Some New Year's Resolutions for you...

Happy New Year to you!  There, that's that boring old formality done with.  Now for the real purpose of a calendar date merely switching from one number to the next: the ridiculous excuse to make RESOLUTIONS!

But of course you haven't bothered with that.  Most resolutions (like dieting, giving up smoking, and resolving not to dredge up forum threads that are at least eight years old) are all completely phoney and you'll give up within two seconds of the last line of "Auld Lang Syne" (btw: can we PLEASE have a new dratted end-of-year song next year?!).  However, resolutions are what I'm good at (when selecting for other people, that is) and so allow me...

RESOLUTION NO 1: DOORS
Do not mention the word DOOR to me ever again during the remainder of this year.  In particular, do not come waving that grey modern door at me asking for clones.  Just don't - okay?

RESOLUTION NO 2: WINDOWS
You will learn to love inside-out windows.  They are unusual and uniquely authentic to the creator.

RESOLUTION NO 3: CONVERSIONS
It is no secret that there were some creators who were shockingly lazy and inept at Sims 2 creation.  It is therefore cruel and borderline harrassment to badger these witless creators with requests to convert their Sims 2 work to Sims 3 as it merely serves to remind them (and the rest of the world) of their ineptitude and make them a laughing-stock of the entire Sims community.  I would hate to be one of those unfortunate creators who took two months to convert some simple Gothic windows, for example.... 

RESOLUTION NO 4: HIDDEN TALENT
Resolve to understand talent like you have never understood it before.  To judge a creation by how it looks in the game or how useful it might be is such a gauche way to judge, these days.  If you find yourself looking at a questionable object that not only doesn't look very good, but also has little if any value or purpose (especially if it came from MY pages) assume that there is special hidden talent in the object's inception: some finesse, some miraculous touch to bring you an unseen level of quality that isn't cheaply obvious like those other so-called 'wonderful creations' you might hear about....

RESOLUTION NO 5: JUST LAUGH
If any creation (such as one from any of my pages) should send your game up in smoke, then it is etiquette to laugh about it.  The proper way to laugh is a light, tinkly laughter that is gentle on the ears.  You may voice appropriate words too like: "I never did mind about the little things..."  (such as Crash To Desktop and "Unable to start process..." messages).  Sims wearing their heads back to front, returning from holiday to greet themselves sat on the sofa in triplicate or a Sim suddenly married to their toddler are hardly shocking events in the world of EA at the moment, so a mere loss of everything is nothing really.  Just laugh - tinklingly.

Doors are bores, but done!

I've added a new factory set: doors! 

The set comprises 10 doors of various styles.  Some are clearly industrial, but others will work in any kind of building (the door on the right is one example).  Anyway, I hope I've made a good range to increase your building choices.

I hate making doors.  Double doors especially are utterly horrible to make. The ironwork lattice door and I became arch enemies this last few days as it persisted in shooting bolts of white triangles shooting across my screen whenever it was open. Transpired I'd tried to be a bit too clever with the non-existent glass and confused the game to bits.  All is now well and good in ironwork lattice land.

The set is released next Friday: 8th January.

Finally, wishing you a wonderfully happy new year!!!

The Fun Factory

I'm back into urbania and am having a blast!

I've made some factory windows already, and today I uploaded a decorative trim set that will transform the factory windows into a variety of different designs to extend the variations even further.

But with windows taken care of, I know we need some doors!  EA have given us a broad range of doors and those modern grey doors with the glass will colour nicely to fit a grunge theme, but they're not quite industrial strength.  So, I decided to put the sliding door to some good use and made a lattice ironwork sliding door.

I'll be adding more doors to the set - likely along the lines of some industrial doors I made for Sims 2 (grubby heavy-duty doors with metal footplates, a fire escape door etc).

PS: the wallpapers EA have given us in World Adventures are simply the best!  Perfect, realistic grunge.  They just made Sims 3 900% better for me with these!

You asked, and...

...you WILL get!

I've received quite a few requests for my "Hole In The Wall" windows from Sims 2 - and some factory windows.  They're on my list for sure - consider them done (except they're not, so I'm just monopolising the idea as usual...).  I need to finish off a new Alpine spin-off first (Marina Roofline 30-degree windows), but I do plan on bringing back (or more accurately, making from scratch because I was a lazy Sims 2 mapper - and that doesn't do for Sims s) those hole-in-the-wall windows, and I do look forward to a new series of factory-style windows too.  What they will be, I don't know yet, but I have lots of ideas!

The toilet set isn't coming yet.  I need a repair made to Workshop first, but when it is, I'm good to go with it - I even have a fab and grim cubicle door made ready!

What better window than this?!

A window that lets in bugs, and creepy-crawlies and, best of all, freezing draughts!  Yes, the insufferable ventilation brick that building surveyors drone on about: "You should have at least four of those in your front wall otherwise you'll have damp!"   Yeah, right - do I LOOK stupid and in need of an excess of spiders?!

This will be a two-window set: one that places low and one that places high on the wall.  I don't want to make any uber-big sets whilst we're waiting on an end to this miserable patch situation we have, but this is something small to be less than impressed with in the meantime...

Bogroll delayed - so onwards!

That scintilatingly attractive toilet roll litter for dirty bathroom floors causes probems in the game. 

I needed a Sims object that could be walked on, did not impede the path of Sims and could be placed on floors or counters.  The only object that matches this set of criteria is the decorative 'magazines' clutter (rugs are also walkable, but any mesh placed on a rug clone is flattened by the game to rug height - so not very useful for us meshers now) - so that leaves the magazines.  The trouble with those magazines is that they're not recolourable, and non-recolourable objects have proved impossible to clone with the Workshop until now.

A new beta of Workshop is in the works, and one of the fixes is to repair non-recolourable objects!  Yay!  And they do clone and install just perfectly.  But they have a problem in the game and cause a crash, so they're not quite working yet.  Therefore my twee Cottage Bathroom set (see piccies below) is now parked for a while. 

I shall turn instead to a new set of windows.  I posted up a poll (ages ago) about whether a variation on the Alpine set would be wanted, and there was a resounding YES to that so my next set will be the 30-degree Marina Roofline windows.

A picture?  Oh, ha ha.  You think I've made these yet?!  LOL!  No, I'm just full of empty promises.  I've made three windows, but they're not in-game.  When they are though, I promise they won't be back-to-front in Neighbourhood View this time!  Meanwhile, I hope this replacement picture suffices.  Happy Simming!

It DOES get worse...

Yes, indeedy - it gets worse!

Blame riccinumbers - she wanted 'broken'. Left to me, I would have been nice about it (snort)!

But don't worry; I'm feeling charitable, so I shall throw in a non-broken version too - which will spruce up fairly nicely to mask the fact that it has served 3 million clients already and so will serve other, nicer, Sim purposes...

...though quite what THEY are, I have no idea!

Oh ye of little faith! It's here!

Ugh!   Just - UGH!!!

It's a lovely expression isn't it?  After all this time of shudderworthy niceness too.  You had no idea either really.  You saw all these castles with their medieval charm, which followed leisurely after the most syrupy-sweet Alice In Wonderland dining set - and you seriously thought I'd lost my mind, didn't you?!  Admit it.  You thought I'd really gone round the U-bend this time...

Oh ye of little faith!  Did you really, REALLY think I had abandoned our favourite domain of "Ugh!"?  Did you not notice my blog interspersed with 'toilet' mentions? 

Well, I have been working for a VERY long time on this particular little beauty.  It's 95% finished; I just need to deal with that high level of water that I'm wondering must represent US toilets, because British toilets have a mere puddle at the bottom.  I won't go into the merits of different water levels in the bowl of a toilet because I'd risk being banned for good and that's rather a bore, so instead I'll wind this up and show you the Masterpiece...

Oh!  I'm sorry - did you want me to offer an advance warning about that picture?  Oops!  * chortle *

There is more to add.  I want to make a grotty old privacy window for it, a broken toilet lid that props against the wall, a cubicle door - maybe a nasty little wash-hand-basin but the last time I visited that particular project I lost patience with it because my meshing skills became very unglued and so did I.

And the finale will be rounded up with a nice little toilet-roll holder - totally empty of course!  Ha ha HAAAA!

And before you ask: yes, the toilet seat IS meant to be at that precarious angle.  Aren't they all?

They're COLUMNS!

I haven't received any "can't find them' comments yet, but realising that some will download the first castle set from the main page (which won't show the detailed description), I thought I'd best tell you that the castle towers are COLUMNS. 

If you place a floor tile on top of the column, it is concealed in the tower, but it makes the tower stackable without using any build cheats.  This also applies to the quarter columns of course, and it also makes them walkable by Sims (should you need an extra corner tile on your rooftop).

Sorry about missing comments :-(

I've now uploaded the three Castle Lore sets.  AGAIN.

I'd already uploaded the sets the first time around and then realised that all three sets were missing some items...

The first set was fine until I figured that it might be helpful to those of you who hate the CAST tool to include the three castle-matching wallpapers I've used for the castle block and stone colours of the meshes. The second set was missing the coat-of-arms banners.  I'd just left it out of the zip.  The third set was uploaded before I realised that I hadn't thought about a two-tile Gothic arch!  Doh!  So I quickly made one of those and, being an additional item, meant again recreating the set.

And all this meant I needed to delete the old sets.  No problem, I would reply to the comments already there first (and I have been able to do that for sets 2 and 3), but I somehow lost the first before I'd had chance to reply.  I kmow there were 2-3 comments left on that set that I hadn't replied to - and I'm really very sorry to those who left the comments.  I wish I could get them back.