Hi i am Hannah I sometimes make sims 2 stuff then disappear and also break the game in weird ways like adding expansions to life stories and other cruel and unusual experiments to the game files :D
-Mootilda's Subhood Selection fix now works correctly (if you have this -mod already, please remove it as it is built in)
-Updated a ton of icons and ui elements to look prettier
-Fixed dark unchanged text
Future updates:
-Adding animated loading screens
-Anything I missed or think needs changing
-That bulldozer icon that is weird to press
Wtf is this?:
Some of you might have seen my TS1 inspired UI floating around twitter, tumblr, discord etc. I've been having people test it in the Lazy Duchess discord but i've decided to upload it here for others to test and so no one else can claim they made it themselves lol. Sorry for the lazy photos but basically it's a recoloured version of the original UI. Pretty much all the elements are done. I'll keep updating until it is done basically. It's made to suit my resolution which is 1920x1080 but I will add the options for wider screens at a later date. Also not sure how well it works with Legacy editon so just be aware that it might display weird
Install instructions
Place the TS1 UI folder into your downloads.
These are the main files needed
Download
(updated to add version 2.0. Please delete old files before installing new version)
Place this file into your base game UI folder which should be in a directory similar to this "Program Files x86\EA Games\Sims 2\TSData\Res\UI"
This file replaces the background on the main loading menu as it looks weird without it. It is a placeholder.
Download
Do not delete any of the files in your UI folder. (Please)
If you are already using Clean UI or any other UI replacement, Please uninstall them first. They cannot be used together
Special thanks to @greatcheesecakepersona for their templates as they were insanely helpful
working on a custom ui system, so modders can bring up dialogues with custom ui scripts without replacing the originals. here is a modded resurrection dialogue - the original one still works as its own thing!
Heya! Do you know does your ts1 ui mod conflict with simnopke's no pause frame? I just started using the ui and when I loaded the game I have the pause frame despite having the simnopke mod so I suspect a conflict, not sure if it can be resolved with load order or not. Either way the ui is super duper cool!!
Maybe try loading the pause frame mod after the ui mod and see if that fixes it?
Did you get infant face sliders working? The link you tried to link to is down/ no longer exists... and I haven't been able to find any other face lengthener mod.
I have not yet. But the link for the lenghtening slider is working fine for me. Simfileshare probably is down currently
-Mootilda's Subhood Selection fix now works correctly (if you have this mod already, please remove it as it is built in)
-Updated a ton of icons and ui elements to look prettier
-Fixed dark unchanged text
Future updates:
-Adding animated loading screens
-Anything I missed or think needs changing
-That bulldozer icon that is weird to press
Wtf is this?:
Some of you might have seen my TS1 inspired UI floating around twitter, tumblr, discord etc. I've been having people test it in the Lazy Duchess discord but i've decided to upload it here for others to test and so no one else can claim they made it themselves lol. Sorry for the lazy photos but basically it's a recoloured version of the original UI. Pretty much all the elements are done. I'll keep updating until it is done basically. It's made to suit my resolution which is 1920x1080 but I will add the options for wider screens at a later date. Also not sure how well it works with Legacy editon so just be aware that it might display weird
Install instructions
Place the TS1 UI folder into your downloads.
These are the main files needed
(updated to add version 2.0. Please delete old files before installing new version)
Download (updated 01/06/26)
Place this file into your base game UI folder which should be in a directory similar to this "Program Files x86\EA Games\Sims 2\TSData\Res\UI"
This file replaces the background on the main loading menu as it looks weird without it. It is a placeholder.
Download
Do not delete any of the files in your UI folder. (Please)
If you are already using Clean UI or any other UI replacement, Please uninstall them first. They cannot be used together
Special thanks to @greatcheesecakepersona for their templates as they were insanely helpful
A quick-ish guide to the culture of The Sims 2 modding community.
Are you new to The Sims 2 community? Are you coming from more modern games, either in The Sims franchise itself or other contemporary games? Are you excited to start your #brand and become a #simfluencer and post your #earlyaccesscontent to support your #sidehustle?
Have a seat, then! Let's chat.
Hello, friend! My name's Pooklet. I've been playing since 2004 and creating since 2007. I'm by no means an expert in most forms of content creation itself, but I've been around since the heyday of The Sims 2, I've watched how community opinions have shifted (or not) since practically the beginning, and I'm hoping to give you a basic outline of the community culture that you can expect to encounter as a newcomer.
A very brief history of Sims 2 content monetization:
People have been trying to monetize content since there has been content to monetize, all the way back in the days of The Sims 1. We tend to call them "pay creators" and their websites "paysites." Some big names in this arena include The Sims Resource (their free-with-ads model is a relatively recent development, which is why you will find people to this day calling them T$R), PeggySims, Newsea, and many others that you can find on this handy website:
Paysites Must Be Destroyed
Now, if you have a glance at that website, you might be saying to yourself:
"But, that's illegal! I own the copyright to my custom content!"
Alas, no! Due to the wording of the End User License Agreement for The Sims 2, no custom content creator owns their creations for this game (or The Sims 1, or 3, or 4, for that matter, but we're talking about 2 right now). It all belongs to EA at the end of the day, and by installing and playing the game, you have agreed to these terms. Which means you have no individual, protected copyright, and it is perfectly legal for someone to download your paywalled content and then reupload it for free for others to enjoy. And they will!
Furthermore,
You are not making anything alone.
Everything from modding resources, to tutorials, to the mods required to fix disastrous glitches in the game code and make it playable at all, to the third party programs used to make any and all custom content, such as SimPE—all of these have been provided to you for free by other creators, many of whom have a usage policy that asks that people not use their freely-provided tools to make a profit. Although no one can be forced to follow a creator's policy, it is generally considered good manners to not try to make a profit off of someone else's free work. And if you are using these tools to make paywalled content, that's exactly what you're doing.
Pay creators have been ignoring these policies since the beginning of time, and so free creators likewise ignore their policies against sharing their paywalled content. Pay creators have also tried lots of different ways to keep their content exclusive, everything from trying to track leaks with slightly altered files to actively filling their content with malicious code. It has never worked.
Free creators have always found a way around these barriers. In fact, it's taken as something of a challenge to undermine monetization efforts. As you can see from Paysites Must Be Destroyed, there are entire teams of players devoted to reuploading paywalled content for free.
A culture of sharing.
The Sims 2 is something of a time capsule. At 20 years old, it predates a lot of the hyper-capitalist hustle culture that has infested every creative hobby. It is from a time when monetization was an outlier rather than the norm, and a much maligned outlier at that. This attitude has persisted for 20 years. Believe me when I say, you won't be the combo breaker. Especially now, given that The Sims 2 is not the most contemporary in the series and the community has shrunk considerably, down to the people who have either been here for a very long time, or newcomers that understand the community culture.
Also, it's just kind of not a great idea in general to try to make money off of a 20-year-old game with a pretty small community?
Like, I get that The Sims 4 is really saturated with pay creators and it's hard to get a foot in the door. I get that you might look at The Sims 2 and think that the small pond will give you room to be a big fish. It won't. You might get a handful of people willing to pay for your content, but at least one of those people will be resharing it for free.
Paywalls vs. optional donations.
Okay, so hopefully you now understand why people don't like it when you put content behind a paywall. But what about those Ko-fi and Paypal donation links you sometimes see at the bottom of people's downloads? Why is that okay, but a locked Patreon tier isn't? Well, because they're voluntary. No one is obligated to pay for that content to be able to download and use it. It's just a way for someone who does have a little extra cash to basically "tip" a creator whose content they like. You have no way of knowing whether the person who posts those links is actually receiving any donations. And that's kind of the point. Whether or not they receive any donations, they are still sharing their content, because they enjoy the hobby of making and sharing content.
"I can't make a living off of that!"
No, you can't. Because that's not what we do here. That is not part of our community culture for all the above reasons. If you want to make a reliable income off of your hobby, you're going to need to get a different hobby. Try Second Life! That is a community that actively encourages monetization. The Sims 4 allows for "early access" monetization. There's options out there for you, if what you want is to make a profit off of your creations for a game.
"Fine, what about monetized link forwarding services?"
Link forwarding services historically have malicious trackers or viruses embedded. People will also strip those and provide direct links to each other. Or they just won't download your content.
"What if I want to make YouTube videos of someone else's written tutorials and I enable ad revenue on them?"
Personally, I still think that's a dick move. I love video tutorials, I'm a very visual learner myself, and although you might feel entitled to compensation for reciting the steps of someone else's tutorial into a microphone and then editing and uploading the video, you're still monetizing someone else's freely-provided content. I would consider this an 'ask permission' scenario, one in which you tell the person, explicitly, that you will be making ad revenue off their work. If they're fine with that, then you're good! (For the record, I'm not fine with that.)
"What if—"
Look, no one can stop you from trying to monetize your content, or worse, someone else's content. But you will have the exact same arc as every pay creator who came before you: your efforts will be undermined at every turn, your reception in the greater community will be chilly at best, and it will become a battle between you and the folks resharing free reuploads of your content until any fun you initially had making content is gone.
"The steady erosion of every known social safety net beneath the crippling weight of end-stage, line-goes-up capitalism and the yawning abyss of poverty over which I am dangling has imbued me with such anxiety that I cannot engage with a hobby that precludes monetization. I am exhausted. I know no other way."
I get it, friend! I have lived in poverty all my life. I do not begrudge the impulse to find a way to make passive income off of your every waking moment. Increasingly, it seems like that is the only way to survive! Unfortunately, you will not be able to do that with this specific community. We know that we have something special here, having resisted monetization's encroach for so long, which makes us fight all the more viciously to maintain it. You are entitled to try to find ways to supplement your income, just not here. Personally, I consider that a feature, not a bug.
Bonus Round: Remember, That's Not Just Yours!
I said it earlier, but I want to reiterate: you are not making any TS2 CC alone. You are making it with tools, resources, knowledge and code that people have provided on the condition that they not be used for pay content.
To use myself as an example, "my" hair textures are a blend of resources provided by other creators. Namely, Nouk's original hair texture was edited by Vintage D, which I then further edited over the years, using parts by the creators Ephemera and Helga. It would be extremely shit of me to say "well, I think that the time that I put into my edit is worth money, so I'm charging for it" when the edits that I made would not exist without the work of those people. And it continues on down the line with edits that other people have made of my texture blends and color actions, and the content they make with them.
(If you see someone charging for these, btw, lemme know. I'd love to have a talk with them.)
In closing,
The knowledge base, the resources, the coding required to make any and all working content for The Sims 2 has been compiled for 20 years. Please understand, I'm not trying to denigrate anyone's creativity when I say: you cannot bring anything wholly "new" to TS2 CC-making, something that uses no one else's resources or programs, something you can point to and say "no one helped me with that. I did it all on my own. It is my property." Nor should you aspire to! The fun of The Sims 2 community is to share and share alike, to credit each other for our contributions, to hype each other up and iterate on shared works and resources. We've been doing it for 20 years, and hopefully we'll be doing it for many more! Wanting to be a #simfluencer is utterly antithetical to the community culture. No one is influencing anyone else. You need to leave that shit at the door if you want to be invited in.
TL;DR:
Don't show up to the commie circle-jerk trying to charge for handjobs. We're already giving them to each other for free, and nothing about your wrist technique is special enough to justify the cost.
So you're a Sims 2 Legacy player who wanted to install some modular stairs? Maybe a lighting mod? You installed Scriptorium and you enter your game and suddenly your foundation is missing or crashes your game whenever you try to place it. Or maybe your pools and rooves have fences in them?
(images sourced from Lazy Duchess Discord server)
WTF did I do?
You've broken your script files!
Currently they look like this:
When they should look like this:
What do the script files do?
They give the game instructions and settings for certain build items that are generated by the game engine such as walls, foundations, pools, modular stairs, fireplaces, rooves, awnings and more. Lighting also uses scripts for some things. Some of these items require the scripts to display in catalog or at all.
How did this happen??
So i've seen two different ways, firstly, the auto installer installs in the wrong location. So what does the player do? They moves the files into the correct location.
The issue with this is the script files that Scriptorium creates when it can't find your game files are missing ALL of the original script lines. Then when you replace your existing script files with these, you basically are replacing your script files with a blank one (minus the Scriptorium lines).
Second way, when manually installing, the player deletes the contents of the original script files and replaces it with the Scriptorium lines.
This results in the same outcome shown in the example script.
Why does this affect only Legacy players?
Legacy uses different file paths. Scriptorium was last updated after M&G came out. The auto installer was made to work with the discs in both their original and compilation file paths. For example, Double Deluxe\Base or Sims 2, or Fun with Pets\SP9 etc. All other versions up until this point have used these paths so they never experienced this issue. EA decided to do something different this time and go by EP/SP numbers. So the installer gets confused and places them in the wrong place.
How do I fix this??
A few options, reinstall or repair your game, or replace the broken script files with the ones below. Place them in your C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Legacy\Base\TSData\Res\Catalog\Scripts folder. You may need to delete the files first that you are replacing and cut and paste the new ones in.
Download Original Scripts
But I still want to use Scriptorium?
Once you have replaced your broken scripts, follow these manual instructions that I have modified from the original Scriptorium post for Legacy users.
Go to C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Legacy\Base\TSData\Res\Catalog\Scripts
And open the fireplaces.txt and copy and paste the line below at the bottom of this file without deleting the existing text.
wildInclude "Scriptorium_Fireplaces*.*"
Then save.
If you have issues with saving due to permissions, cut and paste the files to desktop while you are editing them and move them back after
Next open modularstairs.txt and add the text below
wildInclude "Scriptorium_ModularStairs*.*"
Then open walls.txt and add the text below
wildInclude "Scriptorium_Walls-Fences-Arches*.*"
While remaining in your Scripts folder, Create 3 new folders and call them
Select these 3 folders and right click and choose copy.
Now go to Documents\EA Games\Sims 2 Legacy\Downloads (if you do not have a Downloads folder, create one)
Then right click and press paste shortcut
If you want to use custom lights as well, follow these steps
If your lighting.txt is also empty, this is a copy of the original version
Download Lighting Script
Go to C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Legacy\Base\TSData\Res\Lights
Open lighting.txt and add
wildInclude "Scriptorium_CustomLights*.nlo"
While still in the Lights folder
Create a folder called Scriptorium_CustomLights
If you already have a folder called CEP3_CustomLights, rename it to Scriptorium_CustomLights
Right click on this folder and copy it
Then go to Documents\EA Games\Sims 2 Legacy\Downloads and paste shortcut
And you are all done :D
If you have any issues, feel free to leave a comment or send a message!
Decrease the strength of terrain paint application (in TS2)
If you are like me, you almost certainly never play around with terrain paint. It's not that I don't like to, but the application always felt too strong for me to do anything that doesn't look extreme with it.
So, the other day I was going around looking at the game's directory, and stumbled across these two values in the "Terrain.ini" file:
This file is located in: LATEST EP/TSData/Sys
*The exact location depends on where you installed the game, which edition you are currently using and which is the latest EP you got installed.
This might just be common knowledge, but I personally never saw anything related to it, so I'm sharing in case it interests others.
It's fairly self-explanatory: if you change the "PaintBrushStrength" value to something between 0 and 1 (I imagine higher values are accepted but probably useless), the strength of the paint application decreases accordingly.
I've personally put the value at 0.1 – but you might find that too slow of an application. I also feel like this increases how much money is spent to paint the terrain, since weaker application = holding the mouse button longer = more money spent.
I tried to play around with the "PaintBrushApplicationInterval", increasing it to like 6000 (= 1min), but noticed no difference, so I left the default value as is.
Important note: Remember to backup the file! Alternatively, you can add a comment to any change you've made that reminds you what the default value was (I haven't changed anything else).
The ‘remember the testingcheats cheat will show “debugging” messages sometimes’ is so fucking condescending. It’s like back in the old days when people use to tell others to just disable testingcheats to stop the errors. Covering your eyes doesn’t get rid of your sim turning into a beyblade
Trying my hand at baby stuff again by converting some accessories from Animal Crossing: New Horizons. You get Baby's hat and Pacifier. The hat has been made specifically to not clip with hairs by me, but YMMV with other hairs. I used accessories by Theraven as a base, so I kept all the same settings for bins and categories.
