Anonymous edits have been disabled on the wiki. If you want to contribute please login or create an account.

Difference between revisions of "The Sims Castaway Stories"

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
m (Updating infobox with StrategyWiki guide link)
Line 14: Line 14:
 
|steam appid  =  
 
|steam appid  =  
 
|gogcom id    =  
 
|gogcom id    =  
|strategywiki = The_Sims:_Castaway_Stories
+
|strategywiki = The Sims Castaway Stories
 
|wikipedia    = The Sims Castaway Stories
 
|wikipedia    = The Sims Castaway Stories
 
|winehq      =  
 
|winehq      =  

Revision as of 00:30, 3 June 2019

The Sims Castaway Stories
The Sims Castaway Stories cover
Developers
Maxis
macOS (OS X) Aspyr Media
Publishers
Electronic Arts
OS X Aspyr Media
Engines
The Sims 2 Engine
Release dates
Windows January 29, 2008
macOS (OS X) March 17, 2008
The Sims Castaway Stories guide on StrategyWiki
The Sims Castaway Stories on Wikipedia

Warnings

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.
This game uses a slightly modified version of the The Sims 2: Seasons engine and most fixes and some mods for it also work here.
This game has a lower texture quality than The Sims 2.[1]

General information

Official Website (Yahoo!, archived)
Official Website (OS X)
Answer HQ for The Sims series at EA.com
Answer HQ for The Sims series at EA.com (OS X)
The Sims Wiki

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
CD key
SecuROM 7 DRM.
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Mac App Store
Icon overlay.png
macOS (OS X)

Game data

In-game General settings.
In-game General settings.

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\TSData\Res\Config[Note 1]
macOS (OS X)

Save game data location

System Location
Windows %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims™ Castaway Stories\
macOS (OS X)

Video settings

In-Game Graphics settings
In-Game Graphics settings

Template:Video settings

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]
  1. Navigate to the configuration file location.
  2. Open Graphics Rules.sgr.
  3. 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!
Alternative Fix
  1. Navigate to the configuration file location.
  2. Open Graphics Rules.sgr.
  3. Search for enumerateMultisampleLevels
       boolProp enumerateMultisampleLevels false
    
    and wherever it says false next to it, correct it with true. There are multiple lines with the enumerateMultisampleLevels so keep changing to true until there are no more results.

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 settings

Template:Input settings

Audio settings

In-Game Audio settings.
In-Game Audio settings.

Template:Audio settings

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Speech is fictional language called Simlish.
Speech is subtitled with generic icons.
Danish
French
Finnish
German
Norwegian
Russian
Swedish

Issues fixed

Poorly Placed Objects/Frozen Objects

Periodically, special object may be placed in a bad location, preventing a sim from doing anything. In other cases, a normal object may be improperly tagged as "in use" and cannot be moved, sold, or manipulated.
This problem can only be fixed with a mod, as moveobjects on cheat is disabled for this game.
Use "Stuck Object Remover" mod
  1. Go here and download the file
  2. Extract .zip file to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims™ Castaway Stories\Downloads\
  3. While in game open "Barter Mode" (Buy mode) and in "Nature" section and you will find yellow box.
  4. Place the box where your stuck object is.
  5. Go back to "Live Mode" and you will receive notification that object has been eliminated from your lot.

Black Square Under Sim

Download Sim Shadow Fix
  1. Go here and download the file that suits your preferences (0.2 shadows are more opaque, 0.4 more transparent and 0.3 are in between).
  2. Extract the .package file inside the zip file you downloaded to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims™ Castaway Stories\Downloads\
If you're using an Intel HD Graphics card, the author recommends downloading the xReallyNotMisty versions of the fix.
If the Downloads folder is missing, create it.

Low quality neighborhood terrain

Enable high quality neighborhood terrain
  1. Navigate to the configuration file location.
  2. Open Graphics Rules.sgr.
  3. Find the following section:
    boolProp simpleTerrain true
    and change true to false.

Other information

API

Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows
macOS (OS X)

System requirements

Windows
Minimum
Operating system (OS) XP, Vista
Processor (CPU) 1.8 GHz
System memory (RAM) 256 MB (XP) / 1 GB (Vista)
Hard disk drive (HDD) 2.9 GB
Video card (GPU) ATI Radeon 7500 / Mobility Radeon 7500
Nvidia GeForce2 Series / GeForce Go Series
Supported Non-T&L Cards (e.g. Radeon VE Series and Intel Extreme 82845) require an additional 256 MB of System Memory
32 MB of VRAM
DirectX 9.0c compatible
macOS (OS X)
Minimum[2]
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

  1. 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