Where can I find "No Headlines" Mod?

[edinfresno]

Hi, everyone!

I'm looking for a mod that automatically turns off the headlines (thought/speech balloons) in Sims 2. I've just spent weeks looking for such a thing and can't find it.

I have mods that turn off the plumb bobs, the megabobs in neighborhood view and lots of others but the one that turns off the headlines is the one I need most.

If there is no such thing at present and someone knows how to do it then could you please respond with instructions on how to do it in SimPE, which file to edit, which properties, and etc.? I'd be very grateful for any and all help.

Thanks in advance.

Ed

[EKozski]

Try this -  Open the cheat box:

Control-Shift-c

Type in this:

showHeadlines off

And then press the Enter key.

[edinfresno]

Hi, EKozski.

I appreciate your help but you misunderstood what I meant.

What I'm looking for is a mod or a hack or a line to add to my userstartup.cheat
that will do that automatically, just like the mod that I have that automatically removes Sim's plumb bobs when I open a lot

Thanks anyway, though. I appreciate it.

Ed

[Tenshii~Akari]

A userstartup.cheat line to make disabling speech/thought bubbles automatically happen is not possible.  The game always re-enables the code upon loading.  The only thing I can suggest is to make an aliased cheat to make it quicker for you to disable them.

However, there is a "no balloons" mod made by Inge, but it's only compatible up to NL.  (...since OFB was the first EP to introduce the headlines cheat, she saw no need for redundancy.)  Unless someone is willing to make a mod that prevents them up to your latest EP, there doesn't seem to be any other mods out there that disable them, other than using the cheat mentioned.

[EKozski]

This is how it's set up in my user start-up cheat:

alias sht "showheadlines true"
alias shf "showheadlines false"

I never use it.

I'd give you a copy of mine, but I'm using Gunmod's Lighting System......

But, I think Bloom has one downloadable somewhere on site. I got his and just kept adding to it.

[edinfresno]

Tenshii and EKoszki thank you for your help. I tried the link for Enge's mod but, apparently, it's gone because the page wouldn't come up for me.

I did, however, follow your advice and make a user cheat sheet with the abbreviations and it does make things easier so I want to thank you both for your help, it's much appreciated.

I did look around in the UserProps file and noted that much of what is listed there is very similar to what is written in the usercheats file and it looks to me that it would be relatively easy to write/add a userprop that would turn off headlines/speech bubbles except for one baffling mystery: Namely, what appear to be GUID listings in the strings.
Example:<AnyBooleankey="edgeScrolling"type="0xcba908e1">false</AnyBoolean>
I'm thinking that, if there were some way to open such a file in SimPE then I might be able to find a way to identify a particular GUID or whatever that code is and then write one that  would allow me to put a no-headlines string in userprops
file. Until then I'll be happy with what I have.

Thanks again to you both for your help.

Ed

A Small Update..

Hi, again, Tenshii.

Funny you should mention the no-balloons mod because once I knew what the file name actually was I had little trouble finding it on several sites. Unfortunately, as you mentioned in your last post, none of them were updated beyond night life but, at the time, I didn't know that and none of the people hosting the file on their sites mentioned that the file was obsolete so, naturally, it didn't work.

However, the file did come in handy because I found the GUID and was able to use that to try an experiment with my userprops file. I added a load line in the userprops (anyboolian section) to see if it  would prevent the balloons from coming up. It didn't hurt the game at all, it just didn't work but I think I'm on the right track for making a no-balloons mod now. I'll keep trying and write back to you to let you know if it works or not.

Thanks again for your help, it's much appreciated.

Ed

[Tenshii~Akari]

Inge's downloads are actually located elsewhere from the old SimLogical domain.  The no balloons patch is located here, although if you have any EPs installed that are later than NL, I would highly suggest not using it.  You'd risk some strange/unwanted errors in your game if you install non-compatible hacks.