In response to your particular question, I wouldn't think that turning aging off would in itself cause the Sims to have more memories. It simply stands to reason that if they never die, eventually they will get more and more and more memories. However, I have never tried turning aging off, so I can't say.

Also, although I realize that never having had the problem personally does not mean it doesn't exist, nevertheless speaking as someone who writes software for a living, it is remarkable the sorts of superstitions and urban legends that grow up around this sort of thing. I am skeptical of claims that "X caused my Sims to crash" because there are just soooo many variables in a game this complex, especially when you figure in all the EPs and especially custom content and mods. There's no doubt your game's crashing, but guessing why is where the voodoo magic comes in.

That said, there was, in the pre-EP base game, a hard limit to the number of character files you could have. So it's possible that there is a hard limit (either intentionally built-in or otherwise) to the number of memories a Sim can have. If someone can provide some more scientific evidence of this behavior I will gladly eat my hat, sirs and dames. And I will freely admit that a "mature" neighborhood with tons of lots, characters, relationships, CC, and memories can get verrry slow. I have scientific evidence of that every time I load my game.

How do I keep my Sims from aging? I don't! My Sims don't even eat or go potty. I don't play at all, so they almost can't get older. My problem is how do I make them age? And the answer is The Insiminator. You can also make a Sim get younger with InSim by selecting his life stage from the list. The only thing you can't do is make a Sim go back to baby. AFAIK, once a baby grows up and you save, you can't get the baby back.

As for the more general question, I have a few "Must have mods" for storytelling listed on my "Where can I get?" page. I should probably add a few things to that. I have also found JD-movies.com to have some useful objects for animations, as well as an excellent tutorial on the overlay option on the reaction tester.

There's a bit of info on taking totally bitchin pics by HystericalParoxysm on the Sims2 Wiki. I didn't really learn anything new there by the time I found that page, but some people might.

Otherwise, I would be happy to answer any questions about particular mods or techniques I use. I don't mind sharing, I just can't even think of where to start!

If you're like me and only take pictures and exit without saving most of the time, you'll never accumulate memories at all. My problem is usually that I have to recreate Sims' relationships every time I want to do a chapter with them together, since I never save after building it up in the first place. Of course the flip side of that is that I do not save when Sims have bizarre relationships with each other? Like Leofric and young Sigefrith in love.

I use move_object all the time on everything that's not bolted down. Seriously. I sometimes do make Sims talk (or do other interactions) and move them around each other. Not only does it make it seem more like a real conversation, where people (especially agitated people) pace around the room, but sometimes you take an interaction that everyone recognizes and move the Sims around in relation to each other, and suddenly it looks like an entirely different interaction.

Or I get them to start an interaction with other Sims and move the other Sims out of the shot and put the two I want together... so I can have one person flirting while the other is arguing, and it looks like they are flirting/arguing with each other.

For facial expressions, it helps that I simply take a lot of pictures. I also use the reaction tester object a lot, as well as animation testers for other EPs. The pained look on Eirik's face was the beginning or end of one of the Seasons coughing animations.

By now I have learned a huge number of animations / facial expressions and how to get them via cheats and mods, but that's something that simply has to come after over 2 years of taking pictures for this story. I only found the Seasons and other animation boxes recently and I am still learning what all the animations look like. A lot of times when doing a chapter I will "waste" an hour just making the Sims do random animations and putting them together to see how they look. But it's learning time and I get some interesting shots that way. (That's Sigrid doing the "get out of my way, I can't get out of bed!" animation, which is caused simply because Eirik is standing in the way, and Eirik doing the "help I'm being hailed upon" animation from Seasons.)

Is there a way to get pictures I took in the game without exporting them to the EA site? I'm writing my own story and that would save me so much time and frustration.

Heck yeah!

The files should all be saved in a location like the following:

C:\My Documents\Jenny\EA Games\The Sims 2\Neighborhoods\N0004\Storytelling\

The first part I am just guessing at since I never install stuff where Windows expects it, but basically it's the same "EA Games" folder that contains your "Downloads" folder.

Also, you should replace "N0004" with whichever neighborhood you are using. If you have several 'hoods you might have to peek in each one's Storytelling folder to find the files. Lothere happens to be N0004 on my computer.

Anyway, in the Storytelling folder should be a bunch of files with very ugly names. I think they start with snapshot_. Use your image viewer/editor program of choice to open them, edit them, rename them, whatever. I recommend you move them out of there into some other location so that (1) the game doesn't overwrite/delete them (never had that happen but you never know) and (2) so you can find new images more easily the next time you play.

Bleah! I didn't know that you could do that with insim. But I'm still kind of new to that.

Edit: *considers* I'm new to the Sims period.

Yay! So much easier!!