It's been a while since I talked about the empty Accessory cache. I still couldn't get it to stay empty but it seems like my game (and Bodyshop) boots up much faster with just the Groups and cigen.cache on read-only. So far my Accessory cache slowed down to the 4k KB range, and it's been that way for a while now. I haven't emptied out my Thumbnails folder either, but it's not outrageously bloated. So I hope it stays like this

I still love the actual SC3K city I based this terrain on much more than anything I'd ever be able to do in TS2 (and I'm gonna be really unhappy if I can't recover my old SC3K files from my old computer, which seems more and more likely to be the case ), but as a proof of concept for a TS2 neighborhood, I'm quite happy! Not sure what I want to do with it... if I should just keep it for myself, if I should put it together as a neighborhood map without creating lots to fill it, or if I should go whole-hog and start trying to recreate some of the Asian buildings that I can remember from SC3K.

If you're curious, this was the "Top Of The World" scenario terrain, and I ended up playing that city longer than any other, to the point where the inside of the crater was a glittering skyline of modern skyscrapers, a variety of smaller houses and farms filled the hills and promontories, and a lower, more industrial waterfront filled the southeast side of the island. The whole city was environmentally focused, with priority given to parkland and environmentally-friendly power sources, and the culture being an amalgamation of all sorts of Pacific rim states.

Very tempting to try to do a whole TS2 neighborhood based on that city...

But are you going to upload the terrain, Zara? Inquiring simmers want to know!

(Because I would use that, as a terrain or as a finished decorated neighborhood, either way! I never have the patience with SC4 to get them looking that lovely.)

I'll have to find it first! I haven't finished moving all the files from my old machine over, and at this point that includes SC4. Plus, I'd have to actually re-do all of this, since that picture is a neighborhood that's had quite a bit of in-game fine-tuning, and I've spotted a few road problems that would require an SC4 fix too.

So, long story short, maybe, but not right away!

ETA: I'm also still completely at a loss for how to make a terrain that will accept beach lots... there's several spots that are obvious candidates for a beach lot on the island, but literally nowhere that will accept a beach lot when I try to place one!

Beach lots are a pain in the butt. I tried placing some recently and even though they fit they all ended up graphically broken.

It helps if you get the land as low as you can (a few tiles from the waters edge) and have the road 1 tile away from the water. The water also can't be too deep, close to shore.

I like flat beach lots (because I can build them once and then use them in any of my hoods) so I've gotten pretty good at getting them nearly flat in sc4 and then finishing them off in-game via the modify terrain cheat. When you place an empty beach lot and then bulldoze it, the part along the waters edge will be flat (no matter how steep it is from road to that last bit), so from that edge you can make your whole beach area flat with the modify terrain cheat.

I'm kinda thinking of building a restaurant for my school powerpoint representation that I'm assigned to do with a group. Never done such a thing and I'm not sure If I'm able to accomplish it as the design idea for such commercial build is too ambitious (might be the first time I'll need to be looking for CC), let alone I don't 'build' anything in my game other than (sloppy) houses for sims to interact efficiently in-game during gameplay.

Too bad playing a 14-year-old game doesn't have the same earning power as a real job.

If it did, I'd totally be at home right now playing, instead of at the office. It's something about sitting in your office looking out the window on a gloomy autumn-ish day that just makes the thought of being at home with a cup and tea and firing up the game seem oh so appealing.

Unless you're a good twitch streamer that is charismatic-party-type-of-guy/gal.

I like a party, and I'm a bit of a twitchy witch. Does that make me a "good twitch steamer"

Yeah, that's because beach lots conform to the existing terrain. (Within a certain range of tolerance, that is; outside of that range they won't place at all.) This is the opposite of "regular" lots that force the terrain to conform to them, sometimes resulting in "holes" or making it so that you can't place empty lots around the placed one. Both "methods" have their disadvantages that way. With beach lots, because they conform to the terrain, even if you can get them to place, you might end up with, for instance, stuff underwater where it wasn't so when placed in other neighborhoods or in different spots in the same neighborhood. It's the result of small differences in terrain elevation between where the lot was built and where you place it when not placing it in exactly the spot the lot was built.

This is why I routinely use the modifyneighborhoodterrain cheat to flatten most beach areas on neighborhood terrains before building anything on them. That way, I can reuse beach lots I build in any neighborhood. If I want "cliffside" beach lots anywhere, I'm resigned to the fact that I'll always have to build them from scratch each time because it's rare that you can get such lots to place anywhere but where they were originally built.

I pretty much always just assume beach lots only ever work where they were initially created (or on the same stretch of road, in neighborhoods like Desiderata Valley)... it's getting the terrain to even accept a new blank beach lot in the first place that's the problem! And while the waterfront in the middle of the crater is an area where I actually don't want beachfront property (because reasons), there's quite a few spots on the outer banks of the island that I do!

In other (but related) news, I was able to save my old SC3K cities, so now I have my beautiful tropical city-state that I based this terrain off of to use as a reference again! Hooray! :D

ETA: This is what I ended up turning that terrain into in SC3K... and you thought TS2 was the only game I spent an obsessive amount of time perfecting things in!

With placing empty beach lots...Dunno if this applies to you, but if your terrain is decorated with hood deco and there are those boxes that create surf on it in neighborhood view, you often can't place beach lots, empty or built, without moving those out of the way. I forget this all the time when I'm placing empty beach lots and get so frustrated. You can put them back on the lot once it's placed, though usually only in a very particular spot so you have to slide it around until you find the spot where it doesn't turn red, but sometimes the lot won't place with those boxes in the way. Sometimes it will, though, which is weird. I haven't figured it out.

Other than that...Yeah, there are limitations as to where you can place empty beach lots. They have to be a placed such that there's enough space between the road and the waterline. They can have a slope from road to waterline only within a certain range. Etc. Frankly, I often find it easier to place a normal lot somewhere in the neighborhood, move it and turn it into a beach lot using the Lot Adjuster, then add beach portals and surf generators. There's always a way around! You know that better than anyone.

Sometimes I wished they put in a 'Make a Child' option for Bodyshop. I create most of my sims through Bodyshop now that CAS is getting laggier for me the more I stuff CC into my game, and mostly because I'm too lazy to open up my game and click the pacifier button 100 times to create a spawn just to extract them to save for later

I just tried making a child in Bodyshop and it worked fine. What are you trying to do?

I think Primavera is talking about the option to blend two adult Sims' genetics.

Meanwhile on my Recommendation feed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYNF_Uvem6s

Well, I made a compromise and decided to upgrade the homes of the Pleasantview residents. Unfortunately, some of the families don't have enough funds to do the type of upgrades I want to do, but I still get my building urge satisfied.

I've never seen someone look closer to death from boredom than that guy lol.

Maybe it is because he has Autism? I do think he is enjoying playing from what I can tell, as I watched the video. I was curious. Observations: I certainly play with a lot more mods than he does and I don't like to play with Free Will Off like does. I never help with home work like he does and he always ignores the chance cards, I don't I choose the best ones usually. He does not seem to know the game that well as he thinks that using TestingCheats too much will corrupt your game. I watched the whole video, but I skipped the Horror movies btw.

I dunno...It's not like I sit there smiling and enthusiastic-looking when I'm playing the game. That would be kind of creepy. People who've seen me playing say I look very serious, like I'm examining account books or something. So, I imagine I look quite like that guy. Although I suppose if I knew I was on-camera, I'd attempt to look a bit more happy and a bit less like I'm reconciling an account.

I did watch a bit of the Let's Play (I've actually never watched one before), and all I could think was, "Man, that is a HUGE! FRICKIN'! BATHROOM!" Seriously, what is so wrong with realistically-sized bathrooms? Why do people like bathrooms the size of two-car garages in the game? Why, why, why?

I suppose it might be interesting to watch bits of Let's Plays. Not sure I see the appeal of sitting and watching someone else play a game, any game, for two hours, but it might be interesting to watch bits, just to see what other people do.

I have hypomimia - or the 'Parkinson's stare.' It sometimes weirds people out, especially when I start laughing out loud without cracking a smile.

A lot of the appeal of Let's Play depends on the personality of who's doing it. If you like the personality, you'll return for more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HbwgaHpFjY

Lately, youtube is speaking my language. Have yet to watch the video.

I don't know if it's just me, but I tend to watch LPs for games I want but can't actually play or plan on getting in the future for performance appraisal. If I've played the game before or still play it on a regular basis, I usually end up clicking the video in an effort to "correct the mistakes," forgetting that it's not the actual game. I remember watching a TS2 video once while waiting for some papers to download and was wondering why I couldn't change the camera angle to check on the other household members. "The toddler's in the red - why can't I click on them?"

Maybe it's the younger sibling in me, but this, sooooooo much! I always swear that people who watch let's plays didn't have a controller-hogging older sibling growing up, but I realize I might be biased.

I can only "watch" a few lets plays, ones that have banter or conversation during gameplay or are straight comedies, like some of Little Kuriboh's ones where he plays the game as a Yu-Gi-Oh character. (Watch is in quotes since I rarely actually sit and watch but rather listen while doing something else.) But the ones that are just.... legitimately playing the game, with long pauses in between, sitting there seriously, recording their normal regular gameplay... Idk if I'll ever understand that.

...I have vivid memories of waiting to be passed the controller, of being told 'oh, you can play when I die,' then watching my sister die over and over and over again ('just wait until I get to this next part!') and then, finally, hours later it's my turn but oh, look, 'time to go home, girls; say goodbye to your uncle' or 'k, you died, give the controller back.'

That's the very reason why I'm such an avid supporter of handheld games & Nintendo's gameboy/DS/3DS and got into some computer games like TS2. I also never got into consoles cuz of this and missed out on some Nintendo & rpg classics (my family could only have one console, my sister chose PlayStation and she hogged it). I couldn't believe it when lets plays got to be the most popular thing on YouTube...

*grumbles about kids today and how they make no sense*