(Oil lamp by Parsimonious, potted plant by Ohbehave, other somewhat repetitive deco by Maxis and me.)
Category: Hobbies -> Knowledge
Cost: $600 (wall version), $650 (standing version)
Poly Count: 
EPs Required: None – base game compatible (BG version)
Sometimes when I’m watching a film or a tv show, I come across something I know I’ll just have to make for the Sims. That’s what happened when I spotted Kirk’s black-and-chrome bookcase/display case in The Wrath of Khan – the thing was just screaming to be Simmified. So I did. 
Kirk’s TWOK Bookcase is a two-tile bookcase with thirteen slots – three on the top shelf, five on the middle shelf and five on the bottom shelf – where you can place things like deco, lamps and small electronics. As usual, you cycle through the slots with the M key on your keyboard.
The bookcase comes with three recolours for the frame and four for the stand:
It’s much more apparent in game than in the screenshots, but the frame recols are all really really shiny. Really. 
(This is all the fault of, I mean, thanks to Pixelhate @ MTS and his articles on the TXMT. Envcubes rock! 
)
But wait, there’s more! I made a wall-mounted version as well, just because. It’s slightly smaller than the standing one (but still two-tile) and therefore it “only” has nine slots – 3+5+1. It can be shifted up and down on the wall if you have Apartment Life (and get the FT version); just be aware that the animations for when the Sim retrieves or puts away a book won’t match the shelf height if you do.
Size comparison with Sim
Now, there are two variations of these bookcases: a repository variation where the wall bookcase is slaved to the standing one (i.e. gets its textures from the standing bookcase), and a stand-alone variation where the bookcases are independent of each other and both have their individual textures. Both versions use the same GUIDs, though, so only download one of them!
But don’t worry, it gets worse.
The .zip files below each contain two folders, one called “TWOK Bookcases BG” and another called “TWOK Bookcases FT”.
Only keep one folder! Which one you should keep depends on which expansion packs you have installed:
- If you have Free Time or Apartment Life installed, then keep the “TWOK Bookcases FT” folder and delete the other one.
- If you DON’T have Free Time or Apartment Life installed, then keep the “TWOK Bookcases BG” folder and delete the other one – even if you have any and all other EPs.
(If you don’t have FT/AL, but keep those versions of the bookcases in, then your game WILL crash. On the other hand, if you have FT/AL but keep the base-game versions, nothing will crash, but you’ll only get the base-game menus for studying and not the expanded Free Time ones.)
The .zip files also include a file called INSTALLATION.txt with the above instructions, just in case.
leefish said,
February 25, 2012 @ 02:15
Just snooping about (looking for star trek stories) and came across these – very nice indeed. I especially like that slide up and down the wall version.
NixNivis said,
February 25, 2012 @ 14:32
SnoopFish!
And thanks! I like that one, too (even though my meticulously positioned middle shelf no longer match the anims if you shift it). I’m still not sure if I shouldn’t have allowed object intersection with it after all, though; I decided against it because only really small items would work, bigger ones would cut into the frame and that looked weird… but then again, small items did work. So yeah, I might still go back and change it. Or not.
I also need to make quite a bit of stuff for the screenshots – like that TWOK uniform up there. (The model is a very young and very green Irina, BTW. It’s her fault I need those uniforms. 
) But that’s also coming along nicely, so that’s good.
Lots!
I’m still working on my next story; now it’s starting to come together and is moving along at a steady pace, but it’s been like pulling teeth with molasses. Or something.
But if you’re looking for Trek stories, there are two up there among my reading recs that I really want to recommend: The Yndara 5 Scandal and Shadows on the Horizon, both by ayshara.tel.rhuath over at SimTrek. (I’m using Yndara as the backdrop for my own story, BTW – some of us SimTrek writers have go our own little canon thing going on over there.) Picking Up the Pieces is another great story – it isn’t just well written, it has lots and lots of pretty pictures, too.