Good Bad news, everyone!

I have returned from a grueling 48-hour adventure deep within the Maxis mines, and have witnessed unspeakable man-made horrors with my own two eyes — the object limit is very real and there is nothing that can be done to fix it! The end times are upon us!

Okay, I'm being slightly dramatic. It could be fixed fairly easily, but not with a simple patch, and likely not without access to the source code (anyone else tired of hearing that excuse?).

The issue is that the limit isn't localised to purely the Build/Buy menu — it's integral to every aspect of the game that involves objects. Here are just a few examples of the game's functionality that would need modifying to remove the limit:

Sim pathfinding and routing.

Mapping tree tables to objects.

Interacting with objects.

Manipulating objects within lists (reading/writing/deleting them).

Objects being unselectable in the Build/Buy menu was also a result of this limit and I managed to fix it very quickly, but because The Sims 2 is a house of cards with the limit as its foundation, everything started falling apart almost instantly.

"So, what is this limit?", I hear you ask. 32,767. Yes, you read that correctly. The game is only willing to accept object IDs up to a meager value of 32,767. In computing terms, this is the maximum value of a signed 16-bit integer. It can store many more objects than this in a list, which is why you can still see all your 4t2 objects in the catalogue, but it isn't designed to recognise this many IDs and thus can't do anything with them.

Why are integers signing things? Are they famous or something?

'Signed' refers to the fact that these are integers (an integer is just a whole number btw) that can represent both positive and negative values — negative numbers have a negative sign before them, hence the term 'signed'. An unsigned integer is therefore one that can only represent positive values.

While they can both represent the same total of different values, the range of representable positive values differs. Using 16-bit integers as an example:

Unsigned: 0–65,535 Signed: -32,768–32,767

This shows that both can represent 65,536 different values, but the range of positive values for signed integers is half of that of unsigned integers. Object IDs cannot be negative, which means Maxis deliberately chose to use signed integers as a way to cut the ID limit in half.

The cherry on top of all this is that the game is manually converting 32-bit numbers into 16-bit numbers to enforce this limit. This is why I could fix objects not being selectable in the Build/Buy menu easily, as all I had to do was patch out the conversion. Could EA do this across the whole game themselves if they wanted to? I imagine so. But then again, if I had billions of dollars, I probably couldn't be arsed either.

What's an object ID?

An object ID is just a number from 0–32,767 that the game assigns to each new object it places into a list, presumably starting at 0 and incrementing by 1 for the next object. It would appear that CC objects are given IDs first, which is why it was solely Maxis objects becoming unselectable after passing the limit.

Sims and objects are stored in separate lists, but I believe they both contribute to the overall limit. My single piece of evidence for this is that I experimented switching between several hoods and observed that the IDs of objects in the Build/Buy catalogue fluctuated across them. Objects in hoods with subhoods attached had higher IDs than in those without.

What was causing the Build/Buy menu crashes?

The same thing I explained in my original post (the game trying to access null pointers), except the creation of these null pointers was no accident and not the result of something going wrong.

The game merely checks whether the ID for the object it is looking at is above 32,767, and if it is, it deliberately sets the pointer to its address to 0. This would be fine, if it didn't then try and access this nullified pointer immediately afterwards!

I'll cut Maxis some slack here, because surely no one would be crazy enough to want more than 32,767 objects in their game, right guys? How could they ever have predicted such a scenario? (2004 was a simpler time).

Wait, so you were wrong about there not being an object limit? Not so cocky now, are you?

Whoa there, cowboy — hold your horses. If I may direct your attention to this excerpt of an email I sent to @teaaddictyt on the 22nd of April 2026 at 13:42 BST:

As you can see, I was right all along!!!

In my defence though, we thought the crashing was the only thing we had to solve, which is why I missed the completely obvious 16-bit conversion that was occurring within the functions I patched. Unfortunately, I am only human, but I understand if you want to destroy all the spockthewok posters I know you have hanging on your walls...

In light of these new findings, if you want to hear my updated opinion on the existence of the object limit, watch this video.

Is your patch useless?

Yes, but also no. It's not fixing the object limit (I should probably rename it tbh), but it is fixing those annoying crashes caused by it.

At the moment, not having the Build/Buy menu crash when you try and use it is the best we can do. It's up to you which you find more annoying — crashing, or not being able to buy x number of objects in the catalogue. Like the 4GB memory limit, this is going to be an additional constraint we'll have to learn to accept :/

Another alternative would be to join me and the 12 other weirdos who play with no CC, and never have to worry about any of this. No? Oh well, it was worth a try...

Will you ever actually fix the object limit?

If it's even possible without the source code, then not by myself, no.

Because of the number of core areas of the game that would need patching, I don't trust myself not to miss something and have the game explode. Unless someone wants to assemble a modding strike force to try and tackle the issue as a team over several months, I'm not touching it with a 10-foot pole (for your safety and for mine).

Should Maxis go on trial at the Hague for crimes against humanity?

Probably.

Anyway, that's all from me, apologies for the false hope :( One small positive is that I did manage to map out a reasonably large chunk of the game's code while I was frantically searching for solutions, which should make my life easier when looking at your requests. I feel like I need to successfully complete some of them now to make up for this dud!

Will

​Tite Kubo gave us peak character designs, banger theme songs in the character books, Spanish guitar leitmotifs, and the highest concentration of audacity in anime history—only for Lord Aizen to assemble the most incompetent squad of dramatic theater kids Hueco Mundo has ever seen.

​Here is the official Espada L Counter & Fraud Watch Breakdown:

However that doesn’t change the fact that fraudka is the funniest thing the fandom could ever come up with

No, like, think about it.

When's the last time you had to actually try to defeat a Legendary Pokemon? No, really, think back. I guarantee, every single last interaction you have ever had with a Legendary Pokemon is you trying NOT to kill it.

You always kill them on complete accident. You're trying to keep it alive on red HP so you can catch it. But you always either crit it, or it Struggles itself to death.

If you're actively trying to NOT defeat something and it STILL somehow loses, then it's probably not that strong.

And every time we see someone in online competitive with like 6 legendaries on their team, they suck ass at the game and lose to some stupid meme strat.

Bro, Arceus in Pokemon Legends Arceus got dogwalked by my fucking Typhlosion. Literally all it takes is a SLIGHT type disadvantage, and they lose all their aura and fold.

And in all the movies, these "legendaries" always need Ash to save them from some big bad villain or something. Like excuse me, are these not elemental birds and psychic dragons, why's a 10 year old gotta lock in for them? Mewtwo being one of the few exceptions, but again, I could boot up the game and walk into Cerulean Cave and dogwalk this guy with either my Charizard or my Snorlax.

And didn't Ash's Sceptile beat a fucking Darkrai?

They're always hyped up to be this super big deal in lore, but in gameplay and even the anime they're these helpless little flowers that constantly need saving and protecting.

There's a reason nobody uses these things, and it's not because they're banned. It's because their legendary status is just a title. High base stat totals be damned, they're just not always viable.

And now that I'm thinking about it, didn't Rayquaza get curbstomped by Diddy Kong and Fox McCloud?