in half down the center, you lose another 5 points for the wall, but as you enclose the same number of tiles, it's only -105 points total)
• -20 points for every item on the lot* whose function is entirely duplicated by another item (except purely decorative/no-use items... which you shouldn't be buying anyway!) (Examples: having both a cheap and an expensive telescope is -40 because either telescope could replace the other; having a stove and a toaster oven is -20, because the stove could replace the toaster oven; having a television and a bookcase is -0, since even though both can teach cooking, they have functions the other does not)

*Note that items held in Inventory are still considered "on the lot"!

Scoring Exceptions:
The Lot Debugger and other pure-hack items that provide no direct benefit to Sims' motives, finances, or relationships do not count against the number of items on the lot. Use your own discretion. If an item is delivered to your lot by a Sim not under your control (date flowers, for example), you take no penalties if you burninate the item immediately after it arrives on your lot. If the item is Rod Humble's computer, you automatically lose the challenge for not being awesome enough. Expired aspiration rewards and similar do not count as having "duplicate functionality;" a burnt-out Energizer is good for nothing, but a charged Energizer obviously still has some use. You just take the usual penalty of -2 per object for each one you've got, or -10 each if you sell them.

The definition of "object": An "object" is any non-transient thing (i.e., not a Sim) on the lot. That includes trees, and just about everything else. Dinner plates, books, and other things spawned indefinitely by other objects in the course of normal usage do not count as objects separate from the one that spawned them. A quick rule of thumb: if it sells for more than $0, it's an object. If Sims can interact with it, it's an object. This should be pretty clear, if not from the letter of the rules, then at least from their spirit.

Custom Content:
All Awesome hacks are allowed. No custom content that provides functionality not available with regular TS2 Maxis objects is allowed (example: the porta-potty salvaged from one of the Stories games is forbidden). It should be pretty obvious if custom content provides functionality advantageous to this Challenge; if so, it's banned. Money cheats are not allowed; building cheats are (if you'd like to run your score into the ground, who am I to stop you?).[/list]

So I was starting a new eXtreme Legacy Challenge (I don't intend to follow the rules rigorously, but it should provide some much-needed structure for my too-infrequent play), when I hit on the following idea.

Stop me if this has been done before, or, more likely, when you find the loophole. The golden path for winning this challenge is not obvious to me, even after a few minutes of thinking about it. I'm sure you challenge addicts can find it, though.

The Making Do With Less Challenge

The goal of the challenge is to raise a child from birth to death on a single lot... a lot with as few objects or buildings on it as possible.

Rules:
Create an adult sim in CAS, any way you like. Move this sim into a 5x6 "Huge" lot, leaving the poor bastard with only $1500 to his or her name. (The lot size isn't important at all, just the starting money; if you like, you can achieve this condition using a smaller lot and your choice of cheats).

The parent Sim must, sometime prior to their death, spawn a child. The child Sim must never leave the lot he or she is born on, except to attend school or work. The child must not attend college. The challenge ends with the death of the child. If the child dies before reaching Elder, you automatically fail. Neither the parent nor the child may leave the lot except to attend work or school; in particular, they must never visit a community lot and raise skills or motives.

You may move in as many additional Sims as you like, so long as you wait no less than 5 days between move-ins, and each move-in contributes at most $1000 to the family's funds. You may have as many additional children as you like. If either the parent or child Sim attains permanent platinum mood, you must use the Lot Debugger to remove such immediately after gaining it. Failure to do so will forfeit the Challenge.

Scoring:

• +10 points if the child attains platinum aspiration level as a toddler and never dips back into gold
• +5 points if the child attains gold aspiration level as a toddler and never dips below gold (does not stack with +10 for platinum)
• +2 points if the child is admitted to private school
• +1 point if the parent dies a platinum death
• -1 point if the child does not die a platinum death

• -1 point for every hour the parent spends at least partly in red (i.e., below 0) mood
• -5 points for every hour the parent spends at least partly at red aspiration level
• -10 points for every time the parent enters aspiration failure
• -2 points for every hour the child spends at least partly in red (i.e., below 0) mood
• -10 points for every hour the child spends at least partly at red aspiration level
• -20 points for every time the child enters aspiration failure

• -2 points for every object on the lot at the end of the challenge
• -10 points for every object that you acquire and later get rid of
• -5 points for every linear stretch of wall or halfwall on the lot (no matter what its length; a normal rectangular room, composed of 4 sides (as most rectangles are), would then be -20 points)
• -5 points for every tile fully enclosed by walls or halfwalls (a 4x4 rectangular room would therefore suffer -20 + 16*-5 = -100 points total; by dividing it in half down the center, you lose another 5 points for the wall, but as you enclose the same number of tiles, it's only -105 points total)
• -20 points for every item on the lot whose function is entirely duplicated by another item (except purely decorative/no-use items... which you shouldn't be buying anyway!) (Examples: having both a cheap and an expensive telescope is -40 because either telescope could replace the other; having a stove and a toaster oven is -20, because the stove could replace the toaster oven; having a television and a bookcase is -0, since even though both can teach cooking, they have functions the other does not)

Scoring Exceptions:
The Lot Debugger and other pure-hack items that provide no direct benefit to Sims' motives, finances, or relationships do not count against the number of items on the lot. Use your own discretion. If an item is delivered to your lot by a Sim not under your control (date flowers, for example), you take no penalties if you burninate the item immediately after it arrives on your lot. If the item is Rod Humble's computer, you automatically lose the challenge for not being awesome enough. Expired aspiration rewards and similar do not count as having "duplicate functionality;" a burnt-out Energizer is good for nothing, but a charged Energizer obviously still has some use. You just take the usual penalty of -2 per object for each one you've got, or -10 each if you sell them.

Custom Content:
All Awesome hacks are allowed. No custom content that provides functionality not available with regular TS2 Maxis objects is allowed (example: the porta-potty salvaged from one of the Stories games is forbidden). It should be pretty obvious if custom content provides functionality advantageous to this Challenge; if so, it's banned. Money cheats are not allowed; building cheats are (if you'd like to run your score into the ground, who am I to stop you?).