...soooo....slooooooow

The "I Hate This Process and Want to Die" Font is already installed.
If you want to install a new version you will have to uninstall it first.
[OKAY] [CANCEL] [SHOOT SELF IN HEAD]

I think I'll be ready to install the Sims in a couple days. I guess.

So, get this...

We have this stack of shiny new computer components. Brand new AM2+ motherboard released this year, brand new CPU, brand new video card (I think it's like a month old, seriously), Lightscribe DVD drives, dual SATA hard drives, pretty widescreen monitors. Actual state of the art equipment, yanno. Which is a first for me, by the way.

more partses

We now have a Mighty Stack of Boxes. We are waiting on video cards, however, and input devices (we could transfer the ones we have but for ease's sake for file transferring it'll be easier to have all 4 boxes running until that's taken care of.)

Incidentally, the setup fFIL chose for hard drives? RAID drives. That means I will automagically have data backup on a mirrored drive. The chances of both drives failing catastrophically at once, particularly since he also sent us each a UPS which should avoid the stupid "brownout = computer crash = hard drive damage" problem, is pretty slim, so hopefully I will avoid ever completely losing data, though the downside is that corruption would be copied to the mirror, too. But soft file corruption is usually easier to work around than "My sector is full of holes", so I'm optimistic it'd mean less likelihood of having a major catastrophic loss of data even if something does go wrong in the future.

Also: widescreen monitors. Heh-heh. Yes, I know I already said that, but you have NO idea how long I've been drooling over those, and Sims isn't the only game I play that'd benefit from it.

heh-heh

Widescreen monitors.

(The computers aren't here. The monitors are.)

More delays, but some good news, too

Well, the bad news is I no longer can predict a solid date for when I will be putting anything out. There's three reasons for this: the first is my cold came back so I kinda didn't really do anything Simsy last week. (I feel better now.) The second is a really good reason that involves joy and happiness and great celebration, or at least it does from me.

pushing back projects due to illness

One of the consequences of my general ill health is that when I get a cold, I get sick for a long time. Very fortunately for me this cold didn't choose to settle badly into my respiratory system; when that happens, I tend to end up in the hospital. Instead, it chose to grace me with severe head congestion. The nose part is mostly cleared at this point, but I still have severe ear congestion on the right side and mild on the left, leaving me feel unbalanced and distracted. I am having a hard time concentrating on anything because of this.

So, I'm not even trying until it's cleared. Now, it is better; I can actually hear at all out of the right ear, and the left ear is mostly cleared up, both of which represent major improvements over last week. And my voice is mostly back, though still hoarse. So I expect it won't be too long before it clears up, but by that I mean "Maybe next week I'll feel like I can concentrate enough to do things like build and finish up clothes and make my collections." This week, I'm just giving myself off, and if I happen to work on things during it, well, that'll just put me ahead...

So, um. Mid-to-late December for releases of things? A nice holiday present for people who actually like my stuff?

grrr bodyshop grrr

So, I'm having this problem with Bodyshop trying to extremely compress the original BMPs of clothing in the actual package file, resulting in what ought to be a perfectly good graphic turning into this pixellated crap. I'm not sure what I can do about it... I'm already trying to keep adjacent colour changes to a minimum but somehow it's managing to b0rk them up anyhow. So either I need to rework the base for the clothes to be even less shaded, or I need to go into each and every package afterwards and replace the files with cleaner versions (increasing package size considerably, naturally).

I don't know why I'm having this problem... I swear other people don't have this problem. It's the same sort of stupid dxt issues I've had before I tihnk, though (for instance I was going to switch to Hysterical Paroxysm's skins but I can't because as soon as they're loaded once the game ultra-compresses them for some bizarre reason, which leaves them really badly pixellated). I don't know if there's some hidden setting somewhere I could alter to try to fix this, or what. What's freaky is I don't have this issue in other games using DXT. AND I have the nVidia toolset, even (though not an nVidia card).

Anyhow, so the only Bodyshop thing I actually got done-done today was custom eyebrow colours for the characters with unusual hair colours. I also loaded in a bunch of object recolours (but haven't looked at them in-game yet) and made a list of everything I need to do the flashback scenes for Twilight Dreams, since I'm going to work on those first... mainly it involves making duplicates of the characters in different settings with different companion characters, and figuring out what buildings I need to make multiples of and how to put together the duplicates had to be done before I could build.

the full update for today

As you can see, I managed to finish the first round of Homecrafter stuff and sort and upload it. I will be finishing up some object recolours and uploading those as well, hopefully within the week. Eventually I'll be adding clothing, too.

I'm going to be redoing the shirts I did for the chicks because I want to go back and fix the detail washout, so I'm going to start over with a new and improved base so hopefully it won't happen again. I also will be working on new stuff, too. Again, hopefully I'll get it done within the week.

Tomorrow I'll hopefully be working on Twilight-Dreams specific things, including building. I guess that means I'm going to have to make a final decision on what neighborhood base to put it in. It's really not that vital, I guess, but I want to build a whole little town for it, so I've been debating about the size and layout.

I say 'hopefully', because I'm still sick. I'm hideously stuffed up, though it's better than it was a few days ago. I can't hear right and I can't talk easily. (I sound really funny when I try to talk. Imagine that exact note of the crack of a voice change from puberty, only for the entire sentence.) So my motivation is there but my energy and ability to concentrate is less so.

I would seriously consider committing murder for some steroids and some combivent or even just albuterol right now.

Anyhow, still shooting for early December for the first Twilight Dreams releases.

Custom Content Roundup

ATTENTION: If you downloaded ANYTHING but clothing or my Simself prior to February 9th 2008, please read this post.

[This note will be edited as custom content is added; it is linked in the sidebar.]

All files hosted by box.net. Due to their slightly poor navigation system, I recommend opening links in a new window/tab.

File names ending in a string of numbers represent an upload date (e.g., 080203, February 3rd, 2008), for things where I may upload another set later.

All folders now contain notes files and representative pictures detailing contents. Most folders have some subfolders; to keep this note from growing too long, the top folders are linked to but most subfolders are not.

Homecrafter

Walls (Paint | Siding | Tile Walls)
Floors (Basic Floors)

Bodyshop

Stupid DXT compression errors. Going to be rebuilding these and reuploading replacement files.

Objects

Object recolours require CEP, the Color Enable Package. Some skins recolour more than one item; this should be noted where applicable.

Object Recolours

Other

Sim packages

it's a conspiracy

My sweetie brought home a cold this weekend, and I got it... BAD. I spent most of yesterday asleep, and a large chunk of today... and I'm feeling totally fluff-brained and really, really out of it. So, um... apparently life is trying to make it so I never actually play the Sims again, or something. I don't know.

Weekend was a bust, of course

My sweetie was ill and we never did get around to doing Final Fantasy stuff, so I really didn't accomplish anything, except for redoing my custom eyes and trying 4 or 5 times to make a new version of SimMe. I'm still not 100% satisfied with the eyes I made for SimMe, actually, but I'm done playing with them, I'll deal. And the new SimMe is actually an old SimMe edited slightly (I had an old file) and done in the thin version, cuz, well, it's a fantasy game, I can be thin. :D I'll be uploading that when I upload other stuff.

Oh, I did a few other miscellaneous things, like discovering the 'shag' version of the carpet isn't looking right, so I'll leave it out. I also, surprisingly, made some makeup -- actually, just a couple extra eyeliners (including a couple Maxis things normally found in eyeshadow), a few eyeshadows, and a few face makeup recolours, the latter of which is actually for Twilight Dreams.

Today, I finished loading the painted walls and the regular tile walls. I just finished editing the mult-colour tile walls because there was a grout flaw in them, and I'll load those in (a lot fewer even with multiple versions of the half-tile, half-paint ones) along with the 20 or so aluminum sidings I have tomorrow. I also started recreating the non-shag carpet, redid one of the recurring characters for Tasogare Yume because I wanted to tweak him, and made him some custom clothing recolours.

I may finish up the carpet tonight, or go back to working on bedspreads. Not sure. Also trying to decide what else from the object-recolouring directory I want done before I start, and there's some made stuff that needs loaded into the game, too. I think I'll be able to finish the floors and walls and make a serious dent in that stuff tomorrow, unless I decide I'd rather do clothes tomorrow.

grrrrr

Okay, I am going to hunt down whomever at Maxis decided how to map bedding textures to objects, and STAB THEM WITH A RUSTY FORK.

So, I made 27 custom bedspreads, and had to throw away all but 4 because it turns out that the texture mapping on the single bed side uses the right third or so of the double bed side. What kind of crack were they smoking???

(The four I kept were recolours of one of the flowered bedspreads, so it wasn't an issue.)

So, I'm currently working on trying to make sure I've got the right saved selection for the duplicating part, so I can try to match up patterns... and in the meantime, I am going to be doing simple recolours of the textured creamy bedspread just to give myself some variety. I had some before but because of the way I separated things out there was a line down the middle of the single bed so I'm doing something a little simpler (I'd tried to take the top folded-over part and make it a separate colour but it was funking up things, so I'm leaving it the same colour as the main part.)

Needless to say, this turned out to eat up most of the time I was planning on putting into CC today. However I did get some other random things loaded (curtains and painting/poster recolours, the latter of which had two I might need to redo because of the way they are mapped).

Our plans this weekend are to spend some time (re)playing Final Fantasy 7 so I might load walls during battles since my sweetie will be the one with the controller. Also I figured out a new way to do the carpet that pleases me better though I want to do test loads of both styles to make sure it looks right, but if it does, I'll be able to recreate the carpet and add a new style (short and shag, essentially) pretty quickly -- yay for Photoshop Actions.

Progress to Date and other Custom Content Natter

As of this moment, I have loaded 715 wall files into HomeCrafter. So far since about 2:30 (Eastern) today, 220 files with the absolute longest names I've had yet, so with the renames of the files, I've typed more than enough to make a NaNo quota if I were participating, which I mention just for the fun comparison.

There are about 200 wall files left to do, but right now my fingers feel like they're going to fall off, so I'm taking a break. And then there's floors, but I need to take another look at the carpet as I'm not fully satisfied with it.

At this point every time I predict a date I end up getting sick or something else interferes with things, so I'm not going to predict a SOLID date, but I'm hoping that this means that all the custom content I really want in before I play (and that means the first round of clothes and object recolours and the rest of the stuff for Twilight Dreams, too) will be done by the end of next (not this coming, the one after) weekend, just in time for my birthday. :D Which means you should see Twilight Dreams releases by December, hopefully.

I also plan on making other stuff later, but that I'm going to work on more slowly: object recolours of stuff I think "too bad this doesn't come in x" as I play the game, more complex clothing recolours (and other age groups), some additional Homecrafter stuff (mainly some wallpaper and patterned paint that I like and want to bring in line with my main 12-20 colours, but I might do a few other things), etc.

Also, I'm going to upload stuff to box.net (I have an account associated with this gmail address) and I need to decide if I want to break it down by group of colour or by category (e.g., plain paint, paint with white wood kick, paint with dark wood crown and kick, etc.). It's by category right now, but for the collections I'm splitting into colour group as well as category, so I might package it up that way for box.net as well. I'm debating about uploading it to MTS... I suspect they don't really need a whole new batch of simple wall recolours, though, so I think I might not bother with this basic stuff.

Also, while I'm on the topic of custom content, I downloaded a bunch of makeup since it's one of those things I don't like working on, and also a bit more hair. So, see, I'm only horribly anal about some things. Makeup and hair, I'll take from other people. ^_^

I also now have a whopping THREE clothing meshes in the game, two of which are directly for use in Twilight Dreams, one of which I already recoloured (the other one's probably staying 'as is'). The third is HP's Comfy Sleepwear, which I'm a little unhappy shows up as casual everyday as well as sleep/workout clothes, but I'll live with it. I've also done one recolour of THAT, because my protagonist needed scary, scary pajamas.

Okay, now my fingers really are going to fall off, so no more til I've got more to report.

bleah

Last week, there were cramps, and then there were distractions, and then this weekend there was feeling lousy, and then there was the insomnia, and today I ended up sleeping during the day. I was going to tackle some stuff today but the way I'm feeling right now it seems unlikely, so I'll start back in tomorrow, though I might do a few more object recolours (I did a few random things last week too).

This, however, is a Sims 2 post

Ded But Not Forgotten, a photo album of pictures from my dead legacies.

Not really a Sims 2 post

But it is an explanation for why there's no real progress post today...

Many many years ago a friend of mine got (re-)married to a woman I eventually became friends with. She was just here in town, on a stopover on her way from Point A to Point B (she couldn't stay long because she was carpooling) to drop off a portable computer my friend used to own.

Last year, the friend in question died, at rather a young age but unfortunately not entirely unexpectedly; he'd been in poor health for many many years (he was actually on disability) and was not really good about going to doctors. Actually the anniversary of his death was 4 days ago, which I've been kinda down about, but that's not really why this is the only update you're getting today.

Because he was disabled he spent a lot of time on the computer and online, so it's a pretty nice computer, particularly for a portable (can't really call it a 'laptop' as it's big and heavy). His wife offered it to me after his death and since I could really use a backup computer given the problems I've had with this one, I of course said yes. (Besides, having a portable computer is useful in and of itself, but definitely once we get it set up it'll be a good backup computer for us and maybe we can run a dedicated UT server on it, hehe.)

So, anyhow, bringing this in relation to the Sims 2 and my progress or lack thereof today; she couldn't really say for sure when she'd be here until they actually got on the road and saw how traffic was going to be, so I've spent most of the day doing fiddling little things (and non-Sims) things so I wouldn't get heavily involved in anything that I wouldn't want interrupted.

I did start putting together some object recolours—notably, I've added some posters and paintings, and I also did some new crib colours. I've got a lot of various object recolours left, and that's really all I did today and likely all I'm going to do today is fiddle a bit more with that stuff.

CC Progress and rambling

Well, I worked out a fairly easy method for loading and renaming files. For those who like the details: since Homecrafter loads in alphabetical order, what I'm doing is loading the files in (moving the loaded stuff into a subdirectory every pageful to make it easier) and then quitting back out of Homecrafter, sorting the newly-added files by time created, which should put them in the same alphabetical order, and renaming them against the list of loaded files.

15+15=30

15 polo shirts and 15 blouses for adult women. A couple of the lighter colours have some washout on the details I am not fond of but they don't look too bad, just not quite up to the level I'd prefer.

I pulled the colours from the 20 I'm using for furniture, figuring it was as good a base as any, but I didn't match them as precisely as I would for the furniture... a few are lighter or darker or more muted or something.

Now I need coffee, except for the fact that we're out of coffee... actually, I think there's enough left for me to run one cup through my french press, I'll go look. My sweetie should be calling soon to see if I need anything on the way home so I'll have him pick me up some.

Tomorrow I guess I'll start tackling the Homecrafter stuff, as I said. Next batch of clothing will be adult male shirts... but over the weekend I probably won't do much. I might build the two neighborhoods (yes, two: one for flashback filming, one for realtime filming) that go with Twilight Dreams, but more likely I'll save that for Monday or Tuesday.

No Walls or Floors Today!

I'm taking a day away from the homecrafter decor in favor of doing some of the character stuff for Twilight Dreams. I've now got the custom hair and the majority of the character's specialty outfits (possibly all of them, but I might want to make two or three other things, depending), plus the Body-Shop-Created characters (the ones I'll need multiples of or multiple age-stages of), plus backup packages of those elsewhere on the drive.

Two of the characters have elf ears. Fear. I was originally thinking of making one of them an alien skintone but I'm looking at her right now and she actually looks interesting in a normal skintone, so now I'm debating if I can justify it... well, I probably can, but I probably should also see how she looks as an alien.

I'm going to take a break for some food and stretching out, and then see how I feel about working on more Simfoo... probably either furniture or adult clothing recolours if I do, and either way I will probably start on Homecrafter loading tomorrow.

Wall and Floor Graphics are Done

Of course, now I need to load them into Homecrafter, but at least all the files are there. ^_^

I did 20 colours (the 12 in the last post plus the 8 secondary picks I ended up making after) for the other linoleum and aluminum siding. Everything else is the 55, or 55-a few similar off-white and off-black shades. There's no light-wood double-coffer wainscotting because I didn't like the wood in the existing files but I might add one in later for completeness; everything else has dark, medium, light, and white trims. Whee!

And, of course, there's also collectionizing them... I need to make some custom collection icons again, and I can't remember how big they're supposed to be, but that shouldn't take long to figure out.

So, still to do: Homecrafter loading, collectionizing, furniture recolours (especially bedspreads and a few custom wall hangings), adult clothing recolours of the basic stuff, some custom hair and clothes for Tasogare Yume, making the neighborhoods that go with it, finishing up the people that go with it... not sure I'm gonna finish that all by the end of the month, but I'm still shooting for early November for the start of filming/shooting for Tasogare Yume.

I still plan on doing other clothing recolours, including tshirts and stuff for other age brackets, but the basic adult stuff is a priority because most of Tasogare Yume features adults.

Taste the Rainbow

Full Colour Set (opens in new window)


Abbreviated Colour Set for furniture and other misc. recolours

[Speaking of colours, just updated the page to fall colours.]

[ETA, 21:46 Heh, just was looking at that and realizing there's no orange or yellow, though there's a couple brownish colours that would go with them. Well, I did pick out the colours I thought I'd use most often, so it makes sense; generally I don't use much orange or yellow or red anyhow... maybe I'll do a small orange yellow red set too for a second pass, and throw in another couple purple shades too.]

Motivation: Better, Speed: Not so Great

Well, I got about 80 more wall files made, but I still have another 220 to go... I put on B5 in the background to have something less boring than choosing colours and colour filling and saving files but unfortunately it really took more of my attention than I anticipated. Shoulda picked something less attention-capturing.

Well, I could still get more done today but I feel like stretching out; knees are bugging me again. Maybe I'll still have time to run through one more set.

I took another look at my eye file, too. I'm still not sure I like it as is but I can't seem to make something I like better (and I spent about an hour fiddling with it), so I'm going to go ahead and load what I have, and if I do decide to rebuild it I can always replace them later.

When I'm done with the walls, I will have 55 colours each in plain paint, paint with 4 types of kick, paint with 4 types of kick and crown, paint with 4 types of chair rails, and paint with 3 types of double-coffer wainscotting, and I think 50 colours of full tile walls (there were a few I didn't bother with), half-tile walls with white paint, and half-tile walls with complementary paint, plus however many aluminum siding choices I make, and some multi-colour tile walls as well.

Floorwise, I've got carpet, 3x3 tile, 4x4 nicer-looking tile, checkered linoleum, and (still undone) the linoleum with the large inset square and small corner squares, again possibly not in all 55 colours but probably in 48-50 each.

Loading those into Homecrafter is going to be fun... especially since the new version of Clean Installer is giving me problems with showing the names of files when I hover over them, which means I'll probably have to rename as I go instead of in batches. But, worth it to have that much matching non-wallpaper to use.

As you can imagine, I don't plan on making 55 recolours of any given furniture item... I'm thinking of pulling my favorite dozen off the colour chart and using those for the furniture I use most often. Except for bedsheets, where I may very well end up having several dozen recolours. ^_^

Motivation: Zero

Guh. I just can't seem to get myself started on the rest of the walls and floors. I'm wondering if I should stop trying to force myself to work on those and do something else for a bit, like some of the clothes or recolouring couches or something, but even that doesn't sound good right now.

Actually I'm having kinda a blah couple weeks in terms of motivation for anything... I had an idea for a short story and didn't bother writing any of it down, and now of course I've forgotten the details. The apartment needs a serious scouring. It's just bleh. I've just felt really tired lately again... stupid recurring health problems.

Anyhow, on the bright side, the more I think about it the more I think that actually doing the captions embedded onto the graphics doesn't sound like too much work after all, and has the benefit of giving me an easy archiving method, while fitting really well into either Picasa albums or into a PDF if I want. I can organize the photos with Picasa's desktop software and batch rename them so they're in order, and do the same thing with throwing together captions in a text file that I was going to anyhow, and while editing the pictures individually will be slightly more time-consuming than just throwing captions into a text box, I don't think it'll slow me down so much that I find it difficult to do.

Twilight Dreams was probably going to need some edited pictures anyhow, which is what got me thinking about it (I was working out a method to do flashback and/or dream sequence editing).

Bleh. Okay, I give myself the rest of the day away from Sims stuff now and tomorrow if I still don't want to tackle the walls and floors I'll start doing the adult clothing recolours.

Two more captioning possibilities

One of the people at boolprop mentioned that they'd seen a PDF legacy. That's kinda a keen idea, actually, although I'm not sure I have readily-available software for making PDFs out of whatever (I can look into it, though).

While I was thinking about editing methods for that (and checking really quick if Adobe Photoshop has a way to do this, which it doesn't), I thought, well, there's also the option of just embedding the captions onto each image, which would look something like this:



As the caption says, I'd really like to see how people feel about the comment method before I go changing anything, as this may be harder. Embedding onto the images would be somewhat more time consuming as I couldn't rearrange on the fly and edit the captions easily, which is a consideration. I would have to storybook the whole thing out and then edit them and only then upload them... using Picasa is far easier for me as a writer and organizer of the stories, but I want something that the reader feels comfortable with.

Bodyshop is quicker in BV?

Huh. I opened up my BV bodyshop and I swear it's loading custom content quicker than it used to, especially for hair but even for clothing. Still some drag time but not nearly as bad as in Seasons.

Anyhow, I made a set of 8 (4 per gender) Asianish templates. (Actually I made the four women first then cloned them for the guys and tweaked.) I'm not totally satisfied with them but they should all be recognizably Asian... I'll probably use the two of each gender I like best for the base for most Asian faces. (I say 'Asian' but I was trying for 'more Japanese than not', since it's the thing I'm most likely to add even without taking the not-so-sekrit-projekt into account.) Some of the toddler/child stages are hideously lumpy but that clears up in teen years.

Next time I open Bodyshop I should load in my eyes, and do the characters for Twilight Dreams and package them up for backup (as I did with the templates). I'm doing them in Bodyshop because, for filming reasons, I'm going to need multiple copies of some people, and I want to just go ahead and make them all easily duplicatable in case that turns out to be more characters than I thought.

My insomnia suggests I could get more done but I think I want to wait until I can have music or TV in the background without disturbing my guy, who is sleeping. (Yeah, I could wear headphones, but my headphones aren't really that comfortable.)

Upcoming Projects: Teh Sekrit Projekt

First, since I took them out of my boolprop sig, here's a link to the three teasers I did via artpad about my upcoming Sekrit Projekt: Teaser One - Teaser Two - Teaser Three. For best results, you'll want to speed up the redraw, unless you really want to watch me correct mistakes repeatedly. Also note those were drawn with a mouse, so no commentary on the roughness.

Upcoming Projects: Saints and Sinners

I want to assure people I will be restarting this, though it may not be for a while for various reasons.

My Comfort and Energy are Orange

So, I put in my BV-updated hacks and my regular custom content, as well as throwing the /Projects files back in (I'd taken them out for the install just in case), but that's as far as I got. Why? Because a) my knees and back are making it really hard to sit up for long and b) although it's allegedly only 70 outside, it's about 90 in the apartment, which is c) making me sleepy and loggy-brained.

Okay, comments field it is

So, in looking over the captioning, I realize that they're also default bold and centered, which is another handicap for using them. However, the comments appear directly below the picture and are appended in order (earliest comments first) so I believe that it could be used to caption the picture. Seems a little odd, but I think people could get used to it, and unlike the captions, it takes line breaks. (No formatting otherwise, but that's liveable with.)

The only problem I can think of is keeping the picture on screen with the caption as much as possible (i.e., longer captions scrolling is fine; the offishul site has that issue, too). I probably will want to decrease the default dimensions of the picture and let people magnify it at will to help with this (ETA except for some reason this isn't working... hrm. Well, maybe I'll just leave it be.)

I now have my copy of BV installed and am testing things. I still have to put back custom content I've gotten from others and work on getting my own finished, but I'll be doing that starting Monday, I think. With any luck, by the end of the month I will feel I'm set up enough to begin working on stories again, though I'm going to aviod the legacy for a while in lieu of getting the sekrit projekt moving -- it's a shorter project anyhow, technically, though it probably will take longer per release than a legacy would (but I envision the legacy having a minimum of 100 releases, whereas this has a dozen plus a few extras).

ETA2 And here's the sample using the comments for the captions.

EA stands for "Egotistical Alienation"

Well, the official post about EA and SecuROM is out, and it's basically this: "Hi! We're EA! We will not take you seriously! Instead we will take Sony seriously, despite their track record."

So, here's a list of EA products I won't be purchasing: The Orange Box, Hellgate: London, The Sims 2 Free Time, The Sims 2 [insert stuff pack here], SimCity Societies, The Sims 3. I figure that's a few hundred dollars they aren't getting from me, plus a few hundred dollars they aren't getting from my fiancé, plus however much in referral sales they aren't getting from me as I tell my friends what a piece of untrustworthy crap SecuROM is and incidentally, remind them that EA's QA has been getting shoddier and shoddier. On principle, I think I will avoid their console titles, too, though I don't know they've got anything upcoming for console I would buy anyhow.

This wouldn't tick me off so much if only I didn't like the Sims. But I do. I love the game. I hate the bugs, the company producing it, and the official site's limitations, but I love the game.

Well, more posts after I figure out if there's a way around the lack of formatting in Picasa's captions.

Bye-Bye Official Site

I've not been happy with EA for a while, but really the last straw for me was the switch to SecuROM. I don't understand why they went from a program that caused no problems to one widely reported to cause problems which was also released by a company with a poor track record in DRM, and I don't really care anymore. I've found a way to work around it for BV, and that'll be my last Sims purchase unless they change things.

That having been said, aside from my issues with EA in general, the official site is slow and clunky, as is the interface for the storybook creation, so I'm trying out Google's combination of services: the blog, here, for a replacement blog (duh), Google/Picasa web albums for stories, and my gmail addy (matches this site's addy) as well as the comments on the web albums will serve in lieu of the limited guestbook ability at the Sims 2 site. I will have to come up with a good way to handle having backups of story albums, but I've got a couple ideas for that, and my experimentation with the web interface for Picasa shows it should actually be easier to deal with in some ways than the storybook editor, and the downloadable organizer might make it easier still -- I haven't tested that yet, since I know I can do it all via the web interface.

As to when I'll get a chance to show this new method in action, well, that remains to be seen. I got way behind on recreating my custom content due to health issues, and I'd kinda like to get that in and working before I start either of my two pending projects. I can't really estimate how long that'll take -- I'm unlikely to work on it this week, so I would guess the earliest would be end of the month.

ETA Hrm, I just discovered a flaw with this method that I didn't catch before—you can't put any formatting, even line breaks, into captions. I've sent some feedback requesting this (it's also been requested in the features request group) so maybe they'll change that *crosses fingers* Otherwise it's going to be kinda hard.

To see a sample, though, you can look here.

I'm not sure what I will do if they don't add this feature. I haven't found any better sites for this sort of thing. I suppose it might be possible to find a way to break things up or caption such that it isn't an issue (using extra photos since the limit is 500 rather than the 100-120 you can usually convince the Sims site to take) but I'd much rather it was just possible to do it the easy way.