The Sims Life Stories
Developers | |
---|---|
Maxis | |
macOS (OS X) | Aspyr Media |
Publishers | |
Electronic Arts | |
OS X | Aspyr Media |
Engines | |
The Sims 2 Engine | |
Release dates | |
Windows | February 6, 2007 |
macOS (OS X) | April 13, 2007 |
Reception | |
Metacritic | 72 |
Warnings
- SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see Availability for affected versions).
- The macOS (OS X) version of this game does not work on macOS Catalina (version 10.15) or later due to the removal of support for 32-bit-only apps.
The Sims Stories | |
---|---|
Subseries of The Sims | |
The Sims Life Stories | 2007 |
The Sims Pet Stories | 2007 |
The Sims Castaway Stories | 2008 |
Key points
- Runs well on low-end hardware, especially laptops and integrated graphics cards.
- This game uses a slightly modified version of the The Sims 2: Bon Voyage engine and most fixes and some mods for it also work here.
General information
- Official Website (EA, archived)
- Official Website (Yahoo, archived)
- Official Website (Aspyr)
- Answer HQ for The Sims series at EA.com
Availability
Source | DRM | Notes | Keys | OS |
---|---|---|---|---|
Retail | SafeDisc v4 DRM[Note 1]. | |||
Retail | ||||
Mac App Store |
Game data
Configuration file(s) location
System | Location |
---|---|
Windows | <path-to-game>\TSData\Res\Config[Note 2] |
macOS (OS X) |
Save game data location
System | Location |
---|---|
Windows | %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims™ Life Stories\ |
macOS (OS X) |
- The final folder may have a localized name depending on which language you installed the game
Video
Graphics feature | State | Notes | |
---|---|---|---|
Widescreen resolution | By default you can select up to 1280x720.For more widescreen resolutions seeWidescreen resolution. | ||
Multi-monitor | |||
Ultra-widescreen | See Widescreen resolution. | ||
4K Ultra HD | See Widescreen resolution. | ||
Field of view (FOV) | See Field of view (FOV). | ||
Windowed | Use -w parameter.When in Windowed Mode, the Resolution will be adjusted so the window will not overlap the Windows Taskbar |
||
Borderless fullscreen windowed | |||
Anisotropic filtering (AF) | Can be forced in driver control panel | ||
Anti-aliasing (AA) | Smooth Edges slider; if the setting are greyed out see Anti-aliasing (AA). | ||
Vertical sync (Vsync) | On by default. See Vertical sync (Vsync). | ||
60 FPS and 120+ FPS | Frame rates up to 120 FPS have been observed. | ||
High dynamic range display (HDR) | See the glossary page for potential alternatives. |
Widescreen resolution
- The game's maximum default resolution is 1600x1200. For higher resolutions you need to edit the following file:
Electronic Arts\The Sims Castaway Stories\TSData\Res\Config\Graphics Rules.sgr
Set maxResWidth and maxResHeight to your display's native width and height, or copy/paste the following:
option ScreenModeResolution setting $Low uintProp maxResWidth 2560 uintProp maxResHeight 1600 uintProp defaultResWidth 800 uintProp defaultResHeight 600 setting $Medium uintProp maxResWidth 2560 uintProp maxResHeight 1600 uintProp defaultResWidth 1024 uintProp defaultResHeight 768 setting $High uintProp maxResWidth 2560 uintProp maxResHeight 1600 uintProp defaultResWidth 1024 uintProp defaultResHeight 768 end
Field of view (FOV)
Each of the game's cameras can have their FOV set independently using the fov parameter in their Camera Settings files, which are contained in %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims™ Castaway Stories\Cameras\
Anti-aliasing (AA)
- If your "Edge Smoothing" slider is greyed out in-game, then it's likely that the game cannot determine how much VRAM your GPU has and is defaulting to its failsafe of 32 MB.
Raise amount of fallback value[citation needed] |
---|
Notes
|
Alternative Fix |
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|
Vertical sync (Vsync)
- Toggling Vsync can cause the game to hang.[citation needed]
Vsync can only be toggled using the Cheat Console (Ctrl+⇧ Shift+C) and using either the 'vsync off' or 'vsync on' command.
Input
Keyboard and mouse | State | Notes |
---|---|---|
Remapping | See the glossary page for potential workarounds. | |
Mouse acceleration | ||
Mouse sensitivity | ||
Mouse input in menus | ||
Mouse Y-axis inversion | ||
Controller | ||
Controller support |
Controller types |
---|
Audio
Audio feature | State | Notes |
---|---|---|
Separate volume controls | Voices, Sound Effects, Music, Ambient and Audio Quality sliders | |
Surround sound | 4.0 and 5.1 | |
Subtitles | No intelligible dialog. All in-game dialog uses the fictional Simlish language. | |
Closed captions | ||
Mute on focus lost | Game 'forgets' it does not have the focus when leaving loading screens |
Localizations
Language | UI | Audio | Sub | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
English | Speech is fictional language called Simlish. Speech is subtitled with generic icons. |
|||
Brazilian Portuguese | ||||
Czech | ||||
Danish | ||||
Dutch | ||||
French | ||||
Finnish | ||||
German | ||||
Hungarian | ||||
Norwegian | ||||
Polish | ||||
Russian | ||||
Spanish | ||||
Swedish |
Issues fixed
Black Square Under Sim
Download Sim Shadow Fix |
---|
|
Game stuck in 800x600 resolution
- Occurs because the game fails to detect the video card correctly.
Edit Graphics Rules.sgr |
---|
option ScreenModeResolution setting $Low uintProp maxResWidth 1280 uintProp maxResHeight 1024 uintProp defaultResWidth 800 uintProp defaultResHeight 600
|
Other information
API
Executable | PPC | 32-bit | 64-bit | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
Windows | ||||
macOS (OS X) | 32-bit[3] and PowerPC only. |
System requirements
Windows | ||
---|---|---|
Minimum | ||
Operating system (OS) | XP | |
Processor (CPU) | 1.4 GHz | |
System memory (RAM) | 256 MB | |
Hard disk drive (HDD) | 3.5 GB | |
Video card (GPU) | T&L Capable 32 MB of VRAM DirectX 9.0c compatible |
macOS (OS X) | ||
---|---|---|
Minimum[4] | ||
Operating system (OS) | 10.9.5 | |
Processor (CPU) | Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz | |
System memory (RAM) | 4 GB | |
Hard disk drive (HDD) | 3 GB | |
Video card (GPU) | Nvidia GeForce 8800 series AMD Radeon HD 3870 Intel HD Graphics 3000 256 MB of VRAM |
Notes
- ↑ SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows 10[1] or Windows 11 and is disabled by default on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 when the KB3086255 update is installed.[2]
- ↑ When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below
%PROGRAMFILES%
,%PROGRAMDATA%
, or%WINDIR%
might be redirected to%LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore
on Windows Vista and later (more details).
References
- ↑ Not Loading in Windows 10; this will break thousands of - Microsoft Community - last accessed on 2017-01-16
- ↑ Microsoft - MS15-097: Description of the security update for the graphics component in Windows: September 8, 2015 - last accessed on 2018-02-16
- ↑ MacOS Catalina, 64-bit, 32-bit, and related Questions – Aspyr Support
- ↑ The Sims™ 2 Life Stories - Aspyr