SimNation Life Before

Story Simblr, I operate on sarcasm and bitterness. Will be friendly with the offer of chocolate, please send asks.

[simnationlifebefore]

Story list 

Pleasantview Life Before (Tumblr)

💍  The Burbs ,  🚨 The Brokes ,  🎨 The Dreamers  

💋 Lothario  👩‍❤️‍👨 The Oldies 🔥The Goths

💔The Pleasants Part 1 ,Part 2 Part 3 

👽The Calientes Part 1 , Part 2  Part 3

Simnation 2020 (Wordpress)

🤝Angela and Lilith, 👻Ophelia , 🧚Titania 

Strangetown Life Before (Wordpress)

🎖️ The Grunts, 🚀 The Smiths, 🔭Curious Brothers, 

🛸 Curious Sisters, 🧪The Beakers, 💀Specter,

🥀 Ajay Loner, ⛸️Kristen Loste

[simnationlifebefore]

Bad news guys, this is my new ship

[fireflowersims]

What happened when GoS died?

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.

[simnationlifebefore]

My problem solving skills when I can't be arsed to look for cc knows no bounds.

I just can never use certain camera angles again for the rest of my life.

[julessims]

GOS is back for good!

Hello! I was the one who fixed it.

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.

[simnationlifebefore]

Just your average bad father in 2005

[gaypleasantview]

[dimond3d]

Hello, The Sims lovers! 🥰 Any vacation plans? Because the journalist trio in the next episode of the SIMWOOD series have their hands full!

This time, the studio is investigating one of the oldest families that helped establish it. There is a dark curse hanging over the entire family, and its last remaining member seems to be hiding in a hotel with a rather familiar name, White Oleander.

This episode took me about 5 months of work and is absolutely packed with references and easter eggs for both The Sims 2 and The Sims 2: Castaway 🐒

As previously, the episode is available with two audio options: POLISH and ENGLISH. I would be absolutely thrilled if you checked it out! ❤️

[painfully-painful-pain]

A small look at the HUGE world of lost Sims 2 Broadcasts on TV

Partially Lost British BBC "Newsround Showbiz" Will Wright Interview Segment about new features of The Sims 2

Partially Lost because we do know what questions the interviewer asks. But we don't have the actual footage. Or probably it is somewhere out there. I'm sure someone recorded every episode. Anyways we do know what was said in the segment because there's a transcript on the official website that's still up.

Lost German 3sat Broadcast About The Sims 2 Beta:

This took place in Fall of 2003. Around September. It aired twice on the German documentary station called 3sat. The first time I'm Not entirely sure on. The 3sat archives from 2003 list The Sims 2 in a "Games Convention" report that took place on the 25th of August in 2003 though it's unclear if it really is this clip or if it's the same Jennifer-Ernie-Jessica love square that's pretty infamous for grilling Jennifer in the hottub.

The second airing took place on the 26th September 2003. This broadcast is infamous for being one of the only Sims 2 Beta playthroughs to feature exclusive and unique differences to the retail version of the game. It showcases a family and a house that was used during promotion.

Theres also mentions of a few showcases of The Sims on Console that happened in multiple gaming magazines from 3sat but apparently those haven't been archived either sadly.

Lost Swedish "Kontroll" on SVT 2 Broadcasts Potentially About The Sims 2:

On the Official Swedish Sims 2 Website there was an announcement that a Gaming Magazine would air on March 15th 2004 for 12 weeks every Monday. Apparently it was broadcast on the Swedish channel "SVT 2". The text does not go into detail what relations it has to The Sims or if it was even featured on it. Though it probably did otherwise it wouldn't have an announcement on The Sims™ Website. Anyways no screenshots nor footage exist from The Sims segments from what I could find.

The first of the 12 episodes can be found on YouTube. That doesn't have a Sims segment in it. The other 11 episodes, where a Sims segment could probably be, seem to still be lost as of now.

Lost French "France 5" Special About The Sims

According to a few French fanwebsites it was broadcast on May 27th in 2005. It was speculated to be about the development and history of The Sims 1 and The Sims 2 and may have showed some insights and behind-the-scenes of creating the game. No screenshots of this exist to my knowledge.

And that's BARELY scratching the surface of how many reports there are out there.

[deafeningmooncherryblossom]

So, I have some good and bad news about that French special.

It's been archived by the INA (France's Audiovisual National Institute):

And I'll be putting an English translation after the cut, but the main issue is, it's only available for on-site consultation.

I wrote to ask them if there could be any other alternative, and if yes, I'll edit this post accordingly.

29.05.2026 edit: they refused. No copy nor diffusion is allowed :(

But if there are any french Sims fan reading this, salut! La vidéo serait consultable à n'importe laquelle des sites de l'inathèque, il faut juste prendre rendez-vous (et donner la référence id notice 2846107.001):

English translation of the Sims2 french special's notice:

The Sims: explaning their success from the Phenomania collection Programme title Culture, you said cultures Channel France 5 broadcasted on the 27th of May 2005, Friday, from 8:58 pm to 9:49 pm.

Document's summary: News story about The Sims, the best-seller video game of all times, which shows little virtual people taken care of by the player. Alternating interviews of specialists and aficionado of the game with commentary on screenshots of the game, this story tries to understand the reasons behind the game's exceptional success, and reviews the context of its creation, its sanitized and comforting universe, its relation to capitalist consumption, women's interest for the game, the sublimation of the self, the feeling of being in control, the excesses [in relation to the game], the players' community, the use of the game in ads and on television.

People interviewed: Tommy FRANCOIS, editor-in-chief, Game One Will WRIGHT, the Sims' creator Philippe SAUZE, director of Electronic Arts France DIAM'S, singer Bruno ICHER, journalist at Libération Luc BARTHELET, vice-president and research at Electronic Arts Jean-Claude KAUFMANN, sociologist Marc VALLEUR, psychiatrist at the Marmottan hospital Michel MAFFESOLI, sociologist at la Sorbonne Sandrine, 32 yo, Stay at home mother Elie OHAYON, CEO of Euro RSCG Chloé DELAUME, writer Serge TISSERON, psychiatrist, psychanalist Maxime, 15 yo Laurent TREMEL, sociologist Michael STORA, psychologist at EPS Ville Evrard Salomé, 14 ans, fan of the Sims Julien, 28 ans, fan of God of War Karen, 31 ans, public servant Stéphane NATKIN, teacher at the School of Video games and interactive media Audrey, 23 ans, translator Janique LAUDOUAR, sociologist

Summary of the episode: PHENOMANIA - THE SIMS

Virtual people whose life or death depends on the player: this is the principle of the video game "The Sims" which international success constitutes a real social phenomenon. That was more than enough for Phenomania to investigate and deliver a few keys to understand this. Talking with the tv director [Laurence Relin, L.R., interviewer Anne-Laure Fournier].

What are "the Sims"? L.R. It's a life simulation game which had been developed in 2000 by the American Will Wright. The player creates characters for whom they choose physical and personality traits, and invent their life. The player must provide for their essential needs under the threat of seeing them die, eventually building their life with a job, hobbies, and relationships. The game offers three different universes, but the one most chosen resembles an american residential suburb.

Why can we say it's a cultural phenomenon? L.R. It's the most bought game in the World: 60 millions copies sold, 400'000 of which in France for the second version launched in 2004. It was an immediate success. This constitutes an exceptional case since the players are predominantly women of various ages, including older than 35, who spend several hours per day with their characters.

How did you conduct your investigation? L.R. We focused on three main axes: the attractiveness of a rather unremarkable game which nonetheless allows its player base to dream by living another life, the huge community of websites which developed around the game, and the excesses brought by the game. The testimony of players and the analysis from sociologists show in what way this game is indicative of the insecurities and aspirations of a part of today's society.

End credits: Producers Schwartzenberg Emmanuel & Koszarek Christophe TV director Relin Laurence Journalist Lévy Cécile Communication Montuir Marie Participant Wright Will Participant Diam's-singer Participant Kaufmann Jean Claude Participant Valleur Marc Participant Maffesoli Michel Participant Ohayon Elie Participant Delaume Chloé Participant Tremel Laurent Participant Natkin Stéphane Participant Laudouar Janique

[teaaddictyt]

Good morning (from Australia), just an update for everyone that Sims2Artists is now rehosted and accessible once again. The site is being cleaned up and will likely go down again for a major update later down the track, but first priority it GOS.

As to GOS itself, all files have been secured and are in good hands. Still "running into many interesting and varied errors" while trying to update 😱🙈 but the main news is that things are moving.

Just a reminder I have pretty much nothing to do with any of this, I'm just the messenger but I'll certainly post as many updates as I can to keep everyone in the loop 😊

Cheers, Tea xo

[simnationlifebefore]

So I will be on safari during pvlb4's birthday this year, which means I have two months to finish the updates & celebration posts.

[simnationlifebefore]

Need a VPN on my phone because I'm not giving tumblr my ID to see incorrectly flagged mature posts on my mutual simblrs

[grimbunnies]

Juliette Capp has fallen for Romeo, golden child of the rival Monty clan. Can the Capps set aside their grudge and put Juliette's happiness first?

[mystery-pixels]

Sims 3 University Life™

[simnationlifebefore]

View this post on Instagram

Everyone go home, the best sims video ever was made.

[sixamese-simblr]

[sixamese-simblr]

Happy pride!

[woohoohotline]

ts2 premades as memes (part 1)