I'm pretty sure that's in the game already.

It's "water many." That's how you tell when they actually need watering - you get the "water many" option.

I think Bubblebeam is talking about Sun and Moon's crops, which no, they don't, unfortunately, have a 'water many' option. But they do advertise for autonomous watering or tending or something, I think, I tend to queue up the crops manually to make sure they all get taken care of.

A hider for all EP/SP content in the build/buy mode menus. I still want to be able to use it, of course - but by picking through the collection folders. I just got the ultimate collection, and without any CC installed yet, both build & buy are so full (I've only ever played with 3 eps at a time until now) that every single category takes a few seconds to load. Which is great, except sometimes it's frustrating when you're trying to build new lots (especially big, complicated ones) and you keep forgetting what you went into a category for. If I only saw CC + basegame in buy/build menus it'd be so much faster, but I could still access ep+sp content via their respective folders.

It'll speed up once it's got all the thumbnails loaded.

Ah yes, that's it. Thanks.

It has sped up a little bit since I initially started playing again, but it's still a lot to pick through for me. :/

Almighty hat has hiders, but as far as I'm aware it hides the item from the game completely, if anything they might be useful for an item you know you'll never use in a clogged up category.

Forgot about those. There's some stuff I definitely don't use so I'll dig through those. Thank you. <3

Presumably impossible, but a hack that fixed firstborn syndrome and meant you didn't have to randomize yourself. Even better, one that actually checked and would not produce a copy of an existing child. I have the batbox and I can roll dice myself, but it would be great not to have to worry about clones (I try to backup my neighborhood a few sim hours before each birth, but that's tedious when I have multiple sims giving birth to a non-first child on the same day of rotation).

I guess that you're not alone in that wish, and I agree as well.

Adding new objects to the produce packing station is not that simple, though. It requires that new textures be made for a full crate of each type of fruits or veggies, and with each fruit comes a new GUID for the full crate. And then that produce needs to be added to the menus of the packing station.

I *might* have been able to do the technical side of it (I'm not going to, because I retired), but I have no idea how to do the graphics part of the whole ball-o-wax.

Tzigone, you only have to roll the pacifier once per load of the game. The randomizer resets when the game is loaded, not when you switch houses. And yes, it would be nice to have the randomizer fixed, but even Mootilda couldn't do it.

There is a tool that makes the whole process painless. Search for leefish securom tool on Google. It should be the first result.

I actually did know that. Just reinstalled TS2 after ages of not playing, and memory's fuzzy.

But I still have to backup before each non-first baby because I'm paranoid that the second family's first baby was on the "roll" that the second baby is on now. Like I rolled the pacifier 9 times before the first baby in this family was born, but I only rolled the pacifier 8 times this play session and then another family had a baby, so I'm on roll 9 now, so would they be clones? I once had a second and third child be clones once (both were sets of twins). Wondered if birth memory was wrong and the second child was actually the first, but that wasn't it because the fourth child (second born of the second set of twins) didn't match any of her siblings. Fortunately the clones were boy/girl, so it wasn't as annoying as if they'd been exactly identical to look at (I could mostly forget it when playing).

Anyway, I prefer to backup before non-first children are born to each set of parents so I can check SimPE and make sure the babies aren't clones. Because sometimes, I forget to roll, I admit it. Even when I don't forget, it's good for peace of mind.

I'm on 8.1 but I did this yesterday and it makes a world of difference. As a bonus I also bypass the launcher since I really don't care to have origin taking up cpu in the background. Never had problems with securom or slow menus until UC + 8.1, go figure. That'll be something to look out for when I get a new pc. Still digging through Hat's hiders though. Amazing. <3

Edit: just to keep contributing to the discussion, perhaps something to keep better track of points in challenges? I'm not sure how this would be implemented though - maybe something to make a picture stick in storytelling.

What do you mean by "making a picture stick?" If you want to add a screenshot to your album, just name it according to the protocol: Snapshot_HouseholdID#_randomalphanumeric.jpg.
If you're one of those people who thinks the Storytelling folder isn't permanent, you're looking in the wrong place. Each neighborhood folder has its own Storytelling subfolder where all the pictures, thumbnails, and album files are kept in perpetuity, or until you delete them. Does not work for screenshots, of course - you have to use the dash camera or make the sims take their own pictures with the BV camera.
Most people use spreadsheets to track things for challenges. The variety of challenges and reasons to award points for them is far too great to add anything to the code for that; though certain of the more complex challenges (such as the zombie apocalypse challenge) have had hacks made specially for them to automate some of the restrictions.

I worded that funny, is all. But I've played this game for ages, I know how Storytelling works. It's all good. I don't have a ~particular idea yet for implementation of tracking certain challenge data, so I'll stick to my notebook.

Check out simbology's school system. He might have made something that will work for you.

You know what this game really needs? Massage enabled on pregnant ladies. You can tell that one was coded by a man...not a parent, either...

I can't imagine that'd be too difficult to do, as Cyjon made a pregnant yoga mod. Still beyond my limited SimPE skills. You'd probably also have the pregnant stomach clipping through the massage table.

The Simlogical School system has both a 'class' item and a 'homework' item that will produce a homework notebook. You could certainly use one or the other to simulate taking the exam (I would use the homework item, unless you wanted a bunch of sims taking it on a lot that was not their home, as to use the class item you would need to enroll kids in the school and set up a class). But they would not randomize passing/failing. But those items are for children/teens. You would need to do something else for YA and Adults.
You could put in a harder grades hack and let only kids who get passing grades in regular school get the driving license. Harder grades don't effect simlogical schools in my opinion.

Simbology has a school system? Did you mean Simlogical? I'm not trying to be facetious here -- I'm genuinely curious. It'd be so cool to see an update or an expansion of Inge's school system (even though it's already incredible as-is).

Yes, I did; sorry! I got a typo in my head. I don't know of any recent expansions to the school system.

I've seen a lot of people mention "rolling the pacifier". I've always found it easier to just roll the dice above the field for the first name and it seems to work just fine for me (I have used the Batbox to do this, but sometimes it seems to get "stuck" and just generates the same number over and over). The tooltip for the dice specifically says "randomize" and you don't have to waste the time making two throw-away sims in order to be able to access the pacifier button. Does the pacifier button work better for this than the randomizer dice?

That's what I do, too, when I don't use the batbox. Somehow the expression "rolling the pacifier" just stuck and became used for that too, at least for me.

But it's fun to load in some of your Sims and see what sort of children they'd produce.