Magpie's Stash

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.

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.

Hypothetically speaking, if I were to convert meshes for feminine/genderqueer (and, as sneebsy pointed out, narrower-of-build) teen-elder men, what kind would you like to see? For that matter, what kinds of styles would you like to see for trans women (I'm picking up that banner because Twisted FATE seems to have vanished)? Hypothetically. >_>


This post inspired by me opening the androgynous meshes I thought my last install of Milkshape had ruined and finding that lo and behold, they still work. NOT having to redo them all has done wonders for my enthusiasm for that project.

By the way, the latest Sims 2 mesh import/export plugins for Milkshape may not ask you about importing additional bone definitions, but they also seem to randomly ruin meshes on import or export! I NEVER had that problem before I updated them and no longer had it happen after I reinstalled Milkshape - and I could export meshes that had turned into exploded messes on me with the ostensibly newer plugins. Stick with the import/export plugins that come with the Milkshape install, trust me.

Even at this late stage in the game it's entertaining to dig through the basegame files and see what I find. For example: while I was extracting meshes to reshape, I stumbled across one I'd never seen before, amtophoodedsweatshirt. It's the hoodie we see paired with jeans and 'board shorts'. It's an acceptable shape and would have been a great addition to the guys' woefully limited seperates selection, it even has material definitions... but no textures. For all it's mapped exactly the same as the top part of the outfits and could have used the top part of the textures, nope, no textures. It's half-finished for no discernable reason. No, instead we got a metric fucktonne of hideous polo shirts.

I'm finishing the hoodie to see if it's good enough quality for today's standards. I know others exist, but the idea of finishing something Maxis halfassed and didn't finish and doing it better than Maxis would have pleases me. >:)

Speaking of the hoodies, it's bizarre how the hoodies+jeans outfit have jeans textures that are actually quite good -- not quite H&M level, but close. Does Maxis use them anywhere else? Nooo, instead we got that noise filtered pseudodenim on all of the other pairs of jeans. It's like they very briefly had some good texturers on staff, then fired them and told the remaining mediocre one to churn out the rest. Okay, that might be a little unfair of me, but the difference in quality -- actual texturing vs. smudgy noise filtered halfassery -- is shocking.

... And just now I found some ribbed sweater textures for the long sleeved crewnext shirt that beat the hell out of noise filtered ones we got. The hell, Maxis?

Just how obsessive/completionist/stupid of me is it to retexture and recolour in Pooklet's naturals + white all of my favourite facial hair (brows+beards+stubble, about 40 types total)?

I almost feel a little silly, but... for the first time in my non-Maxis match game I'm going to have all of my hair genetics matchy. Matchy textures for each thing, matchy colours... It'll be heavenly.

So, uh... any good eyebrows/facial hair (not Nymphy's, which I've already got and are excellent and now I must MAKE MATCHY) I should know about? Especially odder brows (except the tiny ones, since Ja already got them).While I'm being OBSESSIVELY COMPLETIONIST and all I might as well go really nuts with it. That is, if I don't go throw up my hands in disgust at myself at some point. We shall see!

This is the level of creativity I'm capable of this time of year. Guuuuhsosickofwinter. If you're waiting on me for something, remind me please?



P.S. Thank you to those who gave me 'happy birthday's. :D

Bad: The primary harddrive on your otherwise healthy Frankensteinian monster of a komputarbox starts making scratchscratch-click sounds.

Worse: Despite your efforts to make Windows STOP BLOODY USING THE BAD SECTORS, the problem still pops up again every few months and is worse every time it pops up again, invariably when you forgot to defrag for too long.

Relief: Your partner being willing to buy and let you have your holiday gift early, in the form of a shiny new hard drive.


So, tomorrow or Wednesday I'll be spending the ENTIRE AFTERNOON AND EVENING installing Windows, and all my programs, including the three hour runaround that is re-installing Sims 2 and all of its crap.

Fortunately, all of my CC and projects are on my healthy secondary hard drive (without which I would have to have a bare minimum of everything because it's only 30GB*; Frankensteinian monsters take what parts they can get, yanno?), but just in case I'm upped the working files for my Secret Santa project on Mediafire.

I'm not freaked out since I used to fix these bastards for a living and I know just what's going on, but there's a definite sense of "Oh gooood I do NOT need this right now." I'd really be up shit creek if I my partner wasn't the best partner. <3

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* It still boggles me that 30GB, which was decently roomy 5 years ago, is now not very much--especially considering that I can go out and buy a 1 terabyte hard drive for 90 euros.

The first time I saw 1TB worth of storage was in late 2000. It was an array of hard drives in a hip-high rack, and the pricetag was thirteen thousand dollars.