TS2 Simblr

⊹・ starting from december 21, tumblr is expanding its list of banned tags on its ios apps to comply with app store’s (new?) guidelines. ⊹・no official list has been released detailing all the tags that have been banned. however, @bannedtags has compiled a list of known banned tags, which is linked at the bottom of this post.

⊹・sadly in the mix are tags such as #mine, #my stuff, and #*mine, all which are commonly used among the editing community, as well as some tracking tags such as #bbelcher. ⊹・for content creators who use such tags, this means that their posts (and any reblogs of such posts) will be unavailable to be viewed on the ios apps from anyone’s dashboards. ⊹・however, the posts are still viewable if you go to one’s blog directly or if post notifications for a certain blog is turned on.

⊹・if you are a content creator using one of these newly banned tags, rather than using mass post editor to delete & add tags, tag replacer is a far easier tool to use. ⊹・a popular tag used in the editing community that has not been affected (yet) is #*, which you may consider using instead.

tldr: the Internet Archive/WayBack Machine is super important in term of archived content, billions of stuff are on there, and with the current event happening in the world like stated above,without this tool, it will be hard to properly document what took place. It will be easy for certain people to rewrite history. Dont let them.

DONATE HERE (post dont get much exposure with working links sorry)

 archive.org/donate/

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

IF YOU CANT DONATE THEN PLEASE SPREAD THE INFO

THIS IS FOR SIMS 2.

Overshirt Edit

I had recently downloaded @julietoon‘s TS4 version. And thought I could recreate it since @roguebotanist converted this outfit.

This is for adult male and female. Morphs included. Comes in 16 colors. Separate->Tops Files are compressed.

DOWNLOAD Alternate

Hey y'all, I thought I'd write a lil update on how on the archiving operation for Garden of Shadows is going.

Let's get one thing out of the way first: we are trying our utmost best to save as much as we can. But as you may know, Garden of Shadows has been around for a very long time, which means there's a humongous amount of cc tucked away in every corner of the forum. This makes archiving the mediafire cc on GoS extremely draining to do.

At this moment we have too few hands (it's mostly I, Fir3princ3ss, @asimplevampire and @simnostalgia ) doing the archiving. It's very slow going and at this pace we will lose a significant part of the cc on GoS to the Purge.

This is why I'm reaching out to ask y'all for help. Please follow the link to this Spreadsheet and pick a section to work on. If enough people help, we can save it all.

Please start as far back as you can. Creators from 2019 may still be around, but those from 2010 may not. When you're done, upload the files to a file host of your choosing and put the link in the Spreadsheet too. This way we can avoid any overlap.

Please. Help us save the MediaFire CC.

@gardenofshadowssims @sims2packrat

Info and downloads under the cut!

AUGH

Is fixing hair meshes challenging? I am sick of gappy necks and hairs that aren’t available for all ages.

Open hair mesh in SimPE, extract the affected ages, import the first one to Milkshape, hide other groups except “hair” (since that one usually should be the scalp) in groups tab choose the hair group and hit comment-button to open them:

Make sure the NumSkinWgts: line says 2 or 3 (2 is enough for scalps but you can use 3 too, 1 however will cause gaps like that) hit ok to close the comments.

Using select tool set to Vertex option, choose these vertices shown in red in picture below (for males it’s one more of the bottom rows too. Sorry this particular scalp is bit weirdly shaped, I just grabbed the first mesh I found from my downloads and it ended up being this deformed one ^^; ):

Open up Joints tab and under the vertex weights choose head & neck for the options then set them both to 50 and hit Assign button at the bottom.

To make sure it stuck turn on the Draw vertices with bone colors to see they’re different color from the rest of the scalp:

then just export it and reimport via SimPE and that should take care of it. Start new file in Milkshape and rinse and repeat the steps for each age.

                   How l got Sims 2 to run on Windows 10                               (a tutorial for stubborn idiots)

                  From installation to playing the game and beyond

I don’t know if you know this, but trying to run a 15 year old game on a modern computer is not so simple! Luckily, there are many others out there who are still fond of TS2 who have found a way to make it work on Windows 10, despite our computers resisting us so much for doing that.

I have made a list of the steps I took to get my Sims 2 game to run on my Windows 10 laptop. I have also included explanations as to why these tips help your game install and run successfully (curated from my many weeks of frustrated trial and error). There were many sources used to help make this guide; please reference the links I’ve included if you need more information. 🔊 I am not an expert. This is just what worked for me. Though this post is lengthy, it is not all-inclusive. TS2 is an old game that will require a lot of technical fussing in order to run and look good. Please do so at the risk of your own sanity and your computer’s health. 🔊

I hope that these tips help you!

PART 1: MAKE IT RUN

1. Install The Sims 2 base game. 

I used my CD’s to install my game, and you can use the discs if you have them. Some simmers are absolutely against this when your system runs Windows 10, but I’ll address why I chose this method and why this was not an issue for me in #2 below.

Note: If your laptop does not have a CD-rom drive (most new systems with Windows 10 do not!), you can purchase an external CD-rom drive. They are very affordable, and in my opinion, this is safer than using a CD crack or questionable download to run your game. 

Some tutorials about installing TS2 on Windows 10 mention something called Origin where you can purchase and download the game, but I am old and I don’t know what that is. Go ahead and use that if you’d like.    2. Download the TS2 Patch.

Patches fix issues and glitches that EA had found in the game and in previous expansion packs after they’d been released for some time. Each time a new expansion pack was released, you were required to download its patch, or the patch would be a feature of the expansion’s installation. 

Now that TS2 is over a decade old (and the exchange no longer exists, RIP), these patches have been combined into just one patch. 

Follow the instructions given here to install the patch. If you think you can figure that out on your own, here’s the direct download for the TS2 Patch.

The other reason why you need to download the patch is to avoid having to install your expansion packs in the “correct” order. Prior to the patch, this was important to do to ensure the packs installed correctly. 

3. Install each expansion pack as an administrator. 

This is a fail-safe to ensure that there are no issues when installing each pack. 

Personally, I was getting this error when installing FreeTime and University Life:

This error message was preventing me from installing these expansions at all.  You can learn more about why you may be receiving a message like this by watching this YouTube video. But for the SparkNotes version, it has to do with Windows 10 trying a little too hard to protect your computer from malicious software (which is what your computer thinks your old-as-hell Sims 2 expansion packs are) with its built-in Windows Defender program. 

By installing each expansion pack as an administrator, I was able to get rid of this error message.

4. Play in Windowed mode as an administrator

It is extremely common that once you install The Sims 2 in Windows 10 and try to play it, that you get this error:

First and foremost, please make sure that all of your drivers are up to date. This can help remove this error message, and is just a no-brainer for optimal gameplay.  However, one way to get around receiving this error is to play the game in windowed mode. Please follow these instructions for playing in windowed mode. I don’t know why this works exactly, but I can assume that by playing in windowed mode, the computer has to do less work to run the game. 

You might as well run the game as an admin, as long as you are in the .exe’s Properties! Follow the instructions to do that here.

When I did both of these, this error message went away and the game booted up just fine.  If playing with the smaller windowed screen bothers you, try something like Fullscreenizer. It will take the windowed game, and make it fullscreen.

PART II: MAKE IT LOOK GOOD

So now that you have the game up and running, you find out that it looks terrible! The graphics are bad, the resolution is small, and you feel like a fool for putting in hours of work trying to run a game that looks worse than ever.  There are several things you can do to resolve this.

NOTE: This reddit thread cautions against you using Graphics Rules Maker if your system runs Windows 10. I have had no issues with Graphics Rules Maker and my Windows 10 system personally, but please read this, as it contains a lot of helpful information so that you can make an informed decision. 

5. Download/update the Graphics Rules.sgr and Video Cards.sgr for your game

This requires you to be comfortable with messing with the game’s files. If you are a nerd who is ready for Big Brain Time, go ahead and read up on what the Graphics Rules sgr file is right here.

But to make it short, a sgr file is something that is included with the game files, that contains the “rules” for running specific video game card models with your game. 

Why do you need to know about this? Because The Sims 2 came out in 2004, so some newer cards are not listed/recognized in the .sgr files at all. If your game cannot recognize your graphics card, this will cause issues with poor resolution. Like wearing glasses with the wrong prescription for you, so to speak.

The Video Cards.sgr will have many kinds of video cards listed in it. If yours is not listed, please follow this tutorial to have it added to your Video Cards.sgr. When you open a sgr file, it’s usually in the Notepad program, and the sgr file can be edited this way. Or, if you are not quite ready to do that, just download this Video Cards.sgr that contains most of the newer (and older!) video cards. Please read all instructions in this thread carefully.

Also, celebkiriedhel at LeeFish found that when Windows 10 came out, that texture memory for INTEL cards could not be found by Windows 10.  What they have done is made an updated version of Graphics Rules.sgr to replace the one that comes with the game. You can go to the forum thread to download that, or you can download that right here

~~~

To install new a Graphics Rules.sgr and Video Cards.sgr, please follow these steps very carefully. This involves replacing a game file, so please make a backup!

Find your program files for EA GAMES. These will either be in This PC/Windows/Program Files or This PC/Windows/Program Files (x86). Once you find EA GAMES, navigate to your most recent pack. For me, that’s E99 (Sims 2 Store Edition Ultimate Collection). Open your most recent pack and click on TSData/Res/CSConfig. It should look like this:

Take the new (or edited) Graphics Rules.sgr and Video Cards.sgr and let it overwrite the old one. Then load up your game!

6. Install the 4GB Patch Find the download for that here A big issue with running The Sims 2 on Windows 10 are graphics issues (Purple soup? Flashing pink?) and crashing. The 4GB Patch helps with this - it’s an excellent tool that people can use for many older games, not just The Sims 2. 

Crashes can happen because your game thinks it is out of memory. No more memory - the game has nothing to run on.

The Sims 2 is an old 32 bit game that it only recognizes 2GB of virtual memory, but it is capable of recognizing much more. The 4GB patch allows your TS2 game to access 4GB of memory, which helps improve graphics over all. By allowing your TS2 game to recognize 4GB of memory instead of 2GB, the chance of crashes are reduced. 

Note: You should ONLY use the 4GB patch if you have a 64-bit system and more than 6GB of RAM. You can find out if your computer has this by following the instructions here. If your system is running Windows 10, your computer should meet this criteria.

To check if the 4GB patch has applied, locate the file My Computer/EA Games/The Sims 2/Logs and then click on the document that has the name of your computer, followed by a string of numbers and then “config-log”. Open this document.

Mine is called “LAPTOP-E1JVCC8N-config-log”.

If the 4GB patch is working, you will be able to see that Memory and Free Memory start with a 4.

7. move the .exe file from the TSBin to the CSBin

The 4GB patch is an excellent tool, but it is not perfect. This YouTube video was invaluable to me in understanding how the 4GB patch works, and how it can malfunction.  This is what worked for me when the patch was not applying, and what Jessa explains in the video: Find your program files for EA GAMES. These will either be in This PC/Windows/Program Files *or* This PC/Windows/Program Files (x86). Once you find EA GAMES in this file, navigate to your most recent pack. For me, that’s EP99 (Sims 2 Store Edition Ultimate Collection). Open your most recent pack, and click on the folder TSBin. CUT (don’t copy) the .exe file from the TSBin to the CSBin. Then, update the shortcut of the program (aka “.exe” file) on your desktop. (this would be the “Target”, or what your shortcut links back to). To do this, right click on the TS2 shortcut on your desktop, click Properties and then the Shortcut tab.

My “Target” looks like this: "C:\Program Files (x86)\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 University Life Collection\EP99\CSBin\Sims2SC.exe" -w”

The 4GB patch should apply. NOTE: You will need to move the .exe file from the back from the CSBin to the TSBin when/if opening and using the Graphics Rules Maker. The Graphics Rules Maker won’t be able to find your game if you don’t. Just remember to move it back to the CSBin when you’re all done.

8. Open Bodyshop; it will make the GB patch apply Okay, this is something that I have not seen posted anywhere, but is something that I figured out by accident.

I was tearing my hair out trying to figure out why after some gameplay that the 4GB patch was not applying. I tried everything I could google; but nothing made the 4GB patch stick. I’d open my config log time after time, only for it to say “2048MB” for the Free Memory and Memory each time.

Then for an unrelated reason, I opened The Sims 2 Bodyshop, did what I did in there, and happened to check my config log:

O.M.G

I have no idea why this works, but it does.  Now, every time before I open my game, I open Bodyshop first. There’s no need to have any CC the Downloads folder in The Sims 2 file when you do this; it does not seem to affect this, and then Bodyshop loads super fast. The 4GB patch applies every time, and my crashes are 0 and glitches do not happen! Amazing. ~~~

For even MORE fussing with your game files to get TS2 to work on Windows 10, check out the following posts:

The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection: Increase Resolution Guide by Wee Albet

The Sims 2: Fixing & Improving The Graphics by Jovan Jovic

If you have a Nvidia graphics card like I do, check out iCads’ post about their Nvidia card tweaks. I *highly* recommend this one!

Black boxes under your Sims feet? There’s a fix for that

An helpful resource to Stop Sims 2 Purple Soup or Pink Flashing Crashes on Windows 10 and Modern Hardware with DXVK . Please try all of the above before tackling this one. An excellent wiki made by the reddit group Help for The Sims 2 is also very useful and contains a lot of the same information I have listed here. The page Getting the Game Running is a great place to start if you are installing the game.

THIS IS FOR SIMS 2.

SP16 Pajama

This is for adult female and male. Morphs included. Comes in all original EAxis colors. Categorized as pajamas.

I made separates of the top and bottom. They are categorized as everyday and pajamas. There is a shadow on the back side of the bottoms. That is a part of texture and I was too lazy to edit it out.

DOWNLOAD

I decided, since my Spooky Dip Gift is much larger than it was when I did these screenshots, that I would be okay with having a sneak peak of two of the items. :)

This is a 4t2 conversion of NitroPanic’s Ripped Dress. It comes in most of the original swatches (some were too similar so I skipped those).

It can have transparency issues at some angles, but I hope that isn’t a huge turn off for most.

It is available for AF and has both pregnant and fat morphs.

This is a decorative overlay with which you can visually change the shape of the pool.

- you must have a file - Lagoon_DecoPool_01 MASTER-mesh for the rest of the overlays to work correctly, since the rest (SLAVE) take textures from the MASTER object.

- the object has two recolourable subset:

1.the very of the pool

2.floor around the pool (the floor hides the tiles of the pool, which should not be visible to get the desired shape)

- to cover the floor around the overlay (if you need a larger area), you will need floor tiles from the Pool tile set “Lagoon”

-  there are many recolor

- overlays are in the section Shopping -> Decorative -> Miscellaneous

Price 50 $

- the set also includes: white repainting of the slide and springboard, invisible repainting of the stairs (for the pool). As well as partially invisible repainting of the Jacuzzi SPA. The Jacuzzi will have to be installed with the codes [moveobjects on] and [boolprop snapobjectstogrid false].

- there is a collection file

MDP’s 4t2 Shirt Button Open for CU (requested by anon)

Now you have it for the whole family! They have fatmorph, come in MDP’s 8 and Esotheria’s 25 recolors. As usual, you can choose if you want them repo’d to the AM ones (that you can find here and there), or not :)

Credits: Eaxis, MDP, Esotheria, AstraeaNevermore, BustedPixels

Download MDP 4t2 Shirt Button Open CU Repo’d - Alternate

You can get more information and download conversions of Wings’ ON1120 hair here