Darker Black Swatch Recolors for @platinumaspiration's Ultimate 4t2 Hair Default Replacement Collection
The amount of work platinumaspiration put into converting this, wow! With animations, so many hats, age & gender conversions, all NPC hairs, repo'd, etc., etc. All my thanks for making a cohesive clay hair-ified TS2 a breeze to set up, and for allowing recolors.
I was glad to see she used the TS4 swatches that are also my faves, though Maxis's black swatches aren't as consistent as I like. There's some that are jet black, some that are gray (like the previews), contrast varies widely, etc. I prefer jet black, which loses some details in the texture but looks the best with all skintones IMO. I used dbasiasimbr's PS action to batch recolor, her Black-Dark Brown Override is one of my TS4 must-haves. Thanks also to all her work! And thanks to @lordcrumps for hosting the previews with sortable filters, made keeping track much easier.
I also recolored some of the pale blond swatches for toddlers to match the dirty blond swatch the other hairs use. All in all, I edited 333 files, so I uploaded each folder separately on SFS (file size limit) or you can download the single .zip from Patreon, for free. Please let me know if I missed a hair or forgot the texture for any accessories/hats!
Default replacements, see LordCrumps' site for previews
Recompressed
Kept the folder structure and file names the same
Installation Instructions:
Download platinumaspiration's full collection first, if you don't have it already. I only included the files I recolored, if you don't have the full collection, there may be missing meshes or textures!
Download my files and allow them to overwrite the original files.
Download: SimFileShare Folder (3 .zips) or Patreon (free, combined .zip)
Adds all the sliders that were originally only for Bodyshop to CAS. Which include:
Eye Squint
Eyelash Size
Cheekbone Fwd-Back
Cheekbone Up-Down
Upper Face Width
Brow In-Out
Bridge Curve
Bridge In-Out
Bridge Width
Nose In-Out
Upper Lip Thickness
Lower Lip Thickness
Mouth Corner Fwd-Back
Mouth In-Out
Nose Turned Up
Cheekbone Size
Jaw Taper
Place in Downloads Folder: Cut and paste the mod into your Downloads folder Documents and Settings\(Current User Account)\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Downloads\
Doesn’t require any Expansion or Stuff Packs, It will work with just the base game.
Outdoor Gym set | Fitness trail and exercise bike
Popping in for another long-due upload!
This is a mini set of outdoor gym equipment, including a fitness trail cloned from the obstacle course career reward, and an exercise bike. Both use the AL monkey bar textures, and I made 4 custom recolors.
More details and download at MTS
or SFS
(personal rambling under the cut)
I'm still trying to keep up with the community and lurking around here but it's been more difficult to play and make progress on my projects lately, juggling between work, my computer showing signs of age, and personal life in general being pretty rough lately... I'm planning to switch to Linux on my laptop in hopes of (among other reasons) prolonging its life by a few more years but I'm stuck on installation problems. And in the longer run I need to prepare to buy a new computer anyway, pretty daunting task tbh.
Anyway, I have other stuff in the works that I hope to share before the end of the year at least!
I use reshade with HORROR PIXEL preset by Lavenfur. It's technically for Gshade but I believe you can use it if you have gshade shaders in the shaders folder.
I removed 90% of actual roads and used fake dark rural lane roads - TeaAddict edit. I also use this default invisible desert roads to complete the look.
Here's the list of grungy lots I used to fill the town:
Pleasantview Apartments by Pikkonsimming HERE.
Various Lots by Maryata - War, War 2, Haunted House, Abandoned House etc. HERE.
Various Kativip Lots - Abandoned House, CHBL, DOS
Falling Oasis by Purity Project HERE.
GOS favourites - Toxic Pond, Lucky's Tattoo & The Pitts, The Factory
Forgotten & Abandoned Gas station by RecklessJerry HERE.
Backstreet Place, Tin Can Alley by Cyclonesue HERE.
Funfair lot by Paranoia0612 HERE.
Ramshackle Cottage by Aya20 HERE.
Dereliction House by eedgan HERE.
Ottomas Cottage by Aurora HERE.
I plan to update the list when I find missing links to some of the lots, like Replica, Old Sport Complex and Farthing Alley.
Good news, I found the textures I used for the neon karaoke recolors, so I could put them on the Butterfly Crawler (they're from Freepik). All 4 recolors included, Free Time EP is required. That's it :)
So uh, maybe there are people who are aware of this already, but maybe there are some who aren't. You know how when you make a room with a sloped ceiling it ends up looking like this:
The part of the walls that reach the second floor is much lighter than the lower part. It happens because the game doesn't recognize the shallow end of the roof as a wall, so it doesn't block light coming indoors from that direction.
But if you have Numenor's invisible wall installed you can do this:
Build an invisible wall just at the roof's edge, all the way across the room.
And ta-da! The second floor has proper indoor lighting. It's not completely perfect due to how the lighting behaves in multi-story rooms in this game, but it's much better!
This How-To can help with editing in game Pets or PetBreeds to change their face/body, adding fur accessories, adding heterochromia, or to blend genetics to mimic the pacifier*. Be sure to edit appearance in mirror to see any changes.
I will do my best to make this as clear and easy to understand as possible, but in all honesty there is A LOT of information. Some of it will only make sense if you already are familiar with editing CC and game files due to the jargon and syntax. Some things I also just frankly don't know, or I may have forgotten. As such, if you discover something about pets that I haven't mentioned, please share it here for others as well. Please refer to this spreadsheet for all pet genetic codes.
Now to start! Pet genetic data is stored in the AGED (Age Data). You can find this file in any petbreed.package or in a pet's personal characterdata.package. All things genetic and appearance wise seem to pull directly from this file (except collars). When you first open it, it can get overwhelming at first. Once you know what you're looking for though, it gets (a bit) easier. Below are the important lines of interest:
eyecolor (dtString)
alteyecolor (dtString)
Pretty straight forward. These are the eyes. If both values are the same, then the pet will have only one eye color. If they are different, the pet has heterochromia. Heterochromia is NOT normally inheritable, so editing this value yourself is the only way to mimic it. Not only is heterochromia NOT inheritable, but only the right eye color can be passed down and never the left. All born-ingame pets will have both these lines somewhere already, but sometimes alteyecolor may be closer to the middle of the list or the bottom. Some petbreeds may be missing this line however. Luckily, it is very easy to just add it in yourself. Note that puppies and kittens can't display heterochromia yet due to the way their mesh was made. You will need Paluding's and my default replacement meshes for rectify this.
petbodyoption# (dtString)
These are the tail shape and ear shape. There are currently 4 possible tail options for cats. For dogs, there are 2 ear and 6 tail options.
coatlayers (dtUInteger)
The number of coat layers. Pretty obvious, which is nice. This includes the pet's base coat, so for example if a pet has 5 coat markings then this should say 6.
coattex# (dtString) - Coat Texture, color of the coat
coatmask# (dtString) - Coat Mask, or the marking
coatmaskamt# (dtUInteger) - Coat Mask Amount, the opacity
These are the markings themselves. coatmask0 should always be left blank as it is the base coat color. 0x000000FF is the maximum opacity that a layer can have. If a pet offspring inherits a marking, it will usually be an exact copy color/opacity wise of their parent.
numpsd (dtUInteger) - the number of archetypes/modifers applied
psd# (dtString) - References the Face Arch Modifiers and Pet Body Modifiers
...Pet Slider Detail, maybe? In a vanilla game, 1 click of a slider is typically equal to 0.150000. Psds are typically written as family:4:amount of change. Positive values go left, and negatives go right. There will at times be multiple copies of the family, it's due to the game listing every time it's changed even slightly. I believe the game takes the sum value of all and applies them (or it goes down the list, if order turns out to matter). You can edit these lines directly to change them, or you can add/delete the lines yourself. Just make sure to have the psds numbered numerically and the numpsd line matches any changes. All modifiers are applied over the base archetype used, which means if you remove all but the psd0 lines, you will have the base pet shape.
Value wise, I'm not sure what the limit may or may not be, but you can go pretty extreme and even use whole numbers. Here's my experiments with Skull Small-Big set to 4.000000 and to -9.000000
You may notice that some lines don't have a family or they have a number that is NOT 4. Those are archetype modifiers. Archetypes are the "face templates". Edit those values at your own risk, as the possible results for these are more unpredictable.
numpbd (dtUInteger) - Number of Pet Body Decorations, or the number of fur accessories
pbd# (dtString) - Pet Body Decoration, or at least that's what I choose to believe
This is where you can add or remove fur accessories. Those are the fluffy face or beards and such. These objects are typically dependent on the color of the pet. Can be edited, added, or removed to your liking. Just be sure the numbers are correct.
coatflags (dtUInteger) - Coat Flag, the type of fur for cats & dogs
This determines whether a pet is "smooth" or "curly". This can also be easily changed in the mirror instead.
coatshapemod (dtString) - Dog only, refers to the Coat Shape Modifiers (the "collie" or the "airedale" body shapes, etc.)
coatshapemodamt (dtString) - Dog only, refers to the slider amount applied. Values are in decimal, with 1 being the max slider.
These are the dog only coat shape sliders. Dogs can only have 1 I believe. I didn't test this section heavily, so I don't now if values can be more than 1.
Note: About the "pacifier". When pets breed in game, they don't mix face genetics like humansims. All kittens/puppies will either get mom OR dad's shape, not a mixture of both. While it's tedious, you could in theory use the knowledge from this How-to to pull parts from both parents to be "inherited" by their offspring. You can randomize features with a coin flip or something and then apply them into the Age Data. As a reminder, edit appearances in mirror to see any changes.
The underground fashion runway apparently didn't hit rock bottom hard enough during the previous gameplay session when a huge inaccessible fire killed a guest. Aurora seems to resent the firefighter who failed to save him, so much she is considering cannibalism.
But who has time to process anything when we could be having another fire? It's an arson/burglary combo this time.
This is an idea I've had for long, but what brought me to eventually execute it is this post on Reddit I saw a bit ago:
I suggest taking a read, but in short, it's about a draft of Veronaville that eventually was scrapped and rectified before release. I'm specifying "draft", as the creator makes it sound like this is the "intended Veronaville" we didn't get. It's one of the many ideas they eventually ditched, but I think it would really be fun to play as a "what if" Veronaville. Data (some of which I even found myself) is so old it dates back to when Veronaville was called "N005" ("Europa") and the fifth and last neighborhood to release after some other scrapped ones. With the information provided in this post, I would like to aim to recreate a visualization of what it used to be like. This includes:
The return of some unseen/dead characters
Return of deleted characters (where possible)
Rectification of existing characters (goes from the whole family to the single character and what they do)
Modifications to the story
Modifications to the structure of houses (unsure)
Modifications to the map (unsure)
Scripted notifications (I'll see if I can also make scripted events)
Restoration of old mechanics (such as baby faces)
Rectification of maxis errors
More? Maybe!
How can YOU help?
I'd absolutely love if you could help me develop this project, as there is a lot to do and help can speed things up. First and foremost, I need as much material as I can get. If you have beta pictures, promotional material, leftovers of data, or Knowledge on any of this matter (even if it's little)— do not hesitate to contact me!! Either write a comment on this post, contact me in private, or, if you're really shy, you can send an anonymous ask. To have this reach more people, please reblog, tell a friend, or share this via any means you want and on whichever platform. This gives a higher the chance to eventually get in touch with someone that might have vital information. Anyone that contributes will be credited (or can opt to not be credited). If anyone knows how to operate SimPE, share what you know and maybe I could even pass the project around so multiple people work on it.
Now, I did try to ask for the poster to be more specific with their provided information, but I've been kinda ignored...
In an advanced state, we could even start rolling out translations. I am only fluent in English and Italian, therefore, to not make half-assed translations, I'd appreciate if someone else could translate it in other languages.
Stay tuned! Everything will be posted under the "Sims 2: Project Europa" hastag.
Not an ask, I JUST LOVE YOUR IMPMON PFP. 😭💜 Have a blessed day
OMG THANK YOU!!!💜💜💜💜 I drew it myself and it was a blast, maybe I should do another impmon drawing for my PFP XD at this point I just be drawing impmon for fun next to my other favorite characters 🤣
Have some unfinished sketches I did of impmon a while back and still have in my procreate files to ever finish:
tangentwithtanner
jacobvanloon
romaincrisis
theartofmadeline
kianamaiart
