I do really wish there were more body types in TS2. It's really my only peeve with the game whatsoever. I'd say height customization as well but none of the Sims games have that (sadly).

You can do both with either custom CC or file editing but I agree it would be nice if the game were more flexible in that way. That's one thing in TS3/4 that's definitely an improvement over TS2. The issue with heights is animations - like kissing. You end up with sims kissing foreheads and necks. The neck thing works I guess but kissing foreheads - or worse, clear air above the head - in a sexy manner doesn't seem to work for me.

You could get a Mod by Squinge OFB_CustomernoMoreComplaining that will help with that.

Someone already suggested that, I already downloaded it

This Error is because of the Memory Leak in the game engine and it is due to bad programming and it is also why I no longer play The Sims 3.

Too bad we couldn't have a real life "CustomerNoMorecomplaining" mod. I'd be thankful for it every day...

I forgot how much nicer the game looks on a screen larger than 14 inches.

Finally got my 17inch laptop with the bum keys working by simply rerouting the three broken letters (iou), to buttons i don't use. it's a pain to type, but i can at least fill out my spreadsheets for the game lol.

Do you have a camera mod that lets you see to the edges? In a well-developed hood, recently, I had the idea to tuck away behind a mountain a separate tiny village. Having fun with that.

Uhm you mean like develop the ood? Or, in the case of the Uni hoods, expand the students background?

The thing is that I like to build, but I don't have the patience/the skills to build something completely from scratch. Idem with the families: I usually manage to create a couple of nice Sims, but in the end they look all similar and they lack of... personality, I'd say.
I don't mind usin other Simmers' creations at all, but sometimes 'd like to come with something completely new I made.

Yes, I do! I couldn't live with the maxis camera this sounds like a very interesting idea! Did you invent a background story for that? How do the inhabitants interat with the rest of the hood?

Thank you so much for the tips, guys. It's always nice to get new ideas! :lovestruc

Shout Out to: Sedona's Hoodbuilding Group @marka93 @Jawusa @M.M.A.A. @litlegothcat13 for the sims and Widespot RFD @Peni Griffin

Because this is some sort of random thoughts about sims 2 I thought I would share a bit of what I have been doing with my game as of late. The game is my Ãœberhood main of Strangetown,plus Bluewater Village, Pleasantview, Veronaville and Riverblossom Hills and custom hoods, but this part is all about the Sedona people combined with Widespot people. Hope that all makes sense.

I have not yet had everyone graduate from University, but it is in process. {I send all teen Sims to University}, I did play all of the households in Sedona enough to get the Alien Hybrids off to University. I also played all of the households in Widespot RFD long enough to get the younger generation all off to University and I made a few matches among the Sims that were not leaving for University.

So anyway first Sedona {more or less as they are mixed}:

Collensworth Family, Phil Collensworth had two children, one daughter and one son. He put the son up for adoption as it was normal looking for some odd reason and kept the daughter. He named the daughter Phiippa. After raising his daughter he marries Didi a Townie, also a knowledge sim and Didi gets abducted and she has twins. Have Not raised them yet.

Philippa Collensworth goes to University where she she finds Howard Beech from Widespot RFD and a match is made.

Atkins Family, Aaron Atkins has Roberta and Rolando. Roberta goes to University and finds her match in a dormie Valentino Haigh, while Rolando goes to Univerity and finds his match in Rosalie Mann Daughter of Mary Land and Valentine Hart from Widespot RFD.

The Lari Family, Tarek Lari has twins a girl and a boy, Tamara and Teutorigos. After he manages to raise his kids he marries Brooke a Townie. Tamara meets Rocky Beech from Widespot RFD at University and a match is made, while Teutorigos goes to University and is matched up with Sally Weiss daughter of Penny Weiss from Widespot RFD. Sallly looks like a normal Sim except for her Alien Eyes and she likes Aliens.

The Spurlock Family, Jared Spurlock has twin boys, Delwyn and Dynfnwal. They go to University and Delwyn finds a match in Dixie Land from Widespot RFD and Dynfnwal finds his match in Goldie Hart from Widespot RFD.

I intend for all of the Sims from Sedona to return to Sedona and live with new partners and their Fathers {in many cases I will either make the house bigger or move them to a bigger house, which ever is easier} I like to have large multigenerational Families and Communes. I have found that 6 sims is about the number that I like to aim for in most cases. Once in a while I will have a family with just 2 or 3 Adults like with the Landgraabs, but that is because I don't want to move them or enlarge the house either.

On to Widespot RFD. In a lot of cases I have matched up someone from Sedona to the sims I sent to University from Widespot, but not in all cases.

River Land finds a nice Townie Denise Matsumoto who also moves to University and they make a match of it.

Scot Land I match up with Missy Beech.

Mary Land gets married to Junior Mann {Mafia Don} and they have Manfred Mann who I match up with Virginia Beech.

Junior Mann and Candy Hart have a son named Brett Hart who falls really hard for one Penny Weiss, they got married after Brett Graduated.

Woody Weiss {Romance} is in a triad relationship with Felicity Usher {a CAS Romance Sim based on PS2 Sims 2} and Elena Poulson {former Dormie} and they all live with Penny Weiss and her husband Brett Hart. They live in Widespot RFD, but I moved them into a larger house next to their old house.

Delta Land went to University and she finds her match in Horton North dormie.

As my sims from Widespot graduate most of them are going to come back to Widespot unless they go to Sedona with one of the Alien Hybrids.

I think that covers all of the sims from Sedona and Widespot RFD or pretty much anyway.

I really like Sedona and I really like Widespot RFD, they are the only two custom Neighborhoods that I have, all of the others being ones that came with the base game or its EPs.

On a fairly different note: I added a new object mod that I like by Sophie-David Three Honest to Dickens Mirrors for Discerning Victorians and then I went through my Ãœberhood and teleported those Sims that are Aliens or Alien hybrids or have Alien ancestory to some degree. I did not teleport them in to the same lot, instead I did it in stages as I have a lot of Aliens and Alien Hybrids. I like the mod works well. I even noticed that if the sim is born from an abduction that takes place after the mod has been installed that it knows that the Sim is a half Alien Hybrid.

What I found interesting is that in the process of checking my game for the Aliens etc. I noticed using the Sim Blender that I have Gruffydd Pfeifer 1/4 Alien that is Alien Pregnant with twins, Séamus Pilferson 1/4 Alien that is Alien Pregnant, Tammara M. Roseland 1/2 Alien and Alien Pregnant and Geraldo Grunt who is a normal Sim that is Alien Pregnant.

I do hope that some people find my long wall of text interesting.

I wish the game weren't so quirky. Here's how most of my week has gone.

Put in content. Game freezes the second day of play.
Take out new new content and just run the essentials that have worked for years and years.
Game stutters and sims reset.
Take everything out and make game generate new folders.
Things look good.
Go to place a maxis desk. Catalog says it's there, but it's not. No desks. Huh. Try to place a chair so my sim can think about that awhile. Same thing. Check a few other random pieces. Some are there, some aren't.
Curse.
Try 50/50 on essentials because I'm out of ideas.
Game won't start on first group.
Try the other half.
Game takes foreveeer but starts, only to freeze on the family screen.
Curse again.
Decide to sod the whole thing, move my current stuff back to the old computer where the game is still installed and just needs the latest progress.
Taking forever to do this.

I'm thinking about taking up tic tac toe as a hobby.
Maybe dots.

I am sorry to hear that you are having trouble with your game @smorbie1, maybe just keep the old computer to play Sims 2 on if it works OK? Or If the old one won't work well I would plan on installing Windows 7 on your new one, maybe in a partition and then playing Sims 2 that way. I understand that is how @maxon does it. They have Windows 7 on their new PC in a dual boot set up. Works for them from what I understand.

I watched a lets play of Games of Thrones on Youtube, and now I want to create a hood base of it. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to do so.

There's actually a thread for that. https://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=574021

Kind of agree with you on the first point - I'm not a builder nor do I particularly like building, so what I usually end up doing is recreating and improving something from another game, editing an existing lot (usually downloaded, because I don't have much patience for EAxis lots), or sticking to a theme, like a hood of mountain cabins.

I guess it snowballs for me; I tend to get bursts of inspiration from books, movies, or games, or whatever just happens to strike me so some of my hoods are a mishmash of different ideas - I have a hood that's based on Silent Hill, but several of the sims are iterations from other horror games and completely unrelated origins. I tend to get bored when I have too many similar households/sims, so I lean towards actively making different sims. It helps in terms of variety - have a serious bookworm from Rule of Rose there, an easygoing guitarist I randomly imagined after listening to a rock instrumental here, but some people might question why I decided to place Justine from Amnesia in a Dragon Quest setting...

Oh, yes, there's A.L.W.A.Y.S story! They are a "Wanderers" camp that's been causing some havoc in the sim communities, moving in and out, sometimes in camps, sometimes in apartments, sometimes slipping away leaving young women pregnant, violins missing, and graves moved, but always planning their return. They exist in all the hoods, but no one really knows where they are from. Until now. They are usually only seen two or three at a time, but this is where they all call home. I plan to bring them, in a disturbingly large group, to this nearby town as a traveling carnival.

Been wanting to bring a carnival to this town for a while, so decided the Wanderers need to come from somewhere, and this terrain (don't know if this is PG's original terrain or not, but very nice) happened to have this great spot so I added deco trees and buildings and put in a large lot (green square in the bottom right) for tents/RVs/gypsy wagons, etc. Isn't it awesome? Love the way they are just lurking there, nearby, but out of sight. <3 Look at all those innocent plumbobs going about their little simmy lives suspecting nothing!

Oh well, I've been making over so many lots (customs, default, from other hoods) that I kinda of got bored of spending hours in buy/build mode
I see, it actually makes a lot of sense taking inspiration from different sources and mix the staff together. What I probably lack of is variety in terms of personality/background...

I can picture them with your words, I think that's one of the best ideas I've read so far! I was thinking to do something similar, adding a little tribe or some castaways o the hood - an outcast group of sims, with a peculiar background :D

Seriously, this topic has been very helpful. I decided to go for a mix of Prah's Strangecountry and SimValley by CrisNewbie and finally start something on my own as character I will add the Sims from Stangetown and some from the other game versions. Now I just need to thing about some "unique" characters to put in the mixture :D
Thank you so much guys - that's the kind of inspiration I needed :lovestruc :lovestruc

Smorbie, that sounds like what happens when people's antivirus starts quarantining game files. Have you tried it on that machine with the antivirus turned off?

I wish the contest threads didn't close quite so quickly after the winner is announced. I always seem to have something else I want to post in the thread. But this time it really is rather sad for me. I have started on my Round 4 Play-along post for the Strangetown makeover contest. I have uploaded 23 pictures and attached them to my post, and started to write the accompanying text. But now I find the contest thread has closed and I can't finish or submit my post.

@joandsarah77 , might it be possible to reopen the thread for a few days to allow me to finish my post? If it's not possible, I'll try to post in the Lots and Houses picture thread, but the pictures could still be a problem as they're already attached to the post I now can't complete.

Sorry to raise this matter here. A PM might be more suitable, but my mailbox is full, and I was trying to complete this post before turning my attention to clearing out old PMs. Sorry for being such a pest, Jo, but Real Life is making more and more claims on my time. My mother's health isn't good these days.

Here, as a taster, is the first picture from the post I can't finish:

Not quite sims, but another board I'm active on has a *hugs* button, usually used for expressing sympathy.

I wish we had one here.

*hugs* to AndrewGloria. Hope your mom has some good days soon.

I'm sure my stamina for building is much less than yours, so I can't imagine how long you've been at it to be bored! I guess I'm too worked up from building in real life to want to do it in-game.

I actually used the EAxis premades as "target practice" before using my own sims when I first played the game and I ignored majority of their set-ups, either going off on an interpretation of the premade or just outright going in another direction. Maybe ideas for original sims will pop up as you go through the premades' stories. I used the premades to explore how I wanted to implement various settings and systems in-game, and they ended up not having much to do with each other but created stories that I preferred instead - so much that I forget that they didn't start out that way.

Strangetown is usually associated with sci-fi yet I turned it into a Bioshock: Infinite-esque setting and removed aliens from the context. The Capulets and Summerdreams were given fantasy and/or somewhat modern storylines (depending on the family branch, and contrary to the set-up, Hermia remained in the human world while Juliet went off into the supernatural...), and Lilith Pleasant Ruggbyrne and the Brokes became entrenched in this grungy urban framework. None of the premade relationships survived ( bite me ) and not all of it might make sense, but that's okay - as long as you're having fun while not destroying your computer or game, it's your game, your rules.

Oh yes please, I second this request @joandsarah77 @gdayars

I know that @Modder was told that they could post their late entry too; I was looking forward to seeing those as well as AndrewGloria's.

I would like to see those entries too.

I am TRYING to figure out how to do that... It says it is open, but it has been moved and won't let me reply (and yeah I am not sure may require Jo) so I am asking in staffchat and will ask Jo when she gets on to reopen for a few days.

Scratch all that, I got it working!