#Modding

[lazyduchess]

TS2 Extender for Legacy Collection

Hi :)

I've been poking around in the new Legacy Collection release for The Sims 2.

I started work on a small mod that currently adds the following:

Borderless fullscreen support

Toggle to skip intro videos.

Firstborn Syndrome Fix (Fixes broken RNG in general)

Experimental restored Lua features for modders.

Download on Github

Installation is simple, head to your game's installation directory -> EP9 -> TSBin and extract the contents there, alongside the game's executable. You can tweak the mod's features via notepad by editing the included .ini file.

Now let's hope EA actually addresses the other millions of issues the release has...

[alberetta]

-[AL WESTERN]-

꒰Greetings꒱

Wesker AL WESTERN replaces Wesker Midnight in Mercenaries.

[This mod is for Steam's Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition]

[Copy] and [paste] NativePC_MT here:

(C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Resident Evil 5\nativePC_MT)

꒰Have fun ~ ʚ🧡ɞ꒱

(CAPCOM)

[kirain]

This company is so unserious, I love it.

The time has finally come, my console friends! Though I do have the game on PC, I do prefer my nice, comfy console, so this will be great! Thank you, Larian, for everything you've done. And thank you to all the wonderful voice actors and to the modding community as a whole!

Let the chaos begin!

[bon-the-angel]

i got bored and put shadow in yakuza kiwami 2

[spuddragon]

For FUCKING real. My game won't fully load for some goddamn reason, and I'm getting rid of certain mods, trying to figure out what is messing it up. I HAVE HAD NO LUCK SO FAR. I am in loading purgatory right now.

Man, I just wanna play the game...

I hate RimWorld so much, it's the worst game ever created, anyone who plays it is stupid and it shouldn't exist and I hate it and it sucks

Yes alright maybe I'm only saying that because I'm currently going through the 500-600 mods I have downloaded and trying to figure out which of the stupid fuckers is causing the stupid errors I keep getting. Maybe.

[chaosroid]

Why have I seen no one on this site talking about this yet. The people are making a Stardew Valley mod with the BG3 companions 🗣️📢

Like hello???? So far they've only added a few characters (shadowheart, astarion, gale and halsin) but there's plans to include the whole cast, unique maps and even romantic plots.

[nataliedecorsair]

I put Pticenoga/Hedwig and Vaughn into Cyberpunk 2077, a crossover that nobody expected, even me

He's an ex-Corporate obviously, and she's a Nomad; though she'd use something flying instead of a car or a bike, if it was possible. And some wings & talons implants, but I don't have it in my game x)

Borderlands in-game edit is here

[oonalovesastarionssimpleplan]

thats what The Leg Thing Mod on Nexus looks

[simnopke]

The Sims 2 Legacy Collection: shadow fix

The rerelease of The Sims 2 introduced a fix for the black rectangles under Sims. You may have experienced this bug in the Ultimate Collection version.

As the creator of the Sims Shadow Fix, I was curious to know how it was done. But first, I'd like to explain what the problem with Sim shadows is.

What's the cause of the shadow bug?

When the game works as intended, a Sim shadow texture is a light bluish blob on a white background. It also has transparency, but it's unused. It looks like this:

However, many modern graphics cards render the texture as plain black with transparency:

That's why black rectangles appear under the Sims.

What does my mod do?

My mod is only a workaround for the bug. It uses the transparency to recreate the shadows.

The first versions released in 2015 and 2016 were achromatic, while the original shadows were bluish. Back then I didn't even know why and how my mod worked.

On 2 January 2025 I released new versions based on my research into shaders. I also recreated the original bluish shadows.

How does the Legacy Collection fix the shadow bug?

Thanks to @ivycopur I was able to examine the code. It uses a workaround, just like my mod.

In fact, it looks almost exactly like the really not misty 0.4 version of my mod, which, ironically, is now legacy. The shader code in the Legacy Collection contains the same nonsense. And a bit more.

Code comparison

The left side is the original code extracted from the Materials.package file in The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection. The right side is my code or the Legacy Collection code:

The differences between my code and the LC code:

the debug part: I removed it from my code as players will never see it. The LC has this feature untouched.

alphaBlend srcFactor: despite the difference, it actually changes nothing. Explained later.

The identical changes:

alphaBlend dstFactor,

the same colorScalar has been added,

textureBlend.

Nonsense #1: textureBlend

The textureBlend defines how the colors of the incoming texture are transformed. The first argument is responsible for the color channels, the second – for the transparency.

Originally it's just:

textureBlend select(texture) select(texture)

And it means that the texture is taken as it is.

My and LC code transforms it though. The colorScalar is defined as a partially opaque (40%) black color. The transparency argument takes the transparency of the original texture and darkens it with the 40% factor:

multiply(colorScalar texture)

And this makes sense. The color channels argument takes the transparency part of the texture and makes it pure black, because the color scalar is black:

multiply(colorScalar texture:alphaReplicate)

It's pointless. I could go:

select(colorScalar)

instead. It would be effectively the same.

The texture after the transformations looks like this:

Nonsense #2: alphaBlend

The alphaBlend defines how to mix the source colors (in this case the transformed texture from the textureBlend step) with the destination colors (in this case, the ground under Sim's feet).

The srcFactor argument defines the source color transformations, the dstFaction – defines the destination color transformations. And then they're put together.

Originally it's:

alphaBlend srcFactor(destColor) add dstFactor(zero)

The srcFactor says that the shadow colors are darkened with the ground colors. The dstFactor doesn't really matter because it's multiplied by zero (black). Also, transparency isn't used.

If I understand correctly, you could achieve the same effect with:

alphaBlend srcFactor(zero) add dstFactor(srcColor)

And the final effect is:

My and LC code had to do it differently. The dstFactor says to darken the floor color with inverted transparency:

dstFactor(invSrcAlpha)

It sounds complicated, but the inversion actually means that black becomes white and vice versa. So the transparency texture, which is a dark gray blob on a black background, becomes a light gray blob on a white background.

The srcFactor is actually useless because the shadow texture (from the textureBlend step) is black. So it doesn't matter if you use:

srcFactor(one)

like I did, or:

srcFactor(destColor)

as in the LC code, it will always be black because you can't make black any darker. To make the intention clear, I'd personally go with:

srcFactor(zero)

instead. The final effect would always be:

It's different from the original intended effect. You can even see the difference in the official screenshots:

Source 1 | Source 2

Conclusion

It doesn't look like a coincidence. The cause of the shadow bug hasn't been fixed, and I doubt that an experienced shader creator would come up with such a workaround. There are better ways.

Before you point out that it's against my terms of use to take my code and sell it, especially without credit, hear out. It doesn't matter – EA's policy allows it. And I'm not even angry. It's just funny that they trusted such a messy code. I wouldn't be surprised to see other creators' fixes in the Legacy Collection.

The good thing is that EA has addressed the shadow issue at all. 🙃

[prokopetz]

The Baba Is You modding community is sort of the exact opposite of every other video gaming modding community in that the troll levels are actually more interesting and accessible than the ones that purport to take the game and its design principles seriously. The "serious" level packs are like "here's a level that expects you to keep track of thirty plus unmodifiable rules and accepts exactly one valid solution which obliges you to carry out a two hundred step procedure to pile six different instructions on top of each other and exploit an obscure text stacking priority mechanic in a way that's deeply counterintuitive but technically base-game legal", while the "troll" level packs are like "let's see how long it takes them to notice that the pause button is an interactable object", and I'm 100% prepared to argue that the latter is more true to the base game's driving ethos than the former.

[dreamness-vp]

Otherside, Silent Hill 2 Remake

[sour-macaron]

I don't even play Genshin anymore, but I love all the visual mods the community has made 🫶

[Hexenzirkel Mona Mod]

[dicipher]

!!Exciting updates!!

This friday (EST) is the release date for Homicipher. Me and my friends who are helping me on the voice acted mod project will be playing it. We strive to translate the full dictionary (both in english and japanese, the original language.), to then make an understanding of the language's structure, and be able to give it a sound. (It will be very loosely based on japanese, as it's clearly not a latin based language, and japanese is the original language)

This game's language gameplay is unique and stands out so immensely, this project has been on the mind since we first played the demo. We hope to bring it to life.

The mod will be free!! Wether i will fund it out of my pocket, make a crowdfund, or rely solely on the generosity of people willing to help the project is yet to be determined. But i plan on making the mod accessible to all.

You can support this project for free by sharing this post/blog. Any interested in participating (wether it be dictionary notes, linguists, voice actors, programmers, or simply sharing what you think they should sound like) are free to contact us via inbox, most importantly i want the community to enjoy this as much as i enjoy undertaking the project

[scipunk]

Rotary Un-Smartphone

[imfromsixam]

Small Mod: Brindleton Bay Outdoor Street Lamp, Be Gone!

I was recently building a house in Sable Square at Brindleton Bay, and came across some irritating street lamps that cannot be removed. They are of a very particular style that doesn't go with everything, and most of all, they are annoying because they ruin the view of the house, especially for screenshots.

So, I decided to create an override to make them disappear. This little mod removes all the lamps in the neighborhood.

Download here