Seeing the neighbors Is there an option anywhere to enable you to see the neighbors and ambient trees/foliage and whatever around your Sims' house, rather than just the empty grass?
You can only see the neighbors if you have Nightlife. Depending on your computer, it may or may not appear automatically. To get it to appear, click on the "cogs" icon on the save menu and choose "neighbors on." My video card needs updating and I've noticed I can't see everything. I have some sims whose house is surrounded by office buildings, and they just look like vacant lots. I also don't always see terrain if there's nothing on it: for example, I made a beach and the surrounding terrain is sandy in neighborhood view but not when I play the lot. But I have other sims who can see their neighbors and it looks pretty cool, even with my bad video card. I can only imagine what people with "supercomputers" can see.
Right now we've only got the base game installed, no expansions. Soon, however, I will be getting both expansions. As it stands for the moment, under the "cog" option icon, I don't see any options for turning neighbors on. I guess that gets added with the Nightlife pack, as you said. I have a P4 2.6 1GB with a Radeon X800XL 256MB. While a few years old now and certainly no "supercomputer", I can run such titles as Far Cry, Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 at relatively high resolutions and detail levels. I'd guess there wouldn't be much problem continuing to push the Sims 2 around with the addition of neighbors. Thanks.
That spec is pretty much top of the range as far The Sims 2 is concerned. Don't forget that the game is over a year old already and was in development for over two years so it was made for exactly what you own ... well more or less
Yep, you will be able to see the entire neighborhood when you install NL. Good to see a fellow Mountaineer here in the forums. I was born in Huntington. Welcome, Mule.
Your processor and RAM are fine. And your videocard isn't much over 1 year of age (as the X800s came out in August or September 2004). The X800 and Geforce 6800 were the top of the ability for video cards last year. They should be fine for at least seeing your next door neighbors when you install Nightlife. I have a 6800 (roughly equivalent to your card), although my RAM and processor are higher) and I see to the neighbors and a little beyond. However, to see what we'd see on a non-foggy/smoggy day it gets a little slow. So I only crank it up for doing shots. When I'm just playing I leave it at the settings which automatically set.
How do I keep the option from resetting every time I exit the game? I don't have Univ only NL. Thanks.
I had that problem too. After a while it stopped turning it off. I'm not sure why. Now it's automatically on. Maybe someone else has a better method, but I just kept turning it back on until it got the hint. Seriously, you might want to play with your other settings. Your computer might just be experiencing overload. I have my photos on "medium" for example because "high" freezes my game. All I want for Christmas is a new video card ... oh, and some RAM.
Same here. I figured that it got the message but thinking about it now ... it does seem kinda weird. I even cranked it up a notch after it stayed set and because I didn't noticed the difference in game speed I left it that way. Perhaps PlayLives can tell us what sort of graphics card he/she has???
I think that is one of the things the patch fixed. Have you downloaded the patch from the official site yet, Playlives?
I have 256MB ATI Radeon X600. When I bought the game (a few weeks ago) I tried to download the patch for NL, it said that I already had the most recent version.
Hmmm ... that can't be right. Did you download both patches? I got that message when I tried to install the NL patch after installing the NL/Uni patch, because I didn't realize they were the same, but you should be able to install it at least once. Unless later versions were packaged with it? Anyone know?
As of this date (Nov 10 2005) the latest (patched) version of the game with NightLife installed is 1.2.0.337. There's a simple way to way to confirm you have the latest patch. If you look for the file called TheSims2EP2 (it is an executable file but it carries the Sims Nightlife icon).in C:\Program_Files\EA_Games\The_Sims_2_Nightlife\TSBin\ and right click on it, choose 'Properties'. then click the tab labelled "Version" and you'll see if you've got it fully up to date. If only Civilization was as easy as this! :(
I don't have Univ so I didn't install the patch for it (should I?). When I had just the base Sim2 game, I didn't install the patch because the version I had was later then what the patch was for. So, while installing NL, I checked for updates and the message said I already had the latest version. I will try again later. Since I now have NL, should I try to install the patch for the base game and NL or will the NL patch suffice? (edit) Okay Mirelly, I'll check later.
I had version 1.2.0.312. I installed the patch, version 1.2.0.377. One of the fixes is to have the neighborhood view settings saved once you exit the game.
Mirelly, Where did you get the info about the version? I've looked all over the official site and couldn't find it. Oh, I'm a she by the way
LOL. I just looked up the version number of my own copy since I know that it is fully patched. It's like a lot of things computereek: the nerds and geeks keep all the simple stuff to themselves. I got Civilization 4 the other day but not only wouldn't it install none of the geeks on two different fansites had a clue what was wrong! Luckily World Sims always fixes everyone's problems (I fixed my prob myself by just patiently plugging away until found a way to fool my computer into believing that it was supposed to install a game and not an outdated video driver ... sheesh!)
