Just thought I'd point out that, when I tried to go to thesimsstories.ea.com today, it redirected me to sims.yahoo.com, where it said that, if you register your game, you can download three exclusive items (the drumkit, the karaoke machine, and the club cube).

Now, I'm not saying this definitely means that Life Stories will allow custom content, but it certainly seems like it lends itself to the idea. Just thought I'd let people know.

were you able to successfully install life stories? I am having the biggest issue! It won't go past the language screen

I don't personally have it, and I'm not getting it for myself; I was just checking the website for my sister to get some information on it for her. As it is, she couldn't even find it anywhere yet. I'll let you know if it goes in properly for her once she does manage to find it, though!

I have Lifestories. I've played around with it a bit. The game saves in folders similar to the Sims 2 folders in My Documents. I made a Downloads folder and added several custom objects, skins, clothes & etc. Everything worked fine. Before everyone gets their hopes up, I noticed that the game got very laggy for me after adding about 20 things. I strongly suspect that the the objects, sims & textures are much smaller in size and having the larger meshes and textures in the game bogged it down.

ambers,CC works in LS?? cool!
the lagging might also depend on your system too tho....

My specs:
Pavilion ze5155
P4 1.8 ghz
768mb ram
Mobility Radeon 32mb

I tried a little bit of everything. I tested a custom door, custom window, Numenor's table tv, a custom mirror, a default skintone, default eyes, XM's hair #53, a custom bush, custom makeup, 2 Simchic body meshes, 3 outfits and furniture recolors like bedding. A total of about 25mb of custom content. My frame rate in the neighborhood dropped from about 16FPS to 2FPS and everything in the game was extremely choppy. You can press ctrl+shft+S to see your frame rate and memory usage. The difference I see right away between Lifestories and Pets is that Lifestories uses far less memory, for me 160mb. Running Pets the memory usage starts around 400mb and sometimes pegs out around 650mb. That leaves me to speculate that Lifestories uses more processor than Pets which makes my system choke. Pets can get laggy after I've played for hours, but it don't choke and LS does choke for me with every movement a sim makes. Having 25mb of custom content in LS made it unbarable to play. By choke I mean that if I leave the camera idle and let the sims do as they please, the frame rate stays around 40FPS except with every new animation it drops to 2FPS for a couple seconds, which this happens about every 5 seconds or so. My Pets game don't do this.

Also, I was successful at getting an empty 1x1 lot installed. I used Clean Installer and switched the directory to the teleport folder in the Lifestories folder. I have built and played alot with the 1x1 lot in LS. I only tested out a residential lot and not a community lot because I noticed the com lots in LS don't have a trash can.

When dealing with custom content (and original content, too ), the worst RAM-eaters are the big textures; unfortunately, the efforts that I and other modders continuously make to convince object creator to use the smallest textures possible are sometimes ignored.

On the other hand, big and detailed meshes eat up CPU and graphic resources (I know, this analysis is rough, but gives the general picture).

That's why, in my opinion, CC (if not carefully chosen) might slow down the game; especially clothings (whose nature require bigger textures and meshes).
Probably, recolours of Maxis clothings are better (the mesh is already in game); but in general, I'd say that LifeStories was made to just accept the few new items that EA will release every now and then (unless, of course, you play it on a more powerful PC, but in this case, you should be playing the Sims2 game, not LifeStories, lol ).

Boy these fools have some broke mechines. (Practicing my gangister speak ) My brother's computer could possibly run Life Stories smoother then Sims 2 with 200 custom content installed in the game.

My point is that my system specs are what is required for LS. I can run Sims 2 with all EP's and 4 gigs of cc with no problem, but when I add even one recolor to LS, it chokes. I suggested that the objects, textures and sims are smaller in LS because if you look in CAS, you will notice that the sims' shoulders are very square and their hands are very big. This is not true with custom body meshes installed into LS. I find all of this interesting because I truly expected LS to run better than Sims 2 on my system, after all, my specs are exactly what LS was made for. I'm pointing all this out because I don't think it's a good idea to use cc in LS, at least until research is done and we're told otherwise. I'm just willing to wreak havok on my LS game to help understand.

I think if you're not certain of the content will work, you better don't put it in any folder, untill all research is done...Even if it is just to make certain you don't break a computer...

Oh, didn't maxis say that costum content wouldn't be supported?
(this can means 1 thing: some things will works, other things not).

And DON'T forget that LS is a different game, it might handle a few things differently than the sims2 base game (or EP). One of the main reasons can be because this game should be fully compatible with laptops. (and I believe laptops are not always as strong as one of the latest new top computers.

They said that content from The Sims 2 won't work with LS (which supports the idea that the LS meshes and textures are much smaller files), but there was no real answer as to whether or not you couldn't make content for this game itself. It might require some different tools, though, because the files are a little bit different, but the fact that they're releasing extra items does lend itself to a possibility for custom content.

Smaller files for everything in the game makes sense to me, though, when you get down to it. Not just because the game is set to work on a computer with lower specs, but because (at least in my experience), when running The Sims 2 in windowed mode, some of my larger files have managed to really stall the game's load time where they don't generally when running in full screen. Since The Sims Stories runs windowed, the load time drastically improves with everything being just that much smaller.

It was always expected, from when this line was released, that if it allows custom content, it would need to be different than the custom content we have for The Sims 2, though; that's been proven solidly by the fact that (while it can load that custom content) TS2 content lags the game a lot.

Since it will be some days before I have my hands on this, I can only go by what I see posted and by Numenor's screenshot at MTS2. I saw some screenshots at the Yahoo site, but I am wary of them being culled from the ordinary ones.

I suspect that graphics are being handled entirely through software emulation, to eliminate the graphics card issues. So the CPU no longer can throw off a lot of work to the graphics card. This means mesh face count and texture size count much more than we are used to.

Interestingly enough, software emulation is one of the configuration options for the regular game, although I never tried to use it.

<* Wes *>

Well I think that was something Maxis was lying about. Because I receieved my copy today and let me say I love it. It runs great on my school computer and my brother's computer runs The Sims 2 exactly. Let me just say that I will probably not play The Sims 2 for the entire month until Seasons comes out in March. But at least I have Life Stories to keep me busy.

Anyways, let me say that I have checked the system requirements and they recommend that you have one of the graphics cards that you would normally have for The Sims 2. So all of that talk about no graphics card was nothing other then a complete lie.

I don't have the game yet, but isn't possible that you can play the game without graphics card, but it work better if you would have a graphics card.

Hi,
I got the SLS game yesterday and installed it. I played free style for a short period and tried the cheats typing them in one by one.

The cheats I used where the testing cheats enabled, motherload, and so on. I then checked their "help" and it listed SOME of the cheats in Sims2. All the cheats I tried worked the same in SLS as in Sims 2.

SO, I got brave - I put in Maxis' own custom content for Sims 2 and it all works fine. I also added some other custom content and that works fine too, recolors, skins and so on. For about 159 items and 50mb.

I added the altered camera files and the userstartup.cheat, all of which worked fine. The only problem I had was in the "sensor blur" by quaxi - it made the avatars flash brilliant purple.

I used SimPE to open the package files and that worked fine too - the skins, textures and everything I could see (that I am knowledgeable about) was the same. I am sure though that the behavior and so on probably works slightly different as does each new pack Maxis adds to Sims 2.

All in all tho I would have to say - in freestyle mode, the game is Sims 2. It's ok if you travel alot and dont want to carry that big honkin' desktop replacement around just for Sims 2. BUT, the windowed screen is a pain to see/use longterm and thus far I haven't figured out how to change that. I am thinking it really is only useful for laptops, or the "light" Sims 2 player.


-Hope this info helps, I am moving on in my testing and recoloring for it.

There is an option in the game options to disable windowed mode. I did because I found it annoying that I couldn't use edge scrolling, which you can use in full screen mode.

I just got the Sims life stories, and was wondering; how do you get the old skins imported?

I have already read here that it is not very easy to do, but I have alotta knowledge with mods etc. Just need to know what I need and where to put it.

Oh stupid me! I thought I went through that menu and made all the changes but I see it now.

I changed the windowed mode (thank you!!) - I am way too old to see that tiny screen. One problem tho - when I go out of window mode, even at the highest res, I get blurry screen syndrome. I absolutely hate it. I have tried everything I can think of to get rid or it. Guess off I go to the MTS2 help section, eh?

Anyway, thanks for your help! :gidea:
__________________

SLS Screens (pardon the crappy res): http://surlysims.com/slspages/SLSscreens.htm

I guess I'm mostly interested in if you can add default skintones and makeup. Everything else that Maxis provides I don't overly have a problem with. CC is nicer though

I did. That was the first thing I tried, default skintones and default eyes. They worked great, but as I've stated, I'm not sure yet of any harm adding cc might do.

Apart from the cheats (userstartup.cheat in the Config Folder) and the camera modifications (in the camera folder), I put all custom content (including skins and objects) in the downloads folder. Mine is then organized by creator, and I used the CEP for objects. If you don't have a downloads folder, you can create one - the same as in the Sims 2 game. Make sure you have the meshes for hair and so on, else you will see bald, missing hair and missing parts - I did that by accident. Duh!

So far, I have added 1gb total custom content, skins, meshes and so on. NO GAME MODS!!!

All custom skins and DNA works fine. Does not seem to harm anything at all. Does not affect anything other than the body, thus far. However, I havesome custom content that is causing the game to crash and I am testing why and what - it is not a certain group or anything - but if its messing with the game, the game will freeze or just close on its own. So you will know the problem right off.

Game modifications such as quaxi's blur remover and other objects that can modify the game while playing should be tested carefully! Can't say that enough! (I can't get any of them to work) so I am looking at this as just like another EP, the programming changes slightly to reflect updates and fixes which of course will change all mods that utilize those files.

I am continuing to test various mods in the game as well as creating content specifically for the game using SimPE to see how that goes. Any other comments and such about the testing and using of cheats/mods/etc I will move to MTS2.

Have fun! :wave:

So let me get this straight. Can Life Stories run Sims 2 custom content or not. I am using a PC, I believe it is an HP.

Hacks tested with Life Stories

nowhatsthis (JM Pescado)
dontwaveatme (JM Pescado)
clothingtool (but not globals) (JM Pescado)
asprechargetweak (JM Pescado)
manual-navigation (JM Pescado)
novelprogress (JM Pescado)
lesswhiny (JM Pescado)
noroutefail (JM Pescado)
nospoiledfood (Monique)
TeleporterShrub (Inge Jones / Jordi)
NoSpoiledPizzaSlices.package + PizzaBox.package (??)
backtocasual (Squinge)
MaintenanceFreeAquarium_XPTL297 (XPTL)
MQ_More_Fun_Reading (Monique)
RunHereNoActiveCheck (moreawesomethanyou.com Peasantry)
sleep_anytime (modthesims2.com)
breakfast_at_midnight (modthesims2.com)
Fast_skills (omniloth.net/sims/)
WriteNovelsFaster (Squinge)
djsautorecyclingnewspaper (the non-Pets version) (DJS)
GunMod's Lighting (for base game, NOT for NL)
InSIMenator (UV) v2.5 OBJ Edition - not fully tested but seems to work okay, allows pregnancy past the limit of 4 sims in family
Find a Mate Crystal Ball (OFB version) (TwoJeffs)
MoreFamilyMembers12.zip (Squinge) http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=15442
Paintings Stay Viewable (OFB version) (TwoJeffs)
SmartMilkBoost (Squinge)
Buyable Reward Collections (OFB version) (TwoJeffs)
No Smart Milk Drag -TJ (OFB version) (TwoJeffs)
Self Exploding Bottles (OFB version) (TwoJeffs)
Lazy Anim Fix Only (OFB version) (TwoJeffs)
SameDayAdoptionServiceEP3.zip (Squinge)
Baby Wants Fix (OFB version) (TwoJeffs)
No Whining at Missing Objects (OFB version) (TwoJeffs)
Homework Sometimes (OFB version) (TwoJeffs) - only the "sometimes" part could be tested
Abductions - Higher Odds (OFB version) (TwoJeffs) - couldn't really test this one beyond the fact that no errors are generated when using the telescopes. No one got abducted in two days.
Same Sex Marriage (OFB version) (TwoJeffs)
Triplets & Quads (OFB version ONLY) (TwoJeffs)
AnyLTWforallaspirationsEP3V1.0a.zip (Squinge)
no20khandouts (OFB version) (JM Pescado)
sshack (OFB version) (JM Pescado)
marriage-traditional (OFB version) (JM Pescado)
ffsdebugger (OFB version) (JM Pescado)
autosoc (OFB version) (JM Pescado)
autoyak (OFB version) (JM Pescado)
skillinator (OFB version) (JM Pescado)
macrotastics (OFB version) (JM Pescado)
encouragifactor (OFB version) (JM Pescado)
noagediscrimination (OFB version) (JM Pescado)
noaplusspam (OFB version) (JM Pescado)
marriage-postmortum (OFB version) (JM Pescado)
phonehack + phonehack-talkmodule (OFB version) (JM Pescado)
comm-skilling (OFB version) (JM Pescado)
thefightclub (OFB version) (JM Pescado)
callover (OFB version) (JM Pescado)
debugabductionfix (OFB version) (JM Pescado)

Other items tested with Life Stories

Default replacement eyes
Default replacement skintones

Hacks found to be NOT COMPATIBLE

Numenor_VincentsSimModder (Numenor) - does not show up in game
LotFullOfSims.package (Jordi) - error/reset when clicking on another sim while on bed
College Adjuster (TwoJeffs) - breaks game in several ways!
firemod (OFB version) (JM Pescado) - error... and then fire gets stuck on lot.
noplagiarism (JM Pescado) - not necessary

You can include in the NOT WORKING list the Smart(er)Lights by Dizzy2 and myself: the custom auto-light feature just doesn't work, and the lamps go on and off as in the normal Sims2 game.

Just to clarify this...

You CAN get Quaxi's blur remover to work... The problem is you can't use the Pet's Edition of it... The Sims: Life Stories is not on the same level as the expansion packs. Truth be told, it's nothing more than the base Sims 2, with no expansion packs. To get Quaxi's blur remover to work, just use the editon that's for the Base/University/Nightlife game, not the OFB or Pets one.. I put that, and default replacement skins in, and they worked like a charm, after trying the other editions of Quaxi's blur remover...

Frankly, I think that's the key to content, and hacks.. If it was made for the Base Sims Game, (or maybe even up to Nightlife Exp), it should work, anything made for OFB, or Pets is most likely NOT going to work.. (Mileage may vary), Granted, the blur remover, and replacement default nudes are the only things I've attempted to add.. though I wanna add some new foods, and other things...