The Sims Life Stories and the custom content: to be or not to be? )

[AlbaManrique]

Hello everyone!

In advance want to say sorry if posting to an incorrect forum.

So, here goes the issue.

Recently I had to deinstall my Sims as the antivirus software defined a main EXE file of the game as a malware. So now I decided to go a little bit nostalgic and installed The Sims Life Stories (as well as Pet Stories and Castaway Stories.) As I see now, a default replacement kind of CC works just fine for the game, I already have def. rep. skinset and eyes, they really make my Sims look better ^_^

But with clothes and hairs it's a lot more complicated. They do not show up while I try to change appearance of the Sim using a mirror or try to buy some new clothes in a shop. However, after placing the files into a Downloads folder, I saw some townies having a custom hair or outfit.

Is it a glitch or maybe I was doing something wrong?
Is Life Stories compatible with regular (non-default) CC?

Please, someone who has a similar experience, gimme a consultation )

Thanks in advance!

[Theraven]

First of all - which antivirus program are you using? I've used at least four different the past few years (avira/avast/norton/F-secure), and I've never once gotten a warning like that (and I've got "jumpy" settings on all, so they react to pretty much everything). Could be it doesn't like the EADM (SecuRom), but other than that there should be no apparent reason for it to react.

So. If you've got subfoldering in the Downloads folder, try to chunk it all together in the main folder instead. If I remember corectly, Life Stories and the rest are much more sensitive to subfoldering than the main game.

Clothes may or may not work. I know there were creators who had huge troubles converting the clothes from Castaway to the main game, so it's possible there are some significant differences between the two in the coding or skeleton stuffeths. Same goes for furniture, especially if it is modded in some way, and it's not certain anything not basegame or created with newer EPs that came after Life stories will work. And be careful with hacks. Some might work, while others can create more trouble than they're worth. I used the Insimenator mod for a while, and it seemed to work alright, but after a while I started getting errors for nothing.

I've got Castaway, and all the hairs I've tried have worked. I've not tried putting in furniture or a lot of clothing. I do not have subfoldering, and have very little CC for the game (as I rarely play it). I was just very happy that default overrides worked, as I'm not fond of the originals.

Not entirely sure if you have to enable CC, but you might have to.

[caffeinated.joy]

Are you using Comodo? If so, it's nature of the beast. Comodo is a touchy, paranoid monster.

[AlbaManrique]

I used Avira, but now switched to Dr. Web. What's weird, previously Avira didn't encounter any conflicts, all that started just 2-3 days ago.

What about CC, I have NO subfolders in Downloads folder as I plan to keep the amount of CC to the minimum.

Note about Castaway: I do not plan to add any CC there cause of the... let's name it specific charachteristisc of the game )) I meant only the issue with Life Stories and Pet Stories. Corresponding to EPs\SPs their requirements are equal to Basegame\Pets, am I right?

Guess what? I think I'll have to go check the appropriate settings in-game. Seems to me I'm so dumb I forgot to enable the CC in the game settings. Shoot me in the head please!

Theraven, caffeinated.joy - thank you very much for taking some time to think it over and your pieces of advice!!!

[Theraven]

I don't have Life Stories, so I mentioned Castaway (which is the only one I have). I think the requirements of CC and such are mostly the same for the three games, but I can't say it for sure.

I didn't use Avira long, but it didn't give me any troubles. Currently I've got Avast, which seems oblivious to Sims even being there (as it runs nicely along with it without complaining). Norton too (because for some bizarre reason, I didn't bother uninstalling it... None complains, and one seems to take what the other one doesn't take).

[AlbaManrique]

Don't the two anti virus programs conflict with each other? I had a case with my old PC when Norton and Kaspersky were installed at the same time, that made the machine almost unable to use because of a huuuuuge lags.

Oh okay. Won't cause offtopic.

Avira didn't give me any trouble either until the thing described in the main post happened. (

[Theraven]

I know two are supposed to cause troubles, but except for a little lag (which I'm pretty sure was there before I installed Avast) there is nothing to talk of.

[Engram]

I think that Life Stories runs on either the NL or OFB game engine but it is safer to treat it as base game. Ditto for Pet Stories. PS does not really contain much by way of items from the actual TS2 Pets so you're best off just going after stuff that is base game compatible.

A note on hair - unbelievably there are still creators out there who have not patched their Pets and consequently the hair they make does not show up unless you're running Pets or higher (for TS2). Most notably Newsea, who has not patched Pets even though this problem was brought to his/her attention several years ago. So don't expect hair downloaded from Newsea to show up in the Stories games unless it's a retexture made by someone with a patched Pets. Peggy's hair seems to show up fine in just base game as does Rose's  and Raon's hair so those and any retextures done with a patched Pets game should work.

And, as already mentioned, you may need to enable custom content in the game. I haven't played the Stories games in years but I remember having to do that for CC to show up. I only ever played through story mode and not in freeplay but Bodyshop-type CC did show up just fine.

[AlbaManrique]

Still having problems with the accessories - they do not show up whatever I do (

Clothes and hair work fine though - I've just jumped forward to Pet Stories and tarted up the main heroine Alice White, haha... )
Thanks everyone for your councelling.