Game Help:What are Hacks?
Contents |
What Are Hacks... and How Can They Affect My Game?
Hacks (also called mods) are custom content files that change something about the way the game works. An individual hack may change something incredibly small (like allowing you to cancel the action when a sim is trying to make the bed), or may change lots of things in your game (like adding teen pregnancy, infertility, miscarriage, etc.). The more things a hack changes, the more likely it is to have a conflict, but even the smallest of hacks potentially can conflict or be incompatible.
You can see which hacks are in your game during start up - see Overrides for more details on what the various indications in the start up custom content window mean.
What is a hack conflict?
A hack conflict occurs when you have two hacks that are trying to change the same thing. For instance, if you have two hacks that change the way sims handle food when they take it out of the fridge... The first hack says "serve = 1" and the second hack says "serve = 0" ... the game doesn't know how to handle two different settings for the same thing, so you may end up with the food going "poof!" and disappearing when your sim goes to get it.
- You may be able to detect hack conflicts by using the Hack Conflict Detection Utility by Paladin at http://www.simwardrobe.com (Select "Sims 2" button from top left, and then choose "Programs") - while it is not 100% reliable it may help if you are running into problems that you believe may be due to conflicting hacks.
What are incompatible hacks?
You may also run into incompatible hacks... most hacks (especially complex ones with many functions) are designed to be compatible with only one version of the game, i.e. a certain set of expansion packs must be installed for that hack to work properly. If you don't have all the needed expansion packs, or if you get new expansions and keep in old hacks, you can run into major problems. This is especially true with mega-hacks like the InSIMenator and the InTEENimater but this can also happen with any hack. You never know what has been changed, updated, or tweaked in the code for a new expansion, so the only safe thing to do is to remove ALL your hacks until they are updated, or you can confirm with the original creator that they're okay to use in the new expansion.
- There is no utility that will detect incompatible hacks in your game. You must assume that all of your hacks are incompatible with any new expansions you get, and remove them before installing the new expansion. For more information, see: Game Help:Preparing for the Next Expansion.
You may also run into issues with perfectly working hacks if you have certain functions of them in use in your game and you remove the hacks from your Downloads folder... For example, if you have a hack that allows for teen pregnancy, and you have a teen in your game that is pregnant, if you remove the teen pregnancy hack, you may run into game crashes, freezes, or other issues when trying to load the house with your pregnant teen.
For this reason, you should make sure that any functions of any hacks you're using are not currently in use in any of your lots before you delete them or remove them from your Downloads.
Why should you care?
About 90% of problems users have with The Sims 2 are caused by hack conflicts or incompatible hacks! Keep the hacks you download to a minimum, know what hacks you have by organizing your custom content, and when/if you run into problems you believe are caused by incompatible hacks, try our Game Problem FAQ.
Related Links
- Game Help:Game Problem
- Game Help:Finding Problem Custom Content
- Game Help:Preparing for the Next Expansion
