Last time I was modding was a decade ago... Seems so very long and yet when I open my mesh files it feels just like yesterday. In all that time Sims 2 has still been my favorite Sim game. Hands down. (Don't get me started on what I think of Sims 4 unless you want to hear me rant.) Sims 2 in every direction was just a perfect game for me. I could play with digital dollhouses, build to my content, and play through stories that could have loads of various outcomes. I've forgotten how many times I have replayed Pascal from Strangetown or how many alien babies he and his brothers ended up with... Not to mention how often I have restarted Pleasantview, even a gender reversed one.

But that is almost just half the game for me. I don't think it would have captured my interest so thoroughly if I couldn't be a creator. I can live and breathe just making meshes, especially remaking my beloved Sims 1 stuff. The last couple of years have been exceedingly difficult for me personally as a chronic illness has left me bedridden. The severity had gotten so bad that even sitting at a desktop computer for a couple hours would take a physical toll that would take me 2-3 days to recover from. I've tried playing Sims 4 on a console, but it just isn't the same. Not in the least. My chronic illness has stolen SO much of my life away that I was starting to think I would never be able to be a creator again for Sims. I was scrambling to figure out what to do with the rest of my life since being a normal 40 year old adult simply cannot apply to me anymore. My body simply won't allow it. A few days ago I finally got a modern laptop with Windows 10. My old one still runs Sims 1 is at least 15 years old and still runs XP, and my previous one fried itself about three years ago. I bought this intending to have a real computer (not a Chromebook) I could use in bed without the horrid backlash just so I could have access to Photoshop and illustrator again. Once I started it up, before I had installed any of my programs, I got an itch in my brain wondering if it would even run Sims 2.

I cried when the old EA logo flashed across the screen. I didn't realize just how much I missed this game. Of course it didn't take me long at all to get the modding bug. It really hit hard when I noticed a Maxis wall did not have matching tile. I know I shouldn't be surprised but it was still the all too common "WTF EA?!?!" moment. Wallpapers and floors were the first thing with Sims 1 that I remember creating. It is how I started to learn to use Photoshop Elements and the beginning of a 10+ year process of teaching myself Photoshop and then Illustrator. So I find it hilarious that the wallpaper and flooring triggered the modding bug again. They are just so easy!

And then it completely snowballed from there, as I'm sure it does for nearly any creator. I could not be happier when I got SimPE up and running again. Dug up my old working folder where I have way too many unfinished meshes/projects. The only thing that I dreaded was reviving the old dinosaur Milkshape. Don't get me wrong, there was a ton of things I did with it. But by no stretch of the imagination is it is it a modern meshing program. I have tried multiple times over the years to learn Blender but I'm severely dyslexic and having everything being hotkeys and the manual as thick as a library dictionary, I literally couldn't do a thing in there. Even after watching a tutorial aimed at grade schoolers. About five years ago I was able to attend our local community college and one of the classes I took was in 3D design. I cannot even find the words to describe how unbelievably happy it made me. It was also my first experience with 3DS Max. Once I started to figure out the very basics of the controls (make a shape, move the vertices) I just ran with it. I was stunned at how quickly I could morph and change the meshes. Our first project was supposed to an 'alien landscape' (classmates had flat planes with floating blobs...) and of course I ended up with a fairy village full of plants, multiple buildings (a mug, a cooking pot, a milk jug) a couple of simple fairies and a sassy hot air balloon/light bulb. I was not trying to be a showoff, I was just amazed at how lightening speed it felt compared to the tedium of Milkshape. I was truly gutted when I no longer had access to it.

Dejectedly I went and searched for 3DS Max again the other day, knowing it was expensive. I nearly swallowed my socks when I saw the price. Only corporations or large businesses could afford it. So I searched for alternatives. And of course the bane of my modeling life was the first suggestion to pop up: Blender. Completely disillusioned I was starting to think I'd never be able to do make meshes again. Hardly paying attention, I scrolled down the page at the other suggested software. One of the descriptions said something about it being 'a fork of Blender' and I nearly scrolled past as I wondered why someone would want to model a fork in Blender. It took me a moment to go back and look at it properly. Bforartists is essentially Blender with a facelift. It give it a VISUAL interface! I downloaded it (without even giving a thought to if my computer would run it) and installed it right away. The program opened seamlessly and I cried when the splash screen popped up, looking nearly identical to how I remember 3DS Max. You would get emotional too if you were given a massive part of your life back after having nearly all your freedom taken away by an illness you can't fight. Not only can I do Sim stuff with it, I can finally use Shapeways again too for some other hobby stuff I do.

Now that all of that is out of the way, one of the biggest things I'm wondering is how active the Sims 2 community still is anymore? I know I'll be creating things regardless if I share them or not but I just don't know if anyone out here would still care if I did upload them to MTS? Do modern computers make such restrictive poly counts still mandatory? Over inflated counts are never good but I always hated feeling like I had to have chunkier looking meshes than I wanted just because I was terrified of getting smacked down by poly counts. I was unhappy at how it made me feel like my work was sub-par to what I was capable of. I have really been thinking of redoing my meshes and adding an "HD" versions, especially for my Loggin Kannuk set so the logs are actually round... plus those textures are vile. I know why I did them the way I did but I have learned a LOT since then. Things like hand shading... and other 'fancy' tricks.

So what does the Sims 2 community look like now? Is it a ghost town or is there still a small core community left?

~Corsetcrush

Everytime I checked, The Sims 2 Forums on MTS is always the one who has the most people online...
I do not know much about other Sims site, but around here...TS2 is still a flourishing, very amazing community.

Sims 2 is bae forever. Very well made game with enough CC and mods to last a long long time...

Hi!

I'm really sorry to hear about your illness. I have a lot of respect and admiration for you pushing through and I'm really happy that you've found a way to be able to enjoy TS2 again!

The community here is incredible. I only just started being active on the forums in the last... oh, year and a half or so? and I was welcomed and included with very open arms. I wasn't expecting nearly as much activity and kindness on a forum for a 10+ year old game as I found. I came here figuring that it'd be a bunch of snooty snobs looking down their noses at a newcomer, but I was happy to find nothing of the sort.

I personally have 0 issues with high-poly objects. I don't even take that into consideration when downloading; however, from what I've seen, there is a large range of computer builds throughout the TS2 community, with a spectrum from "my computer doesn't handle most mods/modern CC well" all the way to "throw everything at me, my PC's got this". I download anything that catches my eye, so if you're down to share, I will almost certainly (who knows--our styles may be very different) download what you share with MTS. : )

You came back at the right time. The Sims 2 is not only alive and well, but I feel like it's growing. Many are discouraged by the Sims 4 and are coming back. Welcome back!~ I can't wait to see what you do!

Welcome back! It's wonderful that you're able to play and create again. Chronic illness is awful in that it takes away things we love and kind of makes us prisoners in our own bodies. Mine hasn't bedridden me, but it will greatly shorten my life, and I can't be nearly as active as I used to be. So...Yeah, it's good to have something that you can do and that you enjoy. I feel ya there.

As for TS2...Still going strong. To do this day, there are people migrating back from TS3/TS4 or who play all games. This forum here is fairly active, and GOS is still around, though not as active as it was. But there is a whole large, active, awesome, and drama-free TS2 community over on Tumblr, with lots of new stuff -- mods, objects, neighborhood deco, CAS stuff -- being shared every single day. In fact, within the last three years or so, there's been a real TS2 CC renaissance, and you can make this 15-year-old game look pretty darn incredible with the stuff that's been released recently.

And yeah, poly-counts and texture sizes are a lot more generous these days. For instance, people are converting hairs from TS4 that have 30K+ polys and some people are using them without a problem, though MOST still prefer ones under 20K...which is still a lot more than the 8K that used to be considered scandalously excessive! The main problem is that the game tends to run out of texture memory -- so that things start to flash pink -- so most folks have to not go TOO crazy on stuff with high-res textures...but you also don't have to be TOO conservative, either. And it also need to be made large-address aware, especially if you go for large, heavily-decorated neighborhoods with large populations, so that it can use more than 2GB of RAM instead of crashing when it hits that point. And sometimes Win10 kind of wreaks havoc on the game, since TS2 doesn't really understand it or newer graphics cards/drivers, so sometimes people have trouble getting the game running with proper graphics on newer machines, but once you do get it running smoothly...Yeah, you can do a lot with it. Far more than we dreamed of back in 2008, at least.

Welcome back. :D



No need to wonder, just look over the sims 2 boards and see how many new posts there are. We are all very much alive and kicking. Modding has never been better. I would suggest reading threads, checking out the latest mods since if you haven't been around you will be blown away by what is current. I hope joining the community again helps you feel better, there are also plenty of us around with chronic illnesses.

Welcome back

The Sims 2 community is remarkably robust - every time somebody tries to bomb us out of existence, we are invigorated

I found that the game was great therapy when I needed it - and I just played

Wishing you all the best with the game and the modding!

Welcome! I am also a returnee, having played and enjoyed TS3 for several years. However, I never made stuff to share for TS3, and I never joined in any forum chats or similar. I just played for myself. Then I realized I no longer had silly download restrictions, and that I could probably run the UC if I could get it. I managed it, and have never looked back. The first time I heard the theme music again was quite something!
You will find there have been a lot of upgrades to CC you used before, and improved mods and such. The community has not stood still while we were away. There are still plenty of people creating and sharing, it is just a lot calmer than it was ten years ago. I can find time to play now, in between keeping up with the latest download threads.

There has never been a better time to be a Sims 2 player-because we figure that if EA doesn't care about this game, we certainly do, and for a game this old (nearly 2 decades old!) it's withstood many competitors and imitators.
Which is what I think the original developers intended all along-to have a game that withstood the test of time and was adaptable in so many ways that it crushes all the competition.

Welcome home! We are waiting eagerly for whatever you want to create. People still make amazing new things every day!
Look around at all that's been learned and enjoy jumping right back in.

I cried a little reading your story, too.

Welcome back to the best Sims game

Never heard of the Bforartists - need to check that out... I've tried getting into Blender, and I have successfully modeled a couple of things, but it's very backwards when I've been used to 3Dmax (from school) too. I don't mind using Milkshape or Blender as a bridge to SimPE, but Milkshape is an awful modeling prorgam (I only do minor adjustments to already made meshes there), and Blender feels pretty much like completely unlearning one program and learning another from scratch, because everything is different.

My advice is to keep models as low-poly as possible. Low-poly is easier to work with, easer to UVmap, easier to edit, and you don't need to worry about the game or computer having problems with it. My rule of thumb when I'm making something is "Lowest amount of polys that makes the mesh look smooth enough and detailed enough on the distance you're planning to look at it ingame, and keep ingame size in mind - always below 25.000, preferably below 15.000 polys, ideally around/below 5000 polys. Small detailed objects should be lower-poly than large detailed objects, and textures can go a long way for detail." I might go over on certain high-detail meshes and various personal projects, but rarely upload them, so only I get eventual problems with them.

Welcome back! As you can see we're all very much alive and kicking.

Seeing as I knew how to make minecraft models in Techne/Tabula, I figured I would be able to work out how to use Blender. Nope. Could not understand any of it. I did try to learn a little bit about SimPE to try and make my favourite computer (iMac G3) in Sims because nobody else had done it, and to convert some 3D models I had from a different game (Digimon) into childrens toys but again, I couldn't comprehend it and gave up. But yeah that's my whole history of learning to make CC. At the moment I can really just do wallpaper, clothing textures etc. I'm a whiz at photoshop but that's about it, and that one time I made a multi PT mod.

As many others have said, welcome back to the community. Yes, the TS2 community is still going strong. It's moved around a bit--LiveJournal and Dreamwidth were really popular for a while, now it's Tumblr and Pinterest. MTS is still one of the best places for forum type chat, imo, but there are other sites like Garden of Shadows, Sims Cave, and sims2artists, etc. that are going strong too.

So yeah, plenty of TS2 simmers are still around and, as for creators, I've found that the creating baton just got passed around--there have been dips in activity here and there but someone new (or old!) has always come along to create for TS2 and give the community new, wonderful things.

I'm one of those that have never stopped playing TS2, and with my knowledge of the community, I agree that you came back at a great time. Modding and creating have come a long way; so many things creators thought they couldn't do or figure out have been done. And honestly, TS3 and TS4 have been great for TS2--we get so many wonderful conversions now! My sim guys are grateful for the decent selection of clothes and hair they now have for everyday. That used to be a real problem back in the day and the community has been working on it. It's not perfect, but it's getting there.

And while new graphics are nice, I too advocate lower poly meshes. Yes there are plenty of simmers who have lower end computers, but there are also simmers like myself who have large download folders who would appreciate lower poly items (so we can download more stuff!! :D). I think I have what would be a mid to high end computer but my download folder is at almost 17 GB. I know a few have more GB than that, but for me, it means higher poly meshes won't show up at all or will glitch out. So yeah, lower poly is still generally better.

Anyway, I'm glad you are feeling a bit better--hopefully that continues--and look forward to seeing what you create.

Welcome back! Besides saying that, all I really want to do is just give you a big hug. I know what it's like to not be able to create - I wasn't gone as long as you (and I wasn't really gone, I was still around just couldn't do much of anything) but it still bothered me to not be able to do what I love, which is mesh.. mesh.. and then mesh again. Now that I can sit longer, have better concentration (although my mind does still flounder now and then) I've been making up for lost time.

So again: welcome back! Glad to hear that you're feeling better. *hugs*

Welcome home.
And I'm not sure if it's because of the qualities of the game, or because Sims 2 has a demographic that skews older and therefore has an accumulated load of Health Crap, but a lot of people - self included - find that the game provides pretty good occupational therapy for a number of ailments. OCD, ADHD, depression, cancer, mobility loss, whatever; poking in the code, modding, playing, building, meshing, converting, retexturing, storytelling, and participating in the fandom in various ways have all played important roles in a lot of people's self-care.
I myself have not been able to work properly at my profession, or even at keeping up with the needs of my immediate environment for, well, for awhile now; but as sure as I start berating myself for being "useless," someone in the simming community comes along to tell me that something I said or did or made had some kind of positive meaning for them. And that may not be much in the grand scheme of things, nor anything I can make a living at, or show off to strangers outside this niche community, but it is not Nothing.

Oh Hi @Corsetcrush , I remember you! Lovely to see you back here, we missed you!


And I'm very glad that you do this! *Hugs Maria*

A round of loves for everyone. I'm so glad you're all here, or back or never left - the community is better because of you.

Same. I feel like I play less when I'm content.

Oh, welcome! <3

I had a ten year break too, from 2008 until Christmas 2018, and I'm so glad to be back and although I'm more of a silent reader, it is so great to see such a lively community.
Playing Sims 2 helped me a lot last year.

Hello. I'm here.

Ah! I am the opposite. I must be happy and well, to feel like playing.
Each our own, and The Sims 2 will live on...

Sims 2 had a renaissance in 2017 - with sky mods, water mods, face sliders, etc - it was a fun year for custom content. But we've been here steadfast for many years because sims 2 can be such a long term game. Many of us have neighborhoods years in the making, so it's not an easy thing to leave, and some don't think it's worth leaving for the newer versions, while some play them but STILL choose to come back and play sims 2. The Ultimate Collection also helped in bringing in new players when it was being given away at no cost. Welcome back and we are always happy see new creations!

Total ghost town here. No one but lots of H.U.M.A.Ns remain.

This comment has been written in response to the questioning asking if the Sims 2 Community a ghost town or a small core community remnant of what was.

This has been written by an intelligence known as a H.U.M.A.N or Hungry Unexplainable Mysterious Autonomous Nuisance for short.
For further comments please wait for a response (in the form of a thread post below) from another H.U.M.A.N.

I'm returning to The Sims after a break too. I trashed my Origin account (and along with it everything TS3) in an attempt to take the forum account shit-stained by the white-knight "moderator". Good thing I didn't trash my TS2 discs. Reinstalled it and SC4 to make 'hoods (not to play, I have Cities Skylines for that).