Dark Pictures and Disappearing Headmasters

[AxelVal]

I'm ba-ack (not that it's something to be proud of...)! :hello2:

First (and biggest) problem is that I have a neighborhood for sims made only with custom content.  Skin, air, eyes, even down to their make-up, everything is downloaded.  On one family, the family portrait is shadowed extremely heavily, but the single profiles are fine.  On the other family in the town it's opposite.  In my other town, with normal, Maxis sims, the same thing happens sometimes, but usually only to one person in a household.

Then, in the second neighborhood (but not the custom one) the headmaster won't come over 9/10 times, and if he does, he'll disappear around 7:00, no matter what I'm doing or what my score is.  It hasn't always done this either.

Could this have anything to do with the custom content I'm using or anything I could have downloaded recently?  (most recent was the hack from MATY, to increase abduction odds.)

[BeosBoxBoy]

have you installed a Light mod? like say GunMod's Light Mod?  or Stargazer's Light mod at GSC?  this may account for the weird thumbnails.  Also, certain jewelry items may cause this effect too - I don't know which ones, there are so many of them.

But on to the headmaster leaving at 07.00 problem.  That is a problem.  Most likely it is due to a conflict with some mod you downloaded.  If your Mac can run Windows 98-style software with WINE or a similar utility - you may benefit from the conflict detector at http://www.simwardrobe.com/ - it uses VB6 which works well with WINE unlike SimPE because of .NET

Post a question in the general help section to see if anyone is experiencing the same problem with the headmaster.

[AxelVal]

I was going to do that today.  I don't have any light mods, but it might be from Louis's ears.
I had one of the dark-portrait family members put them on so I could quickly delete the unwanted colours, and it suddenly froze for a minute and then gave him all the make-up his wife was wearing.

Headmaster is fixed!  I'm having a thought on the pictures.  Could the dark shadows be caused by the colour enable package?  I can have pictures soon if anyone needs to see them.

[AxelVal]

I have pictures!
The first two show dark family portraits, but the first family is fine in the single pictures where you choose who you're controlling.
Then, the game wouldn't even let me get past the create-a-family without turning them dark.

[BeosBoxBoy]

ok - that looks like a lighting mod problem.  When you said dark - I didn't realise you meant blacked out like with a magic marker.

It may be a bug of the Mac version of the game - I know that there have been numerous problems with custom meshes in the Mac version of The Sims 2 - contact Aspyr technical support and ask what they have to say.

You may need to install the 1.2 REV A patch:

http://www.aspyr.com/detail.php?p_support_article_id=1232&p_game_id=199

And there is this tasty bit of information on the Aspyr web site:

Do not use custom meshes for your Sims (hair, clothing, etc. - available as downloads on Sims fan sites) or custom objects. Some are very hard on game performance and they are also not supported by either EA or Aspyr.

[AxelVal]

Thanks.  I've never had this problem on such a massive scale before.  I might be able to fix it on my own now.