Most of the skyscrapers I've been around have been office buildings. Put shops on the ground floor, an observation deck on the top, and everything in between can be offices.

Randomly wondering while looking at clothes in Bodyshop. Is this actually how fat sits on the body, with a dip in at the bottom of the waist then butt? Looks weird to me.

Fat morph is really unnatural in TS2. I wish someone can make default replacement for that but also that means replacing all clothing meshes... Silly Maxis designers.

@Zarathustra at the observation deck area you could make it into so many things- a rooftop garden, nightclub, bar, restaurant. Maybe have it look like offices towards the bottom. You could even have most of the middle floors be dummy floors and focus on the top of the building.

I had been wondering about about this for a long time now but never bothered to bring it up and hadn't seen anybody bring this up but why is there delay before a teen wraps their arms around an adult or a child while hugging? I had recently found out that it usually doesn't happen when you make them do a different interaction then direct them to hug but when they hug another teen it seems to work perfectly fine. The other ages don't seem to do that but what's the deal with the teens? Is it a bug or intentional to make the teens look cool to make them stand out from the other ages?

Does anyone know how to make custom display shelves hold food? For example, I've got Veranka's Delightful Dessert Display and Leefish's add on Decra-Display, but neither can hold Exnem's food. The food places in the regular display shelf just fine though, so I'm guess it's the shelf that I need to fix.

Why can't Crepes Suzette be sold in a bakery? Sorry if I've asked before, memory of a fish.

Hotels. Office buildings. Most of the office buildings in my area lease space to all different businesses, with 1-2 per floor. My building has government offices, architects, accountants, lawyers, insurance, and a doctor's office. Plus a gym and a cafe in the basement. It's not 20 floors of one company.

I've always felt that fat female Sims (teen and older) look kind of nice and curvy, but fat male Sims just look awful. So while I often just let my fat girls be, I immediately put my fat boys on a regime of exercise and diet!

As for myself, my body shape has recently got to look unpleasantly like the Maxis male fat morph -- I believe still like the Adult one -- hopefully not yet like the Elder one! And I haven't been as good at putting myself on an exercise and diet regime as my Sims. I don't think my figure goes in just above my bottom as the Sim in your picture, but I'll take a look in the bathroom mirror tonight and let you know. (I definitely won't be posting pictures!!!)

Actually my ideal of how I would like to look is much the same as the standard Maxis slim male bodyshape. No wonder I'd rather look at my Sims than look in the mirror!

@Charity I'm glad to see you back on the forum with one of your quirky and entertaining little posts. I've been missing them lately. I trust you're keeping well. One of these days I'll clean out my In Box and send you a PM.
I wish I could lose weight as quickly as my Sims can!

Yeah, my stumbling block is just finding the right mix of things so that it still feels like a believable building, without having 80% of it given over to various office spaces (which don't really do anything interesting as far as gameplay goes, either to visit or to own as a Sim-owned business)

Is merging CAS content and object recolours a good idea? Has anyone else tried it? I am trying anything I can think of to reduce my long 12 minute startup time.

I always merge my CAS content and nothing bad has happened yet. I also merge wallpapers and flooring so I won't lose them. As for build/buy stuff I keep them separate, I think it has something to do with the MMATs but I'm not too sure.

From what I've read if the package you're merging has MMATs, then you'll need to give them "Unique Instances" for the game to recognize all the recolours.

Ah yes, that's what I meant. Only thing is I tried doing that a few times before but the recolors never showed up, I think it was because I merged the recolors with the mesh before I gave them unique instances but I can't say for certain.

Don't they already have unique instances? The game already recognizes them as unique when they're separate, and if you extract them and put them in the same file I don't think that's going to change much unless you want to make them unique from the original recolor files.

I do wonder if the "fix integrity" step may not be needed, but I'm not sure. Personally I don't bundle files, and I'm not planning to start doing it, but if anyone care to test it out, maybe it could be worth a round of testing?
(Make sure to clear cache files after you're done bundling files, though).

Also, if the game crashes after bundling and compressing, try deleting caches. The creator of the compressorizer has said in the manual that compressing/recompressing files (bundled or not) can cause the game to crash because of the cache files (but deleting caches should fix it, and there's probably nothing wrong with the compressed files).

How does an aging mod affect premade Sims?

I use an aging mod and I am thinking of adding subhood versions of Strangetown and Widespot to my custom hood but am unsure of how it would affect the Sims in those hoods. Will the mod apply to pre-made Sims like Johnny Smith and Rhett Hart after their next birthday, or will it only apply to the Sims that are born in game?

Here's tutorial for both CAS and object recolors. As for is it a good idea? Yes and no. If you're only playing the game with those files yourself and never plan to share anything, go for it, no harm done and it'll likely improve the loading times. But if you want to share Sims or lots those would then include in all the bundles files with them and cause tons of file bloat and unneeded files to be included. Though of course if you keep two folders: one with merged files for playing and another with separate files and use the latter when preparing things for sharing it should be fine.

Any aging mod will only affect those growing up into the next age-IE, from child to teen (not before) teen before adult, adult before elder, on their actual birthday.

So Johnny Smith will become an adult in the same way, but when he ages into the next stage, it will kick in.

The game recognizes them as unique because they're in different packages, but if you bundle a bunch of them into the same package, and they all share the same instance, there's going to be a conflict.

I bundled all of my stuff, but it was so long ago that I don't remember if it made a significant difference in load times.

The MMATs. Of course. Took me a while... For some reason I was thinking about the other resources

My brain has been in "tractor on the motorway" mode lately. The lightbulb only came on when I realized packages with double subsets get MMATs with 00 and 01 at the end. Opened a few separate recolors and realized all the MMATs had identical instances, so those would absolutely need fixing.

Fat female sims often look better than me lol. I remember one of your sims who had short denim shorts without a fat morph, who had a rather unfortunate accident when he gained weight and only his top had the morph. XD I'm glad those shorts have morphs now.

Haven't been playing much Sims lately, because an old server I used to play on in NWN opened back up, but I'm getting back into stuff. We're doing okay, managed to avoid coronavirus so far. Hope you're doing well too. I missed you and your sims. I was just looking at some of my old uploads and I found the shorts that Andrew wore for his attempt at a daily clothing challenge. He must be in Uni by now.

@BeckyBoo8, ditto what FranH said, but if you want your age mod to kick in immediately, use Chris Hatch's Age Correct (original post here).

As promised I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. I do go in a bit at the waist like Charity's Sim, but it's less pronounced. For comparison I made a whole family of fat Sims, and it seems to me that the waist is less pronounced in fat teens and adults than in children. But the biggest difference between my fat (male) Sims and fat me is that their bottoms stick out further. Which probably makes them a little bit more attractive. But since I've already said my fat male Sims look awful, what does that say about me and my figure?! I really must start eating less and getting more exercise!!

Meantime I'll go and nibble some food to take my mind off it. ;(

I always delete my chache files before play, I got into the habit of it ever since I had TS2 not launch properly and found the cache files would corrupt themselves causing the issue.

As for compression and merging, I haven't had a crash yet. Compressed about one third of my 8GB CC, and merged a lot loose walls and floors (Over 2,000 files) I had sitting around from lots I downloaded. I haven't tried merging object recolours or CAS content yet.

I remodeled the Hans' Trap Door Corp as a kind of head office for the local mob. Above the foyer and clothing boutique, there's an employee office floor, the boss's office suite on its own level (with a secret room for money trees, and a holding cell for recalcitrant competitors), and a luxurious apartment for the boss to stay in. The apartment is mostly for looks, although with mods my sims can sleep there. They can also watch the large TV of course, and admire the artworks. There's also a nightclub, restaurant and observation tower. Some of these extend over a couple of floors.