I'd say go for whatever inspires you the most to complete. You can always download and edit buildings, and sometimes you may not need every single set you think you need.

Depending on the length of the story, you don't necessarily need to have everything ready before you start - just enough for the first few chapters. The need to have absolutely everything ready can sometimes feel like a giant wall to climb, which may hinder you from starting the project.

I'm a little confused as to how you can have the sets and sims ready for a story you haven't come up with yet, though.

@Peni Griffin @simmer22 Thank you for the advice! To elaborate, on one hand I have a whole fantasy/medieval neighborhood with gods and elves and a whole lot more that I could see making a story out of, I have all the mythology ready needed for such a story, but I don't have a concrete story yet... Main characters, wants/needs, problems and an ending. All of that is missing. On the other hand I could do a sims 2 remake of a sims 1 series I made, which is scifi/comedy. That story is already well developed but I'd have to make the sims and the sets, or at least acquire them. And I can definitely not marry those 2 ideas in any way they're like 2 different universes. But I appreciate the pointers!

It seems though like sets and sims is the most practical issue to sort out, especially if I can get help with that (I could probably get help from my friend who also plays ts2). Because if you don't have a story, it's just going to be crap anyway, so if that doesn't come to me I know I should start with the sci Fi one instead.

You might, however, be better motivated to tell a story you never told before. Nor is there any reason to stop at one story.

It’s not that hard to generate a story from scratch. In the case of the fantasy neighborhood you have the mythology and the characters, so thinking about the implications of the mythology for the characters, the actions the characters might take to address those implications, and the conflicts that could arise between characters based on those actions (plus how those conflicts would be addressed using sim mechanics) has the potential to open up more storylines than you know what to do with. By the time you retell the existing story, your backbrain may have produced a whole new one for those sims.

Zarathustra has some amazing sci-fi lots for download here at MTS They are complex but you could always remove any pieces you don't need.

If your population has an excess people of one gender, will the game be biased to create the other gender when Make New Character is called to balance it out? I have service personnel like maids, dining servers and baristas that are mostly female, and noticed that only male babies seem to be born.

Nope. The randomizers take no account of contingent circumstances. Gender, as with babies, is a 50/50 coin flip, every time. Long runs of one result are what is called a "statistical cluster," a natural byproduct of randomness.

It's just that it's advantageous to our survival to notice and generate patterns; and false positives don't mitigate against survival. So if no pattern is present, that doesn't stop us from seeing it.

Did anybody ever fix Rebecah's toddler bed, the one that basically every self-usable toddler bed is cloned from (including Phaenoh's Smallhouse Models bed, which is extremely adorable)

There seems to be a, or maybe two bugs with it, one is that the toddler will (I think) try to use it repeatedly when they have low bladder or hygiene, which is annoying because they crawl in and out of it constantly and don't do anything else.

The other issue is that sometimes when they leave the bed it throws an error and the toddler resets but the bed gets stuck "in use". You can easily reset it by forcing error in debug mode, but it would be nice if I didn't have to. Mind you, it does stop the constant in-out shuffle XD

Since I've missed a lot of other things recently, I wonder if any of the more up to date modders had happened to fix this object.

(Now I think about it, same question for custom bunk beds).

That problem should be easy to fix, to make the interaction unavailable for autonomy when bladder, etc. are low, and remove the use flag on reset. As to the root cause of the error, I wouldn't have a clue. Where to find the bed to look at it? It is probably in the spirit of sims to engage things like restaurant dining and musical instruments on low bladder. Train them from a young age.

Bunk bed issue was fixed by midgethetree. I think Michelle updated hers her on MTS. I thought the toddler bed was too but I'm not finding right now.

Oh cool thank you, I will look at midgethetree

This is the toddler bed. Not the crib, the little bed. I don't mind them using it with low bladder, especially if they are actually tired, I don't even mind them choosing to sit in the bed and do the rock/play animation, it's pretty cute. and I might be wrong about bladder causing them to use it, I just noticed that the two toddlers who were repeatedly crawling into bed ignoring their toys and other things happened to have low bladder, and weren't yet potty trained. I think the original is linked but not sure if the link still works.

https://modthesims.info/d/527670/sm...ursery-set.html

It actually sounds like Midge's fix may even work for the toddler bed since it seemed to be to do with an impassable tile. I wonder if it is the same error.

Looks like they have added all motives including bladder and shopping to the bed and no failure condition for placing the tile. I'll try to sleep in it another day and see what happens. If you find a copy that is already fixed tell me.

Am I the only person noticing issues with the TV from the Cubic store set?
It's the only one where the image is mirrored for some strange reason.
I'm surprised that in almost fifteen years since then, no one else has seemed to notice that? I tried like four different versions of the Cubic set and all played out the same?

It's also not updated to AL but I can get that sorted. I just can't for the life of me figure out why the image on the Cubic TV is mirrored and no other TV's is. Any tips, perhaps?

------

Also, on the bunk/toddler bed issue above, just a few days ago I have attempted to fix all bunk beds and the toddler bed that Michelle made and posted the archive on her base game bunk bed download site: here it is.
The fix by midgethetree only tackled blue flashing issues with the bunk beds, unless there was another fix I have missed since then.

The motive thing that @jonasn mentioned is indeed a problem, but on the shrunk toddler beds I only fixed Tuck In and Go To Bed (the autonomous toddler interaction) since I didn't deem it important enough to do the same for Put In Bed; as the advertisements are very minimal anyway, Sims should usually find better ways to "satisfy their needs" than putting their baby or toddler to bed. :P
If it really is this much of a problem though, it's just that one interaction now and that's it.

And on the question of the use flag, it seems like even the base game cots don't clear the flag, in Michelle's defence. Since my main concern when I edited the bed files were the advertisement values, I didn't look at that issue.

The bed and crib lack graphics on the frame. It pulsates in blue. Does it have any dependencies on new EPs or other? I installed all packages: 3x furniture and 12x bedding. But don't have this: ##0x1C050000!phaenoh.smallhousemodels.contemporaryendtable_maple

The code has been altered. She hadn't inserted standard entry and standard exit as complementary, and had some tests that terminated the interaction after the object was set to in-use. He should not attempt to get on the bed autonomously until somewhat tired and can actually sleep, and he can be awaken. If he can't step out of the bed because there is someone standing right by its side, he'll just phase to the ground anyway.

I've never used the majority of the Store items, only the two baby things that added new interactions. Maybe they are not very widely used and that is why?

Back to the bed conversation, the overpowering motive advertisement thing drives me crazy - a lot of the early modded stuff did that kind of thing! Thank you for finding it as I would have no idea where to look.

What does "no failure condition for placing the tile" mean?

I will go and grab the fixed bunk beds - thank you! I had the original Trianon set as well which has the same issue (the bunk beds are cloned from the Trianon originally) - would you be able to fix those too, or alternatively would you mind explaining how it is done so I could fix those for my game? If it doesn't throw an error constantly, then I don't mind if it gets stuck in use when it does error, since that would only happen occasionally anyway.

I didn't even realise that Michelle had done toddler beds. I understand that there are two types of custom toddler bed; one is based on the crib, can't be used by children and some of the baby care mods see it as a crib and make adults use it for babies, which is a minor problem as there are no pie menu options for babies, so they get stuck and you have to move them out with move_objects.

The other type of toddler bed is a shortened version of a three tile single bed; it displays three tiles in game although the third tile is usable by another object, it can be used by toddlers and children but adults don't see it as a bed. Toddlers use the child animations and can jump on it, which looks hilarious because they are too small and go much too high in the air.

Anyway, this is the three-to-two tile bed type:
https://modthesims.info/d/312770/up...that-works.html

http://affinitysims.com/index.php?/...-bed-requested/

It looks like Michelle's might be based off that, since they are all shorter versions of the Maxis beds.

I can't seem to find the original of the crib-to-bed type. I'm sure I had another one previous to the Smallhouse Models version being released, but I can't remember what it was. Phaenoh (the one I linked earlier) says that her bed is cloned from Rebecah's toddler bed, but doesn't provide a link or explain which one. Rebecah's listing on Affinity Sims is hard to search but she constantly refers to "like my other toddler beds". I have no idea XD

Or am I confused?? I'm reading some of the comments on Michelle's shorter-Maxis-beds conversions and people mention the crib interactions, and the baby doesn't go under the covers like they do with Rebecah's original one, and Michelle's screenshot is a toddler crib sleeping pose, not a child bed sleeping pose. well now I have no idea!

Right have to go and chase my RL toddlers but hope to come back to this later and test some of them.

The reserve tile is moved to the spot next to the crib, which fails if the spot is occupied, and the line Find Location For returns false. In the code the red line points to an Error, and the "jump bug" happens. What could potentially happen is that the child waits, does some animations (difficult) and tries again, or at least deletes the tile that couldn't be placed and move on. I don't understand the function of the reserve tile, because it doesn't shoo people who are there out, only the Snap action does.

The bed would only put him to sleep if his energy is less than 20, so it makes sense that he doesn't climb on it earlier. Maybe the author of a new object wants to show that is being used no matter what.

Yeah, maybe that's why they put those advertisements in.

Edit: Apologies jonasn, I hadn't seen your post previous to my really long one. I spent ages writing that on and off and probably missed it! Thanks again for the fix! I will definitely test this out and let you know.

The texture is linked/repositoried to the end table in this set: https://modthesims.info/d/526806/sm...g-room-set.html

For some reason repository textures were really popular for a while, I don't know if that helps reduce texture memory issues.

You're welcome! I'll do it myself for the Trianon beds (both bunk AND lower beds as they all have the advertisement issues) as I've downloaded these back when Michelle mentioned them in the original thread, but I'll also explain how I did it.

In addition to my TTAB and BCON fixes I have also applied the blue flashing fix to the two bunk beds in the set as per midgethetree. The lower beds did not need it.

I have also compressorised them - the filesize went down from over 10MB to just under 1MB. This is something that you should do with all CC you download anyway!

You can find the fixed Trianon beds at the bottom of this post.

Now for my tutorial:

1. In the BCON 0x1001 "Tuning - Sleep", I adjusted all three values to those of a similar-priced bed in the vanilla game. For the Trianon beds, I chose the values 0x19 for Comfort Inc, 0x5A for Comfort Max and 0x1C for Energy Inc.
2. And the same in the BCON 0x1000 "Tuning - Relax": 0x28 for Comfort Inc, 0x5A for Comfort Max.
3. I also changed the Object Data to reflect these changes in the catalogue. I gave all four beds Comfort 3 and Energy 3. This is purely optional though, as the catalogue values don't actually change anything in the game.
4. And finally, the TTAB, where the most magic happened. As mentioned in the original thread, Sleep and Relax advertisements were the worst, but it seems that numbers were simply swapped, but I have went ahead and made those values the same as the vanilla bed, too. Adjust the values according to the bed you are "slaving" from, but in order to not be overly broken, these values shouldn't be much higher than this. Vanilla beds usually only modify the Delta values and not the Min values, anyway!

0x0: Sleep - Energy - Min 0004, Delta 0032, Type 001E

0x2: Make Bed - Environment - Min 000B, Delta 0000, Type 0028

0x3: Jump On Bed - Fun - Min 0007, Delta 0005, Type 0019 (this one is not present on bunk beds!)

0x4: Relax - Comfort - Min 000A, Delta 001E, Type 000A

0x6: Tuck In - Amorous - Min 0001, Delta 000A, Type 001E
- Social - Min 0001, Delta 0014, Type 001E

0x7: Day Dream - Social - Min 000A, Delta 000A, Type 0019

0x9: Read - Fun - Min 0008, Delta 0005, Type 0019

Notes: 0x5 Sleep is the user-directed interaction and thus doesn't have autonomy, and 0xA Wake Up is determined by a Sim's motives and the time of day, thus not autonomous in that sense.
Don't forget to click the button in each row to "Copy motive to all", or else elders, teens and children will continue with their old, broken behaviour.

Do you know what types 19, 1E and 28 mean? The docs only describe up to 16.

I believe the docs to be out of date - all the Type values changed with the release of the Pets expansion, and new ones popped up, and Maxis never cared to update the BCON accordingly that contained the values that are on the MTS Wiki.

What I have determined so far by comparing objects that were present in the base game or up to OFB with their counterparts from newer expansion packs where the Type values were updated:

Type	Old value	New value	Evidence
Nice	1	1E	"Tuck In" interaction on beds (?)
Active	3	23	"Play" interaction on sofas. Further supported because exercise bikes from FT also use type 23.
Lazy	4	A	"Sit" interaction on sofas
Playful	7	F	"Play Computer Game" interaction on computers
Outgoing	9	14	"Push" interaction on swing sets
Neat	B	19	"Use Acne Cream" on mirrors or "Use Bath" on bathtubs

I don't think it's in my power to find any new Sim types that may have been added, sadly. While making my Bathroom Intelligence mod, I was equally stumped as to what type "32" (used for Brush Teeth and Wash Face on the medicine cabinets) meant. That sparked my whole investigation in the first place.

As of right now, I don't know what 1E or 28 mean - I have simply copied the values from the vanilla beds to make the bunk beds the exact same, without a possible chance of differences in behaviour. Any help in correcting the Wiki (because I am aware that basically all objects rely on a correctly set-up TTAB) would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT: I looked at the beds again and compared the Craftmeister Pine Bed from OFB with the one from Pets. While it could make sense for 1 (Nice) to have become 1E (see the Tuck In interaction), it also seems like Maxis did changes to the advertisement beyond just updating the values. While "Day Dream" used to advertise to type A (Shy) and "Read" to type 8 (Serious), both have since become type 19, which would be Neat and doesn't really make sense anymore...
Also, "Make Bed", which used to be type B before, is now type 28, which would contradict what Maxis did with bathtubs and mirrors...

Again, this needs more work, but there have been changes for sure.

Does the type mean a kind of personality, then? (I found the list on the wiki, and I see it means personality and skills) Why did they change in Pets? Because pets have personalities and skills too?

I really need to learn how to mod, because I love all this kind of discussion, even though I'm only managing to follow about half of it. What makes the game work under the hood is fascinating to me. In theory, it ought to be easier than ever now that we have all this accumulated knowledge.

I can't really answer this without describing what the TTAB's advertisement values mean for human Sims. (Pets are a different story.)

Basically, the "Min." value is the advertisement that all Sims consider when an interaction is autonomous. Say you have a living chair and a sofa in a living room together, and the only interaction on them is "Sit". The living chair has a Min value of 0004 in Comfort, while the sofa has a Min value of 0003 in Comfort. When a Sim picks which seating object to use to fulfil their Comfort need, they will then prefer to use the living chair because 4 > 3. If you give other motives values too, they will also consider using the object to fulfil those needs, whether they need both or only one. Of note: The motives you specify in the TTAB don't have to match the motives the object actually boosts. For example, you could give a dining chair an Environment advertisement of 0064 (= 100) and you'd find that Sims will always sit on that dining chair if their surroundings are filthy - even though sitting on that chair will not solve the problem at hand :D

But Sims 2 allows you to personalise interactions a little bit, giving each Sim unique quirks, interactions that only they do, or do more often. That's the purpose of "Delta" and "Type". Delta is the Greek letter used in maths to describe a difference between two numbers. So whatever you write into the "Delta" value is an increase in the advertisement, for whatever type of Sim you specify with the "Type" value.
Again with the living chair and the sofa, let's say the the sofa has a Delta value of 0008 and a Type of 000A (= 10). This increases the advertisement of the sofa for Nice Sims only to B (= 11) instead of the default 6. Nice Sims will suddenly prefer to sit on the sofa, all while other Sims continue to stream to the living chair instead.

Values you can set in the TTAB encompass all poles of a Sim personality and all their skills. There could be more, but these values would be undocumented.


As mentioned already, Pets have different motives set, and I don't know how these work so I leave them be.
It is, of course, possible that Maxis still left placeholders for the poles of a pet personality to be used as Sim Types, just like how you can advertise Scratch and Chew motives to Sims even though they literally can't do that.
But I find it more likely that Maxis has added some additional values so they can advertise certain interactions to occults more than to regular Sims. Pets introduced werewolves. OFB came with servos and Nightlife had vampires, so normally Maxis could've done this change earlier, but for some reason they chose not to?
The exact reason for this odd timing will likely always be a mystery, I'm only bringing up wild guesses here.


And yet, the more I dive into modding, trying to make more and more complex mods and trying to make them actually work as intended, the more I feel there's so much still left to discover in the game to truly understand it.
But at the same time, I'm finding so many small things under the hood that make Sims 2 so special to me. I grew up playing Sims 1 as a child, then preferred playing 3 and, to some extent, 4 before finally having tried all the games once I got my hands on Sims 2, which fascinates me with gameplay depth unseen in all other Sims games to this day. Sims 4 and Sims Mobile give you like ten different ways to talk to a Sim, with little difference in how they affect gameplay. Sims 2 has seven ways to kiss a Sim alone, all of them with their own unique animations, all with different outcomes too.
Sims 2, and Sims 3 to some extent, are made for the people that play Sims for storymaking. Sims 4 to me is mostly a feel-good game stripped of many things that made classic Sims so memorable. It's not bad in its own regard but simply can't keep up IMO.

Of course this is before you start modding the games. All Sims games have amazing mods in any category you could wish for. But I seem to use Sims 2 and 3 mods mostly for pepping my game up with fresh CC, while on Sims 4 half of my folder is dedicated to just making the gameplay bearable.

If I have a subhood I never use, is it possible to safely delete it? After all, there are townies attached to it, so I'd say that's a no?

It's still a very popular thing. It reduces the number of textures the game has to load, as well as reducing the number of recolors needed. Both help to make the game run smoother.

What kind of sub-hood is it. If it's a shopping district (as I believe most sub-hoods are) then I don't think there's a problem. I think you've always got to leave at least one university, once you've added one. And there might be problems with Downtownies and Grand Vampires if you delete the only downtown. But with a shopping district, even if it comes with townies, they become part of the main 'hood as soon as you attach the sub-hood to it. Before deleting any sub-hood, move out any playables living there to the Sim bin, and move any graves or urns to a cemetery somewhere else (the main 'hood or another sub-hood).

Having said all that, I'm not sure there's all that much to be gained by deleting an unused sub-hood. If nobody lives there, and nobody ever goes there, then most things in the sub-hood never get loaded.

Can someone explain what is wrong with these doors? They have the same recolour as the wall, but show up darker.

I've tried messing with the TXMT to fix it, but nothing I did has worked. I thought it should be something I could manage fairly easily. Apparently not.

These are doors repositoried as past of Frac's Stone Superset, but I believe the Simstones door always had this problem (I used it before it was repo'd).

For some reason, the Simstones windows don't have the same issue, but changing the doors to match the window values didn't seem to help. Very puzzling.