Grunge and post-apocalyptic custom content used to be quite popular back in the day, be it made from scratch or converted from other games, like Fallout or Silent Hill. Since its appeal waned, much of that cc has become lost or forgotten about, buried under dead links or long-defunct blogs.
Recently, I tracked down as much as I could for my Apocalypse Challenge, and I thought it might be useful to put together a working master list for those who might be interested in recapturing the vibe of 2008-era GoS or just setting up a run-down hood of their own. A few people seemed to agree, so here it is!
☢️The Grunge Masterlist☣️
(Google Docs link)
It goes without saying that this is NOT a complete list of all grungy cc ever made; I will update it as I find/remember other things. The list also focuses more on build/buy cc and less on CAS content.
If you know of cc I've missed, feel free to send me the link(s) (this includes CAS content - in fact, it's encouraged!)
If you find broken links or other weirdness, let me know and I'll try to fix it.
Aka: the clarity and communication that you deserve
Hi everyone. As some may have caught already, GoS is not dead (anymore)! During the period that it was, however, so much drama started and if you ask me; it all comes down to people not knowing what's going on and making assumptions that further sparked panic. So, let's clear some stuff up for those who got caught in the rumor mill.
Oh and if you haven't, it's worth reading @julessims excellent writeup on how she got GoS working again.
This is gonna be focused a bit more on communications stuff. Like, a bit more general I guess?
Q: what did you do?
A: I helped get GoS back online. @julessims did the actual hard work of upgrading the forum. @teaaddictyt played a role by facilitating communication and doing some PR (even if that wasn't received well by many a simmer) and ofc hugelunatic provided files, databases and the occasional bit of relevant information. I approached lunie and provided help with hosting, DNS and ensuring the files were safe and handling some communication. It was teamwork (and jules did most of it if you ask me).
Q: why didn't lunie communicate that it would be rehosted?
A: I'm not sure what lunie's exact motivation behind cancelling the hosting was and if I knew it wouldn't be mine to share, but I do know that @julessims and I upgrading and rehosting wasn't planned. It was a spontaneous action on our ends and so lunie couldn't have told you beforehand. I'm really glad that lunie decided to trust us with this and hope GoS will have many more years!
Q: why didn't you communicate any of this?
A: I thought my time would be better spent actually doing the work instead of playing communications department, fielding questions and countering people's wild speculations. I did think about making a post clarifying matters when it became clear people were making some pretty wildly incorrect statements, but I had other things to do. Better to focus on what matters than to get caught up in more miscommunications.
Q: GoS looks different now. Why?
A: the new look of GoS is a direct consequence of the upgrade. The old theme was not made to fit the new software and the conversion process does not convert themes. Seeing GoS in the default (white) theme felt so wrong, so we picked a good-looking dark theme and @julessims modified it to look more like classic GoS, with great success, I think. Still, it is and never will be truly identical. I don't think it's a bad thing.
Q: is the site in archive mode or can I comment?
The site is not in archive mode. It is a live forum. Posting works, registration works, if anything doesn't work, you should find a mod to message so either they or @julessims or I can try to troubleshoot and fix the issue.
In fact, you should comment! Forums are best when people leave comments and engage. Go express how much you like a piece of CC, contribute to the current theme (fittingly about renovating old things) or talk about something!
Q: why did it have to be upgraded? Couldn't it have just stayed now it was?
A: no. It really couldn't. GoS was running SMF 1.1.21 on PHP no higher than 5.3. The newest version is 8.5. PHP 5.3 had been obsolete since 2014. It would've been difficult to find a host that would be willing and able to host GoS and even if that could be found, it'd still leave it vulnerable to bugs and vulnerabilities resolved in newer versions of SMF and PHP. Credit to lunie's host for having continues to support it for this long, many wouldn't. Now that the forum has been upgraded and is running nicely on 8.3, it should be all good to go for many years to come.
Q: just a forum upgrade? So why did it go down?
A: make no mistake: going from something running on PHP 5.x to 8.x is no small leap and had to be done in steps. There were a lot of issues converting the database to the new format which resulted in all sorts of errors that needed manual database conversions. Upgrading a forum, particularly an old one with more than 600.000 posts is in fact not a piece of cake. There were also traces of a prior attempts to upgrade that complicated matters even more. @julessims made an excellent write-up of the technical bits if you're interested.
Q: who is running GoS now?
A: lunie is still forum admin and it will be up to her to decide what to do about the day to day running of the forum. Whether she'll be running it herself, with the help of others or elect someone else will be her choice in the end. As for hosting: that would be me.
Q: so does that mean we can stop archiving?
You could, but I would honestly suggest at least backing up your own favourite CC, regardless of where it's shared or hosted. Also, you can consider looking up an "auto archiving" extension for your browser that will automatically save pages to the wayback machine. The web archive has a page with resources
Q: *insult angry comment about hugelunatic*
A: you are 100% entitled to your anger and frustration. GoS is an important part of the Sims community and losing it, even for a little bit was a huge blow. It's understandable to be angry. Angry comments, however, were never gonna resolve the issue. Angry comments would not get GoS back nor would comments defending hugelunatic for that matter. What did help was working with hugelunatic. No files+database = no forum. Squabbling was not gonna get either back. Saying that, it's important to acknowledge that I was in a good position to do what needed to be done in regards to skills and connections which is not a privilege most people have. I get why people were angry and given that most were not privy to what was going on behind the scenes, it's no wonder everyone got as upset as they did. I also wouldn't have reacted well if I wasn't in direct communication with lunie and working on getting the site back.
Q: what's the plan now?
A: well, sims2artists still needs an update. I hope we can do that sometime soon. I'll also be keeping an eye out for any errors and aim to implement some extra security headers for the site. We also still need to fix some matters in regards to the domain and DNS. I also hope to have some more contact with the GoS mods so we can discuss hosting and what my responsibility and theirs is. Like, write down who is responsible for what and who can be contacted by my host should I pass away unexpectedly, for example. These things happen, so it's good to have backup plans and emergency contacts.
Q: did you have any freakouts tho?
A: certainly. First, when GoS and S2A went down. I was afraid the files and the S2A DB could be gone for good. I was also afraid that lunie wouldn't be willing to work with us and truthfully I also had the fear that if she got more agitated, we could risk losing the files and database. Fortunately this didn't happen, in fact: lunie gave us the resources and helped us out where necessary so we could get GoS back online. I'm very thankful for that.
I also got dragged by my emotions a bit when an unhelpful reddit post suggested that Delphy of MTS infamy might have something to do with hosting and when lunie mentioned something about an offer of hosting as is, no upgrade required. I may have freaked out and freaked out some other folks in the process (my apologies for that. You know who you are). There were many freakouts and I think it was good I didn't make any tumblr posts about this before we got GoS back. I stand by my decision it wouldn't have helped. Freaking out in private was bad enough.
Q: can you tell us what you actually did technically?
A: certainly! First, I set up hosting and new empty databases for GoS (and eventually: sims2artists). I made sure all the required aliases were in place so that when the DNS records for gardenofshadows.org.uk were switched over, it'd find the correct place on the webserver to go to. I also provided a subdomain on a domain of mine to test the forum live before it'd be moved back to the correct domain.
I also got access to the FTP for the original GoS hosting and was able to grab all the files and reupload what was necessary to the new server. While jules was in PHP hell I also cleaned up some stuff on Sims2artists. It's not gonna be anything you notice, but it's something.
I also did a number of things on the webserver, including changing directories. At some point I accidentally moved the forum to example.tld/gardenofshadows/gardenofshadows/gardenofshadows/index.php if you'd believe it. Finally I helped set the DNS records for the move. An SPF record went missing, but was quickly fixed. I also added some HTTP Headers to be served when visiting GoS and a lil something to hopefully keep AI bots from scraping and spamming HTTP requests. If you notice link previews not working: sorry, that'd be the X-Frame header.
Tldr: webserver and domain and DNS stuff; hosting infrastructure
Q: what about hosting costs?
A: right now they're so low we could call them non-existent. Should that change, I don't expect it to be above €100,- per calendar year. Probably closer to €50,-. Aka: it's not an issue. No need for ads. Should fundraising ever be needed, I will discuss it with the mods first.
Now go leave some comments on GoS!
Anyways, if you have any more questions, don't hesitate to ask. There's a lot more to say about this. But hopefully this does clarify some matters.
Well it wasn’t just me, to be fair. I would have never been able to without @fireflowersims help and HugeLunatics trust in both of us. Thank you to both of them for their work and thank you @teaaddictyt for reaching out and doing the more public communication.
I’m super happy I got the chance to work to fix it. It wasn’t an easy undertaking. It seemed like every little thing would cause more errors, I fixed one and another thing broke. But now it seems stable, finally.
A lot of technical stuff below the cut, beware.
Fixing such an old forum is not easy. Documentation is rather sparse because the framework it runs on is old. There is however a more modern version, but updating is difficult. Here was the issue for the forum - upgrading failed.
A website (usually) consists of two different parts: 1 - The files. They contain the code, scripts, designs, images, attachment, profile pictures etc. 2 - The database. The database connects all the different parts and tells the website where to find something. Everything gets stored in tables, assigned IDs and given values. Everything written, each post and topic is also stored in the database. So without the database the whole page would be useless.
It was clear from the beginning that the database was the culprit for the failed upgrades. I got an earlier backup from HL and started working.
I set up a local environment with two versions of XAMPP. One running on php 7.4 (the last version having compatibility for the forum framework version and the upgrade script to the recent version) and the other on a modern 8.3, which was the same as the version the server @fireflowersims set up for GOS.
I ran the upgrade script (which consists of 4 separate parts) on the old backup and ran into errors right away. The script would just outright crash on me, most often without a log or message. The (local) server would just stop responding. My original plan had been to upgrade to version 2.0 first, then 2.1, since it was the recommended order. However the database backup had already been partly upgraded to 2.1. That was the reason my upgrade script failed. Reversing those changes could have been a possibility but extremely time intensive.
(This is the frontpage of the upgrader. I stared at it so much. Like you can see it has a ton of steps)
Instead I asked for the current database and HL provided it to me. This one was already further along on the upgrade and I could see the error HL had run into before handing over. I had to look at the upgrade scripts and source php files to diagnose what the framework was expecting - and failing - to find in the database.
That’s where I found the main culprit for *most* of the errors: Time tables. The framework saves every action that a user does in a log, a long table with the action, an id and a date. This was where everything had gotten wrong. The upgrader expected to see one column for the date, named *day*, while the current table had a different column for day, month and year. I tried fixing the table at first but that didn’t seem to work, so I completely deleted the table and created a new empty one myself. (By now I think the issue stems from forgetting to uninstall certain packages before upgrading, more on that later)
That was possible because the log actually doesn’t hold relevant information for the forum to work. It just records each step, probably for moderation purposes. Once I had done that step the upgrade script was finally able to proceed.
There were a few more errors where I had to look at what the script was doing, find the corresponding code in the sources and edit the database myself. Thankfully the code is relatively well commented and named, so I was able to find what I needed.
Finally I got the upgrade script to run to the end and I was actually able to open the forums (local) page. I hadn’t been able to for now so it was a first. But a lot of stuff was still missing, like all the topics. I could see that the posts were back, but not sorted correctly.
The fix was simple but annoying. The forum framework comes with a repair_setting.php file which I had run several times to fix all the paths, but apparently it didn’t fix *all* of them. So back to the database I went, ran some queries and fixed them myself.
Then the forum finally worked again!
(This is what the forum looked like when I first opened it. It ONLY had recent posts)
(The working local forum, no files yet with the default theme. Seems wrong to look at GOS without the dark theme, right?)
There were still a few things I needed to fix but the database seemed to work fine now. I had never done so many queries in my life. I know SQL, and had to fix databases before but not this intensely. So I guessed I learned something new haha.
Next was the exciting step to upload my clean install to the server. @fireflowersims and I had some directory issues, but I was able to fix them manually once again.
Then I had to take a look at the files which mostly consist of avatars and attachments. They didn’t work at all once moved to the clean install. Once again I took a look at the code and realized that the upgrade script would have changed those files as well, but because I ran it on a clean install it didn’t actually do this step.
I didn’t want to run the upgrade script again, worried that it would mess up a now working database. Instead I wrote a script myself that sorted through all the attachments, looked for the IDs of the avatars from the database so it could move and rename them.
Last were the attachments. This was an easier fix. They just had to be given the ending .dat. @fireflowersims ran a command through the console and then the attachments worked too!
We were getting closer!
Next was the theme. The old theme didn’t work on the modern framework anymore so @fireflowersims looked for a new one which I customized with CSS, trying to get it closer to the way the forum looked before. I think it turned out quite alright, hope you guys think so too!
(Trying to find out what CSS class addresses what? Make everything red and green!)
(All the spider webs)
Next was packages, or mods, to the framework. Fire and I encountered some hiccups here too, since there were some leftovers in the database. The packages hadn’t been properly deinstalled before running the upgrade script, which was another source of the errors. I tried fixing them manually but one of the packages would continue to just break the site no matter what I tried, so we settled for an alternative.
Some more work was put into SSL and making the forum secure. Once again some settings seemed to just break the page and each time I had to go back in the database and manually fix what had gone wrong. It was tedious but by now I knew my way around quite well.
@fireflowersims handled a lot of the server administrative work and DNS settings. I know very little about that part so having @fireflowersims there was great and they made sure the page is reachable at the correct address.
So yeah, I hope the site stays online for a long time now. It’s such a big part of our community and communities history. I used to download so much from there when I was younger. I wanted to give back to the community I love so much. That was the reason I spent many many hours digging through code and old forum threads.
Jules, I cannot emphasize enough just how cool you are for having done all of this work to get GoS back online! I'm glad I was able to provide a good new space for GoS to live from now on and assist with all the DNS. It was a trip alright, and I'm glad we could work together on this!
You are a hero and I (and I bet so many others) am so grateful for your skill and dedication! ♥️
Kate blinked. For a moment, she had the disorienting sensation of having just woken up from a deep sleep, only to find herself standing in the kitchen.
Sepal was there. What was he asking? Ah, yes.
"All right, you can stay, until the weather turns at least. Just so you know, the garage isn't properly insulated and there's no heating in there."
"All right. Thank you Kate, thank you so much."
"No worries. Listen, I need to lie down; I'm not feeling very well all of a sudden."
"Oh no! Can I help?"
"Thanks, but I'll be fine. I just need to rest."
Kate couldn't quite shake off the sensation of having missed something important in that last interaction with Sepal. It nagged at her like a splinter under a fingernail.
The fact that she couldn't entirely remember what the two of them had been talking about moments before bothered her. She simply had to get more sleep.
Sepal hadn't meant to do it. He'd been so scared and upset, and Kate had been so angry, and it simply...happened!
Of course, he could have done more than just editing a few short-term memories and briefly imposing his will on her. If he wanted to, he could make her do anything. Even love him.
But he wouldn't. He didn't want that, he wasn't like that!
He hoped that one day, Kate would love him for real, not out of compulsion. As for what had just happened, she would never find out about it.
Writing the last couple of Walden episodes reminded me of this really dark take on Strangetown's PT9 I wrote once.
I know this is diverging quite a bit from "official" Sixam lore, but I figured a society that was OK with abducting and impregnating people had to be pretty amoral, haha. (Also this PT9 is just evil.)
He didn't understand how everything could've gone so wrong, so quickly. Everything he said just seemed to make it worse.
He was losing her. She would turn Aster and Nova against him and he would never see his family again. The life they could've had together would be gone forever.
He couldn't let that happen!
"What are you - Hey!"
Sepal acted impulsively, without thinking.
Panic drove him, focusing his will into a needle-sharp point aimed at Kate's mind. It was the Sixamese art of mental warfare, which they had spent their entire history perfecting.
"NO!"
"I want to stay! Let me stay!"
A mere human had no hope of defending against such a powerful psychic attack.
"I already gave you my answer! No means no, not 'maybe later'! And asking me this is the opposite of respecting my wishes, by the way."
Sepal put up his hands defensively.
"I'm sorry! I just don't want to completely give up on us, if there's even a chance that one day you might feel differently..."
"There is no us! If there was ever any chance of that, you missed it by oh, thirteen years!"
"Kate, please, I left my whole life for you!"
"That was your choice, not mine! You know, I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt: 'oh, he's literally from a different planet, he's in culture shock, but he's not a bad guy, really.' "
"I'm starting to think I was wrong. If you can't respect my boundaries, you can get out of my house. I can't have you around my children."
"What?! But I...I love you! And I love our children!"
"Continuing to prove my point. If you cared about us so much, why did it take you this long to come calling?"
"Duty is paramount to our people, one doesn't walk away from it lightly! If we do...we can never go back. We are an exile forever."
"Well, too bad. I've made my decision. You can talk to the immigration office about a place to stay."
"Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about AIOS?"
"Hoo boy. What's this about?"
"I couldn't help but notice how close you are to it, even calling it your partner. Is that common on Sim Earth?"
"I wouldn't say it's common, given how few AIs there are, nor was it something I ever planned; it just happened. Also, it's him, not it."
"Ah. Of course. Apologies."
"I take that doesn't happen among your people?"
"Sometimes we take an AI companion, if it strikes our fancy."
"And the companion has a say in this, right?"
"Of course; they are made for it! Each AI is designed for a purpose; much like we Sixamese."
"Well, the only purpose AIOS was designed for was existence. Our relationship grew naturally from that, like any relationship."
Before she could react, Sepal reached out for Kate's hand. His skin was warm and very soft to the touch, like velvet.
"You must miss it sometimes though, no? The company of someone of flesh and blood, with the same feelings and desires..."
Kate's mouth had gone dry. She hated herself for feeling this way, but deep down, she did miss all that. Watcher, how long had it been? She barely remembered.
Standing there, hand in hand with Sepal, some primal part of her was tempted.
"I know you said you didn't want to be with me, and I'll respect your wishes. But maybe one day...you'll change your mind? I've waited over 13 years; I can wait a bit longer."
Sepal studied the android Kate had built with a critical eye. A great achievement for her species, no doubt, but otherwise quite crude.
Far less sophisticated than the AIs Sepal had grown up with, who had their own inexhaustible fusion batteries and, if not for the limiters his people had built in them from the very beginning, would have long outstripped their creators. Thanks to their precautions, however, a balance had been found between the two races, one synthetic, the other organic.
If they were wise, the Earthlings would do the same, before their creations became too poweful to contain.
For now, though, the unit called AIOS remained quite unsophisticated, down to its obvious vulnerabilities.
Someone with few scruples and the know-how could easily tamper with its systems during its recharging cycle, for example.
"Okay, so; full disclosure: Sepal came on to me the other day."
"I see."
"I turned him down, of course. It would seem that our alien guest hasn't been entirely honest with us, but for the twins' sake, I'm willing to give him a second chance."
"Is that wise?"
*sigh* "I've asked myself the same question, but I feel that banning him from their lives isn't the right course of action either. I told him he needs to find his own place to stay ASAP though, and start paying for it."
"If that is what you think is best, I will comply."
Just the same, AIOS was going to make sure his sensors remained perfectly calibrated from then on.
True to her warning, Kate resolved to keep a close eye on the twins, for anything strange or out of the ordinary. She didn't think Sepal was malicious, or she would've kicked him out then and there, promises be damned, but he did have a very, well, alien way of thinking.
Human and Sixamese social conventions were clearly different, which muddled everything, but if he truly wanted to be in Aster and Nova's lives, he needed to learn how things were done on Sim Earth. His willingness to put in the effort would say much about his true intentions.
One day, when the twins were old enough, she might explain all of this to them, but for the moment she didn't want to outright deny them the chance to get to know their father. It would have broken their hearts.
For their part, Aster and Nova seemed as happy as ever and were doing brilliantly at school, which reassured Kate somewhat.
They also seemed to really enjoy Sepal's company, the three of them quickly becoming as thick as thieves. Kate found their silent mental conversations unnerving, and watched for signs that Sepal might be influencing their minds in spite of her warning. So far as she could tell it was all quite innocent, just not something she could share in.
That bothered her.
The fact that the twins seemed to be growing apart from AIOS the closer they grew to Sepal also bothered her. Granted, he wasn't their father, but he had been involved in their lives from the day they were born, and the twins were fond of him.
Perhaps, deep down, Kate feared that ultimately, Sepal was able to offer her children something neither she nor AIOS could: a connection to their Sixamese ancestry which they had been yearning for all their lives.
Then there was the cat who simply made himself at home one day and refused to leave.
"Katherine...Kate. I just wanted to say I'm sorry for the way things turned out. I've been blind, or perhaps foolish. Even though my feelings for you have not changed, I understand that you don't feel the same way."
"Maybe you could have been honest about it from the beginning, instead of pretending you came here because you had nowhere else to go. And I can't say I'm comfortable with the amount of messing around in my head you've been doing either."
"I'm sorry! It wasn't meant to be "messing around", it's just that I'm not really used to communicating with non-psychics!"
"And the fact that you intentionally suppressed my memories?"
"I had no choice! It's standard protocol for all abductees; for security reasons."
"Which you've now conveniently decided to ignore."
"I thought...if you remembered that night, I might be able to convince you..."
"I'd better not find out you've been doing anything similar to Aster and Nova, unless you want the whole of Sim Earth to know about it, and the fact that you broke your precious protocols."
"I could never harm the children! I swear on the Progenitors!"
"Awww, you're a cute little kitty! C'mere, kitty! Do you want to play? I wish we could keep you..."
Sepal watched his daughter's interaction with the furry creature and thought of a way he might make her happy, in a small way.
It was the least he could do, after his disastrous attempt to unite their family.
I've been doing a bit of building in Walden, since I had made space for these beach (riverbank, really) lots a long time ago, but didn't do anything with them. Until now.
Presenting the Fisherman's Shack and Bingo Hall, where residents can enjoy fresh fish al fresco or more mundane fast food at the diner. Also on the weekends, they can take part in bingo tournaments, and simply enjoy the breeze. When the weather is good enough to do so.
This is the only thing I uploaded to GoS that can be considered in any way recent (and probably the only thing anyone might want tbh), so in light of recent events, here it is:
As a web developer who works on the daily with this kind of stuff (and php!) it makes me sad how little preservation was actually tried. I understand that a php upgrade isn't possible anymore at some point, especially if the base is old, but if you know what to do, you can edit databases, remove all personal data like mails and usernames, leave the threads as is and upload it to an archive.
I think there are several people in this community who could have helped, or still can.
It just makes me sad to see so little care put towards this huge piece of history.
If any of you have an old ass php webpage, reach out to me, I can probably help.
I've successfully scraped all of the available Custom Content that was linked on GOS from Mediafire, Box, and SimFileShare. (Mirrors on 4shared not included)
Of course, I can't go back in time to retrieve things that are already long gone but here's a .zip of 49 GBs of content. This is everything from the beginning of GOS to September 2023.
This is the entire site's worth of custom content scraped. There are a few things that you need to know.- This is not checked to see if depe
