The Official MATY FAQ (a work in progress)

NOTE: You're reading the old version of the FAQ. Click here to read the newer edition.

Pescado Hack Index

FFS Director's Cut for Seasons
FFS Director's Cut for OMGPETZ!!11oneone
FFS Director's Cut for OFB
FFS Director's Cut for NL

TwoJeffs' Hack Index

TwoJeffs' Directors' Cut for OMGPETZ!!11oneone

Suscription Information for MATY - 1 for the price of 2!

JM - J M Pescado, Site Owner, Sims 2 modder, El Presidente, and Fat Obstreperous Jerk
FFS Hacks & Support
Trogdor the Burninator, JM's avatar.

TJ - TwoJeffs, Sims 2 modder
Not A Good Commando Name

CB - CrammyBoy, Sims 2 modder
Propane & Propane Accessories

MATY - This site: www.MoreAwesomeThanYou.com

In the Search field, you can search for hacks by terror scale level (critical, etc). Enter your search for "terror/red" (very critical hacks) and "terror/orange" (critical hacks). You can also search for a problem you're experiencing before you post a new thread, but please don't post on that thread if it's old, that is what's referred to necromancy, and it's bad, m'kay?

FFS - Flying Fish Systems, the hack-making "company" owned by Pescado and Doctor Boris, who is mysterious and hasn't been spotted for a long time. Can also be used for Family Fun Stuff, so you gotta read the rest of the post to figure out the context. Can also stand for "For F___'s Sake".

DC - Director's Cut, a single zip file containing all the hacks JM/TwoJeffs uses in his/their game. Guaranteed not to turn your game into a BFBVS when used correctly. See above for links.

BFBVFS - Big Fiery Ball Visible From Space. What happens when your game implodes.

VBT - Very Bad Thing. I just made this up. An example would be when you lotbin occupied houses and import them into other neighborhoods. This leads to a BFBVFS.

The War Room - "TS2 gameplay-related strategery, tips, facts, and data. Remember, this is the war room! You can't fight in here!" Should be required reading for every MATY member. Especially the Myths, Urban Legends, And Apocrypha Of TS2 Explored And Exploded thread.

Pulling a Ness - Having multiple versions of the same hack installed. This leads to versioning problems and causes people to point and laugh at you.

RTFM - Read The F______ Manual. Usually every hack posted here has a RTFM or Read Me text file included in the zip file or on the thread. The exception is JM's Director's Cut, or the moreawesomethanyou.zip file.

Ripped Lips

- As a member's post count goes up, they acquire "ripped lips" icons. These also function to serve how many PM's (Private Messages) you're allowed to hoard. There are 5 PM's per every set of ripped lips. Senators get 100, and moderators have unlimited hoarding potential. This is a parody of other sites that may have stars or other icons showing a member's status. JM prefers to punish instead of reward people. This is the reason for the insulting titles that one acquires as they move through the ranks. Lip ripping is also JM's favorite pastime. He has been known to rip the lips off people who he deems stupid. Figuratively speaking, of course. I've been told it doesn't really hurt...much.

RL - Retardo Land, the vast wasteland that functions as the MATY garbage disposal. Also a place for silly, off-topic discussion that has no where else to go. Retardo Landers (members with garbage cans under their name) are confined to this forum. RL can also mean Real Life, but on MATY, it almost always means Retardo Land.

Trashcanning/Trashcanned (also referred to as "canning/canned") - Obtaining the coveted "Retardo Lander" status. This exclusive rank confines the user to only posting in Retardo Land, and is currently held by less than 1% of MATY users. To obtain this rank, simply do something incredibly stupid, or do something not quite as stupid repeatedly. It is known as Trashcanning because of the icons that appear beside a user's name (

).

Ranks (in order from worst to best) -

Dead Member - Die in real life. ‡
Banned! - After obtaining Retardo Lander status, prove that your IQ just keeps dropping. One of the easiest ways to do this is to create multiple sockpuppet accounts, post threads that could be considered too retarded for RL, and generally be a total asshat. ‡
Subscription Expired - Be found of not paying your subscription fee. ‡
Retardo Lander - See above. ‡
Loitering Lurker - No posts
Tasty Tourist - 1 post
Asinine Airhead - 5 posts
Blathering Buffoon - 50 posts*
Corpulent Cretin - 100 posts
Dimwitted Dunce - 150 posts
Exasperating Eyesore - 200 posts
Feckless Fool - 250 posts
Garrulous Gimp - 300 posts*
Horrible Halfwit - 350 posts
Irritating Ignoramus - 400 posts
Juvenile Jackass - 450 posts
Knuckleheaded Knob - 500 posts
Lipless Loser - 600 posts*
Malodorous Moron - 700 posts
Nitwitted Nuisance - 800 posts
Obtuse Oaf - 900 Posts
Pinheaded Pissant - 1,000 posts
Querulous Quidnunc - 1,100 posts*
Retarded Reprobate - 1,250 posts
Stupid Schlemiel - 1,500 posts
Terrible Twerp - 2,000 posts
Undesirable Uncouth - 3,000 posts
Vacuous Vegetable - 4,000 posts*
Whiny Wussy - 5,000 posts
Senator - See below. ‡
FFS Member - Only gained if you are an FFS Member. ‡
Moderator - Only for moderators (see below). ‡
Global Moderator - Rank is unused. ‡
El Presidente - Only for J.M. Pescado (see above). ‡

* Also earns lips.
‡ Lips change to a different icon.

Senators

(added by BlueSoup, at the suggestion of Rainbow and TaWanda)

- Senators have no useful functions whatsoever. It is a parody of all parodies to even have a Senate.
- The only thing Senators can do that regular users can't is: vote/post in the Senate section, and we have PM's not based on ripped lips (since we have the cool flames

, don'tcha know? Tongue

)

Moderators - There are currently four moderators on the site - AmberDiceless, Crammyboy, Twojeffs, and Venusy. We are meant to keep a bit of order, and since RL is not supposed to have order, we have very limited powers in there.

Custom Titles - Some users have custom titles, who has one and what it is, is determined solely at the discretion of El Presidente (although some moderators can change their own custom title).

Kitten Killer (added by Venusy) - The InTEENimater, a game modification that is considered non-awesome. Posting its name anywhere in a thread will normally result in someone else (generally a moderator or J.M. Pescado) posting this image.

Necromancy - The act of bringing threads back from the dead by posting a reply in them. Threads are generally considered "dead" if there have been no new posts in them for approximately a month or more. There are certain circumstances where it is acceptable to commit necromancy, such as discovering a flaw in a hack, or if posting a new thread about a certain subject would get you banned. However, most of the time, it is not acceptable to commit necromancy, and will generally result in a message such as "Necromancy is bad, m'kay?" and a thread locking. If the post is especially useless (such as a "THANK YOU THIS IS GREAT" style post) it may even be deleted by a moderator (though this doesn't happen often).

Homestarrunner.com - Also abbreviated HR and H*R. One of JM"s favorite sites, from which he borrows a lot of phrases. For example, the child board in the Peasantry, Made-Up Animals, has this description: "If you were a sim, what would you like as if?" This is from one of Strong Bad's emails. Made-Up Animals is where MATY Members upload their self-sims if they wish to do so. Check out the HRWiki, and the HRWiki's list of H*R sightings on MATY.

SimPE - SimPE - The Sims 2 Package Editor, found here.

disaSim2 - Sims 2 BHAV console disassembler 2.3d - contributed by Syberspunk.
Note: The latest version, updated by Shy, can be found in here.

Content/Hack Scanner Tools - useful for scanning your game for unwanted/conflicting hacks, and deleting content. - Contributed by Syberspunk.
The Sims2Pack Clean Installer (S2PCI) aka Pheverstool

Paladin's Sims 2 Hack Conflict Detection Utility

Dizzy's Sims 2 Mod and GUID Checker Tool
Note: The latest version, updated by Shy, can be found in this post.

CEP - CEP is a tool that makes normally unrecolourable objects, recolourable. Also required to make these items show up in your game.

groups.cache - Delete this file in The Sims 2 folder periodically, more often if you have a lot of custom content. It seems to cache game data, and can get corrupted, causing loading and closing issues, as well as various other problems. It does regen every time you start the game.

cigen.package - Seems to be the same sort of thing as groups.cache, but for BodyShop. Deleting it can fix a problem you're having with Bodyshop, and it does regen the next time you start it.

BBS - The official Sims 2 Bulletin Board. Home of the sheep (also referred to as "sheeple" by some).

"BoolProp" - An incorrectly used term to refer to the cheat code "boolprop testingcheatsenabled true." Actually, there are several "boolprop" cheats in the game, but the BBS in particular as well as many other uneducated Simmers continue to refer to debug mode or "boolprop testingcheatsenabled true" as just "boolprop." This is a constant source of irritation for many. Angry

Contrary to popular belief on the BBS and other Sims forums, "boolprop" does not destroy your game, destroy your sims, delete objects from the game catalog, delete your hard drive, or any other such nonsense. It does not cause errors to occur. Rather, it lets you know when an error has occurred so you can decide how to solve the problem, instead of just resetting your sim and going on. It also produces a helpful log that can be found in the directory shown in the error message, which can be uploaded here as a text file so the Awesome ones can analyze it.

Sadorandom - Maxis' variation of the random number generator used in the Sims, which among other things controls personalities for newborns. Instead of using truly random numbers the same set is chosen every time, leading to exact duplication.

DAC - Acronym for the cheat code "deleteallcharacters"

SWAF - Sim Wants and Fears. In SimPE, each sim has a SWAF entry, and doing a DAC or deleting Sims by other means can leave orphaned SWAFs. Also referred to as "dangling SWAFs" or "hanging SWAFs." Read more about it here.

Popular Tools & Tutorials

DAC and Creating New Townies, by Nec

Creating Default Skins, by Angelyne

Street parking tutorial, by JadeEliott

Out-of-game object collection maker, by Jfade

Checking polygon counts of objects, by Baratron

Hair Binning SimPe plugin, by Theo

Correcting the DNA of Strangetown premade characters, by Baratron

How To: Get An Error Log
Activate testing cheats (boolprop testingcheatsenabled true) When the error pops-up, hit cancel and then reset. In the log folder of your My Documents/EA GAMES/The Sims 2 folder (or equivalent) there will be an error log. If you are unsure of which one it is, arrange icons by 'date modified.' Pick the last error log and attach it to your post (additional options).

Guidelines for error log submission
Do:

Attach the error log to your post using the upload section under Additional Options... (below your post)
Force an error if asked to

Don't:

Copy and paste the top part of the error log into your post
Post a picture of the error message box
Compress your error log into a zip/rar/7z/(insert preferred archive format here) archive
Force an error if no one asked you to
Delete the error log from your post. Someone will normally do this for you after they've had a look at the error log and determined the cause of the problem.

The More Awesome Than You Mission Statement (originally posted by Frankenbeasley, although modified from a Pescado quote)
I think what people are forgetting is that the need to make posters be properly miserable in MATY has to be balanced with the need to keep them from becoming so disgruntled that they riot, which creates an unsafe working environment for the moderators. If you oppress the posters TOO much, they will decide that they have nothing to lose and start becoming unruly and rioting. Horrible forums can really only be accomplished in dimensions where moderator life is cheap, and thus they can afford to delude enough moderators to properly oppress posters, and posters are used to lower standards of welcome even when free. In forums like ~~the~~ US, we simply cannot afford this, as posters will snap faster and moderators whine considerably more ~~to hire~~ and demand better ~~working conditions~~ cheese.

On the other hand, I don't believe posters should be prevented from canning themselves. It saves everyone a lot of bother. If they can themselves, we won't have to poke them, go through bothersome borking, etc., etc., and since they did it to themselves, no one can seriously and logically claim it's anyone's fault but the canned guy. And he's a retard, so who cares?[/list]

Affliates: PAYSITES MUST BE DESTROYED!: Pescado's new business venture. See EA's EULA before complaining.
TSR MUST BE DESTROYED!: A redirect to the "The Sims Resource" section of PMBD. See EA's EULA before complaining.

NOTICE: For future additions, or suggestions for the FAQ, please PM Venusy, as RainbowTigress is not able to modify the FAQ due to the thread being locked.