niamh-sims

[niamh-sims]

Does anyone know where to find the tree house pillar/column in this picture with the spiral stairs? I swear I've seen it before but for the life of me can't find t. I've looked in bits of PBK & MTS, Googled and searched Pinterest. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

#ts2 #wcif

[niamh-sims]

[Edit 2]- Final one!

Thorwood- Mountain Vacation 'Hood

Home to Bosmer

Tamryth

The neighborhood decorating bug has bitten, and I'm so happy with how these 'hoods are coming along! Welcome to Tamryth, my Elder Scrolls inspired 'hood!

Myrthspire- Main 'Hood Royal Court, home to all races

Farhollow- Sub 'Hood Forest District, home to Nords & Bosmer

Earthdrift- Sub 'Hood Plains District, home to Bretons & Altmer

Brittleshore- Sub 'Hood Coastal District, home to Redguard & Dunmer

Darkmont- Sub 'Hood Mountain District, home to Imperials & Snow Elves

Deepmire- Tropical Vacation 'Hood Home to Argonians

Roguestorm- Far East Vacation 'Hood Home to Khajiit

Lostview- Mountain Vacation 'Hood Home to Orsimer

#ts2 #tamryth #myrthspire #farhollow #earthdrift #brittleshore #darkmont #deepmire #roguestorm #lostview #doomcrest #sunpeak #thorwood

[niamh-sims]

But seriously to all creators, if your clothing file has a normal map that looks like this:

It's completely redundant. Your piece will look just the same with or without it.

But what it does do, since it's still a texture, it takes space. And while that ~4KB for each might not seem like much, it accumulates. I've literally deleted hundreds of these, and that's not not much anymore.

If you've experienced weird issues from deleting them, it's because you'll also need to delete all the stdMatNormalMapTexture lines from material definitions. It's these 4 lines:

Deleting the junk already before making recolor files is a time-saving habit.

#ts2 #reblog #episims

[niamh-sims]

Hi Lamare! First of all just wanted to say thank you for all your amazing mods and hard work! I'm not sure if you take requests but I'll ask anyway as I think this is more of a question than a request per-se and you're way more tech-saavy than me so maybe you can point me in the right direction. I absolutely love the fact that we can order photos from the computer with Bon Voyage to hang around our sims' houses, but I hate that it only allows photos taken with the camera by another sim. Is there any way that you know of to move gameplay screenshots to a specific folder to have them show up in the ordering menu also? I've dug around seemingly everywhere in the files and can't figure out where the game stores those dang Bon Voyage camera photos to be able to move mine to that directory. It must be storing them somewhere and it's driving me crazy! I can't seem to find any other people asking about this online either.

Hi Ali!

Bon Voyage camera photos are stored in the neighborhood Storytelling folder, as well as screenshots, for example:

Documents\EA Games\The Sims™ 2 Ultimate Collection\Neighborhoods\N001\Storytelling

The key difference is naming. Regular in-game screenshots are called something like this (two files for each):

snapshot_727938eb_527938ec.jpg thumbnail_727938eb_527938ec.jpg

Sim-taken photos would be called:

nsnapshot_9014dbd3_b2a57631.jpg nthumbnail_9014dbd3_b2a57631.jpg

To have screenshots show up as camera photos and be available in the ordering menu, add an "n" to the filename. They'll change right away, without you restarting the game!

#ts2 #reblog

[niamh-sims]

accountability update/Best Practice Preview

Making the charts and graphs to finally make it clear how ridiculous we all are is taking a bit more time than expected because there is a subset of users that both does and doesn't have pink flashing, and since all insights happen at the margins, I have to dig into this a bit more. Release now expected the first weekend in February.

But: as proof I'm moving along, here's a title card, and the simplest main takeaway from the survey:

IF YOU HAVE "uint LotSkirtIncrease" in your userstartup.cheat, you can safely delete it to help reduce pink flashing.

Explanation: "uint LotSkirtIncrease 36" is equivalent to the in-game "Lot View Distance Extra Large" setting. It was previously thought that it was needed to turn this up to 120 in order to see neighborhood horizons in lot view but is not true (or not true anymore). If your horizon is blinking in or out when your game camera moves, it is not from view distance, it is from graphical glitching - same as if you've ever noticed the reflections momentarily not lining up in Voeille's water when you change the angle.

Having a LotSkirtIncrease over 50 SUBSTANTIALLY burdens the game at a critical stress point: loading any lot. It also overrides your in-game setting so if you were under the impression your setting was Small, Medium, or Large (and some of you were), it was actually Extra-Extra-Extra-Large unless you manually changed it after entering the lot.

Corollary: THE BEST PRACTICE FOR LOT LOADING, i.e., the Lot View Settings Juggling Method (LVSJM)

If you are prone to pink flashing, you should always exit lots (including when you exit the game) with Lot View Distance set to "Small" and Neighbors turned "Off." You may want to save with the game camera zoomed in as far as possible.

When you load a lot and have ascertained it is stable (you can pan the camera without any hiccups/lag/crashing), after 30 seconds, you can turn neighbors back on. 30 seconds later, you can start incrementally turning up the Lot View Distance.

Credit for this tip goes to the users who gave a hot tip on the survey that they only turn Neighbors on for screenshots (they will be named in the final report). We are often prone to thinking of those settings as something static, that we set and forget, but if we treat them as dynamic we can definitely manipulate them to our advantage.

Remember, after playing the lot - OR WHEN YOUR SIMS TRAVEL FROM THE LOT - you should turn the Lot View settings back down and manually save BEFORE the game closes the lot.

IF YOU STILL HAVE PINK FLASHING ON FIRST LOT LOAD/HOOD EXIT, there is further help for you coming in the report, but I don't have time to write it all up now. It's not not complicated but I went from total pink every hood load to virtually none (though I am not immune to crashing) using a combination of all the best practices I will be recommending in the report, and other users saw improvement to overall play session quality and length as well.

#ts2 #pink flashing #pink soup

[niamh-sims]

Forays into Texture Shrinking

If you have looked through my Tumblr, you will see that I love to heavily decorate my neighborhoods. Which leads to a lot of pink flashing and unplayability. After @polygonbeach recently shared Lowedeus' neighborhood skies with reduced texture sizes, I wanted to overhaul all my neighborhood deco to see if it would make a difference to playability of the game and aesthetics.

[DISCLAIMER]- Please be aware that Tumblr has reduced the quality of the pictures somewhat, and they appear more blurry on here than they do just sitting on my desktop.

This is my main neighborhood (WIP) Myrthspire, unedited picture taken last year. All neighborhood deco uses the original texture sizes, mostly 2048 or 1024.

This is Myrthspire this morning, taken after all neighborhood deco has been reduced in texture size by at least half (or more in some cases).

I think the biggest difference is the neighborhood horizon, which is definitely not as crisp.

Close up, you can see the loss of quality a bit with the neighborhood terrain and beach textures.

The stone wall now has a texture size of 512, with no noticeable loss of quality. The textures on Criquette's trees are not also 512 or 248, and although they are not as crisp, they are tolerable (for me!).

Popping in to Earthdrift, and again the most noticeable loss of quality comes down to the neighborhood horizon (which I also de-saturated a bit to fit with the terrain a bit better), terrain and beach.

Greatcheesecakepersona's seasonal fields have had their textures shrunk and don't seem the worse for it.

Over in Brittleshore, the horizon is definitely not as crisp, but not a disaster.

Before:

After:

And finally, to Darkmont. The first pic was taken last year with all texture sizes at their original.

This was the neighborhood that I thought reducing the texture size would be most noticeable. But, there doesn't seem to be much of a difference at all!

Probably the horizon, but the horizon is a bit hard to see behind the terrain mountains anyway, so I wouldn't know the difference.

Close up, there doesn't seem to be any difference, even with rock texture shrunk and stone wall texture halved.

Ultimately, I think the benefit (or not) will come in during game play. If I can get through a days playing with little or no pink flashing, it will be worth it, even for the small loss of quality of the background.

What do you all think?

#ts2

[niamh-sims]

More medieval dyes for y'all!

[niamh-sims]

Sunpeak- Far East Vacation 'Hood

Home to Altmer

Exports- Griffins, potions, herbs, fairy dust

#ts2 #tamryth #sunpeak

[niamh-sims]

Deepmire Reply

@anachronisims commented on my Deepmire vacation 'hood post, and I thought I would post the reply in case anyone else is interested.

Not moi. I use Voeille's Pond & Sea Water Overhaul, but this effect is by Gwenke's Ocean Surface Colours.

#ts2 #replies #anachronisims

[niamh-sims]

Tamryth Replies

I have been absolutely blown away by the response to this post. While I post my Sims pics to give others a glimpse in to my game, it is awesome to get such great feedback.

@nervosims, @helene2troie, @sterina-sims, @12raben, @jonnyparable, @anachronisims, @gold33, @katatty, @maksplaygroundsims2, @princesspiratecat & @eulaliasims- Thank you all so much, especially since there are some many of you who have the most gorgeous 'hoods as well!

And @anachronisims- Yes, these 'hoods are mostly boulders. the regular Maxis sized ones, plus larger and smaller ones, and Sophie-David's Neighborhood Volcanoes. There is a bunch of other deco used, but I went a bit wild with the rocks. I wanted there to be consistency with the neighborhoods, like you know they are from the same world, but all have individual seasonal patterns, biomes, races and flora/fauna.

#ts2 #replies #nervosims #helene2troie #sterina-sims #12raben #jonnyparable #anachronisims #gold33 #katatty #maksplaygroundsims2 #princesspiratecat #eulaliasims

[niamh-sims]

Doomcrest- Mountain Vacation 'Hood

Home to Dunmer

Exports- Dragons & dragon parts, potions & poisons

#ts2 #tamryth #doomcrest

[niamh-sims]

Lostview- Mountain Vacation 'Hood

Home to Orsimer

Exports- Arctic animals, ice, stone

#ts2 #tamryth #lostview

[niamh-sims]

[EDIT]- Two more! Doomcrest- Tropical Vacation 'Hood Home to Dunmer

Sunpeak- Far East Vacation 'Hood Home to Altmer

(I am particularly in love with the vacation 'hoods. I think Doomcrest, Lostview & Roguestorm are my faves!)

((I also have a Bosmer vacation 'hood in the planning stages))

Tamryth

The neighborhood decorating bug has bitten, and I'm so happy with how these 'hoods are coming along! Welcome to Tamryth, my Elder Scrolls inspired 'hood!

Myrthspire- Main 'Hood Royal Court, home to all races

Farhollow- Sub 'Hood Forest District, home to Nords & Bosmer

Earthdrift- Sub 'Hood Plains District, home to Bretons & Altmer

Brittleshore- Sub 'Hood Coastal District, home to Redguard & Dunmer

Darkmont- Sub 'Hood Mountain District, home to Imperials & Snow Elves

Deepmire- Tropical Vacation 'Hood Home to Argonians

Roguestorm- Far East Vacation 'Hood Home to Khajiit

Lostview- Mountain Vacation 'Hood Home to Orsimer

#ts2 #tamryth #myrthspire #farhollow #earthdrift #brittleshore #darkmont #deepmire #roguestorm #lostview #doomcrest #sunpeak

[niamh-sims]

Roguestorm- Far East Vacation 'Hood

Home to Khajiit

Exports- Spices, Oriental & Persian crops, Fine jewels

#ts2 #tamryth #roguestorm

[niamh-sims]

Deepmire- Tropical Vacation 'Hood

Home to Argonians.

Exports: Tropical & New World Crops & Fruit

#ts2 #tamryth #deepmire

[niamh-sims]

Tamryth

The neighborhood decorating bug has bitten, and I'm so happy with how these 'hoods are coming along! Welcome to Tamryth, my Elder Scrolls inspired 'hood!

Myrthspire- Main 'Hood Royal Court, home to all races

Farhollow- Sub 'Hood Forest District, home to Nords & Bosmer

Earthdrift- Sub 'Hood Plains District, home to Bretons & Altmer

Brittleshore- Sub 'Hood Coastal District, home to Redguard & Dunmer

Darkmont- Sub 'Hood Mountain District, home to Imperials & Snow Elves

Deepmire- Tropical Vacation 'Hood Home to Argonians

Roguestorm- Far East Vacation 'Hood Home to Khajiit

Lostview- Mountain Vacation 'Hood Home to Orsimer

#ts2 #tamryth #myrthspire #farhollow #earthdrift #brittleshore #darkmont #deepmire #roguestorm #lostview

[niamh-sims]

Deepmire looks amazing! Makes me want to decorate a tropical hood too. May I ask which terrain you are using for it?

Thank you so much!

The neighborhood terrain is Voleste/Milya's Baikiri, found at GOS here.

I am also using a default dirt terrain in a moss texture, which I recoloured and have not yet released.

#ts2 #asks