iCad's Simblr Thingy

As of April 6, 2020, this Tumblr is on permanent hiatus. I have moved my online activity to my Pillowfort. Feel free to contact/follow me there, if you like. The only posts that will happen here will be links to upload posts I make to Pillowfort. All of the downloads on this blog can be accessed from the "Downloads" link below, or if you don't want it categorized, all CC posts are tagged "my downloads." My TOU: Do whatever you want with my stuff. Just don't make money off of it (including via Adfly and its ilk) because that's both illegal and unethical, son.

[dramallamadingdang]

Mooooving!

So....I decided to start a new, separate Tumblr account. It be here. There's exactly one post on it right now. I did this because I want a separate TS3-related dashboard instead of mashing in TS3 stuff with all the TS2 stuff because that’s overloading my poor old brain.  Basically, it's a fresh start without really being a fresh start.

Why does this matter to anyone but me? Well, if you follow me on my current TS3-dedicated sideblog and want to continue to do so, you should probably unfollow that sideblog (which may or may not get deleted; I haven’t decided) and go follow the new main blog instead. I will likely follow back anyone who posts TS3 content. And if you follow me on my current main blog and want to continue following me for whatever reason, I'll be active on the new blog, not so much on the old one. Well, maybe "active" isn't really the right word at this point, but I'll be more active on the new blog than I will be on the current main blog. So if you want to keep keeping up with me and don't mind TS3 stuff, that's the place to do it.

The new blog'll be TS3-focused, but I'll probably post non-Sims-related nonsense on there on occasion, too. (I always tag such stuff "non sims," though, so you can easily block it if you don't wanna see my nonsense.) I'll also be sharing some stuff I've made, and there'll be gameplay pics, and all the other usual crap for a Simblr, once I get it all up and running.

[pudding-on-parade]

Thought I’d share one of my favorite YouTube channels. This is a live cam of the aurora borealis, and there’s a camera operator, so it’s always pointing at the best view, if there is one on any particular night.

The cam is in Churchill, Canada, where the time zone is UTC -5, which is convenient for me because it’s only an hour ahead of my own time zone. 

The show was spectacular tonight!

[dramallamadingdang]

I thought I’d put this on this blog, too, since it’s not Sims-related, anyway. :)

[dramallamadingdang]

No pitchforks here :P You said you run TS3 with no lag and all maxed out. That's my dream lol. Do you know your computer specs? This would be so helpful for my next build. Thanks! :)

Aw, but what if I want pitchforks?? :)

I know some of the specs of this machine, which is kind a bruiser, but it needed to be for some non-Sims-related stuff I want to do on it.

It has an Core i9 processor (Rocket Lake, I think it's called?) running at 3.5GHz, which hubby has overclocked. 32 GB of DD4 RAM of some fancy gamer type. (G Skill or something? It's rainbow-colored. Pretty, but weird.) A 4TB M.2 SSD (which TS3 is installed on). It's also water-cooled and the case lights up in pretty colors and all that jazz. LOL. The only thing that isn't a bruiser on it, ironically, is its video card. It's got the 4GB NVIDIA GTX 1050Ti in it that I bought for my old machine. The reason for this is that the RTX 3080 I want is about $2200 right now, and I just can't with that. When GPUs stop being stupid-expensive, I'll be upgrading for the sake of other stuff I want to run, but the 1050Ti is fine for TS3 purposes.

THAT said, I'm pretty sure the more important things for TS3 are the processor and the SSD. Because of the open world, TS3 is more of a processor hog than anything, and a good video card can't outweigh how much a slow HDD and an overworked processor gums up the works when playing TS3. It's amazing that EA screwed up enough that you need a machine with 2021 hardware to play a game made in 2009 with any kind of acceptable smoothness. :P

And, aside from the hardware, there are of course all the other things one can do to make TS3 perform a little better, but I'm sure you know about that stuff.

[dramallamadingdang]

You may want to remove the permanent hiatus notice on yer blog! I got scared lmao that you were gone!

Well, I am mostly gone, especially in terms of TS2. I haven't played it in three or four years now. And now I've got a zippy new computer that my hubbo built for me, and I haven't installed TS2 on it. Frankly, I'm pretty sure I'm never going to install it on this machine, partly because I don't want to fight Windows 10 (which I had to have for some of the hardware in this machine as well as for some of the software I want to run on it) to get it running, but mostly because...I think I'm just done with TS2.

I did relatively recently set up an attempt to play a mods-but-no-CC TS2, and once I got things set up (which took a long time because TS2 is a pain in the ass when it comes to that), I played it for an hour or two and found myself thoroughly bored. So, it appears that twelve years of playing TS2 was enough for me. If I get the urge to play it again, I can hook up my old machine and poke at the game on it, but I don't know that I'll ever do that. So, I guess everyone who reads this can consider this my official goodbye to TS2. :(

Aside from that, a year or two back, I started a phase of just not wanting to have an online presence at all, and that's why I went on hiatus. I'm still in that phase, though I might be coming out of it. Maybe. I don't know. If I do come out of my phase...

Well, I'm a TS3 simmer now because, now that I have it modded out the wazoo, I like it a lot better than TS2. (I know: BLASPHEMY! Go ahead and come at me with the pitchforks. :) There's just so much more to do in it, even without mods. So, now that I have a computer that runs a fully-tricked-out, all-EPs, CC-loaded, NVIDIA-tweaked, ReShaded TS3 with no lag whatsoever and no strain on the computer, I'm doing a CC overhaul, doing some weeding, grabbing new stuff, preg-morphing all the teen/adult clothing, and retexturing hairs and all that jazz. When I get that all done and start playing for real, maybe I'll post stuff online, maybe including sharing TS3 stuff I've made. If that happens, I'll probably use my TS3-dedicated sideblog, since that's already set up and all although it needs an overhaul, too, because then I won't be ticking off people who followed me for TS2 stuff. So, that's where I'll mostly be, should I come back to Tumblr, and if you're interested in what I might do in (and share for) TS3, you might want to unfollow my main account here and follow this side account instead. Or follow both of them. Or none of them. Whatever. :)

[dramallamadingdang]

Here's another "I made this thing, so have it if you want it" post. I made it a while ago, but I had a spare hour or two to actually play the game today, so I was able to take some pics of it.

It's a default moon replacement for TS3, made because I wanted a moon that was a planet but I didn't want the planet to be Earth or any other recognizable planet. So, I found an image of a fake planet on the interwebs (It's hard to find one that doesn't have a shadow on it!), tweaked it a bit and added some clouds and crap, and...Well, there it is. It's huge in the pics because I have my moon radius set to 600 in my lighting mod, which is like 3x normal size, I think. It'll be normal size in your game unless you also tweak the moon radius.

The "title" pic has Reshade applied to it, just to reduce the banding in the sky for aesthetics' sake, but the other pics are unedited except for cropping and resizing. The texture images in this thing are all 1024x1024 and there are 7 of 'em, so...yeah. I wanted higher res because I like a big frickin' moon and I didn't want a blurry big frickin' moon...planet...whatever.

Download here.

[dramallamadingdang]

Welcome to Sim State!

*insert orgasmic “Yes! Give it to me! Yes, yes, YEEEEEES!” here*

...too bad I have no time to play or do much else on a computer at the moment. *sigh*

[dramallamadingdang]

I got tired of a general lack of preg-morphed TS3 clothing for teens of both sexes, particularly certain types of clothing that I need for certain ways I play...so I learned how to add preg morphs to clothing myself. 

Thankfully, it’s a billion times easier and faster to do than it is for TS2 because there are tools for TS3 that are, quite frankly, magical. So at least it won’t take me three years to morph all my meshes. Still quite the project, though because of got lots of morph-less stuff that I like.

[dramallamadingdang]

Fiddling around with a quick photoshop technique for making gameplay pics look old-fashioned. 

I’m forever screwing around with creating an off-grid “homesteading” build-a-village type play-style, starting with an empty world, that works in TS3. I think I’ve got it pretty much down. (I just wish there were more animal husbandry and crafting opportunities with TS3! Like, I wish @fracturedmoonlight did stuff for TS3! :) ) Anyway, if I ever decide to do a “story”-type thing somewhere, I thought it’d be nice to do all the pics in this sort of style. (Plus I’ve just been in a photoshopping mood in general, so...yeah, fiddling.)

[dramallamadingdang]

Here’s another of those “I dunno if anyone would want this, but I did it, so here!” things.

I de-sims3pack’ed my TS3 game because reasons. However, some of my favorite patterns are, so far as I could find, only in sims3pack format, and some of those, once converted to .package files, needed to be fixed so that their resources don’t overwrite each other. So, I learned how to do that. And I converted/fixed the above patterns by @chisimi. And now I share. Because I totally hate all you TS2 simmers. (Kidding! :) )

I claim no credit for these at all. I can’t even claim credit for the pictures since all I did was yoink them off of Chisami’s tumblr. I didn’t even rename the files. All I did was extract all 80 patterns to packages and then fiddle around with some numbers in s3pe. Mind-numbing, yes, but not credit-worthy.

Download them here. (Warning! TS3 stuff! Not TS2 stuff! Also not TS4 stuff ‘cuz ew!)

Note: Some of the files in the two separate folders in the download have the same file name but they are different patterns. So, if for some reason you don’t merge your CC and you stuff all these in your game, then you’ll need to rename some of them unless you keep them in separate folders.

[dramallamadingdang]

I figured out retexturing TS3 hairs because although there are already tons out there, none of the textures already out there are exactly what I want because I'm way too picky for my own good. I like non-shiny textures with a lot of color variation and "strandiness" but not over-sharpened strandiness. Basically, realistic-looking but not-too-shiny because I get tired of my Sims looking like they just left a shampoo commercial shoot. Turns out that a texture I made to use on TS2 hairs actually works a lot better on TS3 hairs because of the way hair colors work in TS3. Maybe I was prescient or something.

Anyway, now I'm retexturing hairs out the wazoo. I wanted a visual reference for myself, so I set up a Tumblr exclusively to house TS3 hair retextures. It's mostly for my own reference, but it's not like it's hard to upload and link them as I go, in case anyone else should want them. Plus, I can then redownload them myself when I inenvitably delete ones that I actually really wanted.

So, if you like how the hair looks in the above pics, and you want ones like it for your own game, go and follow my TS3 hair tumblr here: https://pudding-hair.tumblr.com

There's a handful of hairs uploaded already, and there will be many more to come. And just to be clear: The pic on top was taken in CAS and the one on the bottom was taken in-game with no lighting mod, no HQ, and no Reshade. And neither of them are edited in any way other than cropping and resizing. So, depending on what you use in your game, it might or might not be WYSIWYG.

[dramallamadingdang]

Hi, I was wondering if you could help me? Once upon a time you had a neighbourhood where you used criquette's rural lanes in combination with invisible roads. I was trying to do the same in my game, but the lanes turn invisible when placed on where the roads are. Would you have any idea what may cause that?

Hi there! :D Wow, it's amazing how much you forget when you haven't played a game in about two years...

Anyway, IF I'm remembering right, in order to have the rural lanes show in lot view, you still have to remove the road entirely on each lot even when using invisible roads. I don’t even know why because they have transparent textures, but...whatever. Ya gotta remove the roads. Because reasons, I guess. So, use the Lot Adjuster to remove the road where the rural lane is, then load up the lot. If I’m remembering right, when you load it up again, you’ll have the standard “road” floor tiles there, which you have to turn on moveobjects and remove. THEN you should be able to see the rural lane.

...I think...If I’m remembering right. :) I do remember it being a pain in the ass because I had to keep going in and out of the game to use the Lot Adjuster, anyway...

Also: Sorry, I wanted to answer this one privately, but I saved it as a draft to do some research and apparently saving a PM reply as a draft removes the ability to send the answer privately. :P

[clericalrodent]

Sorry, I wasn’t clear in my ask. I’m having trouble with the lanes not showing in neighbourhood view.

I have a situation like in the picture where the lanes just disappear where the actual roads are. I’ve checked the package files but there’s nothing wrong there and I can place every single other hood deco on roads.

[dramallamadingdang]

Ohhhh, neighborhood view! Yeah, for that you have to turn off displaying roads. It’s because the neighborhood view textures aren’t transparent; they just have textures that match the terrain textures. (If you make them transparent, then you just get holes in the terrain in neighborhood view.) So, the lanes will be covered in neighborhood view. 

There’s a cheat to turn off road display. It’s something like displayneighborhoodroads on/off. Unfortunately, it doesn’t “stick.” You have to enter the cheat every time you go out to neighborhood view.

[dramallamadingdang]

Hi, I was wondering if you could help me? Once upon a time you had a neighbourhood where you used criquette's rural lanes in combination with invisible roads. I was trying to do the same in my game, but the lanes turn invisible when placed on where the roads are. Would you have any idea what may cause that?

Hi there! :D Wow, it's amazing how much you forget when you haven't played a game in about two years...

Anyway, IF I'm remembering right, in order to have the rural lanes show in lot view, you still have to remove the road entirely on each lot even when using invisible roads. I don’t even know why because they have transparent textures, but...whatever. Ya gotta remove the roads. Because reasons, I guess. So, use the Lot Adjuster to remove the road where the rural lane is, then load up the lot. If I’m remembering right, when you load it up again, you’ll have the standard “road” floor tiles there, which you have to turn on moveobjects and remove. THEN you should be able to see the rural lane.

...I think...If I’m remembering right. :) I do remember it being a pain in the ass because I had to keep going in and out of the game to use the Lot Adjuster, anyway...

Also: Sorry, I wanted to answer this one privately, but I saved it as a draft to do some research and apparently saving a PM reply as a draft removes the ability to send the answer privately. :P

[dramallamadingdang]

Hi! I dowloaded your stone road for lush terrains default, and it looks great - I love it! However I can't get it to work on lot view. I can't find any overlay "floors" from the build mode selection either to lay over the game's road. What am I doing wrong? English isn't my native language so I feel I've missed something.

Hiya! The road overlay piece should be in the dreaded Misc Deco category of your Buy catalog. However, it’s free (or at least very cheap), so it should be toward the front of that catalog.

If, for some reason, it’s still not there, then try re-downloading the mesh from here: https://simfileshare.net/folder/21391/ There are a couple different versions, so you’ll need to pick the one that matches your game configuration.

[dramallamadingdang]

Hello Icad! Iam trully amazed and grateful with your creations. Specially those cliffs for neighborhood deco. My hoods have a new lookwith them <3 I would ask if it would be possible to add a recolor of those in the future? Maybe you can add textures of water, to make them look like waterfalls. With something like that and some of the hood effects it would be possible to make fake rivers and waterfalls in different levels of the hood terrain, and this also will be visible from lot view.

Hi there! I’m glad you like my stuffs! :D

But, it would likely be very difficult if not impossible to make a convincing-looking water recolor. In order for it to look convincing, it’d need to be semi-transparent, but then the whole texture of the object would be semi-transparent, not just the water. Maybe someone who knows how to make objects could make something convincing-looking, with a separate texture just for the water, but unfortunately I am not an object maker, just a Photoshop monkey. :)

[dramallamadingdang]

Guess who figured out how to retexture hair in TS3?

Guess who is now completely and utterly screwed?

[dramallamadingdang]

I don't know if this will be of use to anyone else, but I thought I'd share anyway. :) It's a spreadsheet I use to help me with gardening in TS3, which is perhaps the game feature that I like the most. Its complexity is one of the reasons why, now, I prefer playing TS3 over playing TS2. In short, I use the info on this spreadsheet to make gardening/farming more realistic in terms of harvest times, for all the harvestable plants I have in my game, including all of the CC ones that exist, as far as I know.

More info and the download link are on my Pillowfort.

[dramallamadingdang]

♪♫♪ Come sail away with me... ♫♪♫

(As a side note, @nilxis‘s Uranesia lighting is just *chef’s kiss*. I use the No Green Sunrises + Intense blue water + Dark Night version, and it’s everything I want. <3 )