Declaration of Aliveness
Hello! I’m alive! End of declaration. ;) I guess I should post a quick rundown of events because I’ve not been around at all for a long time and have no idea when I will be really back into Sims and the community. TLDR: No accidents or the like, just involved in other games; graphics card broke, new PC on its way; time of comeback uncertain but there will probably be beta-stuff.
Long version: I started the year with the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Still good! Unfortunately there was a bug when I entered the last level. Oh well, I'm more the type for the free-roaming gameplay before that, anyway. Then there was a month or two of playing Tropico 3. Finally beat all the missions, except the last one for world domination.
After that I got into modding Fallout 3. I was pretty content with the vanilla game for years (haven’t even touched New Vegas yet which I purchased at the same time), but mods make it so much more immersive and challenging. And there are so many of them! I literally spent a month just going through the nexus and bookmarking my favourites. It was daunting at first to learn the tools for modding yet another game, but meanwhile I’ve got the hang of it and am now in the process of combining all my mods and tweaking everything to be just the way I want.
But oh no! While testing stuff suddenly my Fallout didn’t work anymore! My graphics card broke after serving for seven years. The other hardware of my PC hasn’t been updated in 6.5 years, either. The oldest part, my CD drive, is 12 years old! Sometimes when it revs up I’m worried it might disintegrate. So I took this as the time to start anew. After all, this spring I was able to pay back my student loan all at once on my own - no parental credit required - netting me a four-figure discount. I say I have rightfully earned a big reward. :) My new build won’t be the best and latest tech (Intel Core i3 6100 2x 3.7 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950) but it will feel like a lightyear ahead of what I’m used to. It should even be able to play Fallout 4 decently at high settings, but that’s a few years down the line when I’m bored with FO3 and NV. First I’m looking forward to playing all my favourite old(er) games at the highest of their potential! :)
One of these games is GT Legends, which I also got back into after not playing it for two years or so. I have lots of mods for that which still need some tidying up, and there’re two years worth of mods I need to catch up on. I was also starting to make my own retextures back then and would like to get back to that, although I’ll probably have to relearn how to get those into the game. And finally there was SPORE on sale at steam, so I have that installed, too, and if you have any idea about SPORE you already know what kind of time sponge that game can be.
Usually when I’m not in the mood for Sims I still stick around, but somehow it didn’t work out like that this time. What can I say, a day only has so many hours and modding of any game eats a lot of time. It seems 2016 will just not be a Sims year for me. Fear not, though! All those other games I mentioned are different genres. When it comes to building structures and worlds, letting pixel people live in them and enhancing the experience with custom content all in one I see no challenge for our beloved Sims. :) When I’m in the mood for that kind of stuff I will be back. While my FO3 modding was thwarted by my graphics card failure I already got back to the Space Container Hull project for a bit and have been working on literally hundreds of recolour options, mostly for the inside so our space colonists don’t have to stare at blank metal walls. The building set still lacks a few pieces to really cover all possibilities, but since I might not finish it this year I will probably prepare a beta upload. I will need help with hundreds of matching walls for the recolour options, anyway, else I’ll lose my mind. Setting that up requires time as well, though, that will not be very soon. In a month maybe.
So long, see you later!