These days I spent lots of time fixing lot skirt shader - and it turned into something more. I was to rewrite many game shaders to get consistent look of terrain and snow, and now, it's ready to be published!
Attempted to fix inconsistent lighting, implemented transparent lot skirt roads - so that they match the rest of lot skirt terrain, more and more!
Improvements
Consistent lighting - lot skirt, lot terrain and roads now match.
All lighting states compatible - dusk, dawn, seasonal changes work well.
Every lighting mod compatible - works even with maxis lighting.
New snow shaders (lot skirt, lot terrain and roofs) - fixed ugly shading, proper reaction to every lighting state.
Fixed lot imposters - now their terrain is rendered as well as possible.
Transparent lot skirt roads - now it's possible to use road textures with transparent cuts so that it matches lot skirt terrain.
Now reflective pond water doesn't require pools - its reflections work by reflective plane placed in lot corner.
Neighborhood roads have light snow pass.
Included
Lot skirt shaders
Lot imposter shaders
Lot terrain shaders
Lot lighting fixes (requires RPC)
Roof shaders
Bright CAS fix
Extended Standard and SimStandard shaders
Neighborhood road shader
Pond Water Overhaul
NOT Included BUT Compatible
Better Nightlife
Sea Water Overhaul
Accurate Neighborhood Lighting
Soft Shadows
WIP
Multi-road neighborhoods (I will add it later, sorry!)
Installation
Put the contents into your downloads folder (contains default replacement of maxis roads making them transparent, you may delete these files if you use road default replacements). Remember, my shaders must be loaded last to prevent conflicts!
Snow Lighting
Light snow:
Heavy snow:
Neighborhood roads
Vanilla:
Mod:
Fixed lot imposters
Before:
After:
Lot skirt roads
Default texture:
Transparent texture:
Consistent lighting
Radiance (maxis shaders):
Radiance (my shaders):
Reflective Pond Water
First step - choose respective to lot size reflective plane:
Second step - place it in the lot corner so that the plane covers every lot tile:
Third step - enjoy reflective ponds; there's no need to keep pools or something like that in the scene, reflections work independently:
I know last time I posted about this I got some comments pushing back on my use of AI for this app. I understand the concerns that people have, so i'm trying to be more thoughtful going forward. I have never used AI like this in the past, it was simply because I got given "Free Access" with the purchase of my new computer and I thought I would utilize the fact it was free to finally create something that I wanted. That free era is almost over but I won't be using it again.
I also got way more comments / messages saying how much they enjoyed the app. Thank you for both kinds of messages, good or bad.
After talking and discussing with people on both sides of the fence I have come the decision to hire a HUMAN developer to look into the app, look at its code, check for any "nastiness" that some people were worried out, and genuinely review and audit / fix any coding errors.
Going forward I will acknowledge that yes, the initial set up for this app was built with the help of AI, but future updates / current changes and anything else will be done by a hired human developer.
This developer gave me a comprehensive review of the app and confirmed there was no nastiness or weird stuff going on with the code - which I knew anyway but it's nice to have that confirmed.
They had some recommendations for some changes, such as as only allowing the app to read .package files / its own files. When "uninstalling" it should make sure it is only removing files it created - it should be doing that anyway but they recommended some more checks in the back end.
So they have edited some of the code already. But I hired them again to address the tightening of the code regarding the file reading and other recommendations they have suggested. Which again, has now been implemented.
So that being said... here is the Sims CODEX - again!
Note - The Sims CODEX is currently unsigned, so Windows / Some antivirus programs may show a warning. This is because code signing requires paid identity verification which displays my personal details. The app is offline, reads local Sims 2 .package files, and has had its source reviewed for unsafe behavior.
I was one of the loudest, obnoxious voices in lordcrumps' ear. Without getting into the how and why of the politics of the US, I did not support this app because of how it was created.
That being said, I think lordcrumps taking the step to appease (me) and assure people the app is safe to use and is being reviewed/edited by a human is fantastic.
Remember my 4t2 Sixam project I started 2 years ago? Which I almost scrapped but revisited sometime last year? ... well, I've got good news for you then. It's finally out now! ^^
Welcome to Sixam!
Sixam City, a thriving metropolis on the planet of Sixam, home to Sixam Academy, a prestigious intergalactic university that provides special training for aspiring students to become Birth Queens, Colony Drones, or even the latest innovation in alien technology: Pollination Technicians. Renowned for its cultural diversity and interstellar expeditions, the city nurtures a community focused on curiosity, inclusivity and innovation.
Yes, I recreated the secret alien world from TS4 for TS2 as a custom university subhood! Why as a university subhood you may ask? Well, I tried to keep the original vibes of Sixam of it being an "unlockable"/visitable place your sims can explore rather than a regular neighborhood your sims can live in!
Even after graduation, your sims can actually stay and live in the university subhood using Lamare's YAs can enjoy maternity (and all that) mod, as well as Lamare's Pets at University mod!
Update!! (June 24th 2026)
I made-over the entire neighborhood using my animated 4t2 Sixam plants I uploaded earlier this year, this includes all lots in the neighborhood! So, you can totally have the full TS4 Sixam experience in TS2 now!
Oh... and one more thing, as requested, I finally uploaded a Main Hood, as well as a Downtown version of Sixam Academy, ahem... it's Sixam City now! All the original playables have graduated and are adults now... and the drama goes on! It's like they never left! XD
Screenshots before the make-over
Screenshots after the make-over
Download: MTS | Simblr.cc | SFS
More info under the cut...
Neighborhood Info:
The Main Hood/Downtown versions do require all EPs/SPs though, since I wanted to include apartment lots. I miiight do an alternative version without AL one day, so that TS2 Super Collection users can also use it. The University version is still Uni+NL+OFB EP only regardless.
No camera mod is needed, yet, still recommended for easier gameplay, especially since some lots were built on skyscrapers and can be hard to view with just the vanilla camera.
Number of Sims: 90 (10 playable sims in 4 playable families, 31 townies, 44 NPCs, 5 dead sims) -> 130 now! (including alien pets and other bonus NPCs!)
Number of Lots: 35 (7 residential lots, 2 Greek houses, 5 dorms, 1 secret society, 20 community lots, where 8 of which are owned businesses) -> + 2 bonus lots! (A mysterious Nebula Brick Road lot and Alien Parrrtey!, a lot inspired by the alien party lot in TS4 when you visit Sixam, lol.)
Gameplay Info:
Speaking of lots, I made lecture halls for every major, which you could use with beestew's Active Classes mod! These are community lots, featuring skill-building equipment and study spaces, with NPC professors (as lot owners) available for tutoring whenever your sims visit. The Main Hood/Downtown version still includes these lecture halls, so if you ever wanted to try out the university-in-main-hood mods, this is the perfect neighborhood to try Squinge's Mega College Pack mods out.
I also made an optional custom skybox and custom lighting file for Sixam that will make it always nighttime (Yes, you heard right! The sun never shines here on Sixam!) with subtle seasonal color changes - reddish in Autumn, bluish in Winter, and greenish in Spring.
The inhabited version requires the 3 alien skintones (blue/turquoise/violet) from my [4t2] aliens set to keep the TS4 alien characters like Aileen Rauvu authentic. As giving all these colorful aliens the default green skin instead felt as bad as white-washing, say, giving black characters like Olive Specter a lighter skintone for me. An alternative CC-free version with no CC skintones is also available for players who prefer to not have any CC skintones in their games, though.
I also recreated some characters from TS4, especially all the characters from the The Sims 4 Get to Work: Sul Sul trailer. Every character comes with a complete set of ancestors (at least parents) and customized memories, even townies and NPCs! Some also come with interesting lore! Even though, they're just... townies! Oh, and everyone has genetic infant faces! Yayy! XD
Speaking of characters, scripted events don't work in subhoods, but I wrote a text in each family description that somewhat mimic the scripted event notifications anyway. I think this is a brilliant and fun way of introducing new characters, even in university subhoods. All households should also have a complete set of family album pictures that show their lore a bit. The main hood version does however include scripted events. ^^
Recommended Mods:
All notownieregen/antiredudancy/nodormiespawn/nossrespawn mods. All university townies/NPCs in Sixam are aliens.. or at least have a very good reason why they're there, but this can easily be ruined if you don't have these mods installed, lol.
bloodredtoe's Mannequin babies can be born mod. To have more variety, I used the mannequin skintone for some of the alien sims. While this mod isn't required, it's recommended to prevent crashes, especially when these aliens have offspring, as there's a chance they could inherit the mannequin skintone.
Squinge's No Townie Memory Loss. Again, townies and NPCs in this neighborhood are highly customized and I recommend getting no townie amnesia mods to prevent their lore from getting wiped out! As there are a few clues in the bios of some of the townies... including long lost twins!
lingeringwillx's Restore Default Names for Sims in Subneighbohoods . This is especially helpful, not only because the townies/NPCs are related to the playable sims, but also, it will help to maintain the alien atmosphere of Sixam with names like Pollination Technicians, Colony Drones or Birth Queens, etc. instead of having EA's default townie/NPC names.
Install Instructions:
This download consists of 3 parts:
Neighborhood itself:
Main Hood: Place the NSXM folder into your DOCUMENTS/EA Games/The Sims 2/Neighborhoods folder
Note: If you have TS2 UC, it's DOCUMENTS/EA Games/The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection/Neighborhoods
Note: If you have TS2 Legacy, it's DOCUMENTS/EA Games/The Sims 2 Legacy/Neighborhoods
University: Place the USXM folder into your PROGRAM FILES/EA Games/The Sims 2 University/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate folder
Note: If you have TS2 UC, it's PROGRAM FILES/EA Games/The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection/University Life/EP1/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate
Note: If you have TS2 Legacy, it's PROGRAM FILES/EA Games/The Sims 2 Legacy/EP1/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate
Downtown: Place the DSXM folder into your PROGRAM FILES/EA Games/The Sims 2 Nightlife/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate folder
Note: If you have TS2 UC, it's PROGRAM FILES/EA Games/The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection/Double Deluxe/EP2/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate
Note: If you have TS2 Legacy, it's PROGRAM FILES/EA Games/The Sims 2 Legacy/EP2/TSData/Res/NeighborhoodTemplate
2. 4t2 Sixam Fauna & Flora Set (+ 3 new custom alien skintones):
Download and extract the complete set of the 4t2 Sixam Plants (+ skybox & ocean floor) here.
You should have extracted 4 folders now, go into each one and decide which version of the plants you'd like to keep. Move these folders into the Sixam CC folder of this download. This way, you should have 1 main folder and 4 sub-folders (+ 3 custom alien skins).
Place the Sixam CC folder into your DOCUMENTS/EA Games/The Sims 2/Downloads folder
Note: If you have TS2 UC, it's DOCUMENTS/EA Games/The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection/Downloads
Note: If you have TS2 Legacy, it's DOCUMENTS/EA Games/The Sims 2 Legacy/Downloads
Place the sixam_lot.txt file into your PROGRAM FILES/EA Games/The Sims 2 Mansion & Garden Stuff/TSData/Res/Lights folder
Note: If you have TS2 UC, it's PROGRAM FILES/EA Games/The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection/Fun with Pets/SP9/TSData/Res/Lights
Note: If you have TS2 Legacy, it's PROGRAM FILES/EA Games/The Sims 2 Legacy/EP9/TSData/Res/Lights
Credits:
To EA for creating Sixam in the first place, even though it was originally created for the wrong game ;)
Makers of SimPE (especially with the newest version, allowing creation of customized NPCs!)
Mootilda for all her amazing tools, especially LotCompressor, LotAdjustor, HoodChecker, and her tutorial on how to create a custom subhood template.
Numenor for his AnyGameStarter, allowing for the creation of a Uni/NL/OFB only environment.
@lowedeus for his original skybox, which I recolored and modified to make the skybox season-friendly, as well as @criquette-was-here for the tutorial on how to make nhood objects glow at night.
Gwenke for the original ocean surface nhood deco, which I also recolored and modified to make it glow at night.
@catherinetcjd for all her inspring builds and also for being such an amazing friend. I recommend her Isosceles Apartments, Experiment 4.2, The Colony as well as her Pyramid Commune No. 9 Live, specifically as optional additional lots for this neighborhood. I learned a lot from you in the past few years of neighborhood and lot building!
Creusa Sims for her support and love while I was creating this neighborhood. It was fun discussing some of the lore in this neighborhood with you. XD
@lordcrumps for also being such an amazing friend! It was you who kept pushing me to actually redo the skybox when I wasn't happy with the draft version, lol! And also for your helpful inputs very early on. ^^
@lamare-sims for being such a talented modder and her amazing mods that make living in university subhoods possible in the first place! This concept wouldn't have otherwise made sense.
That's it for now I guess? I hope you have as much fun with this neighborhood as I had building it! <3
OMG, it's been literally a year since I released the original Sixam neighborhood and back then I promised I would do Main Hood / Downtown Subhood versions... very soon. Well, I could finally find some time off to do them, so, here they are! ^^
The Main Hood/Downtown version does however require all EPs/SPs though since I wanted to convert the skyscraper buildings into actual apartment lots. (I recommend this camera mod to prevent the camera from falling off to the ground btw). But the University subhood version is still Uni+NL+OFB EP only in case you use TS2 Super Collection.
Oh.. and I also made-over all lots and the neighborhood using the animated 4t2 Sixam plants, yayy! To make things easier in the future, I've decided to split the 4t2 Sixam CC in 2 downloads, while the custom skintones are zipped together with the neighborhood. The skybox & ocean floor are no longer included in this upload and need to be downloaded separately here.
Whilst at it, I also highly recommend downloading @alienara-simblr's wonderful 4t2 Sixam plant recolors. They look absolutely beautiful and would fit in perfectly in this neighborhood! I still kept my 4t2 Sixam nhood as close as possible to EA's original Sixam, but some alien plants look a thousand times better in some of her new recolors, lol.
Oh... and there's a couple of bonus lots + characters in the Main Hood/Downtown version! Here's a couple of screenshots to show you the changes! XD
Custom scripted events!!
Since this is no longer a university subhood, I decided to include some scripted notifications. The original playable sims have graduated and are all adults now! But the drama from college still goes on... XD
After playing each household on their first day, you can remove the scripting file from the neighborhood folder as you don't need it anymore. Hope you have fun! ^^
For reasons I'm about to detail in a YouTube Community post, I'm taking a break from my New Sims 2 Mods video & web post series. I'm sorry to disappoint those of you who enjoyed and looked forward to my videos and posts, I hate to let you down. As a small consolation, I thought I'd dump all of the mods I've found and noted down that were released Jan-May this year. Thank you for your supportš
Rugs with āGo Hereā (for Rug Fix)
Mesh-only default replacements for afbodysporty, afbodysportyep8 & tfbodysporty
Everyone Can Conjure Grilled Cheese + No Ate Grilled Cheese Memories
Mini Mods Dump (+ Put In Crib Menu For Carried Kid ā Simler90-Compatible Version + Small patch: Lamareās Browse Unlocked To Predestined Ć Simler90ās Electronics Mod)
Workaholic Homework Faster
Mystery Sim is now High School Sweetheart
Dartboard CEP
Dispose Banana Peel & Coconut Shell
OFB Restaurant Podium Default Replacement
Mod Your Dig + Tree Seeds
LTW Chooser For Object Limit Busters
Mini Trait Mods
Bigger Selection Dialog Window
Watch Clouds / Stars Gives Logic
Death-Related mods
Scholarship Age Check
Automatic Gender Preference
Club Counter Mapping Edit
Trait Mod ā Outfit Sense
Lighting Mod Ultimate Collection
Broken Sprinkler Notification
Place Sinks on Counters with Clutter in Deco Slots
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.
Jules, I cannot emphasize enough just how cool you are for having done all of this work to get GoS back online! I'm glad I was able to provide a good new space for GoS to live from now on and assist with all the DNS. It was a trip alright, and I'm glad we could work together on this!
You are a hero and I (and I bet so many others) am so grateful for your skill and dedication! ā„ļø
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 SimPEāall 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.)
edit: more of of my thoughts on monetized youtube videos over here.
"What ifā"
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.
edit: a follow-up for those who are feeling personally attacked by this post.
Special thanks to @lordcrumps for making maxis and clean ui pics and counting pixels with me. It was his and @simnopke's idea to make this thing bigger
Some behind the scenes under the cut
Stage 1, breaking out of the tiny window
Stage 2, figuring out how to mod UI again
Stage 3, going big! But not quite there yet
Stage 4, "should I move it 1 more pixel to the left"
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Secret bonus version for behind the scenes viewers who think that smaller is better, available exclusively and only in starship colors (you can only have one version)
I come back with a download, but a slightly more niche one.
Since sharing my own Turn-Ons/Off default replacement, a few people have asked about how to customise it for their own game (e.g. adding different triggers). So, I put together a couple of tutorials for them to explain the process - especially as it relates to adding different 3t2 traits - and thought I might as well also share publicly.
They don't explain all the ins and outs of BHAV editing, but they do give a basic introduction to the principles - which can be applied not just to TO replacements - so I think they could be a helpful resource for anyone who is new to BHAV modding.
Here you go:
PART 1
PART 2
Let me know how it goes!
(Huge thanks to @episims for so generously teaching me all that I know so far.)
If anyone else would like to join me in petitioning EA to at least try to fix the object limit in Legacy Edition (maybe I'd bother using that version of the game instead, lol), please jump on this thread I've started in their forums and comment.
Hello,An amazing coder named Will Nixon has been digging into a bug in The Sims 2 called the "Object Limit" and has figured out how it could
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(yes, Will, I know you're still poking at the UC code being like "could I fix this...??" but it shouldn't be all on you, lovely)
(yes, I know Legacy Edition sucks but if they were to remove this cap, I'd "use" it... if you know what I mean š)
I have returned from a grueling 48-hour adventure deep within the Maxis mines, and have witnessed unspeakable man-made horrors with my own two eyes ā the object limit is very real and there is nothing that can be done to fix it! The end times are upon us!
Okay, I'm being slightly dramatic. It could be fixed fairly easily, but not with a simple patch, and likely not without access to the source code (anyone else tired of hearing that excuse?).
The issue is that the limit isn't localised to purely the Build/Buy menu ā it's integral to every aspect of the game that involves objects. Here are just a few examples of the game's functionality that would need modifying to remove the limit:
Sim pathfinding and routing.
Mapping tree tables to objects.
Interacting with objects.
Manipulating objects within lists (reading/writing/deleting them).
Objects being unselectable in the Build/Buy menu was also a result of this limit and I managed to fix it very quickly, but because The Sims 2 is a house of cards with the limit as its foundation, everything started falling apart almost instantly.
"So, what is this limit?", I hear you ask. 32,767. Yes, you read that correctly. The game is only willing to accept object IDs up to a meager value of 32,767. In computing terms, this is the maximum value of a signed 16-bit integer. It can store many more objects than this in a list, which is why you can still see all your 4t2 objects in the catalogue, but it isn't designed to recognise this many IDs and thus can't do anything with them.
Why are integers signing things? Are they famous or something?
'Signed' refers to the fact that these are integers (an integer is just a whole number btw) that can represent both positive and negative values ā negative numbers have a negative sign before them, hence the term 'signed'. An unsigned integer is therefore one that can only represent positive values.
While they can both represent the same total of different values, the range of representable positive values differs. Using 16-bit integers as an example:
Unsigned: 0ā65,535
Signed: -32,768ā32,767
This shows that both can represent 65,536 different values, but the range of positive values for signed integers is half of that of unsigned integers. Object IDs cannot be negative, which means Maxis deliberately chose to use signed integers as a way to cut the ID limit in half.
The cherry on top of all this is that the game is manually converting 32-bit numbers into 16-bit numbers to enforce this limit. This is why I could fix objects not being selectable in the Build/Buy menu easily, as all I had to do was patch out the conversion. Could EA do this across the whole game themselves if they wanted to? I imagine so. But then again, if I had billions of dollars, I probably couldn't be arsed either.
What's an object ID?
An object ID is just a number from 0ā32,767 that the game assigns to each new object it places into a list, presumably starting at 0 and incrementing by 1 for the next object. It would appear that CC objects are given IDs first, which is why it was solely Maxis objects becoming unselectable after passing the limit.
Sims and objects are stored in separate lists, but I believe they both contribute to the overall limit. My single piece of evidence for this is that I experimented switching between several hoods and observed that the IDs of objects in the Build/Buy catalogue fluctuated across them. Objects in hoods with subhoods attached had higher IDs than in those without.
What was causing the Build/Buy menu crashes?
The same thing I explained in my original post (the game trying to access null pointers), except the creation of these null pointers was no accident and not the result of something going wrong.
The game merely checks whether the ID for the object it is looking at is above 32,767, and if it is, it deliberately sets the pointer to its address to 0. This would be fine, if it didn't then try and access this nullified pointer immediately afterwards!
I'll cut Maxis some slack here, because surely no one would be crazy enough to want more than 32,767 objects in their game, right guys? How could they ever have predicted such a scenario? (2004 was a simpler time).
Wait, so you were wrong about there not being an object limit? Not so cocky now, are you?
Whoa there, cowboy ā hold your horses. If I may direct your attention to this excerpt of an email I sent to @teaaddictyt on the 22nd of April 2026 at 13:42 BST:
As you can see, I was right all along!!!
In my defence though, we thought the crashing was the only thing we had to solve, which is why I missed the completely obvious 16-bit conversion that was occurring within the functions I patched. Unfortunately, I am only human, but I understand if you want to destroy all the spockthewok posters I know you have hanging on your walls...
In light of these new findings, if you want to hear my updated opinion on the existence of the object limit, watch this video.
Is your patch useless?
Yes, but also no. It's not fixing the object limit (I should probably rename it tbh), but it is fixing those annoying crashes caused by it.
At the moment, not having the Build/Buy menu crash when you try and use it is the best we can do. It's up to you which you find more annoying ā crashing, or not being able to buy x number of objects in the catalogue. Like the 4GB memory limit, this is going to be an additional constraint we'll have to learn to accept :/
Another alternative would be to join me and the 12 other weirdos who play with no CC, and never have to worry about any of this. No? Oh well, it was worth a try...
Will you ever actually fix the object limit?
If it's even possible without the source code, then not by myself, no.
Because of the number of core areas of the game that would need patching, I don't trust myself not to miss something and have the game explode. Unless someone wants to assemble a modding strike force to try and tackle the issue as a team over several months, I'm not touching it with a 10-foot pole (for your safety and for mine).
Should Maxis go on trial at the Hague for crimes against humanity?
Probably.
Anyway, that's all from me, apologies for the false hope :( One small positive is that I did manage to map out a reasonably large chunk of the game's code while I was frantically searching for solutions, which should make my life easier when looking at your requests. I feel like I need to successfully complete some of them now to make up for this dud!
Will
(Thank god I didn't look at this for my dissertation, I would have failed my degree).
If you want to learn modding, I highly recommend Williamās tutorials š He has a nice and clear style of explaining things, a pleasure to watch.
Videos are packed full of useful info bits, will answer many questions about reading BHAVs and help you grasp the general structure of object coding. These two are more broad, there are other tutorials that cover more specific topics as well.Ā
On a side note, @picknmixsims hearing you say that youāre bad at labeling your code cracked me up. Sooo relatable! Iāve become too lazy to label variables and params. I do constants, since they are pretty useless otherwise. Attributes to keep sane. But to go and create labels for BHAVs, nah. I feel so much better all of a sudden š
Author of the mod discovered that memory-usage-related pink soup is a result of an intentional safety check in the game's code, rather than a mistake in calculating texture memory.
So his experimental mod for TS2 RPC launcher basically tells the game to stop freaking out and turning stuff pink when shaders' memory usage goes over certain threshold. NOTE: it may get rid of the pink, but the game will still crash if you exceed 4GB limit.
There are two mod options to choose from:
Version 1 is more radical, it completely removes the safety check. You'll (probably) find out the shader's memory limit has been exceeded when your game crashes.
Version 2 is supposed to allow some pink soup at around 3.5 GB memory usage, near the danger zone, so you have time to act - so obviously, this one sounds more sensible.
And while I remain convinced that pink soup can occur because of other shader-related issues or f*cked-up memory settings, not just this "failsafe", if your game suffers from pink soup it's definitely worth a try!
This interaction is called ingame: āTelepathy.../Suit...ā.
It allows adult/elder aliens identified with the token from Sophie-David's āMirrors of Discernmentā (This is REQUIRED) to put on the EP06 Scifi outfit anytime they want (This is REQUIRED too, the Shiny version) by @mdpthatsme.
You can choose any recolor of the Shiny version.
DOWNLOAD
Credits:
* @mdpthatsme for the "EP06 Scifi outfit".
* @abiamalapizza for giving me the idea and test it too. We would love to see this outfit converted to teens, maybe add morphs to it, but that's out of our league.
* And thank you for reading and (possibly) downloading this.
TOU: You can do almost whatever you want with this mod, but please read the credited creators TOU's if you want to use their work, and if you upload something related, a new version, or an upgrade, give us some credit for it.
I've just released a YouTube Video and Website Post on my favourite mods for The Sims 2 that were released in 2025!
Watch the Video (42 min):
Read the Blog Post:
My favorite new Sims 2 mods released in 2025!
Thank you to all the creators who shared their mods this past year and made this possibleš @teaaddictyt, @lamare-sims, @heathensimmer, @jellymeduza, @fway, @tvickiesims, @matti2k2, @velcositro, @hypersaline, @ashtonlc3, @jinxxsims, @sissysims, @lordcrumps, @logansimmingwolverine, @fracturedmoonlight, @gummilutt, @episims, @millicent-bystandr, @jacky93sims, @grilledcheese-aspiration, @somedaythesun, @simnopke, @pforestsims, @suratan-cc, @vegan-kaktus, @1nsnlgo1nsn, @letomills, @applewatersugar, @12raben, @virtualpeople, @picknmixsims, @blueybre, @chieltbest, and many more on Mod The Sims!
