If you had to pick between two, so far I’d recommend Nightlife over University, however University also has a few features in it that I would hate to be without; namely the ability to get degrees (and therefore get jobs in fields that are otherwise unavailable, as well as start jobs higher up the chain than unedumacated Sims). There’s also the additional wants that going to University makes available, which helps out a lot. The downfall to Uni is that the additional gameplay can get a little repetitive after a while…
Sorry, that was in reply to Zebra’s question…
Other University features worth having:
Lifetime wants are awesome - fulfill a lifetime want and your Sim is platinum forever. Lifetime wants include Become Criminal Mastermind, Become Captain Hero, Marry Off 3 Children, Graduate 3 Children From University, Celebrate Golden Anniversary, Max Out 7 Skills, Have 20 Simultanious Lovers. Their lifetime want is chosen randomly when they pick their aspiration and should relate to their aspiration.
The “Hang Out” interaction is invaluable for teens and young adults. A group of them can lounge around talking and it’s a quick way to make and improve friendships.
Musical Instruments. In addition to the piano that comes with the standard game, University adds a drum kit, guitar and bass guitar which your Sims can play solo or as a group. They are very fun and so your Sims enjoy playing them. The downside is that - even in their own homes - when they autonomously start using them, they go with the Perform option which means they put out a tip jar, and then it takes the cursed things ages to check for tips when you tell them to stop playing.
The Ressurect-O-Nomitron lets you bring back people from the dead for a price. Scrimp and you’ll get a zombie.
The antique camera lets you take photos of your sims that can be hung on walls or you can stand them on tables. This is awesome because you can capture moments with it like you can with the paintings, but you don’t have to wait forever for them to finish it.
My Showbiz sims always want plastic surgery when they become elders, and I’m only too happy to oblige. My Sims will shortly be featured on AwfulPlasticSurgery.com. In the world of aging beauties trying desperately to cling to their youth, lips and eyes can never be too big. Gorgeous.
Very true, and an admirable system. But with one disadvantage—you don’t get to keep them alive on starvation rations, existing for only to suffer for your amusement, in a ghoulish half-life.
Someone really needs to make a SimGibbet.
Well, i made another house, inspired by the SA article linked above, and on the fourth floor, i’m building a “labratory” to perform evil experiments on Sims, and created a horribly disfigured Sim (Reg Shoe) (looks similar to Marduk in the article, but with the alien skin tone and black eyes) to seduce a cloned/age accelerated Juliette and Hermia Capp, after a whirlwind romance, Hermia is now pregnant with Reg’s babies (yep, she’s carrying twins, should be really interesting, to say the least, to see what the end results will be…)
i walled off a section of the room with the “plexiglass” fencing, and used the InSimenator hack (a multipurpose hack that allows you to control almost everything in the game) to teleport over 2 of the NPC burgulars, when they’re 'ported over they don’t burgle the place, they act like normal sims, i used the moveobjects cheat to drop them behind the plexiglass partition, and i put the cheapest fridge and a microwave in the partition, just to keep them alive, i wanted to see how long it took before they were at each other’s throats
problem is, Juliette (yep, messing up Veronaville…) wanted to get to the cheapo-fridge to make her dinner, even though she has the top-of-the-line fridge in the kitchen on the ground floor…
so i had to delete the thieves, the fridge, and the microwave, all because little Ms Juliette was too frakkin lazy to go down one floor to the good fridge, NOOOO, she wanted food out of the hideous green monstrosity
later on, that afternoon, i noticed another cool little random event that makes the game feel so “alive”…
Juliette was in the shower, enjoying a nice relaxing shower, when Reg came into the bathroom, he went over to the tub, as he turned on the water to fill the tub, Juliette screamed in shock, and jumped out of the shower, turned and glared at Reg, then ran over to scold him…
…turns out when Reg turned on the hot water for the tub, Juliette got hit with a blast of cold water, and she didn’t take kindly to this…
Heh, putting tiny little details in like this is what makes the game so damnned addictive…
I’ve been trying to get some of my Sims to spy on Mortimer in order for him to come slap them. The purpose being to watch him not get to his target. You see, the telescope is on a balcony and whenever anyone uses it during the day I remove the balcony’s door! 
This is killing me! I really want to be playing the Sims 2! I played the first Sims to death, usually staying up way too late trying to get *one more * skill point…
I can’t let myself by The Sims 2, though, or I’ll never find time to study.
I’ll just live vicariously through you guys, ok? Torture your Sims and tell me all about it!
Thats it. Im getting Sims 2.
sigh
There go my studies. They won’t have suffered that badly since after I discovered Grand Theft Auto.
Well, the Gallumbits family (Eccentrica and her two daughters) got burgled, cop caught the burgular, i paused the game to determine the name of the crook, once he was arrested, i decided to “take the law into my own hands” as i have no confidince in SimCity’s Finest
i created a 1X1 box out of the clear plexiglass fencing material on the front lawn, used the InSimenator to beam the burgular over, paused the game, and used Move_Objects On to drop him in his standing-room-only cell, he has no room to walk, the only thing he can do is rotate in place and stamp his foot in frustration and cry, he’s on display for the whole town to see, as a visible deterrent to crime…
“don’t want to end up like this?, then DON’T COMMIT CRIMES!, Caprica has a ZERO TOLERANCE policy on crime…”
Yeah, but if you don’t feed him, he’ll die before he generates a knee-deep pile of trash and his own waste that he’s forced to stand in as he prays for a death that will never come, denied even the escapes of suicide or catatonic insanity.
I suggest putting the next one in a 1x2 cell, with one of the tiles taken up by a small table, on which you can deposit starvation rations a couple of times a day.
I have been playing with Nightlife the last week or so, and have been having a problem with it. I call up a Sim, invite them over, they show up, I greet them, and they say “Oh, look at the time!” and leave. Doesn’t matter what time of the day it is, they leave right after saying hi. Occasionally, if I call a second time and invite them, they will come over and stay. This is very annoying. :dubious:
Hmm, sounds like a close relation to the Headmaster bug, where if you invited him over for dinner before 5 pm (which meant he’d come the same day) he’d show up, and then leave right away, saying that the family wasn’t the quite the school wanted to associate with. But if you called him again immediately after he left, he’d come back and stay.
Does it happen with more than one family? I think (not positive) that the headmaster bug was somehow tied to the lot, or in some way structured that moving to a different lot would fix it for me.
Yeah, I have been “ahem” scoping out, the new stuff in Nightlife with my Romance aspiration sim. He is the only one I have tried so far.
Lok
Sucks for me…
I just bought a brand new laptop with a 2.4ghz processor… didn’t may much attention to the video card… and assumed it would be all right.
So I picked up Sims 2 with doing the proper research…
:smack:
Nope, even with all the settings at their lowest, I get jerky movement, major multi-minute stalls, and five minute load time.
Shit.
^without doing the proper research
I made the same mistake - excellent laptop all around, but I didn’t put much thought into the graphics card. (To be honest, I’m not very up to date on what the specs of a good graphics card is.) And of course, being a friggin LAPTOP, I can’t fix the problem.
Been thinking about getting a strong desktop anyway, so if I do, I can guarantee that the graphics card will be up to par. I don’t have a lot of problem with gameplay itself but I can barely stand going downtown sometimes, because of the major load times.
Minor hijack: I’m looking into getting the Sims 2 and a new laptop soon, so what graphics card should I be looking out for?
The box says 32mb and “…or more memory and one of these T&L capable chipsets: ATI Radeon 7200 or greater; NVIDIA GeForce2 or greater”. Also DirectX 9.0 compatable.
This thread has inspired me to play again as well.
My card is an nVidia GeForce4 440 GO, and it’s not strong enough to offer full functionality in the Sims 2 - I can’t see any of the special event movies, can only invite 2 people over to parties, and it bogs down a bit in the downtown situations where there are many people milling around. My work computer had the exact same specs as this one, except a stronger video card (can’t remember which now, but it was also an nVidia) and it handled the game perfectly, with full functionality. So, don’t get the 440 GO - it simply isn’t powerful enough.
also, bear in mind, the “minimum” specs are just that, minimum, just enough to get the game running
if you want to see all the extra “eye candy”, you need a better vidcard, i’d consider a vidcard with 64-128MB of vidram a minimum, none of this “32 MB” crap, that’s just bull-dren, and the vidcard needs to have a relatively current GPU core (nVidia 6200+, ATI Radeon 9200+)
apparently, this game is more render-intensive than the latest version of Quake, look for a machine that can handle the latest version of Quake or Unreal Tournament, and you’ll be set…