My inspiration seems to be consistently lower than it used to be, and so does the activity with TS2 (both in terms of downloads and forum activity)... I still have lots of ongoing TS2 projects, but I wonder if I should start looking at adding TS3 or TS4 just to have some more variety and maybe find more inspiration again.

Woohoo looks so frenetic. It's got to build body skill. Come on.

I wonder after completing the vampire robot army, what the 3rd 1k sims should be. 1k cats? 1k werewolves? 1k bigfeets? eh I've got 30 more tries to make them.
1k mersims! ... no wait, I already did that.

I always thought it looked painful, and just CRAZY! Wonder how many young simmers have a gotten wrong ideas about "the act". Poor kids...

That was ME!
When I was bout 8 or 9 I started playing Sims (1) on my mom's computer, and back in Sims 1 it was called "Play In Bed". I didn't know much about it, just that couples did it and it sometimes (barely ever) produced babies.
Well one day, instead of "Play in Bed", the option said "Have SEX!" I had never encountered that word before and asked my mom what it meant. She just said, "Oh, it's the same as play in bed."
I didn't think much of it right then, but soon after I began hearing that word in other places. And for the longest time that is what I thought sex was. Two people get in a bed, pull the covers up over themselves, then wiggle around and make weird noises. And maybe there's fireworks.

In this latest round of "Guess What Crazy Thing Zarathustra Is Building Now!!!" based on my over-use of a single object... In my most recently started project, I am using (at a guess) approximately 500+ instances of the 'Retratech Padded Egg Chair" from the dining chair section. As a reminder, the answers for previous rounds of this game have been my Cyberpunk apartment lot (overuse of neon light bar) and my wagon caravan (overuse of ship's wheel decoration)

I was feeling today like I probably have too many mods (not cc) that aren't exactly necessary and that I probably wouldn't even notice the lack of if I didn't have. But idk which ones. Idunno. I've been trying to keep my downloads folder at a minimum these days so I'm always looking to clear things out. There's probably something.

I saw a neat mod tonight, over at GOS. The original object is on another page, with recolors on yet another page, but the original object had to be updated and put on yet another page and now I'm tired of trying to find the damn thing and downloading it.

I wish creators would keep all references of the object in the entire set together, and I know about TOU, but having to go on a wild goose chase to get it is ridiculous! Even though the theme at GOS is 'Scavenger Hunt', this is totally stupid and not worth doing.

And it's why I never get into this type of contest. Just too damn much searching for the thing.

I feel you on that. I mostly stay on MTS for that reason, easier to navigate. Sometimes I'll do a day of exploring tumblrs and GOS and stuff cause they have so much nice stuff, it's just so much work to find and sort through.

I cleared out 5 GB of cc but that's a drop in the bucket and my game crashed about 4 times today. I didn't even touch my mods folder. Sims 2 is a battle sometimes.

I've been having similar thoughts about CC lately. Sometimes I have an urge to take out all clothing CC, mostly when I see someone like Sophie the puffin on youtube, who does really well without any, but always chicken out before doing so. For some reason not with build/buy CC, even though I barely use them because I only download no CC lots and then try to match them with my "builds"

Wants to teach toddlers skills vanished from all parents in my game years ago, and I always assumed it was because of me having deleted the hobby-section of want trees, and I decided it was a price I was willing to pay. Recently brought back the original want trees, and hoped I would see those wants return but they are still missing. So now I'm pondering if maybe those wants just have a hard time fighting their way to the front once you have all EPs with all the branches of wants, and two aspirations on every Sim fighting it out for who gets the spotlight. I should probably test a vanilla environment and see what happens, but then again I can just give those wants in SimPE when I want to so... lazy wins and SimPE it is

But I am very quickly reminded of why I removed the hobby trees in the first place. They really dominate the want panel, even if the Sim only has like 2 points in that hobby. Need to go back in on want trees and block more individual wants. It'd be nice if the occasional Sim said hey I wanna go for a hike, but 100% of sims... not so much.

Less of a thought on the game and more from the community. While reading/watching other people's games, I noticed that we tend to use a lot of the same names. Amber, Oscar, Riley, Rachel, etc. My best guess is that the majority of people playing were around or grew up during the time these names were popular.

Not exactly a sims thought but I'm on MTS because of Sims, so I'ma say it works. I seriously don't like the download page overhaul. I still can't seem to figure out how to view all mods of a certain creator, in a specific category. If I go to build, I get 8 and if I press "see more" it defaults back to all downloads. Why are you making me sift through all uploads to find the one I wanted? Why can't I narrow it down by category?

There's a category sidebar, do you see that on your browser?

I do, but when I click on a category I once again see only 8 things, and if I click see more, it reverts back to all.

EDIT: I tested it out again, and it seems if I do it a 2nd time it will remember the category that time. Stupid amount of hassle to go through just to be able to see X creator in Y category, but nice to know it is possible.

This is how it happens for me, if it does differently for you then maybe there is a bug? I'll show screenshots:


The 'see more' bit would only be necessary when say, I look at all of your game mods- as there are 43 of those. It does seem to me like I have to click many more times to see what I could see with fewer clicks previously, but I do manage to get what I'm looking for- and accurately- with this new way. Maybe if you are not seeing what I'm seeing, or else not happy with the new system, you could post screenshots showing specifics, and post it on the Site issues forum? I've been doing that whenever I have problems, and things usually get sorted pretty quickly.

I posted in this thread rather than site issues for a reason It's super sweet of you to want to help and give advice to maybe get it fixed, but I rather just suck it up and deal with it. Not like Tashi is going to bring the old system back, even if it was far more user-friendly and efficient, and even if he were to fix this particular issue I'd still hate it, so eh. I'll spare him having to deal with a grumpy curmudgeon that's tired of him constantly changing the site for seemingly no reason.

@gummilutt There are many who have already asked about getting the old layout back, but I can see why Tashiketh has updated. The more specifics he has about what it is that is disliked though, the more he can hone it. No worries, but you are not nearly as grumpy as I am, I spend as much time shaking my fistat the screen as I do actually reading things! *Hugs gummi*

You have a point, but I'm not sure "everything" is a helpful hint on what is bad about it

But you did remind me of something I do want to mention to Tashi. I don't get why mentions still result in a private message, when he added the mention alert thing. Kinda weird to get two alerts for the same thing

I'm thinking about making a home for unmarried mothers. Maybe with an older matron type who helps with the babies. Anybody done something similar?

A long time ago I downloaded a populated lot named Bad Girls Club (which I now think was some sorts of corrupted). All residents (who was unmarried) cared for the kids, cooked , did cleaning and throw parties. Playing the lot was amusing. (Today I don't have that lot in my game.)

Not done, but doing. And not so much a home for unmarried mothers as a women's commune, where parenting and childcare responsibilities are shared.

Of course, since it's in my game, progress is very slow. At the moment two young Romance women, Steffi Hentze and Freya Hall, have bought a new build house in Monopolis (which is being developed as a sub-hood of Veronaville). Neither is pregnant yet, but Freya has started a passionate affair with "Rich Uncle" Milburn Pennybags, the billionaire financier behind Monopolis. I wouldn't be surprised if this leads to a pregnancy. I anticipate that Priscilla Hand, a Romance townie (and possibly a fourth female) will join them, and they'll move to a bigger house for their commune.

My original Sims Andrew and his mum Gloria are the inspiration behind this. I introduced them as a teen and his mum at the very beginning of my game, and it quickly became clear to me that they have by far the best relationship between a teenage boy and his mother that I've ever seen anywhere, either in The Sims or in Real Life. Andrew adores his mum and will defend her against anyone who says a word against her. He is both conscientious and popular, especially among Veronaville's large gay community. He works hard at school and he plays hard after school. All in all he's a real credit to his mum. So Gloria (Romance and very outgoing) clearly did something right in his upbringing. Now I've only played Andrew as a teen, but he must have been a baby, a toddler and a child before that. His Mystery Sim father took no part at all in his upbringing; I understand he was a Scottish sailor whose ship was moored for a couple of days in the Downtown Creek, and Andrew was the result of a steamy night of passion between him and Gloria. Andrew's age says that she must have been a teen when she had him. So how did this young single mum manage to bring up her son so well? I think that one likely answer is that she joined an all-female commune, and the other members of the commune made sure they were there for young Gloria and her little son. So my project is to create a similar commune for the present generation.

My 2019 thread on Alternative Parenting Strategies is relevant.

great, now i’ve got Falling In Reverse stuck in my head

Ok, so I haven't played for a while for Reasons, including Heat, Travel, and Long Delayed Big Family Wedding (which made all the Family sims in my RL family happy, let me just tell you, which appears to be every single one of us), and it looks like I'm getting a new-to-me computer in, oh, about as soon as I finish copying All The Things from this one. (So, 300 gb or so.) Not a new computer, but my husband got gifted a newer computer, so I'm taking his old one. He just finished wiping it and reinstalling Windows for me.

It'll still be Win7. I'm thinking I remember Origin did some stupid update that I didn't download because the last time I opened Origin was when I installed UC on this computer, that made internet required for playing, or some such. I know there was an old Windows 7 how to run Sims 2 thread that I'm looking for. But I'm not sure where it is anymore, and I'm still a happy curmudgeon about the newest and greatest nonsense.

The other old computer is better because a year newer, bigger hard drive, and doesn't have the failing power supply issue, and a dual core processor instead of a quad core with more actually processing speed, so it should be excellent. And then all the little monsters, er, teen boys, can go ahead and cannibalize this one for parts for whatever-the-heck they're up to, which is probably Taking Over The World or some such.