Personally, I'm also finding it a lot of fun. More fun than S4, but I've got a lot of stuff lying around that I made a year or so ago that I can plonk in.   I think I need a wider variety of aliens, though.


I only got it two days ago, so I've spent some time mucking around with it.  Trying to set up a two-team sport with an explosive ball,  putting together a brief "Get help for us!" adventure, and trying for something cinematic.

My first adventure. Very rough-hewn.  Named it "Misson of Mecredi" for no good reason. The Epic in the picture is not actually in the adventure, that was based on an early version.
 



And then, while toying around with the adventure creator, I set this up...Ulthanatos Attacks

I'd presume he meads the item the thread is about.

Didn't know it could do that. I'll have to try it next time I run a business. I'd been resorting to hiring tours  to get a large selection  of hireables in a short period of time.

(Each community lot you visit will have a different selection of Sims hireable by cell phone (or computer, if the lot has one). This selection won't change until midnight passes on the home lot, so you can go to one lot, evaluate the hireables,  go to another lot, evaluate the hireables there,  and if nobody beats what you found on the first lot, you can return to that lot and hire from the pool you had when you were there first.)

It wasn't a problem for businesses, generally.   But I put Zombo the Clown in his clown costume for a reason. With the Visitor Controller, whenever he'd show up as a walkby to kick the trashcan or steal the newspaper during winter, he'd show up in a trenchcoat and a combover hairdo. I suppose i could have gone in and made outerwear that was identical to  his everyday wear (I did wind up doing that for Zombie Santa), but I also would have had to do it for my greaser-gangster, bobby-soxer, and punk vampires townies, as well as my beach-bum and soccer hooligan werewolves, and my tribal plantsims Given that at least some of them change outifts frequently,  eliminating winter wound up being the least-cumbersome way to pull it off.

Note that twoJeffs' Visitor Controller doesn't consult "nouneededcoats" when Sims show up.  Given that I wanted my vampires, zombies, plantsims, and werewolves in the clothing I put them in at all times,  but I wanted Teen Sims to visit my Teen-Oriented businesses 24 hours a day, I wound up eliminating the season of winter from my neighborhood.

If I recall correctly, those mosaics that are used as pool walls have some hideous Environment-draining effects as well. It's been awhile since I've used them, though, so i can't say if that issue's been fixed.

Comfort Soup primarily exists in my neighborhood as Owned Restaurant Menu Item.  Very few of the Sims who can make it in my neighborhood ever actaully do.

Change:

 alias m- "moveObjects Off" "" ""

To:

alias m- "moveObjects off" "" ""

The game doesn't care about case-sensitivity in the name of the cheat, but the parameters "on" "off" "true" and "false" must be lowercase.

Unsure if that's the case with your 'deleteallobjects' aliases, as I've never used those cheats myself.

I tested your file in my game not thirty minutes ago. Swapped out my userstartup.cheat file and replaced it with yours.

With the line "CHEATFILE" line in there, neither the "boolprop allow45degreeangleofrotation true" cheat, nor the "move_objects" on alias worked.

Exited the game, removed that one line,  loaded up the game again, and it worked fine.

Game doesn't care what Windows association your userstartup.cheat file has, as long as it's got the proper filename and extension. At times,I've had my computers associate the ".cheat" extention with Notepad, later with Wordpad, and most recently with NoteTab Plus.

The "config" folder you're referring to is "My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Config", correct?

In the userStartup.cheat file, delete the line that says "CHEATFILE."

Aye.  Popup notification and all.

That's completely at odds with my experience.  I've been taking advantage of the  "business magically returns to last saved state" feature ever since OFB came out.  I've used it to multiply snapdragons, toys, food,produce,  and even Renu-Yu Porta-chugs and other potions. Post-AL, I used the aforementioned trick to put a large number of Magical Ingredients in the hands of a Sim with no witching ability, far more than the owner of The Observatory had on the shelves or in inventory. She'd routinely run out during a visit, and I'd just leave, come back, and buy more.

I've found the program "Ant Renamer" to be quite useful for renaming the oddly-named MP3 files that result from extraction, as it can read the  ID3 data embedded in the songs from everything after UNiversity. Unfortunately, the Base-Game songs don't have ID3 tages, so the only way I've fouind to discern which is which is by listening to each song and comparing it to the in-game music in the Sound Options panel.

If you could point us at the pictures or videos in question, the way in which the tricks were accomplished might be more easily divined.

You don't even have to do that. Just leave the community lot as soon as you're done buying. When you're sending a Sim to visit a community lot owned by another household, the lot always restores to its last-saved state...which was the state it was when you played a member of the owner's household on that lot. Want to buy twelve Snapdragons, but the owner only has four for sale and none in his inventory? Buy four, then leave for another community lot. Select the neighborhood, but not a destination in that neighborhood. When the neighborhood screen loads, repick the lot you just left.  Buy another four snapdragons.  Repeat a third time. Or more, if you want.

There's no reason to wait around for the staff to restock the item, unless you want to buy more than what is currently set for sale, and the owner has enough in his inventory to successfully restock the item. Or if you want to deplete the owner's inventory in a roundabout fashion.

Have you gone back to play the store to rack up some more profit to base  the "run business from home" income off of?


On a side note, "Mind the Store" is an absolutely worthless option.  It has absolutely no bearing on "run business from home" income. All it does is tell the Manager "I have full faith in the competence of the EA programming to allow you to reassign the workers of this business at any time while I am playing it."

This is rather undesirable,  because the decisions that the manager will make to reassign your staff appear to have no bearing on  which members of your staff are trained for particular jobs, and assumes that you assigned those staff members to those jobs with the same haphazard randomness that the game-logic does.  So your chef maybe waiting tables while the busboy burns the Lobster Thermidor, and your Gold-Badged Cashier may be clipping hedges while your Restocker tries to count change on his fingers.

It's for that reason, of the thirty or so Owned Comm-Lot Businesses I've run since OFB released, I've only ever used "Mind the Store" on the first one.

You guess incorrectly. I've gotten every expansion that's come out either the day it was available, or within a few days.  Nightlife didn't destroy my neighborhood, and if you ask around, you'll probably find it didn't kill most people's neighborhoods.

I have been using Pescado's hacks since his fix for the base game's  "jump bug" manifested in my neighborhood, and the only time I've absolutely needed to reinstall was when I installed University, but I'd backed up my game like the manual mentioned, and the reinstall went smoothly.

And I've done some rather damaging things to this neighborhood, before I knew they were bad.  If I hadn't known about the hacks, and put them in as news about them became available, I don't think I'd still be playing the same neighborhood now.

I do. I've played, almost daily, in Pleasantview since October, 2004. I install fixes when they become available, and usually install patches, as well.

"Beverly, I want to talk to you about one of your recent evaluations, 'Joe's Backyard.'"
"Awful place. Just a park bench, nothing else. Wrote a scathing review, and the place closed its doors shortly afterwards. What's the problem?"
"The problem is the million-simolean admittance fee you charged on the expense account..."

Now, admittedly, I haven't done it recently, so I don't know if it's still the case, but one of the things I'd noticed  (And that a number of people complained about )  was that the Reporter would often be, if not /the first/ one of the first few Sims to visit a newly-opened business.

So it was just a matte of starting a home business, slapping down a Ticket Machine, setting it to  charge hundreds of thousands of simoleans, and ignoring it until the Reporter showed up, and paid the money.

No Loyalty is lost for failing to dazzle a Sim past the ticket machine. I suppose I could have made the effort to keep the  reporter on the lot more than an hour. Never seemed necessary, so I'd just get the huge amount of money, let the  Reporter wander around the empty backyard for a awhile,  wave cheerily at her when she gave a bad review, and shut down the business.

Since I didn;t have No redundancy in when I installed OFB,  my neighborhood contains  three reporters, but I've played enough businesses to recognize them all on sight by now. (Dolphin's Business Adjuster Hack can be set to throw up a dialog when a  reporter appears, or you can just set the Dress code of the lot to something other than  Everyday with Pescado's  Customer Selector, as Reporters seem to ignore lot dress codes)

Heh. 800/hour?

At the times that I would run a backyard venue for the sole purpose of  gaining the money to b uy a community lot, I'd routinely charge $9,999/hr for admission to a bubble blower and a few snapdragons.

And the Reporter will pay any amount to enter a venue, and can sometimes be coaxed into showing up in the fearly days of the business.  The highest I ever charged on a business designed solely as reporter bait was $300,000/hr, but the reporter will pay  $999,999/hr, no questions asked if you let her.

Though prior to the Bon Voyage Patch, you could run a backyard massage parlor, and "Selll Massage To..." townies at $999,999 each with no sales badges required.

Venues can make insane money. Lately, though, I've been setting them to ridiculously cheap and/or ceasing to charge customers when the owner leaves.  Mostly the latter.  It takes too much time  to get a  date or casual group that contains non-resident Sims into the venue otherwise.

Simsbaby did a "No Witch Overlay" hack.  http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,12878.0.html

With that, and a little bit of "Fix Flashing Blue" on the lot debugger, my Good and Evil witches now look like this.

Went with AVG for a couple years, worked pretty well, though lately operating during a scan. I probably don't actually /need/ to run a Virus Scan every night, but I like to.

Lately, I've been trialling NOD32, which is going down smooth. May make it permanent.

Lets you perform several business functions, including hiring new employees, and calling up and inviting particular  sSims to visit the lot.  Useful if you don't have room or reason for a  computer on the lot, and your business owner doesn't have a cell phone.

If I recall correctly, this too is part of the Visitor Controller.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Visitor Controller.  The thing that I most dislike about it is that it seems to override "No Uneeded coats", so Zombo the Clown, and my various Werewolves and Vampires wander by in Outerwear during the winter.

On the other hand, it's the only thing I've run across that will let  Teens show up all night at an owned business lot. Without it, my Teen Wovles  leave the lot an hour after wolfing out, and my Teen Vamps only have two hours each day that they can stay on a community lot.

Have at 'em:  sporeCivPacks.zip

Just a pack of  vehicles, buildings, and spacecraft I've been using in my games as of late. It's sliced up into three subfolders, the Brutal Battallion, which is a set I used for Millitary Civilizations, the Erbzen Spice Corporation (Economic), and the Brotherhood of the Rising Tide (Religious)

Some of the vehicles are tagged as "sprinters", who are 100%-Speed vehicles intended to grab  Spice Geysers quickly, or shift assets  across the map at a prodigious rate Once at their destination, they can be shifted into the "siegebricks" , which are mostly built at 50% Attack Power, 50% Health. The siegebricks typically also have small blocks of body in them that are color coded, and can be  yanked out for a quick redesign; for instance the Brutal Battallion Siegebricks  have long red rectangular blocks that stick out the sides for this purpose.

There aren't any Economic Siegebricks; I went for 50% Economic Power, 50% Speed with those.

I'd have to say that the most entertaining thing I've watched in the Space Stage was a Civ-Stage Planet using the Thunderhead Blimps as the main vehicles in their Worldwar.  There was just something stately and menacing in their attacks that this video can't properly convey.

Yes, sometimes they gyrate wildly. Unsure why. And no, I didn't make the buildings. Official Spore grabbed them autonomously.

 As for why a Killsat appears in the video, the planet used to be one of my colonies until I bombed my cities, and plonked a monolith down to eventually create a ten-city planet I could subsequently conquer. Though my colonies died, the Killsat, the Spice Storage, and Bio-Protectors remained until I took the planet back.

Picture appears to be missing. Google Docs HTML Version?