Open for Business, preorder incentive

[Sagana]

The power supply wasn't big enough to power the card.

Ah, something like that, or like the bit about convincing the machine to understand it has a new card and not read the old one, that's what scares me. Actually my computer is an emachine, but I'm not unhappy with it except for the Extreme card. My sims have all their fingers (well when I set the settings where I want them) and it chugs a bit at the 7:00 time changes but usually not badly unless I just have tons of custom content in one house (my poor India villa with the courtyard and thousands of plants was kind of unplayable) but I think it'll work fairly well if I just put a decent card in it. (Ok the computer is exactly as old as Sims2 and I'm also not anxious to buy a new one I want good color water and reflections and cut scenes

Thanks for the encouragement. I'm certainly game to give it a go and will come here for advice when it gets painful and the silly machine won't recognize the new card

[Paperbladder]

People need to freaking stop with this "eMachines suck" crap.  It's the hardware that sucks, not the manufacturer.  eMachines just tends to go cheap with their computers and shove anything that they currently have in the warehouse onto it.  That's how I got stuck with a 1.3GHZ Pentium 4 with 128MB RDRAM, a 32MB nVidia Riva TNT 2 card, and Windows ME.  However, it performed better than other computers that other people had at that time.  I heard people running TS1 with 256MB ram having more problems than I did.

Then, I bought one again.  They're pretty damn cheap for what you get, and this time I got a pretty good setup.  Athlon XP 3000+ with 512MB DDR Ram, a 64MB Geforce 4 MX 420/440 card, and Windows XP.  I added 512MB of RAM since then, and the game runs without many flaws although I can't increase my resolution.  I blame that budget card, but I doubt I'll put another one in since I don't care that much about graphics.  Besides, I doubt a graphics upgrade will make much of a difference in the looks unless I spend over 200 dollars on it.

Yeah, if you buy an eMachine with a Celeron processor it's gonna suck.  Also, low-end Dells tend to have those "Intel Extreme Graphics" and I doubt they'll run better and they'll probably cost more than mine.

As for the Mascot thing, it reminds me of the "Buy Superstar and you get free celebrities!" thing.

[RainbowTigress]

Anyways, I don't mean to be like an ass or anything, I'm just amazed at people trying to run these graphics and processor intensive games on machines that are pretty much on their last legs or should have been put out to pasture a long time ago.

I think that there are just hardcore Sims fans who want to play the game but can't afford the sorts of machine needed to run it the way it should be, which is their right.  However, the ones who bitch and moan and "don't understand why" their graphics suck or why they can't get the Events Camera or invite more than 2 people to a party deserve a fair shaking.

Thanks for saying that, Batelle.  I would love to upgrade my computer if I had the finances for it, but at this point, I am struggling so it would be unwise to spend money on my computer at this time.  I love the Sims 2 and I will play it any way that I can, even if it's a bit sluggish at times and I don't get cutscenes.  I just have to learn how to work within my limits for now.  As I said in the MATYville thread, anyone who thinks I need to get rid of my computer and buy a new one is more than welcome to send donations to my Paypal account.   Otherwise, I will hobble on as I am now. 

OFB doesn't sound too terribly exciting to me at this time, but I'll probably get it for "completeness" and the new features, and because all the new hacks will be written for the latest expansion pack.

[cabelle]

Athlon XP 3000+ with 512MB DDR Ram, a 64MB Geforce 4 MX 420/440 card, and Windows XP.  I added 512MB of RAM since then, and the game runs without many flaws although I can't increase my resolution.  I blame that budget card, but I doubt I'll put another one in since I don't care that much about graphics.  Besides, I doubt a graphics upgrade will make much of a difference in the looks unless I spend over 200 dollars on it.

This sounds exactly like the emachine I have. Like I mentioned above I added more RAM (I'm up to 1g now) and put in a 256mb Nvidia Geforce FX 5500. Through Newegg both cards cost me about $100. The graphics are quite nice now. I have very little lag too. I'm quite happy with my emachine.
 

[Sleepycat]

your all welcome for the links   

Sleepycat, if you liked the cars by sixstringslim make sure you check out his other stuff. He's got a matching pit crew pickup that just kills me.

Ha! I know I had forgotten to download something, I saw that pickup and meant to download it! *loves pickups* aka "pick me up trucks" *laughs*


edit - damn! sixstringslim has some really great stuff, I'll be busy downloading tonight! (those "leather clothes for the gals" are awsome!)

[MutantBunny]

I have thought and thought about pre-orders incentives: there has GOT to ge a monitary reason why they do the whole extra sales steps BS. Otherwise they wouldn't do it!

I think the manufacturers must be setting the sales price based on number of pre-sales --the more presales generated, the more interest out there, the higher the price they can squeeze out of us. Or out of the retailers.

[RainbowTigress]

But they are always the same price.

[J. M. Pescado]

edit - damn! sixstringslim has some really great stuff, I'll be busy downloading tonight! (those "leather clothes for the gals" are awsome!)

Where's this? I remember seeing his stuff back on lugnut.com, or something, before they up and died. Is he back somewhere now?

[RainbowTigress]

I thought I saw him at VS a while back.  But I never go there anymore because it's slower than molasses.

[Sleepycat]

edit - damn! sixstringslim has some really great stuff, I'll be busy downloading tonight! (those "leather clothes for the gals" are awsome!)

Where's this? I remember seeing his stuff back on lugnut.com, or something, before they up and died. Is he back somewhere now?

he has a bunch of great stuff on mts2 and he has a section over at vs now...which sucks since it takes forever for vs to load for me but he has such nice stuff

[Batelle]

Athlon XP 3000+ with 512MB DDR Ram, a 64MB Geforce 4 MX 420/440 card, and Windows XP.

Those are the specs for my eMachine as well.  I bought it because my HP was shot and I didn't have a ton of cash to buy anything more expensive.  I have a massive downloads folder but keep my number of big meshes down.  As long as I avoid huge houses on huge lots, my game runs pretty smoothly.  Lot load times are sucky and I don't get cut scenes but I'm ok with that. 

OFB comes out right before my birthday and I've already negotiated a new video card and RAM upgrade if the expansion does untoward things to my computer's performance.

[Regina]

Before upgrading my video card I could see the cut scenes.  After you've seen them all a half-dozen times or so there didn't seem much use so I turned them back off.  Now they're not even an option.

I totally appreciate the whole playing on the maching you have thing.  I was lucky enough to be able to upgrade my computer shortly before TS2 came out and as long as I wasn't using the largest lot with max amount of people I was doing okay.  With NL the game was running fairly well still, then I installed Uni and mainly the load time stinks now--performance is marginal.

I remember some years back a young fellow who worked in Staples was always giving me a bad time because my hardware was outdated.  I finally looked at him one day and asked if he was married.  He replied, "No."  I said, "Well, there ya go!  You get married, have a family and likely as not you can't afford all the nice toys."  We do the best we can with what we have, and honestly considering the amount of money that comes into our house, we have tons more than most people I know who make more.  Nope--my kids don't wear name brand clothes or have the latest gaming systems.  They wear hand-me-downs and clearance stuff.  They play a few PC games (mostly ones we find on clearance), a couple of GBA games and original NES and SNES games.  Our furniture all came from second-hand shops.  But we have a warm, dry house, clothes on our backs, plenty of hot water for washing, good food to fill our tummies, and TS2!

[RainbowTigress]

Amen to that, Misty! 

[Gwill]

That's the reason I don't have a family (I'm 23).
At this point in my life I'd rather have a kick ass computer.

[ElviraGoth]

Misty:  Been there, done that, wore the ragged old t-shirt for years!  My kids are all grown now and on their own, so they're the ones raising families and finding out that you can't always get what you want.

I am only now finally at the point where I can afford a few extras.  Number one priority?  My computer!  I live on it when I'm at home.  I've had to make do with what I could afford for years.  In fact, I always recommended to my friends that they just find the best thing they could get for whatever money they could afford to spend.  I always had last year's technology (or the year before! depended on what I could find for the little money I had to spend on it!)  And that computer had to last until it was so outdated I couldn't buy new software because my computer wasn't up to it.

You're doing good as long as you have food, clothes and a roof over your heads.  Necessities always have to come first, and with kids, there are a lot of necessities.  I didn't buy any new clothes for myself for years while my kids were growing up.  But they had what they needed and what extras we could afford.

Hang in there!

[J. M. Pescado]

he has a bunch of great stuff on mts2 and he has a section over at vs now...which sucks since it takes forever for vs to load for me but he has such nice stuff

You know, you keep acting like you have to justify going to rentech.com to everyone. You realize there's no horrible stigma attached to it, and you're free to download stuff there if you can navigate the horrible lag, right?

[Oddysey]

Because it's not cool enough to attach a horrible stigma to it.

[TreyNutz]

For a limited time only, here's the link to download.

Thanks, Blue!  I didn't preorder NL cause I wasn't interested in the car much, but since I have NL...

I am going to preorder OFB though.  The concept looks fun.  I'm actually looking forward to it.

[JenW]

I stopped going to VS not because of any stigma, but because the site in general sucks ass. Now and then I go to see what new stuff Morague and Slim have, and that's it. Those two are the only reasons to go there IMO, and now Morague is posting stuff to TSR, and Slim posts a lot of his stuff to MTS2 as well, so...

Jen

[Sleepycat]

he has a bunch of great stuff on mts2 and he has a section over at vs now...which sucks since it takes forever for vs to load for me but he has such nice stuff

You know, you keep acting like you have to justify going to rentech.com to everyone. You realize there's no horrible stigma attached to it, and you're free to download stuff there if you can navigate the horrible lag, right?

  I hardly ever even mention vs... (most of the time I don't even remember it exists *laughs*) I do have to talk myself into going there, crappy dial-up + vs don't go very well together 

I did go and I managed to get most of his stuff, took me about 8 hours   

[J. M. Pescado]

I hardly ever even mention vs... (most of the time I don't even remember it exists *laughs*) I do have to talk myself into going there, crappy dial-up + vs don't go very well together 

Actually, Rentech.com is even less tolerable on a non-dialup. When you're on a dialup, there's the expectation that everything is supposed to move at a snail's pace.

When you're on Real Internet, it doesn't go any faster, but you expect it to do so. And it doesn't.

[Sleepycat]

lmao @ real internet


We might be getting Directway soon, it's the only option besides this very crappy dial-up that we have. Cable apparently stops about 5 miles down the damn road 


as for vs, wow I get to actually feel sorry for those with real internet *giggles*

[RainbowTigress]

Well, I tried to get Morague's new replacement mesh for the ladies pajamas that make the arms and legs longer, so they don't look like they shrunk in the wash.  It took forever for the page to load, and then it took several tries to get the file because it kept saying it couldn't access it or something.  But I finally did.  Maybe I'll see what she has at MTS2 to see if it loads any faster.