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.

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.