#brightmaple

A Maxis Match Lighting Mod Tweak!

As requested by @jellymeduza I'm sharing my tweak of @dreadpirate's fabulous Maxis Match lighting mod. This makes the unlit rooms during dawn and dusk a bit brighter (closer to how they appear at nighttime) and tweaks the colour-cast a bit too. The photos above are all four time of day states including with my tweaks - but nothing about day or night was actually changed from the original MM lighting mod.

Below are all the before and after pictures for dawn/dusk next to each other - before is the MM lighting mod "out of the box" and after is with my tweaks.

How to install:

Download the Maxis Match lighting mod exactly as per dreadpirates instructions. (don't worry about the part on enabling or disabling dawn and dusk states, that will be included in my edit)

Replace your lighting.txt file with mine included in this download - this will be in your base game install folders, for the UC the file path is "Double Deluxe/Base/TSData/Res/Lights" and you'll be overwriting the lighting.txt file in there with mine.

Enjoy! :)

Download (SFS) | Download (MF)

This is @midgethetree's awesome functional yoga mat, with a few tweaks to make it friendlier for use on an OFB business lot. It's more attractive now, and Sims of any body skill level can use it, not just 3+ points.

This would absolutely not have come together without the helpful guidance of @gummilutt, @hugelunatic, and @heathensimmer helping me and suggesting what to try since I am very much not a modder! But once again, desperately stubborn when it comes to making things work in my own game.

This is just an edit of the mesh, replace Midge's version with mine, but get the recolours from her original post.

Enjoy :)

I got some Simming time in recently and got a much needed project done! I have a household now living in Coconut Cove, one of my vacation hoods (using some fancy footwork with mods and such since Sims can't actually live in a vacation hood) but as such I needed some more lots that support full time living, as opposed to just vacationing. Most importantly, a grocery store!

So this is a cute little grocery store that fits the look of Coconut Cove, and will also be handy theoretically for those who are just staying for a short visit and will be cooking their own food (even though the fridges come already stocked...). I included a little cafe and food cart patio on the side as well.

By popular demand (I saw two people asking) I thought I would throw together a quick guide to using the road editor tool in the newest version of SimPE! You'll see that this is a very easy tool to use, and best of all, goof-proof. If you do mess up (you probably will) it's very, very easy to correct.

Very, very, very important to make a backup of your hood before you ever do any tinkering in SimPE! I also recommend practicing on a test hood you don't actively play in to get a feel for it before you do anything to your main hoods.

We're starting with a vanilla Strangetown. I would recommend going in your game and taking a nice overhead screenshot of the hood like this first to look at for reference of where everything is situated the way that you're used to looking at it.

2. Open SimPE, go to Tools> Neighbourhood> Neighbourhood Browser and open the hood you're wanting to work on. If you're not so familiar with SimPE, opening your hood can take some time. Touch nothing until it's loaded!

3. Once it's all loaded, from the Resource Tree list pick Neighbourhood Terrain Geometry (NHTG). Then you'll see one file populate the Resource List - click that. Make sure on the bottom that you have Plugin View tab selected.

4. Now you should see this map of your hood pop up! There are different things you can toggle, I like to check the Show Lots box when I'm editing the roads. Then click the Road Editor button on the right.

5. To be able to see better, I've pulled this Plugin View window up a bit - it may rearrange the Resource List and Resource Tree windows a bit to accommodate. You can also press the Zoom 2x button to see closer, and then you'll have to use the scroll bars to move around the map and the road editor tool.

6. The road editing tools here will be placed down in the same orientation as the map. So the two parallel roads running through Strangetown from this perspective are the vertical straight road pieces (top row, second from left).

When you select a road tool, above it will indicate which tool you have selected.

Also - I recommend having Handle Stop Signs ticked.

7. Once you have the correct type of road selected for the spot you're working on, simply click on the map - it lays it down one tile at a time. If you miss a spot like shown here, just fill it in.

8. If you want to create an intersection, first delete the section of road where the intersection will go.

9. Then choose the type of junction for the intersection you're making, and add that piece in. You'll see a red circle appear (unsure if this is because it's an intersection or because you have handle stop signs selected, but I recommend you do have that selected either way).

10. Once you're done making all your changes, click Close Editor.

11. This is the part where you save your changes! First click Commit in the top right of the editor. Then, File> Save!

12. Load your game to check! Looks pretty good with all those new roads!

13. However, we have indeed made some mistakes! Which were absolutely for illustrative purposes and not truly an accident.

14. Never fear! Simply reload the hood in SimPE - I've deleted the spot where the T-junction should go and added one in, and deleted where the road just ended abruptly and added a proper end piece.

I have not experimented with what happens if you try to build a road through hood deco - if you have, please let us know in the comments how that went!

I also have barely touched the terrain editing tools, so that's outside the scope of this tutorial.

Played around a little today with redecorating bits of Coconut Cove, thanks to @lordcrumps, @tvickiesims and @platinumaspiration's full conversion of Island Living, plus some other hood deco items from @leoz94 that I'd downloaded recently too!

I realised one of the reasons I haven't made great use of the Nooks & Niches stuff is because it wasn't available in many of my favourite and most used textures! One of which is this gorgeous 4t2 brick texture. I have other custom walls I want to add to nooks & niches that I haven't seen done before, but this was as far as I got.

You'll need of course, Buggybooz Nooks & Niches set - I downloaded it from @cityof2morrow to put it in the architecture category and get the handy collection file so everything is nice and tidy.

For the matching wall texture you'll want to grab that from @lordcrumps - the wall is from EP06 Get Famous; LC_HomemadeBrick is the file you want!

Comes in all 5 original colours, just took screenshots of two of them.

Enjoy!

I had a great time yesterday getting a little better acquainted with Lot Adjuster and making some row style shop fronts for the shopping district subhood, Maple Mills! I had been feeling inspired to decorate the hood recently after downloading a bunch more hood deco, and then got the itch for building too.

Operative word being shop fronts because all of these are shells, which is why I was able to do so many! I still have my lot imposters turned down pretty low, Linux performs great but I'm not getting too cheeky. So tried to get pictures that give the impression of the whole block of lots as one kind of unit.

These are all going to be available for my Sims to purchase as owned businesses, except for the bistro on the far left which will be a community lot bistro. Honestly, I swear that the TS4 team used the same reference image as I did when they made that Cozy Bistro kit because it was so identical, I just had to replicate it.

Most of them I had a direct reference image I was working off of, which I'll link here just cause I find that kind of thing very interesting to see myself.

Built a new little apartment building for Brightmaple today! Three one bed, one bath apartments. I had fun with it, I kept thinking I was done and took pictures, but then decided to add just a few more things here or there. Went all out with the street deco on it!