Poll Results

Okay, getting bored of that poll now too!

And the results are *drum roll*:

What would you like to see more of?
Random sets of furniture, I suppose. 46.99% (125)
Fill in holes in existing furniture sets. 46.62% (124)
Clutter! Because sims' homes are never messy enough. 40.98% (109)
Furniture for less priviledged sims. 33.46% (89)
More recolors for older stuff. 19.17% (51)
Even more meshes using the photo frame textures. 13.16% (35)
OMG! Like, more eyes! 9.02% (24)
Tiling textures! Ugly ones! Yay! 9.02% (24)

What kind of Maxis-match stuff would you most like to see...?
Surprise me :) 56.39% (150)
More completer sets for couchs and armchairs. 40.98% (109)
Double beds to match singles, and vice versa. 33.08% (88)
Counter-matching tables and chairs, and lots of them! 31.58% (84)
Anything bedding-match! 26.32% (70)

Which of the following would you be more intrigued by...
Windows and doors 48.12% (128)
Fences and gates 28.57% (76)
Clothing recolours 21.05% (56)

Hrmm... now what could I make that's surprising? More surprising then oddities like the OFB "Sir Bricks-A-Lot" fencing, for example! I wonder if I'll ever regret putting that down as an option...

userStartup.cheat

Ever wonder what building and playing cheats I like so much that I have them aliased in a userStartup.cheat file? Well, I was talking about that with someone else today, and decided to post mine. Here is what they are; to use them, put them in a text file named "userStartup.cheat" in your My Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Config directory:

intprop maxnumofvisitingsims 15

boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true
boolprop allow45DegreeAngleOfRotation true
boolprop ControlPets on
boolprop PetActionCancel true

sethighestallowedlevel 8

alias bob "plumbbobtoggle" "Toggle the plumbbob"
alias cfeon "boolprop constrainFloorElevation true" "Turn on floor constraints"
alias cfeoff "boolprop constrainFloorElevation false" "Turn on floor constraints"
alias epson "boolprop ShowCatalogEPFlags true" "Display what EP items came with"
alias epsoff "boolprop ShowCatalogEPFlags false" "Stop displaying what EP items came with"
alias loton "boolprop ShowLotPackageFilename true" "Turn on display of filenames for lots"
alias lotoff "boolprop ShowLotPackageFilename false" "Turn off display of filenames for lots"
alias moveon "moveobjects on" "Move all objects"
alias moveoff "moveobjects off" "Stop moving all objects"
alias petfree "boolprop PetsFreeWill true" "Turns on free will for pets"
alias petstay "boolprop PetsFreeWill false" "Turns off free will for pets"
alias showon "showheadlines on" "Turn on thought bubbles and pop-ups"
alias showoff "showheadlines off" "Turn off thought bubbles and pop-ups"
alias snapon "boolprop snapObjectsToGrid true" "Resume aligning objects to grid"
alias snapoff "boolprop snapObjectsToGrid false" "Stop aligning objects to grid"
alias teston "boolprop testingCheatsEnabled true" "Debug mode on"
alias testoff "boolprop testingCheatsEnabled false" "Debug mode off"
alias toolson "boolprop dormSpecificToolsDisabled false" "Enables Buy/Build tools at dorms and community lots"
alias toolsoff "boolprop dormSpecificToolsDisabled true" "Disables Buy/Build tools at dorms and community lots"
alias apttoolson "boolprop aptSubLotSpecificToolsDisabled false" "Enables Buy/Build tools at apartment lots"
alias apttoolsoff "boolprop aptSubLotSpecificToolsDisabled true" "Disables Buy/Build tools at apartment lots"

Houses!

Feeling a bit frustrated at the moment with my "unframed canvases" version of the photo frames. Sooo many meshes to wrestle with, and trying not to loose the proper aspect ration when resizing them is driving me mental. So I've taken a break this weekend and instead started cleaning up a couple of the prettier recent houses from my Soup Legacy. Specifically (for those of you that follow the story), the houses of Watercress & William Soup, and Wren & Winston Wallace. The first of those is completed and should be released tomorrow. It has had some minor changes to how it appears in-game - the usual "stripping of massive amounts of custom content" plus some minor fixes so that it contains a non-CC staircase, and has a garden made entirely of TSRAA plants. The second house is almost finished as well - it's a much smaller job to deal with since, unlike the first house, I had remembered to make a packaged backup of it before moving anyone in. I'm mainly just having to redo the landscaping and some internal texturing. That should be out some time later this week or early next week, depending on where in the calendar I decide to plug it once it's good to go. Enjoy!

Loads of Stuff

A few different things... One is that the frame recolours I did to match Cashcraft's beautiful Victorian furniture have now been released. Enjoy! Lately I've been going through my working directories to sort out a lot of past projects, and delete stuff that I never did get working, or decided I didn't like enough, and so on. In the process I have, naturally, stumbled across a couple of forgotten projects, things I started on and then lost interest in, or things I'd made but never gotten around to actually releasing. I'm trying to get some of these cleaned up enough to actually release :) The first of these, which I'm just some wallshadows away from releasing (gah! wallshadows!) is a pair of art deco style beds. I'd been experimenting a long while back with getting the appearance of flame veneer - that's where you take two sequential slices of veneer and put them together in a mirrored arrangement. It was very easy to recreate the effect on a mesh. Anyway, a few weeks back I noticed the meshes still sitting there, having been ignored for well over a year, and decided they were too pretty not to share. I've made a matching endtable so they're not totally alone, but I'd have to say that at the moment at least, I have no plans to ever build additional completer pieces to go along with them. Who knows - I may be using them myself some time and get irritated at the lack of matching bits and pieces and change my mind. They should be out some time in the next week or two. There are also some Bentform build items that I've had floating around for ages and not published... a column and a staircase. I also have a meshed-but-never-packaged fence and gate in Bentform style. I'm hoping to get these cleaned up and released as well, though I'm waffling on the fence and gate (grrrrr that fences can't be recolourable nor use the repository technique...) I also finally (finally!) got around to packaging up the Shannanigan-matching toaster oven recolours that I've been neglecting for months. You know, the ones to match her retro kitchen... the ones that are of the only base game small appliance I haven't already released a recolour of. Yeah, those ones. Anyway, those will be out this week. And I'm considering doing another set of recolours, in order to recolour the kettle BBQ to match also. Let's see... what else is pending... more oil painting recolours of my photo frames are queued up, as well as some sets based on the fantastic screen shots of aikea_guinea. You won't find most of these images here on TSR, they're from her galleries elsewhere. Future plans... more recolours. A Poorhouse bedroom set. A Pipe Dream kitchen! Some additional photo frame meshes I've been meaning to make since back when I first started working on the original meshes. Some more clutter! Probably a whole bunch of other stuff as well, whatever catches my attention at any given time. Oh, and a final bit of good news - I just ordered a new PC today! Wheeee! My 6-year old P4 1.7Ghz is looking forward to its quiet retirement as my "surfing/working while playing" machine, and no longer having to deal with loading 30k+ custom content files... poor thing!

Freed My Photo Frames

Thinking of recolouring my photo frames, but worried about the fact my stuff is now pay? Fear not! I have set the four master meshes free forever, so you can recolour them to your heart's content without having to worry that downloaders will be unable to get the meshes needed to display your pretty pictures. It's just my additional meshes and recolours that will remain pay - though they will certainly show up in the free rotation at some point in the future.

For those who like direct links, that would be:
- Square master mesh, for square images and all frame recolours,
- Portrait mesh, for all portrait-sized images,
- Landscape mesh, for all landscape-sized images, and
- Panoramic mesh, for all panoramic-sized images.

Enjoy!

Updating Bookcases for Free Time

See my FA Thread on the forums for a brief tutorial :)

Enjoy!

More Pipes!

I've finally wrapped up a second set of the Pipe Dream Industrial Furniture, and posted it for release next week. There should be a third set in a few weeks, with luck, revolving around the idea of a pipe-based kitchen. I may work on something else first though, as over the last week or two I've been peering at pipes until my head is spinning! And in other news, as of today my total downloads is back over the 2 million mark again. Yay!

Archived!

Now that I'm an FA again, I had the option of moving some of my creations off to the TSR Archive if I so desired. So a few of my older and odder creations have now been shuffled off into relative obscurity. Not very many though, as I am inordinately fond of several of my oldest (and strangest!) creations like my Toad Eye colour and Fruit Baby sculpture, and am in no particular hurry to disown them. As you can see from the Fruit Baby, I was using the repository technique even that far back in time. I owe undying gratitude to Windkeeper for explaining to me what I was doing wrong in my attempts to get it working on those first few experimental meshes!

Moving things has, however, had the side effect of dropping my downloads counter back under two million. I guess some time in the next few weeks I'll get to have the fun of re-dinging this recent milestone achievement, hahaha!

Poorhouse Set

Got distracted from my other ongoing projects (such as more stuff for the Pipe Dream set) by a nice texture I found while making some photo frame recolours. It suggested things to me... Hence the creation of this set of worn and abused furniture items, my Poorhouse set. Just a few items for the living and dining room - tables, coffee tables, chair, desk, bookcases, and a TV. I may do some additional items for it, once I finish the Pipe Dream add-ons.

2 Million Downloads! Plus Recolours Galore!

Well, I've finally passed the 2 million download mark. Quite a nice milestone! Thank you to everyone who enjoyed my creations enough to download and use them. I hope you've all enjoyed them. I've decided to create and release a bunch more recolour sets for my Multi-Use Photo Frames, interspersed with additional mesh creations. The recolours will be based on classic oils, watercolours, etc. The first set, of paintings by John Constable, Edouard Manet, and John William Waterhouse, are set to come out this Thursday. Currently I'm slowly working my way through making some more pipe-based furniture, plus I want to make even more frame variations for the photo frames. Including, of course, one that will fit over top of the drawings from the Free Time drafting table the same way there is one to fit over the paintings from the easel. I might even attempt to whip up something that works with the little drawings your kids can make at the drawing & blocks table, though the push-pins in those make it slightly problematical. Maybe a very small corkboard? And of course I have an extensive list of other things to tackle once I get through all of those! Including even more clutter to mess up the homes of your sims with...