Whitewave ⬩ in chronological order
Pinch ⬩ tag ⬩ chrono ⬩ heirloom challenge
Tinwater ⬩ Ironwood ⬩ Greta
All gameplay posts ⬩ chrono
Collection of portraits
Strangetown ⬩ Green Valley ⬩ Sometown (v.2) ⬩ Newend
Whitewave is my current longest running neighborhood, and these are the tags I use for it in this blog:
Whitewave in chronological order
Whitewave Sim Page
Dreamwidth directory (outdated)
households:
Limestone ⬩ tag ⬩ chrono
The Commune ⬩ tag ⬩ chrono (retired)
Lovett ⬩ tag ⬩ chrono
Mills ⬩ tag ⬩ chrono
Rogan ⬩ tag ⬩ chrono
Farwood ⬩ tag ⬩ chrono
Huotari ⬩ tag ⬩ chrono
Aoki ⬩ tag ⬩ chrono
Black ⬩ tag ⬩ chrono
Ardor ⬩ tag ⬩ chrono
Sherman ⬩ tag ⬩ chrono
Puhto ⬩ tag ⬩ chrono
Hunt ⬩ tag ⬩ chrono
Cluster ⬩ tag ⬩ chrono
Strauss ⬩ tag ⬩ chrono
Broman ⬩ tag ⬩ chrono
College ⬩ tag ⬩ chrono
*tag takes you to the household tag on my blog, chrono to the same tag but starting from the beginning. the chronological tags don't work on the app.
I took way too many pictures of these two on their date, so here's a separate little photoset. The sectional booth cuddle is just too cute! Just look at Rosa's smile!!
Lighting Styles - Lighting Styles are sets of configuration files and definitions for different effects depending on what kind of lighting you want. You can choose from one of three:
Cozy - this is a balanced lighting configuration between realistic and Maxis-styled lighting. Intensity of the lights is in between Cinematic and Smooth. If you don't otherwise change the default lighting setting this is the setting you will get.
Cinematic - this is a more realistic, more saturated lighting configuration similar to the Radiance Lighting System and Cinema Secrets. Very dark nights and brighter lights
Smooth - this is a smoother, softer, less saturated lighting configuration that is kind of like a souped-up Maxis Match Lighting mod. Lower contrast, brighter nights. Perfect for more Maxis-Match players
Morning lighting is also made more golden than pinkish to differentiate from the evening lighting.
Cheat aliases are also changed to be easier to remember. Kindly update your userStartup.cheat files.
Funny how originally The Sims was considered to be a satire on consumerism and late stage capitalism, and 26 years, 3 games, and thousands of dollars in DLC later, it might be getting in-game ads.
Full circle moment if the circle was on fire, and also the portal to hell.
got new themes for this blog and the cc finds blog @resometownie! i'm gearing up towards diving into simming big time i guess, the other night i spent setting up all the new fixes people have been creating (the amazing @spockthewok my game THANKS you!!!!! i used to not be able to play two households in a row and was always walking on egg shells, now i was able to switch between idk six big households with no problems 😭), and last night i ended up changing all my major blog themes because i wanted a new feel to it all. what i wanna do next is a little photoshoot with some sims for the new themes, for low i'm using old pictures as placeholders. and THEN i could dive into either Whitewave or TINWATER because now my game could actually hANDLE the up and coming city neighborhood 🤩
Up until now I've been using my sideblog @resometownie (link since for some reason i can't tag my own sideblog...... probably some setting i've set up) as a place to reblog other simmers' posts and cc finds and tutorials and such. From now on I'm moving the reblogs of other simmers' gameplay posts to this blog, because I myself am so horribly inconsistent in posting, and I don't want this blog to fall into disuse! Also I want to be in more direct contact with others through reblogs :) I'll be using the tag #somesimmers so if you don't want to see those reblogs you can block the tag. Since I reblog cc/mods/tutorials mostly for my own safekeeping sake, those will still be reblogged to @resometownie because I don't want my cc hunting sprees to clutter my main.
also a reminder that my personal sideblog is at @gretaesque (link also why can't i tag my own blogs) so if you followed this blog because i followed you(r non-sims blog) that's probably where you'd be more interested.
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.
Here's s some of my favorite builds from Sometown!
The thing I like about MySims is that I can play it without ever worrying about what these builds look like. If I'm not up to building, I'll just plop down a single block, a door and a sign, and that's it. Usually I am up to building, though......... I kinda like the restrictiveness of the building mechanics.
I haven't had time or energy to play TS2, but since I'm visiting my parents for this mothers day weekend, I had access to my MySims save that I've been playing on the old family computer whenever I'm visiting. SO I thought, why not share some screenshots? These are the looks I've been using for my sim (yes, she's supposed to look like me.... I think it's fairly accurate).
Was so thrilled to sit down with the incredible @spockthewok this week to talk about how on earth he fixed The Sims 2. Thank you Will for so graciously allowing me to pepper you with questions (since day 1, lol) and for your time and expertise.
You're going straight to the hall of fame, my dude 😂❤️
So, you know how sometimes it feels like your sims have been dating for forever, and they absolutely should pick up the pace and get married already? Well, sometimes it's not that they've been dating for forever, but it's that you've taken so damn long to play the game that it feels like forever. While in game it has not been even a full round since anything happened.
Ehm. So. Let me start from the beginning.
Meri Broman's bestie Aamu moved out recently to marry Apple Farwood, so now she's living alone in the little apartment the two originally rented together. Meri has been focusing on her work in the natural science career, racking up promotions. As a nature sim she has plans to move out into the countryside, and in order for that to happen she needs a solid nest egg to buy the farm of her dreams.
Meri is hardly lonely, despite her roommate moving out. Earlier this round, Kevin Rogan took Meri out on a date and, like the Rogan round post notes, their relationship has gradually grown into a very firm and secure little thing. Kevin keeps popping up for breakfast visits and the two get along swimmingly. So, since they have already been dating for... forever... which is... approximately one in-game week (read: one and half real-life YEARS) Meri decides it's time to pick up the pace!
Their dream date is truly a dream: Meri and Kevin had now made their relationship official, then almost immediately got engaged, and finally woohooed for the first time. They still haven't moved in together, because Meri had to go back to focusing on getting those promotions, but I'm sure a wedding is not far around the corner.
Also, she met and made friends with Peter the Sasquatch, who is also a recent addition to the neighborhood!
some favorite pictures and looks and faces from twentytwentyfive. according to my screenshot folder i got through six households, and i didn't play almost at all before may, thanks to the farwood household bugging out (it's been fixed now). i've got some catching up to do with this neighborhood.
sims included:
lila hart | titus ardor | apple farwood & gina farwood | aada puhto | flora puhto | babette black | sky huotari | aamu farwood
