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.
General information
- Official Website (EA, archived)
- Official Website (Yahoo, archived)
- Official Website (Aspyr)
- Answer HQ for The Sims series at EA.com
Availability
- SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see above for affected versions).
Game data
Configuration file(s) location
Save game data location
System |
Location |
Windows |
%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims™ Life Stories\ |
macOS (OS X) |
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- The final folder may have a localized name depending on which language you installed the game
System |
Native |
Notes |
Origin |
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OneDrive |
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Requires enabling backup of the Documents folder in OneDrive on all computers. |
Video
In-Game Graphics settings
- The game's maximum default resolution is 1600x1200. For higher resolutions, do the following.
Manual resolution fix
|
- Navigate to the configuration file location and open
Graphics Rules.sgr .
- Set maxResWidth and maxResHeight to the display's native width and height, and edit the following lines accordingly:
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
.
- If the "Edge Smoothing" slider is greyed out in-game, then it is likely that the game cannot determine how much VRAM the 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 the GPU's VRAM in megabytes.
Notes
- This makes game use the VRAM amount as fallback value. Do not put value higher than actual VRAM amount.
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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.
|
- 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
Audio
Audio feature |
State |
Notes |
Separate volume controls |
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Voices, Sound Effects, Music, Ambient and Audio Quality sliders |
Surround sound |
|
4.0 and 5.1 |
Subtitles |
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No intelligible dialog. All in-game dialog uses the fictional Simlish language. |
Closed captions |
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Mute on focus lost |
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Game 'forgets' it does not have the focus when leaving loading screens |
Royalty free audio |
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Localizations
Language |
UI |
Audio |
Sub |
Notes |
English |
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Speech is fictional language called Simlish. Speech is subtitled with generic icons. |
Czech |
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Danish |
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Dutch |
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Finnish |
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French |
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German |
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Hungarian |
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Norwegian |
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Polish |
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Brazilian Portuguese |
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Russian |
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Spanish |
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Swedish |
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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 to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims™ Life Stories\Downloads .
- If 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 the 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
|
- Navigate to the configuration file location.
- 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, widescreen resolutions up to 1280x720 can be selected. To force more widescreen resolutions, change the values for the desired resolution. See Widescreen resolution.
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Other information
API
Technical specs |
Supported |
Notes |
Direct3D |
9.0c |
|
Executable | PPC |
32-bit |
64-bit |
Notes |
Windows | |
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|
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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