I love how your mind immediately went "they should be able to die from that". I am so proud of this community

I am not agree with this idea. Outdoor pools have either warmed water or emptied for a winter. Ice can break water pipes and pool tiles and will be disaster for a pool. Even in The Sims 2 you see water vapour coming out of the pool in winter. If you want ice skating, go to frozen pond like in The Sims 3 (There are some tries for TS2 to make frozen ponds skateable)

There are so many CC out there that I'm wondering when one can stop downloading stuff or where is the limit.
My DL folder is around 6 Gb atm and I think I'll go to 8 Gb with 16 Gb of RAM.

I think to an extent, at least for CAS content, you can download as many things as your computer can handle. I read somewhere that it is different for Build/Buy Mode content, but forget where I read it.

Agree with CrystalFlame360... I think it depends on what your CC is, how robust your computer is and how much of it has to be rendered at one time. I have more than 20GB of CC on a 16GB Win7 computer and play with no problems (other than load time, LOL). But the vast majority of my CC is clothing and hair so unless I have a lot of Sims on a lot at one time, my computer doesn't have to work that hard to display the game.

My guess is that the limiting factors are more likely how good your graphics display is, the memory your computer has, and how fast your CPU(s) can handle things. 5 GBs of a highly decorated large lot with lots of CC, detailed terrain, custom sky/clouds, significant neighborhood deco and a distance viewing of far, could tax your computer a lot more than 15GB of clothing items, most of which won't be on the same lot at the same time.

Well the game won't ever use more than 4Gb since it's a 32bit application. Having 8 or 16GB for this game won't make a difference. The speed of your RAM will matter since that determines how fast your comp can store information in the memory for the game to use.

That would be great! Donald Pleasant's pool is heated though- how do I turn it off?

I disagree. Additional memory does make a difference for Sims 2.

True, the GAME will never use more than 4 GB since it is a 32 bit application and as such simply cannot address more than 4 GB of memory, period. And obviously the faster the memory your computer has, the faster memory operations are performed.

However, if you have a 64 bit OS, your SYSTEM will use every bit of the memory allocated. And it will use that memory for, among other things, paging, swapping and running other obvious or background applications. Your game speed and loading times should GREATLY improve with the more memory your computer has simply because the system can dedicate ALL of that 4 GB to the game (assuming you have installed the 4 GB fix) and run other applications and internal functions using memory that doesn't compete with the 4 GB of memory the game uses.

Just thought how educated TS2 creators were when I stumbled upon this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxop...human_infection and understood why pregnant sims cannot clean cat litter box. It is all for protection of baby.

Apparently it isn't as bad as Sims 2 makes it out to be as long as the person wears gloves or washes their hands afterwards.

I don't know, when my sister was pregnant with my nephew, she wasn't allowed anywhere near cat 'waste' at all. She was told that even inhaling it was risky...

I gotta stop "fixing" things. My Sim kids started that stupid, Q-dropping "I got an A", and also when the last person in a house died I didn't get the choice to move the tombstones. I USED to have these mods. So I went looking for them, found them, plus a few random mods (stop freaking out when a car is in the driveway, and stop stealing from my money trees). And now, in every house, one or 2 beds are glitched. Sim can relax, but if I tell them to sleep, they complain someone is in that bed. Doesn't matter if it's custom or Maxis, etc. Never is logical is it.

@CrystalFlame360
I read the same thing. Out of despair and tired of the constant crashing I created this thread a few months ago.

@HobbesED and @HarVee
I'm sorry. My though about CC was just a rhetorical question. Thanks for your inputs though.
I've built myself a decent desktop three years ago. I aim to have every setting on high since I like seeing neighbourhood objects from lot view.
I think my game dislikes rendering 15 sims on small unowned community lots and heavy snow. I lately encountered purple soup on some lots.
My DL folder is far from perfect and my pixels need more hairs and more outfits. I'm trying to pay attention to polycounts especially when it comes to hair. I have that one sim who appears bald in the loading screen and in though bubbles when pixels are gossiping about her.

As I'm placing tatami mats in a hotel full of rooms, all I can hear is Jun Yoshizuki going "Stupid foreigner, do you know how mendokusai (annoying) is tatami?" And he was right. He was talking about caring for it and not placing it, but he was right.
Side note, I did a little math. Each tatami mat costs $400. With 17 tatami per room and 24 rooms total that's $163,200 to do the whole hotel. Good thing it's my building neighborhood and no one's actually paying for it.

@Essa, I feel ya. The purple soup is definitely not fun. If it helps, I believe the general rule of thumb is your Downloads folder should be less than half of your computer's memory. But idk how accurate that is, since my computer memory is 16 GB and my download folder is currently 22.8 GB. I guess it also depends on the type of cc, and how much is on display at once.

Otherwise, keep your play sessions short and don't run your game all day. Take a break every few hours and restart the game.

@Phamtomknight
I play the game since November 2004 and I have never had more than a 6 GB DL folder even when I was participating in beauty contests.
I have never waited more than 15 minutes for my game to load and it was before I got a SSD.

I think I'd have a bigger DL folder if I liked cc shopping. Since it really feels like a chore for me just as shopping IRL, I'm safe.
But spring is coming and my pixels will need new outfits. I think I saw one of your helpful posts for teen outfits.

I wish I disliked shopping--irl and for sims! It'd make things a whole lot easier and I'd save money, too. I used to work at a GAP store years ago and half of what I made went back into the store (employees got a 50% discount at GAP and Banana Republic, and then 25% at Old Navy. It was pretty sweet.)

And for sims it's not much better. I have 132 tabs in my browser right now and at least 80% of it is things to download. And that's after at least 4-6 months of trying to whittle it down. I've gotten it down to about 60 pages before, but keep find new things to download and so the tabs go right back up again! So if you need someone to look for stuff, let me know. I'm sure I can keep an eye out.

If it helps, you could try bookmarking the CC you want to a folder in the Browser. It's how I store CC I wish to download. It could make the browser faster, I think, as there isn't a lot of tabs open.

I can't talk too much, as I have 14 tabs open on my tablet right now, Mod the Sims being the 14th. It's just stuff I want to read, though; CC goes in a folder, bookmarked.

I bookmark everything that I find important. But mod the sims (MTS) is near the bottom of my list. I keep my bookmarks organized from the most important down to the least and I have a long list.

I'm more on the "Oh! Shiny!" side. Then I download right away or I postpone downloading if I don't feel like it or I will download later when I'll feel the need for it.
I register on Pocket and when it comes to MTS stuff I use the "favourite this" feature.
I'm trying to only add cc I may need.

Mistakenly grabbed the UNI bonfire instead of the balloon archway next to it, but happened to do it while rewatching the Lord of the Rings, specifically the scene where the Beacons are being lit one after the other, and now I'm running through in my head how it could be fun to make a few different beacon hills with the bonfire on top of a tower or promontory...

I'm actually kicking around a few different medieval high fantasy build ideas lately, come to think of it.

Oh no, the bookmark thing doesn't really work. I don't even wanna think about the amount of bookmarks I have to go back and download. I'm sure that's in the hundreds, or considering that I often don't go back, the thousands.

If anyone's really curious, the way I do it, is that when I see a download, I categorize it--stuff I wanna put into my game right now, or stuff that can wait/themed stuff I think I might be able to use later for a certain style of play. For stuff that can wait, I bookmark--after all these years I've had to start categorizing my bookmarks, so I put it in a folder like "2 DL: Hair" or "2 DL: Clothes", etc. If I'm in the mood to download, I'm supposed to go back to those folders and look over the stuff again. Like I said, rarely this happens. Though, if I have come across something multiple times, I do bump it up to the "download right now" category, and try to at least download it and save it in my "To Test" folder I have outside my game folder.

With the stuff that I wanna put into my game right away, I leave the tab open to download. This leads me to having a bunch of tabs eventually because 1. If there are links within the thing I'm downloading, I often detour and find more things to download. For example, let's say I'm downloading something from DeeDee, because I often download from there, and she links to the AF version that her TF and EF things are converted from. Well, of course I need the AF version, too! But what do you know, I've never seen this creator before (or it might be a creator I haven't visited in a while)--so I go checkout what they've got. Turns out several lovely-looking things! So more tabs open.

Then 2. I leave tabs open for things I want to download right away, but don't want to download right now because doing that properly will take a while and I don't feel like doing that. This category is for things like mods, houses, big sets like you might find in a GOS event or from Sun & Moon, or sets that have everything in individual zips (a real pet peeve and turn off for a heavy downloader like me). I try to do a lot of my filing and organizing upfront--because for me at least, doing it later is a pita and/or doesn't happen. That means I need to make sure the files are named properly--creator name, but also now I put the site, unless I download frequently from the simmer, and whether or not something is repositoried/texture-referenced. But I also need to check the zip/rar and make sure there's previews inside (and not just swatches). For mods, I need the description/faqs, too, and all the relevant info, so I take screenshots and make jpgs of that stuff, since that's supposedly better than putting txt files in your downloads folder. If there's a txt file included in the download (and there often isn't), I check that to make sure it's duplicate info/there's no other stuff I need to document; if there is, I screenshot that too. And then, depending on what the mod is, I double check my Downloads folder with my file locator for older mods or mods that cover related areas. I check for conflicts, remove older versions, and figure out the best load order. Even if I don't put the new mod in my Downloads right away, it's helpful to note that stuff so that when I do test them out, I don't run into issues.

For sets, I dislike subfolders, and with a Download folder like mine (22.8 GB), it's a no-no. So it takes a bit more time to make sure individual zips are put back together, or big sets with subfolders are extracted in one folder. And, depending on what it is, I do try to name it properly, especially now that I've been organizing my folder (for, like, years ). That means I rename files with the original creator and put the recolorist or the editor at the end of the file. I also track down the item in my folder, if I already have it, and put the new recolors or updated meshes in there. I'm trying to stamp out duplicates so, yeah, files go in the original creator's folder. For things like houses, I usually want to redesign the inside, so I might open up Paint and make notes for the new layout I want. But what's more time consuming is tracking down any cc that might be used. Again, I'm trying to stamp out duplicates and confusing folders so I hunt down the original upload, if I don't already have it, and put that in my folder. That way I know exactly what the item is, I have proper previews, and I'll have the complete set if there is one.

And then finally, I have my tabs for MTS open, for threads I was reading or comments I'm following up on, etc. So yeah, 123 tabs. But that's just cuz I've become very strict about my filing and do a lot to files/folders before I accept it in my folder.

Well, different systems work for different people

And yeah, I agree with going on detours and hopping from link to link. I was looking for a default hair to replace the Social Worker hair and that turned into looking for CC clothes... I didn't even find a default replacement and I didn't realise until I loaded the game and looked at Monica Bratford to see that her hair was the same I mentally slapped myself for that.

@CrystalFlame360
Been there, done that.

Anyway I'm grateful to all the creators who are sharing their custom contents for free with simmers like me who don't want to or can't bother to create themselves.

When you send a sim to a community lot to buy new clothes and realise that you don't have any appropriate outfits.

I never look for new content unless i need something specific. The only times I have many tabs for downloads is if I download hairs or clothes because you can never get enough variety there. That's how I keep my downloads relatively small. Although lately I've fallen into the trap with medieval stuff where I didn't know what I was looking for so I ended up with many tabs there. I just looked for something to do so that was kinda vague. I can't imagine how big my downloads would be if I stayed updated on new uploads what you don't see you don't miss out on.