Why Sims 2 has been so broken the last ten years
This is down to my own research, and I'm not saying it is the one and only reason why the game is so broken these days, but I have some points worth mentioning.
So, you're bored one day. You remember this game you had so much fun playing a few years ago, or maybe as a child. It's The Sims 2!
The game has a few issues than from when you last remembered playing, so you search on google for some fixes for the tiny resolution, and among the countless posts you may find, you may find this:
(to the creators and players mentioned here this isn't me making a dig at you, i'm just pointing out some cc that could affect the game from working properly. your stuff is all beautiful :D)
Lesya's game is gorgeous!!! Oh, how can I get it to look like that?
So you, with a clean, vanilla (ugly) game you decide to download a few mods she listed, such as:
Skylines by GCKP (you can get optimised ones by me here)
Skies by Lowedeus (you can get optimised ones by me here)
Trees by Criquette (you can get optimised ones here)
No More Blurriness by Voeille (you can get optimised snow only here)
Cool! And then you notice some cheats than can give the game that open-world, interactive feel. Even better!
And you shove them into your folder and you boot up the game. Everything's going great!
You search hundreds of posts looking for the fix. Some recommend 3rd-party tools, but they seem to make the problem worse. You reinstall, finding you only wasted your time. Something has to be causing this, but you'd never guess it'd be the mods everybody swore by.
Well, in fact, it is. Partly.
I've struggled with pink flashing since 2019, when I reinstalled Sims 2 after I got a decent computer for once. I did everything above, searched for fixes, found Lesya's blog which was my primary inspiration. It was through Lesya's guide that I was able to make my game look pretty!
These mods, which are a staple in the modding community, are beautiful indeed... but what if I told you that the reason they're so beautiful, is because they're high-quality. With textures soaring up to 4k, when, hang on--
In 2004, 4k resolution was... probably unheard of. With the leading monitor size being 1024x768, what would be the point of using such huge textures on an engine that was designed for monitors of at least this size? Would you be able to see the detail of 4k on a monitor of that size? Definitely not.
The max visiting sims, okay, a little hit or miss. If your sims are all wearing high poly alpha CC, then it's a problem. If not, good luck.
Then comes the cheats I mentioned. The lot skirt cheat expands the view distance a significant amount. With the mergenhoodflora cheat, that displays more trees. Combining the two, what do you get?
A massive view distance, blinded by trees.
With skies and skylines with large textures up to 4k, and trees with textures up to 2k, The Sims 2 will collapse. It's like forcing an old man with health conditions to do 20 situps, again and again.
It'll overexert him, by the very least. And you're overexerting the game by cramming custom content that is not optimised for the engine TS2 was built on.
So please, next time you encounter the pink soup, please check your CC folders, and research changes and cheats before you put them into your game. You will enjoy the game much more if you do this, and won't encounter this problem so often.
Don't use Graphics Rules Maker
Instead, opt for a maxis original Graphics Rules uploaded here by Veronavillequiltingbee. It's essentially a rewrite of an old tutorial I made a long time ago.
Once you download the file from VVQB, open DXDIAG by pressing WinKey+R and typing 'dxdiag'.
This value I've underlined is what you need to put after seti textureMemory. Open the sgr file and do CTRL-F and input seti textureMemory.
Add the value from DXDIAG and then save it.
You can use GRM for adding your GPU to the game, but I do not recommend it for anything but that.
Optimising the game... inside the game
*shoves GRM off the table*
We're going to go into TS2 in-game settings for this one.
These settings are optimal if you play CC-heavy households. It will ease the load on your game to make space for the heavy CC you have in your current household. You can tweak these when you want to take photos outside, but for playing I recommend them all to be off - especially at community lots as there are lots of sims there.
I never see anybody talking about Object Hiding.
Object Hiding hides objects from floors that aren't in view. If you're playing downstairs, objects upstairs won't be rendered, thus minimising the load on your game.
I have reflections and smooth edges off because I use ReShade.
Snow on Ground is optional. Sometimes snow can cause pink flashing, I believe it's due to texture replacements that are huge in size too, Voeille's is 2k. I've linked a resized one above.
This post will be updated with later findings. I hope you all found it informative :]
