browsers, lack of simming, blather

So, okay. I got sick of sites telling me how horrible I was for not upgrading to IE7, and tired of Windows Update trying to suggest it, so I did.

Boy, was that a mistake. I now understand why so many people dislike IE these days. IE6 was fine. IE7 is a piece of crap.

Microsoft has Star Trek syndrome. For those of you who aren't geeks, Star Trek Syndrome is this thing where the Star Trek movies tend to alternate between good and bad releases. (You might find some argument about which is which, mind.) Microsoft has apparently developed the same problem. For instance: XP? Fine. Vista? Piece of crap. IE6? Pretty good. IE7? Piece of crap. Luckily that means chances are whatever's after Vista and IE8 will both be fine.

Anyhow, I am now using Firefox. Reluctantly, but I am.

You might wonder, why am I reluctant? Because I am sick of people telling me how fab00 and absolutely better than anything Firefox is. Because it's not magic. It still has CSS display issues (every browser does). It doesn't magically protect you from spyware and malware, despite what people claim. (Ask my sweetie.) It's not that I think it's a bad piece of software; there's definitely good points about it, and there are ways in which it is stronger than IE... but it's not magictabulous. (I've been infected by Miranda, I think.) And I'm sick of people who think that it's okay to code for one browser and not care about others. (That applies to people who do it for IE, too, yes.) And I'm sick of Microsoft bashing. They're not perfect, no, but they're astoundingly better than they used to be, and I think that some people refuse to even consider that. Their problem, I guess.

Anyhow. I'm keeping IE7 installed and using it for sites where I have multiple logins as my alternate (Neopets is the main one for that), but I'm setting Firefox to be my default for now.

I haven't even tried reinstalling Sims yet. I wanted a break. Part of the problem is if the reinstall doesn't fix my problems I'm still not sure what I want to do. The issue doesn't make the game unplayable. It just makes it laggy in certain circumstances. So, um. Yeah. That and I don't feel like digging out and reinstalling all 9000 discs. Next week, I think.

thank you, and other things

Thank you for the folks who left a comment on my ER trip post. Yeah, it was kinda scary. I'm just old enough and in bad enough shape to honestly be at risk for a heart attack, so that's ultimately why I went to the ER. They don't know what happened, and neither do I... I think maybe just a blood pressure spike or something, though, since my BP and heart rate were so up, and once they dropped I felt tons better.

Yesterday I slept a large chunk of the day and today I spent half the day running errands trying to get local county or state insurance so I don't have a huge bill waiting for me (they'll retroactively pay for an ER visit). Maybe I can also get back on real meds for the other health issues. It's the first time I've left the house for that long in ages, and my ankles and legs hurt like hell because I had to wait in lines, but it also means I now know I can probably deal with trips to the doctor, as long as they're infrequent. Yes, that really was in question; I have a hard time standing for long. I'm also waiting to fill my prescription to see if I can get it covered under that insurance, but future father-in-law has offered help paying for medical stuff so I might just go get it anyhow if it's not too pricy.

As far as Sims goes, I'm going to uninstall everything and try a fresh install. I have narrowed down the problem further to something bizarre involving windows or doors and lighting (there's a visible hitch on the lighting coming on on those returns, although that doesn't, alas, account for the community lot lag), and I'm vaguely wondering if it might be a corrupt file somewhere, or else some sort of bizarre incompatibility with my current video drivers. I did try changing a bunch of driver settings but none of that helped. So, if reinstalling doesn't work, I'll drop back one version of driver to see if that does. If that doesn't work, I really, really don't know yet what I'm doing. Taking a break, maybe.

Tonight I did not have a heart attack...

...but for a while there, I wasn't so sure.

I've had chest muscle pain before, what with being amply endowed and all, but this was different. Plus this time, aside from the chest pain, I had arm pain. And then tingly arm. And then numbish arm and tingly the rest of me. And moving around made me feel like I was going to pass out. Plus either the temperature dropped or I was having chills.

When the arm numbness and the tingly and the chills didn't go away, even though the chest pain had, I decided calling EMS was not a bad idea.

EMS was iffy. They said the little porta-EKG said I was fine aside from a too-high pulse (not unusual due to taking primatene) and BP... but that if I wanted a hospital trip, they would happily take me. Leaving those decisions up to me usually would result in me not going to the hospital, but in this case, because of the potential seriousness, I elected to go after dithering about it about 10 minutes watching my heart rate not drop.

Full-scale EKG showed no obvious problems, and by the time they got around to the slightly incompetent blood draw my heart rate was much lower, if still high-ish. Then there was a lot of sitting around, because that is what one does in the ER. They also took a chest x-ray. About 3 hours after I arrived I asked the RN if she had any idea how long it'd be, since my sweetie was with me and if it was going to be a while he should go home. She said it would depend on if they wanted to run a second set of blood tests, but went and found a doctor (shift change seems to have happened or something) who took a look at the lab work and chose to send me home, as it was also normal. She also said it was good that I came in anyhow, because it's better to be sure, which was the first time I didn't feel I was wasting people's time the whole night, really. Not that they weren't nice, but... even aside from the cost and lack of insurance issues, I don't like to go to the ER unless I'm like, dying.

Anyhow, I'm fine, and by the time I left, my heart rate and BP were really quite normal. No prescriptions except the one for Combivent I cadged so I had a better alternative to Primatene.

well, that narrows it down for sure

First off, kudos to EA for finding yet another way to be completely incompetent and non-user-friendly. Uninstalling a game warns you it will delete your "saved game files". What it means is "Will completely obliterate your EA Games directory and all its contents." Yes, I had backups, but I pity the poor person who doesn't realize "saved game files" is a code phrase for "all related files at all, in an unrecoverable manner".

Still no sign of fixination

So, I'm still having serious animation lag and freezes.

Maybe I was unclear in my last post, I don't know, but yes, the hacks were updated except for ones that didn't seem to have updates (mostly animation/movie-making things) and I had already found an update to one of those which fixed one problem, but not the one with the cars that prompted the post. And as I said, I had already tried pulling one set of hacks from the game to see if that helped.

problems with Free Time

I found one fixable problem (jump problem that turned out to be from an outdated hack that I didn't realize had a newer version) and did a bit more testing with the test neighborhood with regular gameplay, including some hobby objects. Everything was looking okay...

Until I loaded my Simself's house. I did some building additions to add hobby objects, gave her some aspiration reward thingies including a secondary, and then went to go take her out to buy a video game. She froze in the car and wouldn't drive anywhere.

free time, body shop, and misc.

I've got Free Time installed and so far everything's okay, in that it seems to have loaded everything, but I haven't done any real playtesting. I'm playing around in a test 'hood right now, and if nothing is obviously screwy I'll go load my Simself's house in S&S and see how that's working. CC is showing up (including object recolours) and I can spawn an ACR adjuster and inSim items are findable, but I haven't really tested anything further than that, although as usual the custom cameras aren't working right, because they never do the first time. I always have to clear and reload the files for some reason. I'll do that and put custom music back in later.

anime, j-dorama, nihongo ga wakarimasen

So, this is some blather about anime and Japanese drama shows and my inability to speak Japanese and something to do with Twilight Dreams, but it's mainly blather, so feel free to skip it.

i made you an anime but time eated it

Okay, but, srsly, I've got some Twilight Dreams stuff, yay!

Omake (Extras) for Volume 1:

DVD cover: Front - Back
Twilight Dreams Revised Opening Theme (video)
The Prequel that Wasn't Made Opening Theme (video) (There's some notes in the summary post which are also posted on the boolProp thread.)

And then there's the actual episode. Episode 5: Tests

Still no sign of land. How long is it?

I didn't really do any editing for TD over the weekend like I thought, although I did get some more S&S college played. Some folks are graduated. Some have a bit longer to go. Should be able to do it fairly quickly next time I load up the game.

Skipped Simming yesterday because I felt a little burned out on the concept of college, and because, honestly, I've been dithering about something in the script for TD#5. It's a scene that would be much easier to convey in a real anime, where I could have sound effects and stuff, and I'm worried it's going to come out a bit confusing. I might throw in some description about it to help. Also, I just edited the pics and text for the the first scene and ended up almost completely rewriting the narration in it, hopefully to better effect than what was in the script.

I also tweaked a couple of the standard slides. The title screen didn't look right to me so I redesigned it with the flow from logo to title in mind; the preview page frame got a layer effect to make the frame stand out better; the pre- and post-commercial shots had their colours tweaked. There's going to be a second set of those in the second half but I'm keeping these for now. Also I already put together the commercial, and actually am pretty pleased with it. I think the legacy writer in question will like it, but I'm never sure.

The next two scenes have some heavy graphics editing to do so I'm taking a break, but I am going to try to get some more done today. I don't know if I'll finish, though if not I think I will tomorrow.

An Open Letter to Frank Gibeau

As cited on a gaming blog I sometimes read:

EA Games president and God of Mountebanks Frank Gibeau recently said:

"We assumed that consumers understand piracy is a huge problem - and that if games that take 1-4 years to develop are effectively stolen the day they launch, developers and publishers will simply stop investing in PC games."

glitches and other things

Today is apparently the day for weird friggin' glitches.

Okay, let's try this again...

This week, I hope to get done what I didn't get done last week.

I didn't make zero progress, but right after posting that last post, I started feeling ill. Ran a fever for a couple days, and generally have been foggy (and not sleeping well, either). Today I'm pretty foggy as well... I've been physically awake for about an hour but I feel like I'm still asleep. So I don't know how much (if anything) I'll do today, honestly, but we'll see.

Last week, I did get a set of shots for Twilight Dreams, though just one. I had to throw in a new lot and do some off-screen setup for a couple minor characters, which took a while, and then it took me forever to figure out how to pose a couple things, but at least that part's done, and most of the rest are straight-forward except one or two things. Ultimately it was a good 5 or 6 hours of work for what will be... half a dozen slides in the story? Something like that.

And S&S, college is still colleging, but the eldest kids will graduate on this rotation and then I'm consolidating houses and so it should be fairly quick to get the rest done as well. Then I can get people started on scary babies. (And hopefully in some people's cases, less scary ones.)

Plus there's several updates I want to read and comment on, which I'll get to in the next couple days I hope.

This week...

...I intend on getting Twilight Dreams #5 done. I've got a complete shot list and just took a last look at the script. Then I took a look at 6 through 9 (yeah, I got 9 done), and did about half of 10. I know what goes in the other half, I just need to break it down into shots and dialogue/voiceover. So today or tomorrow I'll work on shooting the shots.

See, I'm still doing a legacy!

Saints & Sinners, Generation A, Chapter 4 is finally up!

When ACR timers go wrong...

Today's lesson: if you queue up someone to do something in a room with a couch, but they haven't gotten there yet, and then the two people who are in the room have their ACR timer go off, there is great potential for lulz.

bleah

I'm not going to bore you with the details of why I've not posted anything, blog or otherwise, except to mention "8 days of migraine symptoms", and now I'm done.

State of the Simming

Okay, I actually have been doing stuff, albeit still slowly.

Dr. Horrible Lives, and So do I

Okay, first, the non-Simmy stuff: they put Dr. Horrible back up as a hulu stream, which I found out about yesterday, so I've now gotten to see the whole thing. I think I'm kinda a little in love with Neil Patrick Harris. Not quite "OMG I want to make babies" with him—though granted I don't want kids anyhow and besides, he's, y'know, gay—but definitely I'd love to see him do more stuff like this. Also, I hunted around for news about whether or not they were doing a soundtrack (they are) because I absolutely need a copy of "Brand New Day" (or whatever they end up calling it) so I can listen to it 138904832 times in a row nao plz. As it is, I rewound the video half a dozen times to listen to it. Also I tried to take some screencaps though they kept ending up blurry, so I guess doing any icons out of it will have to wait til I own an actual copy, which will happen. Cuz, $6 at iTunes? I think I can squeeze $6 into our budget in the near future.

July officially has sucked

Aside from the fun recounted in my last post, there was also the cold or flu or something, continued other health problems (and continued lack of insurance), the a/c freezing routinely such that it can't be run all the time (and yes, it's quite hot and humid 'round here) and then, of course, the transformer for the DSL modem fried. Which is obviously fixed, but it was just so nice to go along with the other crap, lemme tell you.

I am currently beating my head against my computer's inability to compress textures without doing so ridiculously again, so I haven't forgotten about the Sims. But boy am I making no promises about when anyone will see anything. At all.

I am reading folks' stuff, tho, as usual.

Monday started early....

Let me give this post a full title: "How I came to not watch Dr. Horrible, ended up with wet pillows, and had Monday luck start early but leave late".

slooooowwwww

Eeeeeevvvvveeeeeerrrrryyyyyytthhhiiiiinnnng iiiiiisssss gooooiiiiinnnng vvvveeeeerrrrrryyyyy ssssssslllllllloooooOOOOoooowwwww.

Seriously, I looked at some of what I shot yesterday. Something that turned out to be a total of 5 seconds of video took a full minute of sitting there to shoot, because the Sims is too stupid to take advantage of my multicore system.

For those of you who aren't into math, that means that the clip that I shot that was nearly 2 minutes long took over 20 minutes of sitting around staring at the screen waiting for something to happen. (Not something I can trigger. Also, it didn't happen. No, I won't say what, but I might after if I still haven't caught it.)

And this is why I'm not done yet. Because there's only so much of that I can take.

It does not, however, explain why I haven't finished up the CC or building. That, you can chalk up to the back and neck pain, being easily distracted when I'm in pain, and my sleep schedule.

I'm going to go take another painkiller and see if I can get something done today, but I don't expect to have anything to show anyone for another week at least, alas.

Videos and other things

I'm organizing stuff in preparation for shooting video for Twilight Dreams, but I haven't actually started, and I don't think I'm going to until tomorrow, because I'm not feeling patient enough to deal with the "5 minutes of shooting is 30 seconds of video" ratio today. (Thursday-Sunday was All Guild Wars All The Time, because they had a holiday weekend, too, and yesterday I had housework to do, so today's the first day I've really looked at it anyhow.)

I'm actually going to be doing shooting for three videos: a revised version of the opening theme, the video I intend to release ASAP along with one other thing for the close of Volume 1, and one more video that'll probably come out with or just after Episode 5.

The other things I plan on doing, this week and likely part of next: a small batch of CC, some vacation lot building for S&S, and hopefully some scripting for TD.

Today, tho, I think I'm going to veg out on strategy games.

Twilight Dreams updated

Episode 4 of Twilight Dreams, "...becoming the Now", is finally, finally, finally up.

Saints and Sinners FINALLY up

Chapter 3

Yeah, um. I still have no idea why that took so long. But it's done now, and next week I'll work on TD, which is also insanely overdue.

The good news is, Picasa finally fixed their mass upload widget so it didn't compress all images the same regardless of your setting, so uploading is now less tedious than before (and slightly faster).

Non-LJ users: I will be posting a spoilery followup post at my livejournal soonish.

this week is full of FAIL

I'm... really not sure what happened to the week. Again. On the good news front, my sleep schedule, which has been really munged up, seems to be back to normal, so I'm hoping that'll help. And I got some comments to folks on boolProp. On the bad news front, no, I'm still not done writing the new S&S chapter and haven't gotten anywhere with TD. Both of which suck, yea verily.

I did, however, finally notice that the select in Photoshop has a fixed ratio option, which will make cropping quicker. So, um. Yay. I'm a bit past the halfway point, but I'm probably not getting any more done today, alas.

molasses

Pictures are sorted and split, one set for the chapter I'm working on and the rest thrown into a folder for a second chapter later.

I really need to go comment on some recent releases, aside from the brief comments a couple people got on LJ posts... maybe not today, but I am reading even if you aren't seeing comments...

The molasses? That's my brain.

More later, I hope.

no, not dead

And all the Gen B kids are finally in college. I just had another of those easily-distracted weeks, and this weekend is just gonna be worse because the Gub'mint Stimulus Check came and we're getting new games with part of it.

I will work on sorting pics and writing as quickly as I can, though don't expect to see an S&S update until after the weekend, and TD probably... end of next week, maybe? I'm not making any promises. But I'm trying to make a schedule for rotating through games so this stops happening.

I seem to have fixed my hair binning issues. I think. I do tend to bin hairs unless they're advertised as binned, plus I have some rules for what bin things go in (a lot of things people call brown I think of as dark blonde, and if I genuinely can't decide if something is red or brown I throw it in custom, for instance). Anyhow the problem seemed to be putting white hairs in custom even tho I marked the elder as elder. I changed it so all white is now just elder and if I really want white hair on a younger person I'll export and import it.

I'm still not sure who is going to be heir. Without giving anything away, I can at least give you a taste of my dilemma. One kid I might want because they're the only one not a certain Aspiration and the only one with Akio's eye colour is also the best looking. One of the others rolled bi, which isn't necessarily a reason to not use them but does mean that if the person they end up liking best is of their own gender I probably would want to skip them. More than likely I'll post some pics and stats after the chapter is out (on LJ only for the cut tag) and see if anyone has an opinion, though I'm not going to hold a real vote, just solicit some feedback.

Have a good weekend. I'll be adventuring in the north and building galactic empires, so I'm sure I will. ^_^

Hair glitches

There's something really screwy going on with elder hair colours in my game. I don't know if I'm having game issues or binning issues or what, but some hair that appears white in previews and even appeared white after change spontaneously became black, and now it's white in previews and portraits but black on the head...

I'm going to rebin all the hair I binned in the hopes it's just some weird pointer glitch or I messed up binning in the first place or something. I just tried with two specific hairs I had it happen on as an experiment to see if that helps, but I may not get back into the game tonight to test it.

(I really hope it's just a weird misbin issue and rebinning will fix it at least. Seeing as how my honey's computer exploded yesterday I'm feeling pretty paranoid, though. Not. Um. Literally exploded. But the video card is screwed and possibly other problems.)

Where did the week go?

Okay, I got distracted, there were health issues, and now it's Thursday and I'm about where I'd hoped to be Monday night... so everything's behind.

I'm going to get the Gen B kids to college and then do a chapter, which may or may not go up to that point. Likely "not", but we'll see. A few are already there, but I've still got the younger ones to go. I'm not bothering to play college until everyone's there... the kids will go into dorms based on their age group so I can just play the eldest kids more.

As soon as that's done, I'm going to focus on TD for a bit, doing the next episode and the extras... I'll probably release E4 first and then the extras as a separate update. Then I'll work on E5 too. I've got some building to do in S&S so I can alternate in case I get bored with shooting. Also I can play Neopets or something for short breaks. It's been far too long since I released my last one, though, so I'd like to try to get E5 up fairly quickly after the extras... I also really need to start working on the full scripts for E8 onwards.

In the meantime, while you're waiting for an actual chapter or episode, have a lolSim:

Today's WTF Moment

So, I did go fiddle with my Uni housing, but only in the sense of fiddling with existing designs and adding another 2-bedroom option. I'll do a 3- and maybe a 4-bedroom next time.

Then I went to actually, y'know. Play.

I've had some issues with my headmaster being a jerk, at least in one house. Two visits, two barely-scraping-by approvals. He rejected almost all the schmoozing. So I was thinking about manually generating a second one at least to give myself another option... and frankly, was tempted to teleport him over to my simSelf's house and whack him.

I think he must've heard me, because when I had him over to another house, he not only accepted most of the schmoozing, I actually got as many schmooze points as I did tour points...

Anyhow, all that led to this loltastic moment, courtesy of ACR:



I'm still going slow, but I think next week you can have either a large chapter, or a chapter followed reasonably quickly by another. I do want to get some work done on the next ep of TD but I think it's going to wait until next week.

some progress and an odd glitch

I actually have the game loaded still right now, but I am taking a quick break after some bafflement.

Blather Blather Blather

I'm so behind. I just... haven't loaded the game. I have skimmed the updates on my list but not read in depth or (obviously) left comments. Oh, except Miranda's BC, I need to go read that. I actually do want to play, I just keep getting distracted by other things. Like, um, I was going to play last week, but then I found the FMVs/cutscenes from a game I couldn't finish, so I was watching those, and then it was suddenly 3 days later...

I'm also still having issues with the entire concept of Free Time and Apartments. On the one hand, not only do I not want SecuROM on my machine, but I refuse to reward EA for releasing buggy products, being slow to patch, forcing one to buy subsequent EPs to get fixes for stuff they broke in earlier EPs (which they just did again with the FT patch, I noticed), and putting invasive, security-hole ridden, crappy DRM on their products and proposing to put even worse on future ones.

On the other hand, Free Time has some things I'd really like to play with (hobbies really do seem like they'd be fun, for one), and Apartments, while I'm not interested in the concept so much, has SPIRAL STAIRCASES. And a some other things I wish they'd had earlier.

So... sorta sad to do without, but I really don't want them having my money. For FT, I have been waffling about buying used and using third-party fixes to keep my computer uncompromised and my game running with minimal trouble. I just don't know. It's making me a bit cranky, too. Also, last time I installed a new EP mid-legacy, it ate my legacy. This time I've got better backups so I could revert but money is very tight around here so if I buy something I damn well better get use out of it.

I know there's, erm, money-free options, but I prefer to not use those even in these circumstances. If for no other reason than it validates gaming company's views on DRM. Not that DRM really stops those things. But that's another topic.

Oh, right, Memorial Day

I almost forgot that was this weekend... and my sweetie is taking a couple extra days around it, so it's actually going to be an extra-long weekend for him, during which I imagine I sha'n't get much Simming done.

So... I'm guessing I won't be putting out any more updates of either project until early June, though hopefully it'll be fairly early June for both of them.

so sleepy

Quite aside from my sleep schedule being munged up and not having enough sleep last night (really "this morning"), I've also got the lovely Extra Tired because it's That Time of the Month. Apparently any focus is out of the question today, as even coffee isn't helping. So I really doubt I'm getting to any Twilight Dreams stuff the next couple days. Maybe later in the week, I don't know.

I may twiddle around in S&S, though. It doesn't take as much focus to do that.

Sim-Free Weekend

Can't Sim this weekend. Too busy a) making enough money for Very Expensive New Armor, b) dying on the way to get One Specific Piece, c) dyeing it, after dying, and d) taking advantage of it to go Kick Some Butt.

:)

just a little simming last few days

I've been doing other stuff, but I did get in a short round of the houses. I think I mentioned I was somewhat further than the update showed. I've actually got several teens now, in fact. And what is probably the youngest of gen B are toddlers. I've been judiciously elixiring my founders so they wouldn't die when their grandkids were still babies or whatever, but I think I probably could've given them less. Eh, whatever. Current adults are due some elixir, too... just one dose each I think, but we'll see how that works out.

S&S Gen. A Ch. 2

It can be found here, so go read it!

OK, maybe S&S tomorrow

This weekend has just been full of distractions. Lousy mission in Guild Wars we had to repeat several times. Feeling sick and tired for no reason. You know. Stuff.

I'm a tad shy of halfway through the captions. I can probably do the remaining ones tomorrow and get the chapter up without problem, though. Assuming I don't fall asleep three or four times, which has been known to happen once in a while, but we'll just hope for the best. And drink lots of coffee. Well, I will. You will drink whatever. Which may also be coffee. But doesn't have to be.

Anyhow.

I don't know what I'm doing this week for Sim stuff. I think it might be more S&S and then do more TD next week instead. But we'll see.

SOOOO many pictures

I've sorted through what I had and picked out what I want for the update. It's definitely going to be a large update, and it won't even cover everything I've played through. Which is probably good, being ahead is generally not a bad thing.

Anyhow, I've done 20 slides so far. Which is about 10% of the total. So... figure tomorrow night for an update, I guess? Or maybe Sunday, depending on how much time
I spend tomorrow on cooking and Guild Wars.

well, I played some today anyhow

Not a lot, but some. Two kittens and two puppies are now ready to be adopted. Each breeder's pets had three, so I kept one and gave up the other two, right after birth.

Then I decided I wanted to see what my babies looked like toddlerized. Only gotten to one of those so far, though. Also, ACR did something that made me sputter and write notes in ALL CAPS. Even the notes sputter. But I won't tell you what it is yet. :D

I'm going to finish the round I'm on for sure before I do anything towards the update. Maybe one more after that first. We'll see. I may just do a double-length update, too, since the album picture limit on Picasa is 500 slides so I can really make them as long as I would ever want.

oh hai, i'm going to bed now

Was up Very Late last night, then didn't get enough sleep. Then I napped in the afternoon and woke up to a BSOD. However despite that nothing seems to be wrong with my computer. As opposed to my guy's computer, which suffered RAID issues earlier.

Anyhow, I've made it through a few rounds of Saints and Sinners households. There are 6 kids (in three households) and one on the way. Five of six are male. The game obviously was not interested in making me cute little girls. Or something. The one girl hasn't toddlerized yet so I have no idea what she will look like.

I also got my kitty and puppy breeders set up. Kitty breeder's first kittens are on the way. Puppy breeder hasn't bred yet, but I quit out so I could eat and then go play Guild Wars, and I think next time I load the house the dogs are friendly enough to have them go mate.

Pics of the breeders' cats and dogs will probably be bonus slides for next chapter.

Tomorrow I may not Sim. I've got other stuff I want to catch up on. Also, I need to make like a gallon of fresh salsa, because I can. This requires a lot of cutting of things and will take a while. However, even if I skip the day for Sims purposes (or just go noodle around with the pet breeders) I still probably will have an S&S update fairly soon.

Now I go eat cookies and go to sleep.

concentration, what's that?

Feeling very flighty and unfocussed today. Doesn't help that I've got some not-very-controllable pain, which tends to be distracting. I am sorta playing, though I just really got started, and don't know how much I'll do today.

Various Simmy Weekend Things

I just finished up the shot list for E4 of Twilight Dreams, and went over the video shotlist to see if I could think of anything else. I'll probably start filming the video while I'm doing other shots, though I have a lot of video to be done in places the shots are precisely not. Of course. Heh.

Twilight Dreams and Misc.

Episode 3 of Twilight Dreams is ready (click):



Also crossed off my to-do list were two more buildings for S&S, leaving two. I may just wait to make them since neither of them is likely to be used much for a while, and I want to play, darn it.

I also fixed a couple people's last names/household names (I wanted to hyphenate for Adrian, and Abby's household name was not her married name), and took a backup of both 'hoods since I did some minor building in TD too.

Over the weekend I might play S&S but I also notice a bunch of people updated recently so I want to read and maybe comment. :)

So far today...

I'm probably still going to do a bit more Simming tonight, but even if I don't, I got a fair amount done.

Twilight Dreams - All shots are done. I do have a lot of editing this time around (you'll see why), but I think despite that I might have Episode 3 out tomorrow night. If not, sometime over the weekend... I have to be a bit more vague there because weekend Simming time is erratic.

On the topic of TD, episodes 3 and 4 are really closely linked in a way but I have a video to go with #4, so it's likely to be a while, though hopefully nowhere near as long as the gap between the #2 and #3. ^_^ In a worst case, I might release the video a little after the episode, though, depending on how long it takes. There's also going to be another little extra, again either with or soon after the episode. By the end of Episode 4, you should all have a much better idea of what's going on in the series as a whole, too...

Saints and Sinners - Only one more building built, but I also laid down the rest of the lots and some decoration. Of the remaining four buildings, I expect two to be quick to build and two to take a while... but none of them are as complex as the new Garden in the City. Which, btw, I'm probably going to upload to box.net, as soon as I figure out what to do about CC. I suppose I could bin the lot, duplicate it over in my test 'hood, and replace the CC with Maxis-issue decor... dunno, yet.

Incidentally, I'm sitting on 230 pictures for S&S already, though admittedly a lot of that is excess toddler stuff. But I probably could put together an update out of what I already have, so the next one shouldn't take long to do overall.

Some Progress is Better than None

Yesterday was a deliberate Sims-free day. I had other stuff I needed to do. Doing it caused me some backache, though, so I've been a little slow today because I'm finding sitting up a long time a little uncomfortable. Still, I've made some progress.

For Twilight Dreams, I made a revised shot list, double-checked the script while I was at it, and marked off the shots I already had.

For Saints & Sinners, I've now built 3 of the 8 things on my list for downtown, including a revised Garden in the City (my Hanging Gardens inspired lot). I actually did have the original despite the HD crash because it was still available on the Sims' site, but I decided to take advantage of a few of the additional things available in BV and rebuild... also I built it a bit larger, a bit more accessible (the outbuilding and the second floor are visitable in this version), and with a large space for the inevitable water-balloon fighting and whatnot that Sims insist on doing. Also I threw in a bar for a small hunger boost as well as the original coffee thing. Of course, there's only two bathrooms now, heh. I may go take a look at the layout and see if I can fit in at least one more somewhere, but I doubt it.

Anyhow, here's what I have of downtown so far (clickable):



Aside from the Gardens, there's the Winter Park and an art gallery. The unbuilt lot you can see is going to be a restaurant.

Saints & Sinners, Generation A, Chapter 1

Go read it! It's done! Yay!

This Week's Revised To Do List

Things I Intend on Doing for Sure

• Sort existing Twilight Dreams pictures for Episode 3 and make a new shot list once I'm sure what I have and what I don't.


• Shoot the rest of episode 3


• Decide if TD needs the quality drop S&S is getting


• Edit and caption photos and release episode


• Make revised shot and video shot list for Episode 4 and the video I'm going to be releasing with it


• Build downtown for S&S neighborhood

Once that's all done, I'll be putting more play time into Saints & Sinners. I might still put their vacation destinations in but since I want to explore and tweak those, it'll take more time than just saying "Yes please add this please". No one can afford a vacation yet anyhow so no rush, I guess.

I may or may not work on additional TD stuff this week, but more likely 'not'. I have toddlers waiting for me in S&S, after all.

Uploading S&S Now, Plus Changes in Future

I'm uploading S&S now... going a little slow because I still need to use the five-at-a-time loader because of compression issues with the batch one. I'll post again when it's done.

Starting with the next chapter, either picture size, graphics format, or both, is going to have to change. The current chapter is 63M, about average for the S&S chapters, because I settled on an 800 pixel wide picture in PNG format, meaning each picture is 400-600k. Unfortunately at that rate, I'm going to run out space really quickly (I've already used up over 20% of my free gig), and while I was always planning on shelling out the $20 (yearly) to get extra space, I'd rather not only do it later, but not have to worry about filling it up, too, as the next higher level is $75/year and that's more than I want to pay for this.

I'm still debating between dropping size, changing to JPG, or both. If I do both, the pictures will be about a third their current file size and end up approximately the image size and quality available on the Sims' site... not horrible, but definitely a big change from the current quality. If I only do one of those, I'll still drop the size to about half, which might be enough. So I need to decide on that before I start working on the next chapter. I'm really not sure which trade-off is best. The quality loss in JPG is noticeable to me although it's not bad when I'm not looking at them side-by-side, so I might stick with the larger pictures, which I like, and just do that. On the other hand, the high-quality-but-smaller images look nice, but lose a little detail, though I could probably also crop closer in some cases. Doing both would definitely make it sure I can fit this and future projects in my paid space, but the result is obviously the least attractive... so, I don't know yet.

I may leave TD in the high-quality larger size because it's a limited run with a lot fewer pictures per upload, but S&S is going to be a lot of chapters... and I've another project in the works for after TD is done.

So... um. Enjoy the high quality while you can. I'll leave the current chapters as is, but next time it'll be different.

Still Working on Saints & Sinners Update

I got started a little late on the writing, and it's going slow... actually, that's not true. The writing is going fine. The cropping and resizing and re-canvas-sizing for text and re-cropping is going slow. I'm basically doing it in chunks of maybe 10, and I'm at about 80/140. So it probably won't be up tonight, unless I stay up later than I think I'm going to, but I should be able to finish it up tomorrow.

Normally I don't mind this as much, but today it's feeling really tedious. It is a little repetitive, so I always do it in chunks, but usually larger ones, more like 20-30 at a time, with smaller breaks between.

Hopefully I won't feel this way when it comes time to edit Twilight Dreams... though to be honest, the shooting of pictures is probably what's going to make me slow there. But in between shooting I can build. :)

It only LOOKS like morning

I've been up since about 2 AM, mainly because I went to take a short nap yesterday and it turned into 9 hours of sleep. o_O

Anyhow, so... all three S&S households have had some playtime. There's been marriages (and one wedding). There are two babies and a toddler. The two lots I had on my list for the main 'hood are built:

Gradumatation and Other Things

All the kids are graduated.

Abby and her sweetie are moved in and have a fairly big house considering I went with what they had on hand, and it's all baby-ready. I think they're just going to marry in the livingroom and go straight to the baby-getting. (Probably adoption, though I'm thinking of boolPropping them one.)

Aaron's home. He grew up in a ridiculous but somehow fitting outfit. Since I have a pic, I'm going to make him over. I remodeled the main house after his sweetie moved in. Originally I was going to dump a portion of their incoming money but she didn't bring that much. I tried to keep remodeling to necessity levels and will go blow most of the rest on clothes to help waste it. I think with 4 in the house I'm going to skip the wedding party and let them wed informally, too, unless one of them suddenly rolls a Want for a party. I also fixed his sweetie (not enough Want slots for a graduate and, ahem, not doing her original LTW, so I cycled it... much more reasonable now).

Adrian and his sweetie are moved in. He wants a wedding. They have a nice house but it's not baby-ready. Bets on him being abducted or her getting pregnant right away? I've got space to throw in a nursery easily but not the cash. They both grew up in crappy clothes so I'm going to spend part of what I saved out on that, part on the wedding.

I also remodeled the outside of the night club because for some reason the environment score was tanked there... hoping what I did helped. And I named all the basic lots. Haven't tackled downtown yet.

Gonna take a break to go play over at Neopets. (PS, if anyone wants a Neopets account, use this link. ^_^ And if you want a premium invite, I'll be able to give those out in a week. Yes, I pay to use Neopets. No ads = much better, and it's cheaper than WoW.) Then more playing of the Sims. Yay!

Progress and April+Early May Plans

There will be a Saints & Sinners update this week. I'm almost done with college (Abby's graduated and moved into her new house, Aaron's most of the way through his last semester, Adrian's got a year to go). I may want to play ahead a bit before tackling the actual update, so I have a head start on the next one. I think I'll be playing regularly again now... the anniversaries of suck are past, and my distractions, while still distracting, are less so lately. So, you might even get two in short order.

I've got Twilight Dreams exactly half scripted, and of the remaining half, half are planned out. (The whole storyline is technically planned out, but the third quarter of the plotline is detailed and separated episodically more-or-less, but the final quarter is not.)

To do list for the rest of the month and into the end of next week:

* Get the college chapter out for S&S.
* Play ahead a bit, so I can try to have another update out soonish.
* Build at least half of the planned downtown lots and the two remaining planned main 'hood lots.
* Come up with names for the lots. Right now they're all "General Store", "Club", etc. Boring.
* Populate downtown with a small batch of townies.
* Figure out what's left to do for E3 of Twilight Dreams. I actually have a shots list, I'm just not sure what shots I already have.
* Put together E3.
* Start shooting E4 and maybe video for the Next Video.
* Try to get another script or two done for Twilight Dreams. This isn't vital, but I'd like to do it.

I've actually got a small list of stuff post that, but it's stuff that I don't think I will get to by then. I think if I play at least some every (week)day I can get this all done, but we'll see if I actually do play every day.

The Brain, It Is Still Full of the Dead

Just... having a bleah month. I played a little. Still working on college. But mostly I've been distracted by other things.

the brain. it is is full of the dead.

Seriously, I seem to have come down with a serious case of the "easily distracted brain fog", or something. I haven't fired up the game in nearly two weeks, which seems so odd because I actually do want to play.

I'm going to blame it on it being nearly April, even though most of it occurred in March. April's historically been a bad month for me*. Maybe my brain is cringing in the expectation of the month being bad and shut down.

I think today is a wash but I'm going to load the game up tomorrow even if it means sitting there staring at Aaron's nose on pause for 5 hours before I actually play. At this point, though, I'm guessing the earliest I'll have anything out is mid-next-week.

[*Near death of a friend in a motorcycle accident. Unplanned pregnancy discovered just after really bad breakup. Really bad breakup in question. Suicide of someone I knew, albeit someone I wasn't close to. Death of a friend in a car accident. Figuring out my ex-junkie roommate of the time was not, in fact, an EX-junkie. Death of my cat, last year, and I've been thinking about him a lot lately. Birthday of very close friend who died 18 months ago. There's probably other things I could dredge up but I'm already in a poor mood, so why go there?]

In Which Aaron Gives Me Many Choices

I actually, after all that dithering, never got around to doing much play for Saints and Sinners the last few days... my body decided to go on one of its excessive-fatigue jags (the counterpart to the insomnia, whee) so I spent a lot of time sleeping instead. I'm playing now, and trying to find some suitable candidates for Heir's Wife.

Yeah, I think I'll play me some University

Since it's the end of the week anyhow I think I'll stick to Saints and Sinners for today and get some quality Generation A college time in. I can put together the next Twilight Dreams next week.

I have plenty of free time[1] since I'm not working and all[2] so it's not like a day or two is really going to matter, and this early into a legacy everything goes by really quickly. Once I have multiple families going it'll slow down anyhow and I won't have the "but I've already gotten so far!" feeling as often, too.

So there will likely be another Saints and Sinners update next week, and hopefully Episode 3 of Twilight Dreams as well, probably late in the week.

[1] But not Free Time. Since I'm not getting it. Yes, the hobby thing could be interesting and yeah, I'll probably look at other folks' use of it and think of ways I could use it, but, well, I think I'm going to avoid adding the complexity to my legacy and avoid giving EA any money right now.[3]

[2] Yeah, I have nothing better to do than to sit around and play Sims all day. Well, that's not true, there are other things I should or can do (and I do them), but until I can get my health problems under control, working isn't going to be one of them.

[3] I suspect at some point I'm going to have to give in about putting Securom on my computer and/or rewarding EA for releasing bug-filled games, but now is not when that will happen; so far I remain resolute.

Saints and Sinners update

Generation 0's second and final chapter.

Saints and Sinners vs Twilight Dreams: Round One! FIGHT!

I'm taking a break from working on the S&S update... I've chosen and organized the pictures with some thoughts about captions, but haven't edited or written them yet. So maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, depending on how long that takes. I'm still feeling my way with characters—not that this is heavily character-driven yet but I'd like it to work towards it—so it's gonna be narration-heavy again, which means it's mostly the time of the editing, as the writing should mostly come easily.

But now I have a dilemma. See, I've already played some of the college years, have about 100 pictures taken (not all of which will show up in the update, of course), and am enjoying just playing. Whereas with Twilight Dreams, I don't "play"... I run people around and arrange them in poses or have them do things so I can take pictures. Now, obviously I don't mind doing that, or I wouldn't be doing the project, but because of the rather long gap between when I last played and now, playing-for-reals is sorta more attractive at the moment.

On the other hand, the next release of Twilight Dreams will answer a lot of questions that people should have at this point, while hopefully raising some new ones, and I'd like my readers to stay engaged.

So now I have to decide: play some more S&S and work towards a second release of that covering college, or go pull ACR out and work on my remaining Episode 3 shots and get some of Ep 4 done for preview purposes. I was originally planning on alternating, moving between the two at update time, but I hadn't taken into account how much I missed playing. Meep.

Well, I won't be done with the actual update for a while so maybe by then I'll have figured it out.

An Heir is Clear (and other news)

So, since Saints and Sinners is (at this point) an uglacy, obviously the heir is going to be the person I judge with the worst combination of genes (or, if you like, the ugliest, though at this stage I hesitate to use that word).

I know who the winner is now. I was pretty sure it was going to be the middle kid, Aaron, when I saw him transition to teen, but I wanted to let little brother Adrian get to teen before I decided. At this point, even if Adrian's face changes when he gets to adulthood, I don't think he got the worst of the features, though he definitely has some odd ones. But Aaron's nose trumps all. He's actually not really that bad-looking... he vaguely reminds me of an actor from the 80s who I thought was kinda cute, though granted I was a teenager so my taste was suspect (no offense to teens, but let's face it, your judgement when your hormones are all aflutter ain't always the greatest). But he's definitely... um. Yeah, you'll see soon, I'm aiming for an update soon... maybe even tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Akio had his elder birthday alongside Adrian's teenifying, and that's with two doses of elixir... Nimue's due to transition shortly as well (one more simDay). Akio's gonna need a makeover. Yup.

I have an idea about who I might have Aaron marry but we'll see if he's attracted to her now that he's going to college. If not her, well, there's about 20 students right now and I'll probably do up one more batch if the game doesn't generate any new dormies when the boys go to college (Aaron tonight, Adrian probably tomorrow), plus I'm thinking I'm going to put the downtown in soon and make some folks for there, though I may hold off until the kids are back from school.

Abigail's had a year of college already but I probably won't put that in the update, consolidating her college stuff with the boys' instead, officially making it the first chapter of Generation A.

Heh

So, I've decided from now on when I send legacy kids to college I'm going to determine their major based on one of three things: 1) If they roll a Want for a specific major, I'll go with that (if they roll multiple ones at the same time, the leftmost wins), 2) If they don't and there's a clear choice based on personality, I'll pick that (like June declaring Psych in the Greenes... it just seemed to fit her really well), or 3) I'll pick randomly. It's way too easy to go "Oh, I'm going to make them do Job A, so I'll go with the major that goes with it"... and I miss all the earlier job levels if I do it, so I'm going to tend to want to not do it, though sometimes it'll work out that way.

Anyhow, I was giving Abigail a semester to roll up the Want before I chose something randomly (since I didn't have a clear idea of what she'd go for). A day into the semester she did... and she also rolled up a Fear which I swear I've never seen before:


I'm not sure what's so scary about Political Science, but apparently she really, really doesn't want to major in it. :)

(Incidentally, if you're wondering about the homogenous seasons, I'm advancing them manually so all households stay the same... I figure I'll do it once a week (measuring by the legacy house). The main 'hood just started winter so she's getting a bit of autumn time before I go back there.)

Twilight Dreams opening credits

Although I do think it came out interestingly and actually scans more or less like an opening sequence, there's a few bits that I'm not happy with, and I'm already planning a revised version.

I'd like to clean up the video if possible (I still am not sure where that weird artifacting came in and so I'm not sure that it is possible), clean up and add to the visual thoughts Miho has on the couch, regularize the size and timing of the flashing imagery that happens a bit after that and possibly change it a bit, and add a quick non-Miho sequence of either video or images to show some of the minor characters in lieu of some of the reading. I'll also probably throw the lyrics on as subtitles... I couldn't decide if I wanted to or not since this song's in English and all but now I think it'll work.

However I probably won't do it until I've gotten into the second volume, although we'll see. I have another video project between now and then that will be harder to do and I'd like to concentrate on that one first, because if I can make that one come out well, revising this one will be a breeze.

All in all I actually am fairly happy with how it came out, despite that long list above... it's all tweaks, not major changes. I'll probably leave the original up for comparison even after I do a new version, too, because really it's pretty close to what I wanted. :)

Twilight Dreams Episode 2 & Bonus

Episode 2: Neighbors

Bonus Video: Opening Credits

*twitch*

That's my eye, twitching. Periodically I get weird eye tics, usually short-lived (a few hours off and on, say). This time it's lasted a couple days, and as you can imagine it makes it hard to concentrate on anything. It's not a constant twitching but it's frequent enough to be really distracting.

But in the meantime I'm at least thinking about the video. I've got the basic filming done, and the shots done for Episode 2 (and a few for episode 3, actually), and am trying to decide if I need more shots and/or filming for the video... I think I may need to just put together the basics and figure it out from there to be sure. I have a couple ideas that I'd need more shots for but I actually might be doing it with what I already have depending on how compositing works out.

It's a pretty short video so you'd think it'd be easier to envision, but I guess I'm feeling kinda uncertain about it.

Anyhow... still hoping to have E2 out this week, despite the slowdown from my eyes bugging me. That might mean 'this weekEND', but close enough.

this week...

...I hope to get episode 2 of Twilight Dreams out, as well as the first video, though between insomnia (which you might think would let me get more done, but no, trust me, it doesn't work that way, at least not with this sort) and recovering from a cold I am not sure how much I can concentrate. I've got about... 1/2 of the stuff shot I need to, or so, actually a bit more I suppose. The episode will almost certainly come out, it's the video (which I'd like to release at the same time but may delay) I'm less sure about, mainly because there's some bits of it I'm not 100% sure on how they'll look.

I've also got some more Saints and Sinners playtime/photos but am definitely not ready for an update there... I played Aaron (middle child) through to teen and he's looking good for heir despite rolling Pleasure on me but his younger brother is not yet a teen and I want to wait at least that long until I pick, since that's going to give me a much better idea of what he'll look like. I'm sure I'll get more play in this week but since the update process involves a lot of photo editing (cropping and captioning) I'm doubtful there'll be another actual update this week. Still, we'll see how I feel... it is only Tuesday.

I need to throw together some custom university students and see if the game's going to make any more on its own (I don't have a no student regen type hack in place, unlike with the town itself... I figure I'm more likely to marry people off to students on average and I don't want to be forever making new ones). I have a replacement live.package and it's got some really strange names in it, I'm realizing, but at least the people I make can be named really average things to help make up for it. And I changed one of the professors' names already because I thought it was very odd... and I might change another duplicate one although I'm kinda tempted to not since there's something funny about having two professors with the same first name.

Bleah. Anyhow, to give you an idea about the state of my insomnia, I'm off to at least take a nap right now, and yes, it's mid-afternoon here.

Saints and Sinners: A Custom Genetic Legacy

Saints and Sinners is my custom genetic legacy: 13 generations of Uglacy followed by 13 generations of Prettacy. It has a Catholic Saints name theme, which should be fun around the time I hit 'Q', and I've got some ideas in mind to keep the legacy family from acquiring a boring amount of cash on hand, including making Generation M restart on a new lot (since they'll be 'founding' the Prettacy half).

Generation 0 ~ Founding generation, Akio Kimura

Chapter 1
Chapter 2

Generation A ~ Aaron Kimura

Chapter 1 [Last large-graphic chapter]
Chapter 2 [Extra length, still smaller in Mb!]
Chapter 3
Chapter 4

Twilight Dreams Episode 1

Welcome to Episode #1 of Tasogare Yume: Twilight Dreams! Twilight Dreams is an episodic anime-inspired Sims story.

Read here.

misc progress notes

Despite insomnia, cramps, toothaches, etc. I have managed to do a few things:

• Finished up building the main Twilight Dreams neighborhood. Well, mostly; there's one lot that's only partly developed but it doesn't need to be more than it is for now.


• Populated the neighborhood, including with a few generic non-important people so my walkbys aren't always feature characters.


• Improved the dithering issues on clothing. Can't fix 'em entirely (like I said, even the Maxis stuff does this to me) but they're better, although there's still one or two things I might yet do another tweak on. I managed to get charcoal working okay, even, although in some cases 'okay' is better than others. I had to totally desaturate it to make it work, though.


• Made sure there's a second copy of everything, including neighborhoods, in my archive directory. I should (and will) burn some stuff to CD but I really need to organize what I have in archives first, since there's actually multiple copies of a lot of stuff.

Still gonna be a bit before I have anything to release but in the meantime, have a picture:

Okay, so, "no charcoal" it is.

I cannot make any of the charcoal clothing not dither into craptacularity.

Seriously, I've spent the last several hours working on the charcoal versions of several things and except for in one single case I've yet to come up with anything that works. The other colours, yes, I can improve, but charcoal? No.

I do not know how the hell they make their own clothes work, either, considering if I directly re-import what they export I also get dithering problems. *eyeroll*

I'm still going to revise the non-Charcoal colours and fix a couple minor flaws while I'm at it. But I give up on the charcoal. Srsly.

I SWEAR I did not used to have this bad a problem. I don't know if Seasons/BV changed things or if it's the new drivers/vidcard or some combination thereof, or if I just never tried to make dark clothing like this other than tshirts before, but... grr... so frustrated.

okay, I think I got it figured out

So, apparently if I check the item by running Photoshop's DDS filter and make sure it doesn't dither poorly, I can predict if it'll look okay in-game, provided I do then go and do my other workaround.

I'll work on rebuilding the clothes soon, using this method. In the meantime, I've removed the links to the downloads and put a note up about it.

In other news, the backstory neighborhood is built and populated fully, and I'm ready to start working on the new one.

I'm probably going to bed soon, though.

more clothing grr

Well, the game is still insisting on compressing (or possibly converting) textures in the game. On most colours this doesn't seem to matter much and unlike before it's not corrupting the FILES, just the displayed texture, but in the darkest colours it looks like total crap.

I'm not quite sure what to do about this at this point. I already rebuilt one dark skirt with a nearly-flat colour to try to avoid this (it and the fixed skirt texture for the one I mentioned the other day are on the website now) so I may have to do that with the others, too. It's a little annoying to look at the in-file graphic and see it be totally fine but have the in-game one be ass, though.

So, my advice, if you downloaded my clothes: don't use the charcoal ones (the dark brownish-black), because it will likely have some very obvious flaws*. I might be able to flatten the colour on them to keep it from happening, but it may be a few days before I get to it. The other dark colours (notably the twilight blue) don't show it as badly but depending on how picky you are you might want to double-check before sending a Sim out into the world with it.

The kicker is that their clothes have issues, too, but because they mostly use mid-range colours it's not very obvious.

So far I've yet to see this happen on the objects, but I don't have a lot of dark objects.

(*This may be partly an ATI issue. I don't have a computer with an nVidia card handy so I can't double-check this, but DXT compression is not native to ATI cards, so there may be some weird interaction between the Sims' use of it and the card. Note that I have other games using DXT where this isn't a problem so I'm only theorizing.)

Today's thought

I think I might be a little too thorough sometimes. Because that neighborhood you got to see a tiny pic of yesterday? That's the BACKSTORY neighborhood. I'm probably going to shoot about 30 pictures total (well, okay, I'm probably going to keep about 30 pictures total) and maybe 10 minutes of video. Naturally I've spent 2 days working on it.

Tomorrow I start the actual story neighborhood.

Izza more update

Okay, first, pursuant to the last post, we are buying a copy of an older version of Sony Vegas, for $42 including shipping. I think it's actually the version I once did download a trial for a few years ago, which I recall having very little trouble adapting to. So hopefully that will take care of any editing woes... I'm about 98% certain that it's got that variable chromakeying, since I found an old tutorial about it from the year it was released, so it should be all good.

Also, here's my progress to date in pictorial form:



Top row: [left] Miho as a teen (with her mom) [right] One of Miho's school friends with her family
Bottom row: [left] Another school friend of Miho [right] A basic shot of the neighborhood TeenMiho is from.

As you can see I've still got some empty lots down. Those represent places people are going (except the blue one, which is obviously gonna be a community lot). Most of the lots you see are slightly-altered duplicates of one another, just shells for background.

Also, in a fit of irony, the one thing I thought had no issues, that being clothes? I discovered today one of the skirts sorta, ahem, doesn't have a texture. I need to go take a look at that and figure out what happened (and upload a corrected file). Cuz, man, having the shape of the skirt but with the barbie nudity plastered onto the shape? Not working for me.

stupid moviemaker

It's no news to me that Windows Movie Maker is not precisely a robust video editor. It's serviceable, if what you want is simple compositing, and I could probably do most of what I want with it, but one thing I'd hoped to do that I just tested turns out to be impractical... partly because of WMM's limitations and partly because of Sims lighting.

New Versions of Flawed Custom Content

All Homecrafter and Object files downloaded from me prior to February 9th should be replaced. Due to renames and/or reorganization, I advise deleting all relevant files, then downloading the new versions and putting them in place. [If you're worried, make backups... but I did this without trouble.]

Existing collections and decorated items should remain unchanged (except as noted below), as the files have the same ID numbers.

What I'm fixing...

(Click to expand.)





(That's all the update you get today.)

And other recolours...

Oh, look. My object recolours have the same compression problems.

*sighs weightily*

Okay. I've pulled all the download links except for the clothing, which I already worked around the compression issues for. I'll be searching through my archives for the original graphics files and fixing the packages as soon as possible.

If you have downloaded ANYTHING from me besides clothing, you will want to keep an eye out for the fixed files. I'll announce them and restore the links when I get a chance to finish up.

Even More about Paint colours

*tears hair out*

So, I used the ORIGINAL bmps that I loaded into Homecrafter for the solid colour paints to fix up the ones that were off... only it turns out that THOSE don't match the IN-GAME versions, probably because of compression issues.

So essentially I have three choices:

a) Rebuild all 880 file graphics (835, I guess, since I'd be starting with the regular paint colours) and reload them into the existing packages using simPE tricks to keep the compression issues from happening
b) Rebuild only those colours that are still the most 'off' (mainly a couple I missed listing the last time through) and say "fuck it" to the colour differences
c) Say "fuck it" and don't fix any of it, because really who is going to notice unless they literally put two styles of paint next to each other...

Of course, given that the files I've already changed (which, by the way, included ALL the 'Paint w/White Kick' files because there was a misnaming problem) have other compression issues, and I was going to fix those anyhow because they are pretty visible, I probably will end up doing a) even though what I want to do is c) because dammit, I want to start playing SOMEDAY. I'm not an obsessive perfectionist, but little things like this do tend to irritate me especially since in theory I built all this crap to NOT have these issues...

Sigh. I need a drink. Of course, I don't have any alcohol in the house...

Addendum on the Paint Errors

...it's more widespread than I thought. I'm not sure how so yet, but I'm now going to be going through ALL the paint colours in ALL their variations and figure it out.

I suppose I could just call it "Manufacturer's variance" and live with it, since few people are going to combine, say, the original paint with the paint w/dark crown and kick, but it irritates me, so I'll probably end up fixing.

Making a list now.

ETA 116 files of 880 were sufficiently different that I feel a need to change them. I think. If I didn't miss anything. Which I hope I didn't.

I have a good list to work off of that should make this easy, and I still have my bases so I'm hoping it won't take TOO long... but I'm not tackling this until tomorrow, cuz I need a break. Plus I'm starving.

And then I get to package them and upload them and THEN I get to repackage the original files! Yay!

In the meantime, if you're using these... I think just replacing the package file with another should work, since the GUID should be the same (I'm not recreating, I'm editing the picture inside the file), so once I get the files uploaded it should be pretty easy to get the corrections in place.

Collections and Replacement textures

Okay, I'm not quite done with the collectionizing. Seriously, it's well over 1000 files I'm doing, so I'm not surprised. More, counting Maxis colours. And I'm not just throwing them in a collections folder... I'm organizing them by hue, grouping like stuff together (e.g., pastel rose, rose, victorian rose go next to each other; pastel rose with white kick can be found with pastel rose with light, medium, and dark kicks; etc.).

I'm also not surprised, though I am a little irked, that I have some non-matching recolours. I will be fixing these and uploading a batch of corrections this week. So if you downloaded any paint walls, you'll want to keep an eye out for that post. I suppose it's actually pretty amazing that most of the colours appear to really be correct, considering how I did it and how spread out the job was, but I really thought I'd set it up so this wouldn't happen. It seems to mostly be darker colours, too (like, a lot of the Black Satin ones are too light).

What I have left to do:

Organize most of the adorned paint (I've done plain and paint w/kick), which currently contains only my colours.
Add Maxis colours to the various paint folders and organize the new stuff.
Collectionize and organize the tile walls.

The floors are all done.

Needless to say I haven't gotten any actual building done today. There's only so long in a row I can stare at little thumbnails, so I did a bunch of reading in between doing organizing. TBH I'm not sure I'll finish organizing today but we'll see. If not it won't be long tomorrow, so I should be able to get back to building then.

I did do one other thing today in one of my breaks from organizing, and that's start making a list of stuff I need to shoot in the background neighborhood, since I'm going to want to do that stuff first.

This is me, being productive

Well, okay, not THAT productive... but even though I usually don't get much Sims stuff done on the weekends (and in fact am about to go play Guild Wars) I did manage to do a couple things. The object recolours were mostly things I did before but the livingroom stuff was done today, and yesterday I collectionized some of the flooring. Today I put together the first building in the backstory neighborhood and put the relevant people in it:



Tomorrow I'll get back to collectionizing (building even one building makes me want to finish it that much more), and maybe put together some more buildings, depending on how long that takes me.

object recolours uploaded

Object recolours (requiring CEP) have been aded to the custom content post. Right now it's just a link to the top folder, which has subfolders, to help save some space. There are pictures (matching the rar file names) to give you an idea of what's available in any given file.

I may make some separate links to the subfolders later if it becomes an issue; I've been thinking of reorganizing by adding contents lists there rather than here anyhow. But for now I'm leaving things as they are.

The README just asks people to not redistribute (and credits CEP), don't fear it. :D

Note: While I'm mostly reasonably happy with these, there's some skins in that have a few flaws... nothing I feel makes them bad, exactly, or I wouldn't have uploaded them, but a few things where I wish I could've done better. In particular I'm not happy with the expensive toilet recolours, though I'm not sure I could've really done much better, either. Some of these might be remade later if I can figure out how to improve them.

Project: Tasogare Yume (Twilight Dreams)

Tasogare Yume (Twilight Dreams) is an episodic Sims story, influenced by anime. The setting is sorta-Japan... things in the setting are based at least loosely on places and character types I've seen in both anime and Japanese drama shows. It's a filtered-through-Westerner-eyes Japan, though, and I make no claims that it's accurate. The character style is also based on anime.

Progress & Stuff

First: Recolours

My custom content post has been updated and slightly reorganized. This link is also always available in the side bar.

Twilight Dreams Teaser

One thing I should say...

The game runs really well on the new computer. Load times are incredible, and while I got the pause when the game generated a paper girl and a garden club member in my test neighborhood (yeah, I got my blank templates in, for everything but the three basic vacation destinations*) it wasn't very bad. Also it runs just fine in windowed mode, no slowdown at all, which was not really the case on the old box. Sims itself might not take advantage of the extra processors (I haven't really checked that, but considering my video-recording performance I'd bet it doesn't) but the OS itself seems to do it quite nicely. I do get some odd redraw lag if I open a menu when the game is running, but it goes away if I minimize the game, so whatever.

Also, my clipboard-capture program of choice has a way to assign a hotkey to do captures. I'm still probably going to play windowed for other reasons (most notably for the ability to easily look stuff up/take notes/whatever) but it's nice to be able to do it with one key combo rather than doing a key combo, switching windows, doing another key combo, etc. I can only make it take about one picture a second but I'll live. :D

(*ETA forgotten footnote: I did leave the three regular destinations as is, so that I can throw them on a neighborhood if I don't want to do the work of setting up a custom version, but I tell you, if I put in the Eastern one, I'm renaming it to the Far East Theme Park or something, because having all those alleged Asians with red hair and Euro features drives me nuts. At least if I pretend it's just a themed area and not supposed to be the "real" far East, I won't be as annoyed.)

widescreen vs the Sims

Well, I can run the Sims in widescreen, but not at my native resolution. Unfortunately, running in a non-widescreen resolution does NOT do the black bar thing; I think this particular monitor might not know how to respond to that instruction or something? I don't know.

*sneezes*

My allergies are just out of control today. It's very distracting.

pizza time

Well, still moving a little slow (I had a very sleepy day) but I now have BV, simPE and CEP installed and all my downloads (including updated versions of AwesomeWare and a couple new things) in place, and I got a small bit of clothing done. I still haven't actually loaded the game and fiddled with settings yet, though.

It's pizza time. Actually, french bread pizza from Stouffer's time. More tomorrow, I think.

No, um, really, still planning on playing

Okay, see, I got Zoo Tycoon 2 for Christmas, so I spent a few days playing that, and then we got Guild Wars, which is highly addictive, which is most of what I've been doing since the beginning of the month.