Direct action, simply put, means cutting out the middleman: solving problems yourself rather than petitioning the authorities or relying on external institutions. Any action that sidesteps regulations and representation to accomplish goals directly is direct action—it includes everything from blockading airports to helping refugees escape to safety and organizing programs to liberate your community from reliance on capitalism. Here we present a step-by-step guide to organizing and carrying out direct action, from the first planning stages to the debrief at the end, including legal support, media strategy, and proper security.
There are countless scenarios in which you might want to employ direct action. Perhaps representatives of despicable multinational corporations are invading your town to hold a meeting, and you want to do more than simply hold a sign; perhaps they’ve been there a long time, operating franchises that exploit workers and ravage the environment, and you want to hinder their misdeeds; perhaps you want to organize a festive, community-oriented event such as a street party. Direct action can plant a public garden in an abandoned lot or defend it by paralyzing bulldozers; it can occupy empty buildings to house the homeless or shut down government offices. Whether you’re acting in secret with a trusted friend or in a mass action with thousands of people, the basic elements are the same.
Right click on your mask layer, click Select Pixels.
Click the Folder icon and then the Raster Mask icon on the bottom right. This should create a new folder.
Duplicate your gif into your project, either by clicking and dragging it into it or by right clicking and duplicating it into your project.
Simply put your gif into the folder that you made earlier and adjust it as needed. (make sure you have the WHOLE GIF FOLDER selected and have AUTO-SELECT OFF! otherwise it'll only edit one frame)
Export it as a gif and you're done.
You CAN do this with images that have faded borders, but it is important to note that gifs will make masks with any fading solid if you export it as a gif. Exporting it as a webp will keep the fading, though.
So, I picked up paralives and while I have many thoughts (If you want to see my random commentary, I keep that to Bluesky, and this for more coherent things like stories or tutorials.
It's got some wonk but it also has some really promising bones. It is early access but I really think the modding community will make or break the game. So while I have played a bit, I've been focused on how to make mods. Starting with eyes, because that's my default starting point on teaching myself things at this point. I have my eyes in game now:
And my next step is working on default skin replacements because some of the harsh lines bother me no end that are baked into the skin.
I haven't shared the mod for my eyes yet on steam because I'm still testing it in my own game to make sure it works exactly as intended but, I did want to give a few pointers on how files are organized because I struggled with the existing documentation. More below the cut.
So I think Paralives is focusing their team on the big priorities which is good! It's by far my preference, but that means there's not a lot of things like pop up tips or detailed guides when it comes to modding.
But Paralives DOES have things built in to make your own mods wihout needing a third party program like Sims 4 Studio. For eyes, you'll need a texture editor (I use Photoshop). And something like Blender is needed for working on meshes.
File Formats and Locations
Paralives works with .png files for images and .fbx for models. Those are the formats you're going to want to save things into for use in your mods folder. (This is serious basics so I'm not getting into .ini or .config or other things that more advanced most might need.
There are two places that files are stored on the computer. On my machine, the main game files are here:
But you can look up both with Steam and Paralives respectively.
With Steam, you can right click on the game in the list of your games and from the drop down menu select Manage and then Browse Local Files. That will take you to the game files.
In Paralives, on the main menu screen, below Start New Game and Load Game, Settings, etc., there's an option for Mods, which brings you to this page.
Then clicking on the folder icon of one of your mods in the little bar(you can make a blank new one and name it with your project) will take you to the folder that Mod Files should be stored in for the mod you are making.
Finding Base Textures
Now that we know WHERE things are, we can get the textures that paralives is currently using. These will be stored in the main game files.
Anything that makes up a Para is under Equipment in how they refer to it. Clothes, Hair, Eyes, Skin, Teeth, Body Parts. It's all Equipment.
C:\...\Paralives\Main.mod\Species\Human
For humans kid to adult, this is where I found the textures I started with. You can just search through the different file folders and open up things to see what they are - that's the long route I took - but there is a short cut.
Back to Paralives, on the screen where I showed you how to find the folder for mods, start by editing your new blank mod then click on Control Panel in the top bar.
Eyes are Equipment so we'll go there.
I put in Eye to narrow down the search and it ended up being in 'EyeIrisGlobe', if you open up that, you can see all the details about that specific part. In this case, we want to look at the textures that are applied to the eye mesh. This is where we'll change the texture to a new one for the mod later on but if you go and look it up in the menu that pops up, a hover menu will tell you where that file is located.
So, it's a great way to look at what's point to what. While there's not a lot of documentation, this is SUPER helpful for figuring out what goes to what.
What's in an Eye?
A lot, it turns out. There are several different textures that make up the final look of an eye in paralives.
Since Heterochromia is a built in option, there's a mesh for each eye, what Paralives calls the 'greymask' texture and then a colormap mask for each eye.
There's also a greymask for the inner eye ring and each eye has two different colormaps, one for the simple whole eye color and one that allows you to change the whites of the eyes, the inner ring, and the entire iris.
The Greymask:
The Tri Color Mask
Eye Mask
Inner Grey Mask
This doesn't include the catchlights (the white highlights over the pupil), those are their own entry and have additional images in another folder.
For me, all I wanted to do was replace the base eye texture with a different one, same dimensions and same color locations for the different color wheel options, which meant I only needed to replace the greymask texture.
I'm not going to go over how to make a texture for an eye. There are better ones already out there, certainly. This one is just a remake of the eye texture I made for my sims default eye replacement.
Putting it into Paralives
To make the mod, I needed a right and left eye replacement in png format, and at the ratio that they use for textures (1024 x 2048). I strongly recommend using the base greymask of each to model exactly where your replacement is going to fit. Otherwise you'll end up with textures mapped to the wrong mesh as well. Background should be transparent of course.
Now back to Paralives to make it a mod. You'll need to make a New Mod, if you haven't already. Leave the files in whatever place you've saved them. For me, its a working folder on my desktop.
In the game, after you've made the mod, use the folder icon to open the folder window. Paralives automatically makes a folder for your new mod. The files for that mod need to go in THAT folder specifically.
This is the part that caused me serious issues. The game MAY NOT detect the files right away. What worked for me is to exit the game after storing the new files in the right folder and then return to the game.
You will know when the game finds the files as it will pop up a little notice like '2 files were reinstalled'. (Sorry, I didn't manage to screenshot the exact message. I was in and out a bunch of times trying to figure out why I couldn't find the files in the next steps of this. Its the only pop up you get like it. You'll know it when you see it!)
Once you have the files loaded and you've gotten the little pop up, it should go quickly.
Note: A friend who is also working on modding reported that turning the mod on and off has gotten the files to register as well. That may work for you as well! I had to exit the game to get it to show up.
So, click on the mod and then Edit This Mod.
You are now editing the Mod!
IMPORTANT: You will continue to edit this mod even if you go into game and out of game, it will remain in edit mode until you click the stop editing mod button. Which is great for testing. Not so great for not giving yourself a mild heart attack when you realize you're in edit mode and might accidentally change things because you're not paying attention.
Now, back to the control panel!
All we are going to do is replace the HumanEyeLeft.png and the HumanEyeRight.png to point to the new files you made and dropped in the mod folder.
Once that's done, you'll need to make sure that the settings (the wheel icon next to the texture name), match what they should.
The default eye settings for the base game eyes look like this:
For my eyes, that was brighter than I wanted them so I have 'Is Linear' unchecked personally.
The eye that is brighter has 'Is Linear' Checked, the eye that is darker has it Unchecked.
Great! Now you've changed the base eye texture for kid through elder! All that's left to do is repeat the step of replacing the textures and updating the settings for the 'ToddlerEyes' Equipment. That will make the baby and toddler match.
Final Pro Tips
Remember what I said about the 'now editing mod' staying on and the heart attacks?
It IS useful as well. So, if you leave the mod in edit mode, you can actually go into the game and tweak it live. When you're in, for example, Paramaker, Control+F2 will bring up the mod menu and you can make adjustments to the control panel and see them reflected as soon as you change the eye color.
My final word of advice is: BACK UP YOUR MOD FILES. If you delete the mod, it will destroy the mod folder it made for it and any files stored inside. DON'T put your only copy of a texture or a model you've made into the mod folder. Have a backup. For your own sanity down the line.
I stopped memorizing random dates and started organizing history like a system. Here’s the structure I use for every event:
1. Basic Info
Event name
Date(s)
Location
Main people involved
Example: The assassination of Julius Caesar (44 BCE, Rome)
2. Causes (Why did this happen?)
I break this into:
Political causes
Economic causes
Social tension
Long-term background
History makes way more sense when you focus on buildup instead of just the moment.
3. The Event Itself (What actually happened?)
What triggered it?
What were the key turning points?
Who made the critical decisions?
Keep this clear and simple — no fluff.
4. Immediate Consequences
Who gained power?
Who lost power?
What changed right away?
For example, after Caesar’s death, Rome didn’t become stable — it spiraled into more conflict.
5. Long-Term Impact
This is the most important part.
Did it shift power structures?
Did it change a government system?
Did it influence later events?
This is how you connect one event to the fall of the Roman Republic or the rise of the Roman Empire.
6. Patterns & Themes
I always ask:
Is this about power consolidation?
Reform vs tradition?
Expansion?
Economic strain?
Once you start tracking themes, history feels interconnected instead of random.
And if your wondering how this is even possible, i orginized one history dashboard built for things like this. Don't be messy with history! Below is some pictures of the best Dashboard for history! GET IT HERE!
