$LAYYYTER
Cosmic Funnies
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dirt enthusiast
Stranger Things
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Sweet Seals For You, Always
Love Begins
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@analog-mothman
Links For Mobile Users:
My CC
FAQ + TOU
Current Projects:
your guess is a good as mine
I'm Nyketia, a perpetual chronic lurker and severely anxious person who's bad at determining if people like me or not, so I generally avoid contact. I'm trying to improve, though. Adult.
As long as the adsense revenue and donations cover most of the costs, GoS isn't going anywhere. So far my out of pocket cost is less than 25% of the total costs for the site, which is within my budget still. I'm hoping this coming year will be the same but ad revenue is down. I understand ads suck and do my best to remove the auto generated page take over ones and keep them small.
But you know what scraping the site does? Increases bandwidth and server load which costs me more money. This annoys me. I have a budget man.
If I were not willing/able to continue, then there would be an announcement on GoS. All costs are paid annually. The biggest in May which is the hosting itself, the domains are scattered throughout the year. All in it's only about $225 annually.
I mean, if someone is concerned about the state of the site, they could. I dunno. Ask someone?
I'm the person who scraped GOS! I already wrote a response to this post but couldn't find the original but now that I have, I'm going to rewrite my reply.
First of all, I wanted to say. Thank you for everything you do for our community. You've really been a major part of The TS2 community from the beginning!
Second, you'll stop me from archiving when you pry the archiving software out of my cold, dead hands.
Do you know about Plumb Bob Keep? That's a real question because as the TS2 modding community gets ever smaller and becomes more and more insular it gets harder to know who is on what moderation team and who co-runs what. However, if you do know Plumb Bob keep you'd know that recently the owner died. Which meant that suddenly the entire community had to scramble.
Fortunately, they were able to get in contact with the family (in their time of mourning) to ask "Hey, sorry about the dead girl, can I has password please? I need my fix of virtual doll clothes"
I don't blame them for this. They'd obviously put a lot of time into this and the reason I know that is because I got approached to see what I could do when the site was offline and they were still trying to figure out what to do. Unfortunately, when a site's only existing documentation exists in the WayBackMachine that makes it basically impossible to scrape.
And this isn't even the first time this happened, when Yahoo Groups shutdown, ArchiveTeam had trouble talking to MOST older simmers because they were so fucking touchy about their content. Literally our community has a reputation for being obnoxious about TOUs and 'rights' to the point where they'd basically given up trying to archive anything that had to do with The Sims.
So if you thought that this was because I was concerned that you were running into the ground. Rest assured, I'm doing this in case you get in a fatal car accident so we don't have to call your mourning loved ones to ask the very cringe question: "Do you know about the forum from 2008 that your spouse/son/father/sister/daughter/mother ran? Can we have access to it please. I have recolors that I'd DESPERATELY love to get back."
As far as bandwidth goes, I do my best to make sure that I scrape with as little intrusion as possible and your load is lighter since you don't host any of the actual CC or even 75% of your own images.
Now, we could talk about what this really is: a pissing contest. But don't worry. I have no real interest in encroaching on your territory of running an alternative style sims 2 forum from 2008. I love GOS, or I wouldn't have made sure that it didn't fucking disappear into the ether.
But believe me, no one is choosing to look through a list of 10,000 zip files without images or descriptions as a replacement for a fully functional forum with like... images of the items. My archive of GOS is pretty much only for creators and people who know EXACTLY what they're looking for.
And that goes similarly for everyone worried about their precious TOUs in the comments of the original post. No one, and I mean no one, prefers to dig through an entire fucking ass ton of files labeled shit like "[POOKLET] SKYSIMS MESH 007 - UNNATURAL COLORS"
In fact, I've had several creators thank me because the scrape unearthed some shit they'd thought they'd lost. And if you don't like it, or me, get in line. I assure you there is metric fuck ton of people from patreon who hate me far more.
However, I would like to say that whenever you / or any other creator who is mad about this / literally any simmer, is searching for a dependency because someone got in some obscure internet drama and deleted all their cc or Mediafire got shut down by the RIAA or whatever the fuck.
You, for as "annoyed" as you are, will remember the big ass zip file and CTRL + F your ass to what you're looking for. And I'm going to say it now, for when that moment comes:
You're welcome. No hard feelings.
totally unrelated to anything currently happening, just thought I'd reblog this. You know, bc the unexpected can happen at literally any time.
Putting off setting up my new computer because I don't want to deal with installing TS2...
It scares me. Help
Idc about anything but clothes and hair, but the Paralives' assets are saved as .fbx files so they can be opened in Blender easy.
The default rig is also roughly the same scale as The Sims bodies, just shorter. Base position is the much better a-pose used by TS3/4 (and not the t-pose used by TS2).
Also the hairs I opened were in quads instead of tris for some reason? That's a weird one. Most game engines can only handle tris.
Polycounts for hairs seem to be coming in between 1.5K-3K, which is about on par with a lot of modern TS4 hairs that tend to cap at 4K with some exception. Hairs also mix sculpted bases + accent strands with alpha layers
This might already be common knowledge idk
The base body. Some thoughts under the cut
Idc about anything but clothes and hair, but the Paralives' assets are saved as .fbx files so they can be opened in Blender easy.
The default rig is also roughly the same scale as The Sims bodies, just shorter. Base position is the much better a-pose used by TS3/4 (and not the t-pose used by TS2).
Also the hairs I opened were in quads instead of tris for some reason? That's a weird one. Most game engines can only handle tris.
Polycounts for hairs seem to be coming in between 1.5K-3K, which is about on par with a lot of modern TS4 hairs that tend to cap at 4K with some exception. Hairs also mix sculpted bases + accent strands with alpha layers
This might already be common knowledge idk
You know what, fuck it, my critique of Paralives after like 2 days, focusing on the negative because everyone else has the positives covered and I just rage quit because of the glitching:
Build Mode:
object placement is 100% off-grid so lining things up is an actual nightmare
the snapping mechanic is unintuitive and doesn't snap to what you would expect, adding to the difficulties with lining things up
the cabinets need another variant where they mirror as they expand so the handles behave like "real" cabinets
speaking of snapping, range hoods don't center over the stoves and idk that just feels like a weird oversight
some patterns are unusable on certain objects because of the free scaling causing warping, notably being double beds, aka one of the most-used objects in game, which again feels like a weird oversight
this is petty, but the amount of deco is annoying purely because it was obviously prioritized over actual game mechanics
Paramaker:
the one base body is nice in theory, but in practice it means the clothes tend to fit weird
flat chests look awkward and patterns can warp over them
smaller waists cause the mesh to concave in making baggy clothing look and behave awkward
it's clear significantly more effort was put into the feminine options, but the fewer masculine options is obfuscated by having all options unlocked for all characters all the time
while the animations can dynamically adjust for the height slider, they can't for heeled shoes making the para taller
the personality points aren't super intuitive for what they do
idk where to put this, but the characters do not mesh well with their environment
Storytellers:
good idea in concept, horrible execution
if this was added to TS4, people would riot
I didn't try the dog, but the two humans felt the same?
like the hard mode wasn't harder and only positive things happened
you should be able to turn it off or fully ignore it
Live Mode:
live mode is busted, end of story, and was clearly the lowest priority
I'M GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE PREMADES IN ANOTHER SECTION, but I have no idea if it was related to using premades, but my paras kept glitching when I asked them to try for a baby
the paras kept becoming embarrassed from "witnessing an intimate encounter" over their own intimate encounters, with a 12+ hour embarassed moodlet making literally anything else impossible
when I finally got the damn babies (yes, I said babies plural), the default ~2 hour labor of doing absolutely nothing but screaming in pain while the dad did nothing... I can't believe it actually made me miss the "preparental panic" nonsense from The Sims
babies and toddlers are so glitchy they are nigh unplayable (granted, the game decided I needed twins... but that's not my fault)
outside of the glitching, the parents have to physically pick them up before any other options appear, and then it's a 50/50 if they add the option to the queue
related, there's no ability to interact with the highchair or tub for the toddler until they're picked up, so you have to pick them up first, then the high chair will let you click on it to feed them or the tub will bring up the option to bathe them, AND THEN it's a 50/50 if they do that correctly
I think the crib for the baby was the same but I don't remember because it was so annoying
supposedly, toddlers can feed themselves, but I never saw it
you can't store away leftovers so there's nothing to do but let food rot
some meals don't have the option for family sizes, but you can't just make multiple servings because the para will just by default eat whatever they cook as part of the cooking interaction
it took them 2-3 hours to get home from work when they were routing correctly and not getting stuck walking in circles
the devs added the subways, but paras will not use them for routing, hence them taking multiple in-game hours to walk across the map to do anything
if you're going to have an open world you HAVE to think about how long it will take the characters to route around it Jesus Christ
so many of the animations are clearly "inspired" by The Sims that it's a little uncanny at times
the repair person wouldn't leave on their own after completing repairs, then when I kicked them out, they knocked on the door and announced they were here to make repairs
there's little to indicate how long certain actions in the queue will take to complete
likewise, there's little to indicate changes in relationship status as characters get to know one another
there are too few voice lines for how long characters have to talk to accomplish anything
there are so few romance interactions, and the little not-a-minigame when the conversation bar fills up just feels like a way to avoid adding more animations
their autonomy when left to their own devices seemed to get better as they got more skills, but lower-skilled paras did absolutely nothing except idle and play on their phones
everything was so glitchy and like I'm trying to cut them some slack, because this isn't the community to discuss what makes a game ready for "early access", but personally, I don't feel like it was ready to release but it looks like they've been losing Patrons so I guess the money was running dry
Premades:
I think at least some of my weird glitches were because I used the premades instead of paras I made in the paramaker
the premades have their flags set behind the scenes, so both families I played (Dacier and Patel) were confused as to their actual relationship status
related to the above, it triggered massive issues with getting the paras to try for a baby, insofar as one family just kept glitching out and the other idk when it worked but FINALLY I could take a pregnancy test
the Patels kept wanting to propose to one another despite being married for some reason, and at least once the Dacier household forgot I'd gotten them engaged
I need to check more of the families and houses, but for at least SOME of the premades, I do not think the houses they were living in were designed for them
for example, Asha and Rahul's house is full of trash despite neither of them being messy, and there is clearly a pristine room for a teenager or young adult and the other room doesn't fit their vibe either, and MAYBE you can stretch it to some tragedy with them both being gloomy, but idk man, there's no systems in the game to play out anything like that so I'm left scratching my head at the purpose or how I was supposed to implement a tragic backstory
there's no family tree, so if there was supposed to be an implied tragedy, they have no kid to mourn
premade paras don't seem to have a lot of skills and both of Patels were Rank 1 of the respective jobs despite being adults, which again, I would not raise an eyebrow about if there was a lore reason except that THERE ISN'T ONE
it's honestly early TS4-levels of premades
related to all of that, there's not a lot to go on when selecting from the map a household to play
Overall:
I don't know, it's got potential, but I can't judge it as it is now on it's potential. And like maybe I'm the only one having these issues, but I really wanted to just play the game and not get bogged down in the paramaker or build mode, and I'm so frustrated afterwards I'm writing this.
Maybe I'll actually go play TS4 again to make a more "fair" comparison. Idk. I'm tired.
After playing one family for three days and another for a week, Paralives is ~a hot mess~ and we'd be doing it a disservice to pretend like it's not because we're desperate for a Sims competitor.
It COULD be a Sims competitor, but in it's current state, it's not, and we can't judge it on it's potential but what the devs have actually given us so far.
The feminine millennial urge to go full Hot Topic on your Sims game.
back from vacation so some updates on the current rabbithole
UV mapping is my passion
fallen down a rabbit hole again don't wait up
Can we please fuck off with this nonsense that CC creators who share free content should make content only to very specific, arbitrary and malleable "standards" and anything less than that isn't worth sharing or actively worthy of public derision?
Everyone, genuinely, is only "obligated" make the content they want for themselves out of the weird compulsion learning to make CC creates in us all. Anyone choosing to share the content they make with others is a gift to the community.
"But what's the point of sharing something that isn't usable by the most people?"
I dunno. Because it's for their game and maybe someone can use it? Because the mesh was being stupid and they're tired of it? Because they don't want to?
Don't like something someone else has made? Make it yourself. Don't like how someone converted something? Convert it yourself. A mesh doesn't have morphs or a specific recolor you want? Add it yourself.
No one is stopping you.
A quick note about this really amazing breakthrough on pink soup by spockthewok because some people don't know what pink soup actually is on the game's side.
Basically, when devs are programing a game, to check if textures aren't loading, they often put a really obnoxious, eye-catching texture in to make it easier to spot.
Other examples include Valve's iconic pink checkboard, Bethesda's similar hot pink/purple textures (video 1, video 2), and Sims 4's gradient question mark and demonic question mark textures.
These are, as said above, obnoxious and eye-catching on purpose because they are easy to spot even on small objects or in the distance, and their sole purpose is to inform devs that textures aren't loading properly. So basic game logic is if the intended textures don't load, default to obnoxious texture.
Pink flashing and pink soup have always been the result of the intended textures failing to load en masse, and the game is pulling the obnoxious debug texture. And now we actually have a working theory as to what's causing textures not to load based on spockthewok's research and master thesis.
What it's really important to take out of this is that the failsafe isn't directly triggering pink flashing.
Pink flashing is an indirect consequence of the failsafe panicking and telling the game to stop loading textures (and possibly anything else deemed resource-intensive) because on a 32-bit computer, TS2 using more than the 2GB of RAM intended can full on crash your machine and cause serious issues that obviously the devs didn't want.
So, since part of the failsafe's panicking is to stop textures from loading as they're very resource intensive, the game pulls the "shit isn't loading" texture instead of the actual textures, because TS2 deemed itself running out of memory and crashing is better than the whole computer running out of memory and crashing. In result, pink soup.
We're only really noticing this now because the 4GB patch means, in theory, TS2 should be able to call on up to 4GB of memory, but due to the failsafe, this isn't entirely true. You can now technically play past what was historically possible, but honestly the same failsafe that results in pink soup is probably designed to ultimately crash the game to prevent catastrophe.
(Which does also mean there's a possibility that raising the cap for the failsafe to trigger or removing it out-right might cut down on at least some of the crashing.)
TLDR; Pink soup is the result of a default texture the game pulls when for some reason it won't or can't load textures, and historically the failsafe that told the game to stop loading textures when the used memory exceeded 2GB was probably a very responsible decision on the devs part and they probably couldn't anticipate modern 64-bit machines.
It feels like everything on the marketplace is sad beige baby core.
If anyone needed me I’ve been playing Pokopia basically non-stop since release.
And then I started a second save in Chinese yesterday after I got mentally stuck.
The most disgusting thing about the Marketplace is that they've finally made an official modding tool for their 12-year-old game only to gatekeep it for the illusion of exclusivity and profit.
Wait, no the more I think about this the angrier I get:
You have to prove yourself a competent CC creator using fan-made tools for a chance to even be invited to join the exclusive club. It's the fucking equivalent of needing experience to get experience.
This further puts way too much emphasis on a few creators EA deems worthy of sitting at the table at the expense of literally everyone else.
The Sims 2 fucking shipped with the ability to make custom clothing recolors and genetics by literally anyone, and The Sims 4 can't even be assed to throw a bone by creating an official recoloring tool usable by everyone.
God just like fuck EA.
Also like fuck the creators going along with this scheme.
The most disgusting thing about the Marketplace is that they've finally made an official modding tool for their 12-year-old game only to gatekeep it for the illusion of exclusivity and profit.
