Nixed Sims

NixNivis | Swedish | she/her | 40+ | WCIF Friendly | Sims 2 only

[fibrearts]

Starry Night Microsweater

2022 1.3" x 1.6" ~50,000 stitches, 76 stitches/inch 500+ hours in the making. Over 70 different colors of silk thread including thread combinations

[jabberwockypie]

That’s Althea Crome’s work. You’ve seen her work before if you’ve ever seen the movie Coraline because she did the teeny tiny star sweater and gloves for the stop motion puppets to wear.

She does, however, work even smaller.

[catandsusim]

SimPE for Mac is HERE!!!

SimPE for Mac now exists! It is a Wine wrapper around the Windows SimPE 0.8.2.11, patched for Mac file paths, loading objects and TXTR files from the Stuff Packs Huge Lunatic extracted, if they are installed in BonVoyage/TSData/Res/Catalog/Bins. Fixed Wine weirdness of not properly displaying the Resource List. Should work on both Intel and M series Macs, but is dependent on Rosetta on Apple M series.

Like all Wine apps, your local hard drive will be the Z drive in the open and save file menus. To get to your Sims 2 folder, you click Z>Users>yourusername>Library>Containers>com.aspyr.sims2.appstore>Data>Library>Application Support>Aspyr>The Sims 2.

It is not uploaded to MTS, because it exceeds the maximum file size for upload. I am working on that. The wine wrapper makes this a large app. Like 1.2 gig. I went through becoming an official Apple developer and getting the app approved, so MacOS won't complain and refuse to run it. You can download the .dmg now from my github. https://github.com/rhiamom/SimPE-Mac-Wine/releases

One year of my life, well-spent! And please, don’t just like this, please please reblog it!

[lamare-sims]

Check out @catandsusim blog, especially if you’re a Mac user 👀

[platinumaspiration]

Help Wanted

Hi all! So I'm looking for a couple of things :)

First and foremost, I'm looking for 1-3 play testers for a toddler default set I completed. I'm notorious for TERRIBLE play testing and this will help me be able to move forward into other ages.

If you are down, please let me know and I'll send you the link. This default set includes brand new outfits + access to a spreadsheet so you know which is which and you can leave me notes on any fixes. I'm also open to changing outfits for the defaults (though I'd prefer not to convert more outfits, I can if it makes sense lol). I'm really looking for bugs or wonky joints.

Second, and this is a big ask, I'm asking for long term help with the @sims2tutorials page. I've been doing it by myself for a long while and it's very much not up-to-date and messy, predominantly with me going on a semi-hiatus for a while. If you're not able to assist long term, sending in tutorials is always helpful <3

Thank you, all, again!

[lestatfag]

STAY SAFE!! [ID: the Gilbert Baker pride flag with the words “Happy pride to all those who are unable to celebrate openly and safely. You are loved and seen!” in all-caps black text over it. /end ID]

[louisegluckpdf]

next dynamic were sexualizing is that of a bull and a toreador

[star-thief]

[brainstreams]

[teaaddictyt]

22 years later, give your Sims 2 kitchens a pantry.

As I hinted at with my club counter mapping fix, I've been invested in a long-term-want-to-do-this-one-day project the last week or so. Pantries. ALL the pantries.

Dusting off my very meagre and rusty Blender skills, I have made some things for you all.

All pics and details below.

The value kitchen gets a pantry at 2 heights - lower (for more generic cupboard vibes) and ceiling height.

Quaint kitchen looking cute. This one is ceiling height

One of my favourites, the Epikouros set, also ceiling height

The "blue ribbon" seasons country kitchen gets a non-ceiling height pantry cos I wanted the pretties on top.

Chiclettina Fjord, at ceiling height (get yourself a non-blue glass default though, it looks better I promise)

The University Industrial Steelate kitchen also gets 2 height variations because I could see these cupboards being useful in a variety of different settings and thought options might be nice (medical cabinets maybe?)

Forbidden fruit, just ceiling height

The club kitchen, also just ceiling height, and make sure you grab my counter mapping fix cos it makes these counters look SO much nicer

The "Fat City" kitchen, ceiling height only. This is actually a really nice kitchen set with some nice recolours.

Castanoga, only ceiling height. This one was the bane of my existence and definitely the hardest one to get right.

Mission, which I wasn't gonna do cos I NEVER use this kitchen, but I thought others might like it. That pantry is at ceiling height.

Surfaco, probably the most underrated Maxis kitchen IMO. Ceiling height only here.

Neo Quartzo which again... I was gonna skip, but I thought, maybe some people use this kitchen sometimes? idk lol, not me... Ceiling height only.

Romantic wood 😍 I love this one. Not quite ceiling height, again for the pretty loopdey bit on top.

And Chez Moi, also a really tricky one to get right. Ceiling height.

These counters did not get a matching pantry:

Sorry 🙈🙈 If you REALLY DESPERATELY need one... yeah, nah, idk. Maybe I'll do a tiki one, but the others, nope. lol.

All pantries are located in surfaces / misc and cost the same $$ as their matched counter. They are all decorative only. I would love if someone smarter and more capable than me could turn them into functional "snack cupboards" but I lack the know how. So if you're inspired to do it, please be my guest!!

Some of the pantry meshes still have some small issues with normals (MY NEMESIS!!) but I want to give a huge shoutout and thank you to @gummilutt and @morepopcorn for fixing some of them for me, and Poppy particularly for helping me understand how to actually deal with normals in Blender. I really tried and I did improve the meshes a lot as I went.

All pantries were cloned from CTNutmegger's set of upper cabinets, so credits to them. These were occasionally a little "interesting" to work with, but again, I tried my best. And if you need some upper cabinets, you can download those and they should match fairly well. Otherwise, I recommend @nixedsims's Counter Completers and Mutske's kitchen addons too.

Oh, and it should go without saying that these are all repo'd to the Maxis counters so will pick up any recolours you've got 🤗

With that said, if you'd like them, here's the link!

Download

[teaaddictyt]

Club Counter Mapping Edit

Hey simmers,

As part of a larger project I randomly decided to finally do (as a bit of a break from modding), I decided to finally fix / change this:

Look, idk what Maxis were thinking here with the "lip" of the countertop being wood instead of the same texture as the countertop, but I have always thought it was rather horrendously ugly and made no sense. It seems to have been intentional, I don't get it.

The club counters are actually a fairly large set; they are one of the few Maxis counters to have an all drawers / cupboards and drawers variation, there's a commercial counter variation, an island, and it's also the cabinet that the commercial espresso machine sits on. And of course since they're counters, they also had corner meshes. So I've made edits to all of these counters.

(don't ask me how long it took to get the corners right. I am such a derp sometimes...)

To do so I've actually edited a CEP file by Havelock, which originally made the counter and the countertop recolourable on separate subsets. So if you have their original CEP, replace it with mine, otherwise here, have a new CEP! You can put this into your Documents / EA Games / zCEP folder, or just anywhere in your downloads and it will probably function the same way.

You can download my edits

Here

[nixedsims]

Brilliant fix, and I just might redo my counter completers from last summer to match it - because they do look much better, and also make 100% more sense this way. 👍

[dduane]

Spotted on Bluesky…

…The full thread is here: https://bsky.app/profile/phil-lol-ogist.bsky.social/post/3mlvunlb2is2w

…Check out the notes/replies on the attempted grammar. :)

[programmerhumour]

Finding this in the server room made my day

[sexygrammaticalerrors]

[goatskickin]

Frame AND cushion recolors of the Retro Overeasy Eggseater aka chairreclinergroovy! From Unviersity!

30 lovely new cushion colors!

And (forgive the somewhat suggestive looking gif)...

...22 recolors of the frame!

Now, if you still think "Goat, these colors are nice and all, but I just don't see myself using this mesh" - let me show you!

With the right color combo, you can make it work. ✨

Download - RetroOvereasyEggseater - chairreclinergroovy - RC's

[dduane]

Nasty and sophisticated scam: BEWARE of this!

That "Pending PayPal Charge" Email Is a Scam — Even Though It Really Came From PayPal

If an email recently landed in your inbox with a subject line like "Pending charge of USD 987.90 for account activation. Questions? Call 855

Don’t get caught off guard by this. It’s quite a slick one.

[nixedsims]

Am I making an animation box to use on just one Sim in a single screenshot?

Yes. Yes, I am.

[dduane]

It seems to arrive sooner every year

[teaaddictyt]

The Sims 2 Purple Flashing Patch

(yes, PURPLE, because I always saw it as purple and the shader name is literally called the purple error shader. Sue me!!)

Just in case anyone missed it, "pink flashing" in The Sims 2 has finally been busted wide open by a lovely chap named Will Nixon, see here.

I thoroughly recommend reading through the entire dissertation pdf, it's a good read! Even if your eyes glaze over and you skim past the super technical computer engineering jargon, you'll pick up some interesting tidbits from it. Just wanted to share that

1) the patch is fully compatible with Linux and works to improve Linux performance even further, as testing by myself and my dear friend @niamh-sims

2) Some screenshots from testing my medieval hood on Windows 11:

No patch:

With patch:

I also stress-tested the hood by loading into the main Castle lot and having a sim travel between 4-5 different lots with my settings on max. (This is how I play on Linux now so I've gotten used to it, no more turning neighbours and hood deco off for me!!)

Without the patch in, the game crashed and wouldn't load the castle lot for me at ALL, so that was a great start.

Ooft, lol.

With the patch in, I could load into the castle and travel freely around the hood. I noted that that game also generally felt smoother.

This is an absolute breakthrough, people. Linux is no longer absolutely required if you want to play TS2 without pink flashing! Get excited!!

I will personally continue to play on Linux because I honestly enjoy the OS and prefer it over Windows, and my game still loads faster and runs smoother on Linux, but I recommend every simmer download Will's patch (V1 or V2, but V2 is likely safer) and keep it in your essential mods list forever.

[elumish]

When establishing a betrayal plotline (i.e., some person or group of people betrays the main character) one of the main things needed to make it work is to establish an emotional attachment to the people betraying them first.

I'm reading a book right now where the main character's nation/government (including close coworkers + the father of her best friend) are most likely betraying her, but despite the fact that she is a high(ish)-ranking member of the military and the daughter of a high-ranking member of the government, there has been virtually no point where she shows any sort of emotional loyalty to them. She may need to turn her loyalty over to other people, etc....

And it doesn't seem to matter emotionally.

The people who she's realizing might be betraying her already don't treat her extremely well, and she doesn't seem particularly fond of them. Her loyalty is by virtue of birth, not patriotism, by most indications.

This isn't a problem unique to this book--the people committing the betrayal often have tells right from the beginning of a book, and it often ruins any sort of emotional arc. The reader already doesn't like them, and sometimes the main character doesn't either, so who cares.

If the betrayal is going to matter emotionally, there has to be enough of an emotional attachment to the people to make the loss of them matter. It should be a surprise, and it should hurt.