Reduced Redundancy Default Textures
It has become clear to me that if I want something done right, I have to do it myself. It just gets frustrating sometimes. I download things so I don't HAVE to spend time making content that's already done, and I have to modify half the hairs I get, to make sure there aren't extra textures, etc, etc. It doesn't save that much time in the end.
In the process of creating the skintone defaults I posted recently, I realized that the chances that my other defaults had duplicate textures in them was pretty high. I looked at them and, WOW, they really, really did. So I've cleaned them up. There's no reason to have multiple copies of the same texture in a package if you can just make all the references point to the ONE, right?
I've cleaned up my alien default skintone - which is Enayla's Pixie Galaxies, and my default vampire overly, which is navetsea's transparent overlay. If you read my stuff, you're probably familiar with the alien one. I've yet to play a vamp, though I am itching to if the situation is right, but I've included pics of everything so you can get an idea of what you're downloading. One default in your downloads at a time, and just a small side note: if you, coincidentally, were already using the defaults that I have, existing sims in your neighborhood using that skintone that happened to have a texture removed and pointed to another--say, you are Anteros Randolph, a teen alien, and now all teen aliens' faces use the adult female face texture...you'll have to take that sim to a mirror, do something to actually change their appearance, save the change, and then the right face will display. (In Anteros's case, I changed his eyebrows, then changed them back to the ones he had to begin with.)
Let's begin with...vamp!sim!Quinkie!
And here's vamp Noah Lutzen. You can see that it's a semi-transparent overlay with veining. I do have Pescado's creaturefixes in my game, which supposedly helps with issues with makeup and eyebrows appearing along with your vamp overlay. It's got a red eye texture, which I am still waffling about, though I'm sure I will never have enough vamps to where them all having the same eye troubles me. Textures and original default made by Navetsea.
The original file was a bit over 5MB. This one is 2.1MB. Named like the original with CLEAN tacked on the end of the filename.
Download Here
Anteros is here to remind you what Pixie Galaxies looks like. To see more of it in action, browse any Randolph update from the tail end of Generation 3 onward, or browse through Laurince Generation 11-13. Alien sims, I has plenty of them lately. Textures made by Enayla.
The original file was over 7MB. This one is 1.9MB. There was that much repetition. While in the future, I may decide to eliminate textures/tones to reduce file size for my own personal use, this was me cutting it down to the textures that existed in the package. Bloat ahoy. Again, named like the original with CLEAN tacked on to the end of the filename.
Download Here
I do not yet have a zombie or plantsim default in my game. I plan to make them, probably with Enayla skins. I'm sure someone has already done some variant on the skins I plan to use, but I might as well just start it from scratch on my own, that way I can be assured of the quality of the texture reimportation while I'm at it. I will share them when I do them.
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And just a small rant on why I hate dependent defaults. Feel free to ignore it, but I have to get it out somewhere and here makes sense! Best case-scenario, the end-user only uses defaults, and it's equally as useful as a default replacement. There is added texture repetition, because you have to repeat facial textures in the package file for the defaults, while they still exist in the package for the original skin, so it's marginally worse in execution and filesize. (Compared to a regular default file made without redundant textures.) Then, with there being multiple files that are involved with the default replacement, the chances that a user will not install/uninstall them properly, which leads to upset users. Worst case-scenario, you have a user like me. Default replacements that need a custom skintone to work means that I have two instances of the same skin. It's annoying to have redundancy in the selection menu without a good reason. If the skins are geneticized, it means they are twice as likely as other skins to be represented in the kids. If they're townified, they're twice as likely to show up in the general population. If I want to change my defaults at some point in the future, I have to leave those other skintones in my downloads, or deal with a bunch of skinless townies that need to be repared (like you see in the Deline hood).
It's the same problem I had when, back in the day, people who didn't quite understand how to townify skintones ended up spreading the idea that it was impossible to have a townified skintone that showed up in CAS. I ended up with geneticized skintones AND townified skintones, and twice as many sims in those skintones because I had double copies. I could forgive this a bit, since it was a long time ago, and it was before as much was understood about some of the values in the XML files as what we understand now. But it's absolutely asinine that the dependent default method is being touted as "superior" or what have you, when it's really just a good example that the person who came up with it didn't realize that you could just change the references within the package files themselves and keep everything neat and separate. And then just compressorize.
In the process of creating the skintone defaults I posted recently, I realized that the chances that my other defaults had duplicate textures in them was pretty high. I looked at them and, WOW, they really, really did. So I've cleaned them up. There's no reason to have multiple copies of the same texture in a package if you can just make all the references point to the ONE, right?
I've cleaned up my alien default skintone - which is Enayla's Pixie Galaxies, and my default vampire overly, which is navetsea's transparent overlay. If you read my stuff, you're probably familiar with the alien one. I've yet to play a vamp, though I am itching to if the situation is right, but I've included pics of everything so you can get an idea of what you're downloading. One default in your downloads at a time, and just a small side note: if you, coincidentally, were already using the defaults that I have, existing sims in your neighborhood using that skintone that happened to have a texture removed and pointed to another--say, you are Anteros Randolph, a teen alien, and now all teen aliens' faces use the adult female face texture...you'll have to take that sim to a mirror, do something to actually change their appearance, save the change, and then the right face will display. (In Anteros's case, I changed his eyebrows, then changed them back to the ones he had to begin with.)
Let's begin with...vamp!sim!Quinkie!
And here's vamp Noah Lutzen. You can see that it's a semi-transparent overlay with veining. I do have Pescado's creaturefixes in my game, which supposedly helps with issues with makeup and eyebrows appearing along with your vamp overlay. It's got a red eye texture, which I am still waffling about, though I'm sure I will never have enough vamps to where them all having the same eye troubles me. Textures and original default made by Navetsea.
The original file was a bit over 5MB. This one is 2.1MB. Named like the original with CLEAN tacked on the end of the filename.
Download Here
Anteros is here to remind you what Pixie Galaxies looks like. To see more of it in action, browse any Randolph update from the tail end of Generation 3 onward, or browse through Laurince Generation 11-13. Alien sims, I has plenty of them lately. Textures made by Enayla.
The original file was over 7MB. This one is 1.9MB. There was that much repetition. While in the future, I may decide to eliminate textures/tones to reduce file size for my own personal use, this was me cutting it down to the textures that existed in the package. Bloat ahoy. Again, named like the original with CLEAN tacked on to the end of the filename.
Download Here
I do not yet have a zombie or plantsim default in my game. I plan to make them, probably with Enayla skins. I'm sure someone has already done some variant on the skins I plan to use, but I might as well just start it from scratch on my own, that way I can be assured of the quality of the texture reimportation while I'm at it. I will share them when I do them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And just a small rant on why I hate dependent defaults. Feel free to ignore it, but I have to get it out somewhere and here makes sense! Best case-scenario, the end-user only uses defaults, and it's equally as useful as a default replacement. There is added texture repetition, because you have to repeat facial textures in the package file for the defaults, while they still exist in the package for the original skin, so it's marginally worse in execution and filesize. (Compared to a regular default file made without redundant textures.) Then, with there being multiple files that are involved with the default replacement, the chances that a user will not install/uninstall them properly, which leads to upset users. Worst case-scenario, you have a user like me. Default replacements that need a custom skintone to work means that I have two instances of the same skin. It's annoying to have redundancy in the selection menu without a good reason. If the skins are geneticized, it means they are twice as likely as other skins to be represented in the kids. If they're townified, they're twice as likely to show up in the general population. If I want to change my defaults at some point in the future, I have to leave those other skintones in my downloads, or deal with a bunch of skinless townies that need to be repared (like you see in the Deline hood).
It's the same problem I had when, back in the day, people who didn't quite understand how to townify skintones ended up spreading the idea that it was impossible to have a townified skintone that showed up in CAS. I ended up with geneticized skintones AND townified skintones, and twice as many sims in those skintones because I had double copies. I could forgive this a bit, since it was a long time ago, and it was before as much was understood about some of the values in the XML files as what we understand now. But it's absolutely asinine that the dependent default method is being touted as "superior" or what have you, when it's really just a good example that the person who came up with it didn't realize that you could just change the references within the package files themselves and keep everything neat and separate. And then just compressorize.