I'd still like to know this. I've never seen it work... is there some common mistake I might be making with it? I have created new lots thinking it will not work on old lots, but no, doesn't work anyway.

New Question:

I am having a very frustrating issue with fish swimming in the road or on the land near a lot. I thought I had fixed it by being very careful not to make the pond too deep or too close to the front sidewalk. They stopped swimming in the road, but started swimming in the lot next door to the left. The lot is only 2x2. Is it just a size issue? The pond is only as deep as it needs to be to make the fish show up. Is there some fix for this? It's so annoying.

Thank you so much! I'll give it a go!
And thanks to everyone else who replied too

I don't THINK this needs its own whole help thread, pretty sure there's an easy fix and I'm just being oblivious. Looking it up in Google was no help, just get a bunch of results for how to fix blacked out Sim shadows, lol.

How do I fix this SimPE blacked-out issue? A lot of areas have it and I can't read anything.

In SimPE settings, change the theme to Everett.

One way to get the files is to use Advanced in Object Workshop and providing the Group Number of the file and push the button Open by Group ID. You then get the opportunity to choose Clone or Recolor.

To get the Group Number you can use Tools/PJSE/Simantics Resource Finder:
1. Choose (Text in) CTSS.
2. Provide a search word in the Text Box e.g banner. (Resource Finder search every CTSS and recognise the search word everywhere in the text).
3. Push the Search-button.
4. After a while you got a list of CTSS in game that has the search word. The Group Number is at the left in the line.

If you choose Extras/Preferences, then File Table, click in the space next to H&M and then browse to where it's installed.

why is the ts3 section of this site so dead? why did I decide I wanted to play 3 again? I should just come back home to the lovely wonderful magnificent ts2 section where I belong

The TS3 section is dead? I always assumed the later games would be much more active than TS2, especially 3 since that seems to be the most popular version. I always figured we were the weirdos for wanting to continue playing a 20-year-old game that has two sequels.

I always thought that the age of the game doesn't make it bad. Take the game of chess for example.

Even though I like TS3 and TS4 too, TS2 still has something that the other games don't. :lovestruc

My theory is that people who are more interested in the newer games have moved over to ts4. Ts3 is in that spot where it's too new for the fans of the older games and too old for the fans of the new games. Considering that ts2 was a real turning point for the game series, the difference between ts1 and ts2 is huge, a lot of us want to stick with it. Whereas the transition to ts3 and ts4 wasn't as massive as ts1 to ts2.
It's too late so I'm just rambling anyway

Sims 2 is also cheaper to obtain, and possibly easier to run than Sims 3. Which isn't just a factor of age. Sims 4 is also easier to run than Sims 3. It's also easier to break into sims 2 CC creation than it is for Sims 3 creation, which means there are less people breathing new life into TS3, so to speak.

In my case I always start playing it and I abandon it because it is poorly optimized and I lose hours for things that in sims 2 would take seconds, (Create sims, change people's clothes, change the colors of objects, closes when I edit too many sims or the game is overloaded) I also feel that although there is a lot to do, the sims do not feel as alive as I would like ... Although I recently fixed the configuration in addition to using the lazydutches mod and achieved a notable improvement in performance... The last time I tried to play Praveen I could not save the game and I am afraid that my save is corrupted... I have not opened yet the game since then to check.

Although I have to say that if I keep trying it is because sometimes I have had a good time with the game and I really like the open world despite how bad it goes. Thanks to the fixes I made, my computer doesn't get that hot, but the sims 3 feels like a PC destroyer.

If I think about it, each game of the sims ends up more broken and unplayable than the previous one. EA really is a shame, they are pathetic and obnoxious.

In my case, I've gotten used to the game's mechanics and how the mods/hacks work, so I don't have difficulty in keeping it running. To go to TS3 I'd have to completely restart the entire process with great difficulty and I'm not that ambitious. Besides, my pixels would miss me!

Don't even ask about TS4-I think it's the worst iteration and a complete mess. I wouldn't touch it with someone else's ten foot pole!

TS 2 has more heart and soul in it than the two successors. There's a reason why it's still popular after 16 years.

I used to have fun with TS3 on my old laptop, but the last EP I installed broke the game and I never got around to fix that. I installed my TS3 game on my new laptop (had to do a bit of trickery through fixing the game via Origin because of that broken CD), realized there were things I had to fix to make it look decent, had to deal with Origin again because that setup was all kinds of stupid (hate that thing), did a couple fixes, abandoned the project, and haven't played since. I mean - I could probably continue it, but just... no. Got other things to do. Maybe some other time, but I don't miss TS3 enough.

My TS4 game is more in the play on/off for a few hours here and there, then a long break (last one was a year), update after 10-or-so official updates (because I loathe having to deal with origin), and I still only have 2 of the older EPs (not the "best" ones, but I'm not planning to get more). It's more casual gaming, I don't care much about CC (it needs updating, don't have time hunting down that), and I don't really connect much with the sims. Plus it's got a ton of annoying small bugs. Not huge game-breaking ones, but all these little ones that add to the frustration of playing, and that still are present after said 10-or-so official updates, or appear somewhere along the way of the updates. I don't think I could get used to picture taking and all that works, either. I have tried making some CC for TS4 (mostly because someone wanted 2t4 conversions of some items I've made previously, and I thought it could be interesting to poke around in the programs, since I was already converting the other way). I wish it was as easy making poses in TS2 as in TS4, but I much prefer using poseboxes ingame, and nobody can pry away my OMSPs with sim placement (my biggest annoyance with TS4 and posing sims).

Anyway, TS2 is my fave game of the four we have so far, and I doubt that'll change anytime soon.

I forgot to say that I abandoned the sims in the sims 3, maybe if I had played them at the time, now I would know all the things about the game and it would not feel so uncontrolled and tedious. Living a game helps that when you return to it, it feels like coming home.

Is there any way to stop simfileshare from automatically downloading the second or later time you go to a download page, instead of showing the page?

Most of my memories of The Sims 3 include me pulling my hair out due to having to start a new save file for the umpteenth time.

I don't know what it is about The Sims 3, but it's completely unstable, arguably worse than The Sims 2 in terms of the game randomly corrupting itself. With The Sims 2 I know what causes corruption and how to best avoid it, in short, there is usually a reason why a hood has gone up in flames. Yes, there are definitely times where The Sims 2 just corrupts itself without a reason, but those occurrences aren't as common as they are in the third installment. In The Sims 3 a save file corrupts at seemingly random without a cause all the time, at least in my experience with playing the game.

It's why I often get confused when players say that they're going to avoid The Sims 2 due to how "fragile" it is, but place The Sims 3 on a pedestal and state that the only issue is the lag. For me, The Sims 2 is playable and a hood can last years if you know what to avoid, while in The Sims 3 I'm lucky if a save file lasts me a full week. The kicker is I never know what I do wrong, as I'd just played it normally.

It hurts, because I'd get invested in a family and something always happens that makes me have to restart. The last time I'd played The Sims 3 everything was fine when I left it one play session, I load it again and the save was broken; my sims in the main household couldn't do anything as the cursor was greyed out, one sim was stuck in work indefinitely even if I cancelled the action, and reset sim didn't work. Hopeful, I just played a different household and everything was fine until a sim went into labour... she gave birth to 20 Babies before I gave up on the save. This save was three days old...

Yeah, I had to get that off my chest. I'll stick with The Sims 2 where I like the art style, the sims themselves are more charming, I get invested in these sims, and I don't have to worry about a young hood exploding for no reason. The Sims 3 arguably has more stuff to do, but that isn't saying much when a save is more fragile than the glasses in my cupboard. The Sims 2 has plenty to do for its time and it's the only installment I don't get bored with.

Sorry for the rant, but the topic briefly steered to The Sims 3 and I had to get this off my chest

You've had some terrible luck, CrystalFlame It's more like an exception than a rule, though.

Edit.
Well, I guess, you can play a neighborhood in TS2 for a longer time than a save file in TS3. Even without corruption, the lag gets worse, the saving and loading times get longer, and you have to move. So, I agree, overall, about TS2 being more stable in this regard.

Urk, yes - the randomly self-exploding saves. Another thing I really couldn't deal with in TS3... Mine would usually go up in smoke after less than 10 saves, regardless of whether I saved over the same file or if I saved a new file every time. Never understood what was wrong with that game (and I barely had any CC, so unless I lacked some must-have mods that stopped the game-breaking, I doubt CC was the cause. I barely dared using Testingcheats, because it seemed every time I'd used it even just for motives, my game was ten times more likely to find a way to break or start erroring out shortly after. I dunno if it was just a coincidence, though - I also rarely leave the cheat on in TS4, because it seems like the number of strange things happening only increases. Possibly a coincidence, but that game is so filled with random bugs it could be anything...).

As for open world? Eh. Can do without. I prefer TS2's individual lot saving to open world any day...

For TS2 I've managed to keep the same saves for several years, across a couple computers. Had some issues getting them to work on two other computers, but I think I know why on one of them, and possibly on the other one as well. Overall, TS2 seems like it's a more stable game as long as you treat it right. In most cases it's also possible to fix and stabilize if you get issues.

Does TS 3 have a hack to remove corruption in the saves? Because that is probably why most people's TS 2 games are still stable after so many years-the blessed HoodChecker by Mootilda, plus hacks by BO and others to keep the corruption to a minimum.

If you don't have the tools to stop it with, the corruption will take over your game eventually, sooner rather than later..

Has BO made any anti-corruption mods? I wasn't aware of any he made.

No Sim Loaded: http://www.leefish.nl/mybb/showthread.php?tid=1665

I'd say this is an anti-corruption mod.

A long time ago (years) my game started rolling long blue angled flat ‘water’ across the surf and land of beach houses. Every neighborhood in that game was affected. Somehow I solved it but I don’t remember how. Two days ago it started up again. This time I generated a new vanilla game and copied the camera and config files over to see if some kind of basic graphics problem was causing the problem. It was fine. No water. I began adding the cc from the old game. It took me two days of slowly adding and checking. (I have over 40,000 files). The problem never reoccurred. Finally I moved my main neighborhood from the glitching game to the new one. No beach glitch now at all. The cc is exactly the same. What on earth is up with this?

NSL doesn't prevent any kind of corruption. It just deletes some things that BO thought were making the game slow, and fixes some things that he thought needed fixing. It doesn't fix anything critical, and it doesn't fix anything that's not also fixed by another mod (and none of those other mods are considered anti-corruption mods either). People really shouldn't be advertising feature mods as anti-corruption mods, whether or not you want a feature mod is based on your style of play and people shouldn't be told that those kind of mods are not optional.

jain, my best guess is hood deco (maybe beach waves?) or some kind of lightning or graphical glitch that you haven't found. Maybe there was a strain on your computer, for example.

@Sunrader, no idea about the fish swimming in the road issue--never experienced anything like that. I can only guess it's a height issue. Did you start with a flat lot? Otherwise, whose version of Perfect Garden/Plants are you using? IIRC, the one time I tried it, it didn't work for me (I think I got jump bugs) and I switched to Midge's version instead. So idk if that's your issue, but you could try switching, if you haven't already, or checking for conflicts/changing load order, etc.

As for the TS3 discussion:
Omg, never clicked love so much; totally agree with a lot of what's been said! The lag. I have a decent amount of ram, (16 gb now), and plenty of storage. But if I run TS3, my computer sounds like a truck stop. And I'm surprised that the corrupt save thing doesn't get more mention/complaints, considering the game is so heavily skewed to legacy style play. I'm still mad that the one time I really tried to get invested in TS3 and really explore the features, the save became corrupt/unplayable. I, too, don't use a lot of cc (maybe 2 gb, compared to a 20+ gb TS2 folder), and used even less back then. But I didn't even make it a full generation before I couldn't save anymore without serious lag and crashing. And, then one day my old save just wouldn't load anymore, either! I can't tell you how many times I've lost a save, getting that "this save uses a different configuration" crap message, even when I haven't installed anything. Most of the time I've installed something new, not uninstalled anything, but even then, that's not all that often, so idk why I'd be getting that all the time.

To me, the open world is pretty for a little bit, but really boring after a while. I never, ever, ever thought I'd say that I'd miss TS2 townies, but there ya go. Even in those brief moments when I'm having fun playing TS3 and getting into it, it just bugs me to no end that either 1. The world is empty, and hasn't been properly populated yet--so for like an entire life stage, there's no one around, or 2. There's sims around, but they're so tired and they never want to do anything! They're a pain in the butt to get to show up because of their stupid busy schedules, but when they do show up, they either leave five seconds later, or stand around lifeless, complaining about how tired they are! I just can't seem to find mods to address these issues, even though one of the most basic in game TS2 hacks is to max the motives of visitors. It baffles me. (Well, to be fair, I did find a mod that attempts to get more people on lots, but that causes other issues, because it's outdated. ) Compared to their next gen counterparts, TS2 townies are like a higher life form or something...

Anyway, I didn't mean to get too far into a rant; I know a lot of my feelings have already been said, by me elsewhere, and by others above. I'm just a little miffed at TS3 atm (I spent a lot of time editing an empty town save, so that when restarts/lost saves happen, I don't have to set up all the lots and rabbit holes again, but I lost that save too! It might not be TS3's fault this time, and more to do with a system restore and a lack of backups for a game I'm not too invested in, but still. I'm mad at it. ) But yeah, sometimes I wander into the TS3 section and am surprised at the lack of activity. And more than a few times I've been surprised at the weak search results for something I was looking up; I'm thinking that the TS3 crowd just didn't really hang out at MTS all that often.

Last thing I'll say, though--I find it pretty laughable that anyone would consider TS3 a more stable, or better run game. It's launcher literally encourages you not to run all EPs and all SPs at once, and to only run a few select things at a time. Like, what? This is a life simulation game, not an rpg or something, with different campaigns in each EP. I mean, what, I'm supposed to pay EA to not use the content I paid for, and just let it sit around and collect dust or something? Or worse still, be like: 'Hmm, what EP features do I want to use today? Which furniture sets from which SP or EP do I need to play this house?' Like, gtfo with that nonsense...