Read a book?

What's a book? Is that like an ebook or?

Oh! You can swap the crosswalk style from that sims one to a proper one!

Turns out, in Double Deluxe/Base/TSData/Res/Catalog/Scripts/floorPatterns.txt there is:



Disabling the not in catalogue makes them show under "all" in floor tiles, additionally, if you want them applied to all lots and like me, you're too lazy to go and manually replace them all, you can just swap these values:



To:



Bada bing bada boom you got yourself real crossings on your lots. The downside is that it only works if you have the crossing as part of your lot, if it's not then you'll still see the sims-specific style on the neighbourhood itself.

But, it does mean it can look like this!

I've tried switching to Firefox, but given my tendency of digital hoarding (open something, forget about it, keep doing this until the power goes out or the laptop is unresponsive – restart). Much to my dismay, Firefox kept crashing because it couldn't keep up with my tabs.

I started using Brave browser and have no complaints. It's like Chrome, but supposedly without the Google's all-seeing eye monitoring your every online and offline move. (However, Brave's based on Chromium, the very same software Chrome is based on, and which is – you guessed it – developed by Google...) I also tried Edge, but the mobile version is downright awful (the desktop is pretty neat though), and I live for the sync function so I got to keep my mobile and desktop browsers the same.

I think the only browser I haven't tried yet is Safari, because I own nothing Apple at the moment.

I've never understood the whole "100+ open tabs" thing. If I have that many tabs open, my computer just starts complaining, and I can't keep track of what I'm even doing. Maybe I'm old-fashion or some such, but I'll bookmark sites (not individual pages, unless they're important) I use a lot, and for individual links I want to check out I'll chuck them in a folder. Makes it a bit easier for me to keep track of, and I can close down the laptop and such without losing the tabs (I know they usually will reload if Firefox gets shut down by accident or force of evil, but still). I can admit that I have a lot of folders with links I've kind of forgotten about... But most of the time I do get back to the most recent ones and download/watch/read them. Some I chuck into a folder for "later" (never to be sen again), and others I sort into some kind of system.

Probably wouldn't work for everyone, but works for me. I just know I have a tendency to shut down the wrong tabs all the time, and I've had enough frozen desktops/firefox sessions.

I discovered recently that I have way too much CC downloaded, and that's only on this laptop. We're probably talking at least 500+ GB here (it's a mix of TS2/3/4)... Most of it I haven't even tried ingame

I always thought that there must be some way to enable that crossing texture in the hood view. If they made the textures for lot use, then maybe the road textures are there somewhere? Would be interesting to make a default replacement (although, it's possible someone's done this already...)

I love the zebra crossings!! I don't understand the instructions

Is there an explain like I'm five version anywhere?

That's the beauty of us two being two different human beings. I have a tendency to take on many "projects" (be it an actual project for work or uni, or a "project" of looking at this week's supermaket catalog). I simply don't have the tendency of closing those tabs. I don't have 100+ tabs in one window though, but I probably do when counting all the open windows as well. Granted, most of those tabs could be closed because it's usually: a notebook, a google search for "how to add the euro symbol in latex," then the actual result window on stackexchange, then another google question window, another stackexchange answer window etc. For the most part, I don't want to interrupt my workflow by finding the answer somewhere, entering it in my notebook, and then going out of my way to close those tabs - I just continue working.

My computer FWIW does a pretty good job managing all those tabs in the background. Brave has this one function where it completely offloads the "forgotten" tabs to the disk, so my browser still uses roughly the same memory as if it would if I actually had just the three active tabs I'm using opened, and no other tabs.

My biggest toll on the RAM and everything was when I discovered Win+Tab, or in other words - separate desktops, where I got to group opened windows to separate desktops in the same manner I group tabs in separate browser windows. Again, as I'm switching between workplaces, only if I have the time will I go out of my way to open a different desktop and go clean up and close up stuff I don't use. I usually have to restart my computer every month or so because I do notice a significant slowdown for what ever reason, but until that moment, I have a setting that puts my laptop to hibernate as soon as I close the lid. I used to be a neat control freak and close everything as soon as I'm done with it and have no two tasks opened at once, but I'm pretty sure it's because I had pretty bad hardware before, such as 512 MB of RAM on a Windows 7 and similar. Ever since I had a computer that can withstand this workload, I've pretty much let myself go in the manners of maximizing my idle RAM.

I only have 37 tabs open right now; I am creeping into the unhelpful (for me) zone again - at some point I realised that it wasn't helpful for me to have so many open.

I like to have some open permanently, my email/calendar/tasklist/budget. These help me with ADHD-related challenges.

Then for everything else, I find it works best for me if I keep it to literally what I'm doing right now. However I have got into a bad habit again of opening things because I want to read them and then being too tired to focus but thinking I'll get back to it later; I rarely do. At one point I collated these into a list but I think I will just close them :D

I do have 2x Sims related spreadsheets open in my browser, though. I suppose I don't *need* those open all the time, but damn, I do like to access them while playing.

Chrome is supposed to put inactive tabs to sleep, but if I mouse over them to see what they are then it reactivates them again so that doesn't help in practice.

I think I can't realistically switch to Firefox all the time. I am too reliant on the password manager built into Chrome which syncs with my phone.

My brain has a breakdown when there's much more than 10+ open tabs, because I can never remember which ones I'm working with, so I start randomly clicking through them, and then accidentally close down a tab instead of just clicking it (not always noticing), or close a post I'm writing (thereby deleting it, if I'm unlucky - has happened several times), which is one of the reasons I like to keep the tabs manageable. I do tend to keep two open windows, though - one for streaming/youtube and one for various web stuff.

Look in the basegame TSData\Res\Catalog\Scripts folder and you'll see a whole bunch of text documents which govern how Maxis assets appear in the in-game catalog. If you open the floor patterns one you'll see there are descriptions for the basegame floor tiles. But- there are some listed there which we can't see in the catalog! Some of them have 'notInCatalog' written next to them. These are tiles that are a part of the game, but not in the catalog as the player should not (normally, but we are not normal ) need them. Such as the wood on the foundation, and the road markings. But, if you delete the words 'notInCatalog', the tiles will show in the catalog under 'all'. Put a # symbol in front of the words 'notInCatalog' and save the file, the # indicates a comment (the game ignores that line), so that it's easy to change back. backup the file before you change it!
Also, there are hidden wallpapers and wall types in the other scripts, as always backup before you change anything! I have for example some hidden wallpapers and the deck wall type in my game to use.

Edit: I knew I'd seen a tutorial somewhere:
https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=679658

Someone's shagging the judge! XD That slice thing looks delicious.

Why are there hidden patterns etc. that are perfectly functional? If they're functional, then why hide them? I wonder if anyone made a mod to unlock them.

Good question.
I know HugeLunatic has unlocked some floors and somebody else did too and somebody else has posted the tutorial on how to do it yourself, but I am too lazy and too busy playing, so I hope another somebody else will unlock the lot and upload them

At the risk of making myself sound like a geek or a nerd or something - which I'm not - if you want a more privacy friendly web browser that's out of Google's control there is LibreWolf, it's based on firefox but without even mozilla's telemetry. Never know, might handle the tabs better? It has a few tweaks overall.

(Personally, I've had no issues - and like you, my gentoo box runs 24/7. With browsers and all sorts left open spanning multiple workspaces. )

There has to be, I mean the maps are created by SimCity right? Well, it's obviously not using the road texture from that game, and it must know the positions of junctions to correctly set the crossings and such, the road is too neat to be just be a low-poly generated image like lot imposters. They're more like hood decorations in terms of visual quality. But not high enough in quality to be the same tiles you use on your lots.

So.. my (probably completely wrong) guess would be that the SimCity maps tell the game "roads are in these XYZ places" and the game uses lower quality tiles to generate said roads and display them to you. So, if those tiles are found, and either the texture switched, or the config switched then it should be entirely possible to have zebra crossings by default on any road.

What would be interesting is to unlock those curved corner tiles used for the road.

Some of them were used for debug (such as the numbered floor tiles) and others are used, but not shown in catalog because they are so very numerous, such as the road textures. I don't think the developers anticipated that we'd want to edit the lot roads at all!

Others, such as some of the wallpapers, were present in the basegame but were left out of the basegame catalog. Then with later EPs, they were updated and put into the catalog. The deprecated textures are also those which were redone or replaced in later gameversions.

Yes, several people have extracted unused textures and made them into custom packages. But if you can activate them through changing your game script, then this means that they are vanilla compatible. For example, I can use any of the hidden wall types or hidden floors and walls,and they still show up for someone with an unmodded game. Whereas if someone extracted textures and made them into custom packages, players need those files in the same way as for any custom content.

Last time I played online with tabs open, the house burnt down 4 times. I was quitting without saving like a mad woman.

Upon inviting over a sim, I noticed one of the sims in the household had, besides the option to greet him, the option to attack him. His relationship to the other man is 0/0 and there's no fury or anything. The only connection they have is that the guy in the household is engaged to a woman that the invited sim is still in love with, and the woman with him, so I guess that might be why he has this aggressive option available? In any case, I've never seen that before.

In another household I noticed one sim had the option to "place grave here..." besides "walk here" and "run here". Clicking it showed three names of sims that are buried on the lot, but the graves are where they should be, and there are also 33 other graves besides these ones on that lot. Furthermore, the sim in question was the only one in the household to have that option. Thinking some more about it I realized neither of the three deceased sims died on that lot and might very well have taken the same route to it, so it's certainly possible this sim could have had their urns in his inventory at some point, but it still seems odd to me that this option would still show up after they've been placed on the ground.

That behavior is part of the Nightlife's Romantic Rivalry system. The other Sim can continue pestering your couple and you may even get options such as Influence To.../Leave Us Alone and Buy Off For §50, something among those lines.

Oh, wow. I've completely missed all of this.

One thing I extremely rarely use is the catch butterfly/firefly interaction.

But, because my sim had a want for it, I figured what the heck. Interestingly this popped up. I had no idea there were different types of butterflies in TS2.

That notification is from the hunt for bugs interaction, it has nothing to do with the catch butterflies interaction.

I also only came across the rivalry system recently, this explains how it's supposed to work. To make it clearer, imagine that Sim A is Don Lothario, Sim B is Cassandra Goth and Sim C is Darren Dreamer.

https://strategywiki.org/wiki/The_S...ationship_Types