Now that I think about it, that quote is in reference to leaving Spore.  I could be wrong.

I second the motion.

To quote JMP (OK, paraphrase), "There is always something else to do in The Sims 2."  I'm contemplating.

ETA: What about putting games on a SSD?  Would that improve performance over a regular HDD?

Agreed.  I deleted all but the "English" folder in the base game and my game was fine.  I know others were able to save more but I got 1.56 gigs free from the first "easy" steps.  However, there are several stuff packs I don't have installed, which is probably the reason.

Sorry, I know necromancy is bad, mmkay, slap me.

What if there is no "English" folder in my locales?  Obviously my game is installed in English (maybe not so obviously)... so this leaves some of my locale folders empty.  I may be replying to this if my game doesn't work...

Hope the title is descriptive enough (I hate "PLEASE FIX THIS" titles that have no clue as to what the problem is).

I re-installed The Sims 2 (base game) yesterday.  It may be notable that I installed on a second drive (F:, not C:).  After install, I cannot install University.  It gets to the end of installation, tells me that it will now check that my existing installation is up to date, and then goes to patch.  During the patch, it asks me to put in Disk 4 of the base game install CD's.  I do that.  It then tells me it's "Unable to copy from disc" and promptly uninstalls everything.

So naturally I think, if the patch is the problem, I can patch before installing to avoid all this business.  So I try that - same error.  So I think, well OK, maybe my disk is damaged (it looks a little scratched, maybe?).  So I download an image of disk 4.  Same problem.  So there is a problem with the physical CD, and there is a problem with the virtual CD.  Any suggestions on how to fix this?  Do I have to install the game on my C: drive?  (I don't have enough space for the base game and all expansions; could I work around that, as well?)

Thanks in advance for any ideas about fixing this.  I have searched on Google and while I have found a ton of people with the same problem, the answer almost always is "your disc is bad" followed by pleas to borrow someone else's disk.  

Edit: Resolved.  I went ahead and reinstalled on my C: drive and the problems I've had appear to be resolved.  I am going to leave this up in the event that someone has the same problem - they will be able to search the text and find at least what worked for me.

I only have 1 gig of RAM on my laptop and Vista (Alienware gaming laptop, don't make fun of me - it was a gift), and it works fine.  Between running perfectly and running at a medium level.

Also apparently ghosts die if you resurrect your sim and play it as one.  So exactly - ghosts are now see-through glowy regular sims.  Argh.

On another note, apparently my first child to make it to toddler will eventually become the godfather.  Cf:

He will grant you one favor on this, the day of his daughter's wedding.

ETA: Also, anyone notice the convenient color of toddler mush, considering the place sims pull it out of?  OK, immature, but still, it crossed my mind and grossed me out.

I don't know a whole lot about legal intellectual property issues, especially being that there are probably multiple jurisdictional problems, but I would imagine that if it came into court that they used the very service to download that program that they are later suing, there's a good chance that they could convince a jury that they were just doing that for PR purposes, etc.  But I seriously doubt they are going to sue anyone over this; cf. Spore, haven't heard any lawsuits over that.  Suing people over the internets is really difficult; it's easier just to whine to internet providers and get internet service suspended/shut down.

ETA: Also, I think that if they were to upload it themselves, it would only be a violation of contract to their detriment, and that would be like a store suing you for voluntarily giving you a discount.  Nothing illegal in and of itself in distributing uncopyrighted content through torrents, is there?  I'm not really familiar with IP law, like I said.

I suspect that they went ahead and did it (can't steal from yourself) and put out that statement purely as damage control.  The community here has been very loud and vocal, enough so that other sites are aware of how shitastic this game is.  I bet they are scrambling to rescue sales before they tank in the first week.  Certainly turned myself off of buying the game, although if the game is actually a beta and has at least some bug fixes (fixing the routing/pathing, lack of genetics, and putting male features on female babies/vice versa MUST GO) I will /consider/ buying it.  But I also suspect that the statement is a total lie and if so I will be EVEN MORE ANGRY at EA (if possible, although generally lowered expectations remove some of the rage/desire to throw things and replace it with slow-moving, long-lasting, soul-consuming hatred and a deep desire to undermine any way possible)

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i2Ts-zyPtq_1NOZV49oeN7ZvY4RgD98BBEMG0

Edit again! (deleted most of the original post)  Sorry this is a double post; I guess somewhere between working at 8 AM and now on three hours' sleep I missed reading a whole page of the thread.  I will, however, note that they do call it a "buggy, pre-final" release of the game, which to me indicates that they are talking about more than just leaving out Riverview.  But I can't wait for the PR shitstorm if this ends up being another lie.

This was asked several pages back, but I never saw a proper response.

Is it just my computer, my copy of the software, or my retardedness that is causing the game to run, AT ULTRA SPEED, at roughly the same or slightly slower pace as Sims1/2 speed 2?  If the game is this excruciatingly slow-paced, it's WORSE than the loading screens from TS2; I can only watch my sim sleep for so long before I want to scoop out my eyes with a spoon.

It could be my computer, I've only got a gig of RAM and am running Vista, but it's not lagging or skipping or indicating in any other way that it's my PC speed causing the problem.  I just have most of the graphics settings on medium.  HALP

I realize this is kind of a n00by question, feel free to beat me with anything handy (though I might make a special request for anything black and leather).

Just because I have seen a conflicting instruction with the torrent instruction, I wanted to get some clarification.  Once I use the no-CD crack .exe replacement, do I have to turn off my internets or am I safe because that file will not try to connect to the internet?  I'm pretty sure this hasn't been asked before, and it's likely that's because it's such a dumb question, but I just wanted to make sure here in the event that others had seen the same comment and were a bit confused about whether or not to turn off internet access or block with a firewall.

You may beat me.  I will not complain this time, just try to do it with wet sand in a sock so it doesn't leave a mark.

I don't have a .rar unzipper, nor do I have Excel installed on my computer.  Can you give me a brief summary of what is in this file so that I can determine whether or not it's worth getting an un-rar-er and a .xls reader?  I've played space for about an hour total but I'm not sure how this can help (so if you could tell me that it would be nice as well).

Again I'm not trying to be stupid.  Just trying to see what this is about and how it can be useful.

True that; and screwing over their legal customers in a vain attempt to stop pirates.  Like by not allowing one to manually download the patch from the website and forcing him/her to login to the game to get it.  I said a few choice words the other night (see above post) and scared my boyfriend with my anger (he's used to most of it by now, though).
Besides, how stupid do you have to be to bork the game beyond all recognition by a PATCH which you then must fix with another patch?  Idiotic.  Though, again, I haven't come to expect much more from EA, though it does make me a little sad that they brain-slugged Will Wright as well.

I guess it's more like too paranoid to arr the game, since anything other than a traffic ticket puts my future career in jeopardy.  And I'm not smart enough to be sneaky enough to not get caught.  I do stupid things like put my real name on my computer (justifying in my mind that I use it for school).  Again, as JMP says, don't do that.

Anyways, I'm installing the second patch now and I hope it will fix the invisible creatures problem (since that has been plaguing me, and I didn't put two and two together to realize the patch caused the problem).  I will update this post shortly with whether I am still having the same (frustrating) issue.

Edit: If you are having trouble getting the patch in the usual way ("log into Spore to grab the patch"), reinstall your EA download manager.  I did and my patch is now downloading in-game.

Edit (again - third time! LOL): Invisible monsters seems to be caused by Patch 1 and fixed by Patch 2, for me.

And it's not that I don't trust the instructions at all.  It's also partly because I'm lazy, and I think the box is pretty (I have a bookshelf with boxes of games going back to about '98; didn't say I wasn't a loser).  I have nothing against arr... acy?  I just don't do it.  For a number of reasons.  Sorry to come back to this and beat a dead horse but I want to clarify that I don't mean to sound condescending or judgmental in any way.

So... pardon my n00bness, but should I or shouldn't I install this patch?
FYI I am not smart and/or devious enough to have gotten the game in any creative way.  I paid $50 for it, and it makes me sad to think that I spent over 6 hours' pay on this STUPID GAME.

Extremely good point; however, if one were to use the jsalemi tactic and run around screaming your head off while using ranged attacks, this significantly decreases the target's chances of having successful aim at attacker.

Anyways.  Problem continued, except pretty much every creature this time was invisible.  It's not a stealth attack, it's my piece of crap computer.  Yes, I was incredibly wrong, and yes, I almost threw it across the room (never again will I buy a $2800 gaming laptop - it's a $2800 PAPERWEIGHT).

It had been a long day and I was in serious need of hilarity - that is, duck-related hilarity.

Voracera - my most vicious creation yet.  I modeled him after the early screen shots of the game in which Will Wright had made a two-legged one-armed thing similar to this (except his was green).

The first race I played to space.  Unfortunately a freeze that completely wiped my save (I would have saved if I had expected the possibility of a freeze, yes I'm a moron) kept me from a.) getting past tribal stage since and b.) getting very far into the space stage.

And I know these aren't creatures, but I'm more proud of them and worked harder on them than anything else I have done up to this point.


Edit - if these aren't showing up because I linked to EA, please let me know and I will sign up for photobucket or something.

They killed one of my pack members (most because I was sitting there yelling WHAT THE F*CK) and were spitting purple poison at them.

So just to clarify - again, because I haven't used it - you can attack while sneaking, without actually becoming visible once the first attack is done?  I can understand sneaking UP on them, but then being able to attack without the possibility of victim defending itself is not cool.  Even the Romulans have to come out of being cloaked before they can attack you (yes, Trekkie alert).

It wasn't a loading issue.  This was the only time it happened, and my computer doesn't have any lag issues loading the game (I'm a lucky bastard with a gaming laptop).

It was just weird.  And frustrating.  And uncool.

But thank you all for the clarification.  If it happens again I will say something.

I was playing creature stage earlier and got attacked by invisible monsters.  Seeing that I'm a vegetarian pacifist candyass, it scared the crap out of me and I runned away.

Is it possible that they were using a stealth/sneak ability (does that stay activated when they attack?  I didn't think it would, that seems fundamentally unfair)?  I ran over by the nest later on and lo and behold, there they were.

Has this happened to anyone else with any degree of regularity?  Or has it happened as a fluke-kind of thing?

Apologies if this has been covered in another thread; I don't have time to read them all and none have any specific references to this in the titles.

Happy now?  It's one thing to be slapped by an admin... but... whatever.

I find it strange that there is no award for having collected ALL parts in the creature stage, but one for having done so in cell stage (6 parts... what an achievement).  Kind of a reverse easter-egg, I guess, because I expected at least SOMETHING.

Agreed.  At least let us enjoy the game you had THREE YEARS to finish before you start telling us you're going to sell us more crap the game will be "incomplete" without.  It pisses me off that they basically kept these features out so that they could milk more than $50 out of us.

I don't like this game enough to buy the expansions yet and no one I know who has played this game thinks it was worth the $50 they shelled out.  So hopefully this will backfire in their money-grubbing little faces.

Yeah, well... Maxis is STUPID!  (*snicker*)

You may harass and/or beat me with sticks, but CERBERUS is the three-headed dog guarding the Underworld, and the Chimera is the animal made with a number of parts of other animals (the one I see most is snake/lion/eagle).  So if anyone still wants to build a cerberus, build a three-headed DOG.
On another note I'm glad I read this thread; I wasn't big on playing the game but now I do (I never got very far into space).

Man, I'm on a roll... I noticed that even when really happy - platinum mood, high motives - my sims don't play the violin very long.  Also, I'm not getting a sound when they play.  I will report this on the maxis boards too.

EDIT: playing for a few minutes doesn't occur every time.  And I'm hearing the sound, but it is very quiet - not as loud as the piano, I think.