Anyone had a house party yet?

[nothingbutsims]

They've dropped the number of guests you can invite now down to only 4! 

[Motoki]

I think it's because the requirments are upped for the game with Nightlife. Hell, I only seem to get 2 now and I can do 8 with no problems. I'll have to look into modifying that.

One thing you can do now though is create groups of up to 4 then after you through the party, call the groups and invite them over too. It's a bit easier than inviting people one by one.

[nothingbutsims]

  Good idea!

[gali]

When you begin to be permitted to invite less than 8 guests to a party - you have to update your drivers. It happened to me - in my custom neighbourhood I could invite only 2 guests to a party. After I updated my drivers - I was able again to invite 8 guests, without cheat.

[nothingbutsims]

Pardon my ignorance, but what drivers?

[cyperangel]

Pardon my ignorance, but what drivers?

A driver is a piece of software that runs you grapchics card. To ensure that your graphics are always topnotch, you need to have a somewhat new gfx card, as well as the newest drivers for that card.

The people who create these graphic cards continually improve on the software that runs it. Check wwhat company manufactured your card, and look on their website for the latest driver.

[Motoki]

Well mine are the latest catalyst drivers from ATI so it's not that in my case, but if anyone else doesn't have the latest drivers for their card, it's generally a good idea to update.

[Danni]

I found the newest drivers for the NVidia GeForce cards (I've got an FX 5200) don't always work well, and I have to roll back a couple. I'll just check how many people I'm allowed to invite (I was allowed 8 I think, though I have a vague recollection of having 15 at a party once, without cheats... hummm)

[Danni]

Yup, it's now down to 4... I'll check my drivers, but I'm pretty sure it's because of Nightlife (the rest of my specs are respectable - AMD Athlon 64 3400, 1 GB ram)

[sara_dippity]

I put intProp maxNumOfVisitingSims 8 in my startup cheat file and it works for parties, groups, and it seems to help on community lots too. I don't think the game really reads the requirements right, because when I looked in the graphics rules file, my computer met all the highest setting options.

[Kristalrose]

I updated my drivers because I had also lost the "Special Events" cinematics.  The movies came back, but I can still only invite 4 sims over without using a cheat or hack.  I have a NiVidia GeForce 5500.

[nothingbutsims]

I've got an Xtasy 9200 graphics card by ATI with 256 MB DDR memory and a 3d graphics accelerator.  I just recently updated the driver for that when I had Uni installed.

[IgnorantBliss]

I used to be able to invite 8 quests, but now only 2 (this was in a house that had 5 sims living in it). My video card is fairly high end with new drivers. I wonder if it's just the video card that affects it, though? I also have a gig of RAM, so that shouldn't be a limiting factor.

[Rebochan]

I've been down to two guests   Any NL compatible hacks out there yet?

[gali]

Coppied from the exchange:

The Requirements for NL:

"Windows XP, ME, 98, or 2000 operating system.

1000 MHz (1 GHz) or faster processor.

256 MB or more RAM.

At least 1.5 GB of additional hard drive space.

Supported T&L-capable video card with at least 32 MB of video RAM.


Supported Video Cards:

ATI Radeon 8500, All-In-Wonder 8500, 9000, 9200, 9500, 9600, 9700, 9800, X300, X600, X700, X800, and X850.
NVIDIA GeForce 2, 2 GTS, 3, 3 Ti, 4, 4 Ti, 4200, 4600, and 4800.
NVIDIA GeForce MX 420, 440, and 460.
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200, 55500, 5600, 5700, 5800, 5900, and 5950.
NVIDIA GeForce PCX 5300, and 5900.
NVIDIA GeForce 6200, 6600, and 6800.
NVIDIA Quadro, Quadro2, and Quadro4.


If you have a 2.4 GHz or faster processor, the game may run with the following video cards:

Intel Extreme Graphics 82865, 82915, and higher."

[sara_dippity]

Here's something even more interesting than the minimum requirements. This is copied from my graphics rules file.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
# Constants
#

seti Off 0
seti On  1

seti Low    1
seti Medium 2
seti High   3

seti MediumButDefaultLow 4

seti memoryLevelHigh    512
seti memoryLevelMedium  384
seti memoryLevelLow     256
seti memoryLevelUnknown 0

seti cpuLevelHigh        2800
seti cpuLevelMedium      2200
seti cpuLevelLow         1000
seti cpuLevelUnsupported 0
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The only thing I understand about it is this. The "seti memoryLevelHigh", medium and low, means if you have at least 512 ram, your default  settings will be set to high. 384 is medium, 256 is low. Same with your cpu level on the second part. This determines your graphic textures, object detail, number of sims on a lot, all that.
Here's what I think is interesting. I have 1g of ram. My processor should be rated high as well. My game runs like butter on highest texture settings, object detail, light, shadows, and on community lots. Everything runs very well. Before I had nightlife my settings were always the highest defaults. They should still be. But they are not. I only get two sims for parties, my textures were set to the lowest, reflections were off. The only high option I have in my defaults is high object detail. When I set them back to high, my computer still runs like butter even on on a community lot with all the neighborhood view options set to high.
Mr. Maxoid suggested tweaking the file I copied from, but I have nothing to tweak. I meet the requirements already.
The only way I got eight people on the lot was to put the boolprop for 8 sims in a user startup cheat. Isn't that weird? I think it's buggier than they thought with the options.

[Hook]

This is copied from my graphics rules file.

There is also a lot of stuff in the graphics rules file about video cards.  If you don't have enough video RAM or don't have a high enough level of video firmware processing, it can force your game to run at lower specs.  These numbers can be different for various brands and models of video cards, and the information is much more difficult to dig out.

If your game only allows you limited options when you have high RAM and processor speed, it's the video card.  And one thing that will definitely lower your options is having "integrated" video.  If you don't have a separate video card you're outta luck.

Hook

[sara_dippity]

I have an nVidia geforce fx 5200. Not totally top end, but not so low that I would expect only 2 to a party and the lowest graphics settings. That might force it to medium, but I can't see it forcing it to low.

[J. M. Pescado]

I have an nVidia geforce fx 5200. Not totally top end, but not so low that I would expect only 2 to a party and the lowest graphics settings. That might force it to medium, but I can't see it forcing it to low.

I can. I formerly used an FX5600. It chugged. Horribly. Back in TS2 Original. Given that Nightlife is much more horribly bloated and inefficient, this outcome does not surprise me.

[Danni]

My FX 5200 set everything to medium as default when I first installed Nightlife, and let me have 4 guests to parties. I upped all the settings as high as they can go, and it's still running extremely smoothly. I think I have the third most recent drivers.

[witch]

I can. I formerly used an FX5600. It chugged. Horribly.

I'm using an FX5700 with 256Mb memory, I'm not entirely happy with the sims performance and like Danni, am using older drivers.

What did you swop to JM and how is it performing?