#i already reduced a BUNCH of the cc i have

[aliengirl]

Seriously, i may go vanilla for some days when the update cames out. Like an experiment while i wait my mods get updated, ppl make defaults compatible, etc. In the middle time i will explore the cas and build of the pack 🥰

[thesimscurator]

Career World Performance Update

Hello, friends!

I have been closely following the bug thread on the save file corruption bug that got worse with For Rent, and here's the deal:

The corruption is pretty clearly related to hitting some secret limit on the total amount of data one save file can contain. Whether or not you have hit that limit depends, in part, on how much content you have in your game. Suffice to say that as a completely updated, detailed, stuffed-full save file, Career World is either at or near that limit.

While the For Rent version of Career World does not appear corrupted for me, some of you contacted me saying that the version you downloaded already had the orange warning flag over the botanical garden in Willow Creek—the first sign of the corruption bug. So I tried downloading a bunch of CC, opened the save file without changing a thing, and bam! Orange flag. Simply having more content in my catalog was enough to push it over the edge for me. So if you are a player who uses a lot of CC, or even just has more packs than I do (I don't have Journey to Batuu, Bust the Dust, or most of the CAS kits), the For Rent version may start getting corrupted for you as soon as you open it.

Since that sucks and I want the maximum number of people to be able to play this save file, I've gone back and made some data-saving adjustments to the For Rent version of Career World:

Reduced number of rental units — As it turns out, more people have gotten the corruption bug since For Rent because the game reads each rental residential unit as a separate lot, and the total number of lots in the game is a big factor in hitting the data limit. Consequently, I've decided to reduce the number of units by squishing all empty units in each rental residential lot into a single unit called "VACANT." So basically, a building that used to have ten units but only has premade families living in two of them has now been reduced to three units: separate units for each family, and then the other eight units all smooshed together into a frankly very stupid-looking gigantic unit renamed "VACANT" to catch the player's attention. The upshot of this is that if you want to move into one of the many rental residentials in the save file, you will need to enter it in build mode from Manage Worlds first and manually reassign rooms to carve out the unit you want. I personally hate how against the "ready-to-play" principle of the save file this is, but it looks like it's necessary to prevent data bloat and the resulting corruption bug.

Reduced number of sims — The total number of sims in the save file apparently also adds to the data limit issue, so I have taken the liberty of deleting all randomly-generated households from the "Manage Households" tab. When you start, there should now only be households with profession/descriptor names who are there on purpose, not randos with surnames for the household name. The game will autonomously generate more, unfortunately, but the total number should still be kept down by the next measure I took:

Disabled neighborhood stories — Neighborhood stories adds significantly to random sim generation by constantly having households have/adopt kids and pets. And although neighborhood stories also kills sims, my use of coolspear's "delay ghost culling indefinitely" mod to keep around lore ghosts I wanted also meant that the ghosts of dead randos never disappeared—and as far as game data is concerned, that means they still counted against the invisible limit on total sims in the save file. So I have now disabled neighborhood stories completely, for everybody. Reinstate it at your own peril. And that brings me to:

Reinstated ghost culling — Since my unthinking combination of neighborhood stories with delayed ghost culling bloated the save data so much, I have decided, with a heavy heart, to let go of coolspear’s excellent mod, and with it, the ghosts of Princess Cordelia, her many pirate boyfriends, Captain Morgan, and all the other lore ghosts I so painstakingly put into this save file in the first place. Bon voyage, dear friends. Sulani will never be the same without you.

. . . So those are the adjustments. I hope they will make the For Rent version of the save file more playable for many of you, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed hard that they will enable me to keep updating this save file as the sims team releases more content (I actually did put in a little bit of Crystal Creations stuff with this update). That said, if the team keeps releasing new packs and worlds without expanding the data limit in the game engine, we are likely nearing the end of my ability to add to this save file, which makes me sad. If you want to help, please go click "Me too" on the bug thread. The more people reporting they have this, the more likely they are to make it a priority when fixing the game.

And with that, here's the data-saving version of the save file:

Career World (Performance Version)

[ciara-sims]

Evergreen- gardening, horses and farmer

You and  grandma have been kicked out of the house for some kind of reason. Your mother told you the reason because your grandma has cheated on your grandpa but as your first grandchild you know her very well. He is a lying cheating scam, who cheated on his wife first and that’s messed up how your family believes your grandpa and not grandma. but at the end of the day you and grandma found an abandoned home, which has been abandoned for four years. So  grandma said she knew this person, but she died a long time ago. She was your aunt. Your aunt died from cancer. Your grandma told you a long story about what happened but what thing your grandma.did not  point out to you about was your aunt used to be a horse rider while she used to be a farmer as well? Throughout generations our family has been farmers and also having farms and pigs and also horses. Because of that, your family has been famous, your dad is famous but your mom is not not for some kind of reason which you’re suspicious of. But you have 12 friends throughout elementary to high school to college? But one day you found a love mascot. Who was the basketball mascot his name is drake Easter stand which is a weird name because it’s funny but that’s not the point of the story you want to find out how your generation of your family turn out to be good at farming  That’s what your mom wants  but your grandma wants you to but  Do you went to!!!!!!?

—————————————————————

Gen 1 Farmer lover /colors🟤🟠🟢⚪️

———————————————————-

🩵Wellness skill 10 

🤍Cooking skill 10 

🩵Baking 10 

🤍Fitness 6

🩵Charisma 7

🤍Singing, 8

🩵you must start off with a 50 x 50 lot 

🤍you must have your grandma and your dog but 🩵you were having three years old like your very 🤍first pet that you wanted

————————————————————

🩶you must have two ex-boyfriend and get 🤍pregnant with two of them at once 

🖤have 8  children 

🤍Had to be employed/no job just stealing food on your lot 

———————————————————

🤍The rules

You can use free real estate on your first cheat in this challenge to get the lot that you want

💜You must have a Bandan home with  a Garden and also, if you have laundry day, you can also add some laundry stuff to the lot.

You must take out money  so you have to start with $200 after you finish building a Bandan home

———————————————————-

💛You must have 12 friends and 2 ex best friends

🧡You have to be bisexual?

💛The colors are spring  if you  love Spring

🧡The last name must have evergreen in it,so can  make sense, but you don’t have to

💛MC command center

__________________________________

🩷 Pregnancy woohoo up to %89

🤍R-woohoo %91

🩷How many kids in the household must be 8

———————————————————

❤️You have to be bisexual and already out?

🤍Meet seven different bisexuals friends 

❤️How parties and complete the goals

🤍Adopt one one  kid as your next GEN

Or

❤️Pick which care the best relationship with the 🤍parent as you’re next GEN

———————/———————————

🤍Traits

🩵Old soul is a cc traits

🤍Ambitious

🩵Loyal

🤍Aspiration-Freelance BotanIst

🩵You must complete your aspiration 

————————————————————

🤍Traits and challenges for your lot 

🩵1 home studio

🤍2 Eco lot

🩵3Great soil 

🤍For the challenges 

🩵1 curse

🤍2 bad neighborhood

🩵3 off the grid

🤍4 quake zone

🩵5 reduce and Recycle

🤍6 creepy crawlies

———————————————————

🔓Pack required

🔒Bass game

🔓Eco living

🔓City living

🔒Laundry day

🔒Werewolf

🔓Bunch of other packs is 1:44 am in the morning I can’t do it🥲💀

———————————————————--------------------------------------------------------------------

[plbsims3]

Read!

This were some of the questions people have done since i started to convert my cc to TS3.

1) Are you the old Plbsims or just someone pretending to be him?   A: It’s definitely me, the “old” Plbsims.

2) Why did you stop to make CC to TS3 for so long? A: I just felt i needed to try something new, since i stopped to create custom content for TS3 my knowledge has improved a lot and now i can bring CC with so much quality with LOW polycount which for TS3 players is very important since the game itself is very heavy. Sometimes CC turns around 8k vertices which is the limit and now my CC is turning around 5k, 6k.

3) Why are you posting on Patreon instead of SFS, MegaFire, Dropbox, etc? A: I just don’t like the SFS layout, people can easily download my CC even before it’s releasement for everyone just changing the final numbers on URL. I  like to convert a bunch of CC and just upload them on Patreon and let them on the drafts section so i can manage better how i want to share them and when i want to share them. Also, for those who wants to support me, i think patreon is a very safe place for subscriptions. Consider as a donation, you can cancel the time you just subscribe and if you still want to support you will be charged every 1st day of each month. ♥

4) Will you ever post Early Access for TS3? A: Definitelly NOT. All of my TS3 custom content are conversions from TS4 cc that are already available for public! I don’t intend to do Early Access of my cc even if i convert them when they still are locked for early access to TS4.

5) Can i suggest CC for conversion? A: Since the CC was made by me you can definitelly suggest. Some CC can take more time to be converted since some of them are very high poly, so i would have to reduce it carefully which take some time to do so. I DO NOT convert CC from other creators.

6) How much will you share CC? A: I am still a TS4 creator, so i can’t be very often but i want to share at least 4 times a month.

[madametrashbin]

If you're still accepting characters

Albedo ehe

Look, if you guys want me to write a character, let me know. Just be aware, I will take forever depending on the days (because I have work from Fri-Mon, so I don’t have enough time to write during those days... and if I haven’t posted during my free days, it’s because I’m working on le project... aka CC series that shall be properly named another time).

Anyways, Albedo simps. Rise up from your graves and have a snack. This is all I can really deliver right now, since I have a few things in progress that took up my creativity.

If there was anything that can make Albedo feel human, it would be anything that involved you.

Whether it was to see you, to draw you, to even have a moment to touch you or maybe even spend time with you... whatever the case was, he felt most human when you are around him.

There is no one who could reduce him to such a state but you alone, and he lives for it.

Especially now, when you sought out for him, asked for his company and left yourself relax around him. There was no greater joy for him than your unwavering trust, and the fact you’re so openly affectionate with him sends him over the moon.

Albedo wishes he could move, if only to draw your beautiful visage as you slept atop him... and also finish some experiments that were left on hold since your arrival.

He is, for now, content to let you have your rest, combing his fingers gently through your hair that is kept silky soft to the touch.

Albedo hopes to spend more time with you like this.

But... he is rather restless this time around, for he still has an itch he needs to get rid of, one that involved a bunch of those foolish Treasure Hoarders who tried, and failed miserably, to capture you if only to force knowledge of “treasures” and “riches” that you may know of or hold... 

Of course, with Teyvat and the Archons as your defenders, there is quite literally no one in the world that could truly harm you. Even if they did try everything in their arsenal, they still have to get through the limitless numbers of monsters and the wandering armed men to truly have a chance to reach you.

That chance, obviously, was non-existent.

Albedo stops his restless shifting when you quietly groaned, your gaze blearily looking up at him as he makes an apologetic smile.

“Ah, did I wake you?”

“Not really... it’s just a bit cold.”

Ah... that shall not do. 

Albedo hums in acknowledgement, murmurs softly to you to give him a moment as he gently shifts your body off of him, making sure you are laid on the warm spot he left behind before fetching a few blankets.

By the time he crawled back in after wrapping you back up, you were already fast asleep.

He wants to take this chance to go finish his experiments... but he decided that they can wait... for any time spent with you is a rare moment he wants to savor as much as possible.

[lucemferto]

I’ve noticed that the explanations about how it’s “actually very in character for c!techno to not take the prison seriously you guys” are only provided ad hoc and use little to no evidence to try and retroactively explain away issues with cc!techno’s style of roleplaying??

Like I’m more than aware the CCs are not professional actors by any means, but I find it odd that people critique Karl’s roleplay in TFTSMP until the cows come home but when it comes to Techno suddenly he’s operating at 6000 IQ and if you think he’s destroying tone clearly you aren’t picking up on context clues like -checks notes- circular reasoning? 🤔

The other odd thing I’m noticing is people saying “but look at Doomsday/Nov 16th!! Techno can carry serious roleplay tone!!” And he did carry tone in very specific, very animatic-friendly clippable segments but even on Doomsday he did destroy a lot of the in-roleplay tension, both pre-Doomsday and even during the infamous Tommy speech? Did everyone just conveniently forget this?

Don’t get me wrong, c!Techno is great fun, but no one in this fandom is capable of admitting when the roleplay is sub par for any CC

A lot of great points, anon, but I think it's important to make one distinction here.

It's not like Technoblade is going for something and failing, which is what people usually criticize Karl's acting for (incidentally, while I also think that Karl's acting is ... very shaky, I'll appreciate that he's brave enough to try and be sincere, even if he doesn't always succeed. Because, yeah, he's not a trained actor. It's fine.)

Technoblade is very much "succeeding" in what he's going for - at least it seems to me that way. It's just that what he's going for is ... bad.

This problem is twofold: 1.) He doesn't work with the mood of the storyline. I've discussed this a bunch now, so I'm just gonna appropriate something that I saw @lazyliars wrote about this whole thing:

You can play the best Deadpool in the World, if the movie you're in is Grave of the Fireflies, its going to fall flat.

Problem Nr. 2 is that I just don't think it was a good character choice, regardless of mood (though it certainly doesn't help).

It falls into two trappings, that Techno's writing has tapped into in the past, so it's really frustrating that he just does it again.

It really heavily relies on telling and not showing: "I have friends now, Dream". This sentence does a lot of heavy lifting. It tells us that the Syndicate is this found family, that Technoblade is so confident in them that being trapped in Pandora's Vault doesn't phase him at all.

But the Syndicate's dynamic was barely ever shown or developed prior to this moment. We had two (2) Syndicate-streams. This moment acts like this is some sort of culmination - and with the proper build-up it could have been - but just like "I'm in retirement now" and "You never saw me as a person, Tommy" it relies on the viewer filling in the blanks that weren't shown.

Bad writing.

Another aspect is that this is just a basic power fantasy. Just like Hog Hunt and Doomsday before, this is just Technoblade being the vicarious stand-in:

I don't care that I'm walking into the most dreadful place on the server; I don't care, that I'm being trapped, because I already accounted for that and have a plan. I'm cool as a cucumber, cause I'm Technoblade. Dream, the Big Bad villain is reduced to a cowering, sobbing mess? No skin off my back, I'm Technoblade Never Dies. Subscribe to Technoblade.

If that is just your plotline each and every time, it gets ... tiring and boring.

[fractal-quadrilioquy]

i’ma give you a free space—boss fight for whoever you most want to answer for! :D @kerra-and-company

It was actually a pretty difficult choice, but I think I'm gonna go for Theta, my main, a dragonhunter, and primary commander!

This... might get a bit long, and a little self-indulgent, so this is probably a lot more than you were expecting, but enjoy!

Theta's weapon of choice is greatsword: Large and cleaving attacks, tinged with fire. However, the more concerning threat wouldn't necessarily be these attacks, but his symbols and traps; he's capable of holding and maintaining many of these, unless you break his concentration, so the floor would almost certainly keep ticking damage unless you break his defiance to dispel them. The whirly traps in particular would deal more damage (In-game, Procession of Blades), but these are more easily avoided than the symbols. For ranged attackers, he will gladly throw chains and Spears of Justice to pull you back into melee. In a casual spar, this would be his fighting style, down to, say, 75%.

In a more serious fight, or if you don't tap out at 75%, he'll also begin to throw out Swords of Justice to attack at range from unexpected angles, and periodically blind people by channeling bursts of light magic. (note: I have been informed by one of my guildmates that this is legally considered a 'war crime'. however, all's fair in war and dragons.) In lieu of dragging attackers to him, instead he'll throw himself at his attackers, shadow/flash-stepping directly to them, and not letting up pressure at all.

Below 50%, he'll start to use two more traps: A trap that heals him, and a trap that, well, traps you. Both will fade out if not activated within a certain amount of time, but it's very difficult to avoid either, as he often plants them at his feet immediately after flashstepping to you. Damage is really the only way out of this phase, down to 30%.

After 30%, his strategy switches dramatically. Whereas previously ranged attackers couldn't get away, now melee attackers struggle to reach him, as he's pinning people down and knocking them back with a longbow, and sniping with unblockable attacks. These attacks will continue until you reach melee range or CC him, after which he'll switch back to greatsword and perform a bunch of his previous attacks in quick succession; this time, the two traps from the previous phase will be placed at the end of these attacks, before he flashsteps away, to start up the longbow attacks again. This repeats down to 5%.

In a normal fight, he'll either bow out (if a '''''casual spar'''''), or wrap himself in protective magic and retreat (if he can), or surrender (if he can't run, and doubts that his attackers will kill him). If he's trapped, however, he'll keep on fighting down to 0, forgoing finesse and just using his greatsword to attack with reckless abandon.

---

And because this is already a self-indulgent boss fight ask, this would be when the challenge mote, aka Deus Ex Aurene kicks in!

Let's start us off with a heal up to full; All traps and symbols now have a larger radius, general damage is increased, and Theta's breakbar is now locked (and for the sake of not making this a super grindy fight, let's say his health is reduced from his near-death experience). Theta now switches at will between greatsword and sword/focus, reflecting projectiles and blocking attacks. Any and all of his light-based attacks are also now boosted by Aurene, so 'blind' can't be removed and sticks around for an entire 2 seconds, instead of 1 attack, so these are even more important to avoid.

In addition, the Procession of Blades traps are much harsher; activating them causes a protective dome to spring up, trapping the person inside, and Theta will flashstep directly to them and focus them down, throwing effect after effect on the trapped party (starting with Spear of Justice, then Sword of Justice, then planting more symbols, Purging Flames, constantly pulsing blind, attacking them... If you've done the Samarog raid fight, think that, but the person has a small ability to fight back), until either everyone in the dome is dead, or the dome is destroyed (either through CC or damage from the other players. If you're alone.... well. good luck). When the bubble is destroyed, it shatters, the backlash stunning Theta. This will be an ongoing theme throughout the fight, and unlike before, these traps don't become inert on their own - The only way to get rid of them is to activate them. Not activating these semi-regularly means there'll be Nowhere To Run To.

Every 25%, Theta will go invulnerable and begin channeling a blindingly bright light attack. This will make the edges of everyone's screen turn white, and will instantly kill everyone caught in it. In this boss fight, there's nowhere to hide... unless someone activates a trap, springing up a dome, and everyone else hides behind it. Once the light passes, Theta flashsteps to focus on the people in the dome, as usual, and the fight continues.

Below 75%, Theta will throw down smaller Dragon's Maw traps, to keep people in place. While annoying, they aren't really a problem... yet, because:

Below 50%, Theta will also attack a large swath of the room with sweeping AoE attacks that damage and inflict blind and burning on anyone caught in them. These would be relatively easy to avoid, but the ever-present symbols and traps make it a little bit of a challenge - Especially if someone activates the trap-and-dome, and blinded people have to wait a couple seconds before being able to actually help.

Below 25%, Theta has permanent quickness, but also permanent Exposed. Trading outgoing damage for incoming damage. Good luck to the both of you!

At 0%, when you've finally beaten him, Aurene comes in and starts a third phase- no, I'm kidding, Aurene would probably just grab Theta and abscond the fuck away, because she isn't risking them against you twice.

[dogin8]

Hello dogin! With the red banquet being today, what has been your favorite dsmp event so far?

HEYO,

So I've got 3 things to talk about here because I'm not actually sure if 2 of them count as "events", so I added 1 definite event at the end just in case. So:

The Community House (Or to make it more of an event, The day before doomsday): THE EMOTIONS HERE WERE ABSOLUTELY AMAZING, Tommy and Techno turning up to hear Dream framing Tommy for the destruction of the community house, then when he appears and starts trying to convince everyone that he didn't and the murmurs of anger and disbelief from everyone until Techno appears to back him up and their anger suddenly changes, they're outraged at Tommy for teaming up with Techno. There were so many emotions and the emotions were LOUD, I loved it, Tommy was shouting, Dream was shouting, Techno was shouting, the crowd was shouting and most importantly: Tubbo was shouting, something that doesn't happen very often but when it DOES, it's amazing, Tubbo is insanely good at acting and he really shines when it comes to anger (due to the generally calm lighthearted nature of his character, the contrast certainly helps) This was also shown later when Tubbo confronted Quackity about wanting to execute Ranboo, absolutely amazing. ALSO: The line "THE DISCS WERE WORTH MORE THAN YOU EVER WERE!" and everyone going totally silent, The delivery was perfect the reactions from the other characters were perfect, EVERYTHING AHH!!

The 2nd "Event" that's more of a scene (The event being Nov 16th) Is Schlatt's death: WOW it hurt, Like I just wanna talk about how by reducing the Malevolent Powerful Dictator to a grovelling alcoholic mess, they stripped the characters and the audience of any of the satisfaction of victory, nobody got to kill Schlatt except for his own bad habits, unless 👀 (HC that Quackity poisoned Schlatt my beloved) Also it was a really good writing decision making the "victory" of beating Schlatt not feel like a victory at all, it not only left us wanting/expecting more out of the stream but also foreshadowed how there would be no victory after all "If I die this country is going down with me" and it did (Also I don't think I say this enough but regardless what you think of the cc, Schlatts acting is fucking insane (when he tries)). AND on top of that, it hit us with the emotional PUNCH of seeing that Schlatt, The asshole, the dictator, the evil tyrant, HAD EMOTIONS. This for me really was the first time when I saw them use the intricacies of their platform to the fullest in the writing, I'll explain this a bit further: Schlatt and Dream are the two biggest "POV-less" characters, and as such, we don't get nearly as much insight into their heads as we would with say Tommy, AND THEY USED THAT FACT TO IT'S EXTREME WITH SCHLATT. Schlatt is the asshole, he does malicious things on purpose and laughs about it, he doesn't show care for anyone around him and he is never vulnerable or open about his emotions, that is... he wasn't, not until the very end when it all came out at once, this terrifying transformation from the cold person we knew we could hate to... something afraid, something vulnerable, something... pitiful, and altogether human. "Don't kill me I'm scared of that/death"(can't remember which word), There's an amazing animatic of it (here). Also just how it highlighted that... he was alone, he pushed people away and then when it came down to it? he was entirely alone, Fundy who had stucked by his side the longest was the final straw, the amount of pain in his voice just saying "Fundy?" AHHH. "In my time of need everybody left" IS LITERALLY A LINE, Clear as day he is aknowledging that he had a "time of need" he needed people around him but his own actions pushed them away. Okay I could talk about this scene for hours and hours but I'll cut it short just for the answer (might make a standalone post abt it later tho)

Lastly the only actual Event, and a genuindly hot take, The event on the dream smp that I would consider my favourite so far: Doomsday

A lot of people have brought up incredibly valid reasons why they dislike Doomsday, but I can't help but love how it turned out. Two of the people on the server who spend the most time preparing for war (Dream and Techno) + the person who probably plays more minecraft than 90% of players and has never died on the server so has never lost his equipment (Phil) fighting agaainst a ragtag bunch of broken people, it was the epitome of An Unstoppable force, except in this analogy there was no immovable object. Not to mention the Tommy & Sapnap reconciliation (chaos twins supremacy) and how Sapnap actually got so insanely close to killing Techno right in the middle of doomsday, the man might be a himbo but he's also insanely good at PVP and I love him. ALSO MORE SHOUTING!!! Genuinely we got so many banger emotionally charged lines from multiple characters during doomsday and it was... amazing. "People, PEOPLE are above the government" "I AM A PERSON" "You are and so are WE!!!"

"DON'T SPEAK TO ME OF LOYALTY"

All lines that I absolutely love, regardless of whether or not they are even slightly true, Brilliant brilliant, BRILLIANT,

now I'm just gonna post this quickly without looking back over it too much because I've already accidentally deleted this answer once and I don't want to do it again

[simranger]

a somewhat comprehensive performance guide for the sims 3

what it says on the tin. i’m sticking everything under the cut to avoid clogging everyone’s dash because, hoo boy, this is a looong post

welcome to my kitchen, and hopefully i can help you get your game to run a bit better!

first, if you haven’t already, make sure to launch your game (i recommend just bg so it loads quickly) and check if you need to change your graphics settings. if you’re on windows and would like to play your game in windowed fullscreen: 

download and install this program (it’s safe, i promise)

open the program and you should get a notification that it’s running in your tray

with ts3 open (in it’s windowed mode), click on your tray and right click on the program’s icon, then select Add window

go back to ts3′s window and press F3 on your keyboard. you should get a notification that ts3 has been added to the program’s list, and you’re done!

you’ll also need an fps limiter to prevent the game from frying your video card. i use this one, set at 60fps. alternatively, you can download MATY’s fps limiter and place it in your game’s bin. (The Sims 3/Game/Bin)

is your game crashing on startup? check your DEP settings or try using 3booter.

some tips to help your game run better

have as few programs as possible running while ts3 is open.

run a 4gb patch on your game. download this, run the .exe, select the game’s executable (The Sims 3/Game/Bin/TS3W.exe for patch 1.69 or TS3.exe for patch 1.67), and click open. you’ll get a pop up saying it’s patched. please note that your computer needs to have over 2gb of RAM for this! (most do, but do check how much RAM you have!)

if you’d rather increase how much RAM the game uses yourself, follow this tutorial.

download razer game booster. this frees up some memory on your computer to increase performance.

check how much virtual memory your pc is using. follow this tutorial.

delete cache files. the game will generate new ones every time you open the game, so make sure to delete the following files before running the game: CASPartCache, compositorCache, scriptCache, simCompositorCache, socialCache. these files are found in Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3.

if you’re on pc, delete your WoldCaches folder. not everyone will have this folder, and the game may also regenerate the folder. (mine didn’t regenerate the folder, but it’s happened to others)  DO NOT do this if you’re on mac!!!!

disable your FeaturedItems folder. this prevents the game from generating a fuckton of store thumbnails you’ll never look at. follow this tutorial or just set the folder to be read only.

turn off the following in your game settings: shop mode, interactive loading screens, and online features. i also recommend turning off story progression and memories and using mods to handle these instead.

edit your GraphicsRules.sgr. this will help your game load textures faster. (it also helps how fast your sims change their clothes!) do it yourself by following these tutorials ( 1 + 2 ) or download avian’s graphics fix (v1.69) (v1.67). i recommend doing the latter more than doing it yourself!

modding your game: a quick crash course

yeah, i know most people know how to download and install custom content + mods, but this is still good to give a read for managing your sims 3 cc!

first, you’ll need a mods folder because ts3 won’t generate one by itself. i recommend you download this framework and follow MTS’ guide to setting it up. it comes with a nifty little no intro video mod!

use the compressorizer redux. you can extract it wherever you’d like, just make sure to keep all its files in the same folder. this program is pretty self-explanatory, it compresses .package and .sims3pack files. to use it, click Add Files to List, select the folder with your files (you can do this multiple times), and click GO! now, just let it do its thing! it may take a while to process everything if you have big files, but you’ll get a pop up saying how many MBs you saved when it’s done. you can also use decrapify mode on .sims3packs (useful for store content!)

i recommend downloading Delphy’s Sims3Pack Extractor. i avoid using the game launcher to manage my cc at all costs, and this tool is useful for extracting .package files from .sims3pack files. follow this tutorial to use it!

Delphy’s Dashboard Tool is also useful for finding any broken, duplicate, or conflicting cc. i don’t recommend using the fix all problems option, do it yourself instead to make sure you don’t delete anything you want to keep.

renaming cc files can also help with lag. follow this tutorial!

you can also merge your package files to help with lag and load times using this tutorial. i don’t do this personally, but my mods folder is pretty small too.

note: the game launcher can only load 500 .sims3pack files at a time. only use the launcher to install absolutely necessary items!

to help reduce lag and load times, you can delete everything in your DCBackup folder (Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 3/DCBackup) EXCEPT for ccmerged.package. DO NOT delete ccmerged, it has all the cc installed through the launcher. (ps. you can safely use the compressorizer to compress your ccmerged file!)

final tip: try to control the amount of cc you have installed. i’ve noticed that the game takes a lot longer to load when my mods folder starts to reach a Gb. my mods folder is currently 368Mb, and it takes around 5 minutes to load any saves.

helpful mods for your game

the ETERNAL must have: nraas’ mastercontroller. you’ll need this to run all nraas mods! also be sure to grab overwatch and errortrap while you’re at it! these catch and clean any errors that happen in your game. i also recommend register and traffic.

no (or fewer) auto memories is SUPER useful for controlling memories in the game and helps with game performance. it’s super customizable!

ellacharmed’s world fixes. not really a traditional mod, but this helps with routing and camera control! note: don’t use these on preexisting saves! some lots have been moved and there will be little gaps in the world with preexisting saves.

routing fixes for schools + other lots. be sure to use nraas to reset your school lot after installing!

interaction on sloped terrain. this is mostly just a sanity saver, but very useful!

finally, i recommend grabbing awesome mod. it has a bunch of fixes and is very customizable!

reducing save game bloat

a.k.a. the steps i go through to make sure that my game loads relatively fast and runs with minimal lag. 

if i’ve taken any screenshots the last time i played the game, i move those out of ts3′s screenshots folder and into a separate folder.

i delete all generated cache files. see the tips section above for more info

i run kuree’s save cleaner on the save i’m planning on playing. if the latest version (2.1) doesn’t open/work, try using v1.1 instead. you can also do this manually, though i don’t recommend it for the sake of your sanity.

every couple of in-game weeks in a save i run a total reset on the world i’m playing in. this is done through nraas mastercontroller. click on your city hall from map view>nraas>mastercontroller>total reset

tip: to help prevent your saves from corrupting, use save as and keep multiple versions of your save. for example, i have 3 versions of my lepacy save. this way, if a save does corrupt, you have a backup! 

misc. ways to reduce lag

don’t run the game with all packs enabled. it’s going to murder your game. only run with packs you know you’ll use. you can also refer to this masterpost for bgc items if you only want certain items from a pack.

don’t keep tons of stuff in your sim’s inventory. use the fridge to keep fish and harvestables instead.

if your sim has the collection helper LTR in their inventory, make sure you have it set to none when you’re not using it.

i recommend downloading simborg’s CAS hiders, ILTS’ CAS Rehaul, and/or sweetdevil-sims’ CAS hiders to reduce CAS load times.

change CAS’ catalogs to show in compact form using nraas mastercontroller. select a sim>nraas>mastercontroller>settings>CAS and look for show in compact form options and set each to true

nona’s no limos mod can help nraas overwatch’s nightly clean up

make sure to turn off any build/buy cheats you activated when you go back into live mode. (even if it’s just to save)

if you’re using CAS a lot in a play session, it’s a good idea to quit to desktop and reload the game every once in a while

try to avoid saving presets and CASt swatches

disconnect from the internet. i don’t do this often because i usually have spotify or carl’s sims 3 guide open alongside ts3.

good resources to refer to

the sims wiki’s game guide to improving performace

nraas’ tips for better game performance

this thread @ MTS

optimization guide @ games4theworld

this post by darkfridaysims

that’s all folks!

if you’d like to know what cc and mods i’m using, here’s my resources page. thanks for reading all this, and if you need any clarification or have anything to add onto this, definitely hmu!

edits

*ps that i won’t be tagging people i credit so i don’t risk clogging their activity, i’ll still include a link to their blog!

the fps and 4Gb patch aren’t needed, it was fixed in a patch! (thank you, create-a-sim!)

[impassive-aggressive]

it’s ZOIDS HEADCANON TIME

this all took me way longer to assemble into something coherent than I initially thought :V  BUT HERE IS PART 1:

ZOID BIOLOGY: All Zoids start off as Cores.  These need to be "incubated" in pools of highly metallic/nutrient-rich water that are common on Zi, and if left long enough will grow a body around them that's capable of moving about on its own.  New Cores come about via Zoids periodically budding new Cores and dumping them into pools to mature.  Wild Zoids are much smaller than man-made ones and of course don't have cockpits/pilot interfaces, etc.

Domesticated Zoids are the product of "genetic engineering", in that their Cores have been tampered with so that, when immersed in tanks of synthetic fluid, they grow bodies with cockpits and such.  (They can also be grown to a certain point and then plucked out of their maturation tanks and stuck into a pre-built body.)  They've been tweaked so that their Cores are bigger and can support larger bodies with more advanced weaponry, etc. but they're less intelligent/capable than wild Zoids were.  Their Cores are also "charged" like batteries, so they have a finite lifespan, although this can still be a couple centuries (or more, if the Zoid is taken care of).  As with any lifeform, excessive strain (forcing it to use/carry ludicrous amounts or types of weaponry LEENA), abuse, neglect, etc. can reduce this span considerably.  By contrast, wild Zoids would prey on and eat each other's Cores (or munch on also-metallic foliage) to keep themselves going.  Domesticated Zoids no longer need to eat, although all Zoids are hella territorial and naturally inclined to fight, which is why they make good war machines.  

Wild Zoids were common in the time of the Ancient Zoidians but vanishingly rare by the time CC rolled around and all but extinct by the time of NC0. Blaming the Death Saurer seems like a good idea here, so yeah.

ZOID EVE: Whereas most Zoid Cores grow bodies and crawl out of their birthing pools to go on their merry way, sometimes Things Happen and Cores fuse together.  When this happens it usually results in a) dead, malformed Cores or b) shambling monstrosity Zoids that usually don't live very long.  

However, in one particular instance it resulted in c) an entity with a weird, alien intelligence that continued to bud Cores off of itself, producing Zoids that were smarter and generally "better" than other wild Zoids.  The Ancient Zoidians discovered this and were puzzled by the gross, lumpy Core-mass entity but were also impressed by the quality Zoids it produced, and eventually a city sprang up around it.  They started calling the thing "Zoid Eve" and built a big woman statue over it to symbolize this, strung up with a bunch of wires and shit to channel its power to the growing city.  They also went ahead and tampered with Eve's basic Core-programming so that it'd start producing pilotable Zoids, because Zoidians are stupid and can't resist fucking around with everything they find.

Zoid Eve was initially seen as a scientific curiosity, and then by turns as a status symbol, a good-luck charm, a bringer of prosperity and good fortune, and eventually as a deity.  People began flocking to Eveopolis to reap the social benefits of living right next to God and to claim the Zoids it produced.  Disputes sprang up among different groups as to who was getting all these Zoids, with some groups claiming they were being cheated or overlooked in favor of others; these disputes escalated into physical attacks and then all-out war, with different factions squabbling over the right to claim more of the Eve-born Zoids.

In response to this, some neutral parties collaborated to produce the Eve Saurer, designed to basically terrify everyone into calming their tits.  It was created from an Eve-spawned Core and placed in a body so fuckoff huge and powerful that none of the warring factions could really hope to stand against it; it was also deliberately created without a pilot interface or any way to control it so that it couldn't be hijacked by any particular faction and used to force everyone else into submission.

This kind of worked insofar as the various factions tried to attack the Eve Saurer and were immediately slapped down for their efforts, but the Saurer had the unfortunate side effect of being infectiously aggressive so that it triggered insanely violent urges in most of the Zoids that came near it.  Since it only knew to respond to aggression with more aggression, it set off a feedback loop of rage that culminated in lots of people dying really fast.  The Zoidians were at last united in finding a way to stop the Eve Saurer, and deduced that the only way to accomplish this was to do something to Eve itself.  Some people were like "FUCK IT, JUST KILL EVE" and other people were like "holy shit calm down", so while the first group worked on building something that could destroy Eve the second group came up with a pair of scorpion Zoids that, individually, were less powerful than the Eve Death Saurer but marginally more controllable. 

Team Kill Eve deployed its contender, a massive aerial type armed with gravity weapons that should have been able to crush the Core-construct forming Zoid Eve, but it rebelled violently at being forced to take action against Eve, bucked control of its pilot and escorts, and wrecked a bunch of shit before fucking off into the wilderness.  Team Calm Your Tits, probably giving team Kill Eve disgusted looks from across the room, sent out its scorpion Zoids, which succeeded in holding the Death Saurer at bay long enough for them to power down Eve (namely, the big statue thing which was a conduit for her power), thus enabling them to halt the Death Saurer without killing every other Zoid on the planet.  Unfortunately the damage had already been done and Zi was left all but uninhabitable, so the Zoidians stowed their surviving Zoids for safekeeping and placed themselves and their Organoids in stasis, in the hopes that they would eventually be able to resume life in a safer world.

...but before this was done, team Kill Eve was like "nah, that was totally a good idea that we just executed poorly" so they stuck some programming mojo into a girl and her Organoid that would enable her to shut down Eve if the need ever came up.

ORGANOIDS: Organoids and Zoids arose from a common ancestor, and lived together in the wild for thousands of years.  Organoids would "tend" groups of wild Zoids for whom they acted as guards, lookouts and pack leaders; in exchange they get first dibs on the Cores of prey the Zoids took down, or of old/injured Zoids in the group that were ready to die anyway.  They would also use the Zoids' Cores to reproduce, sticking their cables into a freshly-budded Core to leave their "DNA" all over it, which would start a new Organoid forming.

When the first wave of human colonists came to Zi, they were aware of organoids but considered them just another part of the landscape to be overcome as they sought to capture and tame wild Zoids.  Organoids were undoubtedly dangerous, particularly because of how intelligent they were, but humans have a marked tendency to give no fucks about things like danger when there are Cool Things to be poked at, such as big robot animals that could help out around a growing settlement.  The humans had superior weaponry to pretty much anything else organoids had ever encountered before, and were more effective than any wild predator on Zi at repelling the protective organoids while they captured Zoids.

The first organoid to live peaceably with humans was a young individual whose burgeoning herd of Zoids was in danger of being eradicated entirely by predators; while wary of humans, it also noted that the Zoids under the humans' care were healthy and well-protected, and figured that hanging around the settlement might be worth a shot.  Since the organoid and its herd weren't causing any harm, the humans kept an eye on it but otherwise left it alone.  Both species being naturally sociable and curious, the organoid and the humans eventually started trying to interact and established a tentative sort of bond.  When the organoid started producing offspring, they were even more inclined to hang around the humans, who discovered that having teleporting psychic mechanical dinosaurs accompanying you on expeditions or keeping an eye out for threats while you tended the fields was kind of useful.  

Meanwhile, other organoids started copying the first one's example and hanging around the settlement; although naturally territorial, the organoids all forged an uneasy truce knowing that it was in everyone's best interest to play nice and keep reaping the benefits of living near humans.  More and more organoids were born in close contact with humans, and the two species became so accustomed to each other that pretty soon it was no big deal for them to live and work together as partners.  Once Zoids started being engineered to be larger and more powerful, the "domesticated" organoids would sort of naturally be drawn to certain ones and found that it was more efficient to devote their attention to a single large Zoid than to a whole group of smaller ones, particularly since that Zoid could serve as an energy source and a place to rear young, zealously protected by its human caretaker.  

While wild organoids were fairly small and drab-colored, those that grew up around humans became larger and more powerful, and the humans also kind of unconsciously selected for organoids that had bright, pretty colors.  AND THAT'S HOW WE GOT SHOW ORGANOIDS

Roughly as intelligent as humans, organoids tend to choose their partners based on personality traits and how well they mesh as individuals.  These partnerships grow and deepen over time, and once a pair is bonded it's very hard to find anything that can drive them apart short of death itself.  Losing a partner can be deeply traumatizing, as it is for anyone who loses a loved one, but it is possible to recover and forge a new bond, given enough time.  (Most humans/Zoidians don't generally live long enough to reach this point, but it has happened a time or two.)

Organoids communicate with mental bursts of imagery + emotion.  They don't have speech that utilizes words, although they may visualize written words or mentally "repeat" things that are spoken to them in the voice of whoever said them.  This includes names; although their human/Zoidian partner may assign them a word-name that the organoid recognizes as its own, the names they choose for themselves are represented by more images-and-feelings: the moons reflected in a lake while one contemplates the universe; elation during a spring day surrounded by wildflowers; the peace of solitude atop a cold mountain peak.  It may take a while for the organoid to find something it likes enough to choose as a name, and this may change subtly over time - or very radically following severe trauma.  They also tend to assign organoid-style names to their partners and Zoids.

When an organoid Core-bonds with a Zoid, it's reading/altering the Zoid's data via all the little cables it plugs into the surface of the Core, lending its superior computational capabilities to the Zoid's raw power and its pilot's intelligence and strategic abilities.  When all three are in sync, this results in a Zoid that's faster, stronger, more resilient and more powerful than others, often to a devastating degree.  Organoids can heal and evolve Zoids by "overwriting" parts of the Zoid's data to jump-start the repair process that would otherwise occur much more slowly, triggering accelerated cell growth that can result in near-instant healing or, in the case of evolution, an entirely different chassis. 

MOAR TO FOLLOW

[bonduniversity]

How to get the best out of your smartphone camera

Bond University Senior Teaching Fellow and award-winning mobile journalist Rob Layton shares the tips of the smartphone photography and video trade. 

Photo: A light-trails long exposure of London’s Tower Bridge, shot on iPhone 8 Plus using the NightCap app. 

Each time you snap a photo with your smartphone — depending on the make and model — it may perform more than a trillion operations for just that single image.

Yes, you expect it to do the usual auto-focus/auto-exposure functions that are the hallmark of point-and-shoot photography.

But your phone may also capture and stack multiple frames (sometimes before you even press the button), capture the brightest and darkest parts of the scene, average and merge exposures, and render your composition into a three-dimensional map to artificially blur the background.

The term for this is computational photography, which basically means that image capture is via a series of digital processes rather than purely optical ones. Image adjustment and manipulation take place in real time, and in the camera, rather than in post-production using any editing software.

Computational photography streamlines image production so everything — capture, editing and delivery — can be done in the phone, with much of the heavy lifting done as the picture is taken.

A smartphone or a camera? 

What this means for the everyday user is that your smartphone now rivals, and in many cases surpasses, expensive DSLR cameras. The ability to create professional-looking photos is in the palm of your hand.

Photo: Low-light photography shot on iPhone 8 Plus. 

I started in photography more than 30 years ago with film, darkrooms, a bagful of cameras and lens, and later the inevitable switch to DSLRs (with digital single-lens reflex, light travels through the lens to a mirror [the reflex] that sends the image to the viewfinder and flips up when the shutter is fired for the image sensor to capture the image).

But my photography now is done exclusively with an iPhone — because it's cheaper and always with me. I have two accessory lenses, two rigs (one for underwater, the other for land), a tripod and a bunch of photography apps.

It's the apps that often are the powerhouse of computational smartphone photography. Think of it like a hotted-up car. Apps are bespoke add-ons that harness and enhance existing engine performance. And, as with car racing, the best add-ons usually end up in mass production.

That certainly seems to be the case with Apple's iPhone Xs. It has supercharged computational photography through its advances in low-light performance, smart HDR (High Dynamic Range) and artificial depth-of-field: this is arguably the best camera phone on the market right now.

A few months ago that title was held by the Huawei P20 Pro. Before the Huawei it was probably Google's Pixel 2 — until the Pixel 3 came out.

The point is, manufacturers are leapfrogging each other in the race to be the best smartphone camera in an image-obsessed society (when was the last time you saw a smartphone marketed as a phone?).

Phone producers are pulling the rug from beneath traditional camera manufacturers. It's a bit like the dynamic between newspapers and digital media: newspapers have the legacy of quality and trust, but digital media are responding better and faster to market demands. So too are smartphone manufacturers.

So, right now, the main areas of smartphone computational photography that you may be able to employ for better pictures are: portrait mode; smart HDR; low light and long exposure.

Portrait mode

Conventional cameras use long lenses and large apertures (openings for light) to blur the background to emphasise the subject. Smartphones have small focal lengths and fixed apertures so the solution is computational — if your device has more than one rear camera (some, including the Huawei, have three).

It works by using both cameras to capture two images (one wide angle, the other telephoto) that are merged. Your phone looks at both images and determines a depth map — the distance between objects in the overall image. Objects and entire areas can then be artificially blurred to precise points, depending on where on that depth map they reside.

Photo: This portrait of a young lowbow archer was shot with the Halide app, the background blurred in Focos app, and final editing done in Lightroom CC for mobile. Notice the bowstring disappears in low-contrast areas on the depth map, showing limitations in a technology not yet perfected.

This is how portrait mode works. A number of third-party camera and editing apps allow fine adjustment so you can determine exactly how much and where to put the bokeh (the blurred part of the image, also known as depth-of-field).

Other than what's already in a smartphone, (iOS) apps for this include Focos, Halide, ProCam6, Darkroom.

Android apps are harder to recommend, because it's an uneven playing field at the moment. Many developers choose to stick to Apple because it is a standardised environment. That said, you may try Google Camera or Open Camera.

Smart HDR 

The human eye can perceive contrast far greater than cameras. To bring more highlight and shadow detail into your photo (the dynamic range), HDR (High Dynamic Range) is a standard feature on most newer smartphones.

It draws on a traditional photography technique by which multiple frames are exposed from shadows to highlights and then merged. How well this performs depends on the speed of your phone's sensor and ISP (image signal processor).

A number of HDR apps are also available, some of which will take up to 100 frames of a single scene, but you may need to keep your phone steady to avoid blurring. Try (iOS) Hydra, ProHDRx or (Android) Pro HDR Camera.

Photo: HDR exposes for shadow and highlight details to extend the dynamic range. 

Low-light and long exposure 

Smartphones have small image sensors and pixel depth, so they struggle in low light. The computational trend among developers and manufacturers is to take multiple exposures, stack them on top of each other, and then average the stack to reduce noise (the random pixels that escape the sensors).

It's a traditional (and manual) technique in Photoshop that's now automatic in smartphones and is an evolution of HDR. This is how the Google Pixel 3 and Huawei P20 see so well in the dark.

It also means that long exposures can be shot in daylight (prohibitive with a DSLR or film) without risk of the image overexposing.

In an app such as NightCap (Android, try Camera FV-5), long exposures are an averaged process, such as this three-second exposure of storm clouds travelling past a clock tower.

Photo: A three-second exposure of passing storm clouds at Bond University at midday, made possible through computation. 

Light trails, such as the main image (top) of London's Tower Bridge and these images (below) of downtown San Francisco and a fire-twirler are an additive process to capture emerging highlights.

A tripod is essential unless you use Adobe's free editing app Lightroom (iOS and Android), which has a very good camera with a long exposure feature that adds auto-alignment to its image stacking.

Photo: Light Trails mode was used to capture passing traffic in this long exposure of downtown San Francisco. 

Photo: Light Trails was used to capture this fire twirler at Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast. 

Long exposure in iPhone's native camera app can be made by tapping the Live mode button. The iPhone records before you press the shutter, so you need to keep the camera stable before and after you take the picture. Then, in the Photos app, swipe the image up to reveal four modes: Live, Loop, Bounce and Long Exposure.

The key to successful smartphone photography is to understand not just what your phone can do, but also its limitations, such as true optical focal length (although this device by Light is challenging that). However, the advances in computational photography are making this a dynamic and compelling space.

It is worth remembering, too, that smartphones are merely a tool, and computational photography the technology that powers the tool. This old adage still rings true: it is the photographer who takes the picture, not the camera. Mind you, the taking is becoming so much easier.

Happy snapping.

Photo: An underwater housing for iPhone (AxisGo by Aquatech) was used to capture this picture of a father and daughter swimming in the ocean. 

Find out more about how a Bond degree could help you get ahead in your journalism career. 

All photos taken and edited on a smartphone by Rob Layton. This story originally appeared on The Conversation. 

[deathrelic]

would you be open to sharing more of your organization subfolders if not all of them? they're been a huuuuuuuge help in figuring out my cc mess, but I also understand that it's a weird question. thanks either way :~)

it’s no problem! i’ll outline everything i do to organize my mods & you can follow all, some or none of it. its all about what finding what works best for you and the cc you have ♡

first here are some tutorials purely for the aesthetic of your mods folder  →how to change folder icons   /   how to change file icons  

i get my icons from l’univers sims because they’re usually up to date with all the packs. the website is in french but it’s easy enough to navigate.  

i also rename every .package file to look like this →CREATORNAME FileName.package

inside #MINE MCCC & MODS its a free-for-all of loose files. i don’t do too much when it comes to organizing these because there aren’t many files to begin with. the TEST folder is a godsend and i recommend having one just to make sorting new files easier.

BUILD BUY & CAS look like this. i like having a #DEFAULTS folder so if you want to swap out one replacement for another it won’t take 25 years to locate the file you need. 

i also keep subfolders to the absolute minimum without getting things too muddied. (and tbh i could probably reduce my folders more if i wanted) 

child & toddler items are mixed in with the adults only because i don’t have THAT much cc for them. if i need to, i differentiate some files by adding a suffix 

i’ve been remaking my POSES folder & i’m still not 100% sure on exactly how i’ll organize it but this is what i’m currently using and it works okay. 

for cas poses i also add a prefix of what trait it replaces so i can easily see the ones i already have. for example  →GOOFBALL CreatorNamePoseName 

i think that’s everything. the only other thing i can think of is bulk rename utility 

if i download a bunch of things from one creator i can quickly change [creatorname] to CREATORNAME on all the files at once. it also has a bunch of other functionality like removing spaces and dashes from file names & adding prefixes and suffixes.

[dramallamadingdang]

Hi there, I’m pretty impressed that you create and use a lot of high res textures and I was wondering whether you had run into pink flashing stuff because some people including me have been complaining about it since we play UC on Windows 10. I also use a Nvidia graphics card and Leefish said that the game doesn’t go well with these cards so if you don’t have any of these pink flashing issues, what graphic card do you use? Your advice might be helpful if I ever need to buy a new gaming computer.

I've privately answered these kinds of questions a number of times now; I hope you don't mind me publicly answering your questions so that, if I get more similar questions in the future, I can just point to this post. :)

Before I cut for length, I'll say that no, I have never experienced pink flashing, ever. That said, I am VERY conscious of what I put in my game, and I make content/playing sacrifices/compromises in order to have higher-res textures (within reason) without having, so far, such issues. I'll go into more detail about that and my machine and stuff behind the cut.

Also, I am a loyal NVIDIA customer after having had multiple issues (not related to Sims but to 3D rendering in architectural CAD) with AMD cards. I have never had issues with TS2+NVIDIA. This could, however, be due to the fact that I deliberately use older drivers and do not allow the drivers to automatically update.

So now, here's that cut...

My approach to this game, whether we're talking about computer hardware or content for the game, is that it's a game that was originally coded in 2004, meant for the sort of machine that most people had at that time. It makes sense to me that, from a hardware angle, a machine that's as 2004-like as possible would be the optimal choice for playing TS2, specifically. That being said, aside from occasional non-serious poking at TS3, TS2 is the ONLY game I play, so I am entirely unconcerned about my Simming machine being able to play other/newer games. This machine is "optimized" for playing TS2, making TS2 content (using Photoshop CS6 for the graphics editing), and dinking around on the internet to download stuff and interact with the community. That is literally all I do on it. I have other machines to do other things on.

Anyway, my Simming machine. It's a desktop because I'm not fond of laptops in general but especially so when it comes to playing games. It's an older HP machine that I bought as a refurb from Newegg about a year ago, for ~$120, including tax and shipping. It came loaded with 64-bit Windows 7 Pro (I won't touch newer OSs with a 99.5-foot pole), 4GB of RAM, had integrated graphics, and has a 3.0GHz Core2Duo processor, the latter of which is fast(ish) but its architecture is as close to "2004" as I could get in a "stock" machine. I then maxed out its RAM to 8GB and upgraded to a dedicated video card, in this case an NVIDIA GTX750 Ti with 2GB of DDR3 RAM (I think...or maybe it's DDR5; I can't remember), which was as powerful as I could get without also having to upgrade the machine's stock 375W power supply...which might be difficult/impossible to do because it has an HP-proprietary one. As I said, I installed the driver that came with the card and do not allow updates. (Once, I did allow an update and it FUBAR'ed the graphics in my TS3 game, although TS2 was fine. I'm not risking it, though. I rolled back to the old driver, which works, and that's what I'm keeping forever.) I did the CFF Explorer thing so that the game uses 4GB of RAM rather than 2 and used the Graphics Rules Maker to force the game to use all of my video card's texture memory. The latter, I think, is very important for avoiding pink flashing, Win10/UC bullshit aside.

Speaking of UC bullshit, my game is all installed from disks. I have all EPs/SPs installed, and I keep the CC to ~5-7GB. (It fluctuates. :) ) I neither have nor want the UC because I want zero, zip, zilch, nada chance of EA being able to "update" my TS2 game for me because any update would probably upset the apple cart and I would be very, very pissed. :) For my "backup," I have a pirated complete collection of the game, about which I have zero guilt because I've bought the full game on disk many times over now and, also, EA itself now gives away the game for free. I tested the pirated version so that I know it works if I should need it in the future if something happens to my disks, but my installed game is from legit disks.

Now we come to content, and here's where things get "personal." As I said, I make sacrifices/compromises to prioritize being able to use high-res textures on objects and walls/floors in my game because that's what I, personally, like. The primary sacrifice is that I am VERY choosy about what I download, particularly when it comes to hair and new objects with custom meshes. I do not download things mindlessly, and everything I download is checked for poly count and texture size(s) before I decide whether or not it goes into my game. In particular:

I am rigorous about poly counts/texture sizes for hair in my game because aside from things like high-res terrains/skies/horizons/neighborhood deco, they are the biggest drain on texture memory in my game. I allow myself only a certain number of high-poly (which I define as "more than 10K polys") hairs. In terms of helping with pink flashing, I have also been experimenting with using smaller texture images for hairs. (512x512 instead of the 1024x1024 that most of them seem to be. That's 1/4 the size/texture memory usage.) So far, in those hairs that I've messed with, I am not noticing much in the way of loss of quality in normal gameplay. Anyway, my rule is that, if I want to download a new high-poly hair, I have to delete one I already have. I don't think polys contribute to pink flashing, BUT they definitely contribute to general video card strain. AND, high-poly hairs tend to have large textures as well, so...double whammy.

For build/buy objects I tend to stick mostly with Maxis meshes and add-ons that people have made for them and older objects that were made for TS2, not those converted from newer games. This is primarily because such objects are low-poly with low-res textures. I can improve how they look with better and/or higher-res textures, but they remain low-poly. I also avoid useless, non-functional clutter (Exception: Plants :) ) because such things are often high-poly and do nothing. I would rather do this that have a bunch of high-poly AND high-res custom meshes in addition to higher-res textures for the Maxis objects. This means I have fewer choices when it comes to furnishing/decorating, but I am entirely willing to make that sacrifice for the sake of prettier/clearer/sharper textures in general.

The other thing I am conscious of is what I use in my general playing. For instance, I like using high-res terrains and (very) high-res skies and horizons and such. I like to take pretty scenery pics and use them as computer desktop wallpaper, for instance. BUT, I will often remove skies and/or horizons when I'm just casually playing a neighborhood that I don't take pics of. Those things eat a LOT of texture memory, and running out of texture memory is what causes the pink flashing. If I remove such things from neighborhoods when I'm "just playing," I can pretty much go wild with most other things. Or, if I want to leave in skies/horizons because I am, for instance, taking outdoor gameplay pics, I will often turn off neighbors in game so that only the lot I am currently playing (plus any visible-from-the-lot neighborhood deco, but that can be turned off, too, if you want to be really conservative) renders. Lot imposters do not. This reduces texture memory load as I play.

So, basically, it's all a balancing act. If I want pretties in one area, I have to settle for less-pretty in other areas, and I'm willing to do that settling. It's an old game, not meant to be high-poly/high-res, so if you want to force it to be high-poly/high-res in certain ways, you have to be willing to make such compromises because the game's age/limitations (regardless of the shininess of your computer hardware) are such that you really CAN'T have it all. I realize that the exact things I do in my playing won't suit everyone's playing/building/decorating style, but I'm pretty sure that anyone can make similar kinds of compromises in order to make prettier the things that are of primary importance to them.

[official-alan-dabiri]

Voice chat is here, whether you want it or not! If you don’t sound like a whiny white boy, consider learning how to use voice-change software. Please recommend a reliable service for this because I do sound like a whiny white boy so I’ve never needed it. You can choose not to automatically join voice chat channels, so, you know, at least there’s that. Find more details here.

We’re making Maiev slightly less tanky. We know that she will eventually end up being super-squishy to the point of uselessness, but we want to get there nice and slow. Her kit is very flashy and entertaining to watch, so let us have at least one week of her being dominant in HGC before we get all the way to balanced.

Malthael went from being the best solo lane hero in the game and a dominant teamfight hero in the late game before his major rework to being the best solo lane hero in the game, a dominant teamfight hero in the late game, and ALSO an oppressive double-soak hero after his rework. So we’ve made him a mana hog, nerfed his early game healing, and nerfed his late game power spike. He’s still the best solo lane hero in the game, but now you actually might run out of mana and need to back at least one time before level 10.

In an effort to extend the olive branch to Metzen so that he stops calling me a coward, we gave Thrall a nearly-meaningless Chain Lightning buff. I’m just saying we don’t have to be enemies, Chris.

In a shocking turn, we DID create a heroic more powerful than Void Prison, and now nobody picks Void Prison. So we reduced VP’s mana cost, buffed Zera’s spell damage, and nerfed Nerazim’s Follow Through effect. For those of you who don’t know what any of that means, I promise that was a succinct condensation of the Zeratul changes.

I played a bunch of Xul last week and it fucking sucked. I dominated in the laning phase, but then got totally bodied in every teamfight. So we’ve made Xul more of a bruiser, with increased health and CC, in exchange for a basically meaningless skeleton nerf. They were already a joke against the newly-buffed towers and minions, it’s not like they were ever going to be impactful after the ammo change.

Someone stood in front of a mirror in a dark bathroom and chanted “Night Elves are a matriarchal society” three-hundred and sixty-four times. In accordance with the Old Ways of the Folk, one of Tyrande’s cooldowns was reduced by 1 second. This time it was her heal.

We recently nerfed the crap out of Sonya, and so everyone just abruptly stopped playing her. Due to this change in the community, it took us an entire month to realize that none of the changes actually got applied. Please start playing nerfed heroes sometimes. You might be surprised to find that we’re Blizzard, and therefore terrible at patching our games.

[nightmareonfilmstreet]

[Exclusive] The Sounds of SAW: An Interview with Composer CHARLIE CLOUSER

New Post has been published on https://nofspodcast.com/exclusive-sounds-saw-interview-composer-charlie-clouser/

[Exclusive] The Sounds of SAW: An Interview with Composer CHARLIE CLOUSER

Once upon a time, way back in 2004, a then relatively unknown James Wan made his directorial debut with a little film called Saw.  The film rocked the horror world and was an instant hit in the genre.  Since then, the Saw universe has continued to grow, expand and ask the now infamous question;

“Do you wanna play a game?”

While Saw has experienced different directors, writers, proteges and victims, one of the constants that has helped truly unify the Saw universe is the music of Charlie Clouser.  As a former member of NIN and his years working with artists such as Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, and David Bowie, Clouser was well versed in the world of electronic and industrial music when he took on his first solo scoring gig with Saw.  I recently had the privilege of speaking with Charlie for a bit and we talked about all things Saw, including the upcoming Saw Anthology releases from Lakeshore Records.  Check out our conversation below:

  Rachel Prin for NOFS: In 2004, the very first Saw movie was released and it was our first introduction to the now infamous “Hello Zepp” theme.  Did you realize you were creating a theme at the time?

Charlie Clouser: I kind of had a game plan going in that I discussed a lot with James Wan and Leigh Whannell, that we thought it would add extra impact to that twist ending, and the sort of thing that’s become a sort of trademark in a lot of the Saw movies, the ending reveal montage where there’s a lot of quick cuts and flashbacks to earlier scenes in the movie while Jigsaw’s voice narrates and explains the parts you may not have seen earlier in the film.  So it was kind of on purpose that the whole main body of the movie had a score that was just very murky and indistinct and kind of blurry and didn’t really state musical ideas, thematic ideas strongly at all.

 As it turns out, if you dissect the notes, chords, harmonies and everything that’s used earlier in the movie, they relate to the “Hello Zepp” theme, but they’re transposed down a couple of semi-tones so that it’s just a slight shift when the actual theme comes in at the end. We really felt like we wanted it to be as if the bright lights get turned on when that ending theme begins. So you spent the whole movie in this cloudy, murky, dark indistinct world of music and sound that then gets really insistent and shattering when it comes in full force at the end. So for that reason the sounds that are used in the ending theme aren’t used elsewhere in the movie and it’s sort of a whole different set of sounds and a different approach.  

I knew that in order for that piece of music to work it would have to be fairly simple and kind of repetitive and hypnotic and not have a lot of musical information in there but still kind of start small-ish and then build as the insistent phrases kind of repeat. So once I had that game plan sort of in my mind, the creation of that “Hello Zepp” theme wasn’t something that took days, it really kind of came together kind of quickly because I had already established these kind of mental rules and conditions that it had to fulfill. I did most of the music in a few hours one day, spent the evening arranging it for a string quartet, the next day recorded a string quartet, and boom it was done.

NOFS: What have been some of the films or composers that have influenced you and your scoring work?

CC: The kind of movies that I wind up liking and enjoying are often well outside the horror genre.  Some of my earliest influences, for movie anyways, were all of Kubrick’s.  That’s what I wanted to see on screen. Whether it’s movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey or his version of Stephen King’s The Shining. I still think it’s the greatest horror movie ever made and even though maybe pure horror fans don’t feel like it fits in with their genre, I always thought that it was just fantastic. And of course the music that Kubrick uses a lot is not composed for his movies, but was music that he found in classical music collections and so forth.

I still remember seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey when it was in the theaters for it’s initial release when I was just a little kid and being so struck by these atonal choir pieces, by the composer Gyorgy Ligeti, and it’s just these dense tonal clusters that sounded so other worldly and unlike anything I’d heard before. Of course a lot of other music from that same kind of genre of super modern classical composers is also used in The Shining. There’s a lot of Penderecki, Bartok and these other composers and it’s almost a sonic experiment more than it is traditional classical music.  The clattering, rattling, smacking sounds and weird atonal and dissonant elements; those kind of things have always been the pieces of music that stuck with me over the years. Mainly because it wasn’t anything that I knew how to do or just figure out how that music was put together by picking up a guitar or sitting at the piano.  It was such a mystery to me how that music came to be and that was what drew me in.

Of course horror movies are perfect avenues to use atonal and dissonant and experimental kinds of music, more so than say an Indiana Jones kind of movie or something, and so that’s sort of what drew me into these kind of movies. 

NOFS: Lakeshore Records has recently digitally released (with CD and vinyl forthcoming) the Saw Anthology Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 featuring music from all 8 Saw films.  Were you involved in this process and if so what was your role?

CC: Oh yeah. They said ‘Look, you figure it out, you put it together and we’ll put it out’.  So, it took me almost a month to go through all of the pieces of music. I literally went with a microscope, inspected and chose, out of the whole sum total of movies (there’s over 550 pieces of music in the source folders across all 8 of the movies). Since it’s coming out on vinyl, each side of a vinyl record is about 20 minutes, so I sort of set up a set of mental rules for myself that each movie would get 1 vinyl side and within that 20 minutes I would try to put my favorite cues from each movie in chronological order so that it felt like a miniature journey through the films themselves.

 I didn’t do things like, put all the action cues from all 8 movies all together and that sort of thing. I tried to reduce each movie down to this 20 minute slab that maintained the order in which those pieces of music originally appeared in the film. Once I had that set of rules, I had at least some sort of guidepost that I could use to map things out, and it certainly was agonizing to throw away and skip over so many pieces of music that I liked, but I still wanted it to feel like it balanced. So that each 20 minute chunk from each movie would have a variety of stuff; the thematic melodic material and also some of the crazy action and trap scenes, and some of the weird floaty dark ambient stuff that fills up so much space in those movies.  

So having that kind of game plan in place really helped me to organize my thoughts as I went through it.  And I did combine a lot of pieces together where I might have 2 or 3 pieces of music that are only 30 or 40 seconds long, and I would combine those together and then graft them on to the front of a longer piece. To create a sort of flowing, landscape of longer pieces instead of just a million short little pieces of music with silence in between them.  And I always like it when so many of my favorite albums growing up had that sort of feel, like Pink Floyd albums. Where the songs kind of cross faded against each other and it was just one long seamless experience, so I wanted to kind of emulate that as much as I could for this Anthology project.

NOFS: This is the first time any of the Saw scores have been released on vinyl. How do you view the importance of physical media and what is your connection to medium?

CC: Aside from the obvious sonic differences of listening to something on vinyl vs. CD, or streaming or whatever, the physical experience of holding something that’s large and slightly fragile and has to be treated with some kind of care and respect.  You know, you don’t leave your vinyl records lying around on the floor the same way you might leave CD’s laying around in the glove box of your car, or downloads lying around cluttered on the desktop of your computer.

So that process, and that manner in which you have to physically interact with the vinyl certainly forces you to behave a little more carefully with the vinyl that you own. Not to be in such a hurry to grab one and throw it off to the side to listen to another one, and that is helpful because it kind of leads the listener to not be in such a hurry to skip over songs and get to the next one.  I always prefer that on vinyl, if you do want to skip over a song you have to carefully lift the tone arm off the record and carefully place it down, as opposed to a CD or a stream where you just hit the next track button. I’m glad that vinyl makes it more difficult to skip over things because then maybe people will take the time and just relax a little bit and let the music flow along.

That’s also kind of why I wanted to combine a bunch of different pieces of music into longer suites and to kind of cross fade them all together so that you can’t get in between every track and it kind of forces the listener to sit back and let this whole 8 minute thing with it’s peaks and valleys kind happen.  The resurgence of vinyl and people’s love for a big solid hunk of physical media sort of has parallels in the resurgence we’ve seen recently with big hardware synthesizers for musicians in the studio.

For a long time it seemed like everything was going to just occur inside a computer. We had so many great software programs for creating music that everybody was just jumping on that bandwagon, and then a few years ago we started to see the resurgence of synthesizers that reminded us of the 1980’s. Back when things were big and had lots of knobs and were sort of expensive and delicate. There’s been a real resurgence in that as well and I think it really comes down to the tactile experience of wanting to touch the thing, to feel like you can feel the sound waves emanating from it.  I think both of those phenomena are kind of related in some way.

NOFS: Do you have any go-to Saw instruments or techniques that you only use in the Saw films?

CC: Yeah, there’s a whole category of sounds and techniques that I use, that in my mind anyway, that really only apply to that world.  I have a bunch of strange handmade acoustic instruments that are basically made out of pieces of scrap metal, which you can play with a violin bow or with sticks and most of them involve some kind of metal sheet or metal rods that’ll produce sound when you operate them.  I have a whole family of 5 or 6 variations of that kind of instrument that were built by a metal sculptor and musician named Chas Smith that I’ve known for a long time. In my mind those instruments are restricted for use only on Saw movies because they’ve become a big part of the sonic landscape that I use in those movies. And they also create sounds that are just so heavy-duty scary that they don’t really apply in less insane kind of scoring work. 

NOFS: After a 7 year hiatus, did you ever think you’d be coming back to the world of Jigsaw?

CC: You know, I secretly knew that somewhere deep down inside that, even though the 7th movie was called the “Final Chapter”, I knew they weren’t gonna let this thing die.  We had been doing the movies every year, one per year for 7 years straight, and it was always a mad dash to get the things finished. So once they decided to take some time off from the franchise I knew we’d be back. I didn’t know when, but they’ve created such a rich kind of cinematic universe of heroes and villains and victims that I knew they’d find a way. And at this point nothing would surprise me in the Saw universe.  So I wouldn’t be surprised if there was even more yet to come.

NOFS: So, Saw 9…you in?

CC: Oh I’ll ride that horse into the sunset.

The response to this latest movie from the hardcore Saw fans was really good and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the phone rings and they say ‘Hey get back on the horse because we’re working on the script for the next one’.  Of course, if they keep the franchise rolling, I’ll be all in for as many as they care to do. The first Saw movie was the first feature film that I scored by myself so it has a special place in my heart.  I’m fine to do as many as they care to roll out. They can count me in.

  The digital version of the Saw Anthology Vol. 1 & 2 is currently available from Lakeshore Records and you can find it here. CD & vinyl releases coming soon so stay tuned for more information on that.

Also available from Lakeshore Records, the digital release of the Jigsaw soundtrack.  Make sure to check out that release here.

[simgaroop]

The Add On is called  Photobucket Album Downloader (Unlimit) and you can find it here.

Unfortunately, it is not free. You need to pay I assume the equivalent to 2 US dollars (I paid 25 mexican pesos), but that is faaaar cheaper than what Photobucket is asking. 

I gladly paid it because I so wanted to delete my presence from Photobucket once and for all and it pissed me off how they were preventing me from accessing my own pictures unless I disabled UBlock. And that meant being overwhelmed by suspicious Ads and dangerous scripts that were fortunately caught by Chrome. 

Once you buy and install the add-on, this button will show up when you log in to a Photobucket album:

(It’s the one below the Story Embed link)

You need to download each album individually and then your “Bucket” for those pictures that are not organized in albums. 

It took me around half an hour to download all the albums from my Simlish (mostly CC previews), Simgaroop (just  few pics) and kangaroop (my Legacy pics) accounts, and I have already deleted them. 

I ended up with this mess:

I am afraid I was unable to save all my Legacy pics because I hosted some in a fourth photobucket account (I was poor and couldn’t afford a subscription, so I created many accounts to reduce the bandwidth load) that I can’t access anymore

However, I was smart enough to save a bunch of pictures (around 300) that tell the Legacy story in a condensed way. I may post them in the future as a way to preserve my legacy in some way. Probably here on Tumblr. 

And oh my God, the 2007 look of my Sims is SO dated!! :D

(I think this was the very first custom Maternity Outfit I ever used. I had just discovered Squinge’s mod!)