I'm embarassed to admit that I just stumbled across BeosBoxBoy's "Postmodern" office set, and I love it.  But he left out one very important object:  the swivel chair!  That seems strange, since if the one used in the "lie detector" aspiration object was extracted, it would be a perfect match.  Unfortunately, I can't do 3D stuff myself, so would someone consider doing this chair?

Another idea would be to re-texture some of these objects to look like old wooden institutional furniture.  The problem would again lie in getting a desk chair to match.  The wooden swivel chair that came with FT would work, except it would need to have arms added to the mesh.  Would this be difficult?  A matching armchair would have to be done from scratch, though.

Third thing:  I've looked around a bit, and I've never found a version of the plain old standard metal folding chair.  The one Maxis made is slatted, not solid, but I imagine it would make an okay starting point to make a folding chair to match the Postmodern colors.

  -- Mal

Recently my graphics started acting a bit strange, so I decided to upgrade my video driver.  That appears to have been a bad decision.

System stats:  

  Pentium 4 3.0 ghz; 1 gig ram
  Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 with the latest 6.14.11.6921 driver (dated 5 Dec 2007)
  Soundblaster Audigy 2ZS (not that it matters for this thread)
  Running under Windows XP Home SP2
  Sims installed:  TS2, Uni, NL, and less than 1 gig in the downloads folder.

With the old driver I was using (5.3.0.5), the graphics worked just fine, even with all the options set to the highest rating, including fade and distance.  The only thing I had to minimize was edge smoothing, or else the performance would degrade rapidly.  I reckon I'll be rolling back to that driver pretty soon.

With the new driver, I get the "blue screen of hesitation," which has been described elsewhere.  Blue screen pops up, hourglass flips, then screen goes back to more-or-less normal.  And that is not the only problem.

Initially, the graphics seemed crisper in some things, but textures for landscaping and background trees were amorphous blobs.  Complete loss of detail.  Then, as I started moving the screen around, the "blue screen" issue started.  After several repeats of that, suddenly all the textures were fine again... but performance had degraded massively.  It took several seconds to move the screen view just a little from side to side, animations were jerky, and in general it seemed like I was massively overloading the graphics card (which is what causes the "blue screen" to begin with, they tell me).  

So I'd recommend that users with the old FX5200 NOT upgrade the driver.  It's just too painful for words.

  -- Mal

I'm puzzled.  I d/l'd the separate parts for Athene, put them in their proper places (I have done this before), and she does not show up in BodyShop.  The clothing, hair, and mask all work, but the package "af_atl Athena by Alex" contains only the clothing, according to the Clean Installer.

Since I was mainly interested in seeing what you'd done with her face, this is disappointing.

The same condition obtains for Aphrodite: parts all present, no Sim.  I have only Uni and NL installed: might this be the problem?

  -- Mal

Really excellent.  Now, how about Kate?  I worked pretty hard to do her, and got the eyes and mouth okay, but I couldn't get a satisfactory likeness of the Cheekbones of Death.  Judging by your work on Audrey, you might be the one to do it.

  -- Mal

There appears to be no place to post tech questions about download troubles, so I'll post it here.  Please re-direct as necessary.

I have dial-up, so I use GetRight to download.  Two problems emerge when I try to download here or at the adult site:  1) no matter what content I try to d/l, I get a tiny file called "attachment," not what I was trying to d/l, and 2) GetRight advises me that this site does not support restarting, which makes it almost useless for large downloads -- and almost all Sims2 downloads are large.

So what to do?  Can I download from here, or not?

  -- Mal

I am just about to start in TS2, after playing TS1 since the thing was invented.  I have a couple of questions about customizing the game.

I have the old Bodyshop demo/download that Maxis put out in '04 before they released TS2, and I fooled around with it a bit and made some Sims and some custom content.  So question one is, what happens to that Bodyshop when TS2 is installed?  What happens to the sims and other stuff?  How are they incorporated into the game?

Second, what are the best hacks or whatnot to give the player a bit more control over the game, and not be subject to Maxis's puerile brand of "humor" or "entertainment?"  For instance, no doubt there are cockroaches and flies and animals rooting through your garbage and all that kind of crap -- which Maxis thinks adds interest and which I and many others abhor.  How to kill these pests?  And others they may have invented to "add" to the Sims experience?

  -- Mal