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Simlicious

(Fri, 02 Jun 2023)
so soothing!
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Pride Month Freebie (Thu, 01 Jun 2023)
Save 100% on Tell Me Why on Steam The story-rich adventure game Tell Me Why from DONTNOD Entertainment (best known for the Life is Strange games) is free this month (June 2023) on Steam and the Microsoft Store. It features LGBTQIA+ characters. I have not played it yet, but it does sound interesting.
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Creator Community Good Faith Practices (Thu, 25 May 2023)
ts3creatorscave: Here at the Creator’s Cave, our mission is to create a ‘safe space’ for people to learn how to create new content and mods for The Sims 3, and share their knowledge of how to create new content and mods for the Sims 3. Frequently, new custom content (CC) is generated by making edits to existing CC. As part of the above mission, we feel it is required of us to encourage ‘Good Faith’ practices, and to discourage ‘Bad Faith’ practices when utilizing content from other creators in your CC or mods. We’ve made a  list of ‘Good Faith’ and ‘Bad Faith’, and ‘Grey Area’ practices to serve as guidelines for both existing and aspiring creators. We asked those in the discord to help distill and tweak it, and will continue to make alterations based on feedback from the creator community. These guidelines are primarily enforced by the community itself, and other creators may decline to provide assistance to someone who is using ‘Bad Faith’ practices. Here’s a link to the doc for any interested: TS3 Creator Good Faith Practices
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personal update :) (Mon, 22 May 2023)
I want to start by saying that I appreciate you all so much, whether you are followers, mutuals, just casually lurking around, dropping by every 2 months, or regularly engaging, thanks for being around, it means a lot! More personal stuff follows below :) Soo… I’m still pretty quiet, huh. I guess I am on a semi-hiatus, I still drop into tumblr and try to see what’s new with other simblrs, but I do not have to share much on my own blog for now (but that could also change quickly again, depending on my mood). A lot of my family members’ birthdays are in April and May so I’ve been busy on that front. Today was nice, we enjoyed my mum’s yummy strawberry cake for my dad’s birthday :) My brother introduced me to a new game that we can play together, No Man’s Sky. Part of me is fascinated by it, and part of me is annoyed because it’s pretty grindy and I hate repetitious gameplay. I’ve been investing a lot of time in the last few days to achieve some things, but I just realized how much time is actually needed to make it anywhere in the game (but there are a lot of ways to do stuff, so maybe there is a better way than what I’ve been doing as a noob). I just need to be careful not to spend too much time on it. I’m also working on a project that’s sims-related, but it will take some time before I can unveil it. I am proud to say that I have been making some progress in battling my anxiety regarding Covid. In Germany, the pandemic has been officially called over and we are not required to wear masks basically anywhere anymore. My initial reaction was “well, tell that to the virus!”. Of course, we can still get sick and we have no way of knowing who might be sick, other than people coughing/sneezing/ showing obvious symptoms. But I’ve been to several places without a mask now (something I could not have dreamed of doing 2 months ago), including a restaurant, a supermarket, and a shopping center. It still feels weird not wearing a mask! In my head, I pretend that it is pre-covid and that helps a little. It also feels weird to still wear a mask when nobody around you does now, so it’s tough either way. I still keep my distance though and if someone coughs or sneezes I’m outta there in an instant… and I think if/when I use public transportation, I would definitely wear a mask again. I am not comfortable sitting in tight spaces with others yet (even with a mask). Do you guys feel weird/vulnerable too without a mask?
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(Wed, 17 May 2023)
elfgrove: elfgrove: New Things to Beware on the Internet On May 3rd, Google released 8 new top-level domains (TLDs) – these are new values like .com, .org, .biz, domain names. These new TLDs were made available for public registration via any domain registrar on May 10th. Usually, this should be a cool info, move on with your life and largely ignore it moment. Except a couple of these new domain names are common file type extensions: “.zip” and “.mov”. ALT This means typing out a file name could resolve into a link that takes you to one of these new URLs, whether it’s in an email, on your tumblr blog post, a tweet, or in file explorer on your desktop. What was previously plain text could now resolve as link and go to a malicious website where people are expecting to go to a file and therefore download malware without realizing it. Folk monitoring these new domain registrations are already seeing some clearly malicious actors registering and setting this up. Some are squatting the domain names trying to point out what a bad idea this was. Some already trying to steal your login in credentials and personal info. ALT ALT ALT ALT ALT This is what we’re seeing only 12 days into the domains being available. Only 5 days being publicly available. What can you do? For now, be very careful where you type in .zip or .mov, watch what website URLs you’re on, don’t enable automatic downloads, be very careful when visiting any site on these new domains, and do not type in file names without spaces or other interrupters. I’m seeing security officers for companies talking about wholesale blocking .zip and .mov domains from within the company’s internet, and that’s probably wise. Be cautious out there. I really want to reiterate how this can go wrong frequently and fast, folks. A malicious actor sets up a page with an auto-downloader squatting on a domain name that matches a common zip file name like photos DOT zip. This website is set up to start an auto downloader upon being visited, downloading a zip file with the same name as the URL which contains malicious software (virus, worm, keylogger, etc). Scenario. Someone you know well sends you an email or text with promised photos attached. The email even reads something like this. Because .zip is now a TLD, that plain text is automatically formatted into a link to malicious actor’s website without them having to send you anything. Folk with family with iPhones or iPads that are sent multiple photos in one go might be familiar with iCloud’s tendency to automatically compile them into zip file for the sender and less savvy tech users have trouble NOT doing that. These same less savvy users, or even just someone just not thinking in the moment, will click that .zip link, not realizing it isn’t the the same as clicking on the promised attachment. They download a file that matches the name they expected. They open it because they were expecting that file and it’s from a trusted source. Except the file they downloaded isn’t the one that was sent by their trusted source and now they have malware. Another Scenario. An IT person tries to send you an email with instructions on how to resolve a problem with a commonly used filename like install-repair DOT zip or to install new software like microsoft-office DOT zip. The email may start with instructions of where to go get the legitimate file to do the install or repair, but now a line later in the instructions is also has a link to a .zip URL. A user, already frazzled by IT problems, may click it to ensure they have the right file. Again, they download malicious code from a squatting website or it prompts them with a fake login and now the squatting website has stolen their login credentials for a legitimate site. All due to an expected email from a trusted source. Above you can see microsoft-office DOT zip is already out there with a fake Microsoft login screen waiting to steal your credentials. These risks are already out there now because the TLD has been activated. Plain text on old post are already being resolved into links to the new websites. Here you can see a tweet from 2021, long before .zip was a domain name, now resolves that plan text into a clickable link. You’ll start seeing this everywhere, and malicious actors do not have to lift a finger to send it to you. Yes, a lot of users aren’t going to click that, but a lot of folk will. Whomever is squatting on photos DOT zip domain name has made a one time payment to have access to anyone that ever sees that file name typed out. In an example of an existing squatter site, clientdocs DOT zip is exactly one such pre-setup .zip domain name that initiates an automatic download. This one may be harmless, but the set ups are already out there and waiting to catch folk. It’s an unnecessary and risky can of worms that’s been opened up. Holy Unforced Errors, Batman.
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15 Questions for 15 Mutuals (Tue, 16 May 2023)
Thanks for tagging me, @ktarsims, @aroundthesims and @batsheba 1. Are you named after anyone? I don’t think so. 2. When was the last time you cried? Yesterday. I’m pretty emotional, so I cry frequently. It also relieves stress, so I guess it’s a good thing? 3. Do you have kids? Nope, I can barely take care of myself 4. Do you use sarcasm a lot? Sometimes, when I am in a bad mood. 5. What sports do you play/have you played? Currently none, I’m a couch potato, though I enjoy long walks with my best friend. As a kid, I was in a circus acrobatics group, where we built human pyramids, rode the unicycle, walked on a rope, etc. It was a lot of fun. If anxiety wasn’t a factor, I would love to go to a belly-dancing class! Dancing is my favorite “fitness activity”. I’m not particularly good at it, but it’s fun to do! 6. What’s the first thing you notice about people? Their clothes and their overall vibe. 7. Scary movies or happy endings? Happy endings! 8. Any special talents? Sadly, I can’t think of anything. Oh wait, does knowing how to ride the unicycle count? 9. Where were you born? In the state of Lower Saxony, Germany. 10. What are your hobbies? Creating CC for the Sims 3 (duh), modding other games, gaming in general… I also like to go down random rabbit holes on the internet for a few days and learn anything I can about the thing until I lose interest or the next thing comes along. I also love watching series and movies. In winter, I like to knit and I also collect yarn for knitting (I love how squishy and soft and colorful wool is). Speaking of colors, I also used to do a lot of nail painting/collecting nail polishes and stamping plates, but I lost interest during the pandemic. I did paint my nails in hot neon colors last week though and I bought 4 new nail polishes today on a whim, so maybe there’s a new spark? 11. Do you have any pets? Yes, my granny of a cat, Lina. She turned 20 in March. She requires a lot of care and attention now, which I gladly give her. I’m happy she is still here and I love her so much! 12. How tall are you? 163 cm (5'4"). I’m so happy that petite jeans are a thing! Being short was okay during the cropped jeans phase, but now that most jeans are ultra-long and wide or flared, I can’t buy regular-sized jeans anymore… 13. Fave subject in school? Art and Geology (I had a mineral/semi-precious stone collection as a a preteen/teen). 14. Dream job? Tbh, I wish I was getting paid for random projects I like to immerse myself in nowadays. It used to be working in game design/doing something like character design or animation. In another life, maybe… 15. Eye colour? A greyish blue. I think this color is pretty close! As always, I tag anyone who hasn’t been tagged and wants to do this!
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Status update (Wed, 10 May 2023)
All your messages of support mean so much to me, thank you! I definitely feel better, I cleaned out my dash a bit and am a bit more relaxed. I see more clearly now that I still have an important role to play and a place in this community! I am still not quite ready to go back into creating Sims stuff though, as Anno 1800 has sucked me in a bit at the moment. That game is a serious commitment time-wise, and I am also making my own mods and tweaking the mods of others to create the perfect experience for me personally. In case you are interested to learn more about my Anno experience, you can read more under the cut! I play a multiplayer map with my boyfriend, or let’s say I show him what I have built and he dabbles for a couple of hours too every now and then I enjoy the optimization/logic aspect of the game. At the moment, I really like games that pick my brain/give me a challenge in that regard, and I think that is also why I like modding. It requires abstract/logical thinking and creativity at the same time. Anno 1800 is a city builder/production strategy game and is mainly about fostering a happy population in a flourishing city. There are different population tiers, such as farmes, workers, artisans, etc. that have different needs that you need to fulfill in order to get to the next one, and they also want luxury goods that improve their happiness. You have to produce these goods and build farms, factories, and public buildings to provide the population with these items. You start out with a small settlement and end up with a huge metropolis. I am about 100 hours into the save and have never advanced this far in Anno 1800 before. Things get more complex the further you go, and you have to establish settlements in different regions and create trading routes to ship goods around to make sure all production lines run flawlessly and your population receives the goods they need. I also enjoy beauty-building (to some degree at least) and try to make my cities look interesting instead of just boringly uniform. Because I play with a lot of mods, this is easier to accomplish than in a vanilla game, where beauty building and maintaining a good economy at the same time is more challenging. I play Anno 1800 to relax and have fun, not to try to reach record numbers of inhabitants (which is impressive in its own right, but I’m more the casual play type). Here are a few screenshots of my City Bergblick (Mountain View). These are best viewed at full scale because you can’t really see details on the small tumblr dashboard-sized pics. My farmers are having a festival because they feel so happy! The artisan village Amusement park that I built near my skyscrapers and scholar’s houses. View from the harbor. This is the hugest island in the game! In case you are wondering, the reason why do not make (tuning) mods for Sims 3 is that I lack the gameplay experience/knowledge of intricate game mechanics. Only while playing do you notice things that you wish were different, and you get an idea of how they could be. I am a bit out of the loop with Sims 3 gameplay, I’m a bit ashamed to say it has been years since I properly played the game, aside from set building, styling my Sim models, and testing CC. In most games I play, I spend more time modding them/installing/tweaking other people’s mods/making my own than actually playing. I am truly a tinkerer at heart! I hope I can bring myself to start learning Python one day (and C# would also be good to know as a modder), as I mainly tweak XML files for now, but many games require proper coding knowledge in order to mod them. I tried a few times to learn but I have a hard time understanding some concepts. I feel like it’s just a different mode of thinking and to get into that mode and see how everything fits together is the hardest part. I kinda hope I can get my brain ready for it by doing more logical thinking/tinkering with mods! Other games that I am interested in/would love to be able to do more with mod-wise are Subnautica and The Long Dark. Subnautica is probably my all-time favorite game. It is beautiful, and makes you want to explore and find out about that alien planet, but also creates that feeling of terror of the unknown. It touches on emotions in a way that I never experienced in another game. That said, the Sims games are still the best option for expressing creativity! I am also keeping an eye out for Life by You, the modding possibilities seem very enticing. I’m not sure about the graphical style, but I bet they will polish the game a lot before the final release. Also, Custom Content makes such a huge difference, so I’m not too worried about that at this point.
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(Sun, 30 Apr 2023)
lazyduchess: Build/Buy Catalog search mod for TS3, now available on Early Access: Patreon
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budgieflitter:when i want to play the sims but (Fri, 28 Apr 2023)
budgieflitter: when i want to play the sims but
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(Tue, 25 Apr 2023)
wip: See the Tumblr You Wish to See Hey, you! We need your help: Take a moment to fill out our quick survey and share your thoughts with us. Plus, a chance to win free blaze credits Take the Survey now GIF by totallyenchantingwitch Any data collected as part of your participation in this survey will be handled according to the Tumblr Privacy Policy.
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I am not posting much atm, here is why (Sat, 22 Apr 2023)
heya, I’m pretty quiet on the posting front at the moment. This has several reasons. Since this might come across as a bit whiny, feel free to skip this personal ramble. The good stuff first: I made a pact with my best friend and now we take a long walk together every week to increase our fitness levels. It encourages me to leave the house and get some fresh air and be in nature and it feels very good! We actually did a lot more together in the last months than just the walk, so I am quite busy and also often exhausted from the activity. I have also gotten back into Anno 1800 now that the game has reached its final state, and I am fixing some old mods that are not available anymore but I cannot live without, and I am also working on some of my own mods. The reason why I am taking a break from making patterns has mainly to do with the negative feelings I developed in the last months. I have been putting off writing this post for weeks, but my feelings have not gone away and I want to address this particular issue. Tbh, I often get aggravated when viewing my dash these days. I’m not the most emotionally stable person and my self-worth comes also from external sources, like feedback for my patterns, which is not ideal, but it is what it is right now. Lately, I feel that as a creator of recolorable patterns, I am being pushed deep into a corner. I’ve always considered myself a niche creator, catering to patterns kinda does that! But I feel like I am becoming obsolete, now that a lot of creators only make Sims 4 conversions and are usually not fully recolorable. I also fear that more and more creators will forget/will never learn how to make clothes and objects recolorable if all they do is add non-recolorable Sims 4 presets. I consider the Create-A-Style tool to be the most important feature of TS3 (together with open worlds). It is such a unique feature, and it breaks my heart to see that not being valued as such. I feel like we should celebrate that, and I try to with my patterns, but it’s just so hard to keep it up when most creators do not seem to particularly care anymore. I wish more creators would make the good old Frankenmeshes I would love to see more ts3 and ts4 frankenmesh mashups. Creators would need to learn how to turn Sims 4 textures into greyscale ones and step up their uv-mapping game a bit, and then it could be a thing… There could even be an open library of recolorable sims 4 textures and remapped meshes that all creators could contribute to. That way, creators could use them and would not need to remake every texture from scratch by themselves. Over time, that would greatly decrease the effort that would need to be put in to make new creations this way… I know that most of you follow me because you really value my patterns and use them in your games, and I know that people who play mainly with vanilla content won’t have that problem at all, as 99% the EA stuff can be recolored. But it’s just that I see those non-recolorable conversions everywhere on my dash, and it is so disheartening. I guess as a creator, I want to feel welcome in the TS3 creator community, and lately, I do not feel particularly seen or valued as a member of that group. Maybe my Tumblr bubble has shoved me somewhat outside of the group that I would feel more valued in? Maybe I need to adjust my dash. But I do not want to unfollow everyone who posts these conversions. They are nice in their own right, it’s just that I can’t handle them very well right now. How do you deal with stuff that you do not want to see? do you unfollow people, do you block tags? I’ve been mostly avoiding my dash, but that does not seem like a good solution. If you post gameplay pics with my patterns or are a creator that makes their stuff CAS-Tool compatible, feel free to tell me below so I can follow you. Just seeing more people use my patterns would probably lift my spirits!
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(Sun, 16 Apr 2023)
ktarsims: So… how do we define MM anyways? I’m putting this query out there, because ever since I created that list, I keep thinking of various people and going… are they Maxis Match? Or are they not? I feel like MM is not as huge a thing in Sims 3 as it seems to be in TS2 and TS4, my personal CC collection is more maxis-mix and most of the creators I’m aware of don’t actually list anywhere whether they’re MM or Alpha, and a lot of them do both. I have definitely a few criteria which disqualify from being MM: 1 - Photo-skinned items/clothing are not MM. Too different visually. 2 - Clothing made in MD (marvelous designer) is typically disqualified because it doesn’t match the style OR the needed poly counts. 3 - I don’t have a firm guide on what polycounts ought to be in order to be MM, but if they’re high enough to cause gameplay issues, it’s probably not MM. (I found a guide on Sims Wiki that gives some Polycount guidelines.) 4 - Anything overly realistic (like paintings for the wall that use RL photos and don’t make them look like paintings) is not MM. On the other hand, my criteria for saying something is MM: 1 - It was created by cloning an EA mesh and making small changes to that mesh or texture. 2 - Polycounts should be low enough to be comparable to or not much higher than EA items of similar complexity/size. However, I think hair, even from back in the day, breaks this rule. 3 - Style and visual look should be similar enough to official items that they blend well and it’s hard or impossible to tell the difference. Is this good enough for guidelines? Do the rest of you ever think about this? xD What guidelines do you use? Can lots and worlds that use CC be considered MM if the CC they use is MM? Sidenote: That Wiki article basically says even complex hairs should be under 10k poly. And yet these days most conversions are 15k, 20k, or a lot of them are actually over 30k. This is pretty much in line of how I would define Alpha and MM for Sims 3. A note on clothes made from scratch/with cloth simulation, they can be made to look MM, and can have reasonable polycounts, especially when retopologized, but that takes much more effort and people rarely invest it (I would love to see more CC like that though). I think Sims 4 clothing meshes are a particular good mix between some more pronounced details and reasonable polycounts. I guess this is why we see many TS4 clothing conversions! They are a good match for the Sims 3 MM style. They just do not often work nicely with CASt due to the way they were UV-mapped, which is a bummer. (This can also be fixed with effort, but alas, it’s hard work and the final result may deviate a bit from the original.) Regarding polycounts: The Sims 3 is 14 years old (can you believe it?) and our gaming rigs have improved a lot since then, so going a bit higher nowadays should not be a problem! It might still not be a good idea to put 35k hairs on all townies (make sure high poly hairs are set to not set to “allowed for random”), but if used within reason, high poly items should be fine and should not cause a significant impact on performance.
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MM Sims 3 Creators/Converters (Wed, 12 Apr 2023)
ktarsims: Just a list of the most MM creators I’m aware of. This list is not utterly comprehensive, and I’m happy to add to it if I’ve left someone out. This is long, so.. under the cut. Keep reading Thanks for featuring me I have something to add to the already great list too: MM Hair: For low poly MM hair, I recommend checking out Buckleysims’ “disentangled” hair edits.
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(Thu, 06 Apr 2023)
ALT So I’ve been having some fun with GPT-4 through Bing lately. I was trying out different things and every time I start a new topic in English, the AI initially replies in German, because my browser’s language is set to German. I usually just ask the it to switch to English/repeat that in English and it would do so without problems. Until now… I put it on the creative settings, so maybe that played a role in this behavior. I guess I really “ruffled its feathers” by wanting to bet for a hug and then I accused it of being wrong and it did not want to be wrong, so it ended the conversation I think it might have been only referring to the browser’s language settings, while I was talking about the language we were currently using to chat, maybe it did not get that distinction. I did lie to it by saying I changed the settings when I hadn’t, it might have detected the change had I done so, but I did not want to risk the topic coming to an end yet. It really did try to convince me that my English text was German Do you have a funny or weird AI story too?
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How do you feel about… (Tue, 04 Apr 2023)
non-sims 3 content on my simblr? I am okay with content from other Sims games no interest in other game-related content, but personal stuff/hobby is fine I would like to see other game-related content that is not Sims-related I would not follow you if you show/make stuff for other games than Sims 3 I mainly follow you because I like you as a person, you do you! I am just interested in your Sims 3 CC and skip other content Actually… (I’ll elaborate in the comments) See Results I will not use this information to dictate what to post on my blog, but it might still influence my decision to post other stuff which I held back on. I’m interested in what topics you are also interested in and whether there are no-go topics for you on a simblr!
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REACT COLLECTION (Sat, 01 Apr 2023)
brickwhartley: Dear People of Tumblr, I don’t know if you heard the news when it dropped, but I left the sunny island of Clawland in the rearview mirror a few months ago and stepped into a role back here at Tumblr as Chief Officer of Merchandising and Physical Engineering. I’ve been sharing my wares over at my Emporium, and more importantly, you’ve been buying!  Things have been going so darn well that last night, I had plenty of time to reflect on how far I’ve come. No blockers in my way, KPIs going through the roof, everyone happy with their new mugs and pins and tshirts, and me at the head of it all… everything’s coming up Brick, right?  But one thing about merchandising is, well, it’s fun, and creative… but there isn’t much clicking. Brick Misses Clicks!  I thought about how dang popular my little crabby friends were on the dashboard when I was away. Spawning like crazy! There’s no denying it: you kids love those crabs. You’re even spending cold hard cash sending them to each other.  So, the question was: how to combine that kind of clicktastic feature you know and love, with something new? Something FRESH?  And then, it hit me! !!!!!!!!!!!! So I hereby announce that I’m taking temporary leave of my position at the Emporium in order to jump teams and become Tumblr’s Chief Reactions Officer.  Beginning today, you’ll be able to SLAM those react buttons at the bottom of every Tumblr post to express your emotions. On the web at least. Not in the mobile apps. (I’m a budget whiz, but not that much of a whiz.) And listen, this is short notice. I haven’t slept all night, putting this together, ever since the idea struck me while stargazing and reflecting on my life and choices. So the actual reactions available to use are limited for now. They were actually just the most recently used emojis in my phone. But I just know you’ll love them anyway. Because they come from me, BRICK!  Yours clickfully,  Brick Whartley Chief Reactions Officer Chief Officer of Merchandising and Physical Engineering (On Leave) What a spectacular school of reactions I saw on this post! I simply have to share it with the world: ALT I am pleased. Thank you @brickwhartley!
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Just curious: Your Downloads and Mods folders are huge! How long does the game load for you? (Sat, 25 Mar 2023)
hi @cas-sims! I have not played Sims 3 in a regular world for years, mainly because I also had trouble with heavy lag and it ruined the fun If I actually want to play, I need to do a lot of optimization beforehand! My test save that I use for testing and making screenshots for my CC is on a CAS world which has only 4 lots on it and loads pretty quickly. The drawback is that there is no scenery at all for outdoor pics and it does look very bland. It’s just a flat green grass area with a road on it, that’s it. It takes just under 5 minutes to load the game and the save (I actually timed it). My game runs on a PCIE4 M.2 SSD, I bet this definitely helps with the loading times! I also have a good chunk of CC as merged packages. I also use the HQ mod for my screenshots, and because of it, my game is lagging very badly, especially when applying CASt patterns to objects (which makes actually decorating/making the previews for my patterns a game of patience). I do have the smooth patch, but I think my game has a lot of optimization potential still. stead of having 3x the amount of CC installed in one game. I know from some gameplay simmers that they often get rid of store stuff they do not use and disable some EP’s and SP’s they rarely use (like ITF and Island Paradise, which are known to be especially laggy). I’m sure you know this, but in case people read this who are new to TS3, the AnyGameStarter tool at MTS has this functionality and can create profiles so you can have several “separate” games with different mods and CC. Gameplay simmers tend to pay attention to how CC performs in-game/they look at polycounts beforehand, and also reduce their amount of mods. They also tend to play in worlds that have optimized routing. Also, merging CC is a must. It might also be a good idea to make 2 or 3 different profiles with AnyGameStarter and play with different CC in all of them and if you get bored, you can switch over to another profile and play a different save with different CC. My game is definitely overdue for a refresh, and I plan on using the Sims 3 Performance Guide on Steam to get it into a more playable state. It is one of the best performance guides I have come across, so maybe it will help your game too?
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(Thu, 23 Mar 2023)
Sims 3 Nostalgia I found an ancient Sims backup folder on an old hard drive and I think it’s the earliest backup I found of my Sims 3 screenshots, from July 2010 (I am not sure those timestamps are even correct, they might be even older!). Back then, only World Adventures and Ambitions were available EP’s. I did not share a lot of gameplay pics back then, so these are all subpar quality angle-wise, and my monitor resolution was a meager 1680x1048 pixels (on a 19-inch monitor, I believe). We’ve come a long way since then! For this save, I used the motherlode cheat to splurge on a luxurious bachelor pad (yes, there was a maid AND a butler). I made two YA male sims who lived there and they had the time of their lives throwing wild pool parties. I believe that save was called “young and wild” or something like that, lol! Of course, it features the obligatory pool and pool tables and sim-painted paintings of their own house. For some reason, I loved that “paint from reference” feature and proudly hung my sims’ paintings! I also made quite a lot of money painting wiht my sims, I think I forced most of them to paint at some point or another I think this was a vanilla or minimal CC save. UV mapping was a huge pain back then when people used Milkshape to UVmap, so most people did not really pay attention to it (some mapping was quite terrible and you could only stick with solid colors). This is what really got me into creating CC. I started to fix CC that I liked but was low in quality for me personally, so I should really be grateful for that incentive
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Thoughts about Life by You (Tue, 21 Mar 2023)
I have watched the Life by You announcement stream and wanted to share my thoughts. The game does show potential and has some good systems and concepts. I think a quest system could be really awesome. The pixel people would have more reasons to do things, and also the ability to write dialogues sounds very interesting, to load custom stories and play them out? Pretty neat. Also, the scripting editor? Pretty cool. It seems they have some kind of pattern system as well (at least on walls). I like that you can add your own preset colors to clothing/furniture. I am excited for the modability of everything, but… the graphics are hideously terrible in my opinion, I guess alpha players will like it, but I just think it’s very cheap and incoherent at this point. The light (especially outside) is way too harsh for my tastes as it is now. And did anyone else notice how the people have weirdly short arms, or is it just me? Hopefully, graphics will change for the better during early access! I have not preordered it, it is too early/not enough was shown to warrant it for me personally. Things that I am wondering: What life stages will there be? Will people age up in stages or age gradually? I think gradual aging would be a nice change. I am also wondering if the pixel people will have specific wants, wishes, and emotions of some kind because just straight-up dialogue without the pixel persons reacting accordingly will not feel natural. The ability to easily move houses around is definitely a cool thing, and I am glad there will be an open world. The question is, will this impact performance with later DLC? I could not bear another Sims 3-sized lagfest. I guess we’ll have to wait for things to progress! It does seem like the game is still in a pretty early development stage. What do you think about it?
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heldhram: just another morning at the O’Hara household. (Tue, 07 Mar 2023)
heldhram: just another morning at the O’Hara household.
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