Getting Emotionally Attached to Pixels

I've also already mentioned that PT#9 and Johnny are tall (6ft6-ish to be precise), but what I didn't mention was that Jill is also pretty tall compared to other girls/women in Strangetown. Jill stands humbly at 6 foot after hitting puberty, placing her exactly half way between her parents' respective heights. Jill does wish she was little shorter but there's no changing that without drastic measures.

Unlike his PSP counterpart, PT#9 is fluent in Simlish (shock horror, I don't agree with the PSP lore for a change). But, the thing that makes him stand out is that he doesn't use words that a typical native/fluent speaker would choose. Like instead of saying "be careful" he would say "apply caution", or instead of "what did you have for breakfast?" he'd say "what meal did you consume at first light?" Whatever he says, you can guarantee he's using Simlish in an interesting/creative manner that perhaps follows the grammatical structure of the language used on his home planet. And yes, no one corrects his usage (expect Buzz).

While we're still on PT#9, he understands "Pollination Technician #9" is a bit of mouthful, but he'll only accept "Pol" as a given name, he's not interested in a more human sounding name, he's proud of where he's from and already 100% convinced he's blending in well without one (even though he's very clearly an alien). Though sometimes he does lie about what "Pol" is short for, he does a sense of humour after all.

Jenny Smith doesn't have a lot to do with her brothers for a several reasons, mostly the age gap that basically made her an only child in the family dynamics, and then the lack of common interests with her brothers. But, she knows that her brothers would be obsessed with PT#9, and while her husband would happily answer all of their questions, she knows that the list of questions would be never ending. There'd always be a new question or something her brothers would want more clarification on. Sometimes you got to protect your family from your family, y'know?

At the start elementary school, everyone wanted to be Johnny's friend, everyone wanted to be friends with the green kid because they thought he was cool. But by the end of elementary school those friendships disappeared except for a select few, as biases and xenophobia started creeping in, something that would follow him throughout his life. Heartbreaking, I guess we can blame the Grunts for that.

Johnny, even with his average grades gets into college/university on a Sports scholarship. Personally I see it for basketball, but it can be for whatever sport suits the plot. I like the idea of it being a team sport so Tank Grunt can be Johnny's rival while they still have play on the same side. But it's more likely to be swimming.

I don't know whether this happened in other people's games, but after aging up without Ophelia Johnny would still have thought bubbles about her. To me his means Ophelia is his soulmate either platonically or romantically depending on the story you want to create. If they break up there's no hard feelings and they do remain friends, but things are awkward for a while afterwards.

Like their mother, Johnny and Jill have some contact with their uncles, but they mostly ignore them. This is their choice as Johnny and Jill think they're weird, and don't like the questions their uncles ask about them or their biology. Johnny normally texts back with one word answers, or emojis. Jill doesn't text back at all.

Jill is the primary reason the Smiths have multiple fire extinguishers and fire blankets around the house. Jill has good control of the pyrokinesis now but when she was little she was just starting fires left right and center. PT#9 and Jenny even took fire safety classes. PT#9 wasn't aware pyrokinesis was an ability his species had so it came as a surprise to him too.

Speaking of Jill's pyrokinesis, she has accidentally used it in front of Buck Grunt when he refused to play dolls with her. Buck has never disobeyed Jill since. Jill's just grateful Buck has never told his dad.

The eyes on the back of Jill's head are non-functional, as in she can't use them to see. They can still blink and move, but there are no advantages to having them. Jill hates them with a passion.

One of the reasons Jill was fine with being trapped at Division 47 (in the PSP game anyway) was because Buck was there, even if he doesn't make an appearance in game. She had a friend behind enemy lines with her. She even had Ripp looking out for her.

There are two main reasons the Smiths ended up trapped in Division 47. PT#9 considered Buzz a friend and in naiveity trusted Buzz's judgement. Jenny, having known Lyla Grunt, trusted that Buzz wouldn't betray her. Both of them were wrong, and Johnny can't forgive them for their misjudgement, it even affects his friendship with Ripp.

Do you use the NRaas mods? Has the information on the NRaas website and forum ever been useful to you? If so, a moment of your time please!

I’d like to share the current situation with Simblr – which you can also read about directly from the site owner here: https://www.nraas.net/community/topic15428

While it seemed like we were entering an era of old-internet revival and indie websites in the fight against the dead-internet, a significant road block has emerged. Prices have inflated drastically for server parts, memory, storage, and server-hosting itself. This puts all non-profit online communities in peril.

As a result, the site owner has opened a Patreon so that the community can help cover the costs of keeping us online.

Important clarification:

The NRaas mods are NEVER going to be paywalled. The project will remain open-source and free for everyone. Donations are optional.

These mods are still in active development! The site and mods have been maintained by Chain_Reaction since Twallan's retirement, providing countless updates and support. Lots of cool stuff over there if you haven't updated in a hot minute.

There is no pressure to donate if your situation does not allow for it. Thank you for the consideration!

Long post ahead with information on the situation and some incentives for reaching membership goals.

Awhile back, @marticoresims came up with the idea of making families and homes for the Pleasantview townies, and I thought that was very cool. I thought it would be fun to have what she created in my Pleasantview instead of leaving its townies in immortal purgatory.

This is a subhood (N007), so it will go in your C:/ (or wherever you set up your games)/Program Files (x86):/ EA Games/The Sims 2 Open for Business/ (or if you have the EA version I think it might be in the Fun With Pets Folder under EP3)/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate. This subhood will NOT show up without this mod by Mootilda.

All credit goes to Marticore, and thank you to @alienara-simblr for teaching me how to do this in Sim PE! It's much appreciated. :-)

→ DOWNLOAD (MF)

Soooo... I didn't intend for two highly requested fixes for The Sims 2 to drop within the space of a week and a half, buuuut...

Here's where you can download an experimental patch to fix the so-called 'object limit'!

https://github.com/spockthewok/TS2ObjectLimitFix

(Ultimate Collection only at the moment, I'm afraid).

The good news is:

Both @lordcrumps and @teaaddictyt have tested it with stupidly large CC folders and report that it works.

There isn't a dissertation the length of Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' you need to read through to understand wtf is going on.

The crashing wasn't caused by some hardcoded object limit at all! (That I know of).

An explanation of the issue for programmers:

And for everyone else:

The code for the Build/Buy menu was missing basic checks to confirm that the data it was trying to do things with was actually valid. No, I'm not joking.

Basically, it appears that all of the objects you can buy in the game are stored in something you can think of as being like a big, long list, which grows in size with the more custom objects you have.

The only purpose of the code that this plugin patches is to sort the items in the list into some kind of order. This is done by assessing if the value of the previous item in the list is larger than that of the item currently being looked at, and swapping their position if this is true (also known as an insertion sort).

In short, the game wasn't asserting that the data it was about to compare for sorting was valid before accessing it, and then promptly blowing up when it tried to do so and discovered it wasn't.

I imagine that the odds of the game making an oopsie and dumping some funky data into the list increases with the number of objects it is having to process - this might be why this issue only presents itself to those using multiple GB of Build/Buy CC. It was much easier to patch the code encountering the bad data within the list than to try and hunt down the mysterious culprit putting the data in there to begin with, so this is all the information I have at the moment unfortunately.

Either way, one of the first things you're taught when learning to code is to ALWAYS check that the data you're operating on has been initialised (i.e. it holds some kind of value). I guess someone at Maxis must have skipped that lecture :D

Is the 255 objects per subcategory limit theory true?

The Downloads folder I was using for testing had ~672 objects in the Deco/Misc subcategory (Maxis objects included). With the patch, I can freely navigate throughout the entire subcategory with zero crashes, so I guess not?

What about the whole OBJD limit thing?

People have varying beliefs of what the limit on OBJDs might be, but HCDU reports my Downloads folder had an OBJD count of 20,787. Again, without the patch the game would crash when switching categories in the Build/Buy catalogue, with the patch, no crashing.

If you want to hear my opinion on whether such a limit exists, watch this video.

Do I even need this patch if I don't use much CC?

As it adds some fairly important crash-prevention checks to part of the Build/Buy menu's functionality, I'd probably recommend using it anyway, just to be safe - we all know how much this game loves to crash!

Aaaah! I'm still getting crashes with the patch!

I'm aware that a few of you CC addicts out there have Downloads folders larger than the total size of everything ever uploaded to the internet, so if you still experience crashing in Build/Buy mode with this patch, please take a look at the mod's GitHub page and send me over the information requested there. Fingers crossed that shouldn't happen, but if it does, I'll try my best to investigate :)

Anyway...

Will

The fix itself (along with the thesis for those interested) can be found here:

skater boy johnny inspired by the lovely @simm-mouse (the post) and some other skater boy johnny post i saw but forgot to save

EP Build Project Part 1: Riverview - Big Show Venue

The final Showtime lot for Riverview, a big show venue. This has actually been uploaded onto MTS for a little while, but I was waiting for it to get out of the queue bypass, and after about 8 days I forgot to keep checking. I didn't want to just use one of the shells, as they would stick out too much, so I built one based on the event center in my city. Again, it is only loosely based off of it, as the real deal is far too big to accurately build in the Sims.

I have play-tested it to make sure it's functional. Unlike the shells, you can view inside the building at all times (I've placed level skip markers, so only the first level can be viewed). However, like the shells, only the stage can be interacted with, and only during a show, making the lobby, restrooms, and dressing room purely decorative. The only major issue I had was that the proprietor decided to hang around the stage, and since that was inside the building, they could no longer be interacted with. I managed to fix this with a mod that enables me to place the proprietor marker, so the proprietor will now stand outside near the front doors.

Exterior

Front

Back

Interior

Floor Plan

First Floor

Second - Fifth Floors

Bonus Pic

“I’m never going to get rid of you, am I?”

“Not after that.”