That's the only reason I haven't uploaded sims. Because I do think I'm good at making sims actually.

Facial structure's the only thing that really matters in a sim - everything else the player's going to change anyway. You don't need CC for that!

Hair colour matters too though, if we're talking genetics.

Don't need CC for that, either.

up to 866 babies now, game takes ages to save lot, runs normally. SimPE thinks its a completely corrupted and unreadable hood but Hoodchecker has found no major issues, only missing character files are as expected. Saving one pair of pregnancies' (that is 8 sims from double quadruplets) at a time allows faster saving, around three mins compared to 20 mins with anything larger. family tree and relationships tabs display correctly, memories gave up around baby 400, neither sim has more than 40 memories each and they only remember their 30 or so youngest children. every other lot saves within the expected 20 secs or so of my newest computer.

That's true. The skins are usually horrible. Especially on celebrity sims. They're supposed to look like real people but the skins are so spotty and uneven. I always have to change them before I see what the sim actually looks like.

I have a little confession to make. Since the turn of the year, I got lazy about writing up what my Sims have been doing in the Storytelling feature. Normally I take in-game pictures as I play, and then add captions to them. These captions are really quite fundamental to the way I play. When I next come to play the family, they're a reminder of what was happening the last time I played the lot. They also are the basis of my rotations -- the XML file with the oldest date is the one for the household I ought to play next. And finally the captions saved become the basis of what I can paste here -- in the "What's happening in your 'Hood" thread (when I'm paying attention and being good).

Well since the start of the year I haven't been doing it. I had maybe a dozen households to play to complete the rotation, and, if I'd done it properly, I could easily have finished it in January. But instead I did pretty well everything else. I downloaded more Sims clothes and did age conversions of them. I looked at rubbish on the internet. I made silly posts in various threads here. I went ahead and played other lots, despite knowing that I hadn't written up the last one. (Not too many of them though, as I knew every one I played was making my problem worse.) And, worst of all, I kept going to the Real Life fridge and doing the Stuff Face interaction, giving me the horrible fat beer-belly body-shape that I hate to see on my male Sims.

Finally a few days ago I faced up to the problem. With the help of the Sims 2 Storybook Album Viewer and the Windows 10 picture viewer, I worked out that there were six households I had played but hadn't written up.
They were:
Stout: A new CAS family of 6 eccentric overweight Sims - 13 Jan
Capp: Albany & Goneril and their brood - 17 Jan
Mailer: A new CAS pair of twin party-lovers -- Pippa and Mamie have long blond hair and like to wear little black dresses - 5 Feb
Jones: That's Gloria and Andrew and their new husbands. Andrew and Julian went out for their Valentine Day Date, and Gloria thought she was pregnant - 14 Feb
Hunter: Miriam lives in Bluewater with her children and lodger-cum-lover - 18 Feb
Paton: Gerard lives downtown with his teenage lover Nancy Philippine and her young brother Scot - 15 March

Well, I'm getting on well with writing all of them up. I'm more than half-way through doing Andrew, Julian, Gloria and Garry. So only two more to write up and then I can resume playing. And then I have only two families to play to finish the rotation. They are the Smythe sisters in Bard Boulevard and the McBains in the Via Veronaville, both families now long established in Veronaville. I'm especially looking forward to playing the McBains as Peregrine and Peni Jo will be starting school.

[EDIT] One problem with writing up the story days or even weeks after playing is that by the time I write it up, I can have forgotten exactly what happened -- especially the details. I have a picture of Hans Moltke eating a hamburger in one of the armchairs at 19 Chorus Court. I remember that, when he returned from a downtown outing with Andrew, Julian and Brigitte (Julian's and Hans's sister) they were still hungry, and somebody fried hamburgers. I think it was Julian, but i can't be sure it wasn't Andrew or Gloria. (I know it wasn't Garry because he would have burnt them! Once upon a time Garry wanted to be a celebrity chef!) Anyway now I've written down that it was Julian who cooked them. So that's now what the "official" history says; I hope it's right. But I suppose it really doesn't matter.

One of my knowledge sims had a wish to see the ghost of her newly deceased best friend. I love how, depending on the sims' relationships and whether the sim in the wish is alive or not, "seeing the ghost of x" can either be a heartwaming wish to see a loved one again or a sneaky wish for someone to drop dead.

Further to my last post in this thread, I've now finished writing up the storytelling. So I'm able to start playing again! Without worrying about getting further behind!

I wonder why it is that knowledge sims want to slow dance and hire maids. Like. For some reason sooner or later most of my knowledge sims want to hire a maid. And the only romance want they roll randomly is slow dancing. I'm not even mad, like, those are the most random wants ever and I'm fine with it it's just like. What.

Well Andrew and Julian certainly like slow dancing. See pic here!

"I don't think I've ever tried to hire a maid," says Andrew. "I did once hire a gardener, but that was because I'd rather ask Julian round and make out with him than work in the garden! And I reckoned mum was earning enough money to pay for one. She was an officer in the army at the time. I did feel a bit bad when mum lost her job the next week though."

"We're doing all right now though. And the same gardener is still coming."

Even knowledge sims need a clean house!

True, except that I have replaced or hidden the majority of the in-game CAS, so I find it more difficult to make them cc-free than it probably actually is...
Defaults won't transfer so that's basically like cc-free, but to give them something like in-game hair I'd have to take my hiders out and it's probably totally fine to do so but idk why I feel like I should keep them in.
Luckily I only use simgaroop'd hair from like 3 different people so hair is easy to say who/where it's from and all their TOUs are fine.

Unrelated, I think my sim burnout is ending finally as I feel inspired to do setup on megahood 3.0 today. Dunno if I'll get it done today if that'll leave any actual playing time but I do feel like playing again

If you want to create CC free for upload, make yourself a new The Sims 2 folder with only the data-corrupting mods installed. You know how that works, right? Rename your The Sims 2 folder so the game doesn't recognize it, load the game to generate the new folder, put in the essentials-only Downloads folder. You can change back and forth between that and your play setup by renaming the folders before opening the game.

Sooooo my old simming Win 7 computer tower died. Deader than dead. My question for you all: is it worth it to try and rebuild it from scratch, or is it just easier to buy a new ready-to-use tower with Win 10? Tbh I'm terrified to trying to use Win 10, all my current computers run on 7, and I know it's a huge pain getting it to work on 10. The new computer would be used at least 98% of the time for playing older games.

In my experience it did not change anything when I was forced to install Win 10 on my computer. I even used same Graphics Rules because nothing else but operating system changed. Trouble is with newer hardware, as I remember Joandsarah had pink flashing even with Win 7.

Me: "Don't download things you won't use. They'll just bloat up the game and take up space."
Also me: "I'm sure someone will want to wear this medieval-inspired casual gown with glitter on it"

One of my projects that's pretty close to finished is basically an amusement park/fairground of sorts, and I'm quite happy with the direction most of the "districts" in it are going, except for the far back corner, which I'm still stuck on and have been for quite a while, and IT"S ANNOYING ME.

I'm curious how it looks. I'd love to see such a thing in TS2. It might remind me of the FO4 Nuka-World or maybe even TS1 Makin' Magic.

Probably more Makin' Magic (though maybe not the lots you're thinking of) since this is supposed to be a Renaissance Faire as much as anything (an excuse for Sims to dress up in armor or kirtle or more supernaturally-inspired medievalism without actually living in a medieval setting!) . I do keep finding ideas that'd work better for a more traditional US "state fair" type setup though, so I may have to do that at some point as well!

For now I'm still stumped on the Fae District of the ren faire though.

Game idea: a shelter for homeless and unemployed sims or small families where teens/adults/elders learn a skill or trade such as sewing, baking, fixing, making, etc. The goods are then sold in a business run by the sims and they now have knowledge they can take with them elsewhere. Variations on programs like this exist IRL, with or without the business aspect: just people learning skills. (The sims don't necessarily have to be homeless and could just be sharing a house because it's economical.)

I have an apartment lot like that! There are three, where if a sim family/household can't afford a house they are allocated a space in one at random. One has all kinds of space for building skills as you suggested. It's also a community living kind of set up so you're expected to make food for others, clean up, take your turn in the garden, etc. The second one has facilities for children, and only sims with dependent children are eligible for a space there. The adults can use a few skill building items, but there are more that children and toddlers can access (the idea is to break the poverty cycle by giving the kids a better start). The third sadly is very run down and not a pleasant place to live at all. In all three, the rooms are small and functional. You get a private bathroom but there is not much space in the living area. The idea is that you would spend time in the communal area and make friends and engage with the resources there.

I remembered this sims 3 supernatural review where the guy said that the werewolves were too tame and comedic and while I did agree I started to think - how in the world could one translate werewolves to the sims in a way that's interesting? I mean in sims 2 they're just regular sims who get the same personality and get a maxmotives cheat every night... which I think is not too special but what *are* werewolves supposed to be anyway? My only exposure to them was this edgy teen show about two sibling werewolves (I was fortunate enough to avoid Twilight), and from what I can remember it was basically all "we have to take precautions so we don't kill someone on full moon" which is just not something you could translate to the sims... I guess what I'm trying to say is that werewolves should have obtained all the interactions of a dog when transformed. Send tweet.

So I was just now in the kitchen washing my hands, and with the state of the dusk and the position of the lights I could see the kitchen reflected in the window above the sink, but the reflection stopped at the roofline of the house next door, and above that edge I saw deep blue sky and tree silhouettes, and I thought: "Huh. I thought we had ceilings turned on."