Holy_grail, I have to burst your bubble and point out that the BIG DIFFERENCE between your item comparison pictures has nothing to do with the programs you think were used. TSR Workshop only puts files together to make a working package. It has no mesh making functionality, no texture painting functionality, all it does is stick together files the creator provides so the game can use and read them. It's like you're comparing a spreadsheet program with a puzzle game and saying the puzzle game is crap because it can't make spreadsheets. Of course it can't, that's not what it's for.

The other big differences in your comparison pictures are the use of 3D details versus painted on, handpainted textures versus photoskinning, and possibly high res and lighting mods versus unmodded picture quality. Those differences are all about techniques and developed skill, not so much about how much the programs they used cost.

Being gung-ho is fun, but running in and lecturing everyone on how to make really good stuff, you know because you've played with the programs!! when you obviously don't have any idea of what you're talking about isn't going to get anyone excited. If you really want more people to make really cool!!! content, how about encouraging people with the amazing skills to write better tutorials? Right now THAT'S the biggest bar to new creators, as the current meshing tutorials are wretched. It would also be something legitimately helpful, whereas your 'Look at me, I found you torrents to GOOD TOOLS now make cool stuff!' is very much not.

Croiduire, it sounds like that custom skin is probably geneticized at some value between the two default skins, meaning that it's on the spectrum with the defaults and babies can be born with that skin rather than a default. Check the genetic line in the skintone XML -- if it reads anything other than 0, that means it was geneticized.

The do pull from adult; in fact, the game files don't have tf face files at all.

Very strictly, there are only a handful of fixes in the Director's Cut that are necessary to prevent game-breaking bugs; the rest is flavor. However, there are so many very annoying, nonsensical, or plain limited things in the game it's worth hunting down mods that improve anything that doesn't satisfy you. The Director's Cut is packed with useful mods, and if you just want to grab and play and not have to concern yourself with possible conflicts, you'll have a much improved game experience with a selection of mods from that.

However, if you're a picky jerk like me and want to tweak the game to within an inch of its life, you have a ton of options. Like Jeebus said, Simbology and Simlogical have some great mods. TwoJeffs has a lot of mods improving how the game treats same-sex relationships; he also has the famous Autonomous Casual Romance, which allows your sims to act on their gender preferences and attractions on their own. Simlogical has mods to give your sims more schooling options for their children, a prison mod, and various controllers that do things like make it so your sims can only serve meals in certain places during certain times of day.

There are quite a few modders on MTS; my favorite is MogHughson, who has made game enhancers like a manuscript sims from children on up can write novels with, a mod that allows pets to sleep on a bed with a sleeping child, and a mod that allows apartments and stores on the same lot.

Then there are the mods made by people who aren't really in the community anymore. They're very use at your own risk, but with some care and attention to keeping backups they can be used safely. Squinge and Monique at Insim and Paladin at SimsWardrobe are the modders I suggest looking for.

All of the options can be overwhelming, so I strongly suggest starting small and only adding one or two at a time, or staying with the Director's Cut for a while.

According to Almight Hat here, the SimPE method should work no matter your game version, but I'm not sure if her instructions are the same as the MATY instructions.

Since this got me curious and annoyed I couldn't find any specific tutorials either, I took a dig through the game files to see if I could figure out the differences -- if any -- in the changes between FT/AL jewelry and BV jewelry.  As far as I can tell, the only place that makes a difference is in the 3DIR -- you will always want to use 0xD327EED9 as your instance. So in theory there's no reason why the SimPE tutorial here wouldn't work.

I don't know why the Wardrobe Wrangler options make jewelry binned with it unusuable in non-BV games; I compared numbers and couldn't find any reason why they shouldn't.  I am but an egg when it comes to digging about with SimPE, however.

If that doesn't work and no one else pipes up, you might be able to rouse someone on MTS who can help, in their create forums.

Oh, rats.  It might be worth giving a try, nonetheless... I'd do it myself if I didn't have BV. Otherwise, it's the long way with SimPE, for which the instructions exist somewhere here.

I don't know why you seem to have a file limit, but there is a relatively painless way of putting accessories into jewelry bins -- the Wardrobe Wrangler. Now, the option says it's to upgrade to Bon Voyage jewelry bins, but I know FT and AL at least also included the option, so it may work. I'd make a backup of one file, then bin that and see if it's accessible in-game.

The lack of RAM might do it, although I once had nearly 2GB of downloads on a machine that only had 512 MB of RAM which had to share that with video -- ran like crap, but it didn't crash. I suppose it depnds on what other stuff that computer has going on in the background. However, regenerating your Sims 2 folder may be a little more likely -- corrupt downloads, neighborhoods, or caches can cause the game to crash.

And yes, the lite version is exactly what you want. Sorry, I should have specified!

Possibly silly question: Did you delete the cache files in The Sims 2 folder? Groups.cache seems to be the main offender for sometimes,  at random, holding on to information of things that you've taken out of your downloads. That the mod didn't work in your normal folder sans CC but did work in your clean building install suggests Groups.cache is the culprit.

160MB is just about nothing for a downloads folder, so it's odd to me the crashing would go away unless you're really low on hard drive space. Huh.

You need Daemon Tools on the same computer you want to install the stuff pack on, otherwise you're not going to be able to do much with that ISO. Daemon Tools creates a virtual CD drive for the disc image to run on.

You shouldn't need to install anything to access the site, IME! Make sure you're getting the program directly from utorrent.com. Nothing else should need to install, because it's a teeny tiny program that you can pretty much stick into a folder and run; installation is very, very minimal.

Pardon, but I  lack the telepathic skills necessary to determine sanity across the Internet. Anyway...

Best method depends on your experience with torrents, how fast your connection speed is, if you have a bandwith cap, and what kind of software you're most comfortable fiddling with.  If you've never done either before, it's going to be a bit of a pain in ass no matter which you choose, but in that case I'm inclined to say that getting ISOs from torrents is a bit more user-friendly than ripping them yourself and finding keygens for the EPs that your keys have gone missing for. Game torrents usually have keys with them.

Assuming you haven't done this before, uTorrent is a good client if you don't already have one; torrent services depend on where you can find the torrents you want (Google helps). I strongly suggest reading the uTorrent FAQ. ISOs come in split RAR files, so make sure your unpacking program can handle those. The rest, IME, is trial and error and finding FAQs when you get stuck.

No, .reg files from one OS aren't going to work on another.

If you absolutely cannot use the discs (are you playing on a netbook? Because that's a Bad Plan), you'll either need to make ISOs of them on a different computer and transfer via USB stick or portable hard drive, or download them via torrent. In either case you'll have to install Daemon Tools on the current one (it's free) so it can read those ISOs and allow you to install.

Floorplan sites are your friends.

This might be obvious, but I managed to brainfart it at one point and cause myself unnecessary pain, so I figure it's worth a warning--the game is somewhat bizarrely picky about what must be there for installation of another SP/EP. Help files might be okay to delete, but old update files definitely aren't and will make the installer throw a hissy fit when it's almost done. Not a problem for anyone who has all of the SP/EPs (or all that they want), but definitely something to be wary of otherwise.

One niggle 'cause I can't leave well enough alone

The hobby is cuisine, not cooking. Cuisine encompasses everything to do with food, and this includes eating. It is, in fact, actually a hobby of some people to discuss the relative merits of various restaurants and the execution of their dishes. Like someone into art doesn't have to be an artist to discuss/appreciate/collect it, one doesn't have to be a cook to appreciate food to the level of analysis and critique. See also: Foodies.

That is all. 

AFAIK, 'talk about major' only works between two sims with the same major. I also don't remember having any luck with getting changed majors to stick for dormies.

Your sims are using the telescope in the daylight, I bet. It's not a glitch. If a sim uses a telescope in the daytime, they're effectively spying on other sims and one--always the same one until they die, as far as I know--will come onto the lot and slap the peeping tom.

So either don't do that, or look around for a hack that stops that behaviour. Probably Mod the Sims or Insim are your best bets.

Plex, I'm fairly sure Nahte is talking about on-lot objects, not neighborhood objects.

Nahte, there isn't any in-game setting to turn the fade of objects like stairs and lamps on and off. I don't know about making a cheat, but you can turn fade off with an edited camera file. Gunmod over at Mod The Sims made one, and there might be others there as well. This means you'd have to swap the edited file and the original around if you wanted to change back and forth, however.

Tides, they're annoyed at you because you keep pestering other people to make your odd little niche mod for you, when one program, Notepad, and half an ounce of sense would allow you to make it for yourself. It's not so much the mod as the entitlement.

This is why I have both installed and play whichever I feel like when I want to play something. I really, really don't understand why people are uninstalling TS2 when they aren't totally bored with it and aren't hurting for hard drive space. Computers aren't first- or second-gen gaming consoles; you CAN have more than one game installed at a time, even more than one game in the same series!

Even when TS3 is modded enough to be an actual sandbox, I'll have 2 still installed and played--they're different enough games to me (I see TS3 as a lateral step from TS2, not one up or down) to warrant having both until the time I'm utterly bored with one.

This happens to me fairly often after a sim has aged up or acquired a different outfit--the sim can stand there for a good few hours until they spin into the new clothes (or new body in the case of bathing after having aged up). My video card is on the elderly side and I 'only' have 2 GB of RAM.

Well, yeah, that would fall into the 'lulled into a false sense of security and never saw it coming' bit, wouldn't it? It'd be quite a lot harder if they were fighting at the time, which is why people do that--beats the hell out of ending up with casualties when you're trying to get your dinner.

DentedLemons, you might have success with the Awesomemod destroy commands, as I described here. I played for quite a few hours today and other than some little oddnesses, my family and neighborhood chugged right along successfully after I deleted the townie pool. Townies aren't so important or widely known it hurts much to zorch the lot of them.

That'll just make your brains taste better, oh you he-man you.

All your rattling on about how the typical domestic food beast isn't smart enough to defend itself shows very clearly you've not been around a healthy domestic food beast with its dander up. Note that 'lulled into a false sense of security and never saw it coming,' as per factory farming, doesn't count.


Oh, you poor, sad thing. Either you've never had properly raised meat, or your tastebuds are so shot you can't taste the difference.

I just hit this bug last night, despite rehoming all the homeless sims earlier in the day. After a lot of tiresome trying of things and going back to the main menu when it didn't work, I used destroyalltownies with apparent success--some of the rehomed townies had unhomed themselves and I had a few new ones in to boot. One of those little bastards was the issue and once it was deleted, the relationships panel and sim switching worked properly.

If it had been really bad I could have blessed my playables and used therapture, but I'm glad it was only a few townies that got the axe.