#the sims 2 graphic

[dystopianam]

𝚃𝚂𝟸: 𝙼𝚢 𝙰𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚝𝚒𝚌 𝙽𝙷 𝙲𝙲𝚜 (𝟷𝟸/𝟷𝟿/𝟸𝟶𝟸𝟺)

I've been wanting to create a list of all the ccs that I use for making my game aesthetic for a long time! I've had a tracker in W.I.P on Notion for a long time (I admit I started months and months ago and haven't touched it since out of laziness BUT...) since some people like how my game looks, I want to make this improvised list for now! When i finish tracking my defaults and mods on Notion, i'll update the post!

Terrains DRs: Lush - Desert - Dirt - Concrete - Snow.

NH Trees & Rocks DRS: Linden Trees/Linden Forest/Linden Row - Ginko/Redbud/Walnut/Beaut Birches 1-6 & Single - BV Palms - Cactus/Joshua Tree/Agave - Castaway Pines - Default NH Rocks from here.

Hood Decos: Here, Here & Here.

Roads DRs: Lush - Desert/Dirt/Concrete.

Skyboxes & Skylines - Here, Here, Here & Here.

Cameras: NH Camera - Live Mode Camera.

Lighting Mod: Cinema Secrets.

Shaders: Better Nightlife & A World Lit by Fire.

Sea and Pond Water DRs: I used to use this but now I use the reflective water from LD's Launcher!

[misogfx]

Doechii "Denial Is A River" posters inspired by The Sims 2 Advertisements

[jamble-junk]

Frutiger Aero Stamps

[scorpionoir]

Some of my favourite retro blinkies and stamps I found here

[bunnithechubs]

[pinniepon]

All my video game blinkies so far

[justmiha97]

New day, new project!

So what's this?

With recent re-release of The Sims 1 and The Sims 2, I decided to fix my UC install (yay!) and return to an old project! It's been a couple of years but I learned how to edit sims 2 lighting, and thus I decided to get Radiance lighting closer to what I've always been expecting of it.

So what's new in this?

For now, only night has been significantly changed, but I plan to apply this to all the weathers and times of day, as well as make the time of day switch just a bit smoother.

Keep reading for some more details:

Lights are a bit more intense, and the highlights are more visible, while shadows are darker (but still affected by the room color). Blue ambience minimized.

Outdoor lights get the same treatment (and yes, that is a base game light, they all have different shapes)!

More precise and dramatic window light spillage indoors (Now also affecting objects)!

Same applies to the outdoor objects (The spillage is softer but still visible)!

For now, this is what I've done, but for example, day is too bright, and there's still way too many shadows during overcast. There's not a lot to be done (day, morning, evening, overcast, winter, spring and autumn all have their own modes, besides the night, which I just finished) and it's easy to edit and test this (just keep reloading the lot), so I think it will most likely take just a couple of days to finish it.

Will keep you posted on this one.

[lilakartoffelbrei]

Pink soup car

[rockethorse]

Did you know the "Handle and Spout" painting from the Sims 2 basegame is a reference to the Utah teapot, a 3D test model so well-known it's become an in-joke within the field of computer graphics?

[okaydays22]

[xx-j4nu5-c4t5-xx]

"An ideal Sims game would have Sims 2's gameplay mechanics, Sims 3's open world, and Sims 4's graphics!"

I absolutely despise this take, and I want to explain why. This is a very long rant and it is full of piss and vinegar directed at everything in the Sims 4. I'm gonna try to keep everything kinda professional as much as I can but I can't guarantee an unbiased opinion.

If you'll let me talk your ears off for a moment, I'd like to explain, from my own experience as an artist and a casual player, my issues with the art style and direction of The Sims 4 compared to The Sims 2. (I'm not really going to comment on 3 because I've never played it.)

I want to start off by explaining the difference between better graphics and higher resolution. The Sims 4 absolutely blows Sims 2 out of the water when it comes to textures and polygon counts on sims, no contest. But I'd argue that the graphics themselves... aren't better. They're worse, even, so much fucking worse. The biggest problems come from the stylization and the animations, in my opinion, so I'll explain what I mean.

Have you ever felt like the Sims in 4 just look... weird? Not quirky, not kinda strange, but off. Distressing. Uncanny. Whatever the fuck the kids call it nowadays. When you strip away the packs and the CC and the shaders, the sims in the base game look bad. They're very close to being human; they walk like us, talk like us, have families like us, but they don't look like us, not exactly. There's always something off about them, no matter how close you try to get. Proportions will be a bit off, or your eyelashes will be like three polygons for some fucking reason, and the jig is up. The illusion is gone.

This is one of the instances where a higher resolution and more detailed models and meshes work against you. You aren't making believe. You are beyond the point of pretending that the pixelated shapes are real clothes and bodies and faces, because at this point, they're close enough that you don't need to. There's no gap to bridge. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're lifelike, at least, not enough to be completely human. In some ways, they're still tethered to being cartoony and plasticky and fake. Just enough to frighten you. Enough to put you off. They're not using it to their advantage anymore, and instead, it's holding them back.

When the Sims 2 came out in 2004, the developers knew that they weren't going to make a perfectly accurate life simulator. They physically couldn't render every wrinkle in the face or fold in the clothing. In some animations, things clip strangely or the facial expressions are sort of janky or there's just some form of roughness around the edges. But that's okay; your brain doesn't need a perfectly accurate representation this time. That's not what you're here for, anyway.

The Sims 4 is basically Icarus-ing itself into disaster. The entire game sacrifices style for complete realism, a goal that was unachievable ten years ago, and is unachievable now.

The Sims 2 never thought of itself as a completely realistic life sim, though. It has cartoony, low poly meshes and exaggerated proportions and wild, raunchy storylines that would never occur in real life. BECAUSE IT ISN'T REAL LIFE. And it isn't like real life, not because it's failing to be, but because it doesn't want to be!

The Sims 4 is not ever going to completely replicate human looks or interactions or dynamics. And if it's trying to, it's doing a shit job of it. That shouldn't be the goal in the first place. If I wanted to watch a lonely college student talk to himself in the mirror to try and get better at interacting with people, I'd close the computer and go look at myself. It somehow highlights the most mundane parts of life without any of the whimsy and goofiness that the earlier installments had. It takes itself too fucking seriously for its own good, and it's killing both the gameplay and the art style.

The other point I'd like to bring up is the animation. The Sims 4 allows for much more customization of both sim and environments, but at the cost of dynamic animations. How many times is that grab animation reused? How many times is the same set of animations used for sims with wildly different personalities? Your sims barely feel alive with how little they express themselves.

Now, look, I'm a digital artist. I've dabbled in animation, but only briefly, and only in 2D. I've got no clue how 3D animation works, much less how it worked 20 years ago, but I can see the passion in every single animation in the Sims 2. The more niche interactions allowed for more expressive animations than in 4. They could afford to have a distinct animation for mean sims throwing the football extra hard to be assholes, rather than every sim using the same generic football-throwing animation to save time and money. I get where they're coming from. I get the idea. But in one move, you've both made the art style stiffer and less expressive, and you've made the personalities of the sims seem meaningless. Everyone acts the same, regardless of what their moodlets or their traits say. It's hollow. It's stifled. It's a waste of potential.

But for what Sims 2 lacks in polygons, it makes up for in smaller animated details. Quality over quantity. The sims have hair physics, they open the door before they get in the car, they take utensils out of the counters when they cook, they jump on the couch and the cushions smush under their weight. When they dance, the weight is realistic, and when they smile, it tugs at every one of the few dozen shapes that make up their faces. The sims are lively. They dance and sing and love and hate just like humans, and rather than being some strange attempt at mimicry, it's almost a tribute. They were made with love. You can tell that they were drawn up and rigged and animated by a bunch of people working together, studying each other and making faces in the mirror for reference and watching their kids and neighbors and dogs and hands for reference. The sims are not human, and not trying to be, but they're taking the most human parts of us and making them their own.

You could never have a game with the Sims 4's graphics and the Sims 2's gameplay. The gameplay and graphics are inexorably connected, and the Sims 2 just has so much glorious detail baked into it, that you could never really make it work underneath the limitations of the later games. The developers of 2 knew what their limits were, and they worked tirelessly to make the game as full and complex as they could within those limits. The developers for the Sims 4 just did not have those guidelines, and thus, the drive to bend the rules was no longer there. They didn't go wild in rebellion because they were never told they couldn't in the first place. They spent the entire time chasing a goal they couldn't meet, and lost sight of what made the series fun to begin with.

It wasn't the realism you came for; you had realism already surrounding you. It was the caricature of it that made it interesting.

[andtosaturn]

Bella Goth: The Disappearance

@cellphonehippie's editing challenge (10 points)

+5 including a woman +2 a lyric +2 nostalgia +2 including stickers +2 bugs -1 person origins from the us -1 capital letters -1 anything from space

bonus movie?? poster that doesn't fit the vibe but i spent too long on to not include:

[belladovah]

A Complete Guide on how to Fix & Optimize The Sims 2 on Windows 10/11

I've made a video tutorial and written guide on everything you need to know on how to Fix & Optimize The Sims 2 on Windows 10/11, with Performance, Stability, and Graphics Enhancements.

Watch the Video Tutorial on YouTube:

Read the Written Guide on my Website

[lazarish]

Well well well...

The lovely and incomparable @samssims mentioned a villain legacy in an ask and... now we're here! With help from a huge number of fabulous people in the community who are all credited in the full rules doc, I present a fun little gameplay challenge themed around classic villains!

Feel free to make your own changes and interpretations, and use the tag #ts4villain so we can all see!

See the full rules doc HERE!

More generational snapshots below the cut! 🖤

[brandinotbroke]

Left is Legacy Collection, right is Ultimate Collection

Their way of improving performance is to just lower the amount of visiting sims on medium graphics settings for some reason?

[clipitcutout]

Sims glitches pngs!

Follow for daily uploads 💖