I rarely play Maxis lots or Maxis families. When I first got the game, I played a bit with Don Lothario, but that was it; I immediately jumped in to make my own family, my own houses, etc, and I enjoyed that portion of the game a lot more than going for premade stuff. (The exception is just using the premade Downtown because holy crap that's way too much time and effort for me to invest.)

Since my own computer is indisposed temporarily and I'm using a relative's, I decided to load up Sims 2. I don't want to bog the computer down with CC I'm never going to use again once I get my own PC back, so I decided to play some premade Maxis stuff. I picked the Curious house in Strangetown.

And wtf?

Who even designed this house, and why haven't they been shot yet? Thanks, guys, I really appreciate the seizure-inducing black tiled floor on every possible square of the lot. The crop circle-esque concrete sidewalk patterns? Cute. No, really. And the Stairway to Heaven thing going on? Yeah, I get it. Again, cute. And stupid. I love playing on a lot with six stories that lags the crap out of my computer! The randomly angled walls, completely unnecessary amount of lighting, terribly-plotted bedrooms--and what is going on with the living room? Two TVs? Two bookshelves? THREE DESKS? WHAT IS THE POINT?

I've never been so utterly confused and angry at a lot before that I completely dismantled the entire Curious house and rebuilt it from scratch. There should be laws about packaging crap like this with a game, seriously.

On the flip-side: I'm totally enamored with the Maxis country-style house (it's red, for 30,000-ish? Not the one that comes with Seasons). What's this? It has plenty of room for a decently-sized family? No one gets into slapfights in the hallways over who gets to walk and who gets to stand there like a stooge until they other person has passed? Unheard of! I did 2 generations of a family that fluxuated between 4 and 7 people and the only problem I ever had with it was sometimes the kitchen was just too small for one more than one person. (Which doesn't even bother me because I am so guilty of building too-tiny kitchens all the time.)

What is everyone's favorite and least-favorite premade Maxis house?

EDIT: Fixed it. I had to get rid of insiminator. I'm having the most bizarre problem. I did some troubleshooting before coming to you good people, but I still can't figure out what's going on.

Last night I was playing Apartment Life with no problems. I have little cc - default eyes, insiminator, and a global mod for the clothing rack. Seriously. That's it.

Anyway, after finishing up for the night I decided that the sim I'm playing could use some cute retro clothes and a couple of new hairs. So I did some downloading. This morning I get the weirdest thing( Read more... )So I thought maybe it was just somethign I could fix easy. I had my sim look in a mirror to change appearance and I get this. Note that the hairs look fine in the menu but when you select a hair you get code?

I've deleted all my cc hairs. all of it is gone. The only thing I have now is insiminator, default eyes and skin, and that hack. Help!!!

I just got Free Time but before I install it I want to clean up my custom content first. At first I tried to stay organized (I have separate folders for each separate function) but I wasn't unzipping everything into it's own separate folder. And some times I'd find these random files with just the name 'Mesh so and so numbers'. Sometimes I can get an image to show up on Clean installer or SimPE, but that's pretty rare.

Is there a way to find out what the meshes are for? Most of what I want to clear out are the cloths I've downloaded.

PS. I'm sorry if this is a stupid question or it's already been answered. I did google it but nothing seems to focus on what I want answered.

Lots of thanks in advance.

I searched and didn't see anything.

I happen to notice in the action queue thing when I had my toddler selected it said "Allergies!" and I zoomed in to catch what might have been the end of a sneeze (I had my sound off as I do at times when playing). Now, I have all EP's except AL and I have had Seasons and FT since they came out, but I have never seen this before. So, did allergies come with an EP? Maybe Seasons? And if so, can anyone get sick from these "allergies" or is there anything else with it or was it just aded for "realism"?

Or, was I just seeing things???

Comments and credit is cool but not necessary. Textless icons are not bases. Caps from Screencap Heaven.

( 19 Some Like It Hot icons )

Hi guys,

I'm going totally batty over a problem I have with Apartment Life.  The feature "inside Joke" has disappeared between people who are BFF.  Its absence is really irritating with children who have repeated wants to tell an inside joke.

( details and a picture under the cut )

I've looked this up, but all the answers are kind of convoluted, so just so I am clear on how to do this I'm going to post my question here.

I've taken an old lot I downloaded ages ago that was intended to be an apartment, renovated it a bit, and made it into an actual apartment complex. However, when I rent out to someone, the residential mailbox still remains. I downloaded the buyable apartment mailbox from this website, making sure to search for the old buyable mailbox that it said to delete (I did not have it), and carefully putting the new one into the downloads folder. However, the residential mailbox is still on the lot. What am I doing wrong?

Though I did not have the mailbox "SEDD_BuyMailboxBV.package", it appears that I do have some kind of hacked mailbox in my game that I haven't deleted yet. Do I need to delete that from the downloads folder? Should I delete the mailbox from the lot and see if the apartment mailbox magically appears? Or is this buyable mailbox somewhere in buy mode and I'm just not seeing it? Are you tired of the question mark yet?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 I have downloaded and installed a TON of sims2pkgs from TSR, and for some reason, none of them are showing up in-game. I have enabled custom content, installed the Free Time patch, etc. At first, I thought it was because I had the sims2installer on my computer, and maybe that was blocking it from getting into the game? So I uninstalled that, too. Still, nothing.
Anything else that could be going wrong? I've been able to have custom content before. Actually, a few objects (all from one set) have shown up, but nothing else. But all of a sudden, I have no other CC in my game. Please help. I've downloaded so many cute outfits, hairstyles, skintones, and objects... and I want to play with them.
:-(

Hey guys! I have a problem. Meh. Every time I play my game for a little while an error comes up and the game crashes. The error just says there's a Direct 3d Error and that the application will have to close. I don't understand what's up because my sister's (who uses the same computer) game does not get this error and is perfectly fine. -_O I tried removing my downloads folder and it STILL crashes! I have no idea what to do.. Any suggestions?

Has anyone else had trouble placing lots in their neighborhood since they got AL? I've noticed that some of the neighborhood deco objects (especially alleys) can really affect whether or not you can place a lot in a specific spot. There is a whole stretch of road where I am unable to place any lots at all. I have deleted all deco in an attempt to place a lot where I want it, but to no avail. It's really starting to get on my nerves. I am playing on the Twiwikii Island template, if that makes a difference. The only hacks I have are those that have already been updated for AL (from MATY and the insiminator site); all of my others I removed.

Anyone have any idea what could be going on here?

[3] George Peppard
[1] James Dean
[2] Gregory Peck
[5] Frank Sinatra (& friends)
[4] Peter O'Toole
[5] The Beach Boys

Oh, and I'm aware that I have a double Gregory Peck icon- I'm just to lazy to fix it haha.



Here at my journal.

I used the new Google search and didn't see anything relevant, so here goes ...

All of the mailboxes in all of my neighborhoods have been like this (see pictures under the cut) for quite some time. Obviously I accidentally downloaded a new default somewhere along the line. I've never really cared until now because --

( pictures of the devil's mailbox )

That's what happens when I SHIFT+CLICK and try to access the MAKE NPC menu. I have no idea if it's always been like that with this mailbox or if it's just because it conflicts with AL -- either way, I'm tired of always having a red mailbox. I've searched my Downloads folder, but I have almost 6gb of CC so the old taking-half-out method hasn't been effective so far. I'm still working on it, but I'd love if anyone knew what file this could be. Maybe you have this in your downloads or have any idea where it came from so I can search for the filename I originally downloaded it under?

Thanks in advance.

FIXED! Thanks to normawilahmina, I used Delphy's Download Organizer and searched the descriptions of items and deleted everything mailbox related. All my options work again.

I have a problem and I am curious to know what can be causing this.

I've noticed that, in Bodyshop, some of my cc has disappeared. Downloaded sims lost eyebrows, skintones, clothes. One even lost his facemask. I'm thinking the same happened in build and buy modes but I haven't checked (even if I did check I got tons of things so I wouldn't be ale to tell what). I haven't deleted anything myself but I did install new CC.

What can be causing this? I know it can't rally be because there's a limit to the amount of cc we can have in game because I used to have a 16Gigs dowloads folder before I took everything out and now I'm up to 4Gigs.

And I also know it's not because I installed a new stuff or expansion pack. I took my downloads folder out before installing Kitchen & Bath and Ikea and I have yet to buy AL.

It's something in my downloads most likely. If I reinstall the Sims that lost their cc, will they reappear and something else will be lost?

Help!!

Edit: I fixed my problem by reinstalling the two important sims I didn't want anything missing and by doing that, it fixed all other sims that were missing things. Brows, skintone and even facemask when it comes to Joker from MTS2. Now this makes me think it only happened with bodyshop things and not objects. If it did with objects, I'll never really know anyway.

I was just going through the tags and adding a couple for new Apartment Life NPCs as well as a couple of neighbourhoods and sub-'hoods that weren't there yet.

Are there other tags that the users of the community think are missing or would like to have? Or suggestions for improving the system of tags?

Any other suggestions or comments on tags can also go in comments to this entry, to keep them in one place.

(Or, of course, feel free to email any or all of the maintainers with comments and suggestions for tags.)

Some of you have noticed that the search engine has been down. The entire site that hosted the search engine is down and currently, we're not 100% sure if this is a temporary downtime or if it's permanent.

In any case, we've agreed that the community needs to have a working search engine available to use. That is why, at least for now, we've created a Google Search bar for the community. We've specified that the search engine will ONLY search within thesims2 along with the tags and memories of the community and nowhere else.

The Google Search bar is where the old search engine bar was - on the main page and on the user info. :)

Since Google doesn't add friend's-locked entries to search results, we strongly urge you to not friend's lock any posts you may make.

We're unsure as of right now how well this will really work so please bear with us as we figure things out. :)