I can do the pinky thing, and can, in fact, hook all fingers over each other on both hands so I have four looped fingers on each.

Can also put both heels into my armpits from behind due to hyperflexible hip joints. Yes, this causes commentary of the lewd kind.

Bratz killed Barbie, so they are bad. But creepy dolls are not new. Blair dolls in the 70s are making a comeback. My fave doll as a kid was Tuesday (or Tiffany) Taylor. The larger size had one name, the Barbie size had the other. She had a rotating scalp, and could be blonde or brunette, at least from the front. From the back, she looked like Alexandra from Josie and the Pussycats. The Bionic Woman had skin you rolled up and down her arm to reveal her circuitry. Like an arm condom. The $6 Million (Dollar) Man had an eye you looked through, and his neck cracked when you turned his head. I didn't have Rockflowers or Betty Spaghetti dolls, but they were really elongated dolls with pipecleaner limbs you could tie in knots. Stretch Armstrong was a stretchable mutant. There are Barbies with colour-changing hair you activate with warm or cold water, gears and levers sticking out of their backs, and so on. Bratz just look like a pedophile's wet dream, and the foot removal is creepy, but they aren't breaking new creepy territory. Not really.

Forgot to mention that. Yes, if you are going to have turn-ons and turn-offs, why aren't any of them personality-related? And if you go to the trouble of having zodiac signs, add those in as possible turn-ons. Playfulness / seriousness as a turn-on or -off. Agree about money. Having a job could be a turn-on, making it more useful not to have independently wealthy motherloded Sims lazing about jobless. Having or not having kids. Having or not having a diploma. Having or not having pets. Owning or not owning a business. Being or not being a service NPC. Age groups that appeal or don't appeal to target sims. Eye colour turn-ons and -offs, much like hair colours. Certain skills could be turn ons (like logic or creativity points) or turn offs. Some Sims will like sporty Body point sims and others will like Logical bookish Sims. Sims with similar aspirations might find that more attractive than not, or opposites might attract. Those who don't have the relevant EPs don't get those options. Give a choice of three each, rather than two and one. Hats and glasses are useless, as those can be altered in-game with a mirror. Formal wear, underwear and swim-wear are likewise useless as attractions because some creators can't bin their crap properly and there are few opportunities for unattached Sims to see each other in formal wear or swim-wear or underwear and this trigger attraction. Hair can be, too, but generally it makes more sense to change styles within the same colour bin, whereas hats, especially with Seasons hats coming, are probably going to fark up the attraction coding.

EDITED TO ADD: If you're going to use the groovy Sixties-Seventies social shortcut of "What's your sign?" then at least do elementary research about what signs are actually supposed to be compatible. The game is wrong, wrong, wrong, and learning the new wrong system is annoying, so I don't. Also, in real life, if astrology has any merit at all, your basic sun sign is the least helpful indicator of actual personality likelihoods, and it gets really titchy and complicated with other planets brought into the mix, and rising signs and so forth, so, on the whole, a useless system overall in the game, but moreso if they can't even get the basic stereotypical wisdom (about which signs get along and which don't) correct.

Attraction coding seems, for the most part, totally irrelevant in my game as to whether or not two Sims dig each other or hate each other at first sight. It could be made more useful.

I also hate the 25 points total personality coding / zodiac crap. I should be able to make Sims with more or fewer points as I see fit. I suspect this was done to thwart Perfect Sim personality reversal cheats from sims 1, where you could make a pointfree Sim and then reverse the polarity of the personality points to cheat your way to a personality maxxed Sim. You can still hack this if desired, so making us have to use 25 points exactly is a pain in the rear. :shock:

Or pitching a fit in a room with seven computers and five sims, to the point where they get up from a computer desk to yell at another sim because they want to turn the computer off.

Some autonomous bathroom behavior would be nice for sims out of diapers. How often do adults wet themselves, anyway?

Seasons seems very Vacation-esque to me. Vacation added new destinations with hot or snowy terrains, and Seasons adds a new destination but the option to have hot or rainy or autumnal or snowy interactive environments. Similar enough that I don't want a Vacation EP on top of this one. I'll make my own Vacation areas in subhoods instead. (Actually, hated Vac because it was swarming with annoying child sims, who were next to useless in sims 1, and without build/buy cheat tool, would have gone bonkers on Vac lots trying to use them as is. The mascots were even more annoying than Uni mascots, too.)

I am one of those folks who liked superstar (sorry) but part of that was covered with glamorous items in GL. I like the idea of adding a fame track, but there are more creative / fame tracks than just acting, music and fashion. Famous artists, news anchors / TV stars, authors, activists (Save the Llamas! Suffrage for Aliens! Vampire Rights! lol), serial killers (won't ever happen, but Maxis could sugarcoat this as a Bonnie and Clyde type of super Criminal mastemind fame / notoriety track), cult leaders (part of a career track, true, but underexplored...imagine a commune of tracksuit wearing, trainer-clad Scientologist types worshipping aliens due to arrive on the next comet but preparing to drink the KoolAid if the aliens don't show), performance artists (sims walking around with cans of Spam on their heads, spouting angry free verse in simlish comes to mind), etc.

Both fame and notoriety could be explored, so you could choose to live an ordinary life, or go to either extreme in Simland. Positive fame track would have pitfalls like in Superstar (paparazzi rooting through garbage, taking bad candid photos, printing gossip in newspaper (actually could make newspaper useful, and I hope weather reports are bundled into paper with new EP for poor sims), whereas notoriety could have hidden perks (being rewarded for being a grouchy personality, faster money earning, immediate (trembling!) deference and service from service personnel when shopping or dining, as if sim was a mob boss, etc.)

As far as EPs duplicated from Sims 1, I had to refresh my memory quickly. (Livin' Large, House Party, Hot Date, Vacation, Unleashed, Superstar and Makin' Magic, if anyone else needs a refresher. My memory is swiss cheese lately.) I honestly don't recall what functionality LL added to the game because I bought TS1base and HD at the same time, then DDeluxe and every EP through SS, then MM (at which point I lost interest after three weeks of play).

I think HP has been bundled into the S2 base game and Uni, and hacks apparently exist that make community lot parties possible. It might be nice to make that functionality available officially, or to designate certain lots as Festival lots, where the atmosphere is always rather Mardi Gras / Festival / New Year's Eve in nature. More social interaction success, more bad behaviors, you name it. Themes could be assigned to lots so that Sims visiting lots like Londoste, the fancy restaurant, have to wear formal attire (which would make it actually useful in the game). No formals in your wardrobe? So sorry, go buy one and come back. No tie, no Lobster Thermidore for you. Likewise, gyms would require gym clothes automagically (unless they had a pool, in which case that area would be coded for swimsuits). Beach lots or public pools would require swimsuits.

Hot Date is, as noted, bundled into the new Nightlife. Unleashed is, duh, Pets. OFB duplicates a lot of CC community lot concepts explored in Sims 1 but expands upon them in a new, improved way. I already noted that I think Seasons is Vacation lite in some ways, and it ties in with the Holiday stuff pack. Vacation in the original game was child-oriented, and Family Fun already covered the crapola aspect for build/buy child needs.

I suspect that's why people keep saying MM and SS in these redundant poll-type threads. It hasn't been covered yet like the other Sims1 EPs.

I'd like it to be easier to bin hair and clothes in-game.

I'd like toddlers and elders to be less useless in the game. Why would anyone want to turn aging on for Sims they care about if their gameplay options are diminished? Let elders work, have romances, have special perks, and a useful, non-fugly wardrobe. Make it easier to correct Maxis genetic horrors on toddlers and babies in-game. And Maxis babies are awfully quiet in my game, never crying, bever experiencing needs failure, complacent about being awakened every five minutes by family members, etc. Maybe my Sim parents are godlike natural parents, but real babies cry. A lot. And guessing what the crying means is all part of the joy of childcare. Childcare services that issued warnings pre-snatch, giving Sims a chance to fix neglect states in the household, or only snatched the neglected child(ren) while ignoring the non-neglected would be swell. No slacker nannies eating all the food, playing solitaire, watching TV, pulling puerile pranks, being abrasive in interactions they initiate (sod off and go watch the kid like you were paid to do, already) and ignoring the kids, thanks. Maybe that's just my game.

Being able to walk across the street to visit neighbors within view would be awesome. They are probably saving that for Sims 3.

I'd like other animals, too, namely the ferrets they already have the mesh for. Ferrets are awesome pets. They are like a compromise between dogs and cats and smaller animals like guinea pigs. They eat catfood, play with cat toys, use litter pans, live in large cages like birds or womrats, and can be taught tricks like dogs, wear harnesses, walk on leashes, and travel around in backpacks and purses and carriers like "Designer Dogs" (if one desires). The downside is that some people don't like their scent (neglible if they are cared for), they steal (imagine the possibilities if your Sim ferret started hiding objects under the couch in the game..."Sorry, you can't drive downtown, you forgot to put the ferret up last night and your keys are under the sofa. Go get them and then you can go."), they climb, they are funny to watch when they play (dancing, play-wrestling, rolling over and general spazziness are the norm), and some do bite if improperly socialized. Fail to train your ferret and you'll get bitten, train him or her well and you can go walkies and play with them. To make it more fair, since ferrets combine a lot of cat/dog behaviors, maybe Simferrets couldn't hold jobs like dogs or cats, or breed litters (most are sold fixed in the US). For more SimFerts in your family, you have to buy them.

Ability to change stupid Aspirations. Grilled cheese my ass. I had a diligent, scientifically-minded, socially adept, popular, platinum aspiration, high influence pointed Biology major, and her lifelong dream was to gorge on dairy products. As if.

Also agree that there should only be one mayor, one Captain Hero (or Noble Heroine) per game hood. For mayors, maybe there could be some way to acknowledge equally qualified candidates, pretend there's been a vote, and then (sado)randomly assign a winner or let the winner be chosen by virtue of who has more skills, or more friends, or the highest cumulative LTR scores among their associates.

The fantasy characters are my least favourite aspects (vampires, werewolves, plant people, whatever!), but it does imply that a future EP will have other magical critters or beings, and perhaps that is when MM will be duplicated. If ever.

I've seen players ask for past Sims ages and future Sims ages elsewhere, and that might be interesting. You could opt to start a hood 100 Sim years in the past and grow it, much like a successful SimCity development, 100 Sim years intop the future. Or, more likely and perhaps better, just have separate hoods for those eras. The Medieval furniture would suddenly make a little sense. A kitschy 1950's Sim future with flying cars, rounded plexiglass domed houses and food replicators and clones and metallic outfits might be hilarious. Using collections, you could allow or disallow certain types of content in each hood, meaning no Townie Goopies walking by in neon puffer jackets and surfer shorts in 19th century Simville.

Apartments hav been noted--the Sim Bin now allows families with different surnames in the same lot, and Myne doors allow locking a keyholders, so, technically, you could have lots dedicated to duplexes and individual housing. Downside being that the sims still act as a family unit and screech if denied goodies in inaccessible areas and try to use each other's facilities. Hacks get around this, but it's hard to create the illusion without hacks. "Highrises" can be built with Maxis cheats, but building higher than 5 floors can cause bugginess. It's possible, but not easy to play. True basements would be groovy, too. Lairs / dens for vamps and weres, functional storage for Sims stuff like outgrown baby furniture (I have an attic in one house, so, as my sims aren't sure they are having another baby yet, they have stored the baby stuff rather than selling it back immediately). With weather effects, basements would be protection from windstorms/hail, power outages would require going down there to flick the power back on, plumbing leaks and floods could reduce the value of the property (you have to check the basement once in a while to prevent this), you can store gardening supplies / pantry stuff / pet stuff down there, etc. Not plausible it will be done, but we're just free-associating ideas here, right?

More stability. If your computer has the specs required, the game runs. No problems. No patches that farq the game up worse than before you patched. I read a rumour that some of the issues experienced with Pets is because it and Seasons were supposed to be one EP originally, and some coding intended for Seasons got in, and some coding meant for Pets got left out. It was too big fopr one EP, but too small for two individual EPs, so they piled on other functionalities and released them quickly, within a shorter interval and at unusual times of the year (Pets near the holidays makes sense, Seasons in Feb/March is a bit weird). This may all be completely wrong, but it was interesting to me.

Less trendiness in Maxis clothing / items (and, as seen in SS, characters) and more references to pop culture that make sense internationally. I think worldwide the Marilyn SS made more sense than the Avril and Christina SSs. Andy Warhol Sim made me ecstatically happy, though.

No stupid Maxis headgear / outfits like knight suits, bunny suits, gorilla suits, Riddick goggles, Santa hats (hello, not all of the world celebrates Christmas, and Christmas isn't snowy in Australia, etc.), or they should be hide-able in-game if the user hates them. When you fire up CAS, maybe you can get the option to have a mannequin try on the default outfits and choose to hide the crappy ones, and this could be a separate function from creating Sims. Hidden or transferred-from-normal-category crap would be moved to a bin like custom hair, and you could opt, when creating Sims, not to open that bin section. Would work sort of like collections do. So if you're looking at everyday outfits, no three pages of rabbit suits, and if you are looking at brown hair, no three pages of open and closed knight helmets. Ugh. That's not even quirky-funny, it's just being weird for the sake of being weird.

Just some thoughts.

I think this is the key. I am auto-logged in, as I am sole user and admin on my xp machine. It's only passworded at startup when I am traveling. So, as I am logged in, I see the images.

Try registering, and let us know if that helps. But really, it's not that important to see my images, unless they will help you identify buggy content in your own game visually. If you don't have any grey loveseats from 4esf, or black modernsims.de dining chairs, or the Holly chair from Wallsims, you're safe from these particular borkifications.

THANK YOU!!

Had a memory lapse.

JFADE, JFADE, JFADE. *burning it into my mental harddrive*

I'm not talking about the usual suspects, be they SimPE or SimCategorizer, but other tools that help you with your Simming.

Google "JDirPrinter.exe" for a free tool that lists, in a text file, the contents of any directory. Good for obsessives who want a record of their downloads.

Google "Del.icio.us", a free bookmarks manager. You can access your personal bookmarks anywhere from any computer, and deletions are carried over when you get back home. Useful for me when using a T1 line at school. I bookmark interesting large downloads at home, then find the links at school, download them quickly, delete the link, go back home and the link is already gone, as desired. You can choose to make all, some, or none of the links public or private. You can also find other people's links, and categorize links. Links related to Flash and ActionScript, for school, are thus easily separated from Sims2 stuff.

Tool I can't wait for: I believe someone at MTS2 is working on an easy clothing categorizer that will aid in binning and deleting hair (and clothing?) and I am excited about it. Will be able to move violently pink reds to custom and blondes, greys and other normal colours in custom to proper bins. If lucky, my custom bin will only have fugly hats from Maxis and weird XMS-like unnaturally rainbowified recolours that seemed like a good idea at the time but which I rarely use.

Just signed up to BeLessStupid and saw the downtime memo, came here to delete post. Oh no, too slow. Oh well!

I generally dislike TSR stuff, but the S2C thread (Sims 2 Community Forums > Sims 2 Discussion  > Sims 2 Chat > Why do people hate Paysites?) got me  so stinkin' narked off I came over here to suffer through hours of downloading via dial-up. (Also, someone mentioned SunAir. Gotta see that!)

 :twisted:

Don't know if it's my ISP, traffic issues or a known downtime issue, but I figured I'd alert ye, me hearties, that it was being poopy.

That's bizarre. The images were uploaded and showed to me on site. I'll go look and see if I can figure out what's up.


EDITED TO ADD: They still show up for me, even after dumping my Internet cache and offline files. I don't know why you aren't seeing them, but I have no idea what I can do on my end to help further.

BlueSoup, I think you noted that you were aware of/affiliated with BSB. Are the images showing for you? If you have no spare time to check, I totally understand. It might help pin down the problem Ymits is having, though, and I'll help however I can on this end.

Ymits: If you want a description verbally, I can do that, but much of the modern content looks similar, so I don't know if it will help. The sofa is boxy, two-seater, and a fuzzy mid-grey, and the Stujl is black, has four legs, is a dining chair, with a round seat and a rectangular back suspended by two "metal" struts from the seat.

Another WallSims overwrite: standard Uni dorm chair overwritten by Holly
Chair (ws_holly_chair_mesh.package or one of the recolours (beige / light tan)--wasn't sure, so removed them all (8-9 files)).

Gripes here: http://www.bettersimsbureau.com/forum/index.php?topic=176.0

Image available in above referenced forum thread; tried to post it here and img code didn't work. Sorry.

Other borkinated objects mentioned in same thread are a Stujl chair from modernsims.de, a hair mesh for which I wasn't 100% sure about who to blame, and a 4ESF Living7 Loveseat that eats Sims.

Thanks for the booty in general, and amileegirl's Peggy Hair reviews was also very helpful. Also, if anyone is interested, images of some of the issues mentioned in that thread are shown here: http://www.bettersimsbureau.com/pictures.html

If you weren't sure what a gap looks like (I wasn't), this reveals the gory truth in full colour. The horror, the horror, pass the rum.

Overall this site is a very worthy project, helpful to old and new Sims(2) people, and full of people who make me have to keep Lysol Wipes near my laptop to wipe up sportle-induced gigglespurts. Well, okay, it only happened like that once. But, hey, I'm not easily amused and can normally contain my glee at finely-tuned wit and spite, so getting even one genuine spit-take out of me is pretty darn good. It's worth having the Wipes nearby in case of future beverage=meets-monitor moments.

Also, I grew up in Savannah, mentioned in Treasure Island and home of the world famous Pirate's House (with shanghai tunnels and cranky, drunken, syphilitic pirate ghosts still present on premises scaring the peanuts out of the staff on a regular basis).