Bloody Build mode. It is out to get me

[Avie]

A minor issue this but no less annoying for that. Bloody railings is the problem.If I use the white-and-glass connecting stairs then whatever I do I get black stair railings whereupon I throw a designer-type fit "But my DEAR it just goes not gel with my vision for this ranch-style, Thai-influenced feng-shuied residence with interesting contrasting chav notes".
Yes OK I have a notoriously bad graphics card a GeForce FX5200 which is about as reliable as a chocolate teapot.
I"m busy building a house for my new Chav family Chrystelle,Clayton, Tiffany, Jordan, Britney and Ashley and the correct level of bad taste is ESSENTIAL.
Help!

[nectere]

have you tried Numenors recolorable stairs? I know he did the holy smoke glass and the cheap wooden ones, not sure about others.

[Avie]

Useful tip but is it chavvy enough?
Chav=Sub species of human.
Commonly thought to be of inferior intellect. the Chavette (Female) surprises us with its cunning plan to avoid taking up a professional career and provide itself with free accomodation supplied by taxpayers by spawning multi-coloured mini chavs at an early stage in life, usually mid teens.
Clearly recognisable by their distinctive tribal Burberry Chavs congregate in town centres and on street corners, Chavs have a reputation of being creative with public property and motor vehicles, buliding themselves Chaviots out of Meccano sets and strip lighting, and providing us with humorous banter such as "Shit" and "Tasha woz ere" in a futile attempt to releive the tedium of using a public toilet facility.
Chavs unfortunately have not yet been officially classified as rodents and by law cannot yet be bludgeoned to death as a necessary pest control measure.

[cwykes]

There are a lot of recolours on the stairs from MTS2 so there's bound to be something that fits - or rather doesn't fit.  I had a quick flick through the ones I've got and found red with black speckles....
Your chavs seem to have spelled the kids names right!  Are you sure they are chavs?

[Avie]

Yes indeed. Total chavs. They have the "croydon facelift" (hair pulled back so tight in a bun that it pulls the face up to the eyebrows)
Dangly faux-gold earrings CHECK
Velour tracksuit CHECK
Vauxhall Nova CHECK
Chav

[Avie]

I SHOULD start a Chav Challenge game
A single female sim should have at least five kids by different fathers without ever having a job
She has to bring up her offspring by herself but she must stay unemployed and unmarried

[angelyne]

I have the perfect house for the Chavs

Terbain Tower : http://www.thesimsresource.com/downloads/cmid_784901/sims2/lots


That sounds a lot like the way I played the Broke household, apart from the different fathers bit.   She raised all her kids to adulthood and then she was old and gray.  She never got to marry.  I felt really sorry for her!.

So I'm pretty sure I could do this challenge, except this time I wouldn't pick a family sims.  Sounds well suited for a romance sims however.

[Avie]

OK then I present to you The Chav Chalenge,
From one female sim created in CAS you must produce five children from different fathers. At least one of these misbeggoten offsrpring must be a Criminal Mastermind..
The next should be top of athelete track
Never mind no real point, Far more challenging things exist
Forget it

[sabra]

This must be some sort of Guinness Book of World Records entry:  succeeding in meaningfully mentioning the Sims and Feng Shui in the same sentence.

My hat is off to you, Avie.

[Avie]

Why thank you Sabra, Talking absolute rubbish is something of a speciality of mine.
For any interested parties (a highly dubious concept that) I now have my Chavs up and running and guess what? the mac immediately did the dirty on me and kindly provided Chrystelle with twins. Thank you VERY much you expensive pile of cack. I now have a maximum-number household and I just hate that,running eight thick-as-pig-droppings Sims just makes my brain melt.
Oh yes and the stair railings are still black.
I think I'm losing the will to live.

[dewshine]

The stair rails are recolored as part of the stair.  If the maker of the new color didn't alter that section of the graphic then you would indeed still have black rails.  Have you tryed my "trashed" metal stair recolors?  The rails are all shades of rusted.

Here are the post links:
 
http://modthesims2.com/showthread.php?p=314128#post314128

http://modthesims2.com/showthread.php?p=329308#post329308

You might also want to look at these by Illias
http://modthesims2.com/showthread.php?p=329295#post329295

The metal and rail match and you can do the glass as a contrasting color.  The oinly rail that is black is the one with the black step.

[Hegelian]

I SHOULD start a Chav Challenge game
A single female sim should have at least five kids by different fathers without ever having a job
She has to bring up her offspring by herself but she must stay unemployed and unmarried

Well, Inge's pay door and having 20 lovers might do the trick.   

[flowerchile]

I downloaded Numenors stair recolours and I cannot get them to run in my game, tried again and again and thought lifes to short.  Give it up.

[BlueSoup]

Did you make sure you have CEP? 

[flowerchile]

I do have it now but not sure if I had it then. As soon as I downloaded the CEP other things started working properly but I may or may not have deleted the stairs, will have to recheck, Maxis stairs are with most of their stuff, unbelievably boring and unmatchable

[cwykes]

I SHOULD start a Chav Challenge game
A single female sim should have at least five kids by different fathers without ever having a job
She has to bring up her offspring by herself but she must stay unemployed and unmarried

I had a house like that in Sims1 modelled after one of hubbie's relations.  Single mum with 7 girls all dressed in pink.  Clearly different fathers from the skin colour and faces.  All different personalities too.  They lived on windfalls from the phone at first, then added good grades money, then she discovered painting.  At the end they had simslice chickens as well which was getting a bit offtrack, but I loved them.  I played this one more than any other house.

  She never got to marry.

Why am I thinking - lucky girl?!?!  Free to choose her own path without compromising...   

[BlueSoup]

I do have it now but not sure if I had it then. As soon as I downloaded the CEP other things started working properly but I may or may not have deleted the stairs, will have to recheck, Maxis stairs are with most of their stuff, unbelievably boring and unmatchable

Sunni Sims has good matches for the Maxis stairs, with railings, etc.

[nectere]

I am sure you know this already but in case you dont, you access the recolors on the stairs by first placing the stairs and any railing you want and then click on each step with the design tool to access the available colors. It can be time consuming if you have a whole bunch of stairs to recolor.

[Kristalrose]

ROTFLMAO!!!!  Avie, love your posts!  Being an American, and a Southern Hillbilly at that, I had no idea what a "Chav" was.  Now I do.  And I have several in my game.  I built them all trailers and little tract houses, and gave them names like "Charlene Hicks" and "Mavis Yokel" and "Delilah Hustler".    Have yet to reach the 5 different fathers yet, but I'm sure that Delilah or one of Charlene's daughter, Leia, will reach that mark easilly. 

[Avie]

"Mavis Yokel" is one to cherish and I shall certainly use that name in some hellish cousin-marrying genetic nightmare of a future game,
Thank you BlueSoup for the links and dewshine for the tip, Both work fine and I am grateful.
Incidentally I named the Chav twins (a boy and girl) Storm and Destiny. Tasteful names as I am sure you will agree.
Thanks to all for advice.

[angelyne]

  She never got to marry.

Why am I thinking - lucky girl?!?!  Free to choose her own path without compromising...   

lol.  Well there is nothing wrong with marrying or not marrying, but Brandi being a family sim had strong desires to fall in love marry, have babies etc.  All unfufilled.  Spending the better part of her youth to raise her kids with no thoughts for herself.  It made me a little sad, in that silly way we tend to anthropomorphize our sims

[angelyne]

I downloaded Numenors stair recolours and I cannot get them to run in my game, tried again and again and thought lifes to short.  Give it up.

Are you talking about modular stairs?  I'm pretty sure you can't just put them in your game like a normal recolor.  You need to edit a file in order to make them work.

[speedreader]

Does blackmailing the (married) fathers count as employed?

[dewshine]

Numenor's stairs just override the maxis stairs of the same type, recolors are accessed using the design tool.
Brasstex's modular stairs are new meshes and need the special text file edit.

[baratron]

"Mavis Yokel" is one to cherish and I shall certainly use that name in some hellish cousin-marrying genetic nightmare of a future game,
Thank you BlueSoup for the links and dewshine for the tip, Both work fine and I am grateful.
Incidentally I named the Chav twins (a boy and girl) Storm and Destiny. Tasteful names as I am sure you will agree.

But you're still making the mistake of spelling the names correctly! It should be Destinney or Desteny or Des'ty'nee or something .

I can't bring myself to mutilate "Storm", that's actually okay as a goth or vampire name...