Recognising Newer Graphics Cards for Sims2

So I think I'm crying uncle and dumping the hood. The 50/50 method has failed to help me determine where the problem is. For example, when I cut my files in half, one half will flash pink. When I cut that set in half, either both halves continue to flash pink or neither half flashes pink and the problem remains inconsistent the smaller the groups get. I've taken files out or added files to an empty game... all I can conclude is that the problem remains some sort of conflict in the top half of my downloads. It's not caused by any of my hacks or mods or default replacements. Nor do I think it's caused by any of my CAS files. Décor Misc, Décor Sculpture flash pink together but not apart as do these three subfolders; Build Walls, Build Floors and Build Outdoors stuff. Yet when all five are the only folders in the DL folder, no pink. Tried the 50/50 method with the five of them and the results were inconclusive. I've deleted several files from each folder with no result. This problem seems to have nothing to do with the amount of CC since cutting them in half does nothing to stop the pink. Nor does deleting files. So yeah, despite having never played anyone in the hood, I think it died somehow. So that's where I am. Sorry I couldn't come up with a better answer.

How awful to lose your hood

Yup - thanks for letting us know. It really sucks that this is happening.

Can I ask a favour? Can you send me a file from your logs - it's called 'CustomContentObjects.txt'

What I'm hoping to do is compare it to a friends who has also got this trouble to see what sort of overlap you guys have gotten.

Of course I can do that only I had a little trouble when uploading the file so let me know if the zip is corrupted or something


  CustomContentObjects.rar (Size: 328.2 KB / Downloads: 419)

And thanks for the condolences. I hate losing the hood since it's been such a joy to build. But the inconsistent flashing pink and crashing worries me. I'm afraid to create a population if it's already acting up.

No worries. Trying to rescue your hood... Have you thought about doing this?

1. Create new empty hood, without downloads.
2. In old hood, package up a lot
3. Install in new hood, using only the CC that comes with the lot Sims2Pack. (and any recolours that the sims2pack doesn't grab)
4. If it flashes Pink, then you know it's CC on that lot, and you can remove it again.
5. If it doesn't flash Pink, then repeat from Step 2.
6. If it does flash Pink - remove the CC from that lot, and install the lot without CC. It shouldn't flash Pink. Redecorate that lot with the existing CC. Repeat from Step 2.

It may be a bit of work, but my guess is that you'll be able to have a hood that is very similiar without the flashing.

I'm actually curious if only AMD cards have this issue, specifically 7000 series ones. Both me and a friend of mine have issues (he has 7850, I have 7770), as well as many of you with 7000 series cards. Never hear complaints from 6000 series owners or Nvidia owners. I've tweaked it, but it still has some nasty glitches. Sim City 4 is also forced to run in software mode (unless I want to have a seizure). Might try GTX 760 when I decide to upgrade if this is the case.

Definitely not just AMD cards - I've seen INTEL and NVidia needing fixes.

The AMD Radeon 7?000 series has a particular problem with part of the code in the Graphic Rules.sgr but is easily fixed.

Most of the problems with the new cards tend to be that they've changed the build numbers, or the way the series are. The problems most recently has been that Microsoft moved where the texture memory was stored. This was fixed by hard coding in the amount of texture memory.

I've had about 10-12 of these to fix, amongst others:

Radeon 6800
NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M
ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series
Mobile Intel® 945 Express Chipset Family
AMD Radeon HD 6570
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670

So looking at it, only mine and one other has been AMD 7?00 series. And now you two.

Hmm, so this is a Windows 7 issue not a GPU issue? I actually did try your fix awhile ago, when I first got my 7770 and it worked without any need for further tweaking in Simcity 4, Sims 2 M&G, and the Sims 2 life stories series. It enabled hardware rendering, which is the initial problem. I'm guessing only 7000 series cards have a need for tweaking the .sgr files then, but a Windows 7 update screwed some things up for everyone. Last time I used Windows 8, which was about six months ago, Sims 2 could not even update. At least it runs on Windows 7. Basically been playing Sims 3 and other games the last 6 months, but I want to play TS2 once again. Not sure how you figured out this fix, but you did an excellent job and have helped many people.

That's correct - there's a number of issues, one is coding issue for the Radeon 7?00, one is Windows 7 issue. The Windows 7 issue is a texture memory issue. There's a coding issue for Intel and Nividia as well, but Intel has more problems than that and unfortunately, I wasn't able to settle all of them for Jon's Intel.

I use the fix in SimCity4 as well.

Windows 8 I don't have any experience of, but from the little that I've heard, I'm staying away from it until Windows 9.

ETA: A friend at N99 pointed me to this thread at MTS regarding Windows 8 and how to get Sims2 working on it. There are 17 pages in it, and apparently it is somewhere in that thread.

Basically I waded through the code in the Graphics Rules file and put trace in to see what was happening until I found the bit of code that was causing the problem. I'm an analyst/programmer by trade so code holds no terror for me.

It will run on Windows 8, but not update meaning you are stuck with the vanilla. And just out of curiosity, what did you do to get Simcity 4 working optimally on your card?