Hey hey! it's Em, she/her, we're dedicated to Sims 2 on this blog. My first true love. At the moment just random builds and sims of mine, and awesome things I find around. But hopefully will be sharing my own mods soon, and maybe, one day, gameplay... Main is @ramblingtreehugger, but it's mostly ignored right now
Have another Linux based question. I screwed up or something went funky when I installed clean installer. And now I can't reinstall cause it's doing that thing where it thinks there's already a version installed but it can't uninstall cause it tried to uninstall before... on Windows I know you can edit the registry to fully remove the bits of clean installer it's seeing, but either I'm not looking in the right place or something else is going on cause I can't see the particular registries listed in regedit
Anyone have any idea what's going on? Or know how I can fully get rid of clean installer on Linux?
Hey! So the game has been running beautifully so far, I highly highly doubt it would be doing so well on this laptop if it was running on windows, but there has been one issue that has cropped up.
Normally the game always throws audio errors, used to seeing that in logs etc. but never actually hear anything off (outside of music just cutting off or something). However, either cause of computer or linux or it being osab's pack (have UC installed on the main), the audio goes *mental*. Music speeds up, tripping over itself, voices start glitching out and hiccuping. It's fine for about half an hour to an hour then the music goes, and I'm usually fine to just have the music muted for awhile but eventually the voices go too and that's when it just kinda becomes an auditory mess and deeply unpleasant to play for much longer haha
Course this little computer was never meant to run anything but excel and email so its graphic capabilities are *limited* to say the least. But it's kinda fun, 'sims in the raw' if you will. Like I was back on the family computer in 2005. Course this little thing still has the capabilities to render the sims' fingers.... our computer did not.
Fully had no idea sims had fingers till I got my gaming laptop years later haha
So I know there is a debate about the use of AI in the community that I wonāt get into but saw that one of its supposed uses was for defaults.
I just wanted to put out there that if anyone has questions, needs troubleshooting, to be walked through the process, or me to look at their files to see if I can spot an issue, Iām really happy to do so. Iām literally happy to help as much as can either over tumblrās messenger thing of discord if you have it. Just want to be helpful x
Please, I beg, I know it's hard to reach out, trust me I used to be super shy and constantly checking myself over the smallest thing (I still do it, it never really goes away).
BUT, if you need help, however insignificant you think the issue might be, or just want someone to vent your frustration over some stupid problem: feel free to reach out. I don't always respond the quickest, but I always respond. AND, never assume helping others (you) is a waste of time. I cannot tell you how many things I have learned from helping others. I love figuring stuff out! Sometimes, I might fail at doing so, even.
Human connection is the only true constant in these uncertain times. I know it's a struggle, but it's worth it! AI is the anti-thesis to all that.
Same here - I'm always happy to try to help.
Let's share and celebrate the collective knowledge we have in the Sims 2 community - it's a beautiful thing!
I'm not much of a creator, but I'm happy to listen to ideas, test things, or when it comes to stories I can absolutely beta read!
The Sims 2 community is seriously so helpful and friendly, there's actual people with the knowledge needed not only to tell you steps but to help you troubleshoot if you run into problems.
Adding my "same here" onto this. Everything I've ever learned to do with this game has been just me figuring stuff out (including making defaults?!) and my asks are always open.
So my partner and I have moved out of our place and are temporarily staying with family as we get moved to a new city. Which means my PC is packed away, and will be for an undetermined amount of time.
Which means no access to my sims.
However I have a laptop that an old remote job never collected back from me. And I've been meaning to try out Linux for an age... was surprisingly easy to wipe and install haha
Will report back if I can manage to get my game workin on it, fingers crossed!
((also bless all my simmers over on youtube who've been filling the sims shaped hole in my life, @katatty's massive story progression vid could not have come at a better time))
MogHughson's Watch TV from all chairs is pretty much required by everyone at this point, but I always disliked how, if there's no seating available, my sims seemed to always route to stand in front of the tv and block people. There's also Squinge's Sit on floor to watch TV, but it conflicted with MogHughson's mod, and it also makes people sit on the floor on community lots, which didn't make much sense to me.
This edit fixes all of that.
With this mod, sims will enjoy the increased viewing angles of Mog's mod, but if there are no more chairs available, they will instead sit on the floor. Only if they somehow can't sit down at all, will they stand. This portion of the mod is the result of me basically combining Mog's and Squinge's mods together.
I have added a check that tells the game that if the current lot is a community lot, they shouldn't sit on the floor. No more sitting on the dirty, sticky floor of sports bars š¤¢
Note: During testing, a grand total of 1 time, 1 sim sat on the floor of a community lot. I was not able to reproduce it and have no idea why they did it. If this happens to you, please let me know!
Thank you very much to MogHughson and Squinge, whose work this mod is based on.
I've been hesitant about sharing this as it's a bit fiddly to use. But this default has made my co-existence with community phones a lot more painless, so maybe it'll help some fellow simmer who doesn't mind using cheats.
This default removes the cover and the stand of the community phone completely, leaving only the phone box (previewed on the middle). Handy for placing it against a wall.
The fiddly part is:
You'll need cheats to use this default efficiently. It's easiest to place the phone against a wall with moveobjects + quarter tile placement on. The box will sink into the wall a bit, but won't show from the other side and is still fully usable.
And you can only move the phone from its handle. It's annoying but afaik can't be fixed as editing the bounding mesh of this thing crashes the game.
Since not all community lots have walls to attach the phone to, I made a custom version of CrabOfDoom's community phone booth (previewed on the right) that can be used together with this default. It's repositioned to the in-game community phone booth and will pull any recolors you have for it. For the variety, I also added a recolor that has the stand only (previewed on the left).
More fiddliness: you'll first need to place the booth and only after that move the phone at its place.
Download (SFS) (alternate) - files are compressed. The booth is located under Electronic / Misc for free.
I recommend using this default together with this edit by @dramallamadingdang which removes the phone booth from the neighborhood view. The texture default shown in the preview is this pretty one by @shastakiss.
Credit to @hugelunatic whose community phone default was the inspiration and base for this one!
Update (30.6.2026): The bounding mesh now properly covers the whole phone so you can grab it and click it from anywhere, not just from the handle.
Not a fix but an improvement. I figured out a way to expand the bounding mesh without crashing the game, so this default is now 90% more grabbable and clickable. I recommend redownloading for better life quality.
I aināt a simblr, but Iād still like to see the results
Voting ended onJun 24
Iāve been seeing a lotta people actively getting these games confused, and idk if itās bc a lotta ppl just immediately think of The Sims 4 when they think of The Sims and/or simblr, or we all just edit alike or use the same 3rd party shaders, but yeah, I thought Iād make a poll to hopefully remind people that simblr isnāt just The Sims 4, lol.
Feel free to reply, reblog, add why you think this confusion exists, maybe suggest some ways to fix it?
A few days ago @dystopianam put a photo on our the sims group with a poster of Will Wright attached on a dartboard with a dart in the center of the head and it makes me laugh so much that I decide to create a dartboard where everyone can choose which enemy to target.
For Sims who hate their God we have Will Wright (creator of the game). For the betrayed lovers there is Don and so on.
The board has its own guid so it will not replace the game board, BUT YOU NEED TO HAVE THE WILL WRIGHT ONE IN YOUR GAME in order for the others to work.
Feel free to ask me which character would you like to have and I will create other recolors for you :)
Remember this? It's one of the first custom objects I made but I've updated it!!
The dartboard now uses the same recolors as the original in-game dartboard, so any custom recolors you already have will work with this version too.
Will Wright's picture is still included (of course) but all the other preset photos are gone because now you get to choose your own target!
It works just like the customizable picture frames: you can use an in-game snapshot or select any image from your Paintings folder. Will it be your sim's rival, an annoying neighbor, ex-lover or mortal enemy? The choice is yours. šÆ
Same download link of the original post. PLEASE DELETE THE PREVIOUS VERSION!!
Hi everyone! This is an experimental (WIP) mod that makes lot skirts in TS2 looking like neighborhood terrain. TSCS inspired me to create this mod; as far as you remember, TSCS has visible neighborhood decals from lot view. It is set in assembly code so that TSCS lot skirts use neighborhood techniques for mapping. Original TS2 doesn't have such functionality. LD attempted to immitate that via fake neighborhood deco but it was created for particular terrains only. So I decided to attempt editing lot skirt shader and got some results; it adds cliffs, rough and meduim stages and improves shores from lot view! Though it is not perfect as it has some misconsistency with lighting (original lot skirts also do) and doesn't repeat the neighborhood terrain mapping but I think it's more practical than neighborhood deco. Hope you like it!
Features
Adds neighborhood decals (cliffs, rough and medium terrain) to lot skirts.
Decals are also visible with snow states.
No blue snow fix and sky fix are included.
Works for every neighborhood automatically.
Supports lighting mods (dusk and dawn states).
Looks better with default replacements.
Installation
Put the .package file into your Downloads folder.
Compatibility
Incompatible with shader mods that modify lot skirts so rename the file adding "zzzz" prefix to make it load last to prevent conflicts if you use many shader mods.
Doesn't conflict with other no blue snow mods that modify the rest shaders (roofs, lot terrain).
Known Issues
May look weird in dusk and dawn states using some lighting mods (still have no idea how to fix that).
Seam between lot skirt and lot terrain (original TS2 lacks lot edge blend technique like in TSCS to make smooth transition between lot terrain and lot skirt).
Lot imposter terrain paint may be invisible sometimes for unknown causes.
Terrain Types
Recently it has been discovered that it's possible to create new terrain types. My shader contains standard terrain types (temperate, desert, dirt and concrete) and uses dependence of textures on lot texture so if you add custom terrain types it's required for my shader to have added such dependencies otherwise my shader will look buggy for your custom terrain types (you are free to contact with me for more detailed information).
DOWNLOAD
Vanilla:
Aka: the clarity and communication that you deserve
Hi everyone. As some may have caught already, GoS is not dead (anymore)! During the period that it was, however, so much drama started and if you ask me; it all comes down to people not knowing what's going on and making assumptions that further sparked panic. So, let's clear some stuff up for those who got caught in the rumor mill.
Oh and if you haven't, it's worth reading @julessims excellent writeup on how she got GoS working again.
This is gonna be focused a bit more on communications stuff. Like, a bit more general I guess?
Q: what did you do?
A: I helped get GoS back online. @julessims did the actual hard work of upgrading the forum. @teaaddictyt played a role by facilitating communication and doing some PR (even if that wasn't received well by many a simmer) and ofc hugelunatic provided files, databases and the occasional bit of relevant information. I approached lunie and provided help with hosting, DNS and ensuring the files were safe and handling some communication. It was teamwork (and jules did most of it if you ask me).
Q: why didn't lunie communicate that it would be rehosted?
A: I'm not sure what lunie's exact motivation behind cancelling the hosting was and if I knew it wouldn't be mine to share, but I do know that @julessims and I upgrading and rehosting wasn't planned. It was a spontaneous action on our ends and so lunie couldn't have told you beforehand. I'm really glad that lunie decided to trust us with this and hope GoS will have many more years!
Q: why didn't you communicate any of this?
A: I thought my time would be better spent actually doing the work instead of playing communications department, fielding questions and countering people's wild speculations. I did think about making a post clarifying matters when it became clear people were making some pretty wildly incorrect statements, but I had other things to do. Better to focus on what matters than to get caught up in more miscommunications.
Q: GoS looks different now. Why?
A: the new look of GoS is a direct consequence of the upgrade. The old theme was not made to fit the new software and the conversion process does not convert themes. Seeing GoS in the default (white) theme felt so wrong, so we picked a good-looking dark theme and @julessims modified it to look more like classic GoS, with great success, I think. Still, it is and never will be truly identical. I don't think it's a bad thing.
Q: is the site in archive mode or can I comment?
The site is not in archive mode. It is a live forum. Posting works, registration works, if anything doesn't work, you should find a mod to message so either they or @julessims or I can try to troubleshoot and fix the issue.
In fact, you should comment! Forums are best when people leave comments and engage. Go express how much you like a piece of CC, contribute to the current theme (fittingly about renovating old things) or talk about something!
Q: why did it have to be upgraded? Couldn't it have just stayed now it was?
A: no. It really couldn't. GoS was running SMF 1.1.21 on PHP no higher than 5.3. The newest version is 8.5. PHP 5.3 had been obsolete since 2014. It would've been difficult to find a host that would be willing and able to host GoS and even if that could be found, it'd still leave it vulnerable to bugs and vulnerabilities resolved in newer versions of SMF and PHP. Credit to lunie's host for having continues to support it for this long, many wouldn't. Now that the forum has been upgraded and is running nicely on 8.3, it should be all good to go for many years to come.
Q: just a forum upgrade? So why did it go down?
A: make no mistake: going from something running on PHP 5.x to 8.x is no small leap and had to be done in steps. There were a lot of issues converting the database to the new format which resulted in all sorts of errors that needed manual database conversions. Upgrading a forum, particularly an old one with more than 600.000 posts is in fact not a piece of cake. There were also traces of a prior attempts to upgrade that complicated matters even more. @julessims made an excellent write-up of the technical bits if you're interested.
Q: who is running GoS now?
A: lunie is still forum admin and it will be up to her to decide what to do about the day to day running of the forum. Whether she'll be running it herself, with the help of others or elect someone else will be her choice in the end. As for hosting: that would be me.
Q: so does that mean we can stop archiving?
You could, but I would honestly suggest at least backing up your own favourite CC, regardless of where it's shared or hosted. Also, you can consider looking up an "auto archiving" extension for your browser that will automatically save pages to the wayback machine. The web archive has a page with resources
Q: *insult angry comment about hugelunatic*
A: you are 100% entitled to your anger and frustration. GoS is an important part of the Sims community and losing it, even for a little bit was a huge blow. It's understandable to be angry. Angry comments, however, were never gonna resolve the issue. Angry comments would not get GoS back nor would comments defending hugelunatic for that matter. What did help was working with hugelunatic. No files+database = no forum. Squabbling was not gonna get either back. Saying that, it's important to acknowledge that I was in a good position to do what needed to be done in regards to skills and connections which is not a privilege most people have. I get why people were angry and given that most were not privy to what was going on behind the scenes, it's no wonder everyone got as upset as they did. I also wouldn't have reacted well if I wasn't in direct communication with lunie and working on getting the site back.
Q: what's the plan now?
A: well, sims2artists still needs an update. I hope we can do that sometime soon. I'll also be keeping an eye out for any errors and aim to implement some extra security headers for the site. We also still need to fix some matters in regards to the domain and DNS. I also hope to have some more contact with the GoS mods so we can discuss hosting and what my responsibility and theirs is. Like, write down who is responsible for what and who can be contacted by my host should I pass away unexpectedly, for example. These things happen, so it's good to have backup plans and emergency contacts.
Q: did you have any freakouts tho?
A: certainly. First, when GoS and S2A went down. I was afraid the files and the S2A DB could be gone for good. I was also afraid that lunie wouldn't be willing to work with us and truthfully I also had the fear that if she got more agitated, we could risk losing the files and database. Fortunately this didn't happen, in fact: lunie gave us the resources and helped us out where necessary so we could get GoS back online. I'm very thankful for that.
I also got dragged by my emotions a bit when an unhelpful reddit post suggested that Delphy of MTS infamy might have something to do with hosting and when lunie mentioned something about an offer of hosting as is, no upgrade required. I may have freaked out and freaked out some other folks in the process (my apologies for that. You know who you are). There were many freakouts and I think it was good I didn't make any tumblr posts about this before we got GoS back. I stand by my decision it wouldn't have helped. Freaking out in private was bad enough.
Q: can you tell us what you actually did technically?
A: certainly! First, I set up hosting and new empty databases for GoS (and eventually: sims2artists). I made sure all the required aliases were in place so that when the DNS records for gardenofshadows.org.uk were switched over, it'd find the correct place on the webserver to go to. I also provided a subdomain on a domain of mine to test the forum live before it'd be moved back to the correct domain.
I also got access to the FTP for the original GoS hosting and was able to grab all the files and reupload what was necessary to the new server. While jules was in PHP hell I also cleaned up some stuff on Sims2artists. It's not gonna be anything you notice, but it's something.
I also did a number of things on the webserver, including changing directories. At some point I accidentally moved the forum to example.tld/gardenofshadows/gardenofshadows/gardenofshadows/index.php if you'd believe it. Finally I helped set the DNS records for the move. An SPF record went missing, but was quickly fixed. I also added some HTTP Headers to be served when visiting GoS and a lil something to hopefully keep AI bots from scraping and spamming HTTP requests. If you notice link previews not working: sorry, that'd be the X-Frame header.
Tldr: webserver and domain and DNS stuff; hosting infrastructure
Q: what about hosting costs?
A: right now they're so low we could call them non-existent. Should that change, I don't expect it to be above ā¬100,- per calendar year. Probably closer to ā¬50,-. Aka: it's not an issue. No need for ads. Should fundraising ever be needed, I will discuss it with the mods first.
Now go leave some comments on GoS!
Anyways, if you have any more questions, don't hesitate to ask. There's a lot more to say about this. But hopefully this does clarify some matters.
Well it wasnāt just me, to be fair. I would have never been able to without @fireflowersims help and HugeLunatics trust in both of us. Thank you to both of them for their work and thank you @teaaddictyt for reaching out and doing the more public communication.
Iām super happy I got the chance to work to fix it. It wasnāt an easy undertaking. It seemed like every little thing would cause more errors, I fixed one and another thing broke. But now it seems stable, finally.
A lot of technical stuff below the cut, beware.
Fixing such an old forum is not easy. Documentation is rather sparse because the framework it runs on is old. There is however a more modern version, but updating is difficult. Here was the issue for the forum - upgrading failed.Ā
A website (usually) consists of two different parts: 1 - The files. They contain the code, scripts, designs, images, attachment, profile pictures etc. 2 - The database. The database connects all the different parts and tells the website where to find something. Everything gets stored in tables, assigned IDs and given values. Everything written, each post and topic is also stored in the database. So without the database the whole page would be useless.
It was clear from the beginning that the database was the culprit for the failed upgrades. I got an earlier backup from HL and started working.
I set up a local environment with two versions of XAMPP. One running on php 7.4 (the last version having compatibility for the forum framework version and the upgrade script to the recent version) and the other on a modern 8.3, which was the same as the version the server @fireflowersims set up for GOS.
I ran the upgrade script (which consists of 4 separate parts) on the old backup and ran into errors right away. The script would just outright crash on me, most often without a log or message. The (local) server would just stop responding. My original plan had been to upgrade to version 2.0 first, then 2.1, since it was the recommended order. However the database backup had already been partly upgraded to 2.1. That was the reason my upgrade script failed. Reversing those changes could have been a possibility but extremely time intensive.
(This is the frontpage of the upgrader. I stared at it so much. Like you can see it has a ton of steps)
Instead I asked for the current database and HL provided it to me. This one was already further along on the upgrade and I could see the error HL had run into before handing over. I had to look at the upgrade scripts and source php files to diagnose what the framework was expecting - and failing - to find in the database.
Thatās where I found the main culprit for *most* of the errors: Time tables. The framework saves every action that a user does in a log, a long table with the action, an id and a date. This was where everything had gotten wrong. The upgrader expected to see one column for the date, named *day*, while the current table had a different column for day, month and year. I tried fixing the table at first but that didnāt seem to work, so I completely deleted the table and created a new empty one myself. (By now I think the issue stems from forgetting to uninstall certain packages before upgrading, more on that later)
That was possible because the log actually doesnāt hold relevant information for the forum to work. It just records each step, probably for moderation purposes. Once I had done that step the upgrade script was finally able to proceed.
There were a few more errors where I had to look at what the script was doing, find the corresponding code in the sources and edit the database myself. Thankfully the code is relatively well commented and named, so I was able to find what I needed.
Finally I got the upgrade script to run to the end and I was actually able to open the forums (local) page. I hadnāt been able to for now so it was a first. But a lot of stuff was still missing, like all the topics. I could see that the posts were back, but not sorted correctly.
The fix was simple but annoying. The forum framework comes with a repair_setting.php file which I had run several times to fix all the paths, but apparently it didnāt fix *all* of them. So back to the database I went, ran some queries and fixed them myself.
Then the forum finally worked again!
(This is what the forum looked like when I first opened it. It ONLY had recent posts)
(The working local forum, no files yet with the default theme. Seems wrong to look at GOS without the dark theme, right?)
There were still a few things I needed to fix but the database seemed to work fine now. I had never done so many queries in my life. I know SQL, and had to fix databases before but not this intensely. So I guessed I learned something new haha.
Next was the exciting step to upload my clean install to the server. @fireflowersims and I had some directory issues, but I was able to fix them manually once again.
Then I had to take a look at the files which mostly consist of avatars and attachments. They didnāt work at all once moved to the clean install. Once again I took a look at the code and realized that the upgrade script would have changed those files as well, but because I ran it on a clean install it didnāt actually do this step.
I didnāt want to run the upgrade script again, worried that it would mess up a now working database. Instead I wrote a script myself that sorted through all the attachments, looked for the IDs of the avatars from the database so it could move and rename them.
Last were the attachments. This was an easier fix. They just had to be given the ending .dat. @fireflowersims ran a command through the console and then the attachments worked too!
We were getting closer!
Next was the theme. The old theme didnāt work on the modern framework anymore so @fireflowersims looked for a new one which I customized with CSS, trying to get it closer to the way the forum looked before. I think it turned out quite alright, hope you guys think so too!
(Trying to find out what CSS class addresses what? Make everything red and green!)
(All the spider webs)
Next was packages, or mods, to the framework. Fire and I encountered some hiccups here too, since there were some leftovers in the database. The packages hadnāt been properly deinstalled before running the upgrade script, which was another source of the errors. I tried fixing them manually but one of the packages would continue to just break the site no matter what I tried, so we settled for an alternative.
Some more work was put into SSL and making the forum secure. Once again some settings seemed to just break the page and each time I had to go back in the database and manually fix what had gone wrong. It was tedious but by now I knew my way around quite well.
@fireflowersims handled a lot of the server administrative work and DNS settings. I know very little about that part so having @fireflowersims there was great and they made sure the page is reachable at the correct address.
So yeah, I hope the site stays online for a long time now. Itās such a big part of our community and communities history. I used to download so much from there when I was younger. I wanted to give back to the community I love so much. That was the reason I spent many many hours digging through code and old forum threads.
Exciting update this morning is that the wizards working on GOS have overcome all the update issues and have the site running on a lovely, modern PHP version and have managed to get many functions of the website working again š I'm unsure how much longer they'll need to keep working out bugs and such, but they are continuing to do so.
Hopefully, the site will be back pretty soon! (good thing too cos I have CC I wanna download ššš¤£)
**I am editing this post based on feedback in the comments.**
I would still like everybody to stop, pause, make some really tight fists with their hands, now shake them out, and do some deep breathing.
I would still like to ask people to sloooow down. The internet moves fast but sometimes, life moves more slowly.
There are still efforts going on behind the scenes to get GOS back online (and Sims 2 Artists).
New hosting has been secured. The website php needs upgrading and this has not been working, but people are working on it.
I know its hard when things happen and you don't know what's going on.
Instead of panicking, jumping to conclusions, making angry posts, it's time to offer support, be patient, wait, ask what's happening without getting mad.
And please, remember kindness and empathy. Lunie has been trying to update GOS for months, and she is exhausted. It's down right now, but not dead (yet).
I do not deny this situation has been handled badly. I do not condone hateful or aggressive language FROM anyone directed TO anyone.
The latest update I have is that the site PHP is ancient, and it will be extremely difficult to update it so that the site can be rehosted, but people are trying.
I'm even probably roping in my IT dude husband who does web hosting and deals with this sort of thing, but who is not a simmer and has no idea what GOS really is.
I will try to actively post more updates as I receive them so that communication can be clear and we can all know what's going on.
I swear there was a mod that fixed the "propose.../give pet" interaction because the game currently does a household funds check when it's not supposed to but now that I need it I can't find any trace or record of it anywhere ;.;
I honestly remember this as well... not on my computer atm but I think I might have it? May be Mandela effect but let me check when I get on. Reblogging for others if they know before I can get to it :)
