The Sims 2 Presents: Foster's Valley!

[Cassini90125]

I was able to change people's clothing but I'm still getting crashes, mostly when trying to get people home from a community lot (mall, park, etc.), and unfortunately when that happens it's like the trip never took place; when I next play the home lot the Sims simply show up in a cab, like they went out for a two-minute drive. It seems to be happening more frequently, too, and it's guaranteed to happen if anyone tries to buy clothing. I don't know who to ask for help about this; a lot of the Sims sites don't seem to be terribly hospitable to non-technical people (MATY being the worst), and the only advice you ever get from EA Games is to get rid of your custom content, uninstall and reinstall the game, and of course the usual line about how the company is not legally responsible for anything.

I hate this, I truly do. It hurts.

[antgirl1]

Sacu-ROM: The Revenge?

[Cassini90125]

Originally Posted by antgirl1

Sacu-ROM: The Revenge?

Actually it may be, to some extent. Among it's other tricks, SecuROM reconfigures your security settings, leaving your ports open to potential attacks. There are currently at least two trojans and/or viruses on my system that have resisted all attempts to remove them, plus a possible rootkit as well, and the stars alone know what they're doing here. On my old system the game suffered crashes due to the presence of a particularly persistent piece of adware known as "EliteWare AdBar". Norton was never able to remove it although Spy Sweeper wiped it out easily. That ancient machine shouldn't be able to run the game but it does, and the pic of Lavender Fred shown above proves it. The graphics aren't great but it doesn't crash. (I played it last night, by the way; Lavender stayed home, much to the other Sims' relief. ). The game still plays on my main system but obviously it has problems, which stem from various sources. Later today I'm running a program that's supposed to remove orphaned mesh files (yeah, that tells you a lot ), which may help a bit. After that it's time to create a restore point and clean the registry, and if that doesn't do the trick I'll reformat the hard drive. Everything's backed up so I won't lose anything other than time (and probably a few sanity points ). After that it'll simply be a matter of reassembling everything back to what it's supposed to be, and we go from there.

[Ignate]

Wow, I haven't been here for a while.
What is it that Sierra's reading?

[Fomalhaut]

Cute ones

Gaaabeee!!! I'm glad you "like" him so much And his personality reflects his real one, though, as far as I can remember (haven't seen him for ages), he can be really sweet... if he wants to.

[Cassini90125]

Originally Posted by Imaginary Light

That picture of Gabe cracked me up I think I can hear him saying, "I'm one hot piece of man!"

And I was looking through those Sim outfits...do you think you can change my outfit to this? It reminds me of what I usually tend to wear

From what I understand, the real Gabe is a piece of... eh, you know.

I did manage to change your outfit. Last I saw, you were chatting with Linestra in the middle of the street. Fortunately the game does not include traffic.

Originally Posted by Lynnie

*snaps fingers* Come back, Cass! Where'd ya go?

A place that's mostly Blue.

Originally Posted by Lynnie

Haha, the last picture of Jimmy jumping on the sofa had me laughing. He's about to fall and crack his head open. Can you imagine having a dad like that? The nightmares!

A place that's mos Jimmy and family are currently dealing with the Welcome Wagon, who he has entertained with the karaoke machine. When I saved the game the lot of them were chowing down on spaghetti and Uma was awaiting a ride downtown.

Originally Posted by Ignate

Wow, I haven't been here for a while.
What is it that Sierra's reading?

She's doing the crossword puzzle. Later in the day she made the previously mentioned spaghetti, as she's the only one in the house who had the sense to pick up a couple of Cooking skill points. Smart girl.

Originally Posted by Fomalhaut

Cute ones

Gaaabeee!!! I'm glad you "like" him so much And his personality reflects his real one, though, as far as I can remember (haven't seen him for ages), he can be really sweet... if he wants to.

Coco brought him home from school the other day. She thinks he's cute, Wilt thinks he's obnoxious, and Eduardo never ran into him. Naturally, he and Bendy got along just fine.

Given that the game is behaving horribly and due to other issues as well I've decided that I have no choice other that to reformat my system. Whether or not that will improve the game's performance I don't know but at least I'll be rid of Fujif-Gen, Virtumonde, Atdmt.com, and whatever else has taken up unauthorized residence on my hard drive. The fun starts early this evening, probably around 5:00 PM-ish or so, so if you don't see me around this evening or tommorrow, now you know why. I may check in via my laptop if this takes too long. Wish me luck.

[Government Man]

Good luck!

[Cassini90125]

No reformat as of yet. The Windows XP disc appears to be missing.

Outfits were changed for those who requested changes. I'm trying to advance the plotline without game-crashing trips to other lots. Frustrating but it's the only option available at the moment. In the meantime...

Imaginary Light disrespects Eduardo:



Eduardo disrespects Imaginary Light:



And the House was a bit tense for the rest of the afternoon. More to come as things deteriorate.

[antgirl1]

Lol they're not getting along swimmingly, aren't they? XD

[Cassini90125]

Originally Posted by antgirl1

Lol they're not getting along swimmingly, aren't they? XD

They'll manage. Funny thing is, Imaginary Light is there because Eduardo brought her home from school. Wilt and Coco brought guests home as well, so the House was a little busy that day.

Got a couple of "change outfit" requests earlier from Imaginary Light and Lynnie, which were taken care of via my favorite game hack; thought y'all might want to see how they look:



Linestra, the best behaved person in the Never Forgotten house (thank you, Linestra!), chats with Imaginary Light in the middle of the street, as I mentioned a few posts back. No danger of a runaway truck, here; you see traffic when viewing the entire neighborhood but never when playing an individual lot. The only vehicles that show up are the bus, various service worker and emergency vehicles, and the taxi. The phrase "Go play in traffic" is not in a Sim's vocabulary. In the background, Sparky has started another pillow fight. A minute later, inside the house, it's time to learn more about cooking:



xxxClaire is reading a cookbook; Linestra and Lynnie are watching the Yummy Channel, the game's equivalent to the Food Network. Learning from the cookbook is faster but not as much fun. All three will gain a point of Cooking skill next time I play the house, and 1,000 Aspiration Points as a bonus. I'm hoping to raise Lynnie's skill level by a point within the next game hour; company's coming soon, and I want them well-fed.

For those interested in what the rest of the house was up to when I took this pic, Jekylljuice was in the shower after stomping around in a puddle, x_dummkoff_x was making a sandwich, Imaginary Light was seeking work on one computer, and Sparky was screaming at the other. Bloo was on the Forum at the time. 'Nuff said.