Honestly, Same

Tutorial: Fixing Exploded Lot Imposters

Published: 8-25-2024 | Updated: N/A SUMMARY Using dozens of the same object on a lot—such as a window on a skyscraper, or lots of the same tree/hedge on a large park lot—may cause “exploded” lot imposters. The lot imposter is the version of a lot seen in neighborhood view or from adjacent lots during gameplay. The error often appears in the form of warped or smeared objects – as if someone wiped part of the screen with a wet cloth. In other cases, the mesh looks like broken shards and/or pokes through other parts of the lot. Meanwhile, everything looks fine when you enter it. This error seems rare, having only occurred about 4-5 times over two decades, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying. Don’t panic! The object itself is likely not broken (although double-checking wouldn’t hurt) but the error happens as your game tries to render the same object/textures multiple times. In my testing, the culprit was usually a single object and one of its recolorable subsets. SOLUTION I used to delete the blown-up lot and rebuild it until the problem went away. Yet, a much easier solution exists – recolors! Apply 1 or more recolors across copies of object and that should fix the warped/exploded object on the lot imposter. In most cases, this should take care of the problem. In this example, the windows “exploded” in hood view. After applying plain glass recolors from THIS (Simmons, 2023) set, the problem didn’t go away. The true culprit was the metal detail on the glass – for which I had no recolors for. I made some (HERE), using similar colors which looked the same from a distance, and that solved the problem.

Simmers who use lots of greenery in their landscaping might encounter an exploded lot imposter. Keep similar recolors in your arsenol…just in case. During gameplay, this happened when I used a ton of custom hedges repo’d to the default one (“boxy lady”).  This has also happened with the default birch tree in-game, so I recommend keeping something like Gwenke33’s recolors (2011) handy. DOWNLOAD THIS TUTORIAL (PDF) (choose one) from SFS | from MEGA CREDITS Thanks: William, Gina, Catherine and others on discord who helped me think through solutions years ago.

Hello! Thank you for all your hard work. I was wondering if there are any resources for learning about how to make custom crafting stations in general, and I was also wondering how difficult it is in terms of modding abilities. Have my own sci fi setup that I wanna build crafting stations for, and I wan a know where to start learning. Thanks!

Hey there, long answer here, so I've divided it up into sub-sections. See below the cut

How to make crafting stations, a long explanation

Learning the basics

There are no tutorials for making crafting stations specifically. Honestly, the difficulty depends on your experience making custom objects, modding BHAV's, testing and the complexity of what you want to make.

The first thing you will want to start with is learning basic object creation, there are plenty of tutorials on every aspect of this. Remember: object creation is not just about SimPE! It also involves meshing and creating textures.

Then once you have a handle on that, you will want to learn BHAV modding. Resources for this type of modding are rarer, documentation can be spotty, but good places to start are Echo's BHAV tutorial @midgethetree's Resources page and @picknmixsims' Primitives page on his site.

Another good way to learn BHAV modding is to look at other people's code. See if others have made code that might be useful to you. Look at how they did it and try to understand why it was made this way. Screenshot a BHAV, label every node with what it does.

Seeing as you're interested in crafting stations in particular, you can take a look at custom crafting stations. A few you could look at are Nadira's Sculpture Manufactory at MTS or anything "descended" from Beck's crafting stations like @deedee-sims' Woodworking station, @nixedsims' Blacksmith Crafting station or @fireflowersims' Candle Crafting station. You could also look at our code for insights, though we do not support straight-up cloning.

The process

But, before you can get to actually making a station, it's important to get a good idea of what you intend to make. The planning stage is as important as the development. What will the station make? Will it require resources a la Sun&Moon? Money a la EAxis OFB stations? Or perhaps the only investment is time and motives? Each of these options are different in coding. And if it needs resources, you'll have to create those resources too. Can the action be interrupted? That'll add some complexity. Autonomy and/or trait options are other things to consider. We like to have the basics planned out before we begin coding in earnest. This gives us a good idea of whether we can do this with our current arsenal or if we need to develop some more parts.

What I've found useful in this stage is reducing the station down to its basic steps: sim goes to the station, does animation, x things get removed from their inventory, then y other thing gets added. This is a very basic example, most stations are more complex than that, but it can help you get a general idea of how to structure your code.

It's also good to remember that crafting stations are not just code... We put a significant amount of time into the visuals. Sourcing meshes and textures or creating them from scratch, mapping said meshes to look good with the textures, optimizing them so they perform well without sacrificing quality. It's an entire development process that takes time.

Testing is another important aspect. We test when developing new code, we test before we duplicate code, we test after we duplicated code. We have some amazing beta testers that help out a lot with this, but even then, things will probably slip past that'll require fixing later on. I cannot understate how important testing is.

Community aspects

When learning how to do any modding, especially BHAV modding, It's a good idea to find a Discord server with experienced modders to join up. @gayars' Sims Crafters is an excellent place for this, as is the PBK Discord. I have also heard good things about @lazyduchess' server.

The important thing is that you have a place where you can ask people for help; both with testing your stuff and figuring out how to resolve that stubborn bug. There is no shame in it, we've all been there. Do not expect people to fix all your issues for you - you'll still have to do the majority of the heavy lifting yourself - but they may just point you in the right direction. Just stay polite and be willing to learn.

So well, Crafting Stations involve quite a bit, but I highly encourage you to dive in and see what you can achieve. Remember: it's not a race, it's a journey. Enjoy the process, errors are your friends. Don't be discouraged if it takes months, so do some of our projects. Laundry took 1.5 years.

The best of luck!

Apartment Life "PJ Tank Top" for Teens and Elders

In honor of Sims 2's twentieth anniversary I finally sat down and polished a Maxis conversion I'd done ages ago, which is the apartment life male pajamas for teen-elder. (They're my favorite pajamas in the whole game so...) They use Maxis feet and hands (I mean it's Maxis Match after all!), are repo'd to the adult txmts so any default replacement textures will work, and are pinned to the Apartment Life EP section. I also included a default for the adult male mesh that adds a pregnancy morph. All six swatches are included, though I could only get four of them in the screenshots. Second screenshot is the fat morph.

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The last time I opened my Asks I noticed that there were a bunch of "look alike" (written in a similar way) anon requests. Maybe someone is using the anonymous option to avoid my policy and request more objects at a time. To prevent this issue I'm going to open the requests only for the ones with a tumblr account, hope you understand ;)

The Coffeesmith Project - Part 1 - A Cup of Joe with Friends

Welcome to the First Actual installment of the Coffeesmith project, this first part is all about (Mostly) Espresso Bars, and it is the core foundation this project was developed over:

So the options I have to offer are the Sims 3 Espresso Bar (with and without the counter) Nynaeve’s Espresso Bar that was converted by Mari, the Sims 4 Big Espresso Machine + Grinder, Fallout 4′s “The Sicilian” Espresso Machine and the Fallout 3 + New Vegas Coffee Urn, originally converted by ThatScaryChick, aside from the ones where credit was given, these were mostly converted by me, and are all working Espresso Bars (And compatible with Barista Plus *hint hint*)

The Sims 4 one comes with 7 Recolors for both the Machine and Grinder so you can mix and match

The Sims 3 Bar comes with 3 Recolor options for the Bar itself and 2 Recolor options for the machine

And the Fallout 4 one comes with two Recolor Options. Btw, the counterless ones are floating because they are based off of HugeLunatic’s Espresso Machine CEP, so please do put a counter beneath these if you don’t want a case of floating cups (but if you do, by all means go ahead). However, remember I said that mostly these were espresso bars? well, as a throw in extra, here, have some Regular espresso machines for home espresso:

Yeah, these are the same as the espresso bars, but these do require counters and don’t spawn any baristas (and the grinder is just deco), but while I was at it, it would be a shame to not make the regular home version of these.

the Nynaeve espresso and the coffee urn are slaved to the Deco Originals, which are included for convenience, the rest are slaved to the Espresso Bar versions.

At least two stations were cut from this, but it is because they are yet to be meshed, so expect 1.2 later down the line

But without further ado: Download Special Thanks: HugeLunatic for the Espresso Bar CEP and a lot of the Resource Material I checked for this, Fireflower, Frac and probably a lot of people from The Keep who gave me help and support for doing this.

ATS3 Update | Ilona’s Kitchen

More of Ikea stuff, with some kitchen furniture. More to come!

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(PS: Sorry to be totally absent of Tumblr lately, but June and July are always the busiest months every year, so I don’t have the time to play, and I hardly have the time to surf on Tumblr! Too many things to catch up! *sigh*)

Around the Sims 3 Update | Ilona likes IKEA: the bedrooms

I’ve been intensively busy at working on this set (and so I’ve been quite absent of Tumblr!), and no, the Ikea theme isn’t over yet, I hope you don’t mind! :p

So today, you’ll find more furniture for the bedrooms (I had already released some beds here), like dressers, end tables, also a simple MALM drawer to put under the bed, or a Hemnes daybed to “build”, so you can use it as sofa or as single bed. Plus a cushion in 24 variations.

Ahaha, why do I always make TONS of things, all the time?! *lol* I often find great updates over the web with just one or two objects, and it’s perfectly fine. Am I overwhelming with my “MORE stuff!!” mania?

(I’ll try to catch up a bit with all your fabulous Tumblrs during the week-end!)

This is really exiting, just the fact it’s possible blows my mind!

I made a thing. Still quite wip.

I basically took earlypleasantview's dish controller and took it a bit further: what you see here is an accessory mesh controller and I'm stupidly excited about it

Big thx to @earlypleasantview for the concept and @logansimmingwolverine for the meshes

Get dressed action on towel racks

A while ago I started using @episims' wonderful towel lite mod that makes our Sims put on a towel or a bathrobe after they shower or bathe. It adds a delightful touch of realism that is really fun. But as much as I enjoy taking my rich lady from her fancy bathroom to her walk in closet in a towel, sometimes I don't want to send my Sim past their bedroom to get dressed. When I shower I usually get dressed in the bathroom, putting on clothes I hung by the towels before getting in the shower. I thought, why can't my Sims do the same? With a little imagination, I re-purposed the actions of the Seasons coat rack to add clothes-changing animations to the towel racks that most of my Sims already have in their bathrooms, so that I can pretend they too put out their clothes on the towel rack before getting in. I wasn't sure if it was worth uploading but you guys loved the idea so here we go! :)

I only added everyday, formal and pyjamas because those are the three I thought it likely I would ever want. Shower during the day? Everyday clothes please! Girlies got ready for a night out? Get glam with your formal wear! A shower before bed? You'll want your pyjamas. The other categories seem unlikely, but I am open to updating it if there's a persuasive reason :)

As you can see in the video Sims are pretty decent about using the towel racks, even if they are on a wall behind stuff. I haven't altered the actual code to navigate to it, it uses the same slot as viewing the deco object did previously, which in my test has worked well. In the end I had to use different animations for children because the coat rack uses a step stool which needs a slot that the deco objects do not have and I could not figure out adding one. It was either different animations or floating in the air, so different animations it is :)

I've edited three of the Maxis towel racks. "Towel on a Metal Rod", "Towel on a Wooden Rod" and "Towel Hanger Plus Plus". I'm also sharing one edited CC towel rack by Simply Styling, which I discovered through @gayars recolors found on her website here.

Get maxis towel rack add on on SFS | Get Jope towel rack on SFS

If any creators would like to add these edits to their own towel racks, please feel free to do so. To make it easier on you, or any simmer that simply wants to update things they downloaded, I prepared a download package with the resources you need and some basic instructions. It's not step by step, it assumes you are familiar with edits. Should anyone want or need more detailed instructions, I am happy to help when I can :)

Conflicts: The maxis towel rack add on are global plug in for those objects, which means there is a potential for conflicts. HCDU+ will find any conflicts, but I doubt there are any. Indirect conflicts may also occur if you have mods that add additional interactions to deco objects, they would not show on the towel racks because I have overridden their usual pie menu.

Credits: whoward69 at @picknmixsims who taught me how to edit event trees in animations, @episims for the towel lite mod that inspired this, @gayars who taught me how to repurpose animations between objects and for introducing me to the jope towel, and all you lovely people that encouraged me to post this with your enthusiasm <3

Oh we're doing a simblr gratitude day... wait what do you mean i'm a day or two late?! Well where do I even begin, I'm not exactly the most vocal person on social media, and a lot of my connections were formed through forums like the Keep and the late but not forgotten Sims Daily, but plenty of the people I met there are still around here, and I'm always happy to see them post, regardless of what sims game they are playing.

I'm going to tag some people I've appreciated through the years and some that I am thankful to have met and others that I don't know personally but i still find their work pretty cool, in no particular order @fireflowersims @fracturedmoonlight @davinaojeda @anachronisims @mortia @missy-hissy @aroundthesims @ice-creamforbreakfast @icemunmun-spicy-scalpel @sentate @pforestsims @deedee-sims @jacky93sims @lamare-sims @lazyduchess @asimplevampire @osab @crispsandkerosene @mrs-mquve-cc @episims @simnostalgia @mustluvcatz-reloaded @tvickiesims @jellymeduza @hodgekiss @bstu @gummilutt @12raben @bayoubashsims @glorianasims @gayars @emperorofthedark @esotheria-sims @withlovefromsimtown @goatskickin @itsdiamondeyesuniverse @riekus13 @junipermeadows @lavenderlight @simping-simmer @midgethetree @samkat10423 @vampirekiss6661 @franglishetchocolat @sitaechoes @anitmb and @aniraklova I probably missed a ton more of people, but just know that i appreciate everyone, my mutuals, the cc creators, the storytellers, the builders, the photographers, everyone that makes this little corner of the internet and the sims community special, In fact the reason I got this post as late as I did was because I was seriously trying to remember all the amazing people In the community I've met before or found to be cool, and again, even If I haven't tagged you and we've interacted before, know that I haven't forgotten about you, and that I still appreciate you!