Hi, Fi! I’m an old TS2 player super tempted to play again, and I have what might be a rly silly question. I installed the UC last week and spent some time playing premades, but it’s only this week that I found out about clean hood templates & how susceptible the game is to corruption. So my question is: do you know if I need to do a complete reinstallation now before I can safely replace the hoods, in case the one I’ve played in has become corrupted? Thank you so much in advance for your time!!

Hi there! Ahhhh, this question has been sitting in my inbox for awhile, I’m sorry. :’D I’m not sure what you ultimately ended up doing, but just in case, here’s my two cents~

There are two types of corruption, game corruption and neighborhood corruption (you can read more about it HERE). As long as you haven’t done anything during your gameplay so far to cause actual game corruption (corruption of the game’s actual program files), a complete reinstall shouldn’t be necessary. Neighborhood corruption shouldn’t require a complete reinstall, but depending on the degree of corruption, you may ultimately have to delete the neighborhood. Some neighborhoods remain playable for months or years following an “incident” that causes corruption, so even if you know you did a no-no, you don’t necessarily need to start over immediately. 🙂

SO, if you haven’t become too invested in your hoods yet and don’t mind replacing the neighborhoods with clean templates, you can go ahead and do so. But you shouldn’t need to reinstall the whole game, if that’s what you’re asking. 🙂

Maybe a strange question, but what’s the largest amount of cc you’ve had with your game still running (at least relatively) smooth? I’m getting back into the game but can already tell I’m gonna need a BUNCH of default replacements before I’m satisfied, and our computer specs are similar, so I figured I’d ask!

Hey! Hmmm, well, my game runs pretty smoothly regardless of the amount of CC (I just like to keep it around or under 10 GB for my own sanity/catalogue browsing/etc.). I start noticing a bit of a difference in load time when I get to the 12 GB or higher mark (which is where I am currently… in the middle of a cc cleanout, heh). Honestly, though, it usually always loads up between 20-25 minutes. It may be different for other people, even with similar specs, because load time is affected more by the amount of files (not so much their file size), how deeply you have everything subfoldered, if there are any special characters in the file path, etc. @dramallamadingdang has a post about it HERE, if you’re interested!

As far as keeping the game running smoothly, this was the singular best thing I ever did. My game almost never crashes (even on large lots with a lot of Sims present… maybe a bit laggy, but no crashing!). So as long as you have more than 2 GB of RAM, give it a shot! 🙂

quick question: do the system specs in your FAQ still apply or have you changed/upgraded anything since then? also, do you still use windows 7 or similar? I do and I’ll need to switch to windows 10 eventually and I’m terrified already :/

Hey anon! Yep, everything on that page is still current. I’m still running Windows 7, too. I’ve heard Windows 10 horror stories, but there are lots of people running the game on Windows 10, so that means there must be a solution! 🙂 Leefish is a great place to look for answers, and (if I recall correctly), a good number of Windows 10 issues stem from SecuROM. So if you remove SecuROM (~~or you ran the game update on Origin that removes SecuROM although people experienced issues with that as well~~), you should be well on your way to a lag-free, enjoyable TS2 experience!

Do you know any neighborhoods that are populated already with nice sims? I just created a lot of sims myself to populate the town but I realized when I finished that I didn’t have my notownieregan mod in my downloads folder.

Hey anon! I’m sorry, but I think I might be misunderstanding your question a bit. If you made all those custom sims yourself to populate a fresh, clean hood, you could just add the notownieregen mod and then start a new neighborhood. It would be free of automatically-spawned townies, allowing you to add only your own sims to the hood.

Unless you didn’t save the sims you used to populate the hood that’s already been infiltrated with spawned townies? In that case, you could always extract them using this method (you can extract and save any in-game sim in bodyshop, allowing you to edit and re-introduce them to any new neighborhood you want!).

If you don’t want to recreate or extract all the sims you made and just want to start playing, MTS has a couple of pre-populated neighborhoods (just look through the tag, they’re usually clearly labeled if they’re inhabited or not!). Other than that, the only one that specifically comes to mind ~~that I’ve wanted to try but I can barely handle my own neighborhood heheh~~ is Europa by @katatty. I’m sorry I don’t have more specific suggestions, I’ve never downloaded/played a custom pre-populated neighborhood before!

If I misinterpreted or didn’t answer your question, feel free to send me another message for clarification. 😀

hey fi! i’m super sorry to bother you but i was wondering if you had any tips on making new hoods look pretty w/ hood deco and making the lots look laid out nicely. sorry that this is a lot to ask, i’m just really stuck.

Oh gosh, I’m like the worst person to ask ahahah :X There’s really no rhyme or reason to my neighborhood layout! I don’t have my game open at the moment, but if I did, I’d show you some views from the less scenic angles lmao (there are so many bald spots right now because I’m trying to redecorate with all the cool new deco that’s out!).

My neighborhood terrain is roughly divided into a “downtown” area, a suburban/residential area, and a more rural area. This kind of helps me plan where I want the lots to go – for example, I wanted the nightclub downtown (since it has an abandoned-factory vibe), I wanted the cafe and the diner in the heart of town, I have the church, school, and park in the residential area, etc. I build all the lots in my test hood, save a clean copy in the lot bin, and then I’m free to play around with it in my main hood. So usually what I’ll do is pick a place I think it’ll work, enter the lot, and see how the surroundings look from lot view. If I don’t like it, I’ll move the lot. 😛 Took me a couple of tries to get the placement of the park right!

I kind of follow the same “method” (if it can even be referred to as such) when placing hood deco. I basically just haphazardly place buildings wherever they’ll fit, then I’ll enter a lot and see how everything looks from lot view. If a building is too low-res or obtrusive or doesn’t really enhance the ~atmosphere~ I’m looking for, I’ll swap it out for something else. 🙂 Once I’m happy with the deco in the surrounding lot view, I basically play Tetris to fill in the gaps with whatever will fit! 😛

Then there’s trees. Boy, I hate placing trees. Luckily, my neighborhood terrain came with a pre-decorated version with plenty of trees, compliments of Voleste! ❤ But, of course, I always wind up adding a few more once I have lots in place. I tend to use the tall pine-y trees (~~I had quite a bit of Baileys tonight and I’m blanking on the name~~) because I like the way they look and give the neighborhood a ~mountainous foresty~ atmosphere, but ever since Criquette released such high-quality seasonal trees, I’ve been liberally scattering them through the hood. 🙂 After that, I just add little details where I see fit. A carousel here, a billboard there, and STRING LIGHTS! STRING LIGHTS EVERYWHERE!

That’s really it, I’m sorry I couldn’t be more useful. D: It’s really just a bunch of moving things around until I’m happy with how it looks (or until I inevitably change my mind again :P). Other people are loads better at decorating hoods – some people have the patience to place roads, and embankment pieces, and railroads, and gaaaaah. *____* (as an example, see this hood by @speakinginsimlish! It’s one of my favorites :D)

Have fun, and don’t get discouraged! Some people (i.e. me) find neighborhood decorating to be a bit tedious, but with a bit of fiddling around I’m sure you’ll find a setup you like! ❤

Hi, how do you place ceilings? I follow all the steps but they won’t appear. The flooring won’t even preview if I hit shift. I have all sp and eps, idk what I’m doing wrong.

This message has been here for awhile, so I’m sorry for taking so long to respond. I’m sure you’ve figured this out by now!

If not – please forgive me for stating the obvious here – but did you make sure the ceiling button is toggled on?

Again, this is not meant to insult your intelligence or anything! This is just the only other thing I can think of. (And believe me, it’s very easy to overlook the obvious – ask anyone who was in Sims Chat the day I freaked out and thought the game had stopped reading my CC folder, turns out I had somehow unchecked the button when you load up the game that says “enable custom content”….).

I’m not sure if there’s a keyboard shortcut or something, but I find that the ceilings accidentally get toggled off for me from time to time. 🙂

Hi Fi! I saw on one of your last posts you talked about a breastfeeding mod… I wanted to install it in my game but I’m kind of a affraid since it’s a social plug in… can you help me somehow?

Howdy! Gosh, this message must be old, I’m sorry! :’)

So, regarding BO’s breastfeeding mod (which is a fixed/better version of Squinge’s mod): hmmm, I’m not sure why you would have any reason to fear installing it (apart from potential hack conflicts, but BO disclosed the most likely culprits in the original post already). You can just pop the file into your downloads/mods folder. 🙂

But it’s always good practice to make a backup before doing so (as with trying anything new in your game, especially when it comes to messing with mods or neighborhoods). That way, if anything does happen to go wrong, you can simply restore your neighborhood from the backup. 🙂

I’ve been using the mod for quite some time without any issues, but if any other users of the mod (or mods/social plug-ins in general) can think of anything else that anon should watch out for, please feel free to chime in and let me know!