Thanks. I tested that and a kid of the same gender did get custom hair, but one of the opposite gender didn't.

They are global, for all neighbourhoods. If you play several hoods in rotation, it might not be ideal. I usually have a separate Sims 2 folder for each of my hoods, as I use different CC and mods for each one, so it suits my way of play.

I live in the inland desert northwestern US, and we have had snow on the hills already this 'fall'. It's okay. (We haven't had even a tenth of an inch of precipitation since June, mind you.)

I feel like Spring in Junior year is a good thing in Uni because that's when anyone who changed aspiration is finding out that their old high school sweetie just doesn't match well anymore.

This thread is getting close to its 1000th page!

Really For me it says page #499?

I have a random question about polycounts.
I know what kind of polycounts are considered "good" or "very high" and so on for hairs (I've tried to mainly add hairs under 15k to the new DL folder I've been working on), but what about objects?
I just saw a nice statue I wanted to download, but it came with a big warning that it was 21k and a mention of another statue with 5k still being a bit high.

So are polycounts for objects measured differently? I would consider 5k a low and really good polycount for a hair (especially nowadays), but apparently it's not considered low for a statue? And 21k is outrageous for a statue? I try not to download hairs above 20k, but would make an exception if it's a hair I really like and I don't remember that causing problems if used sparingly. So would placing one 21k statue on a lot really be so much a worse than putting a 21k hair on a sim? Does it make a difference at all?

25+++k is high for anything. Use very sparingly. If you play without shaders, CAS items don't seem to tackle anything above 30k, and will show up invisible (the limit is a bit unclear, but seems to be roughly between 25 and 30k). If you play with shaders on, the CAS items will usually work fine, though. Buy/build doesn't seem to have the same issue with disappearing items. EDIT: This area and above could possibly also be the reason for items not showing up in family loading screen.

15-25k depends on the item, but is relatively high, especially if you use large quantities of them, so use sparingly.
10-15k depends on the item, but tends to be fine (just don't go completely overboard).
5-10k is usually fine.
5k and below is in the "no worries" zone.
2k and below is in the "absolutely no worries" zone (more so if you get below 1k).

I'd say the same is true for both CAS and buy/build. It's more a quantity thing - you can have a high-poly item (or one or two with larger textures), you can have several, but at some point it gets out of control and you have 100+ items with 30+++k polys and 2048x2048 textures on the same lot, and the game crashes or starts pink-flashing out of exhaustion. Some caution is adviced. Some computers can handle it, some can't.

I was tempted by a 22K hair yesterday but decided not to get it, it's too easy to add on a hair + some jewellery and end up with a 40K walking pixel.

Hmm. That might explain and I've often wondered why one particular long male hair I have doesn't show up for the family when hovering in the hood view and doesn't show up on the loading screen when loading the family. The men wearing that long-hair show as bald but once I get into their lot, everything is fine. Is there an easy way to check the poly count of that hair? Probably a very newbie question but I've never concerned myself with poly counts since nothing I have so far makes the game/machine even stutter (except when someone new comes onto the lot when running 3x speed).

You can usually check polycount with SimPE in the GMDC. The Vertex count usually bugs out, but the poly count should work.

A high poly count could absolutely be the reason why something isn't showing up properly in the loading screens. It usually is those high-poly items. It is a bit strange that we've not really seen it much until 4t2 (and to some degree 3t2) conversions were a thing, though. For whatever reason, these tend to cause more problems than other high-poly meshes.

It's weird, because I've tried to find any other differences between the files (recolor and mesh files) and the only thing that seems to be true for most of them is that they tend to be in the 25+++k area, they tend to (but aren't always) 4t2 meshes, they're pretty much always CAS meshes (can't remember if I've found problem object meshes, but I don't think so), and people who get the problems with disappearing meshes tend to not have shaders turned on.

I'm not sure if there were high-poly meshes from TS2 creators back in the days that were in the 30+k category, or if they had the same problems with shaders, but it would be interesting to know.

The "high poly" meshes back in the day weren't nearly as high. 10,000 and 15,000 were considered high, judging by old threads. Nowadays, a decent computer should handle that fine, depending on the overall size of the Download folder.

I'm not a creator, but from what I've read, 3t2 and 4t2 meshes--especially hairs--tend to be higher poly because of the differences in how the hair was made and how it gets ported to TS2. Apparently TS4 hairs tend to have multiple layers, while TS2 hairs typically don't have much multiple layers, if any. Mind you, I'm talking about hairs by TS4 creators mostly--those can be pretty detailed. I find Eaxis conversions are usually simplier and lower poly. Anyway, it makes sense if objects in the later games were made with more detail, for modern computers better able to handle it. Porting those things to an older game, with different spec caps, would cause problems here and there, especially if creators don't take care to adapt items to TS2.

Other high poly items to watch out for would be car conversions. Some of them can be pretty high and, depending on what else is on the lot, can have trouble showing up.

I know about the layer issue (which is pretty much the only actual difference between the hairs), but there has been instanes of the same thing happening to converted clothes, too, where you don't have the same layer issue.

There's details, and there's unnecessary use of polys. A lot of high-poly items for TS4 I've seen have been high-poly because of the latter... There's pretty much always room for reducing polys when you're up in the 20-30k area, especially when making a hair. I have yet to see a hair that needed 30k or more for any Sims game. Clothes and objects - usually you can make do with less than 30k, preferably a lot less. Often the details are really just a bunch of folds and such, which you can easily do with texture instead. Lowish-poly clothing meshes often have a tendency to animate better than high-poly meshes, too. Plenty of TS4 creators make great low-ish poly content that could fit in with both MM and more realistic gameplay, so there's no reason anyone should absolutely have to make it high-poly. Maybe it's problem in where they find tutorials. If you start out with low/med-poly tutorials that take you through step by step, that's how you'll learn to do meshing and UVmapping properly, and how you learn to add polys where they need to be - but if you start out with tutorials showing you spectacular tricks for how to mesh fast and easy, you'll learn "bad" habits that's going to give you kind of good-looking (if you don't look too closely, anyway) high-poly meshes, but with bad UVmaps and texturing, and with annoying artefacts like bad smoothing. It kinda works for TS4, but those meshes are a nightmare to work with, and TS2 hates them...

I poke around in files a lot. Can't help it. I'm curious

So would that be the "FaceCount" in the Models? If so, then that may explain it. the hair_alpha5 has a FaceCount of 33288 with VertexCount=too many Fsomething (cut off in the SimPE Rcol Editor screen).
The hair doing it in my game is https://www.coolsims.net/index.php/...ms-2/87-hair-80

Face count, yes.

The Coolsims hairs are often high-poly (15-30k area), so that could be one of those that tipped over into too high. Says 25k, but could be a miscount, so I'd perhaps trust the count in SimPE a bit more since it's 7k in plus we're talking about and the hair is doing a disappearing act.

SimPE will give the VertexCount=too many Faces message if the face count is above or equal to 8,192 (0x2000)

Look, guys, I did it! This is a homemade, jigsaw puzzle version of the PV bridge visible from lot view! Squeeeee!

Well done, it looks wonderful!

For the first time in years I tried playing the hood with all the apartments-- brain block from frustration! I know there is a cheat to be able to build - but I often can't get it to work. Mostly what drives me nuts are the other people living there. You can't get them to stand still so you can build a relationship, but they all come in a playable's place uninvited. Kids are in the apartment playground all day and night, but their parents are at work (call social services!). You don't even have a radio on, but neighbors keep complaining; or are they complaining because you left dirty dishes on the table? Like they could even TELL! Even the roommates drive me nuts; their needs don't decay the same; can you have a roommate without an extra bed room?
Does anyone LIKE apartments? Do you require lots of mods to change the stupid neighbors?

No Townie Apt Neighbors - I really like this mod by Nysha as it means it will NOT spawn townies to fill the empty apartments while I'm moving playables in. It would be ok if it'd pull from the sims that are already spawned, but I believe it creates new ones.
No Apt Noise - This mod by Mahris is a lifesaver if you have apts, well for me at least. While I wouldn't mind the noise on occasion, as it's true to life, it can get to be very tiresome very fast so I nixed it.
Landlord Gardens only Communal Areas. - Simler90 was a lifesaver here, or plantsaver This mod keeps the landlord from takin care of any gardening, plants or edibles, that is within the apt's boundary.
Landlord Leaves After Work - Jenna over at InSim gave us this awesome mod that sends the Landlord packing so s/he doesn't hang around and annoy.

I don't play with many apts, but I do play with some so I will keep using these mods to save my sanity :D. There might be others, but so far these take care of the things that annoy me.

When it comes to cheats, while I do have a cheatfile, I keep Sims 2 Cheat Wiki bookmarked so I can always go back to it when one of the cheats in the file don't seem to work. (Which usually is because I spelled somethin wrong :P). I copy the cheat and paste it in the cheat bar to make sure the spelling is correct.

Someone else can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that for apt's you use the base cheat and not the sub cheat. (I have no idea what the difference and I can't recall off the top of my head which one is the right one, but I think it's the base. It's been a while since I built/ remodeled an apt.)
boolProp aptBaseLotSpecificToolsDisabled [true/false] - set to false will make them show up.

I hope this helps some

You really shouldn't (and EAxis designed it to be difficult on purpose!) remodel an apartment lot with sims living in/on it.
Yes, there is a cheat. Changes made with it are not permanent - kinda like on a community lot - and I don't use/have it.
Instead, vacate everyone from the apartment; then go to the apt in build mode, and make your alterations.
You'll have to changeLotZoning to residential (then back to apartmentbase) if you're doing major work.
It's a PITA to keep testing your changes, but it is the best way to make apartment changes.

...And remember to lock your doors - so nosy neighbors Stay OUT!

Good luck, GrammaPat

When you build an apartment you build an apartment base lot, when you move a family in the game generates a clone of the base lot as an apartment sub lot. All the while you are playing a family you are in the sub lot and have no direct access to the base lot. If you were to make major changes to the sub-lot those changes wouldn't show up in the base lot or any other sub-lots so you would lose the visual connection between them, the whole apartment experience could become un-realistic. When you move a family out the game deletes their old sub-lot so a new family gets a fresh new sub-lot cloned from the original base lot. Move all of the families out to remove all of the sub-lots and have access to the base lot again, in buy/build mode.
I don't use apartments very much but if you do then through experience you get to learn what works best and how to lay the apartment out to minimize noise and other problems. Once you get them right the need to make changes no longer matters so much. The few apartments I do use work very well for me without any cheats or mods.

I like my apartments, but I worked on the design for a few weeks to get it right so it works without cheats and with maximum autonomy. I ALWAYS keep a clean, empty residential version in the bin so I can make changes there as I play test. Then, I move the families out of the old and into the new when I'm ready for a new test. All my families are close friends (I also use the no townie neighbors) and I have most everything in the communal areas and the want-satisfying paintings in the apartments (so the kitchen and bath is communal and families will have paintings to stop them wanting to buy those things). Only personal items that can't be shared are in their tiny apartments. I don't recall other sims coming in, probably because there's nothing interesting in there. Even the car is communal, so it's a bit more like a commune than an apartment building, but I like having all the neighbors be playables who are known to each other and the kids all getting on the school bus together and such. Kids all autonomously go to bed about 10pm, iirc.


I almost always have one season per hood. So, in this one it's always summer. In that one, always fall. I don't age sims so life moves slowly for us.

I'm having an issue getting one of the building cheats to work. I looked up a tutorial on roofing and followed the cheats for changing the roof slope angle. The general one that changes the whole lot works fine but I can't seem to get the individual one to work. I'm doing what it said, I open the roof type I want to use and have it ready to place, type in the cheat, then place the roof. No change.

What am I doing wrong?

Not sure if it'll help, but did you see this...
This cheat was broken when Pets shipped - you could change the angle but it would not save with the lot. You must download and install the Pets Patch for it to save properly.

Copied from Sim Cheat Wiki Page

Is there a way (maybe with a mod) I could change at what hour of the day elder sims die of old age? I have my aging mod set to age them at midnight, which I am more than contempt with, but that also makes elder sims die at midnight, usually in their pajamas, and that's kinda frustrating for someone who takes screenshots a lot.