OK, I'll try it here: TV Commercials

[Lerf]

In the folder \Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Movies\Broadcast\Commercials are six files -- all with .movie suffixes.  They are titled :tv_commercial_alien, tv_commercial_bunny, tv_commercial_car, Tv_commercial_pizza, tv_commercial_shampoo, tv_commercial_sitcom.

I clearly remember seeing these commercials on the Sims TVs when the Sims2 first came out.  They no longer appear, not even when I have only the unpatched original game installed.

What is going on with them?  Does anyone else get them.  Does anyone else not get them?  What happened? 

Am I just a loser?

Seriously this is driving me buggy, and whenever I ask about this on less awesome boards people tell me about places I can download commercials made by other people.   I just want to know what happened to these!!!

[Swiftgold]

I wondered the same thing! I miss those commercials! I thought installing Uni was what messed it up, but if it's still like that in the unpatched original...

I'd love to have them back again, but it is strange how they just disappeared.

[cwhitney]

Seriously this is driving me buggy, and whenever I ask about this on less awesome boards people tell me about places I can download commercials made by other people.   I just want to know what happened to these!!!

My thought, and this is just pure speculation on my part (as per usual), is that they were removed when University added the Sports channel, if for no other reason than to keep the number of movies your computer needed quick access to to a set level to avoid slowing the game to a crawl.

I have no concrete evidence of course, but it certainly seemed to me that when I added movies and mp3s to my movies and music folders that my game took a noticeable performance hit.  Perhaps this was done for a similar reason.

[sara_dippity]

Yo, cwhitney.

I clearly remember seeing these commercials on the Sims TVs when the Sims2 first came out.  They no longer appear, not even when I have only the unpatched original game installed.

Hmm, I seem to recall people talking about this pre-Uni. I don't ever recall hearing a fix or a reason why though.

[cwhitney]

Yo, cwhitney.

I clearly remember seeing these commercials on the Sims TVs when the Sims2 first came out.  They no longer appear, not even when I have only the unpatched original game installed.

Hmm, I seem to recall people talking about this pre-Uni. I don't ever recall hearing a fix or a reason why though.

As I said, that was my impression.  I don't understand what the mechanism would be that would disable them, and why it would be there, in the original, unpatched game.  Perhaps it's a file corruption that occurs at some undetermined point, similar to the issue that prevented Bella Goth from showing up in Strangetown until the patch was applied.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, I don't remember anything different about the TV in my original game (not that I notice much, the stereo's usually going full blast at the same time!) than I get now.  I'll have to load my base game on the other PC and find out what I'm missing!

[radiophonic]

I don't recall ever seeing them at all. 

[ZephyrZodiac]

They were rife in sims1, seemed to last longer than the programmes!

[Pegasys]

Yeah, I'd noticed they were gone since Uni. I miss them too.

[vecki]

I don't recall ever seeing them at all. 

Me either.  Was it pre or post-patch* that they disappeared?  I installed the game with the patch and have never seen these ads, and it hadn't had it long when Uni came out.

*Base game patch, in case there's any confusion

[baratron]

First, I should say I only recognise the pizza advert - that's the one with Angela & Lilith Pleasant, isn't it? The only Social Bunny video I remember I thought was a TV programme on the children's channel. But because you got me curious, I did some poking around MTS2.

It transpires that the configuration file that runs the TV is called Broadcast.ini, and is located in My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Config. However, if you edit this, it gets overwritten by the game's default files.
The default file for the original game lives in C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Config
For Uni it's in C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 University\TSData\Res\UserData\Config
and for NL it's in C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Nightlife\TSData\Res\UserData\Config

Here's the interesting part. The only difference between the original game version and the Uni & NL versions is the addition of the extra channel. The SBN, Music, Children and Food channels are all supposed to have commercials broadcast at an interval of "60" (that's what the line says, CommercialInterval=60). The Workout and Static channels don't have commercials. And the new Sports channel is supposed to have commercials broadcast at an interval of "90". I don't know if that's real-life seconds, sim minutes, or what. Chunk of the .ini file for you:

[tvstation_sports]
Folder=Broadcast/TvSports
CommercialInterval=90
CommercialFolder=Broadcast/Commercials

Assuming that you're right and the commercials have stopped showing up, my guess for what's happening is that for some reason, the game has lost the knowledge of where CommercialFolder=Broadcast/Commercials is. Why it would do that, when it's happily finding Folder=Broadcast/TvSBN and the other base game folders, I don't know. Someone who knows their way round the game code could probably shed a bit more light.

Does anyone know what format the files are in? .movie isn't a real file extension, and I don't have anything here that'll open it. I believe the Sims 2 TV channels are .avi files encoded strangely. It would help if we could actually view the files that are in the folder to be sure of whether they're showing up or not .

[radiophonic]

Assuming that you're right and the commercials have stopped showing up, my guess for what's happening is that for some reason, the game has lost the knowledge of where CommercialFolder=Broadcast/Commercials is. Why it would do that, when it's happily finding Folder=Broadcast/TvSBN and the other base game folders, I don't know. Someone who knows their way round the game code could probably shed a bit more light.

It seems logical to me that the reason they aren't showing up is because University/Movies/Broadcast and Nightlife/Movies/Broadcast do not contain a "Commercials" folder. Just a guess, but it seems that the game reads a default config, checks the Non-EP directory files, moves to UNI and then to NL and uses either one of those EP folders for it's "home" movie directory. But then again, maybe not.

Try copying the commercials folder to the appropriate NL directory and see what happens.

As far as the .movie files, it seems to be some sort of Maxis proprietary codec that is in use.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Or you could pretend the sims only have BBC!

[TrueLou]

I noticed that my commercials disappeared when I instakked Uni, I copied the folder with the commercials in over to the Uni TV folder and I had them back, only problem was they all ran in a row, they weren't integrated with the programmes. Personally I think the reason they took them out is cos they added the cheering interaction with the sports channel in Uni, I s'pose they thought that watching Sims cheering and whooping at a pizza commercial seemed a bit sad, although it seems pretty normal to me ! Pizza's great !

[radiophonic]

I noticed that my commercials disappeared when I instakked Uni, I copied the folder with the commercials in over to the Uni TV folder and I had them back, only problem was they all ran in a row, they weren't integrated with the programmes. Personally I think the reason they took them out is cos they added the cheering interaction with the sports channel in Uni, I s'pose they thought that watching Sims cheering and whooping at a pizza commercial seemed a bit sad, although it seems pretty normal to me ! Pizza's great !

Ahh...that makes sense.