I've recently got back into The Sims 2 and have started building up my collection of user made items again. It's been a while since I have downloaded anything to customize my game and I got rid of all my old downloads so I can't go back and compare. Apologies if this is a newbie post.

I used an established Sims download site (similar to this one - don't know if I am allowed to post the name) to download several female outfits. The meshes were included. On some of them, it was fine apart from the fact the mesh also appears (so the Sim is wearing all black or white) as an option.

The other problem though is that several outfits, despite having the right mesh are not appearing properly (they show up as a general Maxis clothing.) I've deleted these and then tried again but its still happening.

Any suggestions?

Depends which EPs you have. If you have only the base game, you can download any object for which only TS2 base game is required. If the download object requires any EP too, it won't work in your game. For instance: you downloaded a dress which requires base game + Uni/NL. The mesh may be done of NL dress, to which the base game is not compatible, without having this EP. If you have Uni and NL, but don't have Bon Voyage - again the dress may not appear, or appear distorted.

"Stick to your own kind" (West Side Story)....

Hope that helps.

Gali's... only halfway on the right track.

Outfits will only ever require the base game and, in 99.9% of cases, maximum of one EP. They will only require an expansion pack if the creator of the recolour based their creation on a dress from that EP - and then it will only ever require that one EP. So if it's a recolour of, for example, the vampire dress from NL, then it will require the base game and Nightlife. The only exception to this is Seasons, if the item is set up as -only- outerwear, and then it will require Seasons + whatever EP the item is from.

Custom meshes included changes it so that no EP is required except perhaps Seasons if it's set as only outerwear.

When you say "the mesh also appears" then I think what you're seeing is a base recolour - many recolour creators include a basic bucket fill recolour of their mesh for people to base their recolours on. As long as you have another recolour of the same mesh, you can safely delete these - you'll never see just a mesh in Create a Sim, ever, as without a texture, there's nothing to show up.

The just Maxis outfits showing up usually means a missing mesh. If you've re-tried and you're still getting that, perhaps the creator messed up and included or linked to the wrong mesh.

OK, I only have basic, university and pets and a couple of the "packs" so I'll weed out the related files. Thanks for the help.