The Sims 2

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The Sims 2

Developers
	Maxis
macOS (OS X)	Aspyr Media
Publishers
	Electronic Arts
Engines
	The Sims 2 Engine
Release dates
Windows	September 14, 2004
macOS (OS X)	June 13, 2005

The Sims
Subseries of Sim
The Sims	2000
The Sims Online	2002
The Sims 2	2004
The Sims Stories (series)
MySims	2008
The Sims 3	2009
The Sims Medieval	2011
The Sims 4	2014

Key points

Large modding community.

All Origin versions get a free upgrade to The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection (contact EA Support for non-Origin versions).

Although it shipped originally with SecuROM, The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection was updated in November 2017 and no longer uses SecuROM. However, it; along with all other digital releases of the game - were already pulled in August 2014.

The disc version may not run properly on Windows 10 due to issues with SafeDisc and/or SecuROM.

General information

Official Website (archived)

The Sims 2 Official Forums

EA Answer HQ

EA Answer HQ (OS X)

The Sims Wikia

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Retail		SafeDisc v3 DRM. Later expansions use v4 or SecuROM 7 DRM.
Mac App Store		Super Collection.

SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see above for affected versions).

The Windows version is no longer sold digitally.

All Origin versions are automatically upgraded to The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection. Contact the EA Support for retail versions.

The Ultimate Collection from Origin no longer has SecuROM DRM.

Version differences

List of all different versions and regions can be found on Wikipedia.

DLC and expansion packs

Name	Notes
Apartment Life
Bon Voyage
Celebration! Stuff
Family Fun Stuff
Freetime
Glamour Life Stuff
H&M Fashion Stuff	Also known as Fashion Stuff in Australia
Happy Holiday Stuff	Also known as Festive Holiday Stuff in Europe
Happy Holiday Pack	Also known as Christmas Party Pack in the UK and Ireland and Holiday Party Pack in Australia
IKEA Home Stuff
Kitchen & Bath Interior Design Stuff
Mansion & Garden Stuff
Nightlife
Open for Business
Pets
Seasons
Teen Style Stuff
University

Essential improvements

In-game camera and game recording settings.

Patches

Retail versions of the base game, expansions, and the Family Fun Stuff pack require patching after installation. The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection on Origin is already patched.

Although the game's patch site has now gone down, many expansion pack patches are available from the PCGamingWiki filespace.

The patch notes can be found here

Skip intro videos

Delete or rename video files
Go to <path-to-game>\TSData\Res\Movies\ealogo_audio.movie (base game) Go to <path-to-game>\Fun with Pets\SP9\TSData\Res\Movies\ealogo_audio.movie (Ultimate Collection) Go to <path-to-game>\Double Deluxe\Base\TSData\Res\Movies\intro_eng_audio.movie (Ultimate Collection) Delete or rename all instances of intro_eng_audio.movie and ealogo_audio.movie

Improved view distances

Remove fog
Open cheat console with Ctrl+⇧ Shift+C. Type boolprop dontMergeNHFlora false and uintProp lotSkirtSizeIncrease 120 You can load the cheats whenever you start the game by placing them in the configuration file

Game data

In-game general settings.

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
Windows	<path-to-game>\TSData\Res\Config
macOS (OS X)

<path-to-game> changes according to what expansions you have installed. For example, if you have Ultimate Collection or all expansions path would be ...\Fun with Pets\SP9\...

Save game data location

System	Location
Windows	%USERPROFILE%\Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\ %USERPROFILE%\Documents\EA Games\The Sims™ 2 Ultimate Collection\
macOS (OS X)

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
Origin		Ultimate Collection now requires Origin running to play.
OneDrive		Requires enabling backup of the Documents folder in OneDrive on all computers.

Video settings

In-game graphics settings.

Widescreen resolution

Fixes common issues like graphics settings being disabled or not getting applied on newer GPUs, and black square Sim shadows. Adds widescreen support.

Download Graphics Rule Maker[citation needed]

Go here and download and install Graphics Rules Maker Open the program and select The Sims 2 in the Game dropdown menu. If it doesn't automatically find the game, browse to your latest installed expansion/stuff pack Modify the settings under Game Tweaks in order to fix what you want. Press Save Files... and click Yes in the window that appears If despite using the tool you still can not run above 800x600 resolution, or the game is locked to 4:3 aspect ratio, see 800x600 resolution fix If you intend on using the Sim Shadow Fix described in the Black Square Shadows section of this article, don't enable Enable Sim Shadows on Graphics Rule Maker or it won't work.

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\EA Games\The Sims 2\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]

Navigate to the configuration file location. Open Graphics Rules.sgr. Find the following section: if (not $useSoftwareRasterizer) # failed to obtain device texture memory size, force to 32 MB if ($textureMemory = 0) seti textureMemory 32 endif and change seti textureMemory to the value of your GPU's VRAM in megabytes. Notes This makes game use your VRAM amount as fallback value. Do not put value higher than actual VRAM amount is!

Audio settings

Alt-tabbing may not work properly during the game's loading screens.

In-game audio settings.

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Finnish
French
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hungarian
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Thai
Traditional Chinese
Simplified Chinese

Issues fixed

Vista/7 Compatibility

The Sims 2 is compatible with newer versions of Windows, however the original release of the game has issues, and will show an error message when loaded.

Patching the game or installing the expansion packs will correct this.

Temporarily freezing during launch with certain AMD GPUs on Windows 10

Newer versions of the Radeon Adrenalin driver software are responsible for this issue.

Rollback to Radeon Adrenalin driver v.18.12.1.1

Download DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) Download Radeon Adrenalin v.18.12.1.1 or earlier. Extract [Guru3D.com]-DDU.zip Run DDU vyourversionnumberhere.exe Click on 'Extract'. Go into the DDU vyourversionnumberhere folder and run Display Driver Uninstaller.exe Click on the 'Select device type' drop-down and select 'GPU', make sure the drop-down below it says 'AMD'. Click on 'Clean and restart' and wait for the computer to reboot. Run Win10-64Bit-Radeon-Software-Adrenalin-Edition-18.12.1.1-Dec5 Click on 'Install' and proceed with the setup as normal. After the setup, restart your computer and launch the game.

Alternatively, use DXVK to circumvent DirectX issues
Download the newest Version of DXVK Follow this guide on how to install DXVK for The Sims 2

Fix crashing with Nvidia 1XXX and Windows 10

Apply 4GB to The Sims 2 executable
Download the 4GB Patch Extract 4gb_patch.zip Run 4gb_patch.exe Apply patch to <path-to-game>\TSBin\Sims2EP9.exe

Alternatively, use DXVK to circumvent DirectX issues however it requires a Minimum CPU speed of 2.4 GHz.

Windows

macOS (OS X)

macOS (OS X)
	Minimum
Operating system (OS)	10.3.8
Processor (CPU)	1.2 GHz PowerPC G4/G5
System memory (RAM)
Hard disk drive (HDD)	3 GB
Video card (GPU)	ATI Radeon 9000 Nvidia GeForce FX5200 32 MB of VRAM