Words fail me!

Well, words never fail me really - that would be TOO rare an event!  Bit I camr real close to it last night.  REAL close!

It seems the curse of my Sims 2 days is following me to Sims 3 already - the curse of me and Maxis (now EA) making the exact same things.  In joyous harmony, Maxis and I made elevators (theirs worked), conical roofs (theirs were real roofs), oh, and not forgetting trim fances, ventilation shafts, rusty pipes etc.  

You've probably seen a few piccies in my blog of the new castle set shortly headed your way (I mean they're hard to miss, really: I made the pictures the size of giant advertising horadings because I was too lazy to click the crop tool), but now EA has had the same idea!  Not about making screenshots the size of advertising hoardings, but making castle build items!

Yesterday saw this arrive at the EA store. 

I will now insert a little space where you can imagine my reaction - the full, unrelenting wrath of my insane, furious reaction....

But I'm still going ahead with my set.  That way, if you're looking for castle stuff, you can choose which you like best (naturally I will be watching closely)!  I'll be splitting it into three sets, because there are 23 meshes in total, and three smaller sets will let people choose the bits they need.

The last piece: a drawbridge!

And finally (FINALLY) the drawbridge is complete!

Sims walk over it just fine, and of course it's fully recolourable.  Now this last piece is done, I'll put together the screenshots and upload the set.  Expect it to arrive next week.

And as a quick edit for Midnight222 and anyone else wondering about water, it's certainly possible to place the drawbridge on floor tiles if placed over water.  The drawbridge hides the floortiles perfectly...  It's very easy to do (very quick, and no building cheats required either) and I'll post a 'how-to' picture up with the drawbridge when it's released...

Next set: castle-building!

I'm STILL making that dratted toilet!  Well, I've finished it, sort of - in a way.  It's finished, but not ready.  It needs other stuff, and it needs looking at to see if it really IS worth uploading.

I still seem to be in a ratio of 1 success to 60 failures with Sims 3.  Everything takes so long to perfect, but when you finally DO think you've made something good, it looks hideous in the game and you know you must do better - somehow (except it never happens).  It's been like that for weeks now.  My upload queue has remained empty whilst I toss mesh after mesh into the scrap folder.  I have been meshing night after night after night.  Nothing to show for it.

But I have finally made something that will soon be ready for release - and it's STILL not a toilet.  It's a mega-set of 23 castle-building pieces including large and small crenelation walls (that's the up-and-down-thingy-whatnot wall to you), some stackable turrets (cloned columns that conceal the necessary floor tile to make them stack), gothic leaded windows, castle defence windows, cloister doors and arches, portcullis door and arch, and a few decorative banners and flags to finish it all off...

I had made some crumbly stone steps too, but they didn't want to work properly at all.  Possibly a Workshop bug, but with recolourable stairs in the game, they're hardly essential now.

A big and special thanks to Arenaria who found me the very site I needed to make my arches more gothic and less Lego!  The doors and arches would not be anywhere near as great had it not been for the links she gave me, and it might have been another set joining my 'meh' pile. 

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I also have coming your way a whole heap of updates.  Hopefully, the site's automatic update alert system will kick in as the Colonial windows are updated so they display properly in neighbourhood view, the gravestones have improved sunshadows thanks to the wonder of the Workshop and its automatic shadows, and one lot that used the Colonials will also be uploaded with the revised windows.  You WILL need to patch your game if you haven't done so already, otherwise any new or updated items will not show in your game.

And that toilet IS finished.  It's in my game and working.  It's just lonely without other items.  Maybe I'll pop up a screenie so you can admire - or something.

Where did Alice go?

Alas, poor Alice!

No dining set.  Any downloaders foolish enough to trust anything I make will be the proud owner of the most pointless dining set yet.  The Alice dining set can't, erm, be dined at.....

Before you start assuming that I just throw random files at the servers, I do have an excuse.  It's feeble, but an excuse IS never-the-less an excuse! 

I first made the set with the publicly available Workshop 0.8.7.  I tested the chairs both independently of a table, with the Alice table and with other tables, indoors and outdoors.  Everything was fine!  But then the TSR dream-team came out with a new closed beta version of Workshop that also generates the shadow meshes automatically AND perfectly.  Any object creators who have tried lining up shadows won't be reading this because they will already be committed in some local asylum somewhere, but yes, it's true: the dream-team have made sunshadow worries a thing of the past - dead easy.  No more MLOD2 and MLOD3 nonsense; no more wailing about disconnected, badly shaped shadows.  One click and the shadows are made automatically.  Beautiful.

So, I ran the Alice dining chairs through the closed beta version, loaded up my game to admire the perfect shadows (and they are perfect - kudos to the developers), and sat a Sim on each chair just to be sure they still worked.  I also placed the chairs at a dining table to ensure they placed correctly, moved when the table was picked up etc.  Fine again!  So, I uploaded the set. 

What I forgot to do in the second round of testing was park a dining table in front of the chairs AND sit a Sim at the table!  Sims can indeed sit on those chairs, but not when they're at a table.  The latest closed beta of the Workshop also automatically adjusts the green footprint beneath the object (extremely, brilliantly useful) but dining chairs have an odd arrangement (a hidden footprint behind the chair when at a dining table) which the Workshop had not accounted for, meaning the Sim could not pull out the chair in order to sit on it at a table.  Fortunately, the beta also allows the footprint to be adjusted manually, so I've made those adjustments and am happy to confirm that the chairs now do work properly. 

The set will be back up shortly.   And the new beta Workshop will be out shortly too!

Cyclonesue does Alice In Wonderland?!!

My previous post was my official 300th post!  300!!!  Unfortunately, I used it to announce "I'm making a toilet"!  Well, what more could you expect from me.  Had I known I'd reached some centenial marker I might have used it to wax lyrical - on and on (and ON) - about past Simming etc...   But no, I spoke about a toilet.  I expect that I'll still making the same pleasant and fascinating statements when I reach the 500 and 1000 marks (and yes, I do plan to rabbit on for THAT long...)!

My reason for writing post #301 though is not about the toilet (which is still ongoing).  I thought I'd give a few grunge-loving people something more to wail and whine about - because again I have seriously missed the 'rust treatment' with my latest set.  It's inspired by Alice In Wonderland (who we all know LOVED a spot of Poker-playing in the dark hours...) and a special request-item for Paramiti (which is again amazing because I usually can't do requests at all)...

Anyone who has already tried their hand at Sims 3 object-making might now want to look at those wall-deco items and say "the SHADOWS - how on earth?"  Indeedy!  The worst shadows ever to render but I had a special facility for making them: a friend called Apple.  Those deco items are only here because of him (they'd enjoyed a warm spot in my recycle bin prior to his rescuing of them) so with a big and special thanks to him, they finish off the set...

I could not bring myself to make anything particularly nice for Sims 2.  Now I can't seem to escape this new sugary world.  Still, there is 'the toilet'.  I don't plan on THAT being sweet.  It's not a Bang-on-a-Can toilet, though I do intend to remake that for Sims 3 at some point.  This toilet will again be another brand new creation.  Except it won't look 'new'...

Amazing announcement!!!

I'm making a toilet.

I thought you'd like to know that, so I shared it.  Warm fuzzies, and ta-ta for now!

The clocks - where did they go?!

I posted up a set of tower clocks - all ready for publishing today, but at the last minute I pulled them.

Why?  Well, because I'm like that.  Totally mean!  "Bet you want these, don't you?!"  Then YOINK - gone!  Chortle!  In fact, I could spend DAYS doing that!

Of course, I jest!   I was really pleased with the clocks: they're animated, they keep the correct game-time etc.  Lovely!  Oh, but one stupid problem stood in the way: they were too high up and there was nothing I could do about it (any attempt to place them lower has a disastrous effect on the clock hand positions and oribits - even when setting the joint itelf to a lower position).

So the clocks have to stay where they are.  Can't be set at a lower height.  But they looked stupid being hidden under a roof.  The 2-tile clock could at least sit under a gable, but this wasn't much good for the 1-tile clock.

So, nice as I am, I figured I'd make a couple of decorative tower roofs instead.  The large (2-tile) version (pictured here) is tall enough to sit behind and rise above the giant clock. 

My apologies to those of you who were hoping for these clocks today.  They'll be out later this week!

Roofline Windows - how to use

I incuded an extra secreenshot in the Alpine Windows set to show how they can be placed under the roofline but many of you won't have seen that if you didn't "view details" of the download.  So I've added it here too.  MUCH easier to place these windows in Sims 3 than it ever was in Sims 2!

Toilet Maze

You've read that title and think I'm kidding, right?

You bet I'm not! 

Meet the Toilet Maze by GrayGoblin!   This is why I find myself browsing lots from time to time wondering what builders have been up to lately. 

This lot hits the humour spot exactly.  Oh, I love it!  I love it maliciously.  Gray Goblin, you have a wicked sense of humour and I really look forward to seeing more from your brilliant mind!

If you like this too, stop by at GrayGoblin's guestbook and drop him a line.  He deserves a big round of TSR applause!

Next! Alpine Roofline Windows

Like a few others I'm sure, I had the brilliant idea of rescuing some of my Sims 2 meshes and converting them to Sims 3!  The end result of my endeavours is that I have at least learnt the art of the hollow laugh.  But that's it.  You see: some people were very lazy with their UV mapping, and those very same people now have to start over.  I would do a lot of pointing and laughing at that - if I wasn't one of them!

It pretty much looks like anything I convert WILL have to be made from scratch, so I won't be carrying out masses of conversions wholesale.  Some favourites will come along though, like these Alpine Roofline Windows that have been requested.  Once I've reminded the door who's boss, this set will be released in time for Friday 16th October.