Everyone has something they're nerdy about... for some reason, mine is the eternal garbage heap known as The Sims. (See my personal blog and Custom Content at MyOnline-PityParty.tumblr.com).
Hello, The Sims lovers! Recently, you probably caught @morepopcorn update about the FAME PACK mod, which is going to bring back some cool features from the Sims Superstar EP (and not only!) 🤩
I can't express how excited I am to bring brand-new animations to these iconic objects and finally see them in action inside the game. I wanted to share a sneak peek of the WIP process with you! These clips come from the Recording Studio and showcase both the successful and failed versions of doing jingles and handling rejection.
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Hi Billie! You asked me to check up with you in a couple weeks to see if any of jaydee227/jd-movies website content had been archived (since it's harder to find being 20ish years old). No hurry! Thanks.
I am posting this so I see it later and remember to acrape that shit!!
lordcrumps "made" sims codex, a spreadsheet/database software geared towards sims 2 players, using AI, initially had a "suck it up an get over it, no one's forcing you to use this software" attitude said AI usage, which lasted a comically short amount of time before he backed down when faced with backlash. eventually, after taking the original down, he uploaded a revised version that he at least claims was made and/or fixed up by a human programmer, and he also claims "no more AI going forward". that's the gist of the situation. i have my doubts personally but most people seem placated for now.
Oh,
yeah I'm not gonna lie I don't really care if people use AI. I know that's like not a cool opinion to hold but like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Like I've made the decision to stop caring about everything so much literally all the time.
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When you mention piracy to the wrong person and now you have to listen to them talk for 2 hours that we need to support small businesses such as EA and Amazon
I was playing Dead Space 2 and noticed some objects from The Sims 2, such as the toy mouse "Kitty Kraze Katnip" that cats play with, a toy fire truck "Little Heroes Fire Truck":
And a children's educational toy "Magical Mystery's "Shape, Rattle & Roll"":
This is a reply from the 'hoes mad' ask that pisses me off specifically (not because of the specific drama, which is mid in terms of sims drama btw) but because AS IF people wouldn't dox each other over this if they had the chance and it was easy. I watched a girl get people calling her honest to god job because one of the russian simmers found out she leaked her content.
Pleasantsims basically had a mental breakdown live on camera and everyone acted like it was fine because "well she shouldn't be filming herself doing this" as if you were too stupid to realize that it's not like job prospects are probably very good for someone who literally has their face attached to them PUBLICLY having a breakdown and then being financially incentivized to keep sharing.
And an accusation of bigotry no matter HOW flimsy is basically a free pass for the uwu smol bean crowd to do 4chan shit without needing to feel bad about it. Most of you could give a shit about doing the right thing, you just want a way to indulge your worst impulses while maintaining the narrative that you're a good person and all of your actions can go entirely unexamined.
these posts are wild, i do not understand. we are all playing dollhouse. people are being trafficked, aka enslaved, living in actual warzones without food, medicine, hospitals or water, being assaulted and actually murdered currently, and strangers are going scorched earth on each other while playing digital dollhouse... forget just smoking weed, have a joint AND an edible jesus christ.
'People are DYING, Kim.' fr
now I remember why i peaced out... now I gotta get back to that
I wish I could find that fucking post again that was like "Some of you spent so much time on the internet that it has twisted your concept of what a problem actually is" and I can't stop thinking about that.
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Literally every default face template set on earth that I've ever seen be like: what if every single sim looked the exact same as each other. and also they're all white
Can't have Asian features or Black features or Indigenous features because they're too #ugly and the Sims 2 community memes on it constantly about how #gross and #ugly they are and how that's why we need defaults that are just 25 clones of the same white guy with a button nose and round eyes. Oh and elf and alien I guess. I GUESS.
"but what if i want my sims to look UNIQUE instead of looking like Maxis face template sim #3874358" you know you can make unique looking sims with the maxis templates right. you know you can just Do that, right. it's not hard. for fuck's sake.
also bold take but i don't think 28 templates with the same vague shape of fucking button noses and round eyes are "unique"
Isbrealiomcaife's All Around the World face templates have been around for over 20 years. 8 years ago @ivy-sims uploaded custom versions of the default faces in the Japanese, Korean, and Chinese installs of the game
I understand what you're saying and we do need more. I'm not a face template collector so there are probably a lot more that I don't know about, it's a niche area of CC creating so it's hard to find people who do it. But here's some links for anyone who's looking for more variety
I agree with @creesims recs! I also think these by Pooklet are quite unique. Deedee has made them non default so you can have them together with Maxis' if you like, it adds variety if you let your game spawn townies, NPCs, etc. I agree that some sets out there are a bit same face-y, but no one's forcing you to download them 🤷🏾♀️
Actually my point exactly was that many CC creators (including my(retired)self) are not creating for the community at all but for themselves. They are generously sharing a set of face templates they've probably made for their own game. You can of course dislike their CC, but you can't tell them what kind of CC they should be making instead.
also, are you guys aware that you can combine face templates from different sets? you do not have to use a full set by anyone.
i get the point that was being made here but at the same time literally every single person's game has same face syndrome to some extent. mixing and matching templates from different people is going to curb that.
yes, it's annoying having to pick and choose instead of just sticking a whole set in there and calling it a day but i feel like if you're going to criticize others for being too lazy to MAKE different faces, you can also be criticized for being too lazy to choose different faces (which arguably is easier and less time consuming that making them from scratch)
Also, instead of being bitchy about the existing templates, how about you make your own?
People make these usually for themselfs and love to share them, which we are really greatful for.
Just a bit of google can lead you to some really nice templates aswell.
Why do you guys always default to this when POC point out racist trends in the fandom? "Make your own stuff", "Just download from someone else", "I'm making this for myself"? The point of this discussion is not to demand people change their gameplay style, it's to make people ask why exactly do they play like this. Why their "ideal face templates" exclude any ethnic features. Why this is such a common trend in the fandom. This is a pattern of behavior people have been noticing for twenty years now. Your preferences do not exist in a vacuum separate from society.
Will you scrape GOS again in the future for archival purposes? I honestly have no trust in this revival with HugeLunatic still having the power to shut it all down again at another whim of theirs.
It's not at the top of my to-do list but I def will. I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to do it but I plan on trying to get everything from Late 2023-current.
Like I said though, that's a little further into the future.
Hey, regarding prehistoric custom content, do you know if anything from jd-movies/Jaydee227's website (aside from the pose boxes) was archived?
I was only able to get Helena via the wayback machine several months ago and am unable check myself at the moment (and Google is useless). ^^;'
Thanks for any help Billie!
I'm almost sure it was. I might have to go digging for it. I'll make a note. If you don't hear about it from me soon bother me about it again. I got lotsa stuff going on but I'll get it if you keep poking me about it ^^;
Hey, I got back into Sims lately and ever since I've been having trouble connecting to Paysites Must Be Destroyed. Is this a recent thing, or has it been down for a while?
That's weird? I just checked and it's up for me. It might be a VPN thing, if you have one try turning it on and off and checking both ways. If not that then there is a back up of it on Archive.org both as a big zip and on waybackmachine.
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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.
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).
im sure ur intentions r good but talking down to ppl in this tone rly isnt it, we're not unruly toddlers in need of the calm and collected adults to come in and explain the situation to us, we understand perfectly well what happened and how and we're not into it. we have every right to be upset at how badly this was bungled
this whole post is a gr8 example of the kind of fake high-ground toxic positivity that leads to situations like these developing in niche communities in the first place, bc some ppl are deemed to have 'offered so much' that ANY criticism of them no matter how valid is summarily dismissed w 'remember kindness and empathy'
kindness and empathy go both ways. where were the calls for kindness and empathy when @simnostalgia thankfully had the foresight to do his gos back up and got a hate train in response? why exactly does HL by default deserve our 'kindness and empathy' when their response has been nothing but dismissive and rude af?
this community is incredibly supportive and if any of this had been communicated properly the (frankly disproportionate to the size of the comm) amount of rly gifted programmers we have would have immediately offered to help and everyone else would have donated money and time to help back up and archive etc
ive been here 10y and have never once participated in drama or any kind of hate train, i was just abt the only person defending paywallers a few years back bc im so uncomfortable w everyone ganging up on one person, but thats literally not whats happening here at all. this is a lot of us being rightfully concerned that 1 person apparently can go rogue and hold smth that is a legit communal property hostage. i dont even care if gos is restored at this point but im rly over this kind of condescending attitude that is endemic around here
