#and then when I went to make a new mesh for a different object it just. would not

[dentist-brainsurgeon]

Retopology is a certain kind of hell

[hedgehog-moss]

The Great Jungle Fence of ‘23

A majority of you poll-voters expressed the opinion that my fence would stop Pampe for 4 to 7 days and I am very touched by this popular endorsement of my fence-building skills, because her first escape happened after roughly 4 hours.

^ Pampe connoisseurs will know that her preferred way of defeating fences is by karate-chopping them with her neck, but I thought she could only do that if the fence was low enough for her to put some strength in the chop. The jungle fence was at least as tall as Pampe in the place where I found it all droopy-sad after she escaped, so I guess Pampe added a new jump-chop combo attack to her character sheet. I imagine it went something like this:

That’s okay! All new information about Pampe is carefully filed and will contribute to the creation of the Ultimate Fence. I decided to simply make this portion of the fence unneckchoppable by braiding branches from nearby trees into the fence like they did in Indonesia with that living bridge made by knitting the roots of two banyan trees. I ended up using five or six branches so it’d be solid enough, but here’s a pic of the beginning of the process:

The braided-branch part of the fence still stands undefeated, after 20 days. Pampe ate all the leaves but couldn’t get rid of the branches and had to concede this battleground.

I then found her staring pensively (worryingly) at another potential weak point of the fence: the gate. I used a standard wood pallet at first, tied to trees, but it wasn’t very high. I couldn’t add another pallet on top of it because that would make it inoperable as a door, so I went to explore the barn, which like all barns is full of dusty treasures. What object do I own that’s like a pallet, but much taller?

!!

A slatted bed base. Once tied to a tree it swings open easily, but it was an awful chore to carry it all the way across the pasture, I had to wait for a weekend when my mum was going to visit me. That conversation went like:

Me: Do you remember that old bed in the barn? Can you help me carry it (well part of it) across the pasture? Mum: Why on earth Me: Pampe. Fence. Mum: That’s a good reason

I was very proud of my new, impassable gate, but Pampe was weirdly nowhere to be seen as I was setting it up. Usually she’s here carefully observing over my shoulder when I add a new element to a fence, so that was alarming.

In a flash of insight I realised I had been tricked; she’d never had any intention of jumping over the pallet gate. Too easy, too predictable. She’d only examined the gate to scare me into trying to solve this non-problem and force me to use my only trump card (I don’t have several old beds in the barn), and meanwhile she’d gone and jumped over a different pallet in a different part of the fence.

That other pallet had a sheep netting stretched above it, so that a) I thought it was unjump-able, b) Pampe thought it was a more amusing challenge. Poor Baby Poldine was a bit distraught; she clearly didn’t dare to jump to follow her mum but she didn’t want to be left behind once again, so she tried to slip through the net, but that didn’t work either.

Poldine made a baa noise like a traumatised baby goat and Pampe grudgingly turned back to go bump noses with her through the fence, it was a cute mother-daughter moment.

I added a new length of wire mesh (see pink arrow in the below pic) above the pallet to discourage further jumping, and my mum went “So you can remove the sheep netting and use it elsewhere” and I was like, what, no! Do you think they remove parts of the fence every time a Jurassic Park dinosaur escapes? That makes no sense. I’m only going to add more elements to this fence. Forever and ever or until it works.

Pirlouit, a law-abiding animal with very modest fence needs, was starting to look a bit overwhelmed.

Also—for once, Pampe didn’t look annoyed about being escorted back where I wanted her to be, she was kind of bouncy and looked immensely entertained by all this.

I’ll spare you the details but she escaped again, this time by lifting the bottom of the fence in a place where it was weighed down with a crossbar, which she broke in two with the power of her neck. That was easy to fix; instead of a wooden crossbar I weighed down the base of the fence with massive rocks. Go ahead and neck chop those, Pampe. But this time around it had taken me forever to find the spot where she escaped, so I decided to make things easier for myself in the future—I cordoned off the area just outside the fence with police tape between trees, along the whole length of it. This way I’ll see easily where she escaped—the tape is very flimsy and I crisscrossed it in places, so she shouldn’t be able to get past it without breaking it.

... So I suppose I’ll have to start the next post with “You’ll never guess what I caught Pampe doing last night” and a photo of her like

Anyway, Pampe looked unamused this time.

Well, that’s all. For now. Pampérigouste is back in the lawful enclosure with her family and we are waiting for her next move. Here’s a photo of her alone in the unallowed half of her pasture the other evening, contemplating her freedom

[amethystamanda]

Pitcher and Basin Set (6 items)

This is a set I started, as far as I can tell, last September. It started as 'how hard is it to convert something from TS3?' It's been converted before, but I didn't really care, because it was just to see if I could do it.

Then, of course, I couldn't leave it at that. I wanted the basin and pitcher together and separate. I wanted them empty and filled with water. And then, when I came back to it, I wanted different designs and colours, and I wanted a sink to match--I would not have been able to do that when I first started working on these, I think, and it's still far from perfect.

There are six items, to mix and match throughout your sim's home:

An empty pitcher

A pitcher full of water

An empty pitcher in a basin

A pitcher full of water in a basin

A basin full of water

A basin full of water that works as a sink (identical to the deco basin but functional)

The basins come in 8 colours (the original 3 from TS3 and 5 solid colours), matching the pitchers.

The pitchers come in 38 colours (the original 3 from TS3, 5 solid colours, and 6 different flower designs on the 5 main colours).

Everything is properly tagged for the base colour.

The 5 deco items are tagged as sculptures and bathroom accents. The sink should be off-the-grid compatible.

Poly count is 148 to 492.

Everything costs 100 simoleons.

About the sink:

There's clipping when it's being used. I can't fix that without remaking the mesh so that it doesn't match the other parts of the set.

It gets dirty without being visibly dirty. It's probably fixable, but honestly I want this in my game now instead of spending potentially hours to days figuring out where I went wrong with that.

You can put it anywhere you can put small deco objects. If you put it too low, sim animations will happen in mid-air. If you place it too high, sims will reach inside the surface of whatever it's on. As far as I can tell, there's nothing I can do about that, because the animation is based on the sim, not on the object--the game expects the one off the grid basegame sink with decent stats to be in a counter, and animations are at that height.Linzlu's Samantha's Commode (used in the picture above) is the closest to being the correct height, which is probably because she also converted the same pitcher and made it into a functional sink. You can get both here https://linzlu.tumblr.com/post/613615726759215104/samanthas-collection-i-teased-a-remake-of-my

It can break. I am not currently aware of how to make a sink unbreakable without creating custom tuning (which makes it more likely to break with patches, which is not worth it for this set in my opinion).

Make sure the arrow is pointing in an accessible direction! It needs to point towards where your sim will stand.

I don't remember WHY I didn't make a bowl with no water, but I remember there being a reason, and I don't want to create a whole new item right now. Maybe later.

Download, individually or a zip: http://simfileshare.net/folder/222502/

[kenjakusbrainstem]

Defenseless (Mahito x Reader)

Contains: Rape, body horror, multiple limbs, Mahito's hand cock (as mentioned in my other fics).

Hello! Day 15 of Kinktober: Noncon. For the amount of Mahito dub/noncon that I do write, this was kinda difficult. I tried to make sure it was different than the other Mahito stuff I've done, don't want things to seem too samey. I wanted to try something new, which is why I took a scene with my oc and changed it. Hopefully it still reads well despite being plucked out of that plot. Crossposted to Ao3 under the same name and shared to twt at kenjakusbrain. Comment or rb if you have any thoughts or want to hear more about my AU, perhaps I'll post some of it after kinktober.

The school was supposed to be a safe place, one where there were plenty of people around to keep students safe. Especially at a Goodwill Event, when the teachers from multiple schools were there on the same campus. This year's Goodwill Event had been a disaster thus far. You’d gotten separated from your classmates and decided to simply search for low level cursed spirits to exorcise when the strange veil lowered. 

Despite the supposed safety, you knew something was wrong when you attempted to reach out to your classmates via cellphone but were unable. With Yuuta overseas you normally paired up with Inumaki, your technique’s meshing fairly well. It was helpful to nearly any sorcerer to be paired with you though, as your ability was to use reversed cursed technique on others. Your weapon proficiency didn’t usually matter, but since this was supposed to be a friendly battle, you only had your wits and two daggers you weren’t fully comfortable with to protect yourself. 

While you were confident in your ability to exorcise some low level curses, the uncertainty of what was going on had you on edge. 

Slowly you crept toward a part of the campus people rarely went to, you neared the path to the Tomb of the Star Corridor, assuming that there would be some form of guard there. As you made it to the edge of the wooded area near the stairs, you were shocked to find the end of the barrier. It seemed whatever was going on had nothing to do with Tengen. 

It made sense to you that whatever the strange barrier was, that is where the trouble had to be. It wouldn’t hurt to hide or at least find someone of authority to alert. 

You met surprisingly little resistance as you burst through the veil, heading over toward the only building you could see. If you remembered correctly, it was a warehouse that the school used to store cursed objects. Looking around, you didn’t see any guards, so you slowly approached the building before slipping in through the door quietly. 

Inside wasn’t what you expected to see, two horribly transfigured humans laid on the floor of the storage room. You froze, hands immediately flying to your daggers as you looked around. It seemed like it was just you and the transfigured humans. Remembering the work of the Patchwork curse, you were on edge. 

Kneeling next to one of the bodies, you attempted to use your technique to assist them in some way. Focusing all of your energy into the palms of your hands, you attempted to restore the assistant that was still moving. Unexpectedly, right before your eyes you watched as the assistant slowly morphed back, his skin returning to a normal shade. You checked the pulse and to your surprise it was faint.

This changed things, unfortunately you felt drained, not expecting to exert that much energy. You weren’t sure if you’d be able to get the assistant back to your teachers soon.

“Oh what do we have here? Did you do this?” A playful voice filled the room. You looked up, shocked to hear another person when you could have swore the room was empty moments ago.

There was no doubt in your mind who it was when he stepped closer, stitches visible on his face, barely obscured by his long blue hair. The curse had an excited look on his face, like he’d just discovered a new toy to play with. As you both looked at the man that used to be transfigured in front of you, you thought to yourself that this was the only time you would have rather been too late to save someone.

“What are you doing here?” You asked, standing upright. Your hands gripped your daggers but with the energy you just used, you couldn’t help but feel exhausted. Still you weren’t going to back down, that wasn’t what a sorcerer would do.

The curse laughed, taking a step toward you. You couldn’t help but step back, but you miscalculated, tripping over the other transfigured human on the ground and stumbling onto your back. The move was a grave mistake, you felt yourself getting dizzy as your head cracked against the floor.

“You managed to change one of my toys back! That’s so strange, if you came with me I wouldn’t have to worry about them breaking so easily. Say, doesn’t that sound fun?” The curse sounded much more excitable than you expected. You hadn’t expected him to speak with the enthusiasm of a child.

The dizziness in your head made it hard to fully comprehend what he was talking about. When he said toys did he mean the assistants? Confusion mixed with fear in your mind to create panic, though your hands gripped your weapons tightly even on the ground, you were somehow less confident than normal in your ability to protect yourself.

You didn’t have the chance to find your voice, because he was on top of you in a flash. The curse was much faster than you had expected. He didn’t touch you immediately, instead choosing to cage you in. For some reason this scared you more, knowing enough about him to know that his abilities functioned through touch. What could he have planned if not killing you right away.

“I’m not allowed to kill any students, but if I hit you hard enough you should forget most of this,” His words didn’t match the tone he was using. The curse sounded like he was discussing a fun pass time he was unable to partake in, not murder. Even though he hadn’t said much, you didn’t want to listen any longer. The pain in your head was already making your head throb, something about trying to understand the curse just made it throb worse. 

You held up your weapons, ready to strike if he moved any closer. Or you thought you were. Before you knew it your hands were empty, daggers ripped from them by a limb protruding from his back that you somehow hadn’t noticed until it was too late.

“Now since you can negate my abilities on others, I wonder what you can do to yourself,” The curse thought aloud, hands reaching for your face. You quickly moved your arms up to protect yourself, not that you could do much. 

As you felt his hands grasp your forearms, you knew you needed to act quickly. Your skin felt like it was boiling hot where his hands touched, as if the skin could slough off onto the ground or be reshaped like playdoh. Though you were exhausted, you pushed all of your remaining energy into your arms. Even with your best attempt at keeping yourself safe, you could feel his power was much stronger than yours.

“Fascinating! No one’s ever been able to resist Idle Transfiguration before! I wish I could take you back with me, you’re exactly what he’s looking for in a sorcerer,” He rambled as he spoke, a look of amazement in his eyes. He was clearly excited, but you had no idea who or what he was talking about. 

It was hard for you to focus, though you’d stopped his attack it felt like something was seriously wrong with your arms. In the dim light of the warehouse it was so hard to tell though. 

Opening your mouth to speak, you were stopped by a pair of unexpected lips on yours. The kiss, if you could call it that, full of tongue and teeth. His tongue slipped into your mouth even though you tried to close it. Everything about him was so overwhelming and strange, you’d never felt a kiss so terrifying before.

You tried to lift your arms in an attempt to push him away, but you could barely move them an inch without pain shooting up your body. You had put all of your remaining energy into trying to block his attack, and it hadn’t even been able to stop it. Groaning at the pain in your arms, you wanted nothing more than for him to leave or knock you out. Pulling away from the kiss, he giggled at what you were sure must have been a horrified look on your face.

“You’re getting me so excited just thinking about it. Say will you stay quiet for me so I can try something? I really think you’d be perfect for one of his experiments,” His words made your blood run cold. They sounded so threatening, and who exactly was he talking about? As far as you knew, this curse operated alone, so to have him actively referencing a partner of sorts was alarming.

Without warning the curse flipped your skirt up, exposing your panties to him. You tried to wiggle away, but it was no use, you were on the floor nearly pushed up completely against the wall. The only way out was through him and that wasn’t happening without help.

You watched in fear as the hand in front of you changed shape and size, taking the form of an erect cock. How hard did you hit your head, exactly? You didn’t remember anyone saying that he could manipulate his body into different shapes, but you also just might not have been paying attention. Now wasn’t the time to worry about that, you attempted to close your legs, but you felt two hands wrap around your ankles. 

“Even at a time like this you’re trying to fight back? What a good little sorcerer you are,” The mocking tone in his voice made you angry. You felt the blunt head of the cock rubbing against your pussy through your panties, as if he were teasing you instead of torturing. You lifted your hips to try and get away from him, but the hands around your ankles pulled you closer.

The sudden jerking movement made you hit your head on the ground again, vision blacking out for a moment. Through the haze of fighting to stay conscious, you felt a hot, stretching pain as he entered you. Forcing your eyes open, you were met with the mischievous patchwork grin staring at you, he looked like he had just played a harmless prank on you. Like he wasn’t violating you.

The curse’s movement inside you was slow at first, filling you up carefully as if he were measuring your insides. You could feel the head of his cock pressing up against your cervix, a shiver running down your spine at being filled completely. No human would be able to do this, the strange image of just how large the cock inside you was filling your mind. 

You watched his smile grow wider as he slowly pulled out of you. It almost felt pleasurable, the way the thick cock felt inside of you. That is until you felt the stretch of the head against your entrance. The curse paused, not pulling all the way out of you yet. For a moment you thought he was finished, but that thought was only able to linger in your mind for a few seconds before he slammed his cock back into you.

The curse’s thrusts had gone from soft exploration to a violent attack, each one coming right after the other. You choked, having trouble even breathing as you felt the head of his cock slamming up against your cervix. The pain of being fucked so hard by something far too big made you feel sick, but the way his cock rubbed up against your walls felt good. If each thrust didn’t make you want to cry, you could have at least pretended to enjoy it.

His pace increased, the speed he was fucking into you made it impossible to try and get away. You didn’t even have time to think between thrusts. Trying to make it bearable, you attempted to focus on the drag of his cock inside you, it did feel good, the way you could feel the veins against your walls. It wasn’t enough though, you couldn’t take your mind off of the pain.

As quickly as it started though, he froze inside of you. Something had caused him to stop and you had no idea what it was. Was someone here to save you? Had you been found? Part of you didn’t want to be found like this, no one needed to see just how weak you had been.

The curse rammed his cock into your cervix again, pressing in and not moving away. 

“It seems I’ve gotta go now, the veil is gone, you’re so much fun though I hate to leave you like this. Next time I catch you, I’ll finish this. Don’t miss me too much, cutie!” As soon as he was finished speaking, he ripped his cock from you. You felt something inside you tear with the violent motion. His hands left your ankles, though you wanted to get up and fight him, you were unable to do nothing more than curl in on yourself. 

You watched through teary eyes as he picked something up. Had he been carrying something when you first encountered him? Your brain was too scrambled to remember any details. 

“Oh right, you’ve seen me! Don’t want you remembering too much,” He giggled to himself, again his speech making you think of a child. 

He stepped over you, his shoes right in front of your face. You didn’t have time to register the sharp kick to your temple as you felt consciousness leave you.

[baticeer-sims]

A couple of experiments with TS2 loading time

I wanted to test out some things I've commonly heard around the Sims 2 community as ways to affect your load times. Disclaimer: I have a powerful gaming computer so my game loads fast anyways, so there might be small differences that I won't notice that are more obvious on other machines. I don't know how much of this generalizes to everyone's computer! I run the UC with Sims2RPC as my launcher on Windows 11.

My method: I loaded the game and timed how long it took the game to load from the end of the intro movie, to the neighborhood selection screen. I did it 5 times in a row for each different thing I tested and averaged out the times, just to reduce variance as much as I could.

Test #1 - Control

First I just loaded my game with my downloads folder the way it is right now (8.2 GB of pretty disorganized CC) to get a baseline value. Result: 55 seconds average

Test #2 - Do special characters affect loading times?

I used a bulk file renaming program to replace the letter "S" in every filename in my entire downloads folder, with š - if you can't see that character it's an S with an accent mark on it. (I picked S because it's one of the most common letters in English and it's also in some words common in cc filenames like "sims" and "mesh" so I thought it'd be one where I'm hitting almost every file even if I only replace one character.)

Result: 55 seconds average Conclusion: This one surprised me because it's such a piece of repeated common knowledge around the TS2 community, but I think it's unlikely that special characters affect loading times? If nothing changed from turning the vast majority of my CC from files that don't have special characters into files that do.

Test #3 - Do non-CC files in your downloads folder affect loading times?

I remember hearing you shouldn't keep preview pics in your downloads folder, because it'll slow down the game, and I was confused because I always thought it won't even try to read non-.package files at all. So to test this one, I temporarily moved 17.5 GB of photos, videos, and audio files from elsewhere on my hard drive, into my sims downloads folder.

Result: 55 seconds average Conclusion: If tripling the size of my download folder didn't change load time at all when the new files were all non-sims files, I think it's almost certainly fine to keep preview pictures (or zipped-up backups of something you don't want to use all the time, or whatever) in with your CC if it helps you keep track of your downloads.

Test #4 - Merging your CC

I knew this one was going to actually make a difference because I've directly experienced it before (on an older, worse computer where my load times were longer) but I thought I'd give it a go anyways just to see how much difference it made for me. So I merged some of my CC subfolders I knew would be the biggest (clothes, buy mode objects, & hairs) with CC Merger. According to the logs, it went from 4,308 individual files to 148 merged files.

Result: 46.5 seconds average Conclusion: This definitely makes a difference but it will make a lot more of one for people who already have long load times. For someone like me it might not be worth the amount of time it would take to be bundling every little thing I download lol.

A few other things I've heard that I couldn't think of an easy way to test

1- "Default replacements don't affect your load times as much as if you had a custom version of the same thing" - It feels to me like this doesn't make sense because surely the game still just has to read the files but I have no clue how to test this, I'm not about to spend hours gathering up the custom versions of all my defaults just to try it.

2- "The game will load faster if you have shorter file paths / fewer subfolders within the download folder" - I heard of and started doing this long enough ago that all my downloads are already only one or two subfolders deep already. I couldn't think of a quick way to make my folder structure a lot more complicated lol, and I think even if I found out this wasn't true I wouldn't change how I organize my downloads, so I didn't spend time on it.

Everyone draw whatever conclusions you want from this post, I'm not telling you to change how you organize your CC or anything, just wanted to share what I found is true for me specifically, I would be interested to hear other people who have longer load times repeating my tests and see if you get the same results, or to hear people who know more about the programming side of this weigh in, maybe something like the special characters is dependent on your computer or operating system!

[briamichellewrites]

41

Sheena filled her parents in on the shopping experience. She showed them what she had purchased as well. They adored the selection she made. Dinner was about to be served. She was hungry. After feeding Goldie, Donna arranged the table. She assisted by carrying objects on her tray. They took care to prevent her from attempting to steal the plate stack. There were times when she wanted to trick them. She should not even consider running away.

She laughed because she was considering it! Nathan grabbed the plates before she got the chance. They were ceramic, so he didn’t want them to get broken. She made a face of defeat. Goldie went back to the living room to continue playing with his new toy. He was like a small child who had to carry it around with him wherever he went.

Henry was getting old. He was training new residents from medical school. They were just starting to apply the knowledge they had learned in medical school. Possessing book intelligence was one thing. Being patient, having people skills, being able to remain composed under pressure, and being able to humble oneself were all different. The emergency room was a difficult place to work. To say that was an underestimate! Their patients would also be unable to remain composed if they weren’t.

They would be prone to errors. Correcting them was his responsibility. Fortunately, his nurses were there to assist him as well. His ability to stay sane was attributed to his time in the army. Learning how to care for their patients was something the residents were very interested in.

When they made a mistake, he corrected them. They heeded his advice after paying close attention. They discussed popular culture, music, and films. He did not know who the new artists were. He was questioned about who he listened to. He enjoyed listening to Tim McGraw and Toby Keith's country music. Jason Aldean, a new artist, caught his attention. They inquired as to his reasons for enjoying country music. He responded to them in the same way that he did to everyone else.

"I grew up in a small Colorado town. It makes me think of that.”

Toby would be performing on August 30th in Irvine. Jerry and Henry bought row tickets after consulting their schedules. They could not wait to see him live for the first time! They asked if Bria and Dave would be interested in going. Since the concert was three months away, they felt confident that she would be okay. She joked that since Toby Keith didn’t have a mosh pit, she should be safe.

They agreed he wouldn’t have a mosh pit. It sounded fun. Was he going to wear his cowboy hat? He might have to. Would she be embarrassed by him? She joked that it depended on the rest of his outfit.

“She’s the Fashion Police”, he joked.

“Oh, I know. Sheena also has opinions on what I wear. She will tell me if my clothes don’t match”, Dave said.

“How is Sheena doing?”

She was doing very well. To choose some new clothes, he and Bria took her to Marshalls. She was overjoyed! He allowed her to boss him around. Did she? In a way. Eventually, they were able to identify a pattern between her preferences and dislikes. After they did, things became much simpler. Anything that revealed too much skin did not appeal to her. They selected some trousers and a couple of shirts. Were only service animals permitted in the store, or were dogs permitted as well?

Pets were permitted inside the store. Because she worked there, she recalled that. Dogs were typically the ones who entered. An instance occurred where a client arrived with a cat in a carrier. It was strange because she heard a meowing sound but was unable to identify its source. She walked past the woman. She noticed a paw pressed against the meshing when she peered inside the carrier.

"I thought, 'Oh my god! It is a cat!‘“

They chuckled. What was the woman doing? She removed it for her own view after opening the carrier. It was adorable! Since they had just left the veterinarian, she did not want to leave it in the car outside. That was logical. It was among the most peculiar things that had ever occurred to me in my professional life. Did anything else odd occur?

They had a large influx of homeless people, particularly during inclement weather. One of the men dozed off in the changing room. He was exhausted. They had to get him to leave by calling the police. He eventually did so without being taken into custody. She believed that they provided him with the address of the nearest shelter as a place to sleep. Sadly, there were a lot of homeless people in Los Angeles. It wasn’t just the rich and famous that lived there.

During their weekly phone chat, Sheena shared her shopping experience with Angel. Was she aware that Bria, her friend, was on TV? No, she didn’t. She participated in the inaugural season of American Idol. She was unaware of that, no.

"Check her out on YouTube," she advised.

She kept her sister on the phone and accomplished that with Nathan's assistance. She viewed her audition on video. After that, she viewed one of her music videos. What was her opinion? She chuckled and grinned.

"That is Bria!"

"Yes!” Angel remarked, "She sings and writes like Dave and his band."

"The next time I see her, I will let her know that I found her on YouTube."

"I believe she will adore that."

Bria was so humble, she never would have known. That was her greatest quality. With her mother's assistance, she took a bath after wrapping up her phone call. They set up her Spotify on her father's laptop so she could listen to Bria's album. In order to keep it dry, it had to rest on the sink. Because of how heavy the music was, they had to lower the volume. It made her think of Linkin Park, Dave's band. Donna concurred that it was comparable.

Finding her identity in a foreign country, falling in love, and her parents' divorce were among the topics covered in her album. At the time, she was experiencing those things. Additionally, they resonated with her age group. Her voice reminded Donna of Janis Joplin. She chuckled. Before turning in for the night, Nathan took Goldie to the restroom.

It was time to get out of the bathtub and prepare for bed after the album was finished. Just as Nathan and Goldie were returning to the bathroom, they emerged. Goldie went to see how Sheena was doing. She felt fatigued from the warm water.

In jest, Nathan inquired about her impression of the concert. She smiled at him. Although she had enjoyed the day, she was now ready to go to bed. They pulled the covers up to her chest after assisting her into bed. They would see her in the morning. Before closing her eyes, she gave them a smile. The lights were turned off and they left.

@zoeykaytesmom @feelingsofaithless @alina-dixon

[jb-rapid-prototyping-college]

Making a brick-breaker game in Unreal Engine

First I created a basic empty project and created a new level for the actual game. The tutorial states that the next thing to do would be to create an atmosphere, clouds and fog, all so that you can tint the background pink, however it doesn't add anything to the gameplay so I will not be doing it.

The next thing is to create a bunch of materials for all of the objects in the scene. this material would have a colour and an emission strength variable so that it would glow, however I think bloom is way too overused, so ill stick with just a flat colour:

The tutorial would have you still calculating every single lighting calculation, which is extremely unnecessary when all you need is a flat colour with a bit of glow.

I can then use this material to create a bunch of material instances, all of which can have their own colour.

The next thing to do is the actual gameplay, starting with the bat. This consists of a static mesh (for rendering), a collider (for colliding) and an arrow for some reason. They went with a capsule, but a box will suffice. I then created a spline for the bat to travel across and finally actually started working on the gameplay.

We're first asked to create a timeline, this will control the movement of the bat. it seems quite unnecessary and I would personally just do a lerp or something, but oh well. We then create a new track with a length of 1 second and give it two keyframes: one at 0,0 and the other at 1,1 creating a linear curve(?).

I then use the "Get Transform at Distance Along Spline" function and plug in the spline's length multiplied by the current timeline's value, giving essentially a percentage along the curve. This transform is then used to set the position of the bat.

It now asks us to test it by placing the blueprint in the scene, but obviously nothing happens other than the bat showing.

So now we create some input using an input action and an input mapping context. the two input actions are a 1D float and a bool for movement and launching the ball, the float is locked to the mouse X and the bool is set to the left mouse button.

We then actually get the input like this:

And then create four custom events to control the timeline.

We then quickly reset the bat after the input is done and begin working on the events:

This basically gets the mouse X position, multiplies it with some sensitivity and uses that to change the play rate of the timeline so that the bat follows the mouse.

Anyway, now that this is done, here is what I would have done: I would have defined an origin and a length variable and used that to calculate an starting point and an end point by adding and subtracting the length from the origin. If I am correct, the mouse position in unreal ranges from 0-1, in that case, I would then create a new vector called "target position", which would be the result of a lerp between the start and end point based on the mouse position. I'd then do another lerp where the start is the current bat position and the target position variable so that the bat smoothly follows the mouse. to increase the sensitivity, all you'd have to do is create a new variable called factor, set that to the mouse X and place that in the lerp instead. but before placing it there, you'd subtract 0.5, multiply by the sensitivity and add 0.5, making sure to clamp it between 0 and 1. but that's just how I'd do it.

I quickly placed some boxes around to make sure the ball doesn't leave

and now its time to make the ball.

This is just a collider with a sphere and a projectile movement set to bounce and only move on two axes (x and z because unreal is weird).

I actually decided to differ from the tutorial once again. they used a spherical collider and had the ball facing the direction it was moving, whereas I chose to use a box collider and no rotation. there is really no difference in my case, other than a performance gain so unnoticeable that there wasn't even a point in mentioning it. if there were multiple balls, then my change would be useful. but there aren't.

[evwuniverse]

Jasper City Luxury Estates - Hop or Flop?

From estates to rent to a beautifully made modern-day oasis city I was able to find everything I'd need to feel as if I was a modern-day princess living in luxury (no pun intended). Let's be honest, some places are still not made with new mesh objects in Second Life, and some of the best places are still prim-based. It was nice to find a city with the aesthetic I love. Everyone's style is different of course! However, if you're looking for modern-day Miami Beach or California vibes, this is the sim for you. I spent about 2 hours exploring it and finding some of my favorite things to do and explore in it. I recommend the visit, visiting places is free so why not right?

Visit Jasper City Luxury Estates by Clicking Here

They also have their own website you can find it here.

In case you needed a view of me living my best virtual life please see the below photo taken here in this sim.

In case you didn't know where you were please look at the above photo.

Where it all Begins:

It all begins when you step foot in front of the ginormous sign, telling you exactly where you are (thank you gigantic sign, I had no idea.). Then you have two pools in the front, not quite sure why there are two with little to no traffic especially at around 10:48 PM EST, but who's counting? (just me?) No, but in all seriousness, this is a very well-put-together city sim which honestly is hard for me to find nowadays. I was rather astounded by what it had to offer aside from trying to get you to buy into their luxury estates.

Pools with butlers? Check.

High-end luxury eateries? Check.

High-end luxury housing and galleries? Check.

Well, that seems to be all the main things you need in a city right? But let's not forget about the rideable Ferris wheel which sits over a body of water.

"The Good Life" - Luxury Restaurant:

But wait! I have to talk about the luxury restaurant, now virtual world restaurants are a newer experience for me. Especially after my ex and I went to one before, it was such an interesting experience. We all know it's pretend but there's something about the Roleplay experience that is so much more, but more on that on a future post. The luxury eatery on this sim is called "The Good Life" very much a fitting name.

When you step foot here let me tell you, you're truly living "The Good Life" (thank you restaurant, now tell me something I don't know). From a full bar with a bartender looking like he's about to make you a whole line of cocktails and a waitress ready to sit you in three different areas of the restaurant, each area is a different and luxurious experience. Now do keep in mind there aren't real people running it, but nonetheless, it's a nice touch and nice to see!

Upstairs in this restaurant, there is a sitting area as well as a YOGA studio, how nice. After you "pitch till you win" (eat) you can relax and work it all off. Beautiful! Now you don't have to worry about your virtual body losing its already perfect physique.

Luxury Estates:

Of course, there are also their luxury estates and there are a lot available currently. However, to be fair I never recommend renting off a sim, it's nice if you enjoy the Roleplay way of life and enjoy a place that is part of the aesthetic your looking for that matches the idea of the sim created by its creator. However, if you want to make it authentic and yours and not have a specific house then I always recommend buying a plot of land or finding a way where you can rent from a friend who has land and do your own thing. That's not to say you shouldn't tip the sim to keep it running. I think it's a great place to hang out with friends, explore, and live the luxury lifestyle in your virtual life.

In conclusion, I feel this sim is perfect for exploring, photos, and just spending a day in luxury taking everything in. It's nice to be in a place that gives you the luxury city experience. There is a lot to explore and it's overall just a great place for some friends and yourself to spend some time and relax. I highly recommend visiting.

[spikefinalfmp]

Star Flares Tracking

Wanting to expand this effect I added some movement to the particles by adding a velocity cone shooting the particles upwards into the air. Watching the system run it reminded me off the elden ring ability effect that I reference back too. Thinking this is my chance to learn how to use blueprints to change properties in Niagara emitters I researched how too. I looked for a long time but I couldn't find anything I exactly needed but looking back at my blog posts I used blueprints to change the colour of a effect. I thought it wouldn't be that different to what I need as I am only changing the position of a parameter so I went for that technique. 

I started off with adding a attraction point force testing to get the particles to attract to the position I set. Then in the user parameters I created a new position parameter enabling it on the attract position on the module. As I needed a target to attract to I made a actor with a character mesh to reference off. Making a new component I went into the blueprints. At first I tried to set up the cast on the player character but I could not cast onto the target as I had no object. So I moved the cast to the target, I set it up so on every tick the target would set the variable as it’s world location. I also made a quick piece of code allowing the actor to move forward to show how it would track. I then moved onto the character blueprint to use this information, I knew I had to set the parameter I made so I made code using that variable to set the parameter. This worked but I only had the actor stay still to show wherever I move it would track the target. When I moved the actor it would not track as I only had it trigger when I pressed 1 it would trigger and set the variable so it would track to the position when I pressed it. To fix this I experimented with what I could do. My first thought was to use a event tick to constantly trigger the set parameter module. Which I did but would get errors as the tick would set the parameter that technically has not been made yet, at first I thought a gate or branch would work as I could set a boolean check to see if the effect was triggered. Using this it worked but a event tick uses a lot more resources up so I got some feedback to try a timeline. Adding a timeline I set the value to increase from 0 to 1 over the time of the particle lifetime set in Niagara, this worked as it would constantly trigger the set parameter module. 

Overall it worked great and I am pleased with it. Knowing I am able to track and be more confident in using blueprints with Niagara is a massive skill as my effects can now have a purpose being able to be used in a combat system. The tracking can be improved within Niagara and refined but other then that it works as I wanted. I can use this technique to spawn systems on target positions and potentially develop a target selector to pick a target to use the ability on. If I wanted to push this system further I could add a health bar and code each projectile to do damage on collision, as I am only focusing on the effects at the moment this might be a option if I have time left.

Video of this in another post

Solutions

Fail ^

Attract Position  

[goboymusic]

“#StarWars is like pizza. I like good pizza, and I like bad pizza.” I can’t remember who originally said this, but I love it.

Knowing “#Ayla” would be the last song on GoBoy 5, the prospect of finishing it was far more exciting than most songs.

While most of the names that I use for song titles are arbitrarily selected, some of them are named after people from my past, like this one. Normally impatience gets the best of me when I reach the end of an album and I begin to cut corners to speed up the production process, but since this song was named after a person that I always had a healthy connection with, and that I’m fond of, I made sure to take my time and not half ass anything. I was going to release the song when it was worthy of being heard by that person, and not before then. Is the song amazing? No, but it’s pretty alright.

After about one week of recording and mixing vocals, I began experimenting with different genres for the instrument tracks, from EDM to rock to hip hop. After a few days of trying to come up with instruments for the “oh she got everything I want” chorus, I opted to leave it as an a cappella, because no matter what instruments I added, they weren’t meshing with the vocals. Loud rock drums were added to the post-chorus vocal skippy segment, because that’s the best thing that I could come up with, and were subsequently added to a portion of the 1st chorus because it sounded cool.

The verse vocals were an ordeal. I wanted to add the same loud rock drums from the post-chorus vocal skippy segment to the verses, but the original rhythm of the verse vocals didn’t fit, so I deleted and re-recorded them. A few days later, after the new verse vocals were mixed, I discovered that my nasal passages sounded clogged during the latter portions of the verses. Rather than record the verse vocals a 3rd time, I opted to add a transition midway through the verses from loud rock drums to a lofi style that consisted of a rhythmic synth, vocals, and a high-end filter to make the music sound muffled (if you listen to the song you’ll hear exactly what I’m describing). That lofi style hid my vocal blunder sufficiently.

Ever hear of a #McGuffin in the film industry? A “McGuffin” is an object that the plot revolves around, like the ring in Lord of the Rings, or the infinity stones in the Avengers movies. In songwriting, names are like McGuffins. It’s really convenient to pick a name and then write a song that revolves around it (excerpts from post 89).

“Hannah (Song 89)” was the first of many song titles on GoBoy 5, 6 and 7 that were named after girls. Some of them are real, some of them are arbitrarily selected. Gotta admit, I think it’s pretty funny seeing three or more tracks on the same album with different girl names (excerpts from post 89).

Beat + bass + melody. That’s the style of GoBoy 5. While I’ve appreciated this minimalistic style for years, “Tell My Mama (Song 42)” was the first time trying it. I went whole-hog with GoBoy 5, in which most songs primarily consist of a beat, bass and melody (excerpt from post 80).

For GoBoy 5, instead of creating for the sake of creating, like I did for GoBoy 4, I wanted to make poppier songs that would appeal to a larger audience. Was that goal accomplished? Well, maybe, I guess. It resulted in the song “In Love (Song 82),” which everyone and their mother seems to like (excerpt from post 79).

GoBoy 5 ragdolled me. I remember wondering if I’d live to see the completion of the album. While the style is minimalistic, the writing and production processes were chaotic, akin to throwing darts with a blindfold on. Most songs turned into a puzzle once they reached the mixing phase, with a portion of the pieces being destined not to fit. It required constant compromising - discarding segments, restructuring, rewriting, etc. The combination of the difficult production process and temporary chaos at work left a blood-soaked trail behind me (excerpt from post 80).

In April, 2021, almost all of GoBoy 3, 4 and 5‘s songs were restructured to be under 3 minutes (preferably under 2m 30s), including this song. I became okay with releasing songs around the 2 min mark after realizing The Beatles and The Beach Boys had some songs around that length. In an attempt to increase replay value in this streaming era, most of GoBoy’s songs are now purposely around 2m 20s (excerpts from post 37).

A bass boost was added to songs 37-101 in Nov, 2021, while I was stuck at home with covid. As a result, this song feels more powerful. The bass boost isn’t a simple plugin nonchalantly added to each song. It’s a process that took about 3.5 hours per song, or one whole month to complete all songs. Admittedly, I pushed the bass boost a little too far for some of them. The bass in some songs sounds like a freaking earthquake (unnecessarily pronounced low frequencies 20 - 50 Hz). Might dial that back someday. The bass boost was also applied to every song on GoBoy 6 and beyond (excerpt from post 37).

[cosmic-dev]

Penguin Slide

Originally posted: Sep 27, 2022

First prototype

Yesterday, I planned out some features I want to include in my game. This includes collecting and crafting materials, such as wood from trees.

I began to begin my very first prototype this morning. The goal of this prototype is to have a movable player, a single tree, and to be able to chop the tree down by pressing a button enough times. The tree should then spawn a bunch of logs.

There are a number of simplifications I'll make for the very first version of the prototype: - No player animations (for walking or chopping) - Chopping will be performed with an action not requiring any Item to exist, such as an axe - The tree will not despawn after being chopped. - The logs will spawn in a fixed location

Then, I opened Unity for the first time in a while.

Lessons in Unity

TLDR: Nothing is easy!

Adding the ground

I began by adding a cubic mesh to the world which would serve as the ground. Then, I remembered to create a non-falling ground, I need to add a box collider to set its bounds, rigidbody to apply physics, and freeze the x, y, and z positions on the ground object to keep it from falling through space.

Adding in a tree

There was no way I wanted to spend time modeling a tree at the time, so I found a free tree asset on the Unity Asset Store. I added user Ada_King's fir tree to my game, and it imported easily and at a reasonable scale.

Player Bean woes

I had created a quick and sorta cute model of a "player bean" in Blender the night before. I was easily able to import this into my project by clicking Import New Asset. It entered the world being absolutely gargantuan, but it was easy to scale down.

But I noticed a problem when applying a blue material to Player Bean: only their main body turned blue. The head, arms, and feet remained the default grey color. I realized then that the object itself was composed of multiple different subdivided cubes, and as a result the material could not be applied universally in one click. Admittedly, I didn't waste too much time figuring out how to correctly reparent/unify the individual components of the model in Blender. But this will be something I want to figure out in the future.

Penguin Slide

I went to Blender and quickly rendered a penguin which would serve as the player character instead, taking care to only work with a single cube during the process. I'm glad it was so quick and easy to throw it together-- the Blender controls are really becoming muscle memory now!

I was able to easily apply the blue material to the entire penguin, but Penguin shared a problem with Player Bean: it would slowly slide across the ground. I troubleshooted this for a while, reading through the different settings I could apply on the penguin's rigidbody, but ultimately not finding a solution. I even considered that the curved shape of the penguin's soles could cause it to move, and created a cubic penguin to test my theory. That also did not fix the issue (and in retrospect, since the box collider on the penguin has a perfectly flat bottom, the roundness of the soles would not have mattered).

In the end, the issue ended up being that the ground's rigidbody needed to be marked "Is Kinematic." From what I've read, this setting seems to allow the rigidbody to be influenced by attached scripts (in this case none) rather than the physics engine. That's probably not the most accurate understanding, but a workable one for now.

Overall, the prototype is coming together nicely, and I'm pleased that I was able to figure out all of my issues so far. Next steps will be adding player movement so that Penguin can approach the tree to chop it down.

[madhatterplushies]

Chiming in as an artist with aphantasia!

You can do it!!

A little while back the original kind of 'picture an apple' meme went around and I found out that myself and a ton of my artist friends and artists I follow also have full or partial aphantasia!

It can make some things difficult but at the same time I think it has some advantages too? For ex. I don't find I get that same disappointment a lot of artists describe with finished work not matching what they imagined because the basic idea I "imagined" is pretty dang nebulous to begin with 😅

If you're discovering you have aphantasia- that knowledge can be super helpful! It can help you evaluate tips or tutorials from others and think about "does this apply to me or do I need a different strategy?" instead of feeling like it must be your fault when "visualize your topic" or "rotate the object in your mind" just doesn't work.

For myself- it really encouraged me to try different mediums or art programs! When I'm having a lot of trouble with a design- especially with how things look for a 3D object- I use some cheap clay to sculpt it out and mess around with it, look at different angles, pose elements different ways. I can use this to help pattern a plush but I've even used it for 2D designs like patches! I take pictures from different angles and mesh elements together until I have a design I'm happy with.

I've also found I really enjoy drawing specifically in vector programs (I finally learned Inkscape this past year). Drawing traditionally makes me feel lost and frustrated because I just don't have that image (either specific or general) in my head that I can rough out and then refine. Many many times I just start with an idea and having to erase over and over feels like a death by a thousand cuts. When I work in vectors I can make pieces, control my shapes even just with a mouse, make small adjustments, resize bits, rotate them, move them somewhere else- I can have everything in front of me visually in a super malleable format and experiment a ton without feeling like I'm 'making mistakes' or 'starting over'. For really polished illustrations Inkscape isn't perfect but I can finally put together a design and really enjoy the process! If I want to polish it more I can use that as my embroidery reference or work on a new layer with an actual plan in mind or you could even import it to something clipstudio or procreate or whatever program of your choice.

Thirdly- use HELLA references! Gather a million pieces if you must! Be unapologetic and gather tons and tons of references. If some people can create a fox in their mind and rotate it around- why can't you use 20-30 fox pictures and throw them in a layer and achieve that same effect? That sculpture I mentioned above? I must have taken at least 40 pictures from different angles before paring it down and taking ~16 as my final references. Don't be afraid to make your own references and mess around!

Learning new things about how your brain works is always good. Be kind to yourself, explore ways to work with your brain, accept that not all advice will apply to you- everyone's brain is different! Most of all- do what you love and follow your passions ❤️

I hate having aphantasia. It’s total bullshit, give me access to the internal images so I can draw better.

[granny-griffin]

Twelve years down the road and I finally figured out why how to train your dragon resonated with me so strongly when I was eleven and saw it for the first time.

I used to joke about how dumb I thought that movie was based on the promotional things I had seen for it. I had read the hobbit, I had read other lesser-quality Christian literature. I knew that dragons were actually evil and that anyone who thought they could tame one was stupid or uninformed and was setting themself up to be eaten in their sleep. So I went into the movie thinking that none of these characters could possibly understand the genre they were in.

As it turned out, I was the one who was unprepared.

I think most of you are familiar with the difference between "this media is good" and "this media is something that I enjoy a lot." For me, the second category has a lot to do with resonance. A story can be beautifully constructed, but if its main point isn't applicable to me personally, I'm not going to get obsessed with it. The stories that have consumed my brain for years are the ones I happened to encounter at exactly the right time, the ones containing some core message that neatly aligned with the thing that I needed to learn in that moment.

How to Train Your Dragon is about growing up. It's about individuation. It's about taking the worldview your parents passed on to you and the dissonant self growing in your gut and fitting them together in a new way.

With as much as I had decided I was going to dislike the story, it hooked me pretty fast—mostly because when the movie starts, all the characters view dragons as their enemy. That was something I could get on board with. I completely bought into the status quo. Of course killing a dragon meant everything to Hiccup. That was the right thing to do. That was the thing his community wanted to do. There wasn't anything else to it.

So when he had the chance to kill a dragon and then didn't I decided that he was an idiot. He had been so on board with the whole program! How could he have suddenly forgotten that dragons were evil? He was lucky that his mistake hadn't killed him! But it was hard to keep that opinion for long. Because the more Toothless appeared in the movie, the more I realized that dragons were objectively pretty cool. And in hindsight, Hiccup's decision to spare his enemy hadn't come from nowhere. He was incredibly terrible at performing the ideals of his community. The way he was put together didn't mesh correctly with them, and he'd spent forever trying to pretend that wasn't the case. So maybe this was inevitable. Maybe Hiccup had simply held back his innate impulses as long as he possibly could.

Because Hiccup, who has never been good for anything, turns out to be exceptionally good at befriending dragons. It's the antithesis of everything he has been taught is right, and he loves it. It speaks to him in a way that nothing in his life ever has. More than that, it makes him good at fighting dragons, a thing he has never been able to succeed at before. Suddenly his community sees him and celebrates him—but it feels inauthentic. Because he knows if they ever found out how he was getting these results, they would reject him. They wouldn't understand—or at least, Hiccup can't think of a way to communicate it in a way that would make sense.

So when he decided that he needed to leave his community for good, I understood. He'd done the thing I had always been warned against—he had rebelled against the teachings of his father and followed his heart. I couldn't blame him for it, but there was no way around it. The thing inside of him was incompatible with all of his former ideals. He could only have one, and he had made his choice.

And then Hiccup picked option three. He went back to his people and tried to explain to them that training dragons was actually pretty cool, and it went terribly. And this time, I understood why he did it. Because the perfect impossible dream would be to have both the dragons and his people—for his father to find out about the version of himself that he had kept hidden and accept it. It wasn't something that could even happen, but I understood why he would want it. I understood why he would try.

Then the ending highlighted something that I had somehow missed for most of the movie. The viking's goal of "kill dragons" was actually an extrapolation of their main ideal—protect the village. And while Hiccup takes plenty of opportunities to not kill dragons, at no point does he purposefully endanger his community. A lot of the incongruence between his perspective and the perspective of his people is that Hiccup has stopped viewing dragons as something inherently threatening. And he's right! Toothless goes out of his way to protect him! He's the opposite of dangerous!

So when Stoick takes his army to attack a dragon that Hiccup knows he can't beat, Hiccup uses his ability to train dragons in order to defend his people. And it works—it works better than anything anyone had ever been able to do before. He's able to defeat the dragon that was forcing all the other dragons to attack the village. He completely ends the dragon attacks that had been plaguing his people for hundreds of years. The dichotomy that I had superimposed on the story was proven completely incorrect. The thing spilling out from inside of Hiccup was not only not incompatible with the ideals of his people—it was the only thing able to empower him to live out those ideals. In order to actualize that he had to be willing to stand up to everyone he had ever respected—but he never had to rebel against the core of what he believed. And at the end of the day, when he was able to show his community that he had never stopped caring about their safety, they understood. They realized that the synthesis he had created wasn't antithetical to their own worldview, and they accepted it. They accepted him.

I couldn’t have told you why when I was eleven. But I knew that somehow it was a story about me.

[lamare-sims]

Hi 👋 I love all your mods, thank you for your contribution to this community.

I’d like to ask you, how would one go about adding a new placemat to your controller? I tried replacing the mesh of existing placemats (BB and LordCrumbs) , but for some reason they didn’t show up in game :(. Thank you!

Making New Placemats Recognized by the Mod

Here's a tutorial for editing placemats to be supported by the mod. Two tutorials, actually -- for placemats with and without intricate multiple states.

Preface

Older supported placemats are checked by GUID, so you don't have to worry about them: - SPX Murray Placemat by Xiomara - Useable place setting by SimAddict99 (for tables) - BB Sage Clutter Placemat by Buggybooz

I excluded a few existing placemats from the "supported" list because they either went in slots or required to be placed off-grid to align with sim's plates. The thing is, in gameplay, to be able to tell which placemat corresponds to which plate, the mod has to know exactly where the placemat is. I went by BB's, Xiomara's and SimAddict99's way of placement, because it's the best and most convenient way for players to place placemats, in my opinion. Not all placemats are made this way, this is why there are so few of them supported.

If you know of an old placemat that is placed the same as the ones I listed, let me know and I'll add it.

If you want to create or update your placemat, read further.

Static No Fancy States Type

If your placemat doesn't have states and you want it to just fully hide/unhide, this is for you. There are 2 important steps to this.

Add a "password" BHAV Create a dummy-returning-true BHAV named "CT - I Am Static Placemat" (without quotes). If you don't know how to do that, you can download the resource I made here and add it to your placemat's package: - unzip the zip file - open your package in SimPE and click Add… - add CT - I Am Static Placemat - if your placemat's existing bhavs have group number other than 0xFFFFFFFF, change the added bhav's group to that number - make sure the added bhav's instance number (10A0) is unused in your package, it must be unique. If there's another bhav with that instance, change the added bhav's instance number to something else.

Make sure your object follows placement rules You may have to edit the mesh for this! - Freestanding at table's height (NOT in table's slot); shiftable up from the floor is also fine - On the same tile as the table; quarter tile is fine - Direction -- facing the chair - Must NOT require off-grid placement -- must snap in a way so that it's right under a sim's plate; look at how supported placemats are placed - Optional, but highly recommended: allows object and person intersection

Dynamic Type With Multiple States

This one is more advanced. If you want your placemat to work like LordCrumps', with different states and interactions, you can start by cloning it. I'm not going to cover the cloning process here, make sure to follow all the common steps like changing GUIDs and all that. I'm going to focus on things that make a placemat go along with the auto mod.

The mod recognizes multi-state placemats by calling this "password" BHAV: CT - I Am Dynamic Placemat

States are changed by running these BHAVs: CT - State - Set CT - State - Eating CT - State - Empty Here, you change materials or even models that you want to use for different states. Apart from that, you should zero out object's hidden flags and lockout count in those procedures.

What is lockout count for? It's an automatic countdown measured in ticks, about 30 ticks per sim-minute. My auto mod doesn't reset a placemat to its default state if its lockout count is > 0. You can set lockout in an interaction, so that when players manually set the table, say, to prepare for a party, it stays this way for a while (I did it for LordCrumps' placemats).

What are hidden flags for? My mod may completely hide placemats in some cases, so we have to make sure that the object is unhidden when it changes to any of the visible states.

Additional stuff. You may include conditions like time of day, presence of the party controller, or a random coin flip to determine what your object should change into. For example, create different looks for breakfast and dinner, everyday and party.

What about attributes, interactions, etc.? Our placemats use attr 0 to keep track of states and have interactions to manually change them. You can copy our code or do something else, the mod doesn't care about any of that.

The mod cares about named BHAVs, lockout count, hidden flags, and placement rules. The latter are the same as above, but I'll repeat.

Freestanding at table's height (NOT in table's slot); shiftable up from the floor is also fine

On the same tile as the table; quarter tile is fine

Direction -- facing the chair

Must NOT require off-grid placement -- must snap in a way so that it's right under a sim's plate; look at how supported placemats are placed

Optional, but highly recommended: allows object and person intersection

You may have to edit the mesh to comply!

[gamebird]

Here are two stories of DMing:

One from my ex - He was a cartographer by training and made gorgeous maps, meticulously hand-lettered, on mylar, multicolored, with population marks and roads and topography and a legend. Lovely things. Works of art. So he has this D&D campaign, right? It's set in the middle of the map. After a while, the players want to know what's to the north, off the map. He says he hasn't mapped it and doesn't care. This, somehow, galvanizes the party. It becomes their mission. They assemble a huge caravan and begin their trek to the north, intending to discover what lies over yon mountains. He expects them to turn back. They have various adventures along the way. When it is clear they are fully committed, he spends long hours drawing a beautiful map of the next kingdom, comes up with a culture and political system, names the language, etc. He unveils this to the party as they reach the edge of the old map.

They are elated! So pleased! Because getting there was such a drag and used up all their money and was downright *tedious*. At that point, they turn around and go home. He was stunned. Why would they not proceed on into the new land of adventure he'd designed?!? They said they just wanted to know what was there. And now that they did, that was cool, but they were going to go back to their old dungeon and see if any new monsters had moved in while they were out.

His gorgeous map and untouched campaign setting went in the closet, never to be used except as an object lesson.

My own: Years later, I designed a game world for my D&D game. I was not a cartographer, but I had a geography degree and high standards from living with ex. So I had a lovely small scale map of the barony, but they were all deceived, because in secret, I had forged written a larger scale map of the kingdom and an even larger one of the continent, etc. (I love world-building)

I presented the small scale map to my players, who immediately wanted to know what was off the edge of the map. Having heard my ex's story, I told them they'd have to go there to find out. They argued. I gave them hints about what was there. Just like his group, they said they'd make it their goal to find out. I told them fine, I was all ready for that and let them see enough that I *did* in fact have a map of that area.

Just like his group, they instantly changed their minds, uninterested and disappointed. I think they even groaned. It was like I'd taken a toy away from them.

So. Learn what you can from these two stories of different D&D groups dealing with the same situation.

(Be aware also that if you allow your player to design an area, they may deliberately and intentionally design something that can't mesh with your established setting. You do low magic, their region is primarily inhabited by dragons and their bonded elven partners and is high magic. You do high magic, their region is magic null and full of steampunk. If you don't tell them your setting, then you have a higher chance of getting something usable, but I have tried that and had players get downright mean and upset that I wouldn't tell them the game setting so that they could design something that fucked with it. Because the entire point for some players is to fuck with the game setting. Really. I'm not making an assumption here. They have told me to my face that it's no fun if they can't play something that breaks all the rules.)

(No, I don't know how to deal with this. Eventually I stopped DMing and just write fanfiction now. I'm very happy and much less frustrated with people.)

Every time I look at how to create a world for a campaign or just plan a campaign on the internet you usually get : start small with the town and maybe the few places around, you don't need to know everything about the world to start the campaign.

However what if your players want to create characters that come from beyond that place. You'll need to tell them what the world is like, what others kingdoms and lands there are and what is happening in there for them to be able to put their character in there and know what is going on so they have some guidelines about the world's alliances etc ?

How do you do ? (Also if I'm looking at it wrong please tell me I am but an aspiring DM)

[scienceandstorytelling]

could you talk more about Kim, the monkey who [checks that i read it right] who tried to phase through a wall??

lmaoo absolutely! Kim was an elderly squirrel monkey who I was trying to teach to exchange tokens for food. Scraggly little thing, going a bit blind, best friends with the bully of the group (which was hilarious, tough aggressive Gwen and her little frail grandma sidekick). I worked with her through the wire door of the enclosure; I would hold up the token and she would reach through the mesh and take it. She got the concept, she knew this would get her mealworms, she was invested.  

(This is a picture of a squirrel monkey who is not Kim)

Now, one day they put a transport cage in there for the monkeys to get used to. It was basically a wire cube that was attached to the middle of the door, hanging in the air. One side was open and they would go in and out of it, and the one wall of it was flush with the door. So I go up and Kim is sitting in the box, and she sees me coming and starts reaching her little hands through the wall of the cage and through the door. Please picture cute little pink soft hands with horrible fingernails and golden fur. Adorable when they grab your hand but also they pee on them so not great. Anyway, I didn’t want to try to work through the double mesh of the wall and door, so I held the token above where the cage was, naturally thinking that she would come out and sit on the top of the cage to be up against the door. This was a logical thought, they had no problem climbing around on the door to get to where the token was.

Reader, this did not happen. Kim looked up at the token and proceeded to reach up through the ceiling of the cage, squishing her little shoulder and face against it and making annoyed screeches because it was very rude of this token to be out of reach. And she kept doing this.

These monkeys are pretty smart, they have object permanence and shit, Kim’s old and experienced - I was not prepared for her to not comprehend that she had to leave the cage in order to reach the token. I remember standing there going “how in the hell am I supposed to explain this to her?” And how do you? How do you explain to a tiny elderly monkey that no matter how hard she presses herself against the ceiling she can’t magically phase through it to get to the token? I thought, maybe she’ll get it if I hold the token below the cage. Reader, this did not happen either. She plastered herself against the bottom of the cage with her little arm reaching futilely through.

This went on for like, five minutes. And you say, well, Kim had issues with her eyesight, maybe that was the problem? But the thing is, as I kept moving the token to different spots hoping one would work, she kept moving around the cage and would go so far as to sit in the doorway of the cage and stare out of it, look around, look over where the token was with her face out of the cage, and then go the fuck back inside and try to phase through the walls again.

I’ve never been so completely at a loss. How do I communicate to this animal that she can’t break the laws of physics? That she has to physically leave the box she’s in to reach something outside of it? That she isn’t fucking Gumby and her arm is not going to be long enough no matter how hard she tries? I don’t remember how, but eventually she got it. Eventually something clicked in her little monkey brain and she climbed out of the cage and came over to the door where - astonishingly- she was able to actually reach the token with ease.

She never advanced to the higher stages of the experiment (Exciting new tokens! Exciting new foods!) but that’s okay because she conquered her own Sisphyean task that day, and made the major accomplishment of understanding that she had to exit one area to get something in another area. We should all be very proud of her. Good ol’ Kim. Idk if she’s still around, but may she be remembered for conquering spatial dynamics, befriending Gwen, and being the geriatric subject of a “swiggity swooty coming for that booty” meme. We shall all eat a mealworm in her honor.