asimplevampire

[asimplevampire]

One of my Sims needed this beast in their house. Don't ask.

📦 ACNH T. Rex Skeleton

Download: SFS | BOX Polycount: 12538

*Decat shared ACNH fossil conversions recently - it includes T Rex, but this here is a different object, so you can have both in the game.

*This is for The Sims 2

Enjoy

[asimplevampire]

I feel like I should never have agreed to do the secret santa because my """historical""" game is so far off the mark from other people's games that I just. straight up can't make things other people would like without downloading a bunch of shit.

[asimplevampire]

4t2 EP04 Catch of the Day Food Stand as functional food stand

Another food stand conversion! A thing about me is I love my sims being able to eat on community lots but I don't always love sending them to restaurants. So food stands are really my jam and I always want more.

These stands were previously converted by @tony-veis as a fish kiosk here, but I decided to convert them again this time as a functional food stand.

These stands also don't require any custom foods. Sims will be able to purchase all of the seafood related maxis dishes, as seen in the pie menu image above.

The dishes are:

Bass with Squash

Blackened Catfish

Lime Seared Prawns

Char-broiled Catfish

Salmon

Stuffed Rainbow Trout

Stuffed Golden Trout

Lobster Thermidor

I've also included a recolor to the "Foodies Seafood Sampler" food stand (the shrimp one). In Sims 4 they're two separate stands selling different things but it's the same mesh so— recolor!

Credit and thanks to @jacky93sims for the food stand this was cloned from.

download @ mediafire

@sims4t2bb

** tutorial to add your own foods: I personally plan on adding custom seafood related dishes to this for my own game, but wanted a "maxis only" base too. If you want to add your own dishes to this you can follow this tutorial. Just mind that in this particular food stand the “Create New Object Instance” appears three times, not twice like the tutorial says. The first instance of “Create New Object” is for the plate's GUID. If the food you're adding uses the default maxis plate then you don't have to change the GUID here. The other two “Create New Object Instance” toward the bottom are for the food GUID and both must be changed to the GUID of the food you're adding in the way the linked tutorial describes.

[asimplevampire]

A quick-ish guide to the culture of The Sims 2 modding community.

Are you new to The Sims 2 community? Are you coming from more modern games, either in The Sims franchise itself or other contemporary games? Are you excited to start your #brand and become a #simfluencer and post your #earlyaccesscontent to support your #sidehustle?

Have a seat, then! Let's chat.

Hello, friend! My name's Pooklet. I've been playing since 2004 and creating since 2007. I'm by no means an expert in most forms of content creation itself, but I've been around since the heyday of The Sims 2, I've watched how community opinions have shifted (or not) since practically the beginning, and I'm hoping to give you a basic outline of the community culture that you can expect to encounter as a newcomer.

A very brief history of Sims 2 content monetization:

People have been trying to monetize content since there has been content to monetize, all the way back in the days of The Sims 1. We tend to call them "pay creators" and their websites "paysites." Some big names in this arena include The Sims Resource (their free-with-ads model is a relatively recent development, which is why you will find people to this day calling them T$R), PeggySims, Newsea, and many others that you can find on this handy website:

Paysites Must Be Destroyed

Now, if you have a glance at that website, you might be saying to yourself:

"But, that's illegal! I own the copyright to my custom content!"

Alas, no! Due to the wording of the End User License Agreement for The Sims 2, no custom content creator owns their creations for this game (or The Sims 1, or 3, or 4, for that matter, but we're talking about 2 right now). It all belongs to EA at the end of the day, and by installing and playing the game, you have agreed to these terms. Which means you have no individual, protected copyright, and it is perfectly legal for someone to download your paywalled content and then reupload it for free for others to enjoy. And they will!

Furthermore,

You are not making anything alone.

Everything from modding resources, to tutorials, to the mods required to fix disastrous glitches in the game code and make it playable at all, to the third party programs used to make any and all custom content, such as SimPE—all of these have been provided to you for free by other creators, many of whom have a usage policy that asks that people not use their freely-provided tools to make a profit. Although no one can be forced to follow a creator's policy, it is generally considered good manners to not try to make a profit off of someone else's free work. And if you are using these tools to make paywalled content, that's exactly what you're doing.

Pay creators have been ignoring these policies since the beginning of time, and so free creators likewise ignore their policies against sharing their paywalled content. Pay creators have also tried lots of different ways to keep their content exclusive, everything from trying to track leaks with slightly altered files to actively filling their content with malicious code. It has never worked.

Free creators have always found a way around these barriers. In fact, it's taken as something of a challenge to undermine monetization efforts. As you can see from Paysites Must Be Destroyed, there are entire teams of players devoted to reuploading paywalled content for free.

A culture of sharing.

The Sims 2 is something of a time capsule. At 20 years old, it predates a lot of the hyper-capitalist hustle culture that has infested every creative hobby. It is from a time when monetization was an outlier rather than the norm, and a much maligned outlier at that. This attitude has persisted for 20 years. Believe me when I say, you won't be the combo breaker. Especially now, given that The Sims 2 is not the most contemporary in the series and the community has shrunk considerably, down to the people who have either been here for a very long time, or newcomers that understand the community culture.

Also, it's just kind of not a great idea in general to try to make money off of a 20-year-old game with a pretty small community?

Like, I get that The Sims 4 is really saturated with pay creators and it's hard to get a foot in the door. I get that you might look at The Sims 2 and think that the small pond will give you room to be a big fish. It won't. You might get a handful of people willing to pay for your content, but at least one of those people will be resharing it for free.

Paywalls vs. optional donations.

Okay, so hopefully you now understand why people don't like it when you put content behind a paywall. But what about those Ko-fi and Paypal donation links you sometimes see at the bottom of people's downloads? Why is that okay, but a locked Patreon tier isn't? Well, because they're voluntary. No one is obligated to pay for that content to be able to download and use it. It's just a way for someone who does have a little extra cash to basically "tip" a creator whose content they like. You have no way of knowing whether the person who posts those links is actually receiving any donations. And that's kind of the point. Whether or not they receive any donations, they are still sharing their content, because they enjoy the hobby of making and sharing content.

"I can't make a living off of that!"

No, you can't. Because that's not what we do here. That is not part of our community culture for all the above reasons. If you want to make a reliable income off of your hobby, you're going to need to get a different hobby. Try Second Life! That is a community that actively encourages monetization. The Sims 4 allows for "early access" monetization. There's options out there for you, if what you want is to make a profit off of your creations for a game.

"Fine, what about monetized link forwarding services?"

Link forwarding services historically have malicious trackers or viruses embedded. People will also strip those and provide direct links to each other. Or they just won't download your content.

"What if I want to make YouTube videos of someone else's written tutorials and I enable ad revenue on them?"

Personally, I still think that's a dick move. I love video tutorials, I'm a very visual learner myself, and although you might feel entitled to compensation for reciting the steps of someone else's tutorial into a microphone and then editing and uploading the video, you're still monetizing someone else's freely-provided content. I would consider this an 'ask permission' scenario, one in which you tell the person, explicitly, that you will be making ad revenue off their work. If they're fine with that, then you're good! (For the record, I'm not fine with that.)

"What if—"

Look, no one can stop you from trying to monetize your content, or worse, someone else's content. But you will have the exact same arc as every pay creator who came before you: your efforts will be undermined at every turn, your reception in the greater community will be chilly at best, and it will become a battle between you and the folks resharing free reuploads of your content until any fun you initially had making content is gone.

"The steady erosion of every known social safety net beneath the crippling weight of end-stage, line-goes-up capitalism and the yawning abyss of poverty over which I am dangling has imbued me with such anxiety that I cannot engage with a hobby that precludes monetization. I am exhausted. I know no other way."

I get it, friend! I have lived in poverty all my life. I do not begrudge the impulse to find a way to make passive income off of your every waking moment. Increasingly, it seems like that is the only way to survive! Unfortunately, you will not be able to do that with this specific community. We know that we have something special here, having resisted monetization's encroach for so long, which makes us fight all the more viciously to maintain it. You are entitled to try to find ways to supplement your income, just not here. Personally, I consider that a feature, not a bug.

Bonus Round: Remember, That's Not Just Yours!

I said it earlier, but I want to reiterate: you are not making any TS2 CC alone. You are making it with tools, resources, knowledge and code that people have provided on the condition that they not be used for pay content.

To use myself as an example, "my" hair textures are a blend of resources provided by other creators. Namely, Nouk's original hair texture was edited by Vintage D, which I then further edited over the years, using parts by the creators Ephemera and Helga. It would be extremely shit of me to say "well, I think that the time that I put into my edit is worth money, so I'm charging for it" when the edits that I made would not exist without the work of those people. And it continues on down the line with edits that other people have made of my texture blends and color actions, and the content they make with them.

(If you see someone charging for these, btw, lemme know. I'd love to have a talk with them.)

In closing,

The knowledge base, the resources, the coding required to make any and all working content for The Sims 2 has been compiled for 20 years. Please understand, I'm not trying to denigrate anyone's creativity when I say: you cannot bring anything wholly "new" to TS2 CC-making, something that uses no one else's resources or programs, something you can point to and say "no one helped me with that. I did it all on my own. It is my property." Nor should you aspire to! The fun of The Sims 2 community is to share and share alike, to credit each other for our contributions, to hype each other up and iterate on shared works and resources. We've been doing it for 20 years, and hopefully we'll be doing it for many more! Wanting to be a #simfluencer is utterly antithetical to the community culture. No one is influencing anyone else. You need to leave that shit at the door if you want to be invited in.

TL;DR:

Don't show up to the commie circle-jerk trying to charge for handjobs. We're already giving them to each other for free, and nothing about your wrist technique is special enough to justify the cost.

[asimplevampire]

🛸 Crop Circles ! 🌾

🌌 I was decorating my StrangeTown remake and something was missing.... I remembered a neighborhood deco I used to have a while back. The Crop Circles made by TheNinthWaveSims

orignal Crop Circles by TheNinthWaveSims and @curiousb terrains swatch

🏜️ I decided to recolor those Circles with @curiousb terrain paints. This allows for a wide range of colors for better effects in your neighborhood decor. They go quite well on Maxis fields, but unfortunately not on the ones by @greatcheesecakepersona or @pixeldolly ones. 🌱

📝 I gave them a proper description and also made them peaceable everywhere, even under water ! 🌊

💾 DOWNLOAD SFS - Mediafire

[asimplevampire]

I will grow up today at 6 PM. It's time to plan a party and buy a birthday cake!

[asimplevampire]

I need another project like I need a hole in my head, but I'm taking @gutosimmer 's Early Pleasantview and medievalizing it because I'm so sick of trying to get Wildwood set back up.

Plus then I'll have something new to post to the Keep.

[asimplevampire]

[asimplevampire]

So if you like historical simming at all- and this includes retrofuture stuff like '50s Strangetown- you should check out PBK's Summer Secret Santa, and maybe sign up if you get the chance! They're more fun with more people.

[asimplevampire]

30 Celda RCs of @sunmoon-starfactory 's Cask Shelf

As you all know, I've basically stopped using "realistic" textures in my medieval Sims 2 game. But I wanted to keep using Sun and Moon's incredible pieces. This is the first step towards me being able to do that: 30 recolours of Sun and Moon's Cask Shelf. (And, thus, everything repoed to it.)

30 colours, taken from @pooklet's Naturals, @withlovefromsimtown's Neural Network colours, and @puppycrowrecolours 's palette. Full swatch under the cut.

Also, the Tonberry was caged by a professional. Don't try this at home, kids.

DOWNLOAD (SFS)

[asimplevampire]

Beck's Washtubs: Cel-Shaded Edition

I've defaulted and recoloured Beck's Laundry Tub to match my cel-shaded fantasy game.

Since I don't use 'realistic' textures, I altered the tub mesh to use the cel shaded ones by default. If that's not your idea of a good time, then delete the file marked "DEF".

Five RCs, in various shades of Pooklet and Maxis wood.

There's not much else to say; it's a washtub. Use it. (Or don't.)

DOWNLOAD (SFS)

[asimplevampire]

This is just One Guy's Onion and you don't have to listen, but honestly, the apocalypse aesthetic without the challenge still works for a BACC if you don't want to do the grindy tedious part.

as someone who used to be super into reading apocalypse challenges, everything getting easier and easier as time goes on can be a bit anticlimactic while actually playing it. as much as it makes sense for things to get better over time, the most apocalypse-y part of the challenge is mostly spent on 3x speed while your founder sleeps and works. lifting medicine first in particular turns it into like. okay what if we played a legacy where nobody does anything except play chess and eat rotten hot dogs in an ugly house.

(i have good things to say about them too, but you did ask to be talked out of it, so)

hahahaha, I appreciate the voice of reason here!!! I was actually thinking of doing military first, since i wanna use zombies, but I can see how the career grind would get boring after a while

my ideal challenge is probably some kinda BACC/apocalypse hybrid tbh, with multiple starting families and maybe incorperating the sun&moon sets... but I already have my MCC and BACC hoods! i think an apocalypse challence partially appeals for the aesthetic and partially bc it feels like a more "simple" challenge in comparison 😅 I'll probably go ahead and decorate a hood lol, maybe doing the building will get it out of my system 😂

[asimplevampire]

Close encounters of the vampiric kind.

Previous / Next

My deepest gratitude to @simsdaughters for making me such a horrible old bitch (affectionate) and helping me workshop insults! Additional thanks to @asimplevampire and @crvptydgaming for Jude and Eurydamos.

Lilith: You’ll love this place. It’s upscale. Exclusive. Everyone there is either already a vampire, wants to become one, or wants to fuck one.

Elizabetha: Yoohoo! Lilith!

Lilith: [groans] Oh, God.

Helena: Holy shit, is that-

Lilith: [to Helena] Ignore her.

Elizabetha: Lilith, darling, I can tell when I’m being avoided. [narrows eyes] What on earth are you wearing? These hideous scraps of fabric modern humans call fashion leave nothing to the imagination!

Lilith: That’s the point, Elizabetha, and it proves particularly effective while on the prowl.

Elizabetha: Refined ladies do not prowl. They have servants fetch their meals for them.

Lilith: A pity you couldn’t find anyone to clean you up after. The quality of service is appalling.

Elizabetha: Oh, you have a shadow! Dressed in only slightly less scandalous rags! How charming! [to Helena] What’s your name, dearie?

Helena: I, uh-

Lilith: Leave her alone! And while you’re at it, why don’t you run off and let those mothballs you call friends know she’s strictly off-limits?

Elizabetha: [shouting] I find it hard to believe your brother permits you to parade yourself around like a common tramp.

Lilith: I don’t need my brother’s permission to do anything, you antiquated hag!

-

Helena: Uh… Lilith?

Lilith: [impatiently] What now?

Helena: My memory may be failing me, but I swear I once took a comparative literature class with that man.

Lilith: Ah, yes, Professor Jude Wilwright. The bane of UBrite’s existence, having yet to produce a manuscript of his closely guarded yet allegedly revelatory thesis on William Shakespeare’s true identity.

Helena: [incredulously] Another vampire. Right under my nose this whole time. Of course, I only ever saw him once or twice. His TAs ran everything.

Lilith: That brat beside him is Eurydamos. Wilwright’s attempting a biography of his Ancient Tartosan adolescence, without much progress, it appears. But what else could he expect from a surly immortal teenager? No more gawking, Helena. We’ve got better places to be.

[asimplevampire]

Awww thank you for tagging me, I'm sorry it took One Brazillion Years

(...I need a haircut...)

I'm tagging @withlovefromsimtown , @nappe-plays-the-sims , and anyone else who wants to!

Did this cute piccrew thingy, tagged by @bool-prop. She's piccrewme lol.

Tagging @geminipixels @mookymilksims @bartoszsims3 @bellakenobi @elvgreen @yooniesim and whoever else lol

Edit: https://picrew.me/en/image_maker/2069970

[asimplevampire]

Is this "where would you like to live", or "where would you actually live?"

I voted Belladonna Cove, but Sims 2 doesn't really have a town that's equivalent to my Beloved Hellhole. I live in a Rust Belt city that's got a great cultural scene, but is half gentrified hipster land and half neighbourhoods with more churches than grocery stores. BDC is the closest BG neighbourhood to that, but it still feels a bit too California for me, y'know?

If I had to pick one of the BG neighbourhoods... probably Downtown, tbh. I love Strangetown but I don't think the climate would agree with me, and I love Veronaville but I don't want to get beat up by a ginger.

[asimplevampire]

...Wow, someone actually tried to start discourse with me about my Chris Hatch post.

Buddy. You must be new here.

[asimplevampire]

Experimenting with @crispsandkerosene SimStandardMaterial shader to get "sequins effect" and omg it's so beautiful I'm crying