#also doesn't load without mods so that's Great

[applesaucesims]

ik there has been no disney legacy post for two weeks now even though i have the pics all ready, but life has been so busy recently, it's very annoying

on another note, i'm feeling inspired to make some kind of men's summer fashion set (for 30s/40s ofc) cuz i don't have enough options in my game. as soon as i get back my motivation and time.

[eachuisge-cc]

Honestly I'm astounded that nobody has taken that name yet.

Do you dislike the look of vanilla Skyrim horses? Are you tired of riding some kind of Clydesdale/Belgian/Cob thing around fantasy Scandinavia for no clear reason? Do you want your beloved and loyal horse to stand out from the crowd as much as you do? Well great news, this mod covers all of those things.

Basically I made some significant edits to the horse model including a fuller, longer mane and tail, redone feathering, somewhat more realistic conformation, and entirely redone ears because at a certain point it was just easier to make new ones. None of the changes affect how the horse fits the vanilla rig so it still bends and moves without distorting weirdly. The textures are entirely painted from scratch and have new normals to go with them that are meant to give the horses a somewhat softer, more natural look that still fits with Skyrim's general vibe. I used references of primarily North Swedish and Dole horses, but also borrowed from the wider range of colors and patterns in Icelandics because I couldn't give up the pintos.

Current Features:

Asymmetrical coats/markings, because I fully redid the UV while I was messing with the mesh (mostly because mirrored pinto horses in video games are the bane of my existence)

Distinct meshes for mares and stallions, the mare model is closer to the vanilla horse's conformation, while the stallion model has a slightly bulkier build and thicker neck, and a an unobtrusive low poly dong.

Five generic solid-coated textures that appear on most NPC horses in the world.

Unique texture for each purchasable player horse

Unique texture and model for Frost (he's now a mealy chestnut as his papers claim)

Unique Shadowmere

Unique Karinda (this mod does NOT add Karinda into the game, but her texture should show up if you have CRF or another mod that does add her, as long as it doesn't alter her texture or base model)

Unique Hearthfire stable horses (purchasable through the steward)

Unique unsaddled stable horse in Markarth because uh, I just felt like it

Unique coats for a growing number of modded follower horses (see the mod page for the list)

Future plans: see the mod page

Compatibility:

This mod should be compatible with most things, though for best results it should be loaded after any mod that affects vanilla horse records (this isn't always obvious; SkyTEST has no visible affect on vanilla horses, but if you load it after this mod the unique player horses will have generic coats). Most mods that add new horses use the existing vanilla records, so unless a modded horse has a unique model (and assuming it doesn't have a unique coat addon) it should be replaced automatically with the edited model and one of the generic coats. That isn't always the case, sometimes another mod gets weird with it and there's nothing I can do about that, but in those cases a patch will likely be needed.

This mod will NOT be compatible with any other mod that changes the appearance of the vanilla horses or replaces their models/textures.

I will not personally be making patches for other mods because there's no way I could possibly keep up with that and I'd rather spend the time and energy on the mod itself, however I encourage anyone else who wants to to make whatever patches are needed. Please message me if you do so I can link them here for people to find.

Huge thanks to SassiestAssassin, who has been an incredible help in navigating the learning curve of editing nifs (and is continuing to be a huge help with solving my inability to make patches), and also has a lot of fantastic mods you should check out.

Download:

Nexus Mods

[streetkid-named-desire]

Important update for flat chest mod users!

Flat chest detector can now detect the flat chest body and load refits made for the wearable pecs mod!

What this means

If you're using the flat chest body and a mod is only using the detector script for a wearable pecs refit, the script will now recognize the flat chest body and load the refit dynamically!

Less work for modders = more refits = more people using the body/wearable pecs = normalizing flat chest!!!

What this does not mean

As of right now, this doesn't work the other way around. If you are using any other body but the flat chest body, you will still need mesh replacers in order to use flat chest refits with the wearable pecs. The script will not load the flat chest mesh if you're not using the flat chest body. I did mention this to Berdagon and it would be great if it could work like that! But it's a lot harder to figure out.

Modder tips

The wearable pecs and the flat chest body are sculpted differently. We can confirm the flat chest body refits work well for the wearable pecs. But, the wearable pecs refits may have clipping if you're using the flat chest body. It seems to be most common with the vanilla refits for the wearable pecs. I'll include some examples under the cut.

For maximum refit compatibility, use the flat chest refit blender file to make the meshes.

You can find that on the mod page in the miscellaneous resources section here.

I think all you do is just use the tag `BaseBodyFlat` for the script to catch it on your meshes but there is a guide pinned to the comments on the mod page for the script to reference.

Here is Sandy using the UV version of the flat chest and wearing the racerback and fishnet mod that is using the detector script.

This would not have been possible without @wanderingaldecaldo who was looking into the script in the first place, Berdagon who made the script and was very open to working on this, and Psiber who just...basically created a new API function out of the blue.

I removed the decal in ACM for the galaxy tee to show the clipping here. The meshes are also sculpted a little differently.

Here is Rosapexa's flat chest refit of V's Favorite Top

And the refit of the vanilla item from the wearable pecs mod page

It was noticeable to me, but I'm also a sartorial mod snob that gets mad when mod clothing doesn't use darts right, so take my opinion with a grain of salt 😂

[jupitermelichios]

i've got teen wolf on the brain rn, so here's every member of the hale/mccall pack listed by what their favourite video game is

scott: he has been playing world of warcraft since he was 11, and he has done basically everything it's possible to do in game, unlocked every trophy and epic mount, reached the level cap with multiple characters, and still he logs in almost every day, even after stiles got bored and moved onto other games

stiles: he gets bored of games fast, but he developed a brief but intense crush on the masterchief when he was a kid, so if asked he'll say halo

alison: she's not great at suspension of disbelief, and mostly can't be bothered with games, but she has a sims 2 build that takes nearly 30 minutes just to load because of all the mods

derek: hates playing any kind of video game, which is probably good because he would get so addicted to rts games if he ever tried one. does know a weird amount of game trivia and lore though, because he goes away and researches every one of stiles's new hyperfixations but then actually sticks with them, unlike stiles. do you want halo lore? because derek has it, and he is desperate for someone to share it with

erica: she tells people it's metro 2033. it's actually barbie horse adventures. it's her comfort game, okay?

boyd: he played the arkham games for erica, and he loved him, but he imprinted on kirby at a young age and nothing else will ever touch it in his heart

isaac: such a sucker for roguelikes. if he knew what kinning was, he'd probably kin zagreus from hades. the fact that failing over and over is built into the game and there's no punishment is reinforcement his brain desperately needs. erica has written at least one zag/meg fic specifically for him.

lydia: she went 18 years without ever touching a video game, and then stiles persuaded her to try the witcher 3, and she was instantly addicted. if she finds out someone romanced triss over yenefer, she will take this as a personal insult

malia: it took stiles years of trying to find a game that didn't make malia immediately want to put her fist through the tv screen, but then DMC 5 came out.

kira: she likes her games fast, plotless, and button-mashy, so she likes most fighting games, but she's an absolute demon at smash

peter: you might think i'm going to say peter doesn't play games, and it's true that he doesn't admit to playing games, but it's also true that he knows nearly as much about street fighter lore as derek knows about halo, and has a frankly insane number of combos memorised. he would literally rather die than tell any of the pack this.

liam: he plays COD, you know it, I know it

cora: jeff forgot to give cora a personality beyond 'plucky' so i have no fucking idea. lets say it's horror games, because i feel like one of these weirdos ought to have strong opinions about bloodbourne and no one else is picking up the slack

jackson: madden, obviously.

danny: he believes strongly that adding an actual ui to dwarf fortress ruined it, and he was very excited about the abilty to export eve online data into excel spreadsheets

[trappedtowers]

Trapped Towers Dev History ~ How We Got Here (Part 2)

(Middle art piece done by @/evilredyoshis)

Hey everybody !!

Part 2 of the "How We Got Here" blog posts today. After covering the original Trapped Towers, Undertale AU territory, Megalovania Hell, and much more... we're finally getting to the original project side of stuff. Almost. A little more Undertale AU stuff to push through, but this is the transition period for it all.

So, without further ado - lets get back into it.

August 2020 - May 2021 ~ Seeing Change:

2020 was an interesting year. The end of 2019 had seen me begin to focus on original projects and ideas again, with Undertale content taking a backseat as I hadn't uploaded in ages. AnoVerse was born and pushed me to learn more coding than I had before. But as the months indoors passed by I ended up finding myself back to one place... Trapped Towers.

Looking through everything there was, this was the first time I'd gone "this really isn't that original or unique... I should make it more unique" and so that's what I started doing. Rewriting, designing, composing, crafting ideas galore for what a new Trapped Towers would be... but it was slow as I kept popping in out of it since I'd just start game development classes and they took priority, as well as my music which slowly began to get lots more attention than expected.

On the music side though, a plan began forming in my brain as the 3rd anniversary of Ministry of Death began approaching and my brain told me it was finally time to make Ministry of Death 4. A showcase of the new direction I wanted to take Trapped Towers, while also celebrating and saying goodbye to what it once was. I started building it up. I remastered V1 and posted it 3 months before MoD's 3rd anniversary. V2, remastered and posted 2 months before.

Then I got ill. And I couldn't finish V3 remastered in time for 1 month before... so I changed my plan of action. At the beginning of 2021, I teased Ministry Of Death 4 finally, with a snippet I'd already made showing that it wasn't just going to be another "megalovania". I then delayed V3 remastered to the initially planned release date for V4, and V4 got pushed back to my own 4th anniversary since I started making music - March 20th.

So V3 remastered happened, then eventually the day came for V4. I'll never forget it, it felt amazing that day. The love and support and excitement from friends, fans, etc over what turned out to be a ~7 minute orchestral battle piece was great. Seeing reactions in live time, getting messages and DMs... it was incredible. All the while too I had began to start pumping out ideas for the new Trapped Towers more rapidly than ever, creating a major document to contain all the information, dropping the Undertale AU title and beginning it's adventure into an original fan project...

This all led up to May 14th 2021, when I officially opened applications to join the new Team Towers (later renamed TeamT).

Old Content:

A lot of concepts and ideas between this time began to merge together as past this, TeamT basically had the base I'd provided to work with - but not every story beat was worked out yet. 2021 Trapped Towers was still filled with plot holes, blank chapters, under-developed characters and so much more. Not to mention when planning this the original reboot name was going to be "Trapped Towers: Revisited" ??? I just found that out from an old tweet of mine as I was looking that's CRAZY.

The screenshot of the "public doc" I did find, but the public document doesn't actually exist anymore as it got turned into an old private one. As much as I want to share an old document like that - this time period is entering when Trapped Towers story beats were starting to form properly and there is some major spoilers that are still relevant.

There's not loads else to share though so !! I hope you enjoyed part 2 of this small little series. I will ensure that part 3 is written up for tomorrow !! Until then, cya

- JustDaniel

[actualaster]

Alright, so, Thoughts on Lightfall.

Overall I enjoyed it quite a bit, though it's not without issues. On the whole I feel it did more right than wrong, and I can very much admit that several of the things I find to be flaws may very well just be down to personal taste in writing choices rather than objective problems.

So, in general, it's mostly positive with some discussion of areas that I think might have been better handled.

Naturally spoilers abound below.

Also discussions of new/revamped gameplay mechanics in addition to the storyline stuff.

Going to be a bit disjointed and achronological because my brain does not vibe with the concept of time in general.

So, first of all, NIMBUS. I love them. They're a great character. I want to see more of them in the future. Canon on-screen nonbinary rep in a character who is great, who has speaking lines AND is a major character in the expansion, AND doesn't just get killed off? YES. It seems like a previous Cloud Strider, Stargazer, may also have been they/them? There's definitely another they/them as an average citizen in the lorebook AND somebody who seems genderfluid.

So Neomuna just casually embraces being nonbinary and it's NOT just a Cloud Strider thing it's just a normal part of their culture. Love that~

Alright, now for everything else.

I really enjoyed the new aesthetics of Neomuna! Very pretty~ I especially love the sparkly, glittery stone (or whatever) ground and caves, that's just such a pretty thing and it's always a top tier design choice. Also really love how they made the Cloud Striders so dang tall! Makes sense with their augments and whatnot, but still, great choice~

Still haven't poked around all the Lost Sectors but I loved the arcade (and the Goblin just... scanning a game cabinet lol. Absolute favorite Vex right there, a shame I had to kill it)

Haven't messed around too much with the new weapons and such, so I can't speak to how I enjoy the new perks or anything yet thought I like the aesthetics of them again.

The re-worked mod system is pretty solid, IMO. It streamlines a lot of stuff. Could use more tweaks, I miss some of the older mods and such, but the team will absolutely be monitoring things and adding new mods and tweaking existing ones and such as we go. It's a massive overhaul so it'll take time for things to fully settle, and I'll probably tweak things around further in the future.

I do prefer the perk system for the seasonal artifact as well, by the way, less of a pain than trying to slot mods into your gear and sacrificing stuff. Still struggling with stunning Champions but that's mostly because I'm still getting used to the new setup and fiddling with weapons and such.

Loudout system is great, no more needing to change up mods or appearances when you swap classes lol.

I do wish they'd maybe increase the slots we have for weapons, or something. It's getting hard to juggle and energy slots between what i need to complete bounties, what I need to stun champions, and what I run for everything else, especially if I've got an exotic catalyst or two I'm trying to work on...

Also, while Strand is fun, it feels... Slower for abilities to recharge, somehow? Might just be because most of my other sub-classes have ways to recharge themselves in PvE faster and all. Especially the loading time on the grapple grenade. I very much get why it's like that but also since it doubles as a movement mechanic and not just a combat mechanic it's a little... Tedious. But there's not really a good way to adjust that, I think, because it's not like destiny has a dedicated "extra movement method" button or anything.

Anyway that might feel a little less clunky as I unlock aspects and try to put together a decent Strand build. Need to find a decent high-stat Exotic to pair it with, tbh, the one I'm running now is just kinda.. Meh, it's what I've got on hand lol. So that might very well be coloring my opinions on it, I can fully admit that's a strong possibility. (But, also, I fully expect Bungie to tweak Strand going forwards as more and more players get their hands on it and they can see on a large scale how it's working and where it's struggling).

ANYWAY enough about that! ON TO OTHER STUFF.

So, overall, I liked the story they told. I do wish we'd delved more into the what the Veil is, however. It's obvious by the time you're doing some of the post-campaign stuff that not even the people of Neomuna have a solid grasp on what it is, and I would have liked to see that explored more... I know they're probably going to drip feed us some of that info over the seasons but I feel like that's extremely relevant to THIS expansion and I feel that expansions should balance being self-contained and setting up the next part of the story (unless it's a standalone expansion in which case it should be entirely self-contained).

Lightfall... Felt like it leaned a little too heavily on the "setting up for the next part" side of things. It wasn't bad, but I feel like we could have explored a bit more in the expansion itself. Maybe not part of the main campaign, but as a post-campaign quest or something to learn a little more about the Veil, and such.

I don't want to describe it as "filler", because it's not, but it did... Hrm... How to explain it... Like, obviously it's the link between Witch Queen and The Final Shape, that's just kind of what the expansions are--continuing the story and linking the entries that came before with those that came after. But Lightfall... It felt a little more like it was meant to just be a bridge and less like it was taking itself seriously as a full story in it's own right.

It's not bad, exactly, but it felt a little... Off. Like it wasn't quite able to come into it's own as an expansion outside of it's role linking WQ and TFS. An excellent effort was made, and that is a fine line to walk so I don't want to give the devs too much grief over it! But it does feel like it managed to fall a bit short on that.

Some of it was the pacing. The pacing felt a little... Inconsistent? Like some areas, such as Rohan's death, felt kind of rushed--we barely had time to get to know or care about these characters before he's sacrificing himself for us! And others felt like they dragged a little--Strand mastery, mostly. That somehow manage to feel like it both took up too much time and too little time.

I think that part is more... It felt like it took forever to get to the serious training to master it, and once we hit that it came very rapidly. I think that maybe if it had been a focus for one more or one less mission it would have felt better paced.

But also part of that might be less to do with the actual Strand and more to do with the content of the missions themselves. I did notice several of them had extended "no respawn" segments which were... Grueling, if you weren't very well-prepared and that can absolutely be coloring my perception of the pacing. It's hard to pull them apart, really.

Battles in segments did seem to drag on a bit, and some of the new stuff you do in Neomuna (the "terminal override" activity) seem to drag on, becoming more of a test of endurance than anything else.

Now, some of this is undoubtedly because we're all still adjusting to the new mod system and we all started out at low light compared to the recommended stuff with the new expansion and all. As we all start to get up there in light level, get better gear, get a handle on the new system, etc. I suspect these will start going faster.

So I don't want to be too hard on that aspect because, y'know, we just came off a "we've got YEARS of experience mastering the system and we're at the top of our game" in terms of gameplay so there's gonna be a learning curve for many of us again and I don't want to ding the devs on that too badly if it really just feels tedious due to needing to get familiar with things and better gear and such.

Plus, like. I know I'm not as big a fan of the battlegrounds style stuff because they take longer and I prefer quick, intense bursts of combat rather than extended firefights, so that's likely also my personal taste coloring how I feel there.

That said, not all the battle segments seemed to drag on--and several of those that were longer absolutely made sense and it really added to the emotional feelings of the mission with how they lasted longer.

Like, the run-up to fighting Calus?

When Caitatl shows up to fight alongside you with her troops through wave after wave of enemy? It felt like that fight took forever--but that worked great because it really fed the sense of "shit, fuck, NO, we have to hurry, we don't have time for this!" and that sense of "can we make it? No, we have to! We have to endure!" desperation that really, really fit the "the enemy is about to fucking win we HAVE to stop them!" that was being built up.

Actually, honestly, the more I think about it... The more I think that may have been the point all along with the combat segments that felt like took longer? To build that "we don't have time to be wasting here" sense of impatience to hurry and try to stop the Witness from getting the Veil.

But, also, again, they may have just taken longer and feel too long because I'm not totally used to the new system and still building myself up again--and I would imagine that the same could be true for others who also felt they were lengthy.

Calus' death, though, that was great. The battle was annoying because I was still trying to get a hang of swinging around with Strand and kept getting knocked off, but that was a skill issue not a game design issue lol.

I liked how in the end he became desperate, and his death just... Felt fitting. He met the end he was always destined for. Honestly a of the imagery around Calus was great, they did a great job of showing that while he gives service to the Witness he's still not actually satisfied and that his "gains" are just... Hollow. Empty. Just like him, really. All superficial opulence with no substantial filling.

His Chalice, a beautiful thing that was never filled, was a fantastic metaphor for Calus himself.

Speaking of interesting things, though.

The Cloud Striders vs the Guardians. One that chooses a life cut drastically short, not as a tragedy, but as a joyful sacrifice to protect and serve their people, a heavy mantle but one taken up willingly by those who are passionate about the cause. And one that has immortality thrust upon them without warning, without consent, and without any sort of purpose innate to the lifespan change.

They're a fun little twisted reflection of each other, and something I hope gets explored further even if only in the lore--that's a really, really neat concept that has a lot of fun potential for compare/contrast, you know?

AND, ON TOP OF THAT, the Guardian hesitates to cut their own existence short--the choice to shoot their Ghost, to save everything? (Or at least delay the Witness' plan)? And they hesitate, they can't quite do it in time (and once it's over there's no point). It's understandable, Ghost is your friend, somebody you care about and I think it makes perfect sense that we'd hesitate. I mean even outside of the narrative of "they can't have us kill Ghost because then we wouldn't be immortal anymore and that would really kind of screw with the whole 'players are immortal beings who come back over and over and over and just Get Better from grievous wounds on the fly'" thing. It just makes sense in general.

But there's also, there, that moment of hesitation in the face of sacrificing their immortality--when Rohan chose to cut his already truncated life short without hesitation to the same end.

It's not that I think we were wrong for our choice, or that his sacrifice was better or anything.

I just thing they're fascinating inversions of each other--parallel lines traveling in opposite direction.

And I think that was really well-done.

Also, speaking of well-done, the cutscene at the end of the new exotic quest for Deterministic Chaos, where the remains of Sagira's shell are enshrined in the Hall of Heroes right behind Rohan's monument/server. That was such a good touch, it was so perfect. It just feels right.

I just.

Yeah, the expansion had it's issues (what doesn't?) and things I would have changed up a bit but overall it was very enjoyable and did some amazing stuff with imagery, metaphor, and implied parallels for players to take note of. My biggest gripes are with gameplay, and those will very likely be lessened as the new mod system and subclass get tweaked and we all start getting more experience with them and such.

A fun time that deserves some criticism but really doesn't seem to deserve the more vitriolic hate I've seen.

So, on the whole, I'd give it a very solid 8/10.

[insertcleverusername101]

Warning: This is a very long, very tech related post, which expands on the post above in a very winding way. If that doesn't interest you, do not proceed.

I am a Gen Z systems administrator (IT guy, techie, etc. for those of you who have not heard the term before). And let's be clear, I didn't end up in this position because I'm some kind of computer genius freak who's been a compsci-doctorate level programmer since I was eight years old (I have been programming since I was ten, but it was pretty much at an age appropriate level). I can:

Use Google.

Withstand enough of Microsoft, and when the occasion calls for it Apple's, bullshit with enough patience to fix most problems.

Make use of available diagnostic methods and tools to isolate problems to specific programs and hardware in computers, which relates back to option one.

Read hard to read technical documents, logs, and discussions to get information that is not immediately clear.

I am very rarely innovating new methods of finding things. I rarely work on issues that no one has encountered or fixed before (although it has happened a few times, it happens to every sysadmin). The skillset I have is, on some level, interchangeable with every mechanic or technician for any machine ever made, including cars, ships, and planes.

And, ultimately, the need for that skillset is what's missing from computers nowadays. It used to be, to use a desktop, even on the most basic rudimentary level, required you to have some technical skill. Without a GUI, you would have to know how to load programs and navigate a filesystem in DOS. You would have to know how to un-park the heads on a disk, and park them when you were done. How to operate a modem.

Doing the basic stuff, up until like, Windows 7 (and the release of the iPhone, the first ever smartphone two years earlier), took some level of technical acumen. Want to mod a game? Have fun downloading janky third party mod packers and managers, and editing files manually inside the game config. Same problem for getting games as a whole. Buy the CD. Put it in your computer. Doesn't work because you have dependencies missing. The dependencies also have missing dependencies, which you then have to find. Packages are missing. So on and so forth. Keeping your stuff running the way you wanted was hard.

Now? Not so much. Windows does a lot in the backend on computer systems. As an example to contrast something I brought up in the previous paragraph is Steam, and other similar stores. One click to install with all dependencies, and one click to install mods. And more importantly, us sysadmins do even more shit on the backend on incredibly powerful commercial systems which are also very heavily integrated and automated. But it's all still there.

These systems, much like many things in our society, are designed to discourage user-level fixes. But you can still do it, even if everything has been designed to cut out that basic level skillset development.

What's really killing us here is that we're giving the very young highly commercialized and consumer oriented devices like iPads to play with, which reinforces this anti-problem solving, "there's always an app for that" style of thinking.

We can and should have those devices, don't get me wrong. There is a place for them where reliability is at a premium, and you just need things to work and be simple for performing low level tasks. I manage multiple construction companies, and a few of them make incredibly effective use of managed tablets and iPads for on-site management personnel, like foremen and project managers, to give a practical example. Easy to set up, easy to swap around, and easy to use with very low failure rates. Great for people who don't need to do super technical work but need to be very effective communicators.

But that's not what we should be teaching people on, because it ruins any chance at proper problem-solving thinking. What we want to train them on is a system that has room for failure, and room for troubleshooting. And that is where the open source and full desktop environments comes to the rescue.

If you want your kid to learn how a computer works, give them a locked down (or not-so-locked down, up to you) Windows PC. Or even better, give them a clean copy of Ubuntu on a laptop with a touchscreen to work with for their childhood. Shit will break, fail, go lopsided, bug out, etc. Part of the cost for using that device will, inevitably, be learning how to fix it, and also as they get older, fixing it themselves.

We can bring these skills back. But it means, like in all things, standing up and resisting the ever encroaching rise of corporations and their locked down technology.

another thought about "gen z and gen alpha don't know how to use computers, just phone apps" is that this is intentionally the direction tech companies have pushed things in, they don't want users to understand anything about the underlying system, they want you to just buy a subscription to a thing and if it doesn't do what you need it to, you just upgrade to the more expensive one. users who look at configuration files are their worst nightmare

[pudding-parade]

This is the tutorial that ate Manhattan my entire day. Ah, retirement is great. It started out as a single post and ended up as four, so if this at all interests you, grab Tempest if you don't already have it, and get a snack while you're at it. Please note that the individual parts of this tutorial don't stand alone; they assume you've read the part(s) previous to the one you're reading. I just can't put it all in one post because it'd be too many pictures for Tumblr's delicate sensibilities.

You are here: Part One - The Easy Stuff, WTF Happened to My Plants, & Holidays

There are also these parts: Part Two - Wait, I Thought This Mod Was About Weather?? (AKA, The Scary Math Part) Part Three - I've Seen Fire Snow and I've Seen Rain. Part Four - Creating Non-Default Weather Settings (AKA, Losing the Last Bit of Your Sanity)

I've been sharing default presets for this mod that are easy to download and import into whatever world you want to use them in. But what if you're unhappy with something I did and want to tweak them a little but you don't know what you need to do? What if you want to make a setting of your own from scratch and you have no idea how to go about it? What if you want more detailed and realistic weather patterns than a compressed default setting can provide, details like weather changing by "month" or week if you're playing with very long seasons? To answer all that and possibly more, I decided to put together this guide, to supplement the basic Tempest information on the NRaas site. Like it says on the tin, it's comprehensive, with some pics, so I am cutting the rest. If you're interested in this sort of stuff, then read on. If you aren't, then scroll on by. :)

First of all: I'm 'Murican, so my game uses the Fahrenheit temperature scale. Don't argue with me about how Celsius is better because it's just as arbitrary as Fahrenheit is and, in my opinion, it doesn't have enough fine gradations to describe temperature on Earth without resorting to decimals. But whatever! If your game uses Celsius, the temperatures on the menu pictures throughout this guide will obviously be different from what you'll see in your own game. Tempest understands and works with both scales and will even convert the numbers for you if you plunk a preset made in a Fahrenheit game into a Celsius game, so don't worry about that.

Now, off we go.

To use and configure Tempest, you need to have Tempest installed (Duh!) and a world loaded. Click on the city hall or any computer in your world. From there, choose NRaas/Tempest. That will bring up this screen, where all the pain begins:

Some of these options are self-explanatory and just require clicking on the line in question to change, and some have sub-menus.

Export Tuning: This exports settings to an XML file that can be used by a separate tuning file for the mod, which is available for download on the NRaas site. I believe at one time this was the only way to export/import Tempest settings between saves. Nowadays, the better way to do it is to export/import the settings using NRaas Overwatch as explained here. That way, any settings you create and export are saved in your Library folder, and you can then easily import them to any save you subsequently start.

Fireplace Auto-Lighting: If the line that says NRaas.Tempest.AutoLightFireplaces:MenuName (Which should say "Auto Light Upgraded Fireplaces In Cold Weather;" I don't know if the broken text is just my game or what) is set to true (which it is by default), then the "Fireplace Auto Light Temperature" line dictates at what temperature to light such fireplaces. If I want this option enabled at all, I usually pick 50F/10C or 10 Fahrenheit degrees above the coldest winter temperature, whichever is higher. You can set it to whatever you want, of course.

Remove Fallen Leaves During Winter: False means no. True means yes. Duh. Set it to true if you can't be bothered having Sims rake leaves but you also don't want the leaves hanging around forever. It will clear leaves world-wide, not just on your active lot.

Show Debugging: Leave this false, unless you're a developer or something. Pie only knows what it does.

Suppress Insects During Winter: True means that the bug spawners (which includes nanite spawners) won't work in the winter. False means they will work. I usually use true for climates with snowy and/or freezing winters and false for climates with milder winters but, again, it's a preference thing.

Total Reset: If you click this, everything in the mod resets back to its default values, so if you screwed everything up and want to start fresh, click this. Otherwise, don't touch it. Especially not if you’ve been working on a huge preset and haven’t exported a WIP of it recently and no, I have not done this nor have I sworn like a sailor for hours after doing it.

Version: This is simply the version number of the mod that you have installed. Version 15 is the current one. If you're showing a different number on that line and you're patched to 1.67/1.69, go to the NRaas site and get and install the latest version.

OK, that's it for the easy stuff and leaves us with the options that have sub-menus: Holidays, Plants, and Weather. We'll cover Holidays and Plants in this part, but Weather is ginormous and has two entire parts of this guide all to itself.

Plants: This is the simplest one. It dictates if and how hail and snow will affect harvestable plants. The menu looks like this and is self-explanatory:

You enter the percent chance that hail will render a harvestable plant dead and/or whether or not hail or snow will "damage" any ready-to-harvest produce by setting the plant's growth stage back to mature. The chance of both is 0 by default, but you can change one or the other or both to your likings. If you want a 10 percent chance of plant death and a 20 percent chance of produce damage, just click those lines and enter those numbers on them.

Holidays: This one's main sub-menu looks like this:

Notice that there's options for each season, which look like this when you click on them:

The first line is the default holiday for the season you chose. If you click on it, you get this:

From there, you can change the day on which the holiday falls by clicking on that line. Entering a negative number counts backward from the end of the season while a positive number counts forward from the start of the season. If you enter 0, that will cancel the holiday altogether and erase the line from the menu. (So if you want no holidays in your game at all, do that for each season and voila! No more holidays! War on Christmas, suckers!) So, in this case, the -2 on the Day line means that the holiday is set to fall two days before the end of the season, and it's going to be a Love Day because it says "Spring" on the Holiday line.

If you don't want spring's default holiday to be a Love Day, you can set it to be any of the four holidays included with Seasons by clicking on that line and then making your choice from this menu that comes up:

So, you could, for example, have a Spooky Day/trick-or-treating in every season rather than the other holidays by choosing the Fall holiday instead of the spring, summer, or winter one in each of those seasons.

You can also create more than one holiday in a season or extend the default holiday by using the "Add New Entry" option. This can be useful if you're playing really long seasons or if you just want lots of holidays for whatever reason. When you click "Add New Entry," you get this:

Notice that it just duplicates the season's default holiday, so that you have two lines that are the same. Simply click on one of them to edit it as above for your new holiday. Obviously you'll want it to be on a different day than the season's original holiday.

In addition, if you wanted, say, a fall Spooky Day that lasts for three days, then in the fall season you'd add two new entries and change the days on the new entries so that you have Spooky Day for three consecutive days. It would look like this:

And that’s it for the easy stuff. In the next part we’ll get into the, you know, weather. Click here to go to Part Two.

[lilyfreshwater]

Billzo was never going to quit streaming but Tubbo did bought him his current PC. His old one was so shit it couldn't even load a modded MC server or CSGO without overheating. It always used to be a problem during streams. His current keyboard was bought by Aimsey as well, old one used to be the standard keyboard that goes with any PC and was missing several keys. Whenever the topic of his shitty set up would come up both of them would always start going on about them just buying it to him but he always shut them up, saying he doesn't want them to spend their money on him etc etc. They eventually bought it for him in secret and send it to his house (also threw away the receipts so he wouldn't be able to return it).

What they did was really sweet tho considering that Billzo comes from a working class single parent household, at that time was barely making any money on Twitch and was still working 9/5 job.

wait that's actually incredibly sweet, tubbo and aimsey really are great together. thanks for the full context anon

[midgethetree]

Hi midge! Hope you're having a great day. So, I recently change some load orders of my mods, cause I add new ones. I used sim manipulator and sim blender together for a long time without any issues, but now, my sim manipulator destination add-on is no long working. I open simidge and it suggest me the load order between sim manipulator/blender, with sim blender loading first. But I have no clue about the add-ons. Did you know how I can make the destination thing work again? Sorry for any typo, my English is lame.

Hello! As I recall that conflict is meaningless, it doesn't matter which load order you use for sim manipulator and sim blender because it's just a single BHAV related to pregnancy and they both make the same exact edits to it (to allow pregnancies to be frozen, stopping them from advancing).

Are you sure there weren't any conflicts with the destination menu addon itself? That's what I'd look for. If SiMidge isn't picking it up in a conflict scan, I think HCDU plus will look for GUID conflicts (or you could use SiMidge to search for this specific GUID by setting type to OBJD and target to 66594900 and selecting Downloads and seeing if anything other than the destination menu addon shows up). They're less likely than other types of conflicts but just about any other kind of conflict it would be would've shown up in your previous conflict search.

Well, except for the one where two files are named the exact same thing (in different subfolders) and both have resources of group 0xFFFFFFFF with the same type/instance that then conflict, but I'm not sure what you would've renamed the destination menu to that you would've also renamed a different file to.

Also, SiMidge doesn't suggest load orders, it can only tell you the current load order. It's possible that's what you meant, but just in case there was a misunderstanding in what SiMidge does I thought I should clarify.

[radwolf76]

Fallout 4 - Overdoing It With The Unlimited Companion Framework Mod: My Vault 111 Survivor and Her Entourage

This is Nova. Before the Great War, she served as a Defense Attaché Officer posted to several different US Embassies during her Army Career. That was the cover story anyway, She was actually an Army Intelligence Operative. Upon exiting the vault, her experience in destabilizing third-world governments gave her the context to do the opposite: stabilize and rebuild civilization. 

But the Commonwealth Wasteland is a harsh place, and it's best to have a team of friends watching your back (Using Expired6978's Unlimited Companion Framework mod, everyone shown below accompanies her all at once. Navigating interiors is a bit of a hassle, but it really helps bring back the old Fallout 1&2 or even Wasteland 1 feel).

The post title refers to a "Vault 111 Survivor" and not a "Sole Survivor" because despite rumors to the contrary, her husband Nate's gunshot wound was not fatal (kesabelus's Dual Survivors - Nate Companion Mod). While Nova focused her efforts on establishing a network of rebuilt settlements, Nate took on the mantle of Minuteman General. (Ok, so everyone still calls her "General" and not Nate, but I figure the two of them are kind of a package deal. I chose that hat as an homage to Boone from F:NV.)

With him in this image is a glowing wolf named Dogmeat that they adopted as a pet (ANDREWCX's Universal Clothing Overhaul). Not pictured, their other pet, a gray tabby named Shaun. 

Nick Valentine (in the Silver Shroud outfit from Kainzorus Prime's The Chrome Shroud mod), Curie in her Synth body (with personal mod to edit her hair to make her look like one of my housemates), and Minuteman Eyebot 2ED-E59 (th1nk's Automatron Eyebot Companions). 

In addition to those shown previously, Preston and Piper. 

After transferring Curie's programming from a robot to a synth, Nova felt that her old robot Codsworth deserved the same treatment (Lazygirl's Codsworth2Human). Here he is with Preston, and Nova's Minuteman bodyguard, Washington (NPC Follower Made with tofudwarf's Create Follower, with outfit and accessories from Far West Minutemen) 

Finally the twins, Lovelace and ADA. After her successes with Curie and Codsworth, Nova wanted to try to transfer ADA to a Synth body as well. 

Unlike the other two, ADA had not been active for over two centuries, and thus had not developed the quirks in her personality matrix to allow for a smooth transition onto synth wetware. The transfer was in danger of failing so in order to save her, parts of her former robot body had to be grafted onto her new synth one (LazyGirl's ADA2Human mod, and Crimsomrider's Assaultroness armor). 

Afterwards, there were enough leftover assaultron parts, so Nova had Lovelace built. 

(Lovelace's shoulder mounted weapons both came from redportal's Assaultron Combatron. Unfortunately, the minigun doesn't actually animate, but I'm too much of a War Machine fanboy to care. As a heads up, that mod also contains robot penis. A lot of robot penis.

The Plasma Rifle comes from Teddy Brain and Misc Robot Parts by the same author.

The head and also the rear armor made from electrified blades is from Dlx's Humanoid Assaultrons.

And while you can't see it too well in that screenshot I've also loaded the basic version of Karel2015's Automatron - Weapons System Overhaul. Either the version where robots add settlement defense or the version where you can have several robot followers at once (or maybe both) do bad things to the WorkshopParent quest (0002058E) that break Nuka-World, but the base version doesn't touch it. Even the base version has some "good bad" bugs like allowing multiple weapons per hand, so I actually also have a shock claw on the plasma gun arm (which tends to wrap the base of the gun in static discharge, sometimes really thick amounts of it which looks awesome), and on the other side there's both the Shishkebab blade, and a Legendary wounding Assaultron Blade that'll swing up for that Gillette TRAC II double bladed action: the first blade straightens you upright, while the second clips you neatly at the ankles.)

Using this many companions really highlights the fact that the game was not balanced for this large of a party, though the ease in which all these followers take down enemies is offset by the fact that you miss out on XP on anything they kill without enough help from you. The only one that you don’t have to compete against for kills is Shaun the Tabby [Not Pictured], who can only meow crossly at the enemies.

[sftswigan]

Manchester garage punks, Tinfoils, George from the band tells us about their latest single, their money raising effort for BLMUK and how a game of pool completed the band...

Alright hope you’re doing well through this shit time.

Can you tell us who Tinfoils are and where did the name come from?

TINFOILS are a mardy northern bastard garage punk band based in Manchester. There's three of us, and we've all moved here from Yorkshire.

The name came from when I was on an X Files hype. Thought it was a good name for a band, so I just got the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages before we'd even done a rehearsal! I think it was before we even met Will. I just thought it was a good name, the other two agreed and we ran with it.

Sounds like you had confidence in this band early on then. How did you find Will and what has he brought to the band?

I don't know if I had loads of confidence in the band before we started really, I just thought the name was cool! We didn't really take it very seriously for a long time, took us about 6 months to bother looking for a gig. Was just an excuse to meet and get pissed up at first.

Me and Alex had known each other for a while, and went to a pub in Fallowfield. We were having a game of pool, when two blokes came up and asked if they could play doubles because no other tables were free. We agreed, and one of them turned out to be Will. After that they invited us to some flat party, and at about 6 in the morning on some unknown persons kitchen worktop he mentioned he played bass. We met up a couple of days later and the rest is history.

He's an amazing bassist, and his love for funk has a massive impact on every song I write. Tunes always come out sounding better once I show them to Will and Alex.

Love the bass lines in your songs, The Abyss, especially. Could’ve been a different story if you and Alex decided that was your last game of pool and just handed it to Will and his mate!

Like The Blinders, you also (and I think one or two others have followed suit) made the journey from Doncaster to Manchester. How much of a difference has that made to you and the band?

Definitely! All credit for that goes to our mate Breezy to be fair, he was the one who suggested doubles. He drops it in to conversation every time he's trying to convince us to come out.

Yeah I moved from Doncaster about 5 years ago, I do love it to bits but I wouldn't have been able to do half the stuff I wanted to if I'd stayed. Wouldn't have met Alex and Will, and probably wouldn't have ended up starting a band. There are some decent bands in Doncaster but a lot of it was indie stuff at the time, which I do like but not something I was interested in doing. The music scene in Manchester is amazing at the moment, there's so much music and it's all really different and interesting. Best place for music in the country at the moment I reckon.

Manchester is definitely a great place for music but I think the UK in general has a really good music scene at the moment with loads of good bands about! Though places like Manchester have some unreal venues and bands love playing there.

I wanna talk about your latest single ‘Spitting’ which was released during lockdown. Absolutely love that track! You went to Magic Garden to record it. What did recording it there bring to the song?

Cheers mate, we're really happy with it. I think it added a lot going to Magic Garden, Gavin's brilliant. First of all, it's just way higher quality than anything else we've put out, and I think it manages to sound a lot like we do live. Gavin also suggested we add some vocals in to middle 8 bit, which was originally just instrumental. I quickly wrote something down on a bit of scrap paper in a few minutes, and recorded it in one take, and that's the take in the final song. It's the whole "lap me up I'm stagnant water" bit. We'll hopefully get some more tunes recorded soon, would love another trip to the garden. The music video for the song is just clips of our time at the studio mixed in with some live clips, had a really good time there.

I hear quite a few bands speak highly of him and his influence on their time in his studio. He does seem to get great results.

You recently released some songs on bandcamp that were live demos if I remember correctly. Are they going onto Spotify at any point and also will you be recording any of these? Peeping Tom is probably one of my favourites of yours.

Yeah they're a load of demos we did at Dead Basic Studios last year, we thought it was a shame to have them just lying about. We decided to put them out and donate all the money from Bandcamp Day to BLMUK, every little helps doesn't it. They won't be going on Spotify, but I reckon we'll probably record a couple of them properly one day. Peeping Tom's a bit of a favourite, would love to get that recorded in a studio but there's a million tempo changes so I think it'd probably be tricky to nail down. Its one of my favourites to play live, especially when we're headlining and get the chance for a self-indulgent 10 minute jam with a big sing-a-long. The demos will stay on Bandcamp for the foreseeable, but I think we'll probably take them off at some point.

A great cause, did you manage to raise much? Some really good tracks on there would love to here them recorded like you say.

So what are the bands plans once lockdown is relaxed to a point bands and musicians to get out there and do proper stuff without fear again?

Yeah we raised about £60-70 I think? It was only for the day, when Bandcamp waived their fees. Props to Lewis from Dead Basic for recording and mixing them all.

First things first we need to get in for a rehearsal! I've written a load of new songs which I'm looking forward to working out, I think it'll be a lot of new tunes in the set list when we're back gigging. Hopefully reschedule our tour that had to be postponed, play some tunes, get some recording done, and go out and see some bands! Just got to hope it's not too far off.

That’s awesome! Excited about the new tunes and future recordings...and gigs again obviously.

Hopefully you can squeeze a rearranged gig for us on the tour!

You mentioned how highly you rate the Manchester scene. Which bands should people go and see once bands get to gig again?

There's a tonne of bands to go and see, to name a few: Loose Articles, Blanketman, The Early Mornings, Swine, Springfield Elementary, Giant Boys, The Red Stains, Cold Water Swimmers, and loads of others. There's a lot of different styles about but I do feel like there's a sort of coherent feeling between all the bands around here at the minute. It got to the point just before pandemic where no matter which venue or what day, if you turned up you'd probably see something amazing. Fingers crossed it all survives the lockdown!

There’s some good bands there, really like Springfield Elementary and Swine what I’ve heard of them and also Red Stains. I need to check the others out but we’re very lucky to have so many good bands about and more people these days that are very much into new music!

We’re gonna end the interview with some quick fun questions...

Favourite album/EP of this year?

I'm gonna go with either Zero Dollar Bill by Do Nothing, or The Non-Stop EP by Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard. Can't pick between them!

Also really looking forward to Fontaines DCs new album, and Idles, and The Blinders.

If Tinfoils could tour with any band alive or dead who would it be?

Would love to go on tour with Fontaines DC, Idles or Sleaford Mods. If I had to pick between them, at the moment probably Fontaines. Loving their last few singles, and Dogrel was banging.

Ah wait, Thee Oh Sees! Maybe Oh Sees actually. Any of the above would allow me to die happy.

Is there a song that at least one member isn’t keen on in the set but are outnumbered?

I don't really like The Royal Baby Machine that much, but the other two do.

Chinese food or Indian?

Indian

Lager or Real ale?

Ale, but more of a standard bitter to be honest. Not West Coast passionfruit and jasmine infused with lemongrass IPA stuff, it's rank and I don't get it. Give me a pint of John Smiths over that wank any day.

Festival you’d love to play?

Wouldn't turn down Glasto!

Last one...

Best live band you’ve seen?

Best live band I've seen is probably Idles.

Alex, our drummer says Cabbage at Night & Day was probably the best gig he’s been to recently

Thanks to George from Tinfoils for chatting to us! You can listen to their music on all the streaming services and go and visit their social media pages. Here is their latest effor, Spitting.