Basic Info & Commentary on The Sims 2, Expansion Packs, & Stuff Packs.

[BeosBoxBoy]

The Sims 2: Teen Style Stuff
Proposed Release Date: November 5, 2007


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[BeosBoxBoy]

The Sims 2: FreeTime Expansion Pack
Release Date: late March 26, 2008


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The Sims 2: FreeTime Lomuted Collection (base game + Nightlife EP + Free Time EP)
Release Date: late March 26, 2008


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Official Page: http://thesims2.ea.com/about/ep7_index.php

Now your Sims can rediscover the joys of leisure time! Awaken your Sims' true passions in life as they discover and excel at all-new activities. Whether they're tossing a football with the family, practicing ballet, restoring cars with friends, or building train sets, your Sims now have more ways to build skills, enhance friendships, and make their lives more successful. Craft new, unique items for your Sims to use in their daily lives including clothing, pottery, and more. Your Sims will even unlock secret rewards by mastering their hobbies and advancing all-new careers. Explore a wide variety of new hobbies that will change your Sims' lives!

Features:
Discover your Sims' passion from a wide range of new activity types, from sports to science to arts and crafts. All-new hobbies include basketball, soccer, restoring cars, ballet, even searching for stars and planets!

Hobbies offer lifetime rewards. As your Sims master new activities they'll unlock aspirations, earn rewards, and uncover secret lots.

Once your Sims build up their skills, they can sell their arts and crafts or see how they stack up against the competition by entering dance, food, and video game contests!

All-new group activities are a great way for Sims to spend time with family and friends. There are even special activities for kids and toddlers, including an activity table for drawing and playing with blocks!

Hobbies can be full of unexpected moments, especially for Sims with low skill levels. Your newbie Sim might sew a bear with one eye, make a lopsided jar on the pottery wheel, get poison ivy while hiking, or who knows what?!

System Requirements (PC):

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

[*]1.3 Ghz processor (2.0 for Vista)
[*]512 MB RAM (1GB for Vista)
[*]Windows(R) Vista, Windows XP, Windows ME, Windows 98 or Windows 2000 Operating System.
[*]8x or faster CD/DVD drive
[*]At least 1.5 GB of additional hard drive space (5.0 GB total is required if installing both The Sims 2 and The Sims 2 Bon Voyage Expansion Pack at the same time.)
[*]A T&L-capable video card with at least 32 MB of video RAM.
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Supported video cards:

[*]ATI Radeon(TM) series 8500 or better (9600 or greater required for Vista)
[*]8500, All-In-Wonder 8500
[*]9000, 9200, 9500, 9600, 9700, 9800
[*]X300, X600, x700, X800, x850
[*]X1300, X1600, X1800, X1900, X1950
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NVIDIA(R) Quadro(TM) series
Quadro, Quadro2, Quadro4

NVIDIA GeForce series GeForce2 GTS and better (GeForce 6200 or greater required for Vista)

[*]GeForce 2, 2 GTS
[*]GeForce 3, 3 Ti
[*]GeForce 4, 4 Ti, 4200, 4600, 4800, MX 420, 440, 460
[*]GeForce FX 5200, 5500, 5600, 5700, 5800, 5900, 5950
[*]GeForce PCX 5300, 5900
[*]GeForce 6200, 6600, 6800
[*]GeForce 7300, 7600, 7800, 7900, 7950
[*]S3 GammaChrome
[*]S18 Pro
[*]S18 Ultra
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Intel(R) Extreme Graphics (see note below)
82865, 82915 and above

NOTE: If you have a non-T&L capable video card, such as Intel Extreme Graphics, then you need at least a 2.4 GHz processor.

Beosboxboy says: *pending release*

[BeosBoxBoy]

The Sims 2: Kitchen & Bathroom Interior Design Stuff
Release Date: April 2008

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Official Page: http://thesims2.ea.com/about/sp7_index.php

Redesign your Sims' essential living areas into the most luxurious of spaces. Transform the bathroom into a romantic getaway with charming claw-foot bathtubs and calming lighting fixtures or give it a contemporary twist with beautiful glass showers, basin sinks, and more. Redesign your kitchen as you upgrade it with sleek appliances on granite countertops or romantic natural wood cabinets next to wrought iron stoves. Outfit your Sims in the perfect clothes and accessories to enjoy their lavish new rooms, from sumptuous spa robes to designer cooking aprons. Be your Sims' personal interior designer! Give them the kitchens and bathrooms of their dreams with a variety of new furniture, décor, and outfits!

System Requirements Same as The Sims 2

Beosboxboy says: Almost every item has already been created in the Sims community several times over, this Stuff Pack more than any other I have seen to date lacks any real point.

[BeosBoxBoy]

What Order Should I Install The Game's EPs & SPs?

Special Thanks to Chairman Greg for this list and his question in the help forum that resulted in this post.

[*]Base Game: The Sims 2 (any version)
[*]Patch: The Sims 2
[*]Expansion Pack: University
[*]Patch: University
[*]Expansion Pack: Nightlife
[*]Patch: Nightlife
[*]Expansion Pack: Open For Business
[*]Patch: Open For Business
[*]Stuff Pack: Family Fun Stuff
[*]Patch: Family Fun
[*]Stuff Pack: Glamour Life Stuff
[*]Expansion Pack: Pets
[*]Stuff Pack: Happy Holiday Stuff
[*]Patch: Pets
[*]Expansion Pack: Seasons
[*]Patch: Seasons
[*]Stuff Pack: Celebrations Stuff
[*]Stuff Pack: H&M Stuff
[*]Expansion Pack: Bon Voyage
[*]Patch: Bon Voyage
[*]Stuff Pack: Teen Style Stuff
[*]Expansion Pack: FreeTime
[*]Stuff Pack: Kitchen & Bath Interior Design Stuff
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Originally posted by Chairman Greg here.

Some of you think that it does not matter what order the EPs and SPs are installed, this is not an idea EA/Maxis tech support would agree with.  The list above was confirmed for me by qualified EA technicians as the ONLY correct order.

[BeosBoxBoy]

Special Notes on the Aspyr Version for Macs
   I have continued testing the Mac version pretty thoroughly trying to resolves issues for Pets EP & other EPs/Stuff Packs. What I discovered is this: many meshes that have been made "bump-map enabled" may cause a crash of the Mac version, this is not a uniformly occuring bug and may deal more with video card drivers/extensions than anything else.

Another thing is the 12800 file limit, the Mac version can barely exceed that number of files in the downloads folder without a crash. The familiar problems of special characters and unicode characters in file names and long file names are still there, and with the Sims community being a world community, the chance of a Korean or Chinese character in the name is pretty high.

Display of some meshes is also problematic, many Mac users have reported a problem where the texture will not apply to the surface of the mesh or the fat/pregnancy morph of the mesh displays with an ugly grey texture even when not in use (I experienced this too in my testing).

Some hair truly unremarkable meshes will cause the Mac version to crash, and I am still figuring out why this occurs.

Then there are colour-binned hair recolours. Some of these work fine - others will cause a crash.

Whereas on a PC a duplicate mesh is more a nuisance than a fatal problem, it seems to always be a fatal error in the Mac version, and with Pets EP's version of Body Shop including meshes in the Sims2Packs, it is a hazardous thing to install any Sim made with that version of Body Shop.

Another consideration is that the game seems to not be affected by modifying the values in the max.proc, so one will additionally run out of resources and have rather crappy game performance no matter how you tweak the system.

As for hacks and mods. A good case example is InTEENimater. The InTEENimater depends on the various pieces loading into the game in a particular sequence. Much like extensions might run into problems if not in a particular order on the old MacOS (version 9 and earlier)

In Windows 98 systems using the FAT32 hard drive format, the issue seems to work based on the "write time" of the files to the hard drive. For a Windows 98, ME, or XP user with a FAT32 drive extracting the files one at a time in the order of their names generally works the trick to make it work.

In MacOS X it doesn't always work that way, and other techniques may be necessary - like renaming the files as one formerly did with extensions. There is no rhyme or reason to the way the game decided to load things in the Aspyr version that I have been able to determine. The people who have gotten the InTEENimater to work on Mac have generally tried many things and can't inform me which of the things they did made it work.

But my guess is extract the files one at a time in the order of their name, then delete the groups.cache and load the game - forcing the game to re-index the downloads. As I say, that is my best guess.

After seeing many of these problems first hand, I am not really sure I would have bought the Mac version for anything other than compatability testing, it seems plagued by far more bugs than the PC version. I appreciate all the hard work that went into porting the game to Mac, but I do not think I can recommend it or any Mac version of a PC game.

If you are wanting to play games - it still looks like a PC is the way to go because of the minute differences that are all the difference between an Intel-based Mac and a PC. Opinions vary, but I won't lie to you or allow a religion based on Steve Jobs sway my opinion: As a Mac-user for over 10 years, I have cordially hated my Mac since MacOS X came out.

There was a time not so long ago that I could run all Windows software on my Macs without a glitch, but that was under MacOS 9 and earlier.

More information about bugs with the Mac version of TS2 can be found in the Mac help section of the forum.

[BeosBoxBoy]

Credits & Acknowledgements

[*] Chairman Greg, Hullabaloo Forum (external link)
[*] Harold & Sean, EA Technical Support
[*] HugeLunatic -- for tirelessly helping me with the Mac help section
[*] IngeJones (external link)
[*] Jase439, creator of InTEENimater (external link)
[*] J M Pescado & members of MATY (external link)
[*] Keith, Moby Games
[*] Maxoid Sam
[*] Michael Lafferty at GameZone (external link)
[*] Paul, Aspyr Technical Support
[*] Sniper and Assassin for assistance with translation from Russian
[*] Wikipedia (external link)
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