Busy, busy
I seem to suddenly have loads I want to achieve this week with regards to the sims, so if I'm a bit quiet online it's probably because I'm working on those projects. Because I feel like talking tonight though I thought I'd share what I'm up to with you all.
First of all I've been playing. I've got to shoot Vicky, Rosemary and Louisa's graduation party as part of the next chapter, and then once I've sped through the other three uni lots (where I can cheat my little heart out because they are all distant cousins) I'm back in the main house to shoot the rest of the chapter and start with chapter 20 too.
Anyway playing means I have picspam for you.
I decided to have Stephan propose to Rosemary on one of my new Simdon lots. Look who followed them onto the lot and what he did.
Joe she knows what you did to her cousin, I doubt she'll go for you.
He then followed that up with this:
Yup he's still furious at his mother because I had her slap him to get the reaction shot when i had Anthony punch him. This makes me insanely happy for some reason.
I was wondering if anyone else had this happen occasionally:
Every so often I'll go and play a restaurant and the chef won't turn up, or will walk onto the lot hours later. More often than not the food will magically appear on the table, but I have had it never show up before. It happens with both Maxis and custom restaurants and like I say only occasionally. Anyone else seen anything like this?
Engagement pictures:
They are really sweet together, and I like them a lot.
After the restaurant I had them go to a coaching inn I'm building called the Wagon and Horses. I've about finished the building work and found some lights at Parsimonious that are perfect for it, but when I was putting them in I was concerned about the level of light they gave out, so I wanted to see it in game. The levels are really low, which is a shame because they look great, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do.
There are two parts to the ground floor bar, a public bar and a games room. Katy decided to be the first to break in the card table.
She was soon joined by Charles and Pen:
Meanwhile I discovered that Joe had followed them to the inn, and was doing his best to try to hide from me.
"Stupid place to put a beam."
It's an old coaching inn, there are beams holding up the ceiling, get used to it Joe.
With Rosemary engaged I just need to get Louisa and Vicky engaged now, so I'll play Cyd and Patrick for a little bit to get that done.
It took a lot for me to find someone that Louisa liked and I liked too. She did flirt with a random dormie as soon as she moved into the halls, but he's a dormie I've never liked and there is no way I was putting them together. She finally decided that she liked Cyd Roseland and i must admit I always enjoyed playing him in my Pleasantview, so they're sticking together.
This is the third hair I've had on Louisa since she started uni and I'm still not sure it's her.
Florence has now moved into the VPLs and will be acting as placeholder for a bit. I'm trying to keep the placeholders at the Greek houses as cousins now. Oh and I just have to say, how beautiful is Florence?
People say never marry in the Komei face because you never get good looking children or grandchildren. HAH Anne and Florence are amongst the most beautiful sims I've had born in game and I've been playing since the day it was released in 2004.
One other thing happened before their end of semester exams: they were robbed.
So this is real Gordon and real Ramin fighting, as opposed to the clones I've got running around still from William's earlier storyline. I suppose I really should kill off the clones at some point, but it's getting round to it.
Oh, and this is what Louisa was doing whilst they fought:
Ramin won by the way:
Thie girls were given a piddly amount of money which didn't even cover a third of the cost of the piano that was stolen.
So that's how my playing has gone. I've got one more semester to play through and the graduation scenes I mentioned earlier to shoot and then they're off into the big wide world.
As well as playing I'm working on a couple of CC projects. The first is a new alien skintone. I mentioned in my reply to Prof in my vampire skintone post that I fancied having a go at making a green skintone with a hint of silver to it. Once I got the idea into my head it wouldn't go, so I sat down and ended up with a skintone that looked nice in Bodyshop on the mannequins there. Bodyshop isn't the best testing ground, so I finished the adult skins and imported the skin into the game. I transferred it to my dummy game and went looking in CAS for a couple of aliens. Here's the results of my test:
First Cassidy as we all know and love him:
Green, goofy, loveable Cass.
Cherryh as we are used to seeing her:
Green, pink loving, wonderful Cherryh.
Now the two of them in my test skin:
Because these guys are great, the four of them gave me two great comparison shots too, with no direction from me.
My thoughts on the skin? I like it. A lot. They're still light green, and there is just enough silver there to make them look otherworldly, without taking over. There's also a slight irridesence to the skin, but it is still matte, plus there is that extra spark I aim for whilst still looking cartoony. A lot of that is down to the base skins I used: I could never crete a skin from scratch. All I do is layer thema nd mess with the opacities. The most imprtant thing to me though is that Cass and Cherryh still look like Cass and Cherryh.
I'm going to continue with this: I've got the adults, babies and children skins done, I just need to do the elders, teens and toddlers.
The other thing I'm doing at the moment is another Herter Brothers wallpaper and ceiling set. I finished the lower border this evening, but thought I'd share how this came together for any of you who are interested.
So this is a very shrunken image of my psp file for the lower border: The original is 1500x1200 pixels.
The image on the bottom left is the original image I downloaded. As you can see it's not a full repeat, so I had to make the rest of it up myself. The image at the top is the repeat I was working on. I basically used the middle panel to fill in where the side panels would be if they were complete. I then filled in the side panels with the background colour, and put in the part of the panel I knew. The green image is the panel I created for my green version, and I used this as a guide for creating the rest of the panel.
If this had of been as straight forward as the green version, I would have finished the panel, merged it all, copied it and mirrored it to create the second panel. I wuould then have copied it all and tiled it all together on a new image. Unfortunately, the image isn't quite square, and the horizontal lines, if they lined up at the top, didn't at the bottom. That's no good for a wallpaper because you will never get it to tile, and that is one thing that irritates me to bits. I actually came across a Bradbury & Bradbury wall paper I'd downloaded when I was decorating some new houses the other day, and decided to use it. Well not only did it not tile panel to panel, because the horizontal lines didn't match up, but it didn't even tile on one panel: there was a seam running right down the centre. I'm sorry, if that's the best you can do, and you're happy with it, fine, but please don't put it out there for people to download if it is so obviously flawed.
Anyway, because this wouldn't have tiled, I ended up doing this:
It's not easy to tell from a flat image like this, but I've rebuilt every part of the border from the main panels to the uprights between panels to the upper and lower borders. It now tiles perfectly, and it was onto this that I pasted the panel I created.
After a bit more faffing about with tiling things together, identifying the repeat I was going to use, and a bit of reszing and sharpening I ended up with the bottom border for the paper finished. I just need to do the middle (much easier) and the top border. I'm also missing a full repeat for the top border; in fact I've not even got half a repeat for that, so there will be more making it up. I actually really enjoy making CC like this, and although there is probably an easier way than the way I do it, this makes sense to me.
So that's what I've been up to. If I go a bit quiet it's because I've got caught up in what I'm doing.
How is everyone else today?
First of all I've been playing. I've got to shoot Vicky, Rosemary and Louisa's graduation party as part of the next chapter, and then once I've sped through the other three uni lots (where I can cheat my little heart out because they are all distant cousins) I'm back in the main house to shoot the rest of the chapter and start with chapter 20 too.
Anyway playing means I have picspam for you.
I decided to have Stephan propose to Rosemary on one of my new Simdon lots. Look who followed them onto the lot and what he did.
Joe she knows what you did to her cousin, I doubt she'll go for you.
He then followed that up with this:
Yup he's still furious at his mother because I had her slap him to get the reaction shot when i had Anthony punch him. This makes me insanely happy for some reason.
I was wondering if anyone else had this happen occasionally:
Every so often I'll go and play a restaurant and the chef won't turn up, or will walk onto the lot hours later. More often than not the food will magically appear on the table, but I have had it never show up before. It happens with both Maxis and custom restaurants and like I say only occasionally. Anyone else seen anything like this?
Engagement pictures:
They are really sweet together, and I like them a lot.
After the restaurant I had them go to a coaching inn I'm building called the Wagon and Horses. I've about finished the building work and found some lights at Parsimonious that are perfect for it, but when I was putting them in I was concerned about the level of light they gave out, so I wanted to see it in game. The levels are really low, which is a shame because they look great, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do.
There are two parts to the ground floor bar, a public bar and a games room. Katy decided to be the first to break in the card table.
She was soon joined by Charles and Pen:
Meanwhile I discovered that Joe had followed them to the inn, and was doing his best to try to hide from me.
"Stupid place to put a beam."
It's an old coaching inn, there are beams holding up the ceiling, get used to it Joe.
With Rosemary engaged I just need to get Louisa and Vicky engaged now, so I'll play Cyd and Patrick for a little bit to get that done.
It took a lot for me to find someone that Louisa liked and I liked too. She did flirt with a random dormie as soon as she moved into the halls, but he's a dormie I've never liked and there is no way I was putting them together. She finally decided that she liked Cyd Roseland and i must admit I always enjoyed playing him in my Pleasantview, so they're sticking together.
This is the third hair I've had on Louisa since she started uni and I'm still not sure it's her.
Florence has now moved into the VPLs and will be acting as placeholder for a bit. I'm trying to keep the placeholders at the Greek houses as cousins now. Oh and I just have to say, how beautiful is Florence?
People say never marry in the Komei face because you never get good looking children or grandchildren. HAH Anne and Florence are amongst the most beautiful sims I've had born in game and I've been playing since the day it was released in 2004.
One other thing happened before their end of semester exams: they were robbed.
So this is real Gordon and real Ramin fighting, as opposed to the clones I've got running around still from William's earlier storyline. I suppose I really should kill off the clones at some point, but it's getting round to it.
Oh, and this is what Louisa was doing whilst they fought:
Ramin won by the way:
Thie girls were given a piddly amount of money which didn't even cover a third of the cost of the piano that was stolen.
So that's how my playing has gone. I've got one more semester to play through and the graduation scenes I mentioned earlier to shoot and then they're off into the big wide world.
As well as playing I'm working on a couple of CC projects. The first is a new alien skintone. I mentioned in my reply to Prof in my vampire skintone post that I fancied having a go at making a green skintone with a hint of silver to it. Once I got the idea into my head it wouldn't go, so I sat down and ended up with a skintone that looked nice in Bodyshop on the mannequins there. Bodyshop isn't the best testing ground, so I finished the adult skins and imported the skin into the game. I transferred it to my dummy game and went looking in CAS for a couple of aliens. Here's the results of my test:
First Cassidy as we all know and love him:
Green, goofy, loveable Cass.
Cherryh as we are used to seeing her:
Green, pink loving, wonderful Cherryh.
Now the two of them in my test skin:
Because these guys are great, the four of them gave me two great comparison shots too, with no direction from me.
My thoughts on the skin? I like it. A lot. They're still light green, and there is just enough silver there to make them look otherworldly, without taking over. There's also a slight irridesence to the skin, but it is still matte, plus there is that extra spark I aim for whilst still looking cartoony. A lot of that is down to the base skins I used: I could never crete a skin from scratch. All I do is layer thema nd mess with the opacities. The most imprtant thing to me though is that Cass and Cherryh still look like Cass and Cherryh.
I'm going to continue with this: I've got the adults, babies and children skins done, I just need to do the elders, teens and toddlers.
The other thing I'm doing at the moment is another Herter Brothers wallpaper and ceiling set. I finished the lower border this evening, but thought I'd share how this came together for any of you who are interested.
So this is a very shrunken image of my psp file for the lower border: The original is 1500x1200 pixels.
The image on the bottom left is the original image I downloaded. As you can see it's not a full repeat, so I had to make the rest of it up myself. The image at the top is the repeat I was working on. I basically used the middle panel to fill in where the side panels would be if they were complete. I then filled in the side panels with the background colour, and put in the part of the panel I knew. The green image is the panel I created for my green version, and I used this as a guide for creating the rest of the panel.
If this had of been as straight forward as the green version, I would have finished the panel, merged it all, copied it and mirrored it to create the second panel. I wuould then have copied it all and tiled it all together on a new image. Unfortunately, the image isn't quite square, and the horizontal lines, if they lined up at the top, didn't at the bottom. That's no good for a wallpaper because you will never get it to tile, and that is one thing that irritates me to bits. I actually came across a Bradbury & Bradbury wall paper I'd downloaded when I was decorating some new houses the other day, and decided to use it. Well not only did it not tile panel to panel, because the horizontal lines didn't match up, but it didn't even tile on one panel: there was a seam running right down the centre. I'm sorry, if that's the best you can do, and you're happy with it, fine, but please don't put it out there for people to download if it is so obviously flawed.
Anyway, because this wouldn't have tiled, I ended up doing this:
It's not easy to tell from a flat image like this, but I've rebuilt every part of the border from the main panels to the uprights between panels to the upper and lower borders. It now tiles perfectly, and it was onto this that I pasted the panel I created.
After a bit more faffing about with tiling things together, identifying the repeat I was going to use, and a bit of reszing and sharpening I ended up with the bottom border for the paper finished. I just need to do the middle (much easier) and the top border. I'm also missing a full repeat for the top border; in fact I've not even got half a repeat for that, so there will be more making it up. I actually really enjoy making CC like this, and although there is probably an easier way than the way I do it, this makes sense to me.
So that's what I've been up to. If I go a bit quiet it's because I've got caught up in what I'm doing.
How is everyone else today?