Floor Blitz!

Wow.. I have been busy, just released and upcoming are loads and LOADS of floors, I decided that there were not enough Natural floors in my ever expanding Downloads folder, so heck, I went and made some! I did them all on a 5x5 scale so the pattern didnt look too squished up and repetative, so i hope you all like them...

I, along with several other people absolutely adore to use that excellent Reflective floor tile that Murano Makes... It is just like Bitzybus' Mirror tile, but with this one, you can place the "tile" over the top of absolutely ANY existing floortile you have.. you are not tied to the recolours of Bitzybus' tile.. I love her tile but, because i also like making my own, I love this one too... Just click on any one of my Natural Floors collection to find the link for this excellent Free surface... Co-incidentally (or not!!) All of my floors look darn fantastic with this surface over the top, especially the Slate and Granite floors...

I feel like Death!

I know ive not uploaded anything for a while, you see, it seems that the Medications my doctor has been palming me off with for so many years has finally taken its toll on my stomach, and all weekend and several previous weekends has seen me forming a very close and bonding relationship with the toilets, and yelling for Hughey and Ralph with alarming regularity.

For those who do not know, since several sports injuries in the past and a few stumbles (one down a set of concrete steps which really bust up the kneecaps!) at the grand old age of 32 I have OsteoArthritis.. yeees I can "Feel it in my bones" when its going to rain!! Anyway, seems that the tablets ole Doc gives me have caused a very nice Stomach Ulcer.. fantastic! So I havent been able to do very much lately, but I have promised Kat i WILL be uploading the Nouveau Riche lot i made yonks ago for a build contest.. I WILL I PROMISE!!!

Anyway, now i have yet MORE pills to take to counteract the effects of the other pills (Seeing a theme here yet?!) Im hoping to get back to my normal, cheek and deeply sarcastic self very soon! Take care XXX

Maxis Betray Lot Builders

Indeed... Sue posted a topic in the Build a Lot forum about this, basically it has very bad reprecussions for lot builders and recolourers. Maxis have altered the coding in Pets which now prevents ALL recolours from packaging with a lot. New meshes and their recolours are fine it is JUST MAXIS RECOLOURS But this means that say someone did a really fab recolour of then Glamour Life Stuff pack bedroom set and decorated a whole room around that recolour. The packaged file would still include the original Maxis meshes, but NOT that fab new recolour... ONLY the maxis default ones.

Maxis and EA led many of us to believe this was merely a bug which would be sorted with a patch but it is not. It was an INTENTIONAL code change done by Maxis, because people over on the official exchange were flooding the exchange with bloated lots packed full of recolours they hadnt taken the time to remove.

Basically Maxis, who yes, have been very supportive before have been very underhanded in this, and many of us here would NOT have bought Pets if we had known of the code change - they also plan this code change with Seasons so please be aware of this.

SO i guess the folks of TSR are going to have to think about a possible work around for lot builders to include maxis recolours - the suggestion has been made to let lot builders include the recolour files as a seperate zip file that could be uploaded. We shall see.. CycloneSue and RICCI have started threads over ont he Exchange's BBS so hop over there if you wanna scream your protests upon their ears - however, you need to scream loudly to get in about the noise of them clinking their coffers about and laughing at us all for being so darn susceptible.

Windows Vista - The Return of the Error

Yup - even with a totally fresh clean install of the whole Vista OS, and a fesh download and install of the TSR Installation Wizard it STILL does not work, however it is nice enough now to tell me that it cannot find the destination folder - IE the MY Chuffing DOCUMENTS that doesnt chuffing EXIST anymore - ARGH!!!!

Does this mean that even though I get Wizard benefit because I pay a subscription fee, I cant actually use it... Because if they change the wizard's destination path, then it will not work on XP... the only thing I can think of is if the update the wizard to allow the user to select the file destination pathe themselves... I can see me having to a holler to Pommes me thinks....

Windows Vista

Vista... Now that it has been officially released, most 3rd party software has had an upgrade where needed. but a word of warning... Vista now gives you an option to insall over the top of XP. this seems like a wonderful idea.. but it isnt.

I found that a lot of XP dregs were left behind and casused compatibility issues where there was no real need. I have yet to do a proper test as to whether the TSR installation wizard, Challenge wizard and story wizard work properly or whether Clean Installer work yet though. the odd thing was, the clean installer and wizard looked like they were working, no errors or anything, yet most of the items i had installed just were not there!

I have now spent ALL DAY making backups and doing a total clean fresh install of Vista, and transferred all my stuff back over. I will try running my game, and the installers and - fingers crossed - they might work correctly... I will update ye ole blog with the results!

Wind

Yes... wind. Now if any other of you folks live over here in England you will know I am not talking about a potentially embarassing flatulence problem, I mean the Weather - Currently we have "Gusts" as they like to call them of upto 70mph. and boy did I feel it this afternoon! 2 elderly people almost got run over by me as they were too busy holding onto their hoods and caps, to pause and look accross the road before stepping out... then, the wisdom of our Local Council bins collection service means we have this great Lightweight tub in which we have to put our bottles, and plastic ready for recycling. Great! until you see the contents of them swirling around in the wind, and as I did, have one of those said tubs being hurtled accross the road, almost hitting my windscreen, and forcing me to hit the brakes again, and end up with a very large HGV embedded into the back end of my (not yet 12 month old) car.

Not only that but they have shut the schools!! argh!... but on the plus side - I got to finish work earlier too.. which means.... more SIMS time!!!!! might actually get around to building some of the numerous things ive been aching to do!

New Tutorial...

Well! I did promise! Ive started off with another easy one - You know those lovely fancy arched garages I do, well, to some of you they might look straight forward to some, but I love to help out all those new builders who struggle, just like i did with those endless "cheats" and the thing I love to do, is to make it look appealing. Who doesnt love to make a pretty garden? or something just that bit different than usual? So, my second tutorial is on how to make what I term an "Elegant Garage". These look particularly great with tudor and victorian lots, or on those where something a bit special is required. Hopefully, the tutorial itself will be approved and ready for upload very soon - and if anyone finds it helpful, you know how much I love feedback!

Tutorials...

I had one of those brainwave thingies last night. Now, Just because these sometimes clash with stong painkiller time, dos not make them any less valid you know! I actually think this is quite a good one!

Now, there are some dead fab builders out there, yeah Im a talking about you Andy (Tiko) who builds some of the most amazing lots ever. but as I am not anywhere near that standard, i thought to myself, when I plan to try out a new technique, I could make a tutorial about it, now, ive done this before and just used it for myself to remind me what I should actually be doing once ive made a hash of it several times and actually made something half decent. I could upload it here too, and share my dismal techniques with you all too! How ace is that then??!!

Now, if you also would like to cast your eye upon the "Current Project" you might -or might not think it looks a bit familiar, well, indeed! it is, a while back I made a lot called Skin Deep Tattoo Studio (full lot available) which I was so immensely proud of, I made all these walls and such, but I was way too new to it to know how on earth to "submit a Set" oh dear! so if anyone wanted them, every single wall had to be downloaded seperately.. So i thought it was high time I made them into a set, and hope TSR dont think im just pushing my luck! I planned to do a few recolours along the same sorta theme too, so its not all bad!

As for my thoughts on objects and clothing - well, I wont even begin to tell you how badly my first attempt at that turned out... needless to say it was like a 60's hallucination all over again... most disturbing.

My Mini Site!

WooHoo! no, im not making my Sim's procreate - I decided that, saying as i had earned enough of those shiny gold Kudos Rewards, I would purchase myself a nice shiny new Mini Site! Now, I appreciate that there may or may not be some of you that feel inclined to read my inate drivel. I might even come out with something interesting at some point - Unlikely, but I do encourage you to visit my site every day to check!!

I have to say though, I am still elated to have won the S2HBAA December Build Contest with my entry, Castle Dracul - due to be released on Jan 7th! Keep your eyes peeled, and dont forget to download it! you know you wanna!!