Crusade Windows and Doors - 9th October!

A new set of windows and doors to be filed under 'complete'!  Crusade Windows and Doors is up for publishing this coming Friday 9th October! 

I rue the day when I said (at the beginning of Workshop development and testing) that at least meshing was easy.  "Meshing is now the easy part; throw together a mesh in 10 minutes - it's the rest that takes longer".  What a n00b!

Having spent 1-2 days per window mesh (and let's not bother naming the extra days one stupid door took to fathom, never mind mesh), I wish to retract that ridiculous statement I made.  It is indeed possible to throw something together very quickly, but the end result looks like a word I'm not allowed to use here

Never mind!  Set is out.  I can now ungrit my teeth and start trying to be personable at home again!

By the way, the matching Castle Stonemasonry wallpapers used in this screenie are already published and available free to download.  It is an irony that this wallpaper set is probably my most popular creation!  This required no meshing or gritted teeth!

All updates available now!

UPDATES ARE WORKING AGAIN!

After a temporary blip, updates are working again!  We have no idea what went wrong, but the correct files are now being served, so do please download the updates again to be double-sure that you have them.

Get the updates here: (click a picture)

USELESS ADDITIONAL INFORMATION  FOR THOSE WHO ENJOY THAT SORT OF THING...

What has been fixed?

File size mainly.  When these creations were made, the Workshop did not offer compression, and that led to files of 1-2Mb in size in some cases.  Additionally, some windows became invisible when on the mouse pointer.  Everything has now been fixed.

How will I know that I have the correct files?

Open the game launcher and click on Downloads.  Although everything is ghosted out, you should see a 'size' column.  If you have the updates, then you will find the following:

- Colonial Windows will be 265Kb or less  (previously 900Kb+)
- the Oil Drum will be 762Kb (not 1.8Mb)
- the Beer Keg will be 220Kb

If you have any too-big files, please download and install the updates.

How do I install the updates?

First, you need to remove any existing versions (don't worry: this won't upset your game or damage any of your lots).  Open the game launcher and click on Installed items.  Tick every file you wish to replace, then click the uninstall button.  Now click the Downloads button and delete the uninstalled items.

Now install the updates by double-clicking each Sims3Pack, or, if you know your way around your computer, you can speed this up by opening the game's Downloads folder (My Documents/Electronic Arts/Sims 3/Downloads) and dropping all Sims3Packs in there, then telling the Game Launcher to install them in a single batch instead.

The updates will have no impact on your game (except to discreetly replace the older files).

Size is everything!

Well, often, that phrase is a lot of stuff and nonsense and there is too much silly pap about size in all sorts of things!

But bigger is NOT better when it comes to Sims 3 content file sizes!  If you've downloaded my latest set: Cubit Windows (pictured left), you'll see that the file sizes are now tiny, thanks to the latest Workshop version!

So my NEXT priority is to resize my last set, the Colonial windows.  I'm already a quarter of the way through this process, and I hope by the time I've finished it that the finishing touches to TSR's new 'updates' feature will be working (downloaders will be notified automatically of updates).

Update: all windows, the beer keg and the oil drum are fully resized - a big improvement!  I'm now awaiting some technical help to upload them - so everything should be with you shortly!

First set of windows now out!

Now out!

Download from here.

Update! Windows might be this weekend!

I have completed a full set of windows!  Therefore, my original release date of 2nd October is the usual hogwash I come out with, and I hope to release the full set this weekend.

A Workshop fault means that one of the windows is not visible when carried on the mouse-pointer; however, once this is fixed, the set is good to go!

No room for community lots?

I've been asked a few times now why a particular community lot cannot be placed anywhere. 

Community spaces are a bit scarce in Sims neighbourhoods, and if you have a community lot you want to place, you need to convert a residential space into a community space.  Unlike Sims 2, it is very simple to do in Sims 3.

1. Start The Sims

2. From the menu, select Edit Town

3. Click on the lot or space you wish to convert.  It needs to be the same size or bigger than the lot you want to place.

4. Click the icon that looks like half a house and half a bench (shown by the red arrow).  This toggles your lot between residential and community.

And that's it!  Some community lots play equally well as residential lots, so you can convert those too if you wish.

A fantastic Sim!

I don't watch TV, although I know Star Trek of old. 

So when I saw THIS fella, I recognised Spock immediately!  Probably the only character I DO know from any sci-fi TV series, and he has become the first ever Sim I have ever downloaded in Sims 1, 2 or 3! 

Despite this dubious honour, Mr Spock is unfortunately not going to be seeing any amazing adventures in outer-space until I see my way to building some outlandishly ridiculous sci-fi lot.  Instead, he has the dubious honour of being my chief lot tester with idiotic "now try THESE stairs for me" missions instead. 

But isn't he just awesome?  You should hear his voice too!  A Sim that truly does look even better in the game than in Create-A-Sim!

Congratulations asakurastar for such a brilliant Sim!

Save Spock from menial lot testing today by downloading him from here - works perfectly in the default game and he's totally free too!

Download Mr Spock here

SHUSH! will you!?

Okay - so I DID make a lot of excited screaming noises in the background.  Now shushed.  But GREAT NEWS FOR BUILDERS!

Early days, but the first object I made with the in-beta-this-week Object Workshop (a bad lamp not even worthy of picturing) DOES actually package properly with uploaded lots!!!  That's the first time I've been able to upload a lot with a custom object inside it!  All my previous objects (experiments) have refused because they were installed as .package files rather than Sims3Packs.  Failures included stairs, windows - even terrain paints.  But it seems a Sims3Pack installs content properly, and is picked up by lots when they're shared.

I am one very happy builder!  Kudos to the TSR developers for what is looking to be a fantastic object creation program.

Objecting to no objects?

I know.  No objects yet.   STILL no objects!!!  That's because there's no objects-ready Workshop released yet, and no discovery on the cause of those scaling textures either.  The wait is killing me (and I hope no-one just said 'good!'...)

The texture problem is a nuisance.  We don't yet know WHY some (most?) but not all objects are scaling their textures.  In the picture above, my oil drum tables have mapped perfectly (both shading and textures are just where they're meant to be) but the radio (I know - exactly the sort of crud I'd make!) has the texture scaling problem where the wood and circular speaker texture has stretched too far down and too far to the right. Same with windows.  A few are absolutely fine, but one or two in the set have their shading falling in the wrong places, giving window frames the appearance of inexplicable bruises! The only items that have been totally fault free to date are the stairs.

And an absent Workshop means that I cannot make Sims3Pack objects.  This is ultra-important.  Any creation you install as a basic package file (including patterns) will not package with any lots you intend to upload.  As a builder myself, I know what a pain in a certain rear part of the anatomy THAT is!  Given that when we install patterns as Sims3Pack files they DO upload with lots, I'm hoping like heck that the same will hold true for objects too.

And no, I DON'T know what I was thinking when I made that radio.  I had a collection of knobs and grids to play with so they were slapped together to make a box that looked like it should DO something - so a radio was born - badly mapped!

How about... STAIRS!!!

Some of the most difficult objects to access for modification in the game are modular stairs.  Thanks again to the tools being developed by Inge and Peter Jones over at Simlogical, stairs are here!

Naturally, my versions lack any polish.  But be thankful I didn't add any little blobs of bird poop to the rail posts either!  I WAS very tempted......

And here's the real good news for downloaders!  No more installation scripts!  You can drop these stairs into your game and they work immediately - no fancy-schmancy stuff required.

Oh, and with all these windows and doors and stairs and terrain paints I'll be making, did I also mention I'll be making a fence or two? I just need one of those day jobs where I get paid for doing nothing at all, and then I could make heaps of this per week.