Hi! I'm posting once again to seek help with furniture not catching any light, or being too dark at night. It stays this way even as I play; no problems during in-game daytime, but when it's night time in-game, outside objects don't catch any light, everything is just too dark, I can't see where I'm clicking so I end up giving sims wrong instructions. I get some silly results as I play (instructing sims to clean up an untouched plate of food because I couldn't see it!), but tedious in the long term.

I can't really find the right terms for my problem, so I have attached a photo so you can see what I mean. Maybe somebody here could 'shed some light' on my situation I really tried searching for answers on Google, but the threads I have read are all inconclusive - no proper answers, just people saying it's a glitch and re-buying furniture one by one solved their problem, and most of the results are older than 2010's so I didn't bother to bump or resurrect those threads anymore.

I use Sims 2 UC right now,
my settings are pretty basic, I play with shadows on,
I use the Gunmod camera I've been using for ages,
I have no reshade because I don't know how to use it,
I use dreadpirate's Maxis Match Lighting mod and shader fixes because I like in-game deep snow in winter.
just EAxis plain blue water, no reflections because I play on a laptop.
I ran HCDU and found no conflicts in my mods so far, except for the usual let other mods run after awesomemods by pescado, etc.
My laptop has an NVIDIA graphics card. Could this be a graphics card settings problem?
Yes, I tried turning up the brightness on my laptop screen, and it's still as dark as ever.
Yes, I have bad eyesight so that might be a factor, but I love spending 2++ hours building an elaborate bus stop out of neighborhood deco that my sims will never ever use

It honestly bothers me because I cannot envision what I am building, and don't know how many light fixtures I should put in my sims' homes.


*EDITED 2023-0505
to add more screenshots to "enlighten" you on my situation: by in-game daytime, everything looks quite pleasant, I can see what I'm building. But when I switch to night time so I could estimate how may lights I should put inside or outside my sim's cafe to make gameplay comfortable enough to actually see what my sims are doing, the floors "glow" - like the nightlife disco floor! And that abnormally "glowy" floor is caused by, get this, the *indoor lights! It's so weird. And, no matter how many light fixtures I add just to compensate for the darkness, the objects don't get any light on, as if they were inside a dark room with no windows. Odd.

Screenshots were taken without adjustments or editing, just the Maxis Match lighting mod and the other settings I have previously mentioned. The mod isn't the problem, I swear it must be something else. Please help me fix my game. Please see the attached photos for comparison.

Today's not-so-helpful update is me uninstalling the Maxis Match Lighting mod, but it still remains SUPER DARK, no lights on objects at in-game night...
Is this a graphics card problem? If so, how do I fix it?
I also tried to play without shadows, and it still does not fix the problem.

I still cannot find the answer I'm looking for in Google, and now I want to try tweaking the lighting files myself. This will be the first time I will try to do so, wish me luck.
And since the MM Light mod doesn't seem to be the reason why, I'm going to put it back in my game, and try to see what I can do from there.
But if anybody could lead me to an answer, or at least help me tweak the MM light mod for my personal use, I appreciate that.


*EDITED 2023-0505 to add a screenshot of my game when I switched out the MM lighting mod for the Cinema Secrets lighting mod, somehow the original problem with the light on furniture got fixed, BUT the lamps lost their warmth - you know, that warm, mellow yellow glow? Thinking of getting the plasticbox light/colour adjustments to compensate, or would those two things conflict? And Cinema Secrets mod does not work hand-in-hand with my criquette neighbourhood lamp deco - the nhood deco lamps don't glow in lot view. I am honestly in the dark and confused about what to do in this situation. Attaching photos for a side-by-side comparison with my previous screenshot.