I hate the fact that certain sounds are much louder than the others. TV, video games, stereos, the arcade machine (I always sell it at the dorm) and that dreaded carpool honk.

Cyjon made several mods that tweak the way the butlers work.
http://www.cyjon.net/node/42

1. Butler Asks To Fire - Butler will always ask before firing other staff. The way the game works by default, when you hire a butler he will ask if he can fire the maid, gardener, etc. Once you say yes, you can't change your mind later. He will keep firing new staff. Under this mod, he will ask again if you hire new employees. Once you tell him not to fire the help, he will never ask again.

2. Butler Fix - Fixes the "butler won't cook" bug. Also tweaks the butler's logic as to what "food" means, so he won't cook so obsessively. Note that this fixes the bug where butlers wont cook at all. If you simply want them to stop cooking garbage then you need Better Butler Meals.

3. Better Butler Meals - Butlers will cook meals which requires Cooking skill of 3 or more, and will choose only true group meals rather than magically getting multiple servings out of single-serve meals. Butlers will not use mini-fridges to cook, but if you can afford a butler you can certainly afford a full-sized fridge.

4. More Butler Cooking - Butlers look at everyone's hunger levels, not just residents, when deciding whether to cook. (I don't use this one. In my game the butlers already raid the fridge way too often.)

5. Apartment Butlers - Butlers and nannies can now enter the apartments of the people who hired them.

6. No Butler NPC Harassment - The butler will no longer dismiss NPCs who have been invited over socially.

Well there's one good thing about the butler. The gardener waits so long to come over, the yard is overgrown with weeds by then. Nice to have more help with that. Kinda makes me wish we had a Sims 1 Servo option.

I have Daily gardener from Pescado and I have also Butler and servo serving fix, so they will not get that last plate to eat for themselves and I have butler is no nanny because he will get that nanny idiotism if he is.



You can always set the in-game sound settings as you like.

There's a cheat code for the TV volume that you can put in your userstartup.cheat file. I have mine set at 0.2. I think the Maxis default is 0.5. I don't know if this will also affect the arcade video games that came with University.

floatProp tvVolume 0.2


Aaroneous made a mod that mutes the fire and burglar alarms. It doesn't work with CC alarms though, and doesn't mute the sirens on the police car or fire truck.

Quiet Alarms - https://simmanipulator.forumotion.com/t73-quiet-alarms

Would the TV sound be considered music or ambient? well, time to find out.

You've had sims bring the dishes to the second floor bathroom to wash them. Now get ready for:
Sims bringing the food to the second floor bathroom to prepare instead of the first floor kitchen

I've never been closer to killing my sims lemme tell you

I see shenanigans like that with three bolt couples. They'll do anything to be a smidge closer to their significant other. It's a bit ridiculous, but what can you do? They're in love.

You can fill these counters with deco items or functional like https://modthesims.info/d/641083/bo...al-updated.html
And http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...pic,7852.0.html

They may be in love but her husband is off at work and the bathroom is empty, save for the counter and her eggs now

When I know someone has to have made a thing for Sims 2, I just know it, there's no way after this many years that someone hasn't . . . and after much searching I discover that yes, indeed, the thing has been made, and furthermore, I've downloaded it, and it's sitting in my zipped Sims 2 downloads folder waiting for me to decide to install it (again).

The thing in question this time? A fridge shaped like a cooler.

Hi, I'm Sunny and I collect Sims 2 custom content.

I dislike the fact that downtown Sims have to be greeted before they can interact with each other. One of the expansions did this. It tends to result in them going around and greeting everybody on the lot and then forgetting what they wanted to say.

Yeah, even if the Sim in question knows the other, they must be greeted first. Which, I guess, makes sense if you think of it as a "Hey, fancy seeing you here!" sort of thing.

The only thing I find annoying about Downtown, which has no doubt been mentioned already, is that everyone wants to greet everybody. You arrive for some food or drink, but every Joe, Jane, and John want to greet you.

Come to think of it, I think that's just community lots in general

Another thing, which has been mentioned already I think, is as soon as you add a Downton to a neighbourhood, your sim gets strangers inviting them out. I find it more funny than annoying, though.

I actually really enjoy this feature. I mean, sometimes you meet someone and they Facebook friend you and then send you an event invite. Some of my Sims are super social and are like - Sure! And others, of course, think it's weird and stay home.

@sugoisama -That's why I never place sinks with countertops in the washooms though it might be fine if the washroom was on the main floor right next to the kitchen.I only i
use the freestanding sinks in washrooms and sometimes even use them in kitchens in starter homes or as starter furniture.
One annoyance was how I would not find playing the ccampus much fun and it didn't take me long to realize it was because I was always in a race to get the students skilled up to be able to get top marks and there was no time for anything else like having any fun or even enough time to study up.Things just went by far too quickly.I found all kinds of hacked objects that can fix these issues allowing the semester clock to be paused to give the students more time to get things done and even some time to enjoy some of the fun things they would've never gotten to enjoy without the hacks.

Something that annoys me is when I go to the trouble of getting a pet bed and kennel, the damned dog doesn't use them (and yes the bed is the right way round).

If you have AL, sims will be pushed to greet each other that way. Pescado's interactwogreet will allow you to fight, chat, etc. with other sims without having to greet them first.

The matchmaker cannot be interacted with unless you first greet her, which is impossible to do on a community lot in an un-modded game. Pescado's ALfixes includes a patch for this, but has a lot of other features that you may not want. ("8. No longer required to greet Gypsy (impossible) or employees<->customers.") Simler90's Gypsy Matchmaker Fix allows players to interact with the matchmaker without having to greet her first and also stops her from trying to ring a doorbell when she first arrives on a community lot.

Pescado's AL mods - http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/al/hacks/

Simler90's Gypsy Matchmaker Fix - https://modthesims.info/d/633028/gy...hmaker-fix.html

There's a mod interact without greet. I think it's from MATY, that solves this somewhat, but when on community lots sims still have to be greeted, And by the time when in the morning everyone greets everyone else, it's night time. I wish I could remove the greet protocol from the game itself.

That's true, kind of like networking. I do like the feature as it's an easy way to make friends, either to fulfil wants, get a promotion, or just for pleasure. Come to think of it, it's usually a stranger when you first add a Downtown, so it could be a welcome to the neighbourhood gathering.

It just makes me chuckle, that's all. It only annoys me when I get the call when my sims are in the middle of something That's more along the lines I was thinking of when I wrote that section.

body types, hair colors, and skin tones... ugh!

I wish the game had more dark skin tones. #1, #2, and #3 are all pretty light- sometimes I can't differentiate #1 from #2. Luckily someone converted the dark skin tone from Castaway stories to TS2 and geneticized it, so that solves that problem. But I always wish there were more genetic hair colors. I have dirty blonde hair, exactly in the middle between blonde and brunette. I'd love to have Sims with dirty blonde hair. And the body diversity in the game is incredibly lacking. I just wish my Simmies could have more variety in these ways.

The Ottomas just had their twins (clean game) become toddlers, and man are they the ugliest ever!

I was going to let Samantha have another - she and Dora both had wants, and then I saw these children. So hideous. So hideous.

I'd attach pics, but am still playing and needed to tell someone how ugly these children are.

That's what default replacements are for. There are several genetic CC sets which have more than just 4 skin colors and 5 eye colors. I use Sleepytabby's Imperfections set which has 24 skintones and her Natural Elements set which has 55 eye colors.
https://modthesims.info/browse.php?gs=0&u=8793450&f=342


There are lots of others listed at the default database.
https://sims2defaults.dreamwidth.org/

My Ottomas twins were a boy and a girl, who I named Greg and Marsha. Marsha grew up all right, but Greg--phew! He is the homeliest Sim I have ever seen. He's at college now and on top of his not-so-good looks, he wears a neon green polo shirt, shorts, sandals, and one of those fanny packs. He's quite the picture. But don't discount him. Ever since he was in high school, he has gone steady with Victor Loner, and now they are engaged and completely devoted to each other. And Victor (son of Ajay Loner and Erin Beaker) is so, so fine. Probably one of my most handsome kids--it's between him and Marcus Nigmos (son of Ophelia and Gunnar Roque). Wherever Victor goes, there are heart farts, from both the guys and the girls. Greg is one fortunate dude.

Diversity in body shapes is possible. Unfortunately in TS2 body types and skin tones are intertwined. "True" body shapes are determined by the meshes upon which the skin tones are applied if you want the shapes to remain consistent when unclothed. But you can get pseudo-body shape differences by using body-shaped clothing by itself as long as you don't care that your Sims are default sized when truly nude (e.g in the shower). However you do it though, different body shapes does require additional custom content in TS2.

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"Oh, hello dear. I didn't know you were in the bath, just washing a dish from downstairs...la la la. Opps, did you drop your towel?"