I made an override for the newly refreshed main menu in TS4. The last played family shown as you open the game made me think of loading screen in The Sims 2, so i thought, why not?
The backgroud is heavily inspired by Sims 2 loading screen. I made the art myself and used the icons from The Sims 4, to match the game's aesthetic. The override only changes the background image in main menu.
Here are the screenshots of the home and store backgrounds:
This is the first time I made a CC to The Sims (and finished it) and tbh I have no idea if I did it right lmao, but at least I'm proud of myself.
Special thanks to:
amethystamanda for making a tutorial on how to make your own main menu background
TheSimKid for Sims 4 icons I used for the background
DOWNLOAD
28/01/2025 UPDATE
After latest update, the game started using backgrounds that are images downloaded via internet connection. They replace the default image or any main menu override.
However! LunarBritney made a MOD THAT DISABLES ONLINE BACKGROUNDS.
It will NOT conflict with my main menu override. I recommend downloading it!
Never enough of poster collages for me, so I put together some ready-to-use ones and slapped them on the Free Time Butterfly Crawler mesh.
There are 28 variations. These collages use the work of 228 different artists; the archive includes full-sized swatches with artist names and a file with a link to each of them.
Full credit to the artists. None of the art is by me, and I don't make any profit from sharing these. Please see the links to check out other pieces by these people, I'm a big fan of their work!
Download (SFS) (alternate)
The files are compressed, Free Time is required. You can find add-ons for the butterfly crawler here and there.
I've tried to ensure no AI images are included. Please support human artists 💜
thinking about buzz beating up the curious brothers again. like what do you mean
but buzz is older than them?? time to dissect this (and by that i mean overly complicate it!!)
Making Sense of Buzz Grunt Beating the Shit Out of the Curious Brothers (and Loki)
I went into this assuming that, considering how old Buzz is, him beating up the Curious brothers + Loki as a teenager was statistically impossible, especially considering their age in actual human years—but was I wrong? Is it actually possible that Buzz did fight them within the time he spent as a teenager?
First, some supporting information.
Age Conversions Based on Adult Lifestage
Buzz: Day 14 or 43 years old
Pascal: Day 10 or 38 years old
Loki: Day 9 or 36 years old
Vidcund: Day 6 or 32 years old
Lazlo: Day 1 or 25 years old
These aren't even my own age headcanons for them (except Buzz's which is surprisingly accurate), just calculations. If you want to know how I got them then feel free to ask 😇
Evidence Provided by Memories
As seen in the picture, Buzz fought everyone "as soon as he aged up." However, it's possible he just has no memories of early teenhood.
Pascal similarly gained the memory as soon as he aged up. This idea is more plausible with him because he was accepted into private high school after the fact. Sure, in gameplay, this can happen as late as the last day as a teenager, but I doubt this is what Maxis was trying to convey since they literally handpicked these memories. Meaning: Buzz beat him up in middle school…?
Loki's only teen memory is losing the fight.
According to the Sims Wiki, Vidcund has no memory of Buzz beating him up (how hard did he hit him?)
Similar to Loki and Pascal, Lazlo's first memory as a teenager is getting beat up by Buzz.
Is This Possible In Normal Gameplay?
Disregarding any other family memories that arose around the time (I do NOT want to try to decipher the entire Curious timeline), the fight memories are in fact possible with their Sim ages.
The teen lifespan in The Sims 2 is 15 days long. Buzz is 4 days older than Pascal, 5 days older than Loki, 8 days older than Vidcund, and 13 days older than Lazlo.
Ensuring that everyone still falls within the teen lifestage, I made a table of the earliest and latest possible ages everyone could have been when Buzz attacked:
Converting their teen days into human years, Buzz either beat them all up as an 18 year old OR slowly picked them off until age 17 which is right before he kissed Lyla. None of this, however, is possible based on the initial age calculations.
Buzz's Attacks Based On the Adult Age Conversions
Buzz is 5 years older than Pascal, 7 years older than Loki, 11 years older than Vidcund, and 18 years older than Lazlo. There are two ways we can interpret their memories: either the Curious brothers + Loki were teenagers when Buzz attacked, or Buzz was a teenager when he started attacking them.
On the basis that Buzz is still a teenager, and assuming each fight happened in close proximity to one another, he specifically had to have been 18 years old when each one happened. This makes Pascal a 13 year old, Loki an 11 year old, Vidcund a 7 year old, and Lazlo…a newborn. ☠️ Alternatively, Buzz may have started younger and continued fighting until 18, the only teen year he could have possibly encountered Lazlo in.
If that seems implausible, then maybe Buzz wasn't a teenager and instead beat the boys up as soon as they turned thirteen. This would make him 18 for Pascal, 20 for Loki, 24 for Vidcund, and 31 for Lazlo. (Side note: Tank and Ripp would have been born by then.)
Conclusion
Regardless of whether you base it on Buzz been a teen or the victims being teens, him beating up Lazlo looks pretty bad. And if you go by gameplay rules, everything flows surprisingly well. According to normal gameplay AND real-life age conversions, Buzz is a big meanie who beat up at least one kid as a legal adult, at least with the age conversion system I used…
Me personally, I think he was college-aged when he started bullying them. (Or maybe they attacked him? Plot twist.) Of course, what I discussed weren't the only possibilities, but they should give a good idea of how things actually went… and maybe they can inspire your own headcanons! ^_^
This is a default replacement for the in game Taxi. This version I made is similar to the Sims 4 one. I removed the "thingy" on the top, leaving just the smaller one, changed the texture and made the glass more clear.
