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Well it wasn’t just me, to be fair. I would have never been able to without @fireflowersims help and HugeLunatics trust in both of us. Thank you to both of them for their work and thank you @teaaddictyt for reaching out and doing the more public communication.
I’m super happy I got the chance to work to fix it. It wasn’t an easy undertaking. It seemed like every little thing would cause more errors, I fixed one and another thing broke. But now it seems stable, finally.
A lot of technical stuff below the cut, beware.
Fixing such an old forum is not easy. Documentation is rather sparse because the framework it runs on is old. There is however a more modern version, but updating is difficult. Here was the issue for the forum - upgrading failed.
A website (usually) consists of two different parts: 1 - The files. They contain the code, scripts, designs, images, attachment, profile pictures etc. 2 - The database. The database connects all the different parts and tells the website where to find something. Everything gets stored in tables, assigned IDs and given values. Everything written, each post and topic is also stored in the database. So without the database the whole page would be useless.
It was clear from the beginning that the database was the culprit for the failed upgrades. I got an earlier backup from HL and started working.
I set up a local environment with two versions of XAMPP. One running on php 7.4 (the last version having compatibility for the forum framework version and the upgrade script to the recent version) and the other on a modern 8.3, which was the same as the version the server @fireflowersims set up for GOS.
I ran the upgrade script (which consists of 4 separate parts) on the old backup and ran into errors right away. The script would just outright crash on me, most often without a log or message. The (local) server would just stop responding. My original plan had been to upgrade to version 2.0 first, then 2.1, since it was the recommended order. However the database backup had already been partly upgraded to 2.1. That was the reason my upgrade script failed. Reversing those changes could have been a possibility but extremely time intensive.
(This is the frontpage of the upgrader. I stared at it so much. Like you can see it has a ton of steps)
Instead I asked for the current database and HL provided it to me. This one was already further along on the upgrade and I could see the error HL had run into before handing over. I had to look at the upgrade scripts and source php files to diagnose what the framework was expecting - and failing - to find in the database.
That’s where I found the main culprit for *most* of the errors: Time tables. The framework saves every action that a user does in a log, a long table with the action, an id and a date. This was where everything had gotten wrong. The upgrader expected to see one column for the date, named *day*, while the current table had a different column for day, month and year. I tried fixing the table at first but that didn’t seem to work, so I completely deleted the table and created a new empty one myself. (By now I think the issue stems from forgetting to uninstall certain packages before upgrading, more on that later)
That was possible because the log actually doesn’t hold relevant information for the forum to work. It just records each step, probably for moderation purposes. Once I had done that step the upgrade script was finally able to proceed.
There were a few more errors where I had to look at what the script was doing, find the corresponding code in the sources and edit the database myself. Thankfully the code is relatively well commented and named, so I was able to find what I needed.
Finally I got the upgrade script to run to the end and I was actually able to open the forums (local) page. I hadn’t been able to for now so it was a first. But a lot of stuff was still missing, like all the topics. I could see that the posts were back, but not sorted correctly.
The fix was simple but annoying. The forum framework comes with a repair_setting.php file which I had run several times to fix all the paths, but apparently it didn’t fix *all* of them. So back to the database I went, ran some queries and fixed them myself.
Then the forum finally worked again!
(This is what the forum looked like when I first opened it. It ONLY had recent posts)
(The working local forum, no files yet with the default theme. Seems wrong to look at GOS without the dark theme, right?)
There were still a few things I needed to fix but the database seemed to work fine now. I had never done so many queries in my life. I know SQL, and had to fix databases before but not this intensely. So I guessed I learned something new haha.
Next was the exciting step to upload my clean install to the server. @fireflowersims and I had some directory issues, but I was able to fix them manually once again.
Then I had to take a look at the files which mostly consist of avatars and attachments. They didn’t work at all once moved to the clean install. Once again I took a look at the code and realized that the upgrade script would have changed those files as well, but because I ran it on a clean install it didn’t actually do this step.
I didn’t want to run the upgrade script again, worried that it would mess up a now working database. Instead I wrote a script myself that sorted through all the attachments, looked for the IDs of the avatars from the database so it could move and rename them.
Last were the attachments. This was an easier fix. They just had to be given the ending .dat. @fireflowersims ran a command through the console and then the attachments worked too!
We were getting closer!
Next was the theme. The old theme didn’t work on the modern framework anymore so @fireflowersims looked for a new one which I customized with CSS, trying to get it closer to the way the forum looked before. I think it turned out quite alright, hope you guys think so too!
(Trying to find out what CSS class addresses what? Make everything red and green!)
(All the spider webs)
Next was packages, or mods, to the framework. Fire and I encountered some hiccups here too, since there were some leftovers in the database. The packages hadn’t been properly deinstalled before running the upgrade script, which was another source of the errors. I tried fixing them manually but one of the packages would continue to just break the site no matter what I tried, so we settled for an alternative.
Some more work was put into SSL and making the forum secure. Once again some settings seemed to just break the page and each time I had to go back in the database and manually fix what had gone wrong. It was tedious but by now I knew my way around quite well.
@fireflowersims handled a lot of the server administrative work and DNS settings. I know very little about that part so having @fireflowersims there was great and they made sure the page is reachable at the correct address.
So yeah, I hope the site stays online for a long time now. It’s such a big part of our community and communities history. I used to download so much from there when I was younger. I wanted to give back to the community I love so much. That was the reason I spent many many hours digging through code and old forum threads.
Jules, I cannot emphasize enough just how cool you are for having done all of this work to get GoS back online! I'm glad I was able to provide a good new space for GoS to live from now on and assist with all the DNS. It was a trip alright, and I'm glad we could work together on this!
You are a hero and I (and I bet so many others) am so grateful for your skill and dedication! ♥️
Paralives: Bigger Terrain Save Presets (Experimental)
In case you've been sleeping under a rock for the last few days, the life simulator game Paralives was released recently.
When creating a new game, you have the option of starting with an empty terrain, where you can build whatever you want. The default terrain size is quite small, and there's no way to change it in-game, so here are three overrides (double, triple and quadruple) you can install by replacing a file in your save folder.
By combining a custom terrain with ToggleEditTown and other cheats, you can even create custom towns that have most of the functionality of Melino, the base town!
It turns out I didn't need to go through the work of creating templates, because there's already an option in the Control Panel to set the number of chunks a new world starts with.
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I need everybody to stop, pause, make some really tight fists with their hands, now shake them out.
Now breathe in, all the way. Hold it - 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 - now breathe out. Now do that twice more.
There are still efforts going on behind the scenes to get GOS back online (and Sims 2 Artists).
New hosting has been secured. The website php needs upgrading and this has not been working, but people are still working on it.
I know its hard when things happen and you don't know what's going on. But please, everyone, just calm down. Instead of panicking, jumping to conclusions, making angry posts, just chill, wait, breathe. Be kind, ask what's happening without getting mad.
And please, remember kindness and empathy. Lunie has been trying to update GOS for months, and she is exhausted. It's down right now, but not dead (yet).
Why is it that anytime some well known member of this community does anything questionable, and people rightfully critique their behavior because they expected better from them (because you know, you are older, more experienced, yada, yada, GOS isn't the first website that has gone missing over the years), we get some PSA by some other well known member about what people should think? 🙃
I'm breathing normally, and can count down from 5, thank you! Still doesn't change the fact HL went from "there is no war in ba sing se" to "gos is dead and no one wanted to save it" while going radio silent on all the places people could reach her out (except MTS ig), and people where rightfully pissed off by it.
It's not "getting mad" it's acknowledging someone is responding to some valid questions (over GOS' situation) with sarcasm, and it's not really an appropriate response. Why can't HL just take the blame on this one, understand people are rightfully calling her bluff, and do a PSA herself since -you know- it all went sour after her response.
It's OK to make mistakes, and miscommunication happens. But what isn't OK, is making it somehow seem like people are "overreacting" when they clearly, aren't, overreacting. Also admitting you didn't handled things well does show me you care.
I made a gift for Lunacress (aka @actually-eevee on tumblr) this year and them decided to share! It is a 4t2 flower crown, some shoe swap for pantless bottoms and hair retextures on them texture blend (straight+twists)! :)
but i think this is an appropriate time to tell all of you that internet archive/wayback machine is *also* not safe for making backups
they have repeatedly been the target of legal battles, some of which they have already lost (see here and here) and which have nearly bankrupted them
so putting everything on the internet archive and calling it a day is a majorly stupid idea. Ideally, we'd need SEVERAL backups of everything, in different places.
Apologies for this taking forever and me disappearing off the face of the Earth, sorry if you've tried to DM me w/ issues, etc etc blablabla. I would like to say I'll be more active now but who knows, life is kind of sucky atm
New patches:
Mirror Reflection Settings - Tunes how far away mirror reflections stay visible. Push reflections out further (or rein them in if you've got a wall full of mirrors and want your frames back, mirrors are each their own little camera). Patch idea from Boring Bones
Animation Blend Tuning - Clamps animation blend (transition) durations to a min/max, so transitions that snap can be smoothed out and slow blends can be made snappier. Also includes a forceBlendOut option that lets through blend-out times the engine would otherwise discard. Big thanks to @thepancake1 for the patch!
Split-Level Lighting Fix - Makes lighting not stop at a single level - lot-bound lights now pass the engine's 'world light' filter in outdoor rooms and terrain lightmaps. May cause a bit of light bleed near walls/floors. All credits to Arro-Now!
Brady Bunch BEGONE - The engine fills unlit/dim rooms at night with a fake blue ambient (the "Brady Bunch Blue" apparently). This allows you to change them or to (ideally) zero the values so unlit rooms render without the gross blue glow. Patch idea from Arro ,thanks!
All four are experimental for now, they'll graduate one day...
Updates/Changes:
CPU Thread Optimization - Fixes Alder Lake+ CPU issues correctly now (hopefully).
Lighting Quality - Improved blur math precision to prevent color banding, plus an additional fix for rooms gradually darkening over repeated passes. Blur is now energy-preserving so it stops drifting the average brightness down.
Startup Warning Dialog Fix - New Hide Dialogue setting that prevents the dialog from being created at all, rather than making it visible.
As always, download can be found here readme can be found here
Do you use the NRaas mods? Has the information on the NRaas website and forum ever been useful to you? If so, a moment of your time please!
I’d like to share the current situation with Simblr – which you can also read about directly from the site owner here:
https://www.nraas.net/community/topic15428
While it seemed like we were entering an era of old-internet revival and indie websites in the fight against the dead-internet, a significant road block has emerged. Prices have inflated drastically for server parts, memory, storage, and server-hosting itself. This puts all non-profit online communities in peril.
As a result, the site owner has opened a Patreon so that the community can help cover the costs of keeping us online.
Important clarification:
The NRaas mods are NEVER going to be paywalled.
The project will remain open-source and free for everyone. Donations are optional.
These mods are still in active development!
The site and mods have been maintained by Chain_Reaction since Twallan's retirement, providing countless updates and support. Lots of cool stuff over there if you haven't updated in a hot minute.
There is no pressure to donate if your situation does not allow for it. Thank you for the consideration!
Long post ahead with information on the situation and some incentives for reaching membership goals.
If you've had some trouble accessing the site over the past week or so:
The situation is directly caused by the greed and encroachment of something we’re all uncomfortably familiar with: AI companies and the companies investing in them (of simmer relevance, that includes EA and Krafton (InZoi)).
NRaas is not the first nor will it be the last to be affected. Website servers already suffer from bots trawling and scraping their content – including your content that you write and share just about anywhere. Now they’re being bought off entirely.
Archives and file-hosting are at high risk. Myrient is a recent example of an archive that went offline for this very reason.
It can feel a bit grim, but I want to assure you that the burden isn't yours to bear as an individual. As a community, it's actually quite easy to become hostile - and more important, unprofitable - to these invasive species as it were.
The past 26 years of modding and storytelling was OVERWHELMINGLY built upon free software, non-profit websites, and shared resources. A few unscrupulous paywallers and corporate greed isn't going to rewrite that history. Greed is the minority - but it does try to eat everything in its path.
That's all I ask - if you enjoy the fruits of The Sims community or enjoy being a part of it, make it just a little more inconvenient to swallow us.
Do not tolerate GenAI in our community spaces.
Do not support EA or Krafton. Let obscurity and irrelevancy devour them.
Do participate in the community wherever you think you'd find a little piece of purpose - make a blog for your stories, come chat with us in the Chatterbox forum at NRaas, make your first mod.
Lastly:
In a separate post, I'll be posting some CC incentives that will be released as milestones are reached. This content will not be paywalled - it will be posted for free as thanks to the community.
This is being offered on my own accord and is not the official reward for any particular tier. None of the proceeds are going to me!
Please look out for that over the weekend, I still need to take all of the preview screenshots which is perhaps the least exciting part of making CC.
And thank you, on behalf of the volunteers at NRaas.
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I did post earlier, but thought I should share how. In a step by step manner. So bare with me.
Step 1:
New game, so you to this pop up:
Then: Simple Empty Terrian
This would lead you to empty plain, where you can freely build.
Step 2: cheats (IMPORTANT)
Open the cheat command by pressing Ctrl+Shift+C, I don’t know what it would by for macOS users. But I know it would be the same the sims cheat box.
So it looks like this:
Now: I TOGGLEEDITTOWN, you don’t need to caps it, I just do it (then press enter.) Now. This will allow you to have an extra things.
Step 3:
Enter build mode - (press the button in the corner)
And got to terrain tools: this is where the lot perimeters are.
You can now edit the lot and use sledge hammer to remove any you placed.
If you don’t do step 2, then you can’t get the lot perimeter tool.
Warning: i have mistake somewhere, where I can’t see the map popups anymore, but I solved thought adding a para. Is kinda hot. But this is an early access game, and you can’t change lot types, but there is probably a way to do so.
I'M SORRY?? why is this post not getting more notes people!! I thought the lot perimeters were still not in the game 👁️👄👁️ I sort of figured you could make a custom world, somehow, given how much stuff there is in the "control panel", but I wasn't excepting this to work like this!
I got Paralives on Steam… you guys know what that means lmao
I had to unironically give Zuko literal 2008 emo hair because it was the best hairstyle available that suited him IMO 😅 I also figured out how to make his scar by putting a birthmark and a tattoo on the left side of his face (I made the tattoo really big and faded)
The game is still a bit glitchy (makes sense for early access), but you can see the bones of a really cool product here. I’m honestly kind of baffled at how well they’ve done some of the facial animations/expressions, I was fujoing out so much lmao. Unfortunately the kiss animations were one of the glitches for me, their heads kept clipping into each other 😭
This is bringing back memories of my personal ATLA household I made in TS2 way back when, I'm about to cry 🥹 been a while since I saw someone use that tag over here!!
Also the "no mods" scar is so well done?? I swear the paramaker has so much potential for things like this!
"when will they add cars to paralives" NEVER i hope. there's a train and a bus free yrself from the americanized prison of car centrism!!!!!!!!!!!! IT'S A WALKABLE CITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If people want to check out Part 2 of my "Learning Blender for TS2 custom content creation" (aka. Cutting Edges) workshop, here's the playback recording fully edited for your viewing pleasure 🤗
Feel free to reach out if you have more questions. I am most active on Discord, and ofc on The SimForge server 😉 And I like to help folks figuring stuff out (sometimes I learn from it myself!) 🤓
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If anyone else would like to join me in petitioning EA to at least try to fix the object limit in Legacy Edition (maybe I'd bother using that version of the game instead, lol), please jump on this thread I've started in their forums and comment.
Hello,An amazing coder named Will Nixon has been digging into a bug in The Sims 2 called the "Object Limit" and has figured out how it could
🙏🏻
(yes, Will, I know you're still poking at the UC code being like "could I fix this...??" but it shouldn't be all on you, lovely)
(yes, I know Legacy Edition sucks but if they were to remove this cap, I'd "use" it... if you know what I mean 😏)
Just an update that there's been no response from EA (yet).
I also sent a DM to EA_Cade on the forums who was the person who wrote the last patch notes when Legacy was last updated (February last year, LOL) asking if support was still available for Sims 2 and if they had seen the post I made about this.
*Crickets*
But thank you to everyone who has gone in and liked and commented, please keep pushing it, we all know that it's gonna take a massive repetitive bashing over their heads to even get an acknowledgement from them lol.
A small reminder that I made a thread about Pink Soup a few weeks after the Legacy edition released, which didn't get much traction (because idk, people were still mad about the DMCA and preferred to complain instead of demand a fix?).
I know other threads have already been started for this issue, but I'd like to use this one as a means to summarize the experience many play
Not that I want them to do another SimNopke shadow fix type of ripoff, but if the fix was found, let them include it in a patch so future players can benefit from it. 🤷
Also, this other thread (not by me) about the Randomization Sequencer fix (aka the First-Born syndrome fix) that for some reason got locked. I think this should also be mentioned if we are talking "QoL" bug fixes.
reminder that you can make your lutris thumbnails be whatever you want! i spent a great deal of my afternoon reworking my own so they have a lil theme 🤌🏼
the text on the simpe thumbnail are lyrics to daft punks technologic and ofc, the lyrics that make the most sense for working in simpe (for me that is):
Write it, cut it, paste it, save it
Load it, check it, quick – rewrite it
anyway, this was a fun lil creative outlet! highly recommended 🖤
