Most Wanted Hacks

[strangetomato]

First of all, thank you to everyone who helped me to troubleshoot my game issues in the last post. As always, I appreciate your help immensely. In the end, it was a simple matter of placing the no-cd crack in the wrong folder. I feel a little better knowing that I'm not the only one who has made the same mistake.

My next hurdle to jump in the quest to get my game running properly again is to rebuild my downloads folder. You see, I may have lost my entire uberhood (with ALL of the households played to 14 sim days) and a good portion of my downloads folder to the hard drive failure of my old PC. *deep breath* I'm okay. There's very little I can't just shrug off these days. And let this be a lesson to you all. Go make backups, and not just half-assed ones where you sort of have copies, but not really, and you're just swapping in and out hoods without also keeping a copy in your external drive. Seriously, double check that you have a decent backup. Do it.

On the bright side, I do still have Elsewhere and the Tomato Legacy and all of my other hoods. I also, by some strange luck, still have my Bodyshop and Build Mode sub-folders of my Downloads folder. What I do not have: Hair, Buy Mode, Defaults, Hacks, and Storytelling (hacks and pose boxes) sub-folders. I'm going to take the first two as a blessing in disguise and a chance to scale back my cc a little. I'll gather up the hair and recolours of buy mode items as I realize what I truly need and want. Defaults, I'll figure out. Hacks, I need pronto. Storytelling stuff is also pretty key.

What hacks do you absolutely need for your game? I know I need the MATY Director's Cut and ACR 2.0, and some of the others are coming back to me as I look into it, but I don't remember everything I had. If you wouldn't mind tossing out some of your must haves for me to peruse (or share a link to your resources post), I'd really appreciate it.

Comments

[im-i.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear you lost your uberhood, but happy that you at least saved some of it. For hacks, other than the ones you mentioned, these are my must-haves:
* Community Time Project (It works fine with AL by the way and couldn't live without it now!)
* Izza's Townie Names
* Faster Uni
* Neighbourhood Decorations Can Be Placed Anywhere
* Decorative Parking Spaces (Yes I count this as essential XD)
* Gunmods Radience Lighting System
* Gunmod's Camera
* Fixes from MATY, Simbology, Squinge obviously
* HP's Witch Skin Fix

Hope that helps a little! Good luck with sorting your downloads folder and setting everything up again.

[smjoshsims.livejournal.com]

The College Adjuster, the Sim Blender, the Find a Mate Crystal Ball for pairings, and Treeag's Base Game Template hider since I hate loading Bodyshop and seeing those ugly Sims. After those I only have MATY's essentials.

[so-goshable.livejournal.com]

Oh, that stinks. No fun.

My must haves: Monique's less friendship decay or Simlogical equivalent (this #1 on my list), InTeen, Sim Blender, College Adjuster, Break Inducer, Freeze Time Clock, crystal Ball, hacked Cow Head Mascot.

[goldpandaah.livejournal.com]

Apart from the already mentioned hacks, Cyon has some essential fixes over here. I also can recommend "No Sim Loaded" from BoilingOil. You can find his stuff here.
Hope that helps a little bit.

[murrealism.livejournal.com]

Visitor controller

<3

[chazzhay.livejournal.com]

Yeah Cyjons mods I could not recommend enough, so many good ones.

[http://users.livejournal.com/ari_/]

stuff not mentioned yet:

Inge's school and prison, and various stuff
Becks at MTS has toddler and puppy/kitten-enabled stairs
BackalleySims: very interesting things in the adult section (Chris H...something has the fun stuff in his subforum forums - the site is horrible to navigate)
some vampire and werewolf-stuff from DJssims
Inge and Marhis have a special wedding-arc that IIRC allows multiple spouses and no relationship check before marriage
LdDarcy from MATY has some slot-enablers for Maxis furniture
Monique at MTS2 has some auto-payment mods (child support, etc)
NDR at MTS2 has some "flower bench is nature hobby" and similar stuff
I still have Squinge's pee naked and his "hire more employees" mods
SimWardrobe has some interesting stuff, especially the "make employees work" related, but others, too

ETA: I don't know where it's from exactly (maybe MTS2?), but "tunaisfish" has a mod that takes that one borked attraction trait and turns it into an "alien" attraction trait (there is also a version that works with cboy's cock mod that adds a "well hung" attraction trait, but you can only have one or the other, and I don't know where the cboy-related one is - probably MATY?).

Essential storytelling stuff:

[skellington7d.livejournal.com]

Freezerclock, full range OMSPs

Decorgal's expressions, the Poserbox, Walk Poses Hack, and Parts Posebox all set to "immediately" in Sim Pe (links and tutorial for that are here http://skellington7d.livejournal.com/31614.html)

Ndainye's Smile for the Camera box:
http://ndainyes-nest.livejournal.com/645.html
(best thing about this is that their heads turn towards the camera even if you're just overlaying the expression over another posebox.)

All of Jaydee's animation boxes, Aikea's Painting of Chaos and Doom, and the Hula Mod
http://www.jd-movies.com/ofbtester.php
http://www.insimenator.org/showthread.php?t=42093
http://www.insimenator.org/index.php?topic=9544.0

Props:
http://www.modthesims.info/d/185863
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=351524

Other Decorgal stuff:
http://files.sims2graveyard.com/decorgal/index.php?path=hacks/

The phone hack only works when time is not frozen. (I mainly like it for the crying pose) The talk overlay hack (green box with speech bubble) will animate your sims walking in a way you can overlay expressions from the above stuff on. It also has some nice cuddle poses. :) My overlaying expressions tutorial is here if you need a refresher: http://skellington7d.livejournal.com/3053.html

Hope this list is of some help to you!

[purpleseas.livejournal.com]

Thirding Cyjon's mods, especially Townie Apartment Residents. I play in a fully custom neighborhood and just didn't want to bother making social group townies because I find them so useless.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I'm a huge fan of Cyjon's mods, though I was forgetting where they were located (and even his name, damn baby brain), so thank you for that link. I was hoping someone would mention him, and happy to see lots of love for him here. :)

Last time, I think I had just about as many of his hacks as I did Pescado's. He has some very useful stuff. For anyone that hasn't checked his stuff out, I also highly reccomend them.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I used a lot of the ones you've listed here. I had Gunmod's Camera Mod in my backup folder, so that went right back in. As a storyteller, I find that one beyond essential. When I was testing the game, I was surprised to remember how truly terrible the default camera is. It's maddening. XD

I've never heard of the Community Time Project. It sounds interesting, tough I think the time management required on my part would turn me off from it. I'm bad at it, and I sort of like the timelessness of community lots.

*checks MATY to refresh memory* Have you looked at Simsbaby's No With Overlay at MATY? I frequently switch back and forth on whether I want green skin and/or sparkles in my game (mostly story-related), but when I did remove the overlay, I used that one instead of HP's. It uses a different technique and the file is smaller.

Thanks for all your help. I appreciate it. :)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Oh man. A big YES to the College Adjuster (though I believe I used Cyjoon's Semester Changes instead). I could never have gotten all the uni sims through college without that (and no, I don't want to talk about losing all that work, LOL)!

I haven't used the other two (I believe I just deleted the Bodyshop sims somehow? I don't recall how), but they sound useful. Thanks for sharing! :)

You manage to keep your game pretty low on hacks. I tend to go a little overboard, I think, but I can't help it. :P This might be a good chance to try to keep it simpler.

[kin-thalas.livejournal.com]

Same Sex Marriage. Essential.
Then Shaklin's dresser (buy clothes at home) and The Sim Blender.
And Crammyboy's hack for turning Sim men into real men ;P
Forgot the name for the creator to remove the blur, though.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree more about the Same Sex Marriage hack. I don't think I'd even play without it. (And Traditional Marriage always gets the boot from the MATY Directors Cut in my game. Bleck!)

You know, I've never bothered with the Crammyboy hack, though I did start to use that mesh default replacement by Fanseelamb to give the male sims more of a bulge when they're in their underwear.

Thanks for the suggestions. :)

Re: Essential storytelling stuff:

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Thank you for all that. :) Very helpful for finding everything again! I've already taken a look at your tutorial for some of those links. I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned how useful that was. Thank you for sharing your methods with us. I used some of the same techniques from trial and error on my own (mostly messing with facial overlays in active game animations), but it was really useful to read how you achieve your more complex poses.

I often look back to storytelling before the freezer clock and full range OMSPs and wonder how we managed. It was a very different time. :P Lots of fun trying to achieve the impossible with very little, though. It was so rewarding when you figured out a way to actually get something to work the way you wanted. Haha!

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Thank you! That's a great list. :)

The more links people post, the more I realize I had a LOT of hacks in my game. Perhaps I should try to take a more minimal apprach this time, at first. It's worth considering. (Check back in a week and I bet I'll have them all again, though. :P)

Thanks so much for your help. It's greatly appreciated.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

*nods* Always a good thing.

Thank you. :)

[cameoflage.livejournal.com]

I cannot play without InSim and... well, I've got a camera mod, but I don't remember who made it and a glance through MTS didn't jog my memory. (I definitely got it from there.) It could be Gunmod's.

Those two I've had for several years. More recently I downloaded the freezer clock and I'm getting attached.

[meetme2theriver.livejournal.com]

I'm happy you got it worked out at last! :D

[meetme2theriver.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree more about the Same Sex Marriage hack. I don't think I'd even play without it. (And Traditional Marriage always gets the boot from the MATY Directors Cut in my game. Bleck!)

Ditto and ditto! But if you don't have it, Marhis' last name chooser is a must for me! Now if only it had an option to combine last names with a hyphen...

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I looked into that one. Didn't it also allow the sims to keep their own names? That's cool. I think I usually just head into SimPE and work my magic on the newlyweds to give them hyphenated names or whatever tickles my fancy that day (or suits the couple in question). It'd be great if there was a hack that allowed you to type in the new names.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think I had something for default friendship decay, or maybe just to stop the passive aggressive phonecalls. I think it might have been MATY that had one where they call and actually talk to you. I can't remember exactly what it was called.

Thank you for that list. It's all very helpful. :)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I'm always interested to see personal hack preferences. I'd never have thought to use that flushing and washing hands hack because of the time involved. In fact, I'm pretty sure my sims never wash their hands. :P Maybe if they could spread germs that way, I'd do something about it. Kinda gross.

That last one is the breastfeeding hack, right? I had that one at one point, but thought it took too long for the sims to nurse the baby vs. using the bottles. Now that I'm doing it in rl, I know it's pretty accurate and acually the sims motives should drop like crazy, too. :P But, to be fair, the sims should have to prep the bottles, so in sim terms that would probably take like a whole hour. But no, they serve them ice cold out of the fridge. Heh.

Thank you for sharing. :) It's very helpful.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I agree completely. I had a lot of his mods before I lost my game. His stuff is so creative and useful.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Loving the Cyjon love here. <3

That sounds like a great one. Those social group townies really are kind of useless. It would have been nice if they had given the option to assign social groups to playable sims instead.