We do not use shoes indoors there where I live but somehow sims using them do not disturb me much. But it would be nice if they could take their shoes off when they come inside. I once tried make shoeless outfit in TS3 and seeing my sim walking on street using only socks disturbed me more then shoes inside the house.

The Goths don't have a TV? Shows how long since I played Pleasantview. XD

I may not have thought of it until you mentioned it, but I watched that show!



Well, I don't make them do it, but they can if they want to. XD



That's one of the reasons that I made stubbies and jandals. XD And it is freezing here! And Mum stole the furry hot water bottle. XD

If you notice, the Pleasantview characters from TS1 are all like that per memories, another indication (to me anyway) that Pleasantview was a Bible Belt town.

Then there’s others who assume that because there are no prebuilt churches, temples, etc that they are atheist. I have a hard time seeing people who believe in a literal afterlife being Richard Dawkins, but that’s just another example of how people’s culture and/or religion affect their game play.

To me it's less about how my cultural background effects my playing, but rather how my life experiences effect my playing. I grew up very poor in a rural area, we didn't have a nice car, our newest car was over 20 years old and was falling apart. It even broke down one time on the freeway leaving our family stranded in a rather "ghetto" like area of a nearby city for an entire day before we got help from a local "native american" family that gave us a ride back into our town. We had to often rely on food banks to feed us as there was barely enough money to pay the bills. Moms would abuse me and my brother and I remember there was one time when I was around 10 when my schizophrenia started and I was being bullied in school. I refused to go to school because not just the fear of being bullied and physically harmed by other kids, but also because I kept hearing voices. My mother instead of getting me help back then, she instead freaked out, called the cops and had me arrested and put into juvenile detention for two weeks. Until they let me out and back home with the exception that I had to be homeschooled. She never homeschooled me and purposely avoided teaching me anything and would avoid answering any questions I had about school subjects. Truthfully this only amplified my mental illness and gave me a lot of trust issues that I still deal with being an adult.

My brother was lucky that he was able to get a diploma despite the problems and has been well-off being able to buy the latest model of car, and was able to move two states away so he doesn't have to continue to deal with my narcissistic sociopath mother.

I never did graduate from high school, and never got a GED. Because of that I live off what we call here in the U.S. Supplemental Security Income, and I only have a part-time job that pays what is essentially pennies with today's inflation. I was never set up for success. Ultimately, when it comes to TS2 I try to often replicate tough situations like these, but I do refuse to simulate mental illness, and I always try to set up families where they can be difficult to play but with a little bit of effort can be successful.

To this day my mother still abuses me mentally. Her latest thing is spreading lies about me to everyone she knows and has even got once-family-friends to hate me and think of me as "bringing shame to the family". She even got in the way of my love life recently and got my girlfriend to break up with me. Honestly, it might sound cruel, but I can't wait for the day for that bitch to die so I can celebrate.

Anyway, this is my "Cleanin' Out my Closet" moment. Time for another beer.

It’s all about prospective. I have autism and where others see weakness I see strength.

In the game, I gave the Pleasant twins a REALLY hard beginning, especially Angela who I gave a traumatic brain injury (I monkeyed with her personality to simulate this the best I could) and a nasty juvenile criminal record that somewhat carried to adulthood, in addition to both twins being abused by their biological parents and yanked by a social worker and ultimately adopted by a military family. Angela (and her husband/family) gets disability payments via Kaching, unable to work. Her life isn’t easy, but she found peace and happiness.

Everybody’s battle is different though.

Perhaps, but I know the real reason why this all happens and I'm still dealing with it all. My mother always wanted a daughter and never wanted a second son. She has resented me my entire life because of that and I know this as my younger sister has overheard moms say that to my own grandfather. Mind you, my sister is only 10 at the moment and is caught in a difficult family drama triangle. Moms moved out and essentially divorced my dad, but still leeches off of his money. I've also heard that my mom neglects my sister quite often and has even said in front of her that she (my mom) doesn't want me around my very own sister.

perspectives certainly can differ, and I do agree everyone's battle is different though. Anyway, enough of my rambling. We're here to talk TS2, right?

I definitely relate to that, especially the mailboxes and the yellow school bus stick out like a sore thumb in my french-inspired neighborhood! I've been looking for defaults but with no luck so far. I'd like to convert the TS3 mailboxes from around the sims some day. Meshing a whole new school bus is probably out of my skill range though

I would say my cultural background mostly affect my building style, lately I've been playing a custom neighborhood based on a french village in a mountainous area and took a lot of inspiration from real life houses, farms and street layouts. Growing up I was always so bothered by the building limitations, especially not being able to build to the edge of the lot to have houses directly touching each other. Now with CC and more advanced building techniques, and of course the lot adjuster, I manage to build much more realistic layouts.

The whole game had a very uncanny valley vibe to me for a long time, and the more I learn about US culture and architectural style the more I understand why it is the way it is. Like the vertical sliding windows, unheard of where I live and I rarely use them in game. I've come to accept some of the "odd" details and mod the ones I really don't like


I'm not that bothered by Sims wearing their shoes inside, even though it's not normal for me to do it IRL. Having sims wear flip flops or run barefoot everywhere out fo the house would bother me a lot more. I guess one solution could be the have a mod that lets Sims wear their outerwear out of the house no matter the season, and have it be an outfit with proper shoes in constrast to their casual indoor outfit. But that would work best in a neighborhood that doesnt have a winter requiring actual warm outerwear.

I think that they were only given memories that were necessary to explain their current status. So, mentioning old flames that weren't relevant to the story was considered a waste of time.

I suspect that sims were deliberately made areligious (as in it wasn't mentioned at all), so that noone could claim that religion was being forced on them and so that religious people would also still want to play the game. Even the Grim Reaper doesn't really represent any particular religion.



Ugh. Sounds like you need to move two states away and block your mother.

I used to try to make things realistic... but then I just kind of started having fun with it. My base game is UC + CH's T&A. This actually lead me to making some interesting changes to both tone it down a little and ramp it up in some cases.

This lead to the creation of my "Nudes vs Prudes Wars - Random Nonsense Edition" controller. It's a nudist controller with a twist. The idea came about because in the UK we have a lot of people who seem to find the natural human body to be a bad thing. :D

Most nudist mods for the Sims 2 seem to work by either making everyone nude all the time or by having signs / doors / etc and as sims go through, they become nudists. But not this one!

In fact, as a player I have no control over who is nudist and who is not, and it's more family based also. The controller works in the background and does a variety of calculations to put sims into four categories:
- Nudist - As the name implies, they are nudists. They can go skinny dipping, visit nude beaches, walk around the home nude, etc.
- Prude - They typically will never be seen nude in public. They will not walk around in underwear with strangers (They will switch to everyday if in company of others, including family and do the embarrassed animation.). PJ's they're okay with in front of family, but embarrassed with others and switch to everyday.
- Neither prude nor nudes: They don't quite fit to be nudist, but they're also not a prude. They're okay with being in undies or pjs. They might do skinny dipping or walk around naked if intoxicated.
- Never-nudes: This is a new type of sim - You will never get them nude, that's no woohoo, no nude showers, no nude toilets, no skinny dipping, etc. Ever.

Now, onto the war:
These groups may not like each other! Prudes will lecture a nudist who is nude (think crumplebottom.) they might even poke them or argue, after which the nudist will typically switch to everyday clothing. On the other hand, nudists who are on a nudist lot and see a prude in clothing may show negative responses like disgust, laughing at them, etc towards the prude. Nudists may switch to nude if they see another nudist who is nude.

The in the middles, kind of don't care either way what those two do.

The never nudes will not switch to nude, and if you try they will do the whole angry foot stomp thing at you after switching to everyday. (They are still a wip.)

The handling of nudist lots is based on the objects and family on the lot, if it's a residential lot then the family may become nudist if the adults of the family can score high enough to cause the family to be nudist. It's not as simple as it seems, multiple factors are taken into account from skills, fitness, hobbies, personality, wealth, etc. The adults have to score at least 12 points to qualify as nudist. Prude is 5 points of less, never nude is 0 or less. For a whole family to qualify as nudist then the majority of adults must be nudist, for that it's simple: It's total adults - 1, so if you have 4 adults, 3 must qualify as nudist for the family to be nudist. But to make it interesting, if one of those adults qualifies as a prude? No nudist family at all. For each prude removes 1 nudist vote. Which means, it becomes impossible to reach enough votes to be a nudist family.

Other sims on the lot also affect whether nudity is permitted. For example, if you have a guest over who is not nudist, then the sims will dress in regular clothes and cannot walk around naked - even if they're nudist.

There's a bunch of other things too, but it's a work in progress and I find it funny to watch sims more strictly follow their personality. It affects all sorts, from whether they get dressed getting out of bed, to whether they are able to sleep naked, whether they can be friends, etc. The fun of it is, because it's all calculated automatically, I basically have no control nor idea over who will be nudist, prude or otherwise. It will just happen. :D

It sounds stupid and pointless, but I find it funny. :D

I pretty my agree with this, except I see it more as a matter of religion being undefined in the game vs sims being areligious. Nothing stops one from building churches or temples and having Sims attend regular worship service, it just wasn't featured predominantly like in Sim City. It would be extremely hard for them to appease everyone if they included it in The Sims, unlike Sim City where churches and "houses of worship" were significantly featured. I suspect the concept of them being built well into the 8000s and beyond in Sim City 2000 really rained on some players' parade, but it would even more so if they made any particular religion (or atheism) the mainstream in The Sims.

Edit to add: Marriage in the game must be interesting for people from outside of American/Western culture. It's very much Americana, and more specifically it's very protestant in style.

@HarVee A narcissistic relative is the worst burden a person can have, I'm so sorry. My father is one too. But you know what? We'll get through this despite them!!!

I have no cultural background, so most of what ends up making its way from the real world into my gameplay is pretty sporadic, and more or less based on what aspects of real life I'm psychologically/morally comfortable with.

I think watching the old Strangetown Conspiracy series on Youtube some 16 years ago influenced me to incorporate some more realism to the game rather than treating it like a shining utopia, and also loosely draw from other cultures outside of my own, at least to the extent of my own knowledge. I have a habit of smooshing grammar from both Spanish and Russian (since they're the languages I know most outside my native English) to create an uncanny "melting pot" type of Sims culture. I find depictions of American culture from a foreigner's perspective fascinating and can have an hypnagogic aesthetic to it, so I kinda try to emulate that feeling in the game. Sims, after all, are not real, and therefore don't necessarily have to adhere to real world societal/geographical/genetic rules.

my 'cultural' background is that I am a flaming homosexual so I always make the gayest village in the neighborhood.

Like so many others have said - I see the sims as something else. They don't necessarily behave like we do in my part of the world, or like humans do in any other part of the world either. But that said, of course I try to build Nordic style houses, or English ones (I'm Swedish, married to an Englishman) and the clothing choices available in an unmodded game can drive me nuts. What do you mean no real winter boots? Why is no one wearing tights under their skirts, even in winter? All those good things. And while I don't personally wear the discrete styles associated with Nordic people, it feels weird that you don't see them around! To me, that's weirder than yellow schoolbuses or pancake breakfasts! I am playing with very little CC right now, though, and it works fine. Not every neighbourhood needs to be Swedish or English in style, after all. I have long ago decided that sims have their own idea of fashion. For example, that basegame jumpsuit for teenage girls that players normally snigger about? That's the height of fashion and style in the world my sims inhabit.

I have a project I've worked on for a long time, building a vacation hood with a Nordic theme. I've gathered up so many mods and so many purely aesthetic downloads for that purpose, it would probably take ages to load the game with all that in. I'm testing my way through it all slowly, to see what I like best and will actually be using. It's amazing to feel the game get more "real" when I see the kind of colours and building styles around me that I have around me every day, and it makes me feel a bit guilty for sometimes thinking other players are nitpicky when they complain the game can't reflect their everyday lives very well.

To sum it up: My sims are sims, not humans. They have their own whacky world that I love exploring on its own conditions. It's fun watching an American movie or TV show and suddenly realising why something in the game is how it is - but that doesn't mean my sims are American. On the other hand, when a little detail actually reflects the life people here in Sweden live, or people in England, it gives me a really amazing feeling. I watched a Paralives clip, and one of the chracters came in from outdoors and took his shoes off - it made me whoop with joy. I wish that kind of feeling to anyone who plays, at least once!

What about sim marriage is American/Protestant?

You still haven't seen enough British nights out then B) those women scare me

Some defaults of Maxis outfits adding tights (and other stuff). https://modthesims.info/d/301758/qu...-base-game.html

For modesty, not warmth, but still works for both.

The fact that they’re NOT arranged for one thing. That doesn’t make the protestant or American specifically, but definitely western. No child brides, interracial/interclass okay, polygamy NOT okay, etc.

I’m not particularly knowledgeable about other cultures marriages but I’m aware of the fact that there are other cultures that do it differently. Apparently Catholics do marriages differently as well? That’s another thing I’m not particularly well versed on.

Is there any Real Life community where one gets married under a special wedding arch? The wedding arch and the absence of any sort of officiant seem to me to be the most distinctive cultural aspects of Sims' weddings. They seem quite different to both Protestant and Roman Catholic weddings to me. In my game, the double wedding of Andrew to Julian (a gay wedding),and Gloria to Garry, took place in the Parish Church (St Simeon's Veronaville) but there really wasn't anything for the Rev. Elspeth Anderson, the Pars Priest (Episcopalian, not Roman Catholic) to do.

Not an arch exactly, Andrew, but one of my Jewish friends shared photos of his wedding (from years before I met him) and he and his lovely wife are standing under a kind of square canopy. I don't remember what he said it was called, though!

My in-laws are African, one of the central African countries: they are Southern Baptist and they had an arranged marriage, so there's nothing inherently un-Protestant about arranged marriages. They've been married for over six decades now, so I'd say it worked well for them. (Also, for my fellow Americans, African Southern Baptist is not American Southern Baptist: there's a lot more alcohol and dancing.)

I don't know if it can be called cultural background, but being a European affects the way I think about premades. For instance I always considered Bella Goth an Italian - born and raised in Italy to Italian parents. Similarly, I thought Calientes to be Spanish as in from Spain, not Latinas. The discourse which of premades are Latinx or etc. is too American-based and unintuitive for me. I think in European terms - e.g. Loki Beaker has Nordic looks, so he probably is a Dane, Swedish or Norwegian.
Veronaville is kinda weird though, because Verona is Italian city but the heavy use of timber framing on buildings makes me think of Germany. However, Verona is a Northern Italian city, so maybe Veronaville is located closely to Switzerland or Austria.

Cheers, Charity! I'd forgotten all about that one.


Good point. And nights out actually look the same here in Sweden. It's just been so long since I've been involved in any of that myself...

You seem particularly unsure about your own post as you have both liked and disliked it lol.

I'm personally glad that Sims 2 didn't include anything nasty like child marriage or banning interracial/interclass/same sex marriages. Sims 4 did tackle polygamy.



I suspect that the lack of a priest was again an attempt to remove religion from getting married, so it became generic. Too late for Andrew and Julian, but if Reverend Elspeth wishes to be able to properly officiate future weddings then she might be interested in the hack in post 9. https://web.archive.org/web/2019032...s-sajta-pc-sims

I actually never like or dislike my own posts on here. I agree on the child marriage and racism thing. I like realism in the game, but it doesn't need to be that realistic. Diddo for excluding incest. They handled LGBT just the right way for a multicultural audience, allowing it as an option without forcing it into the game.

My point was that there are cultures where that kind of stuff is considered normal, and not just the nasty ways (pedos), but also children marrying other children their own age. It's odd to us, but to some it's normal for an 8 year old to marry another 8 year old. Ironically, many from these cultures would consider same-sex relationships to be odd, whereas it is seen as normal in most of the western world. Then there's cultures (some right here in America) where consenting adults need permission from each other's parents to marry. Kind of glad that was not included.'

Edit: I made myself a liar because I did, in fact, like and dislike the post. That must have been thanks to a touch screen.

My sims live in their own little world. I'm French so their last names sound French and I usually give them uncommon first names (or at least i try).

I live in a big city and my sims are absolutely not from there.