ACR and other things

No, I don't have the game installed yet. In fact, I'm feeling like crap and I did say don't expect anything for a while, right? But I've been looking at my downloads and mods and stuff anyhow, trying to figure out what I want to keep, and ACR is on the "only maybe" list.

Decisions, decisions

Okay, well, after thinking about it some more, since I'm still feeling iffy about the old projects, I think maybe I'd be better off just making a fresh start.

So, as soon as my back pain allows, I guess I'll go ahead and look for the disks and install. See if I can get FT working without hitches, or deal with the hitches, see if I can get that bodyshop compression workaround doing some good (and do some updates on my CC), do testing in the default neighborhoods, etc. I'm not planning on rushing; among other things I'd just as soon wait to start publishing until I at least get a little further into sorting out my health woes or, y'know, acquire a painkiller that works reliably. But when I get around to setting up custom 'hoods, it'll be for new projects.

Today's dilemma

Or, more like, "last few months' dilemma".

I've been pondering reinstalling the Sims. Again. Still. Whichever.

Unfortunately, I'm still having health issues. Yes, I'm trying to do something about them, but being that I'm using the local po' folks' insurance, time between appointments gets long... not to mention that the last appointment I had I missed because, heh, I was sick. And then my doctor left the practice. Yes, really. She's moving out of state. I did make it to what one of my friends calls "the annual titsmash" (no problems, btw, yay) but haven't tried to get on a new doctor's list yet, because I hate starting over with a new doctor. I know, I know. I'm going to call soon, really.

Well, huh...

...seems like Pescado is still a genius, because if I'm reading this description of his mod correctly, he actually figured out a way to address the number one biggest problem I'd have with the game:

1. TS2-Style Aging [Optional - Default: Disabled]
Allows you to have sims age TS2-style, with only the active household.
Not enabled by default.

Which still isn't 100% ideal, but I'd far rather have that then the default way. (Ideal would be household-by-household option.) And considering he went from "Modding will be a pain" to "Oh, here, have a mod that, among other things, fixes some of the bugs in the game and addresses the biggest annoyances people have turned up" in, um, a week, I wouldn't be surprised if he figures out how to handle that at some point anyhow. And on top of that, the mod allows you to turn most of the options on/off (hopefully all of them at some point).

So, I may end up picking up the game at some point after all. You know... after I someday get another doctor appointment or two and reinstall Sims 2 and start making progress there again and all that...

I'm cooking da ribs in da oven

Which isn't the point of the post, but since I don't want to nap while the oven is on, I thought I'd take a bit of time to give my impressions of other people's reports of the Sims 3. I actually already posted some of this in a comment to an LJ post but I've since read and seen more and figured I'd do a bit more complete post with like, categories and more words. A lot more words.

To be clear, yes, this is based entirely on other people's reports and screens, but that's what word of mouth is, and so far, word of mouth isn't making me any more likely to go out and get the game anytime soon.

Cleanly pulling Sims from photos

I remembered recently that right before I started my extended Sims break I said I was going to explain how I pulled Sims or objects from a scene to do effects to them as I do now with Twilight Dreams; the first few times I did it by hand and it's reallllly slow that way. This way is rather easier, and leaves very little to clean up by hand.

This is pretty long, but I promise it's actually very easy, and once you do it a couple times you won't even have to think about it. Oh, and, warning: these are humongous pictures in their full sizes. I have a widescreen monitor and you're getting what I usually see.

Pixel Play posts

I realized I never posted pointers on this blog, so: my non-Sims gaming blog does have posts in it. 4 from early January, 3 from today. Click the link on the side.

Top 6 Reasons I'm Not Getting Sims 3 Anytime Soon

I guess everyone knows I'm not getting the Sims 3, at least not anytime soon, but with its immiment(ish) release, I wanted to go over why... it's a big list, probably bore you to tears, but hey, I like blogging about things.

No more non-Sims stuff here...

I've made a new blog for my non-Simming gaming blather, if anyone's interested. Incidentally, both this and the new blog now have links on the bottom if you want to use an RSS reader to keep up with them, though I'll continue to post links from my LJ as well (and occasionally posts will be made just there as usual).

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."