Sims 2 for Mac help

[monieeka]

So, I just finished ARRing the Sims 2 and five EPs on my new macbook. Body Shop works fine, but I can't get the game to open even though it has a no-cd crack. Or I guess I can't figure out how to use the crack. When I try to open the game, it says to insert the disk. When I mount the crack and double-click the icon in the crack window, it quits unexpectedly. I'm pretty sure I installed everything right, but I can't figure out how to make the actual game work. I'm sorry that I'm such a total computer n00b, so feel free to ridicule and macro to your heart's content, but some help [in terms that I can understand] would be appreciated as well :]

[seelindarun]

These days it is no longer assumed that playing on a macbook = playing under Mac OS.  You'll have to specify whether you're running the mac version of TS2 or the Windows version with bootcamp.

If the latter, your issues with the crack are the same as any other Windows user, i.e. refer to the FAQ.

[monieeka]

I'm running Leopard OS-X, and I have the mac version of TS2.

[somnambulist]

Frankly, if you have the hard drive space, you're much better off to use Bootcamp and play under Windows. Aspyr's ineptitude and quality control makes even Eaxis look like a gift unto gamers and at least then you can play Freetime, Apartment Life and the additional stuff packs now instead of sometime in 2010.

That said: I remember some weirdness with existing cracks not running properly under Leopard. You may want to hunt out Leopard specific cracks and instructions. You may also want to try running your existing cracks as root using Pseudo. Basically it lets you easily run any gui app as root -- this does have some risks but, hey, so goes life.

Edit: It may be helpful to tell us exactly what you've downloaded. FIve packs would proably mean up through Seasons, no? If so, you may want to arr up a copy of BV. BV was released post Leopard so any cracks would likely be Leopard compatible.

[raattgift]

Strangely, I have the totally opposite experience: Aspyr's ports are more stable than EAXis in Windows on the same (Mac) platform, and certainly stable enough that since I don't need to run into all the early annoyances in the latest expansions, and I do other things in OS X anyway rather than having a single dedicated gaming system, so switching back and forth is just not worthwhile for me.   I can move the ~/Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/ directory back and forth in order to do SimPE stuff as necessary, and I can do that in VMware or Parallels.   

Otherwise, "what you said".

[monieeka]

I'm pretty sure this is what I downloaded. It's base game through seasons. I found a crack for BV for Intel Macs, but I honestly have no idea what I have or what I'm doing, so I haven't downloaded that yet [link is here] There's also a PowerPC one, but I know I don't have that.

I own the base game and three EPs [plus two arr'd EPs] for PC, but I don't have a Windows license to use with Bootcamp. I don't really mind waiting for EPs, because I didn't even get my first EP until 2007, about a year and a half after I first started playing. I don't use stuff packs either; I have enough CC haha

I'm not sure I really understand Pseudo. Root is the same as system administrator, right? Which I already am [I think]. Are the risks big enough to potentially make my computer a big fiery ball visible from space? Or just create annoying little glitches?

[somnambulist]

 I can move the ~/Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/ directory back and forth in order to do SimPE stuff as necessary, and I can do that in VMware or Parallels.

You actually don't need to move the folder. Just setup ~/Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/ and wherever Sims 2 is installed on the Mac as shared folders and point SimsPE to the correct path. You'll have to set all the paths up manually in SimsPE, but you only need to do it once.

[somnambulist]

I'm pretty sure this is what I downloaded. It's base game through seasons. I found a crack for BV for Intel Macs, but I honestly have no idea what I have or what I'm doing, so I haven't downloaded that yet [link is here] There's also a PowerPC one, but I know I don't have that.

Try downloading BV and using that instead of the Seasons .app. It's probably going to be the least painless.

I'm not sure I really understand Pseudo. Root is the same as system administrator, right? Which I already am [I think]. Are the risks big enough to potentially make my computer a big fiery ball visible from space? Or just create annoying little glitches?

This is gross oversimplification but, on OS X, an administrator account is not root but can temporarily become root. Pseudo lets any user with an administrator password run a GUI app as root -- essentially it's 'su' for anything with a GUI. BFBVS potential: you're giving an app completely unfettered control of your computer. This would be bad if the crack does something malicious like 'rm -rf /'

[AuKestrel]

Strangely, I have the totally opposite experience: Aspyr's ports are more stable than EAXis in Windows on the same (Mac) platform, and certainly stable enough that since I don't need to run into all the early annoyances in the latest expansions, and I do other things in OS X anyway rather than having a single dedicated gaming system, so switching back and forth is just not worthwhile for me.   I can move the ~/Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/ directory back and forth in order to do SimPE stuff as necessary, and I can do that in VMware or Parallels.   

Otherwise, "what you said".

Up through Pets, I would say the Aspyr ports were definitely more stable than EAxis. I haven't played Seasons on the Mac much since I have a Sims-dedicated Windoze PC now, but my husband plays it on his MacBook and has not complained about crashes or instability.

At any rate, if you're running Leopard you need a Leopard crack. If you're running Tiger you need a Tiger crack. There's no two ways around it: Leopard cracks don't work on Tiger and vice versa. (And nothing from 10.3.x works on 10.4 or 10.5.) It sounds to me like the problem is a wrong-OS-version crack with the abrupt quitting.

[monieeka]

yey, it worked when I installed BV + crack. thanks for your help!

[somnambulist]

Up through Pets, I would say the Aspyr ports were definitely more stable than EAxis. I haven't played Seasons on the Mac much since I have a Sims-dedicated Windoze PC now, but my husband plays it on his MacBook and has not complained about crashes or instability.

My concern was never stability -- Aspyr ports were always stable but lost a lot of speed and prettiness compared to their Windows counterpart. Same games, same system, TS2 looks and runs at least twice as fast on Windows as Mac. (I treat my Bootcamp partition like a console system. Nothing productive is done in Windows.)

[AuKestrel]

My concern was never stability -- Aspyr ports were always stable but lost a lot of speed and prettiness compared to their Windows counterpart. Same games, same system, TS2 looks and runs at least twice as fast on Windows as Mac. (I treat my Bootcamp partition like a console system. Nothing productive is done in Windows.)

I was so glad it ran at all, initially, that I didn't even care about the pretty. I was amazed when I loaded it onto the Windows system (that has no great graphics card, mind you, just an X1300, but it does have 4G of RAM) and was able to see the wallpaper details and the shadows and reflections in the mirrors. It was like a whole new game.

So I agree - the game definitely runs faster on Windows than the Mac version does even on my MBPro, to the point that I uninstalled it from the MBPro except for the base game so I could build lots if stuck in an airport or something. I also like having SimPE available. But my Windows system is basically just a console system - Civ and Sims 2 and various entities that support those addictions, like Photoshop and SimPE.

I haven't yet had to install Windows on a Mac. For a while I thought I might have to but then they released SPSS 16 for the Intel Mac and I was good to go.