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horusmenhosetix · 20 hours
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"An ideal Sims game would have Sims 2's gameplay mechanics, Sims 3's open world, and Sims 4's graphics!"
I absolutely despise this take, and I want to explain why. This is a very long rant and it is full of piss and vinegar directed at everything in the Sims 4. I'm gonna try to keep everything kinda professional as much as I can but I can't guarantee an unbiased opinion.
If you'll let me talk your ears off for a moment, I'd like to explain, from my own experience as an artist and a casual player, my issues with the art style and direction of The Sims 4 compared to The Sims 2. (I'm not really going to comment on 3 because I've never played it.)
I want to start off by explaining the difference between better graphics and higher resolution. The Sims 4 absolutely blows Sims 2 out of the water when it comes to textures and polygon counts on sims, no contest. But I'd argue that the graphics themselves... aren't better. They're worse, even, so much fucking worse. The biggest problems come from the stylization and the animations, in my opinion, so I'll explain what I mean.
Have you ever felt like the Sims in 4 just look... weird? Not quirky, not kinda strange, but off. Distressing. Uncanny. Whatever the fuck the kids call it nowadays. When you strip away the packs and the CC and the shaders, the sims in the base game look bad. They're very close to being human; they walk like us, talk like us, have families like us, but they don't look like us, not exactly. There's always something off about them, no matter how close you try to get. Proportions will be a bit off, or your eyelashes will be like three polygons for some fucking reason, and the jig is up. The illusion is gone.
This is one of the instances where a higher resolution and more detailed models and meshes work against you. You aren't making believe. You are beyond the point of pretending that the pixelated shapes are real clothes and bodies and faces, because at this point, they're close enough that you don't need to. There's no gap to bridge. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're lifelike, at least, not enough to be completely human. In some ways, they're still tethered to being cartoony and plasticky and fake. Just enough to frighten you. Enough to put you off. They're not using it to their advantage anymore, and instead, it's holding them back.
When the Sims 2 came out in 2004, the developers knew that they weren't going to make a perfectly accurate life simulator. They physically couldn't render every wrinkle in the face or fold in the clothing. In some animations, things clip strangely or the facial expressions are sort of janky or there's just some form of roughness around the edges. But that's okay; your brain doesn't need a perfectly accurate representation this time. That's not what you're here for, anyway.
The Sims 4 is basically Icarus-ing itself into disaster. The entire game sacrifices style for complete realism, a goal that was unachievable ten years ago, and is unachievable now.
The Sims 2 never thought of itself as a completely realistic life sim, though. It has cartoony, low poly meshes and exaggerated proportions and wild, raunchy storylines that would never occur in real life. BECAUSE IT ISN'T REAL LIFE. And it isn't like real life, not because it's failing to be, but because it doesn't want to be!
The Sims 4 is not ever going to completely replicate human looks or interactions or dynamics. And if it's trying to, it's doing a shit job of it. That shouldn't be the goal in the first place. If I wanted to watch a lonely college student talk to himself in the mirror to try and get better at interacting with people, I'd close the computer and go look at myself. It somehow highlights the most mundane parts of life without any of the whimsy and goofiness that the earlier installments had. It takes itself too fucking seriously for its own good, and it's killing both the gameplay and the art style.
The other point I'd like to bring up is the animation. The Sims 4 allows for much more customization of both sim and environments, but at the cost of dynamic animations. How many times is that grab animation reused? How many times is the same set of animations used for sims with wildly different personalities? Your sims barely feel alive with how little they express themselves.
Now, look, I'm a digital artist. I've dabbled in animation, but only briefly, and only in 2D. I've got no clue how 3D animation works, much less how it worked 20 years ago, but I can see the passion in every single animation in the Sims 2. The more niche interactions allowed for more expressive animations than in 4. They could afford to have a distinct animation for mean sims throwing the football extra hard to be assholes, rather than every sim using the same generic football-throwing animation to save time and money. I get where they're coming from. I get the idea. But in one move, you've both made the art style stiffer and less expressive, and you've made the personalities of the sims seem meaningless. Everyone acts the same, regardless of what their moodlets or their traits say. It's hollow. It's stifled. It's a waste of potential.
But for what Sims 2 lacks in polygons, it makes up for in smaller animated details. Quality over quantity. The sims have hair physics, they open the door before they get in the car, they take utensils out of the counters when they cook, they jump on the couch and the cushions smush under their weight. When they dance, the weight is realistic, and when they smile, it tugs at every one of the few dozen shapes that make up their faces. The sims are lively. They dance and sing and love and hate just like humans, and rather than being some strange attempt at mimicry, it's almost a tribute. They were made with love. You can tell that they were drawn up and rigged and animated by a bunch of people working together, studying each other and making faces in the mirror for reference and watching their kids and neighbors and dogs and hands for reference. The sims are not human, and not trying to be, but they're taking the most human parts of us and making them their own.
You could never have a game with the Sims 4's graphics and the Sims 2's gameplay. The gameplay and graphics are inexorably connected, and the Sims 2 just has so much glorious detail baked into it, that you could never really make it work underneath the limitations of the later games. The developers of 2 knew what their limits were, and they worked tirelessly to make the game as full and complex as they could within those limits. The developers for the Sims 4 just did not have those guidelines, and thus, the drive to bend the rules was no longer there. They didn't go wild in rebellion because they were never told they couldn't in the first place. They spent the entire time chasing a goal they couldn't meet, and lost sight of what made the series fun to begin with.
It wasn't the realism you came for; you had realism already surrounding you. It was the caricature of it that made it interesting.
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horusmenhosetix · 1 day
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View in twitter
http://gofund.me/7489c83c
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horusmenhosetix · 1 day
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10€ does not detract from you, but it saves a life
10€ may seem small,
but your contribution helps save the life of an entire family suffering from the threat of genocide, repeated bombing, and displacement in Gaza. Hand in hand, we put hope and a smile back on my family’s face Please donate now
€10 or more if you can
@nabulsi @sayruq @palipunk @palidoozy-art @el-shab-hussein @communistchilchuck @northgazaupdates @stil-lindigo @queerstudiesnatural @bluebellsinthedells @palentonga @rizzyluke @kordeliiius
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horusmenhosetix · 2 days
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horusmenhosetix · 3 days
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horusmenhosetix · 3 days
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This evening, my children fell asleep hungry because there was no proper food for them. We also walked for three hours to save drinking water. The place was inhumane and the water was polluted, but there was no other choice. Please help me cover travel costs for me and my family. War life is very tiring, especially my children who suffer every day due to lack of food, medicine and hospitals. Please keep sharing and donating as much as you can, every $5 can help us escape to a safe place and start a new life.
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This evening, my children fell asleep hungry because there was no proper food for them. We also walked for three hours to save drinking water. The place was inhumane and the water was polluted, but there was no other choice. Please help me cover travel costs for me and my family. War life is very tiring, especially my children who suffer every day due to lack of food, medicine and hospitals. Please keep sharing and donating as much as you can, every $5 can help us escape to a safe place and start a new life.
The food consists of unhealthy expired cheese and overcooked canned foods that are not suitable for cooking.
https://gofund.me/0f3edba2
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horusmenhosetix · 3 days
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I'm curious! Also can you imagine having a non-stop headache for 13 years? Please leave details in the tags such as your age.
Hi, my name is Ella, and I have had a constant headache for 14 years. I am 26 years old. Painkillers do not work.
I need Pineal Cyst Removal Surgery if I am ever to experience a pain free day again.
I cannot afford the surgery but it would drastically improve my quality of life.
I am suicidally depressed because of my chronic pain.
Can people please reblog this so that it can get traction?
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horusmenhosetix · 3 days
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Feyh Grape 🍇
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horusmenhosetix · 3 days
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Making Sims 2 University Fun: my personal guide
I've noticed that while it's probably one of the most utilized of the expansions, TS2's university is generally seen as a slog. Which makes sense. It has a completely different gameplay loop than the rest of the game. But it's very handy to send your sims to college, especially if you use any of the various mods that limit careers based on education. So here's my big guide to making university an actual fun experience to play through (to me, at least).
The university expansion is, uh, very tailored to the 2000s college party time animal-house tropes. the pack becomes more fun when you treat it that way and let your sims be stupid young adults who streak and fool around on campus and throw parties. which, by default, is tricky because of the gameplay that requires so much skill building and assignments. which the rest of this guide will also deal with.
Note: I make some pretty big changes to normal university gameplay, to the point that it does require a bit of modding and at least one instance of fooling with simpe. there's probably also easier ways to do it, and of course everything is optional. maybe you do like keeping sims in dorms for the entire time and just three-speeding trough it all.
*mods: there are a few absolute must-have mods to me.:
TwoJeff's College Adjuster. It's basically an all-in-one controller to adjust semester timing, change semesters, plus a bunch of other features. The semester timing is the most important to me.
Active Classes is still in testing, but it almost completely changes how I play college sims. Once again, I'll detail gameplay later, but actually sending your sims to class makes for a much more fun campus experience.
No College Time Progression On Community Lots: this goes hand-in-hand with the previous mod.
Community Time: IIRC you have to do a little editing in SimPE to make it work right with University - this post explains what to edit. I don't know if I'm allowed to share the exact edit I made as a download. This might seem redundant after the last mod, but there's a reason for the madness: while one group of sims are in their active classes, the other students can do things on the home lot.
Instant Pledge for Greek Houses: This one is important for greek house gameplay, which is later.
SimBlender: There's like, 500 different edits of the SimBlender, and I think all of them have the main function needed for my college gameplay, which is teleportation. You can use a comparable teleporter if you fancy.
Simlogical's University Break is another important one for me, but it's not really necessary if you don't want it. I usually give the sims one break day per season - more on that later.
Autonomous Casual Romance is not required, but it sure adds a lot of fun to your college experience. You can also do any number of professor-limiting, custom degrees, etc mods and fixes you want.
*mods i do not use: there are mods to change the number of/length of semesters, but I seem to run into issues with them so I use the college adjuster to do the same things. I also don't really use any major overhauls, or mods that make term papers faster. I did have the tuition mod for a bit but grew tired of using it.
*general timing changes: I do seven-day seasons with longer lifespans for all sims and play rotations each day. These are the things I do specifically for university:
Four semesters: I only do semesters 2, 4, 6, and 8. Every time a new semester starts, I just use the College Adjuster to set the correct semester for each sim. I use the default length of 72 hours.
Synchronized finals: I use the College adjuster to reset the timer so the finals are all around 6-8am, and synchronized for each sim on a lot. This makes it easier to keep track of timing and skills. Also, all sims in university run on the same 3-day semester. Finals are the same day for the entire college each round. Once again, that just makes it easier for me to keep track of college-wide events for gameplay reasons.
Because this means there's 3 days per school year, and two school years per season week, it syncs better if they get a day off every Sunday using the University break mod.
Teens are sent to college on the same schedule. I send teens to school when they have 14 days or so left, with maybe an extra day or two if the college is currently in the middle of the semester.
*Gameplay: living situations: Here's where the meat begins. Now all your sims are on the same college schedule, they're all being sent to school, and now they need to actually move into college. I follow a real rule a number of colleges use: Every student spends a year in the dorms. Just their freshman year, then they have to move somewhere else. I find that this gives them a chance to meet dormies, adapt to being on college, and sorta figure out what kind of young adults they are. Plus, this gives them time for joining greek houses, which will be talked about later.
I do this because I like seeing sims as their own little characters with arcs and whatever and it forces me to think about what exactly they would be doing in college. Some sims get so frustrated with the constant mess of a dorm, some sims thrive by making friends with every dormie. Sometimes they start new drama with the others they came from high school with. Nothing quite like losing your high school sweetheart to some stinky dormie, after all.
After freshmen year, the students are kicked out of the dorms. They can get an apartment, they can rent a house, they can move into a greek house if they join one. Either way, they need to live somewhere. You can let them stay in the dorms, but I prefer somewhat smaller college households and divide them accordingly. Which gets into that whole greek house situation:
*Gameplay: greek houses. I gamify the Greek houses. I play SSU in my megahood, which comes with a fraternity and sorority, and you can do whatever setup you like there if you dislike gendered houses. Or abandon them all together and ignore this section. There are a few important elements:
Freshmen cannot live in Greek houses. They can, however, pledge while living in the dorms and move in right after their finals end. This includes dormies. There are benefits to the dorm, such as free housing, more social opportunities, usually more money per household since I cheat to make the greek houses actually nice to live in with things like pools and comfortable furniture, etc.
The Greeks have to be recruiting consistently. To keep the house going, they need to constantly be bringing in new members, either playable OR dormies.
Any recruited dormies are required to move in. You can townify them after graduation if you don't really get attached to them, but every member of the house is moved in. I use the instant pledge mod to get rid of that annoying requirement where they have to hang out on the lot so long before moving in. That, and they also move in after finals. You can teleport or invite them on and just ask them to move in. Whatever you want. Then, you must set them to be sophomores. Beyond that you can do whatever. They're playable now. Have fun.
You gotta let the Greeks party. Throw toga parties all the time and use a teleporter to maximize guests. Generally, ALL members of ALL greek houses are teleported to a party by default. Add more dormies, any friends, anybody in the dorms - the kids need to recruit and the easiest way is by forcing everyone on one lot. If you have autonomy mods or realistic alcohol, sit back and watch the madness unfold.
I don't really play wants-based, so playables that join greek houses is more based on vibes or friendship with existing greek members than wants.
*Gameplay: what do you mean we have to study??? Yeah. I made it this far before even bringing up the whole point of college. This is also where it gets a little more complicated and changed up, so bear with me.
I don't do wants-based, again, so I generally just try to make sure sims are at least passing by default. Whether they go beyond a C is up to whatever. I usually try to get knowledge sims to their 4.0s or sims that just seem like they'd take it seriously to max GPA.
ACTIVE CLASSES ARE SUCH A LIFESAVER. You can use the pre-made lecture hall or make your own. Put some skill-building objects in there, and if you like flavor theme the lecture halls around majors. I have a business/gen ed building, a science lot, and an arts lot, each with two classrooms (plus the library contains a classroom). I do believe I made an edit to the mod to make the class performance go higher with active classes, as well, so attending class every day is the bare minimum to get a passing grade.
The active class lots also contain career reward skill-building objects. These are nice because your sims can request to be taught by other sims on the lot. If you have a mod that allows non-students to visit uni lots, this helps even more with faster skill-building.
Every day, I send groups of sims with similar majors to their class. If there's a mixed-major group, each sim group gets one day in active class per semester. (So if there's an economics major, a bio major, and an art major, each one attends class on a separate rotation and the others do the normal autonomous go-to-class where they leave the lot and disappear). They attend one or both of the lectures and otherwise exist on the college lot to skill-build, socialize, eat, etc.
Outside of class, sims will usually research if they're not doing great. I honestly barely bother with assignments or term papers unless the sim actually wants to do them or are aiming for a high GPA. Maybe they go hang out at the lounge or downtown to fool around. Maybe they just fester at home. Whatever they want.
*other gameplay/storytelling things: I usually will take advantage of the aspiration change after their sophomore year if I realize that their aspiration just doesn't really jive with how they act. It's realistic to me. They had many years since being like, 13 when they first had their aspiration selected. I'd like to implement more in the way of holidays/events, personally, but that's not really relevant either. I usually give them an outfit change as well, and I like to go hard with the idea that they're going through a bunch of weird fashion phases. You know you want to give them a mohawk, just for a few days, don't you? Dye their hair red? Shave it all off? Have fun with it.
All of these things combine for me, at least, to make the college years a lot more engaging/interesting and less of a slow "move to a dorm -> study -> read books -> meet needs -> graduate" loop. There's a lot more storyline development that comes from sims being able to enjoy their time as young adults, too, such as the regular polycule jealousy explosions and party fights. It serves to break up anything they had going on as teens and give them a little direction to enter adulthood with. This concludes my little mini-guide, feel free to steal all my gameplay style or just take inspiration if you please. Or ignore it all and shake your head and call me an idiot. do whatever you want forever.
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horusmenhosetix · 3 days
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Hi, my name is Ella, and I have had a constant headache for 14 years. I am 26 years old. Painkillers do not work.
I need Pineal Cyst Removal Surgery if I am ever to experience a pain free day again.
I cannot afford the surgery but it would drastically improve my quality of life.
I am suicidally depressed because of my chronic pain.
Can people please reblog this so that it can get traction?
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horusmenhosetix · 4 days
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🌴🌺 strange bottom 🫧🐠
sobs violently..... here are my mermay contributions.. I WANTED TO DO SO MUCH MORE but it's already almost june and i am the procrastinatorrr 😝
first up are THE LEAKERS!!! ft. nerfish (he's based on a viperfish) loki is a blue loebstr 🎹 and circe is based on a japanese spider crab cuz their legs reminded me of long medical instruments i guess.
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next THE BLUBS 🫧🐟 get it.. fish dont grunt. im smart right they're sharkies (💕) because @simm-mouse connected buzz with buzzsaw sharks (also lyla is a siren in this au hence the extra finny stuff on the kids)
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their names are general barnacles, submarine/fishtank, riptide, and duck ^_^ @budgieflitter came up with the last 3 im mot creative enough to come up with SUBMARINE </3
🌀🌀🌀
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other doodles blehh 🧛
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horusmenhosetix · 4 days
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Sudanese fundraisers that have yet to reach their goals:
Help Mohamed Evacuate & Finish Education
Sudan War, Help Asmaa's Family
Help Aalaa's Family Escape to Safety
Emergency Fund: Medical, Shelter, & Edu (Sudanese Refugees)
Support Sakina's Family's Journey to Safety
For Sudan: Help support families in Kassab IDP camp
Our home bombarded and destroyed
Evacuate a family from the war
Help Abudjana rebuild after war
One Million Sustainable Pads Campaign
Fight Hunger in Sudan: The Khartoum Kitchen appeal
Help Randa's Family flee war in Sudan
Help my family escape Sudan's war
Sudan Emergency Medical Appeal- Help Children & War Victims
Join the effort to save Jameela and her family!
Help ThomaSerena recover from war
Escaping Hell: A Family's Fight For Survival
CAIRO SUDAN AID
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horusmenhosetix · 5 days
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URGENT!!! ENBY BLACK LESBIAN SHORT ON RENT 💔
I finally!!!! have a job after ill health and long term unemployment but I don't get paid until the end of June leaving me £220 short for my rent due 8/6 (8th June). any help wld be appreciated!
0/220
p*yp*l
hopefully this is the last time I have to e-beg chile
tysm in advance!
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horusmenhosetix · 5 days
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wcif that lovely red hair in your pondskater eyes preview?
Hi! This cute hair is by Xandher over at T$R! This is a recolour made by me that I might release in the near future.
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horusmenhosetix · 5 days
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My 59 year old mother, Dana, is currently homeless and has no car or job. She and I lived with her grandmother for a decade and suffered through emotional and financial abuse until she died of old age. Whatever sense of stability she had is now lost, and she is living in a homeless shelter. Sometimes she stays with her aunt for a few days, but that aunt actively dislikes her.
My mom has bipolar, depression and has previously attempted to take her own life. She has to wait an entire YEAR to even TRY to get an apartment since the one her aunt lives in is doing renovations.
Below are paypal and ko-fi links that I own, but everything will be donated to her bank account. I hope to give her $8000 so that she can buy a car.
$100/$8000
If my CC or presence on Tumblr has sparked joy for you, please donate if you have the money or share.
For Sims 2 players: If you show proof of donating at least $1, I will recolour any hairstyle in any hair system you desire for each dollar you donated. There will be no paywalls. This is just a little incentive, and is optional.
If you want to see my sims 2 navigation page, go >HERE<
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horusmenhosetix · 5 days
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TSR CC Recommendations: TS2 Lot Builders
Nobody asked for this but I have a little time on my hands and I said I might do it, so here is a list of some TSR lot builders who I recommend checking out. A few notes under the cut before we get started (all details under the cut, as well, in case you aren't interested in my preamble):
This is not meant to be paid promotion for TSR. I believe TSR asking users to pay for their CC is ridiculous, especially for a 19 year old game they haven't supported in 7 years. But I spent many years uploading there during the peak-TS2 / pre-TS3 era and know there is great CC in their archives that newer players may not know about. And unlike TheSims2.com, which has sadly shuffled off this mortal coil, TSR's content is still available to freely download (assuming you can stomach the pop-ups and wait times)
This post will only be about lot builders because that was what I was primarily uploading and downloading in this era. I was friendly with some of the creators I am about to list, but none of them are still active members of the TS2 community.
The preview pics might be a little rough and the architecture styles will likely feel very dated compared to the most popular styles these days, which are more colorful, cluttered, and use 3t2 and 4t2 conversions. Re: the previews: too many of us were using free trials of PaintShopPro back then, and TSR limited us to 2 previews, so we did our best. Re: the styles: unlike pre-2010's CAS CC, which was full of hand painted and "realistic" textures (LOL), these are the same objects you can find in the game today, just being used in different ways! Sometimes for the first time! And, yes, while some of these creators used CC, it was mostly Homecrafter walls and floors, as you'll see below.
This was also the hey-day of CFE lot building, which has certainly fallen out of favor to more traditional builds (in part because graphics cards have improved and these types of builds don't look as good in 2024, and also because the great CFE experimenters, builders, and tutorial writers are no longer part of the community and their original discoveries are gone as well - I am happy to go down a massive rabbit hole on this piece of TS2 history if anyone else cares, but trust me, you don't have to care).
Alright that is enough caveating, here are some recs! (Links are in the creator's names and they take you to their Lots, though many of them have other creations, too).
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Lord Tiko Speaking of great CFE builders! Lord Tiko built spaceships, boats, pagodas, domes, windmills and bridges, oh so many bridges before retiring mid-TS2 because of health issues. He was one of the first builders to take Daihtnaoz7's single and double bridge tutorials and apply them to really big lots. I'm still not sure how he built the Venice Rialto Bridge, or his other European water lots. Overall, a massive inspiration to me when I was prioritizing CFE builds.
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Hatshepsut My favorite "traditional" home builder, and someone I considered a friend. She specialized in English and American builds, and I had many of Hat's houses in my old saves and was impressed by her range and decorating style which was (for the time) more varied than many of her peers. Knew how to take great preview pics of her houses, too.
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Tigerblue Another builder I corresponded with, Tigerblue was probably the least prolific uploader on this list for sheer number of uploads, but she also crossed a range of styles. Her builds leaned way into specific styles (see the previews, these were all part of consistent sets of 3,4, or even 10 lots), but this was also what happened when a new EP dropped and everyone raced to uploaded builds using as many of the new objects and styles as possible. Tigerblue just happened to be better at it than most of us.
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Cyclonesue Do current TS2 players know Cyclonesue? Because it's hard to think of someone who had a bigger impact on building and decorating of the era, first with her English and Tudor builds and later with her extremely distinct grunge creations. Seriously, check out her Urban Renewal series and the corresponding objects. Iconic stuff that surely now feels frozen in time. I probably only played 20% of her lots that I downloaded, but they still make for great hood decor. Like Tiko, someone who happily experimented with CFE.
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Illiana The creator who inspired me to make this list is, ironically, the one on it who I know the least about (she is a Featured Artist but not in the Hall of Fame, whatever that means). I just started playing her Tri-Annyas fraternity house and have a few other lots floating around my game. She built in a range of styles, from classical to modern to Twikki Island to grunge. Revisiting some of them in-game, the TSR previews do not do them justice.
*EXHALES* If you made it to this point, kudos to you. I'm sure there are creators I've forgotten, and houses I haven't linked to, but this is a good starting point for digging into some of the eclectic builds the TSR(chives) have to offer (I just coined that, is it clever? It is not). Maybe I'll do a Part 2 if people like this.
If you have any favorites of your own, let me know what I missed! And as I do with my old Exchange re-uploads, I am tagging @sims2packrat and @oldasscustomcontent for general TS2 history awareness!
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horusmenhosetix · 5 days
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i love drawing the most insignificant characters like puck's deadbeat biological parents
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