Children in aspiration failure will get into physical fights with other children, even their bffs. Toddlers throw screaming tantrums.

File this under Things I've learned from playing asylum challenges with ACR turned on . . .

Teens will also kick over the trash can, play roughly with the fridge door and, yes, attack other teens.

Aspiration failure for toddlers isn't a thing, but it might as well be! Their needs can be so bad that they can't be corrected! I have a mod that stops the social worker; on more than one occasion I have had groups of toddlers that were so tired they would not accept a bottle, so hungry they would not stay in bed, add dirty and lonely and you have toddlers who refuse to huggle another toddler (who than doesn't like the one that refused), won't accept a bottle scream when picked up (which causes the person to put them down. Basically all they do is throw a fit (looks like aspiration failure to me!) and pass out on the floor. If they were KIDS they would have died! Other than the bat box, the only solution is for the family to move! (which resets everyone), or for someone to move out and take a toddler with them

You can, if testing cheats is on, move some of their needs up.

maxMotives? NeedsAdjustor?

For a very tired and hungry toddler, put them into a high chair and quickly pause. Make sure to direct any sim who might take the toddler out to go do something else, then with the toddler selected click on the high chair tray. You should get the option to Consume Food. Once they're eating, other sims will be forced to wait until they're finished before taking them out again. So far this has worked for me on the rare occasions I have toddlers who are low on needs, though I understand that sometimes toddlers can get so miserable that they're constantly throwing a tantrum and it can be very difficult to get them picked up. If I don't drag their needs up manually using testing cheats then I might use the Sim Blender motive options.

When I’m in one of my impulsive moods, and I have to fight the urge to impulsively corrupt and reinstall my game so I can finally have a clean downloads folder (my current one is practically unsalvageable lol). That is not a good idea, but my brain is dumb.

==I agreed - not meaning that YOU are dumb, but that I have same impulses. Obsessive compulsive, the fact that game runs fine does not keep me from wanting a neater Downloads folder. Or better hoods.

Graphics issues. I've had nothing but graphics issues from the get-go, first with integrated chipsets that were too weak to handle the game, now with a wonky graphics card that keeps crashing and recovering - and scared the [expletive deleted] out of me yesterday when it didn't recover but bluescreened.

Fortunately it recovered on a reboot, but I immediately went and backed up absolutely everything just in case.

I think I need to talk to a computer expert about getting a custom computer optimized specifically for The Sims 2 - and I'd better do it while there are still some Win7 refurbs on the market.

A few years ago, AFTER Windows 7 was no longer made!, I special ordered a new Windows7, with memory and cooling upgrades. Maybe they are still available, would think better than refurbs.

Even Win7 with the latest updates disables the drive that allows Securom et al to run. You had to open the cmd prompt to type a certain line to enable it. I already had a no-DVD so I could get rid of SecuRom, but it was needed for older games that used safedisc and such.

Just backup and zip your current Downloads folder, then delete it. Then, BAM, you've got a clean downloads folder. Plus if there's anything you miss, you have it saved and can go looking for it.

This is my method, too. Eliminates all the agonizing decisions. I make a new game folder and a new Downloads, then just add to the new Downloads what I want for that game folder from the main backup. I can even keep one game folder with everything and make another with just a few Downloads that are needed in that particular hood. Much faster than thinking about what should stay or go.

But that’s not going to satisfy my desire to break things when I get stressed :/ it’s a dumb impulse but whenever I get stressed I just wanna do the worst impulsive things- honestly, corruption is one of the safest things there since that only harms my Sims game lol

wait why is there a disagree here are you disagreeing that my thoughts exist because that makes no sense or are you disagreeing that corruption is one of the safest things that would happen if i ever acted on my impulses because that would probably be healthier than self harm which is my normal method tbh

You know what really bothers me? The way that this game handles alien sims being family. All alien sims are considered blood related through the unseen pollination technician (I hate that). Therefore, you can't make two alien sims have a baby together without some kind of weird modding. But on the flip side, let's say you get ScienceDude pregnant with an alien baby. ScienceDude already has a wife and daughter.

ScienceWife doesn't consider AlienBaby to be her child, and ScienceDaughter doesn't consider AlienBaby to be a sibling. This can lead to weird situations, and I just don't like it. Are adopted kids considered family? If so, that makes this even weirder. I enjoy playing with aliens in The Sims 2, but the game unfortunately treats them like an afterthought in many different ways, including their lack of special powers in comparison to other life states.

The daughter /should/ consider the alien a sibling--they're biologically half-siblings. After my Gabriel had alien triplets, his wife Genesis raised them all as her own, and their son Paul was an absolutely wonderful big brother. It doesn't really matter to me what the family trees say--and if it does to you, there's always SimPE.
I do agree that there should've been more than one PT in the game from the start, but Multi-PT mods aren't as scary as they sound--as someone who hasn't downloaded a lot of common mods out of not wanting to take any risks, I can assure you of that.
(Since I have a child support mod, I find it kind of funny when a sim's alien parent pays child support from space.)

If you have testingcheats enabled you can hit "Shift-N" to enable hidden clothes, etc. This includes the alien skin/eyes. To make a half alien just make the mom & dad, c,ick the create child, make them adult & delete the mom & dad.

Update on the graphics problems: I finally traced the latest round to having a 64-bit driver on a 32-bit machine. That's not supposed to work at all, and that it ran with "only" intermittent crashes was...impressive. Anyway, I found, downloaded and installed a 32-bit driver, and the computer hasn't crashed since. Hopefully that's the last of it. (Still think I should acquire a Win7 64-bit machine just on general principles.)

Graphics issues also are often due to not having a real graphics card and having that stupid integrated chip instead. Were in up to me the manufacturers that put those in instead of real cards would be walking down the street wearing 3 shoes - 2 on their feet, one in their ass.

Yeah, that's where this all started. So I got a proper graphics card and then had to fix the driver problems. Memo: always check system settings before installing drivers (the OS is supposed to check, but doesn't).

In the Show Business career, in order to be a Blockbuster Director, you have to go to through 8 levels of actor careers and skill building.

That's so unrealistic. Most RL blockbuster directors are schlubs, not someone with 10 body skill points and a long acting career under their belt. Director doesn't fit in with the rest of the career track at all.

Yeah, the "logic" on a lot of those things bothers me; it's odd that they tried to pair a linear progression (by numbering the levels) with the way that most Maxis careers seem to just wander through various aspects of a given field.

The ones that especially peeve me are the Music track, where becoming a Rock God has you first master classical music, and Medicine, because it's not commonly the case in modern times that one becomes a nurse...in order to become a doctor.

Apartments. I can play with them for a little while but soon enough they'll glitch on me and irritate me, especially if I have a pet living in them. I figured this out when I was playing my "again-retired Uberhood". I'm done with Apartments, I'll stick to my overly large houses with extremely large rooms and pointy roofs. LOL.

It's also interesting that they don't have to go to college to be doctors, but do to read tarot cards.

Right? But maybe we are all just misunderstanding, and the creators meant for TS2 to turn upside-down all our notions of career success...

"My parents really wanted to see me become the first Police Psychic in our family, and they were so proud every summer when I went to my internship to read tarot cards. I'll never forgive myself for washing out of college and having to let them down like that---I mean, it's okay, being a Surgeon and all, but still I constantly find myself questioning my life choices... "