The Sims Life Stories

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

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

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

In-Game Graphics settings

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

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]}

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!

Alternative Fix
Navigate to the configuration file location. Open `Graphics Rules.sgr`. 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

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

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).
Extract the .package file inside the zip file you downloaded to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims™ Life 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.

If your installation is in an language other than English, the The Sims™ Life Stories folder will probably have the localized name instead.

Game stuck in 800x600 resolution

Occurs because the game fails to detect the video card correctly.

Edit Graphics Rules.sgr

Go to <path-to-game>\Fun with Pets\SP9\TSData\Res\Config.

If you don't have a Fun with Pets directory, the Mansion and Garden Stuff directory should have your game files if you're playing Ultimate Collection.

Open Graphics Rules.sgr with a text editor.

Search for:

option ScreenModeResolution
setting $Low
uintProp maxResWidth      800
uintProp maxResHeight     600
uintProp defaultResWidth  800
uintProp defaultResHeight 600

Replace

option ScreenModeResolution
setting $Low
uintProp maxResWidth      1280
uintProp maxResHeight     1024
uintProp defaultResWidth  800
uintProp defaultResHeight 600

Save and close.

By default you can select up widescreen resolution to 1280x720.To force more widescreen resolutions change the values for the desired resolution.SeeWidescreen resolution.

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

[3] 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]

[gamedir-4] 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).

[1] Not Loading in Windows 10; this will break thousands of - Microsoft Community - last accessed on 2017-01-16

[2] Microsoft - MS15-097: Description of the security update for the graphics component in Windows: September 8, 2015 - last accessed on 2018-02-16

[5] MacOS Catalina, 64-bit, 32-bit, and related Questions – Aspyr Support

[6] The Sims™ 2 Life Stories - Aspyr

[Note 1]

[Note 2]

[3]

[4]

[1]

[2]

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