Neighborhood Package Files: The Importance of Backing Up Your Sims Game

I never knew how risky playing the Sims 2 could be until my computer crashed a few weeks ago while I was saving the game. When I went back to re-visit the neighborhood, the entire neighborhood was gone! It didn’t even appear on the list of neighborhoods to choose from. Apparently, when the computer crashed, it corrupted certain files in the game and that particular neighborhood was no longer playable. Since I didn’t have a back-up neighborhood package file to replace the corrupted file with, I could only retrieve the characters and the lots, nothing else.

So, to help prevent this from happening to other people’s games, here’s an easy step-by-step for backing up your precious Sims 2 game files:

1) First, go into the neighborhoods file under “EA Games -> The Sims 2 -> Neighborhoods” then click on the neighborhood that you wish to back up data for. (In this case, I’ll back up Strangetown, neighborhood N002).

2) Next, go into detail view and search for the Neighborhood package file (which in this case is entitled “N002_Neighborhood”, when you hover over it the type should say “DBPF Package.” (The file should be rather large considering it holds all of the data for that particular neighborhood: memories, personalities, houses, community lots etc).

3) Now, copy the package file and paste it somewhere else on your computer. (Or you can always burn it to a CD). Do this for every neighborhood that you play often as, or any one that you would hate to lose. So the next time your game crashes, you won’t have to start completely over again! 

Next time, we’ll be exploring the extremely useful and amazing program SimPE, where almost anything is possible. We’ll resurrect random sims that you can’t legally do in the game itself, change personalities/genders and add sims to anyone’s family tree in the neighborhood! Don’t miss it!

Common Sims 2 Problems: Fixing a Broken Telephone

As an owner of all of the Sims expansion packs, one of the most common problems that has occurred to me while playing the game is with one particular object, the telephone. For some reason when I played on certain lots, the phone would stop working. My sims weren’t receiving any phone calls from their friends or families. When I tried to get one of my sims to call someone on the phone, they would simply walk over to the phone pick up the receiver, bring it to their ear before quickly placing the telephone back in its original position. They couldn’t call anyone, even if I replaced all of the telephones with new ones!

Now, I had read about this “broken telephone” problem happening in other sim player’s games and I knew that it was fixable. The problem was the only way to fix the “broken telephone” was to move my sims out of their lot and back into it. (Which doesn’t sound that bad, but I really didn’t want to have to go through all the hassle of picking up all of my sims belongings only to place them in their correct spots a few minutes later).

For awhile, I tried to live with it. My sim families that had the “broken phone” just made as many friends as they could to keep their promotions and looked for their friends online in hopes of seeing them before the “why didn’t you call me” pop-up came up. I tried to buy cell phones, but for some reason they always seemed to disappear after only a few uses (apparently that was a glitch in the Apartment Life expansion pack). I continued playing the game as I usually did, in the hopes of one day finding a new solution to the problem. I never knew that day would be today.

I was playing with one of my sim families that has a broken phone, when something unusual happened on the lot. I heard thunder and screams coming from outside. It turns out something on the lot caught on fire (all thanks to Seasons), causing the family butler to race into the house, pick up the telephone and call the fire department. After the fire department came and went, I heard an unfamiliar noise on that lot, it was the telephone ringing! Somehow, the butler calling the fire department caused the phone to fix itself! For the next few hours on the lot, the family received all of the calls that they missed when their phone was broken (including all of the checks that the father received for his various novels).

Intrigued after this strange situation, I decided to test it out on another family’s lot that has the “broken phone” problem. Sure enough, when I hired a butler, caught something on fire and the fire department came and went, the telephone worked good as new!

So there is a way to fix the “broken telephone” problem without having to move your sims out of the lot and here it is:

1) First, hire a butler. (To do so, you’ll have to buy a cell phone and call for one under “Service.” Cell phones are only available with the Sims 2 University expansion pack).

 2) Next, set something on fire when the butler is on the lot. (You can either wait for the weather to catch something on fire with the Sims 2 Seasons, or you can put something in front of the fireplace using “move_objects on.” But I find the easiest way to set something on fire is to just buy one of those fire jets that come with the Sims 2 Nightlife expansion pack and turn it on when another object is above or next to it).

3) Wait for the butler to call the fire department. The fire department will arrive and cease the fire (if you have one of those fire jets then just have your sim turn it off before they leave).

4) Prepare for the missed calls, your sim’s telephone is officially fixed!

Too Many Tutorial Joes & Janes

Sims 2 Profile: Tutorial Joe

It's time to talk about a sim that comes with every Sims 2 game and the Sims 2 Lifetime Stories. Known for wearing an obnoxious orange sweater with a stripe through the center and not being able to remember a thing in his life, Tutorial Joe is one crazy sim. Don't believe me? See for yourself:

Name: Tutorial Joe Sim

Occupation: Professional Sims 2 Teacher

Known For: Standing around and doing nothing all day.

Likes: Staring at sculptures, doing nothing, talking to his neighbors that are clones of him and his wife, Mohawks

Dislikes: Fire, stupid kids who play the tutorial, people that make him do stupid things because they know that he will be forced to do them

Interesting Facts About Tutorial Joe: 

1) He doesn't do anything unless the player instructs him to do so. (except if you are playing as the third Tutorial Joe who lives in the blue house)

2) He doesn't have a crush on his wife Tutorial Jane for some reason.

3) In the second house he has no family tree.

4) His houses have no telephones, however he can catch on fire and die during the tutorial.

5) He never learned to walk or talk.

6) He has no skills and is extremely untalented, but hey he's still cool right?

7) If you make him wish in a wishing well he will wish for money. (probably because he is a fortune sim).
8) He can't have children unless you use the Tombstone of L & D Genetic Merger cheat.

What I Did to Tutorial Joe:

Since the tutorial lot is never saved Tutorial Joe can have a different crazy adventure every day. Here's what I did the first time I ever played as him (as written under Tutorial Joe's Sims wiki page by me): 

"In my game Tutorial Joe invited the entire neighborhood over to his house for a party (using the boolprop cheat). Little did I know that all the other tutorials lived in the neighborhood, so two more Tutorial Joes and Tutorial Janes came to Tutorial Joe's house. Tutorial Joe was tired of being lonely and not having a premade Tutorial Jane, so he decided to flirt with one of the Tutorial Janes. Tutorial Jane's husband caught her cheating and broke up with her. Unfortunately Tutorial Jane left the lot and Tutorial Joe couldn't marry her. Instead of being upset by this, Tutorial Joe decided to propose to himself. Tutorial Joe and the newly divorced Tutorial Joe got engaged, then married with the other Tutorial Joe DJing down the aisle. And that's when the plot got too disturbing for me to continue." ~ evilbradburb

Another time when I played as Tutorial Joe, I gave him and his wife crazy makeovers and rainbow mohawks (don't worry, I'll be posting a video of that later).

Stories About Tutorial Joe: None...yet.

Videos About Tutorial Joe:

There are three videos that I posted on YouTube featuring Tutorial Joe. Two of them are from the first time I played as him (as described on the Sims wiki), and other one is just Tutorial Joe doing a crossword puzzle. (GASP!)

To watch Tutorial Joe do a crossword puzzle click below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OER1bpynIPQ

To watch Tutorial Joe propose to himself click here:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bChep0N-nSU

To watch Tutorial Joe marry himself click here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJRhk02tV1Q

That's it for this entry. See you next time when I profile another crazy sim.

 AHHHHHHH!!!!!

Resurrecting Random Premades: Open for Business & Beyond

When it comes to resurrecting premade sims in Bluewater Village, Riverblossom Hills, Desiderata Valley and Belladonna Cove, you’ll be happy to know that every pre-deceased sim can be resurrected by just using the resurrect-o-nomitron. The only sim that requires the “move this grave” method is Olivia Riley, (wife of Timothy Riley who lives on the east side of Belladonna Cove, the neighborhood that comes with the Sims 2 Apartment Life expansion pack). Her grave is located at the Belladonna Cove Art Museum.

If you wish to resurrect her then simply have one of her family members travel to the Art Museum, click on her grave and move it. Then, have the Rileys return to their apartment, obtain a resurrect-o-nomitron and resurrect her. It’s as easy as that!

The Sims 2 Freetime expansion pack introduces a new way to resurrect pre-deceased sims, the genie. This is extremely helpful if you wish to resurrect a deceased young adult townie who didn’t die on a residential lot. (In fact, it is the only way to successfully resurrect a college student who died in a base neighborhood). In order to resurrect them however, the sim that makes the wish must know who they are (as in, they must have met them at least once in that particular sim’s lifetime). If they have met them, the option to resurrect that sim should appear when you click on the genie to make a wish. Then just select it and the deceased sim is now fully playable!

Belladonna Cove introduces yet another way to resurrect pre-deceased sims. If one of your sims is an extremely good witch they will be able to cast the spell Expello Mortis (assuming that they have all the correct reagents to do so). However, in order for this spell to work, it must be cast before the Grim Reaper takes the deceased sim to the afterlife, otherwise you will have no luck with it.

However, in my option, the best way to resurrect a pre-deceased sim is to just use the resurrect-o-nomitron. It’s really easy and you can use it as much as you want.

Next time I begin profiling random premade sims. First up is the infamous Tutorial Joe Sim. You know you don’t want to miss this!

Resurrecting the Tricous

It’s now time to resurrect the only premade dead sim family that comes with the Sims 2 Nightlife! Of course I’m talking about the Tricou family. Today we’ll be taking a step-by-step look at how you can resurrect Jon Smith Tricou and the rest of his crazy family using his six descendants.

1) First, in order for the descendants to be made in the first place, you must add a Downtown Lot to the neighborhood. To do this, click the “add downtown” button located on the top of your screen. (If you already have a downtown lot, it should say “Downtown Chooser”).

2) Next, you need to find one of Jon Smith Tricous six descendants. (Or at least get the name of one of them so you can make them selectable using the Tombstone of L & D cheat). If you have University, the easiest way to find one of them is to scroll through their pictures under the cap button. If you don’t have University, then you’re just going to have to wait until you run into one of them on a community lot or one of your teenagers brings one of them home from school. Here are what the descendants look like:

Since I have University, it’s pretty easy to get the name of one of the descendants. Here’s one now:

3) Now that we have a name for one of Jon’s descendants, we can use the Tombstone of L & D to make her controllable. To do this, press CTRL + SHIFT + C and type “boolprop testingcheatsenabled true” into the cheat box. Next enter some random lot (I’ll use the Beaker lot in this case) shift + click on one of the Beakers and select Spawn …Tombstone of L & D.

4) A tombstone should appear next to the selected sim. Now, click on the tombstone and select “Add Neighbor to Family.”

5) Keep scrolling through the names until you find the name of the descendant, (which in this case is Cadence). Click their name, they should now appear fully controllable on the lot.

6) Next obtain a Grim Reaper phone by using the “unlockCareerRewards” cheat that is described in Resurrecting Random Premades Parts 1 & 2. Have the descendant call the Grim Reaper and resurrect Jon Smith. After Jon Smith is resurrected have him call Grim Reaper to resurrect the rest of his family members. Since only eight sims can live on a lot at a time you may have to more some of his family members off of the lot to successfully resurrect all the Tricous.

And there you have it, another collection of premade sims resurrected. Isn’t this fun?

Next time we’ll be heading to Bluewater Village to resurrect pre-deceased sims that come with the third Sims 2 expansion pack, Open For Business. Don’t miss it!

Resurrecting Random Premades Part 3

It’s time to resurrect sims in Veronaville, a place known for being filled with Romeos:

(Okay so maybe I’m responsible for that, but I can’t help it! Romeo Monty is just so fun to clone!)

Anyway, Veronaville is home to many sims with the last names Monty and Capp, so there are a few people with those last names that you can legally resurrect in the game.

Since any sim that has character data (and a tombstone) can be resurrected, both of Romeo’s parents (Olivia Monty and Claudio Monty) can be revived using the Resurrect-o-Nomitron, a genie lamp (which comes with the Sims 2 Freetime) or a witch’s spell (which comes with the Sims 2 Apartment life).

All you need to do to resurrect Olive and Claudio is to enter the Monty lot (located on the right side of Veronaville) and obtain a Resurrect-o-Nomitron. Then have anyone on the lot that is related to them call the Grim Reaper and give him money to bring them back. If you have the Sims 2 Freetime and a relative of the Montys obtains a genie lamp, there should be an option to resurrect them when you click on the genie to make a wish after you have your sim rub the lamp. If you have a sim that is an infallibly good witch or warlock, you can have them cast a spell to resurrect Olivia or Claudio.

In terms of the Capps, there is only one Capp that can be resurrected in Veronaville legally: Contessa Capp, the wife of Consort Capp. She can be resurrected using all three of the methods that I described above.

Next time we are heading to expansion pack neighborhood number one: Downtown, where we will be resurrecting a whole family of Tricous. It’s gonna be great!

If you want to see more of the Romeo clones click the link below: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T3Uiyo208c

If you want to see all of the Romeos going to school click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kglu4uKAEhw&feature=related

Crazy Things That Happen to Lyla Grunt

After successfully resurrecting Lyla Grunt for the first time in the game, I first wanted to take a look at her personality to see what kind of sim that I would be played as. Here’s what I found:

Now I definitely know where Ripp got his sloppiness from. Don’t get me wrong, sloppy sims aren’t that bad, but they can sometimes be a little annoying when they create puddles every time they use the shower or bathtub and how they seem to break appliances and catch themselves on fire more often than other sims. But as long as you keep them away from all stoves and fireplaces and buy them a fire alarm, they’re not too hard to handle.

One thing that I noticed after I resurrected Lyla is that you are only allowed to change her appearance with the mirror once. If you try to “change her appearance” more than once, her face starts to get corrupted. If you want Lyla’s face to stay the same, then your best bet is to not even try to change her hairstyle or makeup in the first place. Also, if you have seasons installed, make sure that Lyla doesn’t get too hot or too cold, or else her face will get corrupted as well.

Another thing that I noticed about Lyla is that when you take her on vacation (with the Bon Voyage expansion pack installed of course), her face shifts to another custom face when you go on different vacation community lots. Here’s what I mean:

Luckily, her face shifted back to the original one when she returned home from her vacation. Now I know never to take her on vacation again, unless I want her face to shift around every time she switches community lots.

Strangely enough, it’s only vacation community lots that cause her face to shift. When I took her to the community lots in Strangetown with the rest of the Grunts, her face remained intact the whole time.

Another strange thing I noticed about Lyla is that she doesn’t have any memories of her family prior to when the game begins. So if you play as the Grunt family and Tank gets an A+ and you resurrect Lyla after, you’ll notice the only memory that she has is Tank getting an A+, she doesn’t remember anything before the player starts playing on the Grunt family lot.

So Lyla has absolutely no memories of meeting her husband, getting married, having her three children, etc. This means that she’s never had her first kiss, so you could technically obtain the “first kiss” video from her if you interact her to kiss someone for the first time. You’ll also get special event videos if you make her do anything with General Buzz, even though he has memories of those things happening before. Well isn’t that nice to know?

Since I could go on writing about the many unique things about Lyla Grunt and all of the crazy things that happened when I moved her back in with the Grunts forever, I’ll post more entries about her later (so I don’t get too far off the topic of premade resurrections). Don’t worry you haven’t seen the last of Strangetown and this interesting sim!

Next time I’ll be continuing on with resurrecting random premades in other neighborhoods. Our next stop is Veronaville, a place filled with Romeos. You know you don’t want to miss this!

Resurrecting Random Premades Part 2

It’s time to discuss how to resurrect premades in my favorite neighborhood…Strangetown! There are a total of nineteen sims that you can resurrect in this neighborhood, and all of them are located in Olive Specter’s garden. Even though you can legally resurrect all nineteen of them, only certain sims can be safely resurrected (as in, they will not corrupt your game if you do). I only know of two sims that are safe to resurrect: Creon Nigmos and Lyla Grunt, although I have only resurrected one of them in the game so far. Of course, I am talking about the latter, Lyla Grunt, who is the mother of Tank, Ripp and Buck Grunt from 51 Road to Nowhere.

For years, I had been trying to resurrect her and for a while, nothing I tried worked. I tried the Tombstone of L & D method, but she only disappeared after I added her and I even tried resurrecting her using the Resurrect-o-Nomitron, but every time I had one of her sons call the Grim Reaper would tell them they didn’t know anyone that had died. After several attempts, I finally came across a method that worked; the move grave method which I mentioned in my previous entry.

The move grave method was a lot easier than I thought it would be and it only required me to have two Sims expansion packs to do it: Sims 2 University and Sims 2 Nightlife. Here’s how it works:

1. First I went into the Specter’s lot and found Lyla’s grave (it was located in the front of the garden).

2. Next, I clicked on her grave and selected the option “move this grave.” Under the menu for which community lot to send it I selected downtown (which you have to add in from neighborhood view) and “Gothier Green Lawns.”

3. Lyla’s grave then disappeared and her ghost appeared to wave goodbye:

4. I then entered the Grunt lot and obtained a Grim Reaper phone by pressed CTRL + SHIFT + C and entering “unlockCareerRewards” into the cheat box and pressing enter. After that, all of the selected family member’s Career Rewards (which in this case was Ripp’s), were unlocked.

5. Next, I grabbed the Resurrect-o-Nomitron and had Ripp call the Grim Reaper. Sure enough, Lyla was now listed under dead sims that he knew and after I paid the Grim Reaper $10,000 dollars (courtesy of the “motherlode” cheat), she was back and playable. Crazy huh?

Looking back, I understood why the previous two methods that I originally tried didn’t work. The reason why I couldn’t resurrect Lyla with the Tombstone of L & D or with just the Grim Reaper phone alone was because no one in her family had a memory of her dying. So in order to be able to resurrect her successfully, her grave had to be moved, so that her children (Tank, Ripp & Buck) could resurrect her with the Resurrect-o-Nomitron. See? Here she is: 

Next Time: The weird things that happen to the premade deceased townies in Strangetown after you resurrect them. Don’t miss it!

If you want to see a video of the “move this grave” method step-by-step click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSV-rfO78BA

If you want to see Lyla successfully resurrected by Ripp click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxuOqR-Xuvw&feature=channel_video_title

Resurrecting Random Premades Part 1

Every Sims 2 game comes with premade neighborhoods with residential lots filled with sims that you can play as. After owning the game for quite some time, I can honestly say that I have played with every premade family at least once and messed up their lives in one way or another. I hardly ever do what the family story tells me to do and I usually wind up making the family crazy somehow. One of my most favorite things to do to mess up the storylines is to resurrect as many random relatives that I can that have died some way or another prior to when the game began. First stop, Pleasantview!

There are only three pre-deceased sims in Pleasantview that you can resurrect (as in they actually have character data in the game): Darleen Dreamer (the wife of Darren Dreamer, mother of Dirk Dreamer), Skip Broke (husband of Brandi Broke) and Michael Bachelor (Bella Goth’s older brother).

Resurrecting Darleen is quite easy, first you need to enter the Dreamer lot, and then all you need is a Grim Reaper phone (which you can get by obtaining a job in the Paranormal career and getting to a high enough level to unlock it). Of course, you need the Sims 2 University to get the Resurrect-o-Nomitron, but your sims don’t necessarily have to graduate from college to get it (you can always cheat by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + C and entering “boolprop testingcheatsenabled true” into the cheatbox and SHIFT + right clicking on the newspaper, then selecting paranormal under the “get adult jobs for” category. You can also change the level of the job by pressing the “Select Job Level to…” opinion, with one being the entry level job and 10 being the highest job in the given career track). Then all you have to do is have Darren or Dirk call the Grim Reaper and pay a decent amount of money so that Darleen doesn’t come back as a zombie. The closer to $10,000 you pay the Grim Reaper, the more complete Darleen’s resurrection will be.

Since the Calientes kind of bored me (and I had no clue what to do with him), I haven’t resurrected Michael Bachelor yet. But his resurrection requires the “move grave” method, which I will be discussing in more detail in my next entry.

Skip Broke can only be resurrected using the Resurrect-o-Nomitron or the Tombstone of L & D if only the Sims 2 and Sims 2 University are installed. If any expansion packs are installed that are Nightlife or later, Skip Broke will not be able to be resurrected without the use of a third program known as SimsPE. Poor Skip.

This concludes my entry about legal resurrections in Pleasantview. Next time I will be trying to tackle resurrections in the next neighborhood, Strangetown (and trust me, there are a lot of dead premades roaming around Olive’s garden).

Weird Glitches in the Sims 2

Not too long ago, I was asked on another website to identify some of the weirdest things that have happened to me while playing the Sims 2. Truth be told, I had never realized how many strange glitches have occurred while playing the game until I sat down and thought about it. Sure, I have been playing the game for quite some time now (at least three years) and I own all of the expansion packs, but I never thought that so many strange things could've happened in the game. Here's a list of some weird glitches that have occurred:

1. Perhaps one of the strangest things that has ever happened in the game, occurred just a few days ago. One of my teenaged girl sims (you probably know her as Sharla Ottomas), was asked out on a date over the phone by her boyfriend. Now that sounds pretty normal right? Well, the thing is, her boyfriend went to college a few days earlier and was now a young adult, so when I took her downtown to go on the date, they were in completely different life stages. I always thought that it wasn't possibly for a teenager and a young adult to date, but apparently if one of the teenagers ages before the other one they can. Of course, they couldn't do any romantic interactions while on the date (which made it super hard to get the date meter up to dream date), but they did "tender kiss" at the end of it. (They couldn't reach each other though, which was actually quite hilarious).

2. Another time, I was looking through one of my sims' memories (her name is Alicia) and I noticed that she had a memory of kissing someone besides her husband. Interested, since I hadn't remembered this happening in the game, I clicked on the memory. Next to the description "Alright, it's such a thrill to kiss someone new!" was a picture of herself! So apparently sims can kiss themselves and get a memory of it? How strange!

3. When you install the Sims 2 Pets expansion pack (which is a great one by the way), many new animals are available in the game. One of them that you often see wandering on a lot is a skunk named Stinky Skunk. Sims on the lot can either watch him, pet him or choose to ignore him. One time, while I was playing as one of my sims couples, the wife was about to pet it. (Fortunately, I exited out of that interaction before she got sprayed). Now, I could understand sims wanting to pet skunks I guess, but a few seconds later her wants randomly changed. Sunny now wanted four of her aquintances to get sprayed by Stinky Skunk, I have no idea why. Now that girl has problems.

4. I love creating new neighborhoods for the Sims 2. I have this one neighborhood that I created about a year ago in my game and it has a pretty decent size population of premade sims in it. Recently, four of my sims graduated from college and returned to the neighborhood to get married and have families. Everything was going great (as in, there weren't any major glitches), until a few of my sims started having children. The babies looked completely normal, but their pictures were all messed up. Here's what I mean:

Now, I'm not sure what that thing is exactly, but it's DEFINITELY not a baby sim. Luckily, the baby's picture turned back to normal when she aged into a toddler. Thank goodness!

A lot of crazy glitches have occurred while playing the Sims 2, but these were some of my favorite (and weirdest ones). Who knows what other strange things will happen the next time I decide to play the game.