#dl:mods

[simi-simmer]

Maxis Unlocked Bin, Ash Pile and Trash

I unlocked the Base Game garbage bin, ash pile, and every single piece of trash! You can find them under Appliances > Large

DOWNLOAD

[pudding-parade]

Since I'm doing the Globetrotter Challenge, I wanted to make a new climate for the second, tropical stage of the challenge, even though I already have a "general Caribbean" one. I wanted something less rainy than that one. (I need to redo it one of these days; I think I went a bit overboard with the rain. LOL ) I do already have a climate based on Aruba, but it's a very non-standard one that I made for a specific save, and I wanted something less specific and more widely useable, so here we are.

Aruba, unlike most islands in the Caribbean, is semi-arid, featuring cacti rather than lush, flowering foliage. So, this preset is more arid as well, with rainfall being very seasonal. However, like the real Aruba, it is sunny more often than not, and since the real island is close to the equator and heavily influenced by the trade winds, the temperature hovers around 80F/27C year-round, day and night, so that's what happens in the preset, too.

This is a preset for use with the NRaas Tempest mod. General info about this project as well as installation/use instructions are here, and here is a link to the tag page for all the presets I’ve posted so far.

There are FOUR different versions of this preset in the download folder for this one, because I just couldn't make up my mind what I wanted for my own use. I've written up a "ReadMe" text file that's included in the download and that explains the differences between the four versions, instead of turning this post into a novel. If you read through it, you can make a more informed decision about which version(s) of this preset you'd like to use. You are, of course, free to keep all four if you think you'll have a use for all of them.

That said, in all four versions, some things are the same:

Fireplaces (if you have any in a tropical world) will not autolight.

Any fallen autumn leaves (if autumn is enabled) will be removed during winter (if winter is enabled).

Insect spawners will spawn year-round.

The possible temperature range is the same year-round in all versions, with no difference between possible day and night temperatures. The minimum is 75F/24C and the maximum is 85F/29C.

There is no snow (obviously), fog, or hail, so the only weather patterns you'll see in all versions are rain or clear/no rain. How those two patterns behave and the relative chances of them happening depend on which version of the preset you're using and what time of the year it is in the game, which is detailed more in the included ReadMe.

DOWNLOAD THE PRESET HERE.

[pudding-parade]

I'm thinking that I might try out @simspaghetti's TS3 Globetrotter Challenge, and when/if I do, I'm going to use @nilxis's Saaqartoq for the first stage of it. So, I wanted an as-authentic-as-possible Greenlandic Tempest preset to go with it. So here we are.

This preset is based on Ilulissat, Greenland, shown above, which is one of the largest towns in Greenland, though, being Greenland, "large" is very, very relative. I chose Ilulissat because it is known for its icebergs, and Saaqartoq has permanent icebergs in its water. The real place sits on the western coast of Greenland, above the Arctic Circle, so this climate is a true polar tundra climate. This means lots of cold, but less precipitation than you might imagine, because the poles are deserts.

This is a preset for use with the NRaas Tempest mod. General info about this project as well as installation/use instructions are here, and here is a link to the tag page for all the presets I’ve posted so far.

The download contains two files. One is a "default" version of the preset, which you can use regardless of the season lengths you have set. The other is a version which requires 12-day seasons to work properly. In that version, each season is divided into three 4-day "months," just because this gives more granular control over what kind of weather can happen when within a season. I made both versions because, if/when I do the challenge, I'll be using 12-day seasons for all the worlds, but I didn't want to lock everyone who might want to use this preset into that. So, you have choices.

For extra immersion when using this preset, I would recommend using NRaas Retuner to offset the seasonal sunrise/sunset times so that you have (sort of) 24 hours of daylight/darkness in the summer/winter. I'll put offsets for all four seasons behind the cut.

Download the preset here.

There's more detailed info about the preset behind the cut, if anyone cares.

Highest Temperature: 50F/10C Lowest Temperature: -5F/-20C

Overall Climate: Cold, but generally sunny and dry more often than not. It will only stay above freezing for entire 24-hour periods in the summer. During the spring and autumn, it can get above freezing for a time -- and it can rain or snow during those times -- but will always dip below freezing in the evening/overnight/early morning. It will stay pretty far below freezing for the entirety of winter, and any precipitation during that time will be snow. Summer is still cold -- So make sure you like your Sims' outerwear outfits, since they'll be wearing them year-round! -- but at least it stays above freezing. This certainly isn't a climate preset you want to use for growing things outdoors.

Snow: In the "default" version of the preset, it will only not snow in summer. For the rest of the year, there will be snow, and since the temperature will be below freezing during that time, that snow will be sticking around until the next summer. In the 12-day-seasons version of the preset, it can still snow in the first third of summer, even. Needless to say, if your game lags when there's snow on the ground, this isn't a preset you want to use. Fog: Fog is a common occurrence in the summer in the real Ilulissat, so fog is possible during the summer in the preset, too, and it's weighted about equal with rain, so it should happen fairly often.

Hail: Nope! Historically, Greenland (and the arctic/antarctic tundra in general) hasn't had thunderstorms and, generally speaking, hail requires strong thunderstorms. So, there's no hail in this preset. (But now? Due to climate change, the tundra occasionally gets thunderstorms, and they're very occasionally strong enough to produce hail. Yay. :/ )

Precipitation Intensity: Both the arctic and the antarctic are deserts, so while it does rain/snow in the preset, the duration of storms is set to be on the short side, with a maximum of 1.5 to 3 hours per occurrence, depending on the season. Rain intensity is set to be of only light or medium intensity, to avoid thunderstorms. Snowfalls can be of light, medium, or heavy intensity, with the highest chance of heavy snowfalls in the winter.

Additional settings:

Fireplaces that are upgraded to auto-light will do so on active lots when the temperature is 45F/7C or less.

Fallen leaves will be removed at the start of winter.

Insect spawners will not spawn in winter.

Annnnd, for those who might want to adjust their sunrise/sunset times for a more realistic arctic environment, here are offset values based on data from this site. These are the values you can plug into the Seasons Manager in NRaas Retuner, using the instructions linked to above.

Spring: Sunrise - +0.5 Sunset - +4.5 (These values are based on sunrise/sunset times on April 15 in Ilulissat.) Summer: Sunrise - -3 Sunset - +8.75 (These values are based on sunrise/sunset times from the day before the beginning of 24-hour daylight in Ilulissat.) Autumn: Sunrise - +3.5 Sunset - +0.75 (These values are based on sunrise/sunset times on October 15 in Ilulissat.)

Winter: Sunrise - +7.75 Sunset - -4 (These values are based on sunrise/sunset times from the day before the beginning of 24-hour nights in Ilulissat.)

NOTE #1: The above offsets are based on using either no lighting mod OR using a lighting mod that uses standard 6AM/6PM sunrise/sunset times. If you use a lighting mod with non-standard sunrise/sunset times, you'll need to do the math to adjust these offsets yourself.

NOTE #2: The game can't really give you an entire 24-hour period of daylight or nighttime. It's just not designed for that. The above offset values for summer and winter will result in sunrise and sunset happening 15 in-game minutes apart. However, the sky will likely be light or dark, depending on the season, for longer than that, because the game's lighting has built-in incremental lightening/darkening for a few hours around sunrise/sunset. There's not much to be done about this, but at least the sky will be mostly light/dark during summer/winter.

[pudding-parade]

A preset based on my hometown. Because. :)

Telluride is a tiny town in the southwest corner of the Rocky Mountain state of Colorado, USA. It sits in a box canyon surrounded on three sides by mountain peaks, at an elevation of about 8700ft/2650m. It has a drier continental climate, with its precipitation happening mostly as snow in the winter and short but intense thunderstorms in the summer, and because of its elevation, it's colder than its latitude would suggest. It regularly still snows in early June and then regular snow resumes in early October, so it is not an area friendly to growing things. However, the area gets, on average, about 335 days of sunshine a year, so it's a mecca for outdoor activities year-round.

I made this preset to use for the "Prosperity Challenge" that I'm going to play in Great Bear, which is a mountain world that reminds me of home, and I figured I'd share it. There are two versions of it, both included in the same download. One is a "default" version, which means that you can use it with seasons of any length. The other is the version I'll be using in my save, which requires using 18-day-long seasons. In that version, each season has three 6-day sections, each with different temperature ranges and weather patterns, to represent the three months within the season. This version is more realistic because breaking things out this way gives you more control over what can happen when, but it will not work properly unless you set your seasons to be 18 days long. That's the trade-off.

This is a preset for use with the NRaas Tempest mod. General info about this project as well as installation/use instructions are here, and here is a link to the tag page for all the presets I’ve posted so far.

Download the preset here.

More details behind the cut, for those who care. :)

Details for this preset:

Highest summer temperature: 70F/21C Lowest winter temperature: 5F/-15C

Overall Climate: Sunny, but generally cool to cold. Winters are very cold with accumulating and persisting snow, as the temperature will rarely get above freezing. Summers are pleasant (but still cool at night) and mostly sunny but with brief periods of heavy storms. The transitional seasons are both cool and drier. Because the real place is sunny year-round, the stretches of no precipitation are set to be long. So, there should be long stretches of clear weather punctuated by shorter stretches of precipitation, with the possible length and intensity of storms varying by season.

Snow: Yes. :) In the "default" version, it can and will snow in spring, autumn, and winter. In the 18-day-seasons version, it can still snow during the night in the first third of summer, though the possibility of snow is heavily outweighed by the possibility of rain or no precipitation, so it is not likely to happen. It will begin snowing again in the middle third of autumn. Since both versions will involve accumulating and persistent snow for long stretches of time, both versions might not be a good preset to use if your game lags when there's snow on the ground.

Fog: None. The real Telluride can appear to be "foggy," but it's actually clouds that are hanging low enough that the area is literally in the clouds. This isn't the same thing as fog and can't really be simulated in the game because the game's fog doesn't give the right patchy effect. So, I left it out.

Hail: None. The real place gets strong thunderstorms that very occasionally produce very small hail, but mostly the storms do not last long enough and do not have the updrafts required to form hail. So, I didn't feel it necessary to include hail in the preset.

Precipitation Intensity: Throughout the year, storms are set to be of relatively short duration, since the real area is a drier climate. However, the game can choose rain or snow multiple times in a row, so longer storms are possible. Snowstorms in winter hold the possibility of the longest duration, with a max of 3 hours per occurrence, and the intensity can be light, medium, or heavy, with medium intensity having the heaviest weighting. The shortest duration, with a max of 1 hour per occurrence, is rain in summer, with a high chance of heavy intensity. The transitional seasons are, appropriately, in between those two with rain/snow durations at a max of 2 hours per occurrence and varying possible intensities. If you use the 18-day-seasons version, all precipitation will be snow, not rain, between the last third of autumn and the middle third of spring. If you use the "default" version, all precipitation will be snow in winter, but it can either rain or snow during all of spring and autumn.

Additional settings:

Fireplaces that are upgraded to auto-light will do so on active lots when the temperature is 40F/4C or less.

Fallen leaves will be removed at the start of winter.

Insect spawners will not spawn in winter.

[pudding-parade]

Here's this lighting mod I cobbled together, up for public consumption for anyone who might want to give it a try. It's a "default" lighting mod, which means it will affect all worlds in all saves that are in the same game folder as the lighting mod, except for the dystopian/utopian futures in Oasis Landing. So, if you use a custom or EA world that includes special lighting that you like, you don't want to use this in that game folder because it will replace that lighting.

Before I start babbling, here's the download link upfront.

There are two versions included in the download. One file includes default replacements for the clouds, sun, sun halo, moon halo, and stars. Then there's a folder that contains two separate files, the lighting mod by itself and the default sky objects by itself, in case you don't want the clouds, stars, etc that you see in the pics and just want the lighting mod. (Or if you don't want the lighting mod but do want the sky objects, I guess!) The pics all use the "combined" version, but you can install only what you want, if that's more your cuppa.

This mod's "base" is Burntwaffles's Dream Dimension lighting mod, specifically version 2.5 with Lucky Palms water and no auroras, except that I changed the sunrise/sunset times back to the standard 6AM/6PM because I use NRaas Retuner to create appropriate seasonal sunrise/sunset offsets instead. It still has Lucky Palms's water, both because it's my favorite and because I don't know how to change it, but pretty much everything else has been altered at least slightly, from slightly brightening and color-adjusting the color ramps to mucking around with light angles and distance fog settings. So, not too much is left of Dream Dimension except the basic colors, but it's still at its core. I also looked at lighting mods made by @boringbones and @gruesim and compared the values they contain to Dream Dimension's values. None of the values I ultimately used are from any of those mods but they were all guidance that helped me to pinpoint values to change to get the look I wanted, so credit to those creators.

My goals for the mod, all of which I more or less accomplished, were:

1) Less-intense shadows, mostly in order to reduce harsh shadows on sims, especially in outdoor lighting, as well as too-dark bits of building exteriors, like covered porches and recessed entryways.

2) Desaturated but bright colors with less contrast, because my old eyes don't tolerate saturated colors and high contrast for long. Somehow, EA's lighting manages to be both very color-saturated and dark and often dismal at the same time. Meanwhile, most lighting mods are too bright and/or too saturated for my likings. I wanted less saturated but brighter, which seems to be a rare combination. Dream Dimension is already desaturated, which is why I like it, but I increased the brightness and warmth a bit on the color ramps because it could also be a bit too dark and "cold," in my opinion.

3) Improved natural-daylight indoor lighting. I somewhat accomplished this one, though there are still issues like too-dark ceilings and some too-bright walls, which I don't think are fixable with just a lighting mod. However, lowering the light angles seems to make the EA windows with fixed lighting (that mod is linked behind the cut) work better and gives pretty good results, which you can especially see in the WIP pics I've posted, since I didn't include a lot of interior pics on this post. I can make no promises about this issue on lots with custom windows, however.

4) Dark but not unrealistically black nights, including darker ground level lighting at night. Dream Dimension already had this, but I lowered the contrast so it's not so hard on the eyes and also made it a little bit brighter so that if you've got your sims in an unlit area far from from any artificial light sources, you can still see what they're doing. It also doesn't have the obnoxious blue tint that EA night lighting has.

Like the WIP pics I posted here, here , here, and here, the above pics have no Reshade or Photoshop editing applied to them at all, other than cropping/resizing in Photoshop. They are all taken in various EA worlds instead of all in my rebuild of Meadow Glen, as all the WIP pics I've posted have been. They are best viewed at full size, and I think they give a good representation of what the thing looks like, including flaws, assuming that you use the same appearance-improving stuff that I use on a decent-enough machine to run all this crap and still be able to play the game. I have tried to be thorough and transparent about my machine's specs and the other mods and stuff that I use that contribute to what my "naked" game looks like. That's all behind the cut.

The WIP pics I've posted have a larger sun and moon than you will get from the mod as uploaded. You can see the "included" sun/moon sizes in the above pics. I like those things to be larger, so my personal copy of the mod has larger sun/moon sizes, but I figured other people mostly wouldn't like that. The mod as uploaded has I believe slightly larger-than-EA values for those things, but not ridiculously-large like I like. As uploaded, there is also no sun halo, which to me results in a sun that looks like a ping-pong ball floating in the sky, but whatever.

I was going to write up and include instructions on how to mess with sun/moon sizes and other things in this post, including how to "reactivate" Burntwaffles's "auroras" if you want them. (Those are really just colored clouds, though; I prefer to use this mod for auroras, and it is shown in one of the pics above.) But I've decided to do all that in a separate post or two at a later time because probably no one will read this massive wall of text as it is. :)

For the sky objects replacement: They began life as parts of @wasset-asekara's "Enchanted Environment" mod, but I have edited them over the years. I don't remember all that I have done, but I do know that I edited @nilxis's clouds a bit and put that in there, and that the stars are an edit of ShojoAngel's starfield because I like its gazillions of tiny stars better than EA's sparse field of large globs that are apparently supposed to be stars. (One day I will make my own starfield from scratch that's more of a "happy medium" between those two, but that day hasn't arrived yet. LOL ) I'm pretty sure I didn't edit Wasset's sun halo, though, and it's included. You can see it in this pic, but as I said the uploaded mod has the sun halo size set to zero, so it will not appear unless you go in and fiddle with the sun and sun halo sizes yourself. As I said, I'll make a separate post about how to do that, if you don't already know.

And now for the section where I'll list my computer's relevant specs, mods that I use, and other stuff I have installed that affect how my game looks, for transparency's sake and so that you can get some of this stuff if you don't already have it…

My computer's relevant specs:

Core i9 "Rocket Lake" processor (The one before the Alder Lake one that requires a patch for TS3 to work right). It runs at 3.5GHz

64GB of RAM

The game and all CC is installed on an M.2 SSD

16GB RTX 4060Ti GPU

So, it's pretty high-spec. If your machine is lower-spec, I can't guarantee that this lighting mod plus all the other crap that most serious TS3 players use will result in a good gameplay experience. On the other hand, lighting mods aren't resource-intensive by themselves. They are literally just numbers and a handful of tiny images. It's just that people, myself included, tend to couple them with resource hogs like Reshade as well as appearance-improving mods and graphics rules and things, plus a mass of gameplay mods, and the cumulative result is one big resource drain. So, bear that in mind.

Mods:

More light through windows This fixes EA windows so that they work better and create more natural lighting. However, if you use a lot of custom windows that clone the unfixed LITE resource from EA windows, it will not help you at all.

Improved EA Lights Similar to the above, this fixes EA lamps and wall/ceiling lights and stuff so that they cast artificial light more realistically. It will also not help you if you use a lot of custom lights that clone the LITE resource of unfixed EA lights.

Fixed tileable item shaders This makes it so that lighting isn't weird on tiled bookshelves and sectional couches and stuff. Alas, it does not seem to fix uneven lighting on tiled windows. :( And, again, it fixes EA stuff, not custom stuff.

LazyDuchess's Sky Banding Fix It used to be that I used Reshade mostly to fix the gradient banding in the sky. With this fix plus this lighting mod, I can completely ditch Reshade, yay! (Of course you don't have to ditch Reshade; I just didn't personally use it much other than to deband and desaturate.)

Default replacement moon shown in the pics I use the Quartz color. You can use any replacement you want, of course. Or you can stick with the ugly EA moon.

NVIDIA Settings

Used for better antialiasing, the addition of ambient occlusion (which affects shadows), and a few other things. I listed the settings I use on this post. I imagine you can alter these settings if you use an AMD card, too, but I'm an NVIDIA girlie, so I don't know how you'd go about doing that. I'm sure there is info out there on the Intertubes, though! Bear in mind that many Reshade presets, if you use them, include better antialiasing and activating ambient occlusion, etc. via the various shaders used in the preset. Generally, you want either/or here, and I personally feel that NVIDIA settings give better results. However, with Reshade presets, you can disable individual shaders used for ambient occlusion and antialiasing and such to make them more compatible with NVIDIA settings.

A so-called "HQ mod."

Which isn't actually a mod at all but just edited graphics rules that change a few numbers so that the game uses higher-resolution images for stuff by default. This is necessary because, generally speaking, the game doesn't "know" that newer graphics cards that it doesn't natively recognize are capable of using larger textures, so it defaults to lower-resolution ones. If you haven't already done so, it's best to edit this yourself because graphics rules are rather machine-specific. General instructions on how to fart around with the graphics rules are here, and if you google around you'll find other tweaks that you can apply or not, as you choose. I personally edited mine for higher-resolution shadows and textures, both of which contribute to the pics of this lighting mod.

In-Game Graphics settings

All of mine are at maximum except for the game's native antialiasing (AKA "Edge Smoothing"), which is turned off since the NVIDIA settings handle that.

Various default-replacements.

The most obvious in the pics of this mod being @asabinsims "Project Renaissance" which default-replaces the textures for many of the game's trees, shrubs, and flowers. The "large" version is used in the pictures, but I use the "small" version for gameplay. Also, the sims in the pictures are using the default skin, eye, hair textures, and brow/facial hair replacements I use, but before the game "updated" them, they were briefly "wearing" the hideous Maxis stuff, and there were still no weird shadows and stuff on them.

Stuff that I don't have/use but that could possibly make this look even better:

LazyDuchess's Shader Framework and Tweaks LazyDuchess's Split-Level Lighting Fix (I don't use these only because, last time I tried to use them, I couldn't get the game to load with the shader framework installed, and the split-level fix just didn't work. But maybe it's time to try getting them to work again…)

And also: @katsujiiccfinds (But feel free NOT to reblog this, because it is a ridiculously massive post because of my thoroughness kink, and I would totally understand not wanting to pass that around. :) )

[simi-simmer]

Want Disablers for Gadgets

I don’t know if this has been done before, but I made want disablers for the cell phone, MP3 player, and handheld game player. Thank you, MidgeTheTree, for the tutorial! 🙂

If you want to enable any of them, simply open the file in SimPE and delete the one you don’t want to be disabled.

DOWNLOAD

[ccfreelots]

Sims2pack Clean Installer

If you are downloading lots for the Sims 2 you have to have the Clean Installer.