♡ hi, i'm jessy. formerly lovely-wow. wcif-friendly and ask-friendly always but suuuuuper slow on replies so ask at your own risk. :) i tag nonsim posts. check out my about me for more info/links. here but not here at the moment ♡
No Outdoor Shadows Part I (Part II is here)
Simsanto Inc. shared some of these a few years ago, I added some others and combined them into two files:
1. zz_shasta_NoOutdoorShadows_supplies is only useful if you have ft and al.
2. zz_shasta_NoOutdoorShadows_rugs is only useful if you have HugeLunatic's Off Grid Rugs Fix. It shouldn't hurt anything if you don't have all eps/sps.
^ I couldn't remove the above rugs' outdoor shadows, phooey. If I had, the file would need to load after Lunie's zz_HL_RugFixesDL_ALL. I kept the zz_ file name in case I ever figure out the baseball rug.
ts2 download sfs - box
Many thanks and credit to:
@simsantoinc, please get their shadowless bg & mg flowerbeds
@hugelunatic for their off-grid rugs fix
Recommended:
@tvickiesims' algae fixes
edit! June 2026
A friend let me know why I couldn't remove the shadows from the rugs in the last pic: load order :/
Numenor's updated _EnableColorOptionsGMND should be placed loose (not sub-foldered) in your Downloads folder
zz_shasta_NoOutdoorShadows_rugs needs to load after HugeLunatic's zz_HL_RugFixesDL_ALL.
Heyyyy, so I'm still learning my way around making Paralives CC at a snail's space cuz I got bit by the Stardew Valley bug recently, but I did manage to convert my old HQ eye set thanks to @myshunosun's excellent tutorial!
I've also noticed some quirks when it comes to making eyes that I figured I would share for anyone else who's interested in making their own, so, notes on that below the read more!
Basics: If you're at all familiar with TS3 CC-making, you'll be pretty comfortable here. There's a grayscale texture and a tricolor mask that determines how colors are distributed by the game's color picker. By default, the eye "zones" are the sclera, outer iris, and inner iris, each one controlled by a different color on the tricolor mask. The texture formats are PNG, though, so no worries about fucking around with DDS files and channel layers (which is a relief for me, personally). The texture for the eye is about 150x150px, and it's spherical, so converting eyes from TS2 in particular will be difficult if you don't have a hi-res texture as your starting point. Not impossible, but difficult.
Separate textures: Each eye texture is separate so you can decide whether you want to mirror the texture or have completely different ones per eye, so that's neat! The same goes for the tricolor masks, so if you want to have slightly different coloration in each eye, you can.
Pupil dilation: The Paralives eye mesh reaaaaally stretches out the pupil. I'm not sure off the top of my head how this compares to the TS3 eye mesh, but for TS2 textures at least, you're going to have to shrink the pupil a lot to get it looking how it did in TS2.
Separate highlights: Exactly what it says on the tin. Highlights for the eyes are controlled by a separate resource in game, so you can mix and match them. Other people have already figured out how to make additional custom highlights but that's still above my current skill level. When making your eye texture, you'll want to blend out any preexisting highlights on the texture itself.
Sclera washout: Although you can put textures on the sclera of the eye, it renders weirdly in game. Any texture you put on it turns gray and light textures don't show up. I tried adding a little bit of pink and faint eye veins, but the changes ended up not showing up at all in game. It looked identical to the default sclera. However, some folks have managed to make changes to the sclera with darker texturing like these ones by CodeNekko, but it looks like the texture has to be very dark for it to show up.
Pupil lightening with saturated colors: The way the game renders eye colors, anything at 100 brightness causes the pupils to turn from black to a light gray, even if the actual color of the pupil texture is pure black (#000000). This unfortunately includes very saturated colors that aren't actually light (such as #0000ff) but are expressed with 100 brightness on the color wheel. I did a lot of fucking around trying to mitigate this, but didn't have any luck. It might be possible if there's a way to enable a fourth color channel on eyes to control the pupils separately, but I have no idea how to go about adding additional channels to eyes or if that's even possible.
Note that I might be wrong abt some stuff or it might change in early access, this is just what I have found in the course of messing around with this one little project! Okay, hope that was helpful to some folks! Back to the Stardew spreadsheet grind lol.
I need to pay my internet and power bills. Internet is $85.34 and power is $139.27. I would really appreciate some help if possible. I still have a few days on both, as I managed to extend the power bill too.
I am trying and I know it's not enough. I should be doing, but my MDD and/or Bipolar 1 are currently making it difficult to even get out of bed. I'm having a severe depressive episode. Trauma cracks from taking care of my parents are showing through in my brain. I can't stay calm for the life of me, unless I'm so medicated that I feel a distinct cognitive decline.
Making a harsh effort to get some facility to pay for my GED if possible. I may not know anything about this until Friday though (writing this June 7 2026)
If you could please help me, here are my paylinks. I would appreciate any assistance.
Like many of us, I grew up with Garden of Shadows. To me, it was more than just a forum. It was a place I could ask for help, learn new skills and, best of all, find amazing content in any style I could possibly want. I loved the board names, the people, the themes; everything, really.
And I admit I was more than a little heartbroken to find it gone.
After mulling it over, I decided that I wanted to preserve what I possibly could. I spent a few hours yesterday running through strategies and ideas about how to best go about it, and the best I could come up with was, well, exactly the same.
So, here it is: the Garden of Shadows mirror forum.
I've only just started, but I hope to add a little bit to it every day. The primary focus will be on preserving all the knowledge and custom content. I'm tackling it myself, but if you feel so inclined, you're more than welcome to join in.
--
PS. I am not here to offend, break Terms of Use, or to step on any toes. This is simply an effort to preserve content and knowledge for a game I have played and loved for over twenty years. Thank you ♥
Just saw the most upsetting news and i don't want to check bc i'm going to be very devastated seeing it. An end of an era and time. I really am upset by this
I am so fucking sick of AI enshittification. What do you mean I have to switch from the search engine I've been using since childhood because Google decided that I'd be better off talking to an AI chatbox than parsing search results with my own fucking brain
also ed and stede are going to live here eventually, in theory 😂 right now it's kinda a weird mishmash of natural and unnatural nature things, lol, but someday.......... it will be all unnatural 😤
i think i did a decent job on landscaping here, which is something i dont normally say 😂
also yes it's based on that one house i made a decade ago that is still my fav 😂 this is just the pastel version, ts2 was grunge version i guess
