PSA: Alternate Download Links

With SFS still down and no news on when they might be back up, I’ve now added alternate Google Drive links to all my downloads (I hope).

In the future, all downloads will have an alternate link in addition to my usual download button. If anything, this experience has taught me how v. unwise it is to put all your eggs in one basket.

Edit, 24 Feb: SFS is back up, hooray, so now my download buttons work again. But as I said before, all future downloads will have alternate links, just to be on the safe side.

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Happy New Year!

 

Wishing all my commenters, downloaders and visitors a

Background vector created by Freepik

Well, I had hoped to be much more active in 2018 than I have been. Don’t know where this year went, it just whooshed past, and there always seemed to be something to take time and/or spoons away from simming. 😦

But hopefully, this year will be better (seeing how I only posted one item in all of 2018, it’s not as if the bar is set high). I have a couple of things that are very close to being finished, one medieval and one not, that I hope to be able to get out the door… well, before 2020, at least. 😛 And things that were high on my list for 2018 (that sword mod, publishing my medieval fantasy story…) are still high on the list for 2019.

Happy New Year, everybody! 🍸 Here’s to hoping it’s a good one, for all of us. ❤

PSA: About Animations and NPCs

Since this is a question I’ve been asked a few times, and also something I’ve seen come up on other sites:

None of my animated objects are controlled by NPCs!

 
Contrary to what seems to be popular belief, animated objects don’t always require an NPC to run; whether they do depends on the type and complexity of the object and not just on whether or not it’s animated. Objects that move around the lot, like Rebecah’s farm animals, usually need an NPC to work, but simple animated objects like mine, that rotate/swing/rock in place, do not.

But if any object of mine did spawn an NPC (which I say again, they do NOT), I promise you it would say so very, very clearly in the upload post. I know there are creators out there who like to foist undisclosed features upon their downloaders, but I’m not that kind of creator.

Training Dummies V. 3.0 – Now Also for Lefties!

Category: Hobbies -> Exercise
Poly Count: Canvas (980); Armoured (1210); Invisible (12); Swords ( < 500)
EPs Required: or above

I blame the fellow in the title pic for this. This wouldn’t have been necessary if it weren’t for him. He’s one of the main characters in my upcoming story – the first one you’ll meet, in fact (I know, I know, I’ve been talking about that danged story forever, but it’s getting close now!) – and he is, amongst other things, a pretty good swordsman. He’s also left-handed. Granted, he can use the sword just as well with his right hand, but when he can choose, he prefers his left. Which causes a bit of a problem when the sword-fighting happens on camera, since even though I can use my training dummies to stage it, all Sims fight right-handed with those.

Now, I’d never force a fellow lefty, pixellated or not, to use the right (or rather wrong 😉 ) hand if he didn’t want to, so of course I had to update my training dummies for him. (Polished the swords some while I was at it, too.) So now your Sims can choose not just which sword to fight with, but which hand as well. Left-handed high-five!

BTW, all this has put me in a sword-fighting mood, so you know that sword mod I’ve been talking about? That’s what I’ll be doing… not next, I’ve got a request I need to see to first (that’s well under way, even though it’s kind of… I was going to say “snowballed”, but “avalanched” is probably a better description), but after that, there will be swords, yes, there will. 😀 (Just as a heads-up, I’ll probably need testers for it, but we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.)

PSA: Moving House

Or moving file hosts, at least. 🙂

As you may have noticed if you’ve downloaded something from here recently, I’ve now joined many if not most creators in the community, and moved my files to Sim File Share.

“Silly Nix,” I hear you say, “why didn’t you do so before?” Because before, the SFS terms of use said that, if and when they closed down, they would rehost all your files, both public and private, on the Graveyard or wherever else they might see fit, and if you had a problem with this, you shouldn’t use SFS. (There was no way to opt out.)

Now, I have no problem with people doing whatever they dang well please with my files after I’ve left the community (which certainly isn’t anything I’m planning on doing any time soon, but you never know what may happen in the future, especially when you have medical issues), but as long as I’m active, I’ll be damned if I give Nysha or anybody else the right to decide where my files should or shouldn’t be uploaded. 😡 So I haven’t used SFS.

But now their ToU (yes, I know they’ve been up for a while, but I saw it only recently) say that they’ll only rehost public files, and to me this puts things in a different light. I do think SFS is a great idea for and service to the Sims community (show of hands, everybody who’s had their files removed by their file host because they haven’t been downloaded in six months? Or who’s had their host change their URLs, so you’ve had to edit every. single. gorram. link. on your blog? Yeah, me, too); it’s just the MTS-ish “you’re too stupid to make decisions about your own files” mentality I don’t care for. At all. But since private files are now exempt from rehosting (and I wasn’t planning on having my files and folders be public anyway), I felt I could start using SFS. So now I am.

This move won’t affect you, my downloaders, in any way, of course. The only difference is that you’ll be taken to a download page instead of having the files download directly, but since it’s like that for everybody who uses SFS, it’s nothing you haven’t encountered before. So download away!

Happy New Year!

Wishing all my commenters, downloaders and visitors a very

Image by Freepik

I know I haven’t been uploading much this year, and I’m sorry about that. This has been one of those years when RL has been interfering with my simming more than I’d have liked. Often, I just hadn’t had the spoons for both RL stuff and Sim stuff – and no matter how badly I wish it didn’t, RL stuff has to come first. Which means less Sim stuff.

But hopefully, there will be more spoons in 2018 – and more downloads for you. 😉 I do have things planned, lots of things (and if you know me at all, you know there’ll be unplanned things as well). A certain sword mod is very high on the agenda (Charity, if you’re reading this, you know what I mean).

I also hope to start releasing this medieval fantasy story I’ve been poking at, but then again I’m an even slower writer than I am creator, so it might very well be 2020 before that happens. 😛

Happy New Year, everybody! ❤

REQUESTED: Bella Statue, Floor Version

Thanks to Colin Hay for the title.

Category: Decorative -> Sculpture
EPs Required: None – base-game compatible
Cost: $1500
Poly Count: (1982)

A while back, downloader Joke Dam asked for a life-size (well, life-size for Sims) version of my Bella table statue, “so Mortimer Goth could have one hidden at his attic.” I thought this was a great idea – I mean, it’s not just Mortimer, every Sim home ought to have a statue of Bella, right? So, as requested, I made one. 🙂

“Still Here” Lamp

Category: Lighting -> Ceiling Lamps
Cost: $95
Poly Count: (1160)
EPs Required: None – base game compatible

First of all: I’m NOT on hiatus and I’m NOT inactive! I’m very much active and I am working on stuff, on several stuffs – but a lot of it is pretty complex stuffs, and complex stuff takes time (at least if you care about pesky little things like not crashing people’s games). So I thought I’d best make a lamp to show that I’m, you know, still here, before someone I don’t know from Adam decides to be “helpful” and proclaims that I’ve left the community forevah, or somesuch. 🙄 (Yes, this has actually happened in the past.)

Anyway. The “Still Here” lamp is loosely based on a ceiling lamp that one of my neighbours has in their kitchen. (No, I don’t spy on my neighbours, honest, but the apartment buildings aren’t very far apart where I live.) It come in no less than four different palettes: Anna’s colours, Kiri’s Colour Surge a.k.a. the MLC palette, Poppet’s Lonesome and Shasta’s Yeti palette. All in all, that’s 78 recols, so I’m sure you’ll find something that catches your fancy. 😉

For Nonni: Four Rocking Cribs

Category: Misc. -> Children
Poly Count: to
EPs Required: ,

Well. These have been a long time coming, to say the least. They were supposed to be posted already during Toddler Month in July, but that didn’t happen for various reasons. At the time I thought it would be no big deal if I uploaded it in early or mid August instead… but then Nonni died. 😥 Nonni wasn’t just a dear friend, she was also one of my most faithful and frequent commenters and had been following this blog from the start. This upload was something I knew she would have liked (she loved the toddlers in game), and I had been greatly looking forward to getting her enthusiastic comments on it… so I needed some time to adjust to her being gone before I was emotionally ready to post it. (I always knew I was going to post it, though; my shelving it on her behalf would have been the last thing Nonni would have wanted.) Then, of course, I had to go on hiatus on a bit for health reasons… so yeah. Time passed.

But now they are finally here: Four rocking cribs for your littlest Simlets. For Nonni. ❤

Seven CEPs for Sofas and Armchairs

This is the second part of my gifts for the for the 2016 Fishmas Advent Calendar at leefish.nl. This was fulfilling a gift from a certain Yeti: CEPs! 😀 The humble Yeti only wanted CEPs for the Luxiary King Armchair and the Sofa of Substance, but as I was making those, I realised there were several other sofas and armchairs, that only had one subset but really ought to have two… and since I was already in full CEP swing, I decided to do something about that. 😉 (I did look around first, though, to make sure nobody had made CEPs for them already – “nobody” meaning HafiseAzale and HugeLunatic, since they are my most trusted CEP makers. That’s why I didn’t make a CEP for e.g. the Futonesque Fantasy Sofa – Hafi already did that.)

The result was no less than seven CEPs: for the Luxiary King Armchair and the Sofa of Substance as per Yeti request, and also for the Contempto Good Livin’ Chair, the Blue Suede Chair, the Glassic Chair, the Satinistics Loveseat and the UNI Wornable Sofa (since that one’s basically the Sofa of Substance, only… worn).

2016 Fishmas Gifts

Feel like some more candles? 😛

These are my gifts for the 2016 Fishmas Advent Calendar at leefish.nl. I know not everybody frequent that site, so I’m going to share them here as well, now that the creators of the gifts at long last have been revealed over there. 🙂

I actually made four gifts for the Advent calendar, but the fourth one, which was fulfilling a wish, will be in a separate post. (You’ll understand why when you see it.)

You’ll find a download button after each gift, but there will also be one at the very end of the post, in case you want to download all of them in one swoop.

Merry Fishmas!

Mood-Boosting Scented Candles

Category: Lighting -> Table Lamps
Cost: $15 (in glass), $25 (in pot)
Poly Count: (glass 668, pot 380)
EPs Required:

Well, she said, I’m back. 🙂 I hope 2017 has been treating you well thus far; I know 2016 was a rough year for far too many of us. Here’s to hoping this will be better one for all – the only way is up, amirite?

So let’s start the simming year off with an upload that’s bound to lift your spirits – if you’re a Sim, at least. 😉 My first upload of 2017 is two kinds of scented candles, inspired by IKEA’s BRÄCKA and SPRALLA candles. And for Sims, they’re scented for real.

Five Sims

 
“Umm, Nix?” I hear you say. “What are you doing? You don’t make Sims; you make stuff for Sims.” And right you are, for the longest time, I didn’t make Sims other than for my own game (and those Sims usually just looked like a blend between Face 1 and Face 2, because, well, that’s exactly what they were 😛 ). But then, a few months back, I made a decision to change the way I play my main game – that is, my contemporary game with all the Maxis ‘hoods and premades. For one thing, I decided to go fully Maxis Match with it; I’ve always preferred the Maxis look to super-realistic, photoskinned ones, but even so my game had been a mix of Maxis, semi-realistic and realistic stuff, and I wasn’t really happy about it. So Maxis Match all the way it was. I also decided to put much more effort into my Sim-making, and try to give my Sims more varied features (and downloaded a ton of new non-default face templates to help me) instead of just slapping different skin tones and hairs on what was basically the same Sim over and over, like I’d been doing thus far.

And these five Sims are the result of this revival.  😀 (Well, not just these five, but these are the ones I like well enough to upload, anyway.)

Counter Completers: Add-ons for Eight In-Game Counters

First of all: I am now officially back from my hiatus! 😀 Thanks to everybody who responded to my hiatus PSA, it meant and means a lot. ❤ (I haven’t deleted it – I didn’t want to lose all your kind comments – I’ve just hidden it from public view since it's no longer applicable.)
 
Anyways. 🙂 This project is something I’ve been working on on and off for well over a year. It all started when I was furnishing a kitchen for one of my Sims, and thought the K&B Surfaco counter would be great for his style… except the Surfaco is one of those counters who has only one variation, with doors, and that looked a bit boring to me. Too boring.

Around the same time, Kiri over at leefish.nl made some great add-ons for the Value counter, and iCad released a ton of counter recolours at her Tumblr. All together this put me in a counter productive mood (bad pun, go stand in the corner!), and it got me thinking. Maybe I should make some add-on counters for those poor, neglected doors-only ones? Just one or two, for the Surfaco and maybe for the Value counter as well (“the single most useful counter in the repertoire,” in Kiri’s words)?

“Just one or two,” yeah, right. 😛 Somehow, I ended up making add-ons for no less than eight in-game counters: Value, Epikouros, Blue Ribbon, Forbidden Fruit, Castanoga, Surfaco, Neo-Quartzo and Double Wood. And just as I thought I was finished? I realised the walls in my test Sim’s kitchen were looking awfully bare – so I made some wall cabinets as well. (Yes, I know that CTNutmegger at MTS made wall cabinets already back in 2009, and they’re great, but as a matter of personal preference there were details about them I wanted done differently, and besides, it seemed a bit silly for me to say that “you can have all these new counters, but if you want wall cabinets to go with them, you’ll have to get them from a completely different creator at a completely different site.” I’ve sometimes used CTNutmegger’s wall cabinets as guides and inspiration, but I have not cloned mine off hers and I have not used her meshes as bases for mine.)

Fishmas Advent Calendar Revealed

At leefish.nl, in December we had a Fishmas Advent Calendar going, with gifts made by the members of the Leefish community. Some gifts were anonymous, some not, but now all the creators have been revealed. 🙂

These were yours truly’s contributions:

You can’t tell from the picture, but all the figurines are animated and play music. 😀

 

 
They’re Leefish exclusives, though, so go there and get ’em! (The pictures are links.) 😀