Magpie's Stash

Pelagos Legacy 1.2

2015-05-02T15:22:14Z

I DID NOT FORGET ABOUT MY LEGACY I just. Had winter happen to me. But my adorable saucy fish girl and her wife's tale continues!

( Read more... )

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The Pelagos Legacy - 1.1

2014-11-18T23:47:18Z

While I've attempted legacies before, I've never gotten past gen two - and I've never done the whole picture taking and story writing thing with them, either. I figured it was time to find out, and see if taking pictures and making things interesting so there's a story to tell will keep me going to generation ten. Come with me on an exciting journey to find out of I can make it and if I ever get any better at taking and editing pictures! 8D

( Read more... )

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aquilegia @ 2014-09-17T18:18:00

2014-09-17T15:19:50Z

I made a tumblr - magpieplayssims - since the bulk of the community activity seems to be over there now. I don't know how many active people follow this blog, but I'll still post the occasional update here just in case.

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aquilegia @ 2014-09-16T23:15:00

2014-09-16T20:19:53Z

Ah yes, forgot to mention - I would really appreciate clothing conversion suggestions for transgender sims. My sense of style is, er, lackadaisical at best, so I'm not really a good judge of what would be a good idea to make.

If you suggest CC, please give me a link since I probably won't have it.

(I've already got three skirt conversions in the pipeline - I made the meshes ages ago and got them linked to a base recolor, I just... never went further than that.)

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aquilegia @ 2014-09-15T20:46:00

2014-09-15T18:07:20Z

Still have my old project files from before I stopped playing years ago. They look like they only need minimal tweaking.

( Cut for tastefully starred out sim nudity )

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Re: transgender bodyshapes + clothes

2014-09-15T14:56:37Z

I am fond of separates, especially since finding out it's possible to use separates in non-everyday categories, and prefer them to be shareable across shapes when possible to reduce bin clutter and maximize variety in randomization.

Problem: The fat morphs put a big wrench in making separates shareable across bodyshapes. Separation point on F mesh makes for a nipped in waist and difficulty shaping an apple-shape belly; M fat morph is SO apple-shaped it's awkward to make feminine.

Not impossible. I have a mostly-completed body mesh that I made ages ago where the fat morph looks good, imo. Not hourglassy like default F, but then, lots of fat folks have apple-shaped bodies and narrowish hips regardless of hormone balance.

F morph... more difficult. I need to work on it, see what I can do. It WILL be a separate bodyshape from F androgyny, as it's meant to simulate a different fat distribution/muscle size due to HRT.

Alternate possibilities if morphs for compatible separates are unsatisfactory:

- two versions of bodyshapes, one shareable separates compatible, one not; make two versions of full body meshes. Will not be making different separates in this scenario.
- shareable M bottom separates where the fat morph is transgender bodyshape compatible, and compatible-ish for default morph tops that are long + bulky enough and have a 'capped' bottom so there aren't visible gaps. Might work okay. F version would be the other way around - F transgender top morphs compatible with default morph bottoms - and probably not work nearly so well.
- flag bottoms for both M and F, have transgender bodyshape tops categorized appropriately. Not an option for me - too messy, wouldn't be able to have clothes flagged that way be townified.

There's also that M and F legs are mapped differently (the choices EA made were so...), so that everything from mid-thigh down ends up in the wrong place if a sim with a skin assuming one kind of mapping wears bare-legged clothes using the other. (Something I messed up on with the M androgyny shape because I wanted to keep skin sizes small. Sorry, everyone; I'll see about fixing that if people would like.)

[edit] There's also the simple fact that EA made the M body considerably fatter than the F body (i.e. actually fat vs. a bit chubby) that makes it hard to get comparable shapes. I could speculate on why there's a large disparity, but... depressing.

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Oh hai, I made you some defaults. [Part 3]

2013-08-06T18:30:52Z

Long time no see. I remembered I had these defaults that I had taken screencaps of but never uploaded, and when I went to look at them in-game (after getting the damn thing to start) I thought they were nice enough to be worth sharing. I also discovered some outfits I'd totally forgotten I'd made because I hadn't taken screencaps of them.

Unlike the previous however many times, I'm not going to make any promises one way or another of if I'll make more stuff, because my gaming whims are capricious and my creating whims even moreso. Also, I hate taking screenshots more than anything.

Sorry, no swatches this time, just preview pics.

( Onward. )

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Attention melanthiabast!

2013-02-07T09:35:00Z

DW says your inbox is closed so I'm posting my reply here:

Thank you for letting me know the elder underwear file links are broken! That's so weird -- I must have made a copy/paste error on my post because the files are still in my Mediafire folder. Anyhow, try these links:

http://www.mediafire.com/?6mh21afm84djpk9
http://www.mediafire.com/?zai22n2i39bbact

Let me know if they don't work and I'll upload them to Box instead.

And I'm glad you found the HP top fix. :D

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TS3 Upload: Hook Coast Tattoos from Fable

2012-09-11T12:32:03Z

This is one of the gifts I made for the GoS Treasure hunt back in June -- a set of 10 tattoos made from images extracted from the game Fable. Some look better than others in different placements, but they're all pretty versatile. Most of them have one color channel, with the exception of 7 which I believe has 2.

If you have Ambitions or your game patched and up to date, you can use these. *.package files only, sorry.

Download @ Mediafire

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State of the Aquilegia

2012-07-26T14:27:12Z

Hey there! I haven't been updating here for a while for various reasons, the big one being that my computer had been getting more and more painful to use. It was terribly slow and acting strangely -- I probably could have used a new Windows install, but that wouldn't have helped with the fact that the motherboard and processor were a decade old, and the video card only a year or two newer. It really killed my creativity to only be able to have one program open at a time, and that their processing times meant it could take up to half an hour just to build one package.

However! I rebuilt it completely a little while ago and it works like a dream, and while I've been trying out other games now that they'll actually run and run well (I can finally play Dragon Age ;_;), I haven't abandoned TS2. Far from it -- now that I have a good computer, creating is fun again because the tedious button pushing parts go a lot faster, and I can keep a whole bunch of programs open at once so referencing what I need to tweak is super easy.

I have a whole bunch of goodies I've already made to put up -- a ton of texture replacements for base game clothes, and nice, matching recolors of some base game build items -- and I'm in the process of making a whole bunch more. Immediately in the works are skirt conversions for teens, elders, and M sims, a new 8-skin Maxis matchy skinset, and a trans* bodyshape basic set.

(On that note: repositoried clothes, or no? I could either give the AM clothes textures and repository the other ages, or I could repository them all to the AF clothes. Thoughts?)

I'll also have some TS3 stuff up, but that will happen more sporadically because TS3 meshing and texturing is a giant headache (the in-game recolorability means the creating end is waaay more complicated) and most of the tutorials are bare bones.

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Upload: Hair: Two more EA Store Conversions/Retextures

2012-04-19T19:19:31Z

I seem to have made a bit of a project out of age and gender converting EA Store hairstyles. They're pretty low poly and they aren't bad meshes for the most part -- they just tend to not be for enough ages or only for one gender, and of course the textures are mostly unsuitable for non-Maxis Match games.

Well.

I've always been really fond of the asymmetric bob so that was a natural to gender convert. The bowl cut is maybe a slightly strange choice, but to me it's a bit more cute than it is ugly, and I think people playing medieval-themed games could get a lot of use out of it.

I converted both styles for men, and added a toddler age to the bowl cut. On the bowl cut I also adjusted the meshes for the existing ages to sit better on the head -- it was awfully high up before.

Both come binned and Pooklet'd in four colors + elder gray linked to black; the asymmetric bob comes in four streaked custom colors as well that work for teen through elder. If you decide you don't want the hair for one gender, delete the recolors with F or M in the filename, as you choose.

Included in each archive are the base texture in Volatile so it's easier to make any other colors you need.

(Dynamite, Depth Charge, Volatile, Pyrotechnic, Mail Bomb)

(Cupcake, Marmalade, Blue Raspberry, Licorice)

Download Modern Asymmetric Bob
Download Modern Bowlcut

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Upload: Hair: No Fooling! Four Hairstyles for ladies of all ages

2012-04-01T21:14:11Z

April Fool's Day generally kind of irritates me with the number of dumb and tedious pranks sites like to pull, so I thought I'd do my part to alleviate that somewhat by offering up a few old styles I've made a successful attempt to salvage by retexturing -- XM Sims 051, Peggy/Juice 0021, and Sunair 0036 & 0037. XM 0051 is for teens through elders, I believe, while the others are all ages.

All styles come in (from left to right) Dynamite (black), Depth Charge (brown), Volatile (blond), Pyrotechnic (red), and Mail Bomb (gray), and have been retextured in various combinations of Pooklet's v. 2 and 3 textures (with some additional textures from elsewhere mixed in where noted). Gray is the elder only file, so don't delete it or elders won't have that hairstyle! However, I've included base Volatile textures in each archive so you can make any other colors you need.

Juice 0021 and Sunair 0036 also come in four streaked recolors.

From left to right:
Cupcake - Primer base, streaked with PowderCake and Pentolite
Marmelade - Firework base, streaked with Torpedo and C-3
Blue Raspberry - HMX base, streaked with Fluorophore and Blasting Agent
Licorice - FlashPowder base, streaked with Fulminant and Semtex

( More previews with side shots, and download links )

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Two EA Store Updos, retextured and converted for teens

2012-03-02T17:05:31Z

The EA Store had a couple of really nice updo meshes (Swept Up & Rolled and French Twist) that I never put in my game because I was so annoyed they didn't come for teens. Some time after I learned how to convert hair it occurred to me that these would be good candidates for conversion -- nice styles in simple, one-group meshes.

Retexturing them wasn't so easy, but c'est la vie.

Each style comes in Dynamite, Depth Charge, Pyrotechnic, and Volatile, with Mail Bomb for elders in the Dynamite file. Also included for each is a bmp of the Volatile texture for clean recoloring. All meshes are included.

Download here.

Download here.

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My GoS February Theme Contribution - Base Game Small Appliance Retextures

2012-03-02T16:23:29Z

I retextured and colored all of the basegame small appliances -- coffeemaker, toaster oven, food processor, microwave oven, and espresso machine -- as well as the two indoor trash bins. The colors match those in the large appliance recolor set I gave as an SS gift to AdmiralAeris, so you can be as painfully matchy-matchy with your kitchen decor as your heart desires.

( Read more... )

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My SS Gift to AdmiralAeris

2012-01-02T15:38:39Z

I didn't get much of a response from my santee about the gift, but I worked really hard on it and I'm proud of what I made.

- All of the counters and countertops have working dirty states
- As do the stoves
- I was careful to keep handles, knobs, dials, etc colors they should be -- no running the whole texture through a color action and calling it done here!
- All of the colors MATCH as closely as I was able -- which was dead on for the appliances. All of the appliances also have the same sheen, so when you switch out, say, a cheap dishwasher for an expensive one, you'll still have the same look and feel.

( Swatches here... )

Credits:
Aelia, Curious B, and Pooklet for color actions
Maxis for most of the textures
Swirl and regular woods grabbed from an image search

Download here. ~~Please let me know if my bandwith runs out so I can re-host elsewhere.~~ You'll probably need to use this mediafire link instead since Box has turned into a bag of dicks.

Do let me know if you're interested in matching recolors for the small basegame appliances and trash bins! I've got some templates put together.

As for what I got, check out my post here on GoS. Cynthia did an awesome job and I'm really, really happy with my gift, enough so that I'm actually sad I don't have a real life sofa in one of those Amelia recolors. XD

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Versatile Bed Blanket Recolors

2011-11-17T15:53:47Z

So hey, long time no see. I've been pretty busy with a new job, but there's also the sad fact that now that I have to use a crappy kitchen chair, my gaming computer setup is just too painful to sit at for more than an hour or so a time. Obviously this puts huge dent in my playing and creating.

Still, I've been puttering around making this and that on occasion. Like these; none of the hundreds of plainish recolors for Jonesi's bed blanket out there suited me, or there were just too damned many per set for me to be able to sort through without being paralyzed by indecision.

These are pretty simple: a generic 'cloth' texture that suits all sorts of objects so it'll look decent with the many things slaved to the bed blanket, and in plain and striped for each color. All of the colors are Pooklet's (except for Topaz, that's Aelia's Saffron), renamed for a little more ease of telling what's what. The lighter color in the stripes mostly matches the same color plain version, but there's some disparity in the dark versions.

Striped Swatch.

Colors are, from right to left:
White, Candy Pink, Candy Orange, Candy Yellow
Candy Green, Candy Teal, Candy Blue, Candy Purple
Ruby, Garnet, Amethyst, Sapphire
Emerald, Topaz, Brown, Black

Everything is labeled clearly so you can easily delete what you don't want.

Download Jonesi's Bed Blanket recolors.

If you're looking for the bed blanket and the addons, here is a placeable anywhere, fixed version and a single bed version by Huge Lunatic (look through the rest of HL's forums to find a few more items), here are a bunch of Moune's pillows made slaved by amethystfenix, and here are a whole BUNCH of items of slaved items, like tablecloths and rugs, by Helle.

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aquilegia @ 2011-09-06T17:12:00

2011-09-06T14:14:50Z

Guess who has a new monitor? :D

Well, new-to-me monitor. It's old enough to be clunky for an LCD and is lower-res than my previous one, but eh, the colors are okay and it's clear enough. Now I can make things and play again!

However, I won't be around as much as before -- besides general busy-ness and fandom juggling, after threeish months away I am reminded of how painful my desk setup is, so I'll have to make every moment here count. Which in practice really means less screwing around with folder setups and reading ALL THE THINGS and more actually doing stuff.

You should take it as a given that any of my previous projects (save androgyny) is probably abandoned, though. I will see what I can resurrect but I know better than to make promises.

I'm sure I've missed a ton (like Christmas in July, sob), so I'll try to catch up at least a little...

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Unintentional Hiatus

2011-07-26T17:22:11Z

Hey folks -- I didn't mean to go MIA, but between my monitor breaking and me being busy with summer and various other things, I haven't been able to do more than glance at this thing and GoS every once in a while.

Broken monitor means no gaming or creating, sadly, and unfortunately I have no idea when I'll be able to get my hands on a new monitor. :/ I have the netbook I do my work on, but participating isn't much fun when I can't make things or play, you know?

~~I also kind of fell down the rabbit hole that is Homestuck, oops.~~

Anyhow, I miss you all, and I hope I'll be back sooner rather than later. <3 I hope you're all doing all right.

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Upload: Oh hai, I made you some basegame default clothes. (Part 2)

2011-05-15T15:51:29Z

Second verse, same as the first. Difference here is that I borrowed heavily from other creator's textures to make these, and there are no mesh edits; all textures work with the waist ridges, which provides an extra and rather nice 3D effect.

Thanks to Pooklet, CuriousB, and Aelia for color actions.

AS WITH ALL DEFAULTS, THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE (per item).

( +5 defaults )

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Upload: Oh hai, I made you some basegame default clothes. (Part 1)

2011-05-15T15:29:30Z

I haven't been around much making things-wise lately because creativity has been at a low ebb for the past month and a half here in Aquilegialand.

But sometime back I made some default replacement clothes, and after a while of actually playing and seeing them in action I could decide which ones were good enough to share. A couple have built-in mesh edits that don't change the mapping so existing recolors will still look fine -- in fact, they will look even better because I made the meshes look better! There is one exception but you'll see that when we get to it.

Thanks to Pooklet, CuriousB, and Aelia for color actions.

AS WITH ALL DEFAULTS, THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE (per item).

( +7 defaults )

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Upload: Hair: Basegame Hair Texture Replacements

2011-04-05T17:01:01Z

This is an ENORMOUS project that started as noodling around to see if I could salvage a few Maxis meshes and grew into an absolute monster. These replacements cover 56 non-hat Basegame hairstyles; the additional 6 hiders hide the styles I loathe too much to touch. Some styles are completely retextured, others only softened a bit and recolored.

Allow me to crow: some of these styles were absolute bitches. Maxis failmapping was in full force in the basegame, with continuous parts of meshes often mapped in completely different places, making it difficult to avoid big, ugly seams with retextures (and in the case of the Short style, even Maxis couldn't avoid such).

Through careful blending, lots of cursing, and the blessing that is previewing via Milkshape, I managed to retexture these styles in a way that minimizes the weird mapping. They aren't perfect; I had to do some blending magic with the Maxis textures to get this to work, and as a result the textures a little funky along those seams. They're good enough for my game; you'll have to choose whether or not they're good enough for yours.

I also made the mullet style workable through a mesh edit as well as a retexture. The mesh is a part of the package, as the texture really doesn't work with the original mesh.

All files have been compressorized.

Preview 1 | Preview 2 | Preview 3 | Preview 4 | Preview 5 | Preview 6 | Preview 7

TEXTURE DEFAULTS

All custom 'mirror' colors have been replaced as well as the binned styles.

I've edited some styles to texture reference the opposite gender's textures, where the styles used the same mapping. This saves considerably on file size, but PLEASE BE AWARE: this means certain age conversions (AM mohawk and AM Longdreads) will end up using Maxis textures unless you fix them.

Some files may look particularly large; this is because they had many custom colors, required large texture sizes for quality, or both.

Remember, these are DEFAULT REPLACEMENTS: You can have only one of any given replacement.

DOWNLOAD Default Texture Replacements (Acorntuck through Meg)
DOWNLOAD Default Texture Replacements (Messy through Will)

BONUS! Conversions, mesh edits, addons, and texture resources

( GENDER AND AGE CONVERSIONS )

( MAXIS MESH EDITS ONLY )

( HIDERS )

( TEXTURE RESOURCES )

Credits:
Pooklet's colors (Dynamite, Depth Charge, Volatile, Pyrotechnic, and TimeBomb)
Pooklet's v.2 and v.3 textures
Nouk's Waves, Afro, and Dreads textures
Nymphy's curls edit of Nouk's Waves
AlfredAskew for the Shortsimple retexture I tweaked, softened, and blended with the Maxis texture
Almighty Hat for the braidsup, halo, lowbun, meg, poofs, rocker, and sixty textures
Alkaloid via Almight Hat for the shortmop textures
Monoblue for the PG Skater alpha
Ja, Almighty Hat, Nymphy, and Lunar Eclipse for pilfered alphas
Biobong on MTS for the Punkflip edit idea
Melodie9's many, many age conversions
Layana's texture referencing, Maxis-blending files for the conversions

I apologize for any missing credits in the text files included with the archive.

Please feel free to use my packages to build your own replacements.

*falls over*

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Preview: Women's Basegame Hair Replacements

2011-04-02T00:09:01Z

I'M SO CLOSE, YOU GUYS. I've done all but ten of the non-hat styles, and of those ten I'm going to hide all but two*, maybe four. I have a couple more meshes to tweak (including some age conversions that fit oddly or have normals issues), a few alphas to fix, and then I can upload the lot. :D (I will do the hats, just in a separate batch).

In order, from left to right, top to bottom:long (Bella Goth's hair) with Nymphy's curls, pagepunk (with a mesh edit), barrette with Nouk's waves, rosettes with Nouk's afro texture, shorttuckin, and acorntuck (with a mesh edit).

---

* Still to be done: crewcut, formal (a CF only updo with a ribbon)

May be done if I'm feeling patient: pompadore, ricebowl

Not going to happen because they are substandard and ugly: feather, mediumcenterpart (it's just a crappier version of acorntuck), ponytailhigh, flypigtails, frontalwave, round (the deflated soccerball Maxis tried to pass off as an afro).

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State of the Basegame Hair Retextures

2011-03-31T00:17:51Z

I have 35 (!!) of the basegame hairstyles retextured (many thanks go to Hat for the retextures of hers I could borrow). After a lot of fussing, snarling, and not touching the project for days at a time, I've decided on a few things:

1. I'll use the colors Ja chose for her default replacements for mine. They really aren't the colors I prefer, but just the thought of doing all of those other styles is a deeply unhappy one, as is making default packages twice over. I can live with non-optimal-for-me shades.
2. I'm doing defaults instead of nice sets of recolors because I really, really, really hate the Bodyshop project dance. I did two styles and... no.
3. Instead I'll offer a base volatile texture (bmp+alpha bmp, or png?) of every hair that anyone is likely to want, like the curly/wavy retextures. I'll keep base textures of the others kicking around too just in case someone decides they really, REALLY want the combover in bright orange.
4. I'm offering each style in individual packages. I'm not grouping them together because I find that really annoying, and if you have something replaced that you like you wouldn't want mine coming in and bungling things up, now would you? You might also think that I have WAY TOO MANY WAVY TEXTURES (there are never too many) and not want them all. It also allows me to release them faster, since if anyone else is like me, there are a few basegame styles you use even when you hide most everything else.
5. I'm also not doing all of the hairstyles. There are a few I absolutely and utterly loathe and never use -- the flypigtails (Cassandra Goth's hair), the high ponytail, and the mullet I can say for sure won't make it in. Some of the hats also might not make it in unless I can texture the hair under them to actually look like another game hair (hip hat, I am looking at you).
6. Other hairstyles may not make it in because of Maxis failmapping. Some things I can correct for acceptably, others... (bowltwist and frenchbraid, argh)
7. I'll also include a few mesh tweaks and fixed age conversion meshes.

I may redo some of the styles Ja already tackled (like the liberty spikes, which I realphaed so they look good without those fucking stupid bangs), which is kind of unfortunate given how she bundled hers in all-in-one packages, so I'll have to cut them apart and offer them individually for people who don't have SimPE to tweak things themselves and who might not want everything I redo in an EP set.

Also, I have plans for a couple of gender conversions -- closecrop for women (has anyone done that yet?) because the ladies need a nice short afro, and the shaved underneath ponytail for women.

( A mighty list of the finished retextures )

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Upload: Clothes: Lovelies Layerable Cardigans for TF AF EF

2011-03-12T19:52:11Z

Policy.

Eight retextures of Amaryll's layerable granny cardigan and two conversions (for TF and EF).

( More info, swatch, & download. )

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WIP: Salvaging Maxis meshes when I should be doing something else

2011-03-03T20:17:03Z

Needing to fix age conversions + thinking gee, I would really like that style if the textures didn't suck + avoiding something I should be doing but don't wanna = a lot of hair retextures. Praise be to Nouk for providing all of the textures I used.

I showed off my retexture of the Uni AF messed up hair at GoS last night. Then, inspiration:

I still don't entirely like the mesh but it looks more like a hairstyle someone might actually have and not a disastrous combo of mania + dull scissors.

( +4 more )

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