katsurinssims

[katsurinssims]

@katsurinssims Formal Kimonos For Everyone

Toddler thru Elder and all genders, every Sim gets formal kimonos! Some of these were already done by Katsu but they weren't repo and AEM were on a different mesh. The meshes I used work with the repo wizard and it was faster to make all new files than to repo Katsu's manually, plus the files are a little bit smaller when you use the Wizard. Set as Everyday and Formal. All the files pull textures from Katsu's AF kimonos, which are included. Meshes by Skell, Mijutaro, and Magical-Girl-Sandbox are included

Download - Alternate

[katsurinssims]

@katsurinssims Pushbike Top for TF

Set as Everyday and Gym, repo'd to the AF tops, mesh by @rudhira is included. I also repo'd Katsu's fullbody TF files and deleted the normals because they were empty, AF fullbody also included because the TF pulls textures from those. But you should check out Katsu's download if you want the skirts for AF

Download - Alternate

[katsurinssims]

@katsurinssims Cutie 1993 For CU

Top-only dress for kids, comes in the 3 textures shown. I also repo'd Katsu's AF top-only and TF full body outfits, everything now pulls textures from the AF full body outfits. Everything's in the download including top-only meshes by Fig and Spacedoll

Download - Alternate

[katsurinssims]

I always do a double take whenever I see my CC in the wild, but of all the places, I wasn't expecting to see it in a Lovely Lor video, aha

To be fair this dress set upload on MTS is probably the first actually lolita thing you'll see if you Google 'lolita sims 2 download', and it's what I see used most, even though I've made nicer things than this, my very first mesh.

I actually met Lor a few years back briefly, and we've been in the community for roughly similar amounts of time, though I doubt she'll see this. Just wanted to put out that I noticed, and check my EGL CC tag if you want this, and objectively better (thanks to experience), lolita fashion themed CC (^_<)〜☆

[katsurinssims]

Hey everyone it seems there a malicious individual trying to hack the sims cc community again and fill it with malware you need to stay vigilant as a creator and a downloader so

i have some tips for both to stay safe while downloading:

1- sims cc file extension is always .Package never download anything that is .exe

2- do not auto unpack zip files and rar files into your mods folder directly, open each zip or rar individually check the file extensions and drag them to your mods folder one by one

3- the only mods that have a .ts4script extension are ones that affect gameplay or how the game works, understand that if you are downloading cas or bb items you shouldn't have a .ts4script file

4- if you are downloading gameplay mods that do have .ts4script make sure that A) the creator hasn't announced on their pages that its infected B) you are downloading from a link provided by the creator of the mods themselves not something off of google or a link you got sent and make sure dates of upload match dated of announcements

5- if the mod or cc creator has retired and hasn't posted for a while LOOK AT THE DATES OF THE UPLOAD if it has been "updated recently" after the creator has left the community its most likely re-uploaded by a hacker and infected

6- download mod gaurd by Twisted mexi and keep it updated and keep your windows defender or malware detector Program up to date and always running do not disable it

7- make sure everything you download comes from a direct link from the cc creator, in this day and age do not trust link shortners, adfly, linkverse, etc get the universal bypass extension and ublock extension to stay safe but genuinely NEVER CLICK ON THOSE no matter how much the creator reassures you its safe it. is. NOT.

8- this is more of a general saftey precaution but, create a system restore point weekly before you run the game with new mods that way if anything happens you could have a chance to restore your windows to an earlier date before you downloaded anything.

9- BACK UP YOUR SHIT im serious right now either weekly or monthly put your files somewhere safe like a usb a storage card a hard drive even an online cloud if you dont have any of the previous.

10- files you should back up are your media from games and media everything else, any mods, games saves, work files, passwords, saved bookmarks, any documents txt files word files pdfs, links you saved, brushes or actions for Photoshop if you have any, any digital bills or certificates if you have any, and keep a physical list of all programs you have installed and where you installed them from

11- turn on any 2 factor authentication and security measures for any account you have

12- google and firefox have the option to check your paswords and emails against any data leaks USE THIS FEATURE and change any leaked passwords

13- regularly check your logged in sessions to make sure all the logged in devices or computers are yours and log out any that aren't and any old devices or unused sessions do this for every website and app you have an account on if available

14- change your passwords often. I know this is a hassle i know its hard to come up with new passwords but changing your passwords every few months will help you against anything mention previously that wasn't detected.

15- and as a cc creator check your cc and the accounts you host cc on and its uplaod and update dates make sure nothing has been changed without your permission :(

16- generally try not to get swept up in the "i must get it" fever you do not need to "shop" for mods weekly or monthly you do not need to download everything by that one creator you do not need to download new cc everytime you want to make a sim, im guilty of this so i know how hard it is to resist but take a breath and think "do i want this or do i need it" before downloading.

These are prevention methods i cant claim they are 100% will prevent any hacking but its better to be safe than sorry and these do keep you safe so

Brought to you by someone who has had their laptop ruined and data leaked from downloading cc once upon a time

[katsurinssims]

Download: SFS / Mega

The shorts from Maxis’s afbodycorsettankshorts, separated by Trapping and edited and retextured by Gwenke here, mashed up with @pforestsims’s Laced Suede Shoes. Textures by Maxis, Gwenke and PF, plus some lace taken from the leggings in this post by @mrs-mquve-cc. Polycount: 1,524.

They have fat morphs, AF has a preg morph. They come in 6 colors. You can have TF and EF repositoried to AF or standalone.

~

@katsurinssims​ turned 4 of the TF ones into default replacements for tfbottomminishorts here.

[katsurinssims]

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.

[katsurinssims]

Downloads for Diversity: Requests Open

I'm joining up with @equinoxts2 and opening up mod requests. Here's vir's post about it, but below is basically the jist :]

So here I am opening mod requests. The idea: Anyone who sends me proof that they've donated to support any LGBTQ+ charity, can also request that I make them something within my skillset. In return, I will put my best effort into making that mod or CC, and will share it for free with all simmers once it's finished.

My skillset includes: Hair retextures (in literally any system and colours), default retextures (just retexturing already existing defaults, I don't make defaults from scratch), retexturing and recolouring clothes/accessories/objects, making somewhat realistic (and fantasy) Sims, making posters like this. Basically anything I've ever released, I can do. Except for TS4 conversions :D

Sims 2 only !!!!

Donation can be as big or as small as you need. I recommend giving to your local region. Lord knows they need all the support they can get. <3

[katsurinssims]

Downloads for Diversity: Requests Opening

I have an announcement to make!

Reporting that one MTS upload, and seeing the massive response to my angry simblr post, has led me to do a lot of thinking over the last few days. One of those thoughts led me to this. Some of you may remember @fireflowersims in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, offering to make content for anyone who donated to help indigenous peoples get the care they needed - and I remembered that, and I was inspired.

So here I am opening mod requests. The idea: Anyone who sends me proof that they've donated to support any LGBTQ+ charity, can also request that I make them something within my skillset. In return, I will put my best effort into making that mod or CC, and will share it for free with all simmers once it's finished.

My skillset includes: Modding and code poking (the big one); default replacements; simple recolouring and even simpler retexturing; running actions over Volatile bases; adding morphs and doing bodyshape/age/gender conversions with the aid of WSO files; texture referencing. Please note I create for TS2 only.

I would also like to encourage other simmers who might have different talents, or create for different Sims games, to join me in doing this. If anyone does choose to participate, the tag "downloads for diversity" is the one to follow.

Edit: You can message me here, or on Garden of Shadows or Plumb Bob Keep (I am Equinox on both those sites). I'll respond as soon as I am able to. :)

[katsurinssims]

Similar goes for preg morphs, because WSOs can often make them look a bit squared off. My method here is to use the WSOs to get the base shape, then go in and manually reshape according to how clothes should lay on a body- this is quicker and easier than making the morphs manually, but also more accurate than just using the WSO and calling it a day, aha. Then I have a test lot on a test hood with just sims and the sim blender, I change their fitness and/or make them pregnant, then get them to do a few actions with different kinds of animations, pausing at various points to see if any holes open up or rogue vertices. Takes about 10 mins, just because my load time isn't very long, yey ^^ good practice for mesh making!

I really wish that everyone who makes CC would test their stuff on dark skintones. I see so much stuff that I can't use on sims with dark skin because it has a little white edge to it that doesn't show clearly when used on light skinned sims.

It's not just a Body Shop thing either, and this is a fairly recent (last couple of years) piece of CC. This is still a problem.

If you recognize this top, please don't mention the creator. I'm not posting this to shame anyone, but to raise awareness. I've found white edges like this on clothes and makeup from a whole bunch of creators. Some of my older stuff probably does this too. I don't remember exactly when I started intentionally testing and previewing my CC on sims with various skintones, but I believe it should be a common practice.

[katsurinssims]

Pride Month Gift Part 2

I, uh, meant to do this ages ago when I uploaded the flags. Oops... Anyway here's some addons to @2fingerswhiskey's Pride Facepaint.

9 new versions which include Nonbinary, Agender, Genderqueer, Genderfluid, Gay MLM, Aromantic, Polysexual, Omnisexual, and Aroace. Aromantic was already in the original upload, but I've never seen the flag he used before so I decided to make one with the standard colour scheme.

Previews below; some with headcanons, some that I don't headcanon but I can definitely see it fitting. Don't be weird on the notes.

Pairs well with @veronavillequiltingbee's Lesbian recolour. :]

DOWNLOAD (MF) & DOWNLOAD (SFS)

🖤🤎❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

[katsurinssims]

The Lanzarinis

Oh, in case you were wondering why I stop posting 😒

[katsurinssims]

bouncing off of @goingsimcrazy, but reblogging rather than replying so ppl can see:

Alphas have a bit of blurred edge that serves as an area of shadow so the clothing looks like it's standing away from the skin, but if it's filled with light colour it makes the shadow not look right on dark skin tones; but the thing is it's not something you'd know about when you just start recolouring clothes, and even if you do know about it it's super easy to forget! That results in the light or slightly glowing looking edge on a variety of skin tones.

The best way to avoid this is to mask off all areas of a texture that aren't actively taken up by texture, and add a 100% black fill layer. This helps with compression, with unused areas being solid colour, but also ensures the best look for shadows on all skin tones! ヾ( ˃ᴗ˂ )◞ • *✰

Even some maxis clothing textures have this issue, it's very common to have. I didn't realise I was running into this issue for years, and even now I forget sometimes (though I forget a lot of things, thanks ADHD), usually I notice after finishing up a set of textures and just have to go back in and fix it, aha.

as to whether it's possible to have truly crisp alphas that don't bleed at all... that's probably a question for ppl who are more knowledgeable in texture compression than I ^^

I really wish that everyone who makes CC would test their stuff on dark skintones. I see so much stuff that I can't use on sims with dark skin because it has a little white edge to it that doesn't show clearly when used on light skinned sims.

It's not just a Body Shop thing either, and this is a fairly recent (last couple of years) piece of CC. This is still a problem.

If you recognize this top, please don't mention the creator. I'm not posting this to shame anyone, but to raise awareness. I've found white edges like this on clothes and makeup from a whole bunch of creators. Some of my older stuff probably does this too. I don't remember exactly when I started intentionally testing and previewing my CC on sims with various skintones, but I believe it should be a common practice.

[katsurinssims]

Download: SFS / Mega

TM conversions of Skell's Witch Costume mesh and recolors + @katsurinssims many beautiful recolors from here, here, here & here. They have fat & preg morphs. Polycount: 2,320.

Full swatches and details under the cut.

All recolors are standalone.

Skell's Witch Costume

Categorized as everyday.

~

Katsu's Retro Dresses

Categorized as everyday & formal.

'99 gingham (originals) ↓

'99 solid (originals) ↓

Cherry Soda dot & gingham (originals) ↓

Daisy Chain plaid (originals) ↓

~

Mesh turnaround

[katsurinssims]

My partner is a CRT hobbyist so can confirm that I regularly use his monitors and TVs as shelves even now ദ്ദി •⩊• )

You forget that for much of The Sims original run in the 2000s, it was viewed almost entirely on Cathode Ray Tube monitors. While The Sims 2 looks just as good on modern flatscreens, I think that the original Sims actually really benefits from the blur and curvature of CRTs due to it using sprites.

[katsurinssims]

@illenlan's Kimono Homongi for AM, TM, CU, & PU

I thought I had enough kimono and then I saw these, I love the flowers. Meshes are included, I got them from here and here. These were made with the Repository Wizard so Illenlan’s AF files are required, those use a mesh that came with the Holiday Party Pack, @letomills added a preg morph to it here. Set as Everyday, Formal, and Outerwear. You can get repo'd TF files in the original set

Download - Alternate

[katsurinssims]

Just remembered these exist, too, and I use them quite a lot, aha ദ്ദി •⩊• )

Ritaxis Alternative Asia recolours

8ksims' Noren Curtains with Rods Repo'd to BB's Niche

There are some lovely curtain recolors for this old mesh but the rod is simple enough I thought having it pull textures from the Niche would be better than having to recolor them individually. Guids and file names are the same as the originals so you can't have those if you use these, but that means any recolors you find for the curtain part will still work. I used the edited mesh from @katsurinssims so you'll find these in Deco->Curtains for $50. You have to use cheats to put them over windows and doorways but Sims will walk through them

Download - Alternate

You can get 8k's curtain recolors at the Graveyard. @katsurinssims has beautiful Onsen recolors here and Aelflaed did lovely Castaway textures here