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Mad Poster
#10051 Old 6th Oct 2020 at 1:57 AM
It just occurred to me why it bugs me that there's no sleek modern EAxis versions of things like the potter's wheel or the sewing machine (it's hard to make an ultra-high-tech Edna Mode design studio with that 150-year-old treadle sewing machine at the center)... it's because EAxis ALREADY did it right back in TS1with Makin' Magic- there was an archaic literary version of the spellbook, and at the same time, there was a modern high-tech version, and both worked exactly the same. Why didn't they do that with the hobby items?

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Field Researcher
#10052 Old 6th Oct 2020 at 9:10 AM
Quote: Originally posted by StrangeTownChick
Everything has its purpose. I believe it was simmer22 who used those crazy Family Fun Stuff costumes for kids to have some of their characters put on the play Peter Pan--and it worked remarkably well.


I hide the costumes except for kids, in case they might want to play dress up at some point. I just wish there was the equivalent of Sims 1’s costume trunk, where those outfits would only show up if you broke that out for a party.
Mad Poster
#10053 Old 6th Oct 2020 at 12:29 PM
Quote: Originally posted by muridae
I hide the costumes except for kids, in case they might want to play dress up at some point. I just wish there was the equivalent of Sims 1’s costume trunk, where those outfits would only show up if you broke that out for a party.

"-Trick or Treat!- Halloween Costume Trunk!" by Purple Hat Projects
https://modthesims.info/d/490219/tr...tume-trunk.html

Two sets of additional costumes for the trunk by Peterskywalker!
https://modthesims.info/d/498093/7-...tume-trunk.html

https://modthesims.info/d/540476/9-...tume-trunk.html
Field Researcher
#10054 Old 7th Oct 2020 at 12:23 AM
@RoxEllen1965 - thank you so much for pointing those out! 2012-2013, mostly, so I guess they showed up during one of the periods when I was finding it just too much effort to boot my Mac into Windows to play. I didn’t come back to visiting here again regularly until the Mac version of the game got re-released in 2014.

It’s just a desperate shame that my main hood is in the middle of winter at the moment, so I’ve missed Halloween. Never mind. This will go nicely with my current CAS reorg, which I might just have finished by the time they get to autumn again.
Mad Poster
#10055 Old 7th Oct 2020 at 1:40 AM Last edited by simmer22 : 7th Oct 2020 at 12:43 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by StrangeTownChick
Everything has its purpose. I believe it was simmer22 who used those crazy Family Fun Stuff costumes for kids to have some of their characters put on the play Peter Pan--and it worked remarkably well.




Proof of concept. Mermaids, pirates, crocodile, (pink) fairy, nightgown (for Wendy), and Peter Pan all sorted by using ingame outfits, plus a slightly recolored Seasons conversion (Peter Pan needed tights)

How time flies. This was how I spent my summer 11 years ago... Turns out this was the first chapter I did on my stationary computer, which is kinda fun. That computer lasted for 60 more chapters until it kinda died (probably still turns on, but freezes at startup 99 out of 100 times, so I've given it up).

---

Anyway, the actual reason I came by this topic was to do a bit of a sigh and a "I'll never finish tidying up that clothing folder of mine" and "GAAAAH! Still have that mess of a hair folder left to tidy up!"

Extracted a bunch of sims a while back, and figured out half the CC I had on them was in a folder I'd removed a while back. Which turned out to have a lot of stuff I really want to move back. Which means I have to remove a bunch of stuff to not completely drown that poor game... Oh, here we go again! I thought I'd gotten that nightmare of a 35 GB down to a manageable 22 GB, but apparently not...

And then I go and hoard MOOOOOOAR CC. I don't know what to do with the stuff, honestly. Use it? At least I have the smarts to put it somewhere else than my Downloads folder. Nothing gets in there without a password and a ten-digit code these days... Unless it's been there before, apparently. Why is it so difficult to get rid of all the old stuff? I have managed to kind of shave off about 120 MB of clothes so far (maybe not the meshes, because I have a tendency to chuck in the entire set, use the mesh for a recoloring project, and never use the original recolors but leave them there for all eternity and forever).

Lately I've stopped caring about orphan meshes and just add meshes to each and every set, because it's so much easier to remove that set along with the mesh - as long as I also get better at adding the meshes to my own recolors, that would be great, too. I absolutely hate when I suddenly can't find the meshes anywhere and have to go looking, because of course I have a metric ton of "orphan" recolors I've worked on over the years hanging out in my downloads folder (probably 3-4 GB or so of CAS content that may or may not be connected to external meshes, and that's just the old stuff. I know some of the meshes they're connected to, and at least I know how to check them now, but it's a nightmare), and they of course don't work without half the items I want to throw out, hence why I struggle to throw out all the old stuff
Mad Poster
#10056 Old 7th Oct 2020 at 8:14 PM
Hey! @AndrewGloria Happy Birthday!

Pics from my game: Sunbee's Simblr Sunbee's Livejournal
"English is a marvelous edged weapon if you know how to wield it." C.J. Cherryh
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#10057 Old 8th Oct 2020 at 1:15 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Sunbee
Hey! AndrewGloria Happy Birthday!
Thanks! And Happy Birthday to your son!

All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
My Simblr ~~ My LJ
Sims' lives matter!
The Veronaville kids are alright.
Scholar
#10058 Old 9th Oct 2020 at 4:16 AM
I made a painful discovery today, when I last had to restore my hood I had to regenerate a completely new Sims 2 folder. I restored the neighborhood with no problem remembered to change my camera files and restore my saved sims folder as well. What really sunk in today was that I now have hundreds of broken thumbnails. Clothes, hair, bedding, makeup, facial hair basically everything I have a default for now has a broken thumbnail. I spent several tedious hours in CAS and buy mode trying to fix all of it today. The hair was the worst of it as it's every color and every age.
Mad Poster
#10059 Old 9th Oct 2020 at 1:17 PM
Quote: Originally posted by AndrewGloria
Thanks! And Happy Birthday to your son!


Happy birthday, AndrewGloria!
Test Subject
#10060 Old 9th Oct 2020 at 1:46 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Clashfan
What really sunk in today was that I now have hundreds of broken thumbnails.

Does it not work to delete the thumbnail folder and let the game re-generate them?
Theorist
#10061 Old 9th Oct 2020 at 2:53 PM
@Clashfan
Was wondering the same as Lumikello.

As I'm growing tired of the wooden interiors in my sims houses, I decide that rules are made to bend.
Mad Poster
#10062 Old 9th Oct 2020 at 3:15 PM
The game will regenerate thumbnails if you delete the relevant thumbnail file; but if you delete the whole file, then all the thumbnails have to regenerate, not just the broken ones, and it slows down paging through catalogs a lot. Like, I deleted the CAS thumbnails in my retro set up weeks ago and there are still categories where I'm waiting 15 minutes for the next page to load. Please note that in the hair categories, each color and age category has its own thumbnail - so you can go through every black female adult hair you own and still have to do it for red, blonde, and brown, for all the elder hairs, all the toddler hairs, etc. So it's a case of which tedious process a player finds less frustrating.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
Scholar
#10063 Old 9th Oct 2020 at 4:51 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Lumikello
Does it not work to delete the thumbnail folder and let the game re-generate them?

No, I tried that first as I thought it might at the very least take care of the stuff in buy and build mode I've defaulted. It randomly did a few here and there out of basegame objects but none of the ep's, I still had to do the bulk of it by hand. Like Peni said it makes the load times incredibly long when it has to regenerate those thumbnails. What I think I'll try in the future if faced with this task is to remove my downloaded hair and clothes and just leave the defaults in. That would save me from having to scroll through those pages before I hit the ones I needed to fix.
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#10064 Old 9th Oct 2020 at 7:03 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Clashfan
What really sunk in today was that I now have hundreds of broken thumbnails. Clothes, hair, bedding, makeup, facial hair basically everything I have a default for now has a broken thumbnail. I spent several tedious hours in CAS and buy mode trying to fix all of it today. The hair was the worst of it as it's every color and every age.
Am I not right in thinking that, if you delete some or all of the thumbnails files (possibly CASThumbnails.package, DesignModeThumbnails.package and ObjectThumbnails.package) in the Thumbnails folder, the game will re-create them the next time you start it? It will be slow in starting, but you can do something else while it's loading. I've never done this myself, so I'm not sure, but maybe someone more knowledgeable can confirm or deny.

[EDIT] Ninja'd on that one while I was writing the rest of my post!

Quote: Originally posted by omglo
@AndrewGloria, I saw you mention in another thread that you have the new laptop (happy birthday!). Once you get it all set up, let us know how you enjoy the game on high settings. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's curious.
Thanks everyone who wished me Happy Birthday and/or gave me advice about the new computer. To be honest I'm both excited and worried. I'm excited about the possibility of seeing some of the Sims that I love in high definition. In real life I have been short sighted since I was 14, so I'm used to seeing things in low definition until I put my glasses on. Without my glasses on, everything in real life over about about three feet (one meter) away is slightly out of focus. But when I put my glasses on, then I can see it clearly. I think think (hope) that it will be the same for my Sims. It will be like putting my glasses on. I'll be able to see their clothes more clearly and their faces more clearly. I hope to be able to see shadows and reflections. I hope I'll be able to turn object hiding off. I think I'm the only regular poster here who's been playing with low resolution graphics. I also have some separate conversions of teen bikini bottoms that I made a few years ago and was planning to upload. (I have a thread about them in Creator Feedback.) Jo and Maxon were going to help me by taking high definition pictures of them, but then they both became queue moderators, and I didn't feel I could ask them (conflict of interest). Now, hopefully, I'll be able to take the pictures myself, and I might even be able to use the NVIDEA tools to remake them to higher quality.

But I'm worried that my NVIDEA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti graphics card might be too modern for TS2, and that I might never be able to use it. And I'm worried that I'll never be able to start my game with SecuROM no longer supported in Windows 10. I did register for the UC back in 2014, but I've never been into Origin since, and I'm not sure I can remember how to get in. I know the user name "AndrewGloria" was already taken so I couldn't use it on Origin. I think my Origin login name is either "AndrewGloriaSims" or "AndrewGloriaSims2", but I can't remember for sure. Anyway I really don't want to add all the EPs at once. Ideally I'd just l like to start off by running my existing game in high definition. Later I might add Pets, and after that maybe the other late EPs. But I like my current game, and I use and love some mods that I don't think were ever updated for the latest EPs. (That's Squinge's version of Community lot Skilling, and mods that let teens [and children?] move out, and invite other Sims to move in.) To play my existing game in Windows 10, I might need a no-CD version of Sims2SP4.exe, and I don't know if such a thing exists, is safe, or even if I'm allowed to discuss it here. Theoretically an alternative might be if anyone has succeeded in developing some sort of SecuROM support for Windows 10. (I see a SecuROM support site exists, so I suppose I could try asking there.) I've had a quick look on Leefish, and posts by Kunder there seemed to suggest it would be hard for me to ever get it to work. Sims 2 is the only game I play, so there is no point in me having a gaming computer if I can't play Sims 2 on it.

I've now got got the Internet (Firefox) and my email (CompuServe on Outlook) working on my new PC, and I've subscribed to a 30 day trial of Office 365 Personal. (The subscription to Office 365 seems the best option for me,as I want to keep my hand in in Microsoft Access. I may be able to work again one day.) So I suppose it's time for me to make a start by trying to attach my external DVD drive to my new PC and then try to install my Sims 2 Double Deluxe. Yes I still have the disk. I use it every time I start the game on my old computer. I'm not sure if I need Grumpy Loader at this stage, or if only need it when I add the patches. (Double Deluxe is already patched.)

All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
My Simblr ~~ My LJ
Sims' lives matter!
The Veronaville kids are alright.
Alchemist
#10065 Old 9th Oct 2020 at 8:52 PM
If you have access to the email address you used in 2014, you will be able to put that into origin and request your lost user name and password. I do know that there are people using a GTX 1650 ti with Sims 2 (I've been laptop shopping for the past few weeks and have been making a list of compatible cards). Of course, as you know, those people are using more modern configurations of the game, like UC. But if you can recover your Origin account, you'll almost certainly be able to install it on your laptop. We can't discuss permanent securom removal here, but people can PM each other about it.
Alchemist
#10066 Old 9th Oct 2020 at 9:39 PM
If you can recover your Origin login info, you can also look and see if you can download TS2 Store Edition. That way you won't need the disks, and you get some of the last updates. It still shows up on my Origin and that's how I log into the game, but no idea if I still have access because I registered it when it was still a thing years ago.

And I mentioned this in my other post, but you can roll back to Windows 7, especially if you still have your old installation discs. I don't know if that's a good option for you, depending on what else you use your computer for, but it's something to consider if it's just a gaming computer.

"May the sunlight find you, thy days be long, thy winters kind, thy roots be strong." -Grand Oak Tree, DAO

XPTL Mod Archive | Change a Mod's Mesh into a CC Object | Increasing the Game Difficulty | Editing ACR 4 Your Age Mod
Bored? Read an unfinished legacy or sim story. | aka Kelyns | she/her
Mad Poster
#10067 Old 9th Oct 2020 at 9:54 PM Last edited by simmer22 : 10th Oct 2020 at 12:46 AM.
Quote: Originally posted by Clashfan
No, I tried that first as I thought it might at the very least take care of the stuff in buy and build mode I've defaulted. It randomly did a few here and there out of basegame objects but none of the ep's, I still had to do the bulk of it by hand. Like Peni said it makes the load times incredibly long when it has to regenerate those thumbnails. What I think I'll try in the future if faced with this task is to remove my downloaded hair and clothes and just leave the defaults in. That would save me from having to scroll through those pages before I hit the ones I needed to fix.


It should technically be possible to open the file up in SimPE and delete the broken thumbnails. I haven't tried, but I think Sushigal had some success doing this with the Cigen.package file (which is the Bodyshop thumbnail file) when she had a broken thumbnail and didn't want to reset all of them by deleting the offending resource from the file. Could in theory work for the regular thumbnail files, too.

Could be worth a try, at least? You'll want to look in the "CASThumbnails" file.

I have no clue if there will be a problem with the "compressed" resource (can't guarantee there won't be crashing happening, so backup the original file first!), but it looks like all you'd have to do is to delete the thumbnails you don't want. Could end up being a huge job, though. These files are massive, and I'm not sure if there's any way to sort them. Looks like just a massive bunch of "JPEG" resources without any descriptions, but I haven't studied them very much.

---

Personally, I try to avoid default issues:


---

At the moment I'm taking a small break from sorting through organizing (head start earlier, but I get bored easily ), renaming (not everything, but trying to minimize special characters and being very stuck-up about it because I don't just run the files through the renaming program and be done with it, cause pet-peeves all over ) and recategorizing (thankfully done a lot of that previously) my current mess of a CC folder.

It's kind of like that junk drawer only I am able to find stuff in, and anyone else would probably have been amazed I'd be able to find anything at all in there, let alone the path to the drawer - and now I'm just trying to clear up the path a little bit and maybe organizing the drawer a bit better so I can find stuff without requiring an archeological dig - which is pretty much what every single piece of harddrive I've ever owned requires every time I have to find something on them, so...

I had a short period of "throw everything into one folder" that didn't go so well back in 2006 - 10000 files and a huge mess. Then there was "everything goes into folders but no sorting" for a while. Kinda worked, but ended up being horribly messy (and turns out it was a "no pictures" phase, so sometimes I have no clue what I downloaded). Then a hybrid between "by creator" and "by type" which definitely didn't go well - still struggling with that one. Then this got further hybridized with "new from -insert date here-" and the frustration was complete. Now I've wiped that whole system, ended up with buy/build/clothes/mods/etc. and a few categories or creators in those again, or just basic folders with sets in them. The fewer layers of subfolders within each other, the better. And I'm trying to remove stuff I probably won't use, or haven't ever used). And to those who say "no pictures" in the downloads folder... *insert lots of angry words here*... It's the only way I keep sane. Sincerely.

(I've adopted the system into my project folders too - for the old stuff, anyway - easier to find stuff, not as messy, but I'm probably still the only one who can find stuff there. Problem is, I keep sliding back to the "old" system, which kinda revolves around the whole "but if I keep it on the desktop I'll remember to do something about it" idea, which works for about a month and then it kinda just ends up forgotten until I remember I need it for something, even if that's already a "tested, and nope that doesn't work" method )
Theorist
#10068 Old 9th Oct 2020 at 11:46 PM
I'm feeling happy because I've been playing the game with no crashing since a few days. I'm sending my playables to community lots with no issues. I still need to test parties out though and marriages on comm lots too.

Last Sunday, game crashed. I got angry, tried to fiddle with Windows compatibility modes, did more tests, game crashed again. I found out that 4 GB stopped working.
Spend 1 hour and a half to make it work again. Finally succeeded and I'm a happy simmer.

Bonneville's inhabitants are also pleased because they can get new clothes now.
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#10069 Old 10th Oct 2020 at 1:54 AM
When I try to install Double Deluxe, it says an administrator has blocked me from running this app (for my own protection!) as soon as I try to run autorun.exe. But I am the administrator! It says it even if I right click and select "Run as Administrator". Do I need Grumpy Loader now?

This whole thing is likely to be a continuing issue for some time. I think it would make more sense if I used kestrellyn's "What do I need to play TS2 on Windows 10?" thread for this rather than this thread. Will that be OK? I think kestrellyn's got it running OK now.

All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
My Simblr ~~ My LJ
Sims' lives matter!
The Veronaville kids are alright.
Mad Poster
#10070 Old 10th Oct 2020 at 3:06 AM Last edited by simmer22 : 10th Oct 2020 at 3:18 AM.
^ Can't you go around by selecting "run anyway" or some such? It's usually an option and if so, it tends to work. I think I've gotten that message a couple times on Win10 (with programs I've run previously without issues on another OS) and have been able to run those programs. Could depend which version of the message you get, though.

It could be due to the SecuRom issue.
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#10071 Old 10th Oct 2020 at 3:31 AM
This is the message I got:
It seems to be from User Account Control (UAC), and it has no Run Anyway option. Maybe I have to turn UAC off completely to run it. It seems very draconian.

[EDIT] I've contacted SecuROM support website and got an email acknowledgement. I'll see if I hear any more from them.
Screenshots

All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
My Simblr ~~ My LJ
Sims' lives matter!
The Veronaville kids are alright.
Alchemist
#10072 Old 10th Oct 2020 at 4:05 AM
Try temporarily disabling smartscreen. Type smartscreen (one word) into your computer search bar. A program will come up called app and browser control. Turn off the option to check files and apps, then try installing again. If it works, I'd go back to smart screen and set it to warn, or you could go back to block.
e3 d3 Ne2 Nd2 Nb3 Ng3
retired moderator
#10073 Old 10th Oct 2020 at 11:18 AM
@AndrewGloria Is there another install executable there? Autorun sounds like it's just a direct to the installation exe, see if there's a Sims2DoubleDeluxe.exe or something, and try right clicking> run as administrator on it.
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#10074 Old 10th Oct 2020 at 2:42 PM
I've still got nowhere.

When I got to App and Browser Control I got this:

I clicked on Reputation based protection and got this:

I turned Check apps and files off but it made no difference, so I turned it on again.

I then looked at Who's protecting me? (Manage Providers) and got this.

I wonder if it's McAfee that's blocking me. I've got it as a 30-day trial with the new computer. I haven't used McAfee since the early 1990s when it was a DOS-based command line utility that came on floppy disks. I think I'll try replacing it with F-Secure SAFE for which I have a paid-for subscription that covers multiple devices. If it is McAfee that's blocking it, that should fix the problem.

I looked at all the .exe files on the Double Deluxe DVD:

None of them has a name that suggests it's the main Install program. There may of course be one hidden inside a compressed file, but I can't see it.

So I think the next thing I'll try is replacing McAfee with F-Safe and see if that solves the problem.

I'm thinking I should really continue this in a new Help thread, as it looks as if it's going to take a while to resolve, and I don't want to clog thus thread up.
Screenshots

All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
My Simblr ~~ My LJ
Sims' lives matter!
The Veronaville kids are alright.
Forum Resident
#10075 Old 10th Oct 2020 at 4:27 PM
@AndrewGloria that happened to me too before, you have to unlock the administrator account on the computer and execute it from there. Alternatively, there's supposed to be a "compressed" folder on the disc, which contains the files autorun would copy over to your computer while installing anyway, and copying those worked fine for me.
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