Sims2 A very warm thank you, Leefishers! Graphics advice inside.

Hello, all. I first would like to thank Kiri and Leefish for their efforts to support new graphics cards in The Sims 2. I have played for about 9 years and did set it all aside about 4 years ago finally moving to The Sims 3.

After building 7 worlds and decorating too much to count, I found myself at a place of utter disappointment. The game wasn't bad, per se, but I had finally tired of the relentless routing whines that I ultimately found out were mostly baseless. It was as though someone coded in a whinge-factor into the game so the sims would whine for no reason. No routing errors, in truth, just plain old attention seeking behavior. I could've screamed.

I backed up the drive and reinstalled The Sims 2 immediately because I remembered the good old days of my favorite EP, Open for Business. They throw their bags down in disgust!

Fast forward, I picked up your advice about adding the video ID to the videocards.sgr, etc, etc. I had tweaked my graphics.sgr extensively before that but adding the entry to the DB took it to a whole new level. I have some things to share with you all that I have found in the Simlands that you can use to make your Sims 2 game look as amazing as will ever believe. Here is what I recommend:

1) ETA: (Type Fix) Reset "simpleterrain true" in your graphics.sgr to "simpleterrain false" - every instance
2) Make sure your current graphics card is in the DB
3) Expand your game resolution. See: http://www.simbology.com/smf/index.php?topic=7372.0
4) If your computer can handle it, replace all of your trees to high poly custom trees. I cannot stress this enough. Do a search for CuriousB and Raynuss and Mustluvcats - all have high poly neighborhood trees. I put them all over the place and also others that are lot-based so that there are no blurry areas anywhere in my towns. I run my game on a 17" Acer laptop and it works fine.
5) EDIT: DO NOT Add the Gunmod Radiance lighting system After further testing, I have found it is not worth the performance hit. I will come back with an update after more testing.
6) Add a neighborhood sky object to your game. I love the Veronaville one from: http://nimi4.livejournal.com/49332.html
7) Add lot skies. I use these two:

a) http://ja-viera.livejournal.com/11280.html - fabulous for storytelling skies and specific situations (high res warning)
b) http://slig.dreamwidth.org/15420.html - this one is the holy grail and has Nimi's textures so it is the best of everything because now I have my Vernonaville sky in lot. Glory Be!

Here are pics:

Hello EswenV, welcome to leefish! What pretty pics those are. Your game is gorgeous!

And thanks for all those tips! I happen to be getting a new PC soon, so this will come in handy if I manage to get Sims 2 installed on it. (Windows 8.1 - eek!) I looked in my Graphics Rules.sgr file though and couldn't find any line called "simpleterrains true" - am I looking in the wrong place? Where is that line supposed to be? What's it supposed to do? (I was looking in the "Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Mansion and Garden Stuff\TSData\Res\Config" folder.)

ETA: Whoops! I found the "simpleterrian true" line - turns out I was searching with an extra "s" in there. Okay, excellent. Will certainly try that if I can. I'd never heard of that tweak before.

fanseelamb, awesome and welcome. A couple other things:

-Sorry about the misspelling on the "simpleterrain". That will alleviate your grass looking flat. It's a great tip I found on the web.

-Set this command to "false" in your graphics.sgr according to Simsample: boolprop dontMergeNHFlora false
It can also be put in your userstartup.cheat file. It prevents flora from disappearing in lot view for a better experience. It must be entered in neighborhood view, userstartup.cheat or in your graphics.sgr file.

-Also check your graphics.sgr file for "ceiling" - there is a setting to turn it on/off. I forced it on to see ceiling inside the game without controllers.

-I use modified camera files from the Gunmod mod on MTS - the last 4 entries in the neighborhood and live files - I have changed them to "-50" for each to turn off fade, as much as possible. Neighborhood objects will still fade if you spin around. I have not yet gotten my dream behavior of "fadeobjects off" like you could do in S3.

-Get neighborhood decor objects from MTS and elsewhere but do not use the pond mod that is on MTS - it breaks with later EPs and will cause a major pain for your water views.

The only thing I'm missing is improving the textures of the neighbor lots (walls/doors/windows) in lot view. Once that happens, I might just faint and I know there's a fix out there someday.

That's all I can think of for now!
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Just for reference, this is my old S2 game before all these fixes became available due to our time in S3:



Believe me, I was in love with my game back then but NOW, holy mackeral is it mind boggling!

Improving walls is a hard one, same with the roof edges. My biggest peeve is windows/doors and fences.

I agree but we've come so far that I believe it will come to fruition. I've looked at Dfender's update of Gunmod's Radiance system. In the manual install, there is a userstartup.cheat that references a few commands not available in the graphics.sgr so I'm assuming someone might know the tick to activate a better graphical view inside lots for neighbors. Hope remains.

Knowing the utter selfishness of the "Illuminati" types, I am certain that there were those at the supposed top of the upside Elysium pseudo-world, who would have never stood for lousy graphics. IMO, they threw a lot of garbage our way and thanks to MTS and others, we can overcome. Seems to me, people like that thwart themselves Final Destination-style, while us royal plebeians enjoy the spoils of war sitting pretty on top of their dusty bones. LOL

Hi. Thank you for the advice. Do you still play TS2?