autonomous adventures

yen | 23 | she/her | ts3 gameplay currently playing: Cedar LEPacy

[oxytosim]

Sims 3 Pattern Recategorizer (S3PR) Tool

Organize your CC pattern files with ease!

Current version: v1.1.0.2

Recategorizes pattern .packages (overwrites those files upon recategorization)

Extracts ICON resources

Download: SFS | MTS (coming soon)

How to use this tool: extract the .zip file to a new directory and open the executable (.exe) to run the tool. Detailed steps in the README.md file included.

More information under the cut!

Credits: This tool’s utility was inspired by @ktarsims‘s pattern hoarder tutorial which suggested changing pattern categories to be more consistent and extracting icons for better organization. In addition, the source code for @chocochipsims‘s Pattern Preset Color Extractor tool (the tool can be found here) was monumental to helping me learn how to identify and extract pattern-specific resources within sims 3 .package files.

I’ve been sitting on this for a while! A while ago, I gauged interest for this tool that I had built for my own uses. With the help of @simlicious‘s vigorous testing and enthusiastic suggestions, this tool has been polished! Currently, it only supports .packages, but I am considering implementing .sims3pack support in the future. This tool does not modify any files that aren’t pattern .packages.

Potential feature roadmap:

Support pattern .sims3pack recategorization

Able to change surface material type

Able to change pattern description

Give TSRW patterns unique res keys (A.K.A. why some .sims3pack patterns cannot be converted to .package without manual editing)

I’m happy to take suggestions for future improvements!! I’m also happy to support any interested collaborators who want to work on this project! Working on it isn’t exactly my top priority — so I encourage any enthusiastic simmer to help make this a full-fledged tool! It’s coded in Python and uses Peter L Jones’ s3pi .NET library to work with Sims 3 .packages. I have already made some preliminary progress with .sims3pack files (message me if you want to know more!).

I sincerely hope you enjoy using this tool and that it makes your pattern CC organization a little easier! ✨

[saccharinescorpion]

That design document predated the decision to exclude gay relationships in the game. Its pages described a web of social interactions, in which every kind of romantic relationship was permitted. That week, Barrett confounded the expectations of his disbelieving boss. He successfully wrote the basic code for social interactions, including same-sex relationships. 

“In hindsight, I probably should have questioned the design,” Barrett, who is gay, said. “But the design felt right, so I just implemented it. Later, Will Wright stopped by my desk,” Barrett said. “He told me that liked the social interactions, and that he was glad to see that same-sex support was back in the game.” Nobody on the team questioned Barrett’s work. “They just pretty much ignored it,” he said. “After a while, everyone was just used to the design being there. It was widely expected that E.A. would just kill it, anyway.”

In early 1999, before E.A. had a chance to kill the design, Barrett was asked to create a demo of the game to be shown at E3. The demo would consist of three scenes from the game. These were to be so-called on-rails scenes—not a true, live simulation but one that was preplanned, and which would shake out the same way each time it was played, in order to show the game in its best light. 

One of the scenes was a wedding between two Sims characters. “I had run out of time before E3, and there were so many Sims attending the wedding that I didn’t have time to put them all on rails,” Barrett said.

On the first day of the show, the game’s producers, Kana Ryan and Chris Trottier, watched in disbelief as two of the female Sims attending the virtual wedding leaned in and began to passionately kiss. They had, during the live simulation, fallen in love.

TIL i learned that the team behind The Sims had originally decided to leave same-sex relationships out of the game until a newbie on the team by the name of Patrick J. Barrett III coded all basic interactions of the game due to one of his senior team members being on vacation, TIL Barrett unknowingly had been given an old design document and everyone just assumed someone else had reversed their previous decision and rolled with it, and TIL that all that plus a rushed demo led to the team’s presentation at that year’s E3 featuring an unplanned lesbian kiss

[oxytosim]

TLDR: gauging interest for release of a Sims 3 utility mod tool that interacts with pattern .package files to (1) reorganize the pattern category in-game, and/or (2) extracts the icon for better CC organization purposes.

Keep reading

[oxytosim]

thanks for showing interest in this lil ol' tool, everyone! i'll start my journey of uploading it on simfileshare and/or modthesims (might take a few days because I need to secure an invite code and content approval!)

[oxytosim]

TLDR: gauging interest for release of a Sims 3 utility mod tool that interacts with pattern .package files to (1) reorganize the pattern category in-game, and/or (2) extracts the icon for better CC organization purposes.

ya girl has been so unhinged lmao — I have been a mini hiatus because I have been reorganizing my Sims 3 Custom Content among other things! In that spree, I converted my pattern .sims3pack files to .package using @ktarsims‘s wonderful pattern hoarder tutorial. I thought changing categories of downloaded patterns to be more consistent and easier to find made a lot of sense — only to be very dissuaded and burnt out when doing it manually for each pattern proved to VERY tedious.

so! me, with my computer science degree thought: this can be automated! and surprisingly, it could! this could not be possible without s3pi, of course, and @chocochipsims‘s Pattern Preset Color Extractor (which @simlicious kindly redistributed a while back). her code interacted with patterns (to extract the preset information) and I thought: if she could do it, so could I! it helped immensely that her code was open-source, meaning I was free to reference from it as I wished!

so, here we are, and I’m wondering: does anyone have interest in using this tool? I’m thinking it might be useful to other CC organizational maniacs like me and maybe even pattern creators — but this is quite a niche use case and it would be very embarrassing to release a tool that no one would use, lol.

[grandelama]

Custom Lighting & Environment Mods for TS3

@amphoraesims

asked me “What lighting mod do you use?”

So here is the complete list of all the lighting mods I’m currently playing with.

(the pictures above are completely unretouched - no Reshade

UranesiaLightingMod_NOGreenSunrise+DefaultWater+BrighterNight by Nilxis : it’s the main lighitng mod.

Wasset_EnchantedEnvironment_Seperated by Wasset ; it change  the appearance of both the sun and the moon (plus adding them a beautiful “halo”), of the clouds, rainbow and stars, and few other features. The original link on his page is broken, so I just uploaded it HERE

Improved Environmental Shadows by Simsi45 ; I’m using just the DYNAMIC file  (the shadows respond more accurately to the sun’s position, letting them stretch further towards the horizon).

Shadow Extender by Lazy Duchess: it  increases the draw distance of shadows and in addition improves the look of map view by making trees and other miscellaneous deco cast shadows, when they previously did not.

Snow but Better by Lyralei: instead of the snow replacement of Wasset, I’m using this one, more detailled. The terrain snow textures are entirely redone; Frosty windows and glass now has more detailed frost on it; it fix that annoying and ugly “Grass” patches.; Icicles have a new texture; Roads got bumpier and more detailed.

Reworked & Impreved EA lights by Simsi45:  it modifies the lite resource for almost all the lamps, making the game a little bit more atmospheric and visually appealing.

Shader Tweaks by Lazy Duchess: this is a set of improvements and fixes to some of the shaders. The color of rooms will now contribute to lighting on Sims.  Outdoor Sims skin lighting was slightly “flattened” to make Sim faces look slightly better.  Bloom has been reduced significantly.

[oxytosim]

Emmett aged up into young adulthood, only to find Clumsiness and well... a sudden burst of wanderlust?

That’s right — Emmett is our World Adventures heir! It was a definitely a toss-up between Vera and Emmett... they’re both my queer disaster favs of the family. But ultimately, it all came down to the fact that Vera was basically a clone of her mother — and I needed me some genetic diversity in the family line.

See y’all in Generation Two!

[oxytosim]

hot girlies don’t mope around about hot and cold romantic interests — they go outside and play in the water and sun ☀️

[oxytosim]

Teenage Millie!!! I actl love her so much. (She’s a spare unfortunately but I would love for her to be a main character in someone else’s story!!)

LONER 🔹 NO SENSE OF HUMOR 🔹 GENIUS 🔹 LOVES THE OUTDOORS

With Millie being a teenager, Leighton completes his LTW!

[oxytosim]

A disaster told in four parts:

Vera could not wait to see Dolores so she visited her the very next day! Literally, the first thing she did after being invited in was pick up where they left out and autonomously kiss her!

Unfortunately, Dolores rejected her (and then tried flirting with her right afterwards!). Miss Steel be playing games 😤

[oxytosim]

The date was going well! They had just watched a romcom together and Vera was about to make a move when the police came...

Naya (now an elder!) gave a lecture to Vera. Vera knew two things: (1) parents are ridiculous, and (2) she had to see Dolores again!

[oxytosim]

Vera went over to Dolores Steel’s house after school and well... Dolores starting flirting with her. Poor Vera was whipped after that — she (autonomously!) asked Dolores for a date right then and there.

[oxytosim]

Vera taking a nap next to Emmett doing his homework is such a mood

[oxytosim]

[oxytosim]

Millie’s toddler days flew by and she became a Genius! She loves exploring the world around her and she gives me major Disney Princess vibes. 🦋

[oxytosim]

The twins aged up to teens and one of the first things on the agenda was cementing their lifelong bond!

[oxytosim]

Millie is now a toddler! Sims get older and move out and yet, some things never change...

[oxytosim]

Sam came over, and continued painting on his easel like he never left 🥲