Oh no! I'm more of a Xena than a Hercules and lack the patience for such kind of work.



Yes, they are EVIL. But as if that were not enough, they are copycats, too. They imitate the building tricks dedicated builders came up with. Come on, it was so much more fun to build a dome or pagoda roof "with your own hands", stand back and admire the outcome, rather than just select a roof type. Meh.

But yes, they throw in one or two features every time that want to make you keep the EP. For example the "walk to lot" in BV was looong overdue. But is it worth to have that terrible EP? Well, I use a lot of Seasons hacks that don't seem to make any trouble, so... *shrug*.

Maybe I'll abandon the idea of a "minimal sim installation" yet. Or at least test it thoroughly with AnyGameStarter beforehand.
Sigh, sometimes I can't help the suspicion that The Sims are not a game for us, but rather a means to make us into labrats to be poked and prodded.

I've one more idea: you could find (or make) yourself a set of default skin replacements you'd like your sims to wear and then simply delete the skintones you can't stand anymore. The sim should adopt a default skin which you can change by different default replacements whenever you get weary of them.

I know, it's not exactely what you want, but since Christianlov's skintone changer seems to have vanished off the face of the earth (I regret not having grabbed it while it was there, too), that might be an acceptable compromise for the time being.

No tact, huh? But a lot of modesty, right?

Well the most important building cheats would be ConstrainFloorElevation.
The Allow45DegreeAngleOfRotation is Uni, too? Then that and SnapObjectsToGrid. Those are the ones I couldn't live without. Aside from MoveObjects, of course, but that's basegame, right?

When I'll find any motivation for my reinstall, I consider not installing Uni, but I'll need those cheats. But... will my Seasons savegames even work when I'll forego installing two EP's (Pets) I formerly had? And oh my, I'll not be able to use any downloaded lots, right? Then it might be not such a good idea after all...
I'm really not so sure about those facts, maybe you could shed some light?

[off topic]
Why, thank you, Mr. Answer! You just try to make me blush or pull my leg? I'm never quite sure with you (I'm well aware I'm not nearly as versed as you). I hope it's not the latter, because I utterly worship your creative soul - and worshippers generally don't like to be mocked.
[/off topic]

May I add another question in this context?
I wonder if you get for example the building cheats of University with a later EP like NL (and with the deluxe edition)? Because frankly, the building cheats are the only reason for me to have Uni installed at all. And, hypothetically, if one has only the basegame and the latest EP, is there a way to tell which cheats or features come along?

You should fix that first (it has nothing to do with your game though).
Right click on a rar file and choose "open with". Then select your unpacking program (if you have none, you need to get one first). Check the box that says "always open with this program". Now the acrobat icon should be replaced with the icon of your unpacker (i.e. WinRar).


Okay, on to your original problem.
Did you ever open the rar file and look, what is inside it?
Is ist possible, that your problem is, that you don't have any unrar tool? Then go and get a free one, I recommend AlZip: http://www.altools.net/Downloads/DownloadALZip/tabid/88/Default.aspx

When you installed it, you can assign with the program itself, which files to open with it and don't need to do the above to remove the acrobat icon. You will then have an egg symbol and when you click on a rar file with the egg, you'll be able to open it and find the missing Sims2Pack file inside. Hopefully.

You should never try to install an older EP on a newer one, chances are you'll regret it. General recommendation is that you install everyting in this order: basegame, patch(es) for basegame, first EP, patch(es) for EP and so on. I personally only use the newest patch, if any, because I don't experience all the possible glitches and one of these patches once destroyed my whole game. But that's just me.

So, if you already have EP's installed, you'll have to reinstall, if you want Nightlife. But not over your current game, you need to uninstall that first. Don't forget to backup any custom content you want to keep. Then you can just take your deluxe edition to install the Sims and Nightlife together, look if there are any patches for this version on the official site, then continue with the other EP's. Oh, I see you also have University... which should be installed before Nightlife. I dunno, but I guess you can install it after. And sue Maxis, if that doesn't work.

I know there are lots of contact lenses on MTS2, just use the search and I'm sure you'll find enough stuff.
I don't know if there are contact lenses here on insimenator, just try a search.
There are other places, but you'd have to google them yourself.

Not a hack, but you can download contact lenses and make the sim select a color in game at the mirror (usually they go to costume makeup, but that depends on the creator). These contact lenses are not genetic, of course.

Or, if the sim has standard Maxis eyes, you can find a nice set of default eyes that change all standard eyes in game to the new defaults if saved in your Downloads folder (only one set at a time!).

What attitude is that? *wonders*

Fantasia asked about sub-folders and what is wrong with it when people say "yes, I have at times a hundred sub-folders and a huge number of sub-sub-folders inside them (I wouldn't know how to ever change replacement eyes or skintones if they would lay somewhere in that chaotic folder) and the downloads all show up and if my game is broken, it's got nothing to do with my downloads."?

I so heartily second that!
Every time you say it.
Vista is a costly disease.

You're looking for the LotFullOfSims hack, but that is currently not available anymore where I got it: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=212448.

I have the hack, but I don't know if it's okay to give it to other people. Maybe a mod can tell me if I may? Jordi doesn't seem to mind, according to his posting. But I guess there's a reason it is down. However, in my game it works beautifully with Seasons. Didn't try it with BV.

Did you install the newest patch(es)?
Du you have outdated mods and hacks or an old InSim?
Does it happen when you remove all custom content (don't delete, just relocate them on another part of your hd)? Or just disable custom content?

I think that was a Seasons problem, before the patch sims would overheat and/or shower exessively to cool down. If you already installed the Seasons patch, rummage through the seasons help forum, I'm sure you'll find similar cases and probably solutions for the problem.

I was feeling kind of adventurous today and started bodyshop to have a look at the new pleasantries I read about. And yes, it is crap and what were they thinking when they removed the delete cc function?!?!?!? Are they totally out of their minds? Are they now trying to keep people from buying new EP's? Are they sick of The Sims 2 and want to go on to The Sims 3 that badly or what?

Sorry, that was not what I wanted to say. I wanted to say: Bodyshop does it too! It also kills my connection. But I don't even know what I would tell the support: when I trace my connection, it looks as though it is perfectly fine. But it isn't just the dns server. I had that problem a few times in the past: websites wouldn't work, but downloads in progress wouldn't be affected. That I could cure by simply rebooting my confused modem. But when I start Sims or BS, everything is dead. Except for the tracer that says hi to any site I try to open. Duh!

If I'll ever be brave enough to play sims again or create any custom content, I'll be sure to reinstall the complete game without BV. And without Pets. And maybe even without Uni. I shall be content with Nightlife, OFB and the wonderful Seasons EP.
But that was where the disconnecting began... *sigh*


Edit: My phone miraculously stays conneced and that's an ip phone that goes over the same line. So I guess that could mean that the router has nothing to do with it? That the reason for my disconnecting is on this very pc?
I even suspected Firefox, but IE wouldn't work, either.

Looks like your graphics card arrived at it's limits and that's why you don't even get the option anymore. I guess, you installed a new EP, perhaps Bon Voyage?

There is a way to improve the quality of your graphics, but that may cost a lot of performance. I'm not 100% sure, but I guess smooth edges is antialiasing. That's always the first thing to go when the graphics are too demanding for your card because it needs a LOT of resources.

You could force antialias in your graphics driver settings (the default settings are "handled by application" in most cases), but the game may be slow down so much that it's unplayable. I tried that once with an older card and that was what happend.

So if I'm right, it's either a new gpu or you'll have to live with it or uninstall the new EP.
What graphics card do you have?

Definitely yes. Whenever I install a new EP or reinstall the game, I copy and save my whole "The Sims 2" folder (not to the desktop, though, but to a data partition). So I save everything from saved sims to camera mods, storytelling, hoods, etc. and after the reinstallation I simply copy the relevant folders back to the game directory.