poeticallydifferent

[poeticallydifferent]

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.)

edit: more of of my thoughts on monetized youtube videos over here.

"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.

[poeticallydifferent]

does anyone else really hate the new trend of patreon creators locking free content behind the membership feature so you have to "join" their patreon just to download stuff a piece of CC?

it's so obnoxious. why are you throwing extra hurdles in the way of people who want to download your stuff? i can't imagine it actually drives more people to sign up for paid tiers. I think most people will click the link, go "oh I guess it's paywalled" and then close the tab, and then the haters (me) will click the tab, go "oh, that's annoying, I'm not going to download it now" and then close the tab

all it's going to do is deter people who might otherwise have downloaded or reblogged your stuff. it makes no sense no matter how you slice it.

[poeticallydifferent]

Besties Me and My Cat Set for The Sims 2

These are 4to2 conversions from SixamCC, low poly. This set contains all you can see in the pictures, walls and floors too. All recolors and a collection file are included.

For the cat condos you can use the “One More Cat Slot Please” by Episim

DOWNLOAD HERE

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If you want to support my creations, you can send me a donation with Paypal or Ko-fi ☕ If you want to ask for a Paid Commission, HERE you can find more details. Thank you ❤️

[poeticallydifferent]

The Wizard's Study

[poeticallydifferent]

today i have a 4t2 conversion and full body mashup of @serenity-cc 's joan jacket and @sentate 's alanis jeans for you guys :)

this outfit is for adult females, is enabled for everyday + outerwear and has all morphs included. the shoes are @kalux-sims conversion of the boots from moschino stuff. there are 10 swatches.

download: SFS / MF

i hope you enjoy this conversion :)))

[poeticallydifferent]

[ts2] Popped Color Curtains

Can I interest you in some curtains? They come in 15 polkadot colors, originally made by teekalu for ts4. Love the colorplatte :) Meshes by simsinlowspace included! Enjoy! 🥹

Credit: Simsinlowspace, teekalu.

💜DOWNLOAD💜 - sfs (3,58mb)

[poeticallydifferent]

This top named SP64 CK006 Buttoned Blouse is so cute ❤️ I hope you like it too ❤️

🐞 for teens and adults

🐞 with all morphs

🐞 categorized as casual top

🐞 all original Maxis colors + normals

🐞 all files are compressed

You can choose between standalone AF and TF version or TF Repod version for which you need AF packages 🙂.

Standalone AF version simfileshare/ mediafire

Standalone TF version simfileshare/ mediafire

Repod TF version simfileshare/ mediafire

Credits: EAxis

[poeticallydifferent]

Various Pet Defaults - Part 1

Pet Bed Basket Expensive

Replaced with chrissy6930's mesh edit of said pet bed (scroll down) and re-mapped by me to use 512x512 textures. Existing recolors will break unfortunately, but I couldn't even find many to begin with. I did include 8 recolors (some of them are remakes of windkeeper's (T$R) recolors). They all have a dirty state, it's not as dirty (/turquoise) as Maxis' but it's something at least. I will include my .psd for this in part 2.

Maxis: polycount: 2784, texture size: 1024x512

My default: polycount: 1294, texture size: 512x512

Pet Food

I dislike the original pet food texture, but I liked the one from this upload by @beautifulnerdkitty. I edited it slightly and turned it into a default replacement.

Note: custom pet bowls might not use my default, since I think they often have their own?

Bon Voyage Bone

The bone sims can dig up from bon voyage is identical to the chew bone from pets ep (but a separate object completely), so I replaced it with the bone from castaway. I re-mapped it to use 140x100px texture (yes!) and I also made it buyable (you can find it under misc - pets) but this edit is in a separate file. If you install the buyable file in your downloads folder, it will have a custom star and can be deleted in-game, and doing so will corrupt your game. If you decide to install the buyable file as well, be careful not to delete the bone in-game!

Maxis made a custom description for this bone, but only in English. I fixed this and now the description is available in all languages, courtesy of Google translate (the Swedish translation I'm confident in but please let me know if any translation needs fixing). They also broke the shadow, which I've successfully restored and edited to fit the new mesh.

Maxis: polycount: 672, texture size: 64x32

My default: polycount: 452, texture size: 140x100 (original was 512x512)

Edited CC

All of the edited custom downloads I mention below, I've re-used their files so you have to choose between my versions or their original!

I re-mapped @deedee-sims' pet pillows to match my new 512x512 textures.

I swapped mesh on hmiller61615's dog chew treat, repo'd it to Maxis' treat texture and also made a version using BV's animations to get rid of the squeaky sound. The file ending with _pets is using the animations from pets with the squeaky sound. The file with _bv at the end is using the animations from bon voyage, with a "boney" sound (and therefore requires bon voyage). Choose one of the files!

hmiller61615's original: polycount: 672, texture size: 64x32

My edit: polycount: 160, texture size: repo'd to Maixs' texture (64x32).

I edited one of the bones by @vampirekiss6661 from here (scroll down). I made it smaller and a tad thicker and gave it a shadow. I made a bv version of this as well, choose one file; either pets or bv!

Polycount: 402, texture size: 128x256

I also re-mapped, resized + edited the textures of ats2's pet bowl & recolor, converted by @beautifulnerdkitty's here. I removed the sheen, repo'd it to Maxis' resources when possible, and gave it a dirty state. My .psd is included if you'd like to make more recolors.

Polycount: 482, texture size: 256x256 (original was 1024x1024)

Recommend Mods

@episims' no rotating pet bowl fix (thank god for that) and Aaron's finicky pet fix (ad-free direct link, SFS mirror).

My pet bed default is required for my recolors to work, and the bv bone default requires bon voyage, otherwise nothing in this dowload is dependent on anything so you can pick and choose what you want. As usual, no mip-maps and everything has been compressed to reduce file size. You can choose between merged or separate recolors (which are clearly named).

Do let me know if anything is wonky or you stumble upon any problems. I am so sorry for the long post, this download wasn't supposed to be more than just two defaults (well, technically it is only 2 defaults included here but I kept getting sidetracked as you can see).. and I have so many more I'll have to make a part 2 (cats are not forgotten)!

DOWNLOAD: SFS | MEGA

No MTS you might ask, and yeah sadly. I'm done uploading to MTS, the upload-wizard completely hates me haha. I've lost all my text more times than I want to admit and keep in mind I have to write [b] and [url=] manually over there. From now on I'll only upload to my tumblr. No offense to MTS, it's a great site and I love it dearly.

Credits: chrissy6930 for the edited mesh, @deedee-sims for the pillows, SpaceDoll for their dirty overlay, hmiller61615 for the chew treat, @vampirekiss6661 for the bone, @cluedosims for the cluedo metal resource, architechture_th for the wood texture, chirokung for the paw texture, aroundthesims2/sandra and @beautifulnerdkitty for the pet bowl, someone(?) for the hyena bone converted from castaway, and lasty, Maxis.

[poeticallydifferent]

MeltedPenguin's Honeydew CC Pack is lovely and so is this dress. Available for CF, has fat morph, and comes in all the original colors. The sneakers are from Throwback Fit Kit if I remember correctly.

4t2 MeltedPenguin Jaidyn Dress CF [ Download: SFS / Box ]

Credits: Maxis, @meltedpenguincc

[poeticallydifferent]

So, I kinda had this idea.. I really loved this default that Rudhira did with ufbodysundress with DeeDee-Sims World Collide dress, and when I saw Antoniko's default of the sundress with matching the swatches from the game dress, I knew what I HAD to do! I swapped out the shoes with pforest's sandal edit from longdresshug, because it's a sundress and I felt it needed sandals.. anyway lol so here we are. Also following Antoniko, I changed the navypiping dress to one with flowers instead of babies, because ew.

Because this might get kinda long, more info and downloads below the cut!

Ok, so where to start?

You can download this as custom and/or default.

tf-af

custom tf standalone OR tf files repo'd to af

if you download the standalone files, the shoes are all repo'd to the celadonvase recolor, so you can choose whatever recolors you want, but you MUST KEEP that one.

if you download the defaults, you can choose between tf only, yf/af only, or tf/yf/af merged.

all ages have appropriate morphs

all files have been clearly named, compressed, shoe sounds changed, and tool-tipped.

everyday/formal categories

Download:

Custom:

custom AF/Alt

custom TF Standalone/Alt

custom TF Repo'd/Alt

Default:

default YF/AF/Alt

default TF/Alt

default UF/Alt

I hope I've explained everything clearly, I'm not the best at that, so I hope it makes sense. These are working in my game, but if you run into any issues, please let me know!

credits: EA/Maxis, @deedee-sims, @antoninko, @pforestsims, @rudhira

[poeticallydifferent]

If you see this on your dashboard, reblog this, NO MATTER WHAT and all your dreams and wishes will come true.

[poeticallydifferent]

Happy Valentines day! 💖

I made two things! I hope you enjoy! 😊

Heart Dress

This dress is a mashup of Lovelace's 3t2 Hi-Low Sparkle Dress, Skell's Heart Belt Dress, and Keoni's 3t2 Anubis Serene Breeze Dress (edited by FlowerMisty and Nekosayuri). Shoes on the fullbody version are by Sentate. Phew!

For adults and teens, they have the appropriate morphs. I only made 4 recolors, but here's the PSD for recoloring. You can choose if you want the TF files repo'd to the AF files, or not :)

Download Heart Dress Repo'd - Alternate

Download Heart Dress Standalone - Alternate

Download Heart Dress Top-Only Repo'd - Alternate

Download Heart Dress Top-Only Standalone - Alternate

4t2 EP01 Hearts Earrings

Found these cute earrings that (I think) weren't converted before! From teens to elders, they come in the original 9 colors. You can choose if you want them in the glasses section or as BV jewelry :)

Download EP01 Hearts as glasses - Alternate

Download EP01 Hearts as jewelry - Alternate

[poeticallydifferent]

4t2 Trillyke -Moonwalk Pajama 

Hey guys! (´,,•ω•,,)♡ I found this pajama here and thought it was incredibly cute! Also, I was missing a pajama like this in my collection. :D I hope you like it just as much as I do! If you have any issues, please let me know. ⸜(⸝⸝⸝´꒳`⸝⸝⸝)⸝

I decided to make it a full outfit instead of separating it into a top and bottom. Somehow, I like it better this way. (=^‥^=)

4t2 Trillyke -Moonwalk Pajama  [Original Top + Bottom]

Age: Teen | Adult | Elder

Category: Sleepwear

Includes all morphs

15 colors 

I hope you like it  :)

---- Download ----

Credit: @trillyke (Link)

[poeticallydifferent]

February 4th, 2000 - 2025 25 Years of The Sims

[poeticallydifferent]

It's like EA revived Sims 2 using the Ressurect-O-Nomitron but only paid less so now it has risen from abandonware as a zombie.

[poeticallydifferent]

today i have a 4t2 conversion and mashup of @serenity-cc ’s avery sweater and naomi jeans for you guys :)

this outfit is for teen and adult females (the teen textures are repoed to the adult ones. all shoe textures are repoed to swatch 1 for adult females) and has all morphs included. there are 20 swatches

download: SFS / MF

i hope you enjoy this conversion :))))))

[poeticallydifferent]

4t2 Trillyke - Bite-Me Cargo Pants

Hey everyone! @poeticallydifferent had the wonderful idea to convert the Bite-Me Cargo Pants by Trillyke, and I absolutely loved the suggestion—so I went ahead and did it! ( ´ ω ` ) I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖° If you run into any issues, feel free to reach out! 

4t2 Trillyke -Bite-Me Cargo Pants [Original]

Shoes: Grunge Revamp Shoes [Original]

Age: Teen | Adult | Elder Category: Everyday 

Includes all morphs

20 colors 

I hope you like it  :)

---- Download ----

Credit: @trillyke (Link)