The Sims 2; i finally caught a trashcan kicker in the act

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

i finally found a good use for the burgulars…

i tend to take the “lazy” approach to placing new houses in my lots, i simply export the house i want to use to a file, and re-import that house, it shows up in the houses bin all furnished and everything…

the problem is, i now have a duplicate family living in it, and if i move them out, they take all the furnishings with them

now, if a family dies, the furnishings are left intact, ready for the next family to move in, so what i have been doing is “assisting” the cloned family to the other side, i set their aspirations to Platinum, then select the “Die of old age” with the InSiminator hack

when a Sim dies with a platinum aspiration, they (to quote the Klingon philosophy) “die well” and get the “good” Grimmy animation, (he shows up wearing a Lei, has a pair of Hula dancers with him, Hawaiian Hula music plays in the background, and he offers the dying Sim a tropical drink to refresh them as they pass over) and their ghost is benevolent…

still, i feel bad killing off the family, even if they are duplicates, so now i do it a better way…

i teleport in a burgular (when the burgular is “beamed in”, they don’t burgle the placem they act like a normal guest), i then add them to the family, i then move out the real family, then kill off the burgular (current favorite method is “Death by Satelitte”)

same end result, a furnished home all ready for the new family, and i didn’t have to kill the clone family, and as an added side benefit, i’m down one burgular to boot, everybody wins! (well…everyone except the burgular, but they don’t count, criminals have no rights in my SimCity universe)

42

I found a good way to get back at a burglar recently too. I noticed that with Nightlife, my sims “met” the burglar when he robbed them. For some strange reason, their relationship score with him increased (even though they were “furious” with him). One of my sims’ daughters, who was a teen at the time, became attracted to him when she became a young adult. Once she was done being furious, I had her seduce the burglar, do the WooHoo with him in a photo booth, and then flirt with another guy right in front of him. I actually may have had her marry him eventually, but she wanted to marry a rich sim and was attracted to Mortimer. I had her marry him and they now have a child together.
I have also noticed with Nightlife that there’s a lot more garbage can kicking. Seems when someone is furious with you, they often come over to kick over your garbage can. On the other hand, I’ve gotten some pretty cool gifts after dream dates. One guy gave my sim a pinball machine! She was really short on money at the time, so I sold it.

43

I love it… she’s a Sim Holly Golightly.

44

If I switch to Sims 2 can I port over my existing Sims (1) families & lots?

45

Not to my knowledge. The Sims 2 is a completely different engine and game, particularly graphically.

46

Heh, can’t wait until NL is released for the Mac, the problem is, since i’m a fan of Vampires, i can see entire towns becoming “Embraced/Turned”, the Human sims will become a definite minority, as the Undead sims will be everywhere (They’re everywhere, man, game over, man, game over!)

it also gives me new opportunities for dispatching criminals, find out the burgular’s name, then beam him over after he’s arrested, have one of my Vampire sims turn him…

then plop him outside in the plexiglass 1x1 “cell” and watch him fry, crispy burgular!

47

I know i’ve been posting an inordinate amount about TS2, but i keep finding little touches in it that make it cool…

one family i’m playing, an unwed mother with a child by Don Lothario (momentary indescretion…), and she’s Woohoo-ing with her new love interest, after the woohoo, the kid runs into the bedroom, yells at the love interest, yells at his mother, then starts sobbing uncontrollably (he knew the man Mommy was with was not his father, he new she was being “unfaithful” to him…

he hates Mommy’s new boyfreind now…

i’m also playing the gold-digging Caliente sisters (one’s pregnant via Don L.), and the other one has succesfully seduced Mortimer Goth…

turns out the Caliente house is haunted by the ghost of Nina’s last conquest (a rich senior citizen), and he’s quite irate about Nina “Gittin 'er Done” :wink: with another rich senior citizen, no sooner had Nina and Mort finished WooHoo then the ghost of her past hubby appeared to each of them, scaring each quite badly, i think Mort lost a few days of life, in fact…

now every evening the ghost is wandering the lot moaning in sadness about Nina’s indiscretion, and yelling in rage, balling his fists up and punching them into each other, if it wasn’t for his non-corporeal body, he’d be beating up Mort every chance he gets, as it stands now, he makes life miserable for any male visitor to the Caliente house…

the Maxis programmers worked overtime on this one…

48

If your game is too slow, try this (it helped me IMMENSELY):

  1. turn off all virus scanning programs. MCAfee, etc.

49

Be careful doing that. I have a couple of things on that list for my keyboard and mouse. If I delete them, things stop working correctly.

Lok

50

I’ve been using Don Lothario as a one-man sperminator for Pleasantview. I heard on other fan boards that he makes pretty babies, so he’s knocked up Kaylynn the hott maid, Cassandra Goth, Dina *and *Nina Caliente, and a random Sim I created named Angelina.

Dina seduced and married Mortimer Goth when she realized she was in a family way. I’m thinking I’ll hook Cassandra Goth up with Darren Dreamer. Kaylynn the maid had actually moved in with old Don, and she caught him boning Nina, and moved out in a huff. I had her move in with Brandi Broke, two single moms pooling their resources, and now they’re a very happy lesbian family.

51

I actually turn off most services on my computer via instructions I got on freeing up resources for another game I play (Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines). It’s a bit more complicated, requires a reboot, and won’t allow you to get any downloaded from the Sims site within the game. I have XP…

  1. Click Start, Run.
  2. Type in msconfig and hit Enter to bring up the System Configuration Utility.
  3. On the General tab, choose Selective Startup, and uncheck Load System Services and Load Startup Items.
  4. On the Services tab, check Plug and Play and Windows Audio. Leave other options as is.
  5. Click OK, let it work. It should come back up asking for a reboot.
  6. Reboot, and the System Configuration Utility will come back up with a message that you’ve changed it. Just cancel out of it, and start up your game.

When you’re finished playing and want to restore your configuration, just follow steps 1 and 2 again, but this time, choose Normal Startup on the General tab and click OK. Reboot, and you’re back to normal.

52

An update on my burglar: I killed him. The mother of the other sim who seduced him was in the mood for some WooHoo (she’s a widow), so I hooked her up with old Russ. She wanted to marry him, so I thought why not? Right after the wedding, I built him a nice little cell. Took forever for him to die. The whole time, his wants included “have baby.” Shouldn’t have married an elder then, you moron.

I do have a question for you guys. I had the elder sim mentioned above move in with her son to help with the kids, so they could buy a bigger house. When they moved, I moved her husband’s tombstone to her inventory, and put it in the new backyard. Then a second tombstone appeared on the front lawn, and it says it’s his. When I came back to the game another time, the second tombstone was gone. Anyone else have this happen? I haven’t seen poor Leo’s ghost since this happened.