#sims on linux

[rurpleplayssims]

So, I have recently been inspired by @teaaddictyt to try out playing Sims 2 on Linux - more specifically Mint Cinnamon 22.1

...and the results speak for themselves! 😍 😍 😍

FOR CONTEXT: I have Optimized Lot Imposters on, all settings on High, INCLUDING shadows (which I've not had enabled for years!) and downloaded the Sea & Water Overhaul.

Now I have crashed the game but I am still in the deliberate stress-test phase. The crash happened after dipping in and out of 15+ lots quite quickly (as I was adding pool tiles to the lots) and I am IMPRESSED! 😇 😍

In comparison to Windows:

I wouldn't be able to run these settings without crashing and/or pink soup, and those settings were on low/medium.

I did use the Sea & Water Overhaul a year or so ago but it kept crashing my game, so I removed it.

My view distance was set to Small and it still crashed sometimes.

In fairness, I am still modding/cleaning up my Downloads folder - as is the way of Simmers 😂. It's possible I have something in my downloads that's causing the single crash I've experienced after a few hours of testing, but that's still SO MUCH LESS crashing/pink soup than Windows.

I like Linux, even disregarding playing Sims 2. It's very crisp, smooth and feels modern and more professional than Windows.

I should add that I was using Windows 10. I have installed Linux on a separate SSD to my Windows as not all the programs I need work on Linux.

If you want to have a look at Linux yourself for playing Sims 2, then check out Tea's video here.

If you want some more tech help regarding Linux, check out the channel on Tea's discord as well. Everyone's been very friendly, helpful and patient in trying to help out people's troubleshooting as quite a few of us have decided to dual-boot Linux alongside Windows.

I've got TS2 up and running but my next job will be getting all the modded tools setup.

[i-mi]

Things have been looking "wrong", different, since I started messing with ts2 again recently. Couldn't put my finger on what was different but there was definitely something. Went through all the troubleshooting, started to think something must have changed with my WINE profile again... Turns out my userstartup.cheat must have got overwritten at some point. No idea why! But everything is back to normal and long live uintProp lotSkirtSizeIncrease 120! 🥰

One day I will actually play rather than just finding more problems to fix.

[i-mi]

MY SMOOTH EDGES ARE BACK! The Lutris developer and I spent practically the whole afternoon reinstalling and messing with it, but they are back and it’s beautiful!! He also says he’s found 2 bugs with Lutris while helping me, so now I don’t feel so guilty about wasting so much of his time haha.

TS2, I will play you sooooon.

(But not now, because now I am exhausted!)

[i-mi]

This week:

I have successfuly installed The Sims 2 on my Linux laptop and got it fully working. An absolute miracle. I really just thought I was purposely wasting time and hadn't really considered the possibility that it might actually work! It seems to be running smoothly and looks fine, although I am going to be very, very slowly adding in CC and play testing it properly, because I really don't know if the game on Linux can handle heavy CC. Who knows, maybe I'll be surprised again? And if not, maybe it'll be good for me to go low CC.

I have also got Body Shop fully working, despite the creator of the Linux script apparently not knowing of its existence, and it also seems to be working, apart from an apparent glitch with the (original maxis) skintones not matching the head and body entirely. Some googling seems to suggest this a common glitch on Mac systems and some people fix it entirely by using custom skins, so maybe it won't be problem when I put some defaults in.

The Compressorizor is also installed and working fine!

I have changed my blog theme (just spent way longer on this than I'd care to admit haha) and I have reogranised my tags page yet again. I seem to do this everytime I come back from a break.

Finally, I've created a new sideblog imi-reblogged for inspiration and CC finds, because the pinterest account I was using has become such a mess and I think I need the proper tagging system of tumblr. It's not properly set up yet (still tweaking the theme!), but if you start seeing this account reblogging your stuff, now you know it's me! I'm also going to try and keep this new resources page properly updated with what I actually have in my downloads folder (especially as I think I need to not let it grow too much, at least until I know if Linux can handle it).

What I hope to do next:

Install and get fully working CEP, Scriptorium, SimPE (oh boy, that could be fun), Sims2Pack Clean Installer, Mootilda's Hood Checker.

Decide on my defaults. Especially important if I'm going to keep my Downloads folder small. I have so many favourite maxis match skin and eye sets that I can't decide between and I think I need to go in game to compare. I am also so freaking excited that I now have the opportunity to have a tidy Hair folder. In my old downloads folder, I had about a million different maxis match textures in there with the odd non-maxis match texture getting lost in there too, but this time I will use one texture and it will Poppet's V2 and it will all match and it will be beautiful.

Work out what basic mods I need to stop hood corruption etc.

Download and get camera and lighting mods fully working (so excited about the new lighting mods I have yet to try and fingers crossed they work in Linux!)

Actually play-test for a long period time, not just the few minutes here and there like I have been doing up to now, plus test each bit of CC after adding it to my downloads folder (because, again, unsupported operating system that not many people have tested...).

So that will all take forever...

[i-mi]

Smooth Edges?

Sorry, more troubleshooting. But I am completely lost and have no idea what else to try. Has anyone ever had smooth edges one moment and then experienced them randomly disappearing out of nowhere, when everything indicates they should be there?

I was so close to being ready to play. For a well over a month, smooth edges worked perfectly and I have no idea what suddenly caused them to stop working. I had changed nothing about my system the day they disappeared as far as I can tell. The setting is not greyed out, but if I drag the slider to "low" it looks exactly the same as “more”. I’ve tried multiple different Graphics Rules (which wouldn’t have made sense if that had been it anyway anyway, because the Graphics Rules I was using worked for over a month?), cheats in my usercheats, being in contact with the Lutris developer and trying different Linux stuff/wine prefixes, but he’s convinced it has to be do with the game settings itself, because according to everything else it should be working.

So frustrating.

[i-mi]

Asking on anon because I don't have a tumblr account but any chance you could tell what missing dependency you needed to get the HCDU working for Sims 2 on Linux, I've been trying to figure it out without any luck. (And if you've had any progress on getting Sims2Pack clean installer working, because I sure haven't.) (Oh, and if you haven't added CEP and camera mods yet, I jused the exact instructions for the Ultimate Collection (minus changes for file paths) and it worked perfectly.)

Eeee, anon! You have no idea how happy this message has made me! Someone else playing ts2 on Linux! I thought I was alone :’)

Long rambling explanations under the cut, but it feels good to share some of the knowledge I’ve gained over the last few months.

I sadly cannot remember exactly what the dependency was to get the HCDU working, but I do remember how I tracked it down. I decided rather than simply running the exe file (through double click or Lutris) that I’d try running the HCDU.exe through the terminal using the command:

wine “path/to/HCDU.exe”

When the exe failed to load, as expected, there was an error message in the terminal that I was then able to copy and paste into Google and that told me I was missing a windows dependency. I remember the forum post I used said it to be installed with winetricks and I think it might have been “virtual runtime” or some other windows thing like that, but I can’t remember any more details than that (and searching my browsing history for winetricks is coming up with nothing), so I think your best bet is trying the exe in the terminal like I did. Sorry I can’t remember more than that and hope you get it working too!

The Sims2Pack Clean Installer is working perfectly for me too now! I could always open the program itself, but I just didn’t know how to open sims2packs with it. Hours of googling (again!) about file associations in linux vs windows etc, but eventually I realised the easiest way was to just use the terminal like this:

wine “path/to/Sims2Pack Clean Installer.exe” “path/to/.sims2pack”

The quotations marks are really important! It took me ages to work that out, but you need them because the file path will almost certainly have spaces in it. I use this method to unpack a sims2pack and then just copy and paste the .packages into the right folder (e.g. Downloads, Saved Sims…). If you want Clean Installer to actually check your Downloads folder then you need to open the exe using Lutris, so that Clean Installer can actually find where the game is installed. Click “Run exe under wine prefix” after clicking on your TS2 banner. I haven’t yet found a way to combine these two methods (so that packages would be installed automatically in the right place), but copy and pasting manually doesn’t bother me too much really.

Glad you have CEP and camera mods working too! Same here, along with Compressorizor, Scriptorium, the Hood Checker… and most CC that I’ve tried. I’ve had a couple of exploding hair meshes, but that’s about it and I’m not convinced they were caused by installing the game on Linux anyway. Now I’ve got the game working fully, it’s really no different than playing it on Windows. Which is pretty amazing really!

[i-mi]

From screaming with excitement to oh this isn't right to oh no definitely not right... Well, it may not be playable yet, but this is the closest I’ve ever got to a functioning game on Linux! I’ll take that as a win and try and tweak it again tomorrow. Guessing it might be a similar unknown graphics card on issue that you even get on Windows 10?

[i-mi]

Sorry, everyone, I have another “is this normal for ts2, a 2004 game, or is this another Linux graphic glitch” question! Can anyone running ts2 on Windows (10, 8, 7, I don’t think it matters) check if their neighbourhood mountains in Riverblossom Hills look like this in snow if using the “uintProp lotSkirtSizeIncrease 120″ cheat in your usercheat.startup. I’ve tested in multiple households (Roth, for example) and this is how they look to me. Thank you! :)

Pictures below cut (and yes my smooth edges are broken in the second photo...they were working a day ago but they’re gone again now oops!) :