Thursday, September 6, 2012

Supernatural Mod- Convert Collectible Spell costs 200 Magic

The Conversion Ritual Spell is way too overpowered.

This mod makes it use 200 of your Witch's magic (Instead of 30MP) and drops the chance of an EP7 gem from 20% to 10%. Therefore, you cannot use the spell again until your Magic is almost fully recharged.*

*You CAN use the spell again, as with all spells, but because you won't be able to afford it, it will backfire. It uses around 70% of your magic pool (the XML implies 200 is the whole pool, but in-game, that's not the case) so you'll want to wait until you're SURE you can afford it to use it!




Sunday, June 10, 2012

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Sims 2 Style Camera

This is a no-drift camera, which allows you to pitch to a very low level, with the added bonus of making the camera focus like The Sims 2.

In Sims 3, the camera focuses on a sim's feet. If you right click their portrait to center them on the screen, they're actually taking up the top half, sometimes not even showing their head- because the camera is centered on their feet.

With this mod, the camera centers on their torso, just above the belly button- just like in Sims 2. Remember zooming in all the way and seeing their torso? If you zoom in all the way in Sims 3, you get a nice view of the floor. Not anymore.

Here is where the camera would center by default. Note that the center of the image is the bottom of the sim- under the chair.


Here's where it centers with this mod.


Here is full zoom on a standing sim before...


And here is after.



Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Smooth Motive Drop 1.31/Showtime

The old Smooth motive Drop will completely make your game unplayable, so replace it with this.

This is a mod that makes the Hunger, Bladder, and Energy motives drop at a smooth, constant rate.

In the base game, motives change speed depending on how high or low they are. When Hunger is at -81 (the motives range from -100 to 100), the speed drops to a decay of less than 1 per hour. When hunger is above -61, it goes at a rate of 12 per hour. I changed this so that hunger drops at a smooth and constant rate. That way, when it's halfway empty, it is literally halfway empty. When it's close to empty, your sim is literally close to starving to death. The rate slows a tiny, tiny bit when a sim/pet is "Starving", but they will still actually be close to death a la The Sims 1 when that bar is way down in the red. So pay the hell attention.

The new rates are as follows:

Bladder- 30 Per Hour. Sims will go from full to empty bladder in 6.5 hours.
Bladder Toddler- 35 Per Hour. Toddlers will go from full to empty bladder in 5 hours and 40 minutes.
Bladder Baby- 35 Per Hour. Same as toddlers.
Bladder Elder- 40 Per Hour. Have fun tomb-raiding as an old person.
Bladder Horse-  35 Per Hour.
Bladder Cat- 20 Per Hour.
Bladder Big Dog- 30 Per Hour.
Bladder Little Dog- 40 Per Hour.

Hunger- 16 Per Hour. Sims will go from full to empty hunger in 12.5 hours. If a sim reaches significantly low hunger, they will starve SIGNIFICANTLY faster than in the base game. In the base game, mostly empty hunger still meant you had 24 hours to live. Now, mostly empty hunger means you've got a couple hours.
Hunger Toddler- 18 Per Hour. Toddlers will go from full to empty in 11 hours. Feed them breakfast and feed them before bed! No more feeding them once per day. The social worker is onto you.
Hunger Baby- 16.875 Per Hour. This is actually the default, but now it doesn't get slower the hungrier the baby gets. Babies may have to be fed during the middle of the night- like real babies.
Hunger Horse- 15 Per Hour.
Hunger Cat- 16 Per Hour.
Hunger Dog- 16 Per Hour.
Hunger Little Dog-  18 Per Hour.

Energy- 10 Per Hour. Sims will go from full to empty energy in 20 hours. This lets sims go to sleep at the same time each night without their schedule going out of whack, because they won't ever be fully tired before bedtime as long as they get a full or near full sleep.
Energy Baby- 20 Per Hour.
Energy Toddler- 8
Energy Horse- Unchanged. Sleepy horses are not good for riding.
Energy Cat- 20 Per hour! Cats are sleepy.
Energy Dog- Unchanged.
Energy Little Dog- 10 Per Hour.

Friday, February 3, 2012

Bands not Integrating with Singers in Showtime

There are a few simple facts nobody is taking into account re: bands not integrating with the showtime singers.

1. Bands were not built to have singers. It is not as simple as "just make them work together". The bands do not play the kind of music that typically has vocalists, and the music they do play is all short, repeating sections of music. There is no way to simply add singing to this. The music doesn't sound like it should be sung to, and if it was, it'd be the same short snippet of simlish over...and over...and over.
2. Singing was not built to go with the bands. Bands play eternally, forever, until you stop them. Singing does not work this way. The performance aspect of Showtime means that sets last a limited amount of time, and sims perform limited interactions- the songs they sing will not last forever until you make them stop. It is extremely unlikely they'll work that way- it is extremely likely that they'll be specail individual songs.
3. These singers are all built around the music playing itself- they're stage performers, like on American Idol. Or they're karaoke singers. Neither of those have a thing to do with a live band.
4. The bands themselves are very much like Garage bands. They start at home, they play crappy bars, they don't ever quite get to the point where they're on stage- never, ever, at any point in time have the bands been big show famous people bands. They're all local bands. This could be changed, yes, but I'm talking *right now*. That's what they *are*.

What this means is that to integrate singing and the bands,

the entire structure of bands would have to be redone.

The bands would need entirely new music. Do you know what that means? That means various songs for each skill level of each instrument. Assuming a bare minimum of, say, 4 songs, that's 4 songs x 4 instruments x 10 skill levels, or 160 individual songs. This isn't a matter of "laziness"- 160 individual songs, even if they're not even a minute long each, is a lot. That is a LOT of time, a lot of money, a lot of planning, a lot of work. The fact that bands exist at all is impressive from this standpoint, but redoing them completely to integrate with singers is silly.


They'd have to add new animations, too- singers work in such a way that you orchestrate their performance as it goes along. You choose when they do special animations and junk like that to make the show better, you pick the next song when it's time based on audience requests, stuff like that. the band would have to do this too. The drummer would need cool flourishes and the guitar guy would likely play in crazy ways, stuff like that. And these would be independent of the singer- because remember, you're looking at a complete overhaul of the bands so they can be Showtime-style performers- singer or no singer.

And perhaps the biggest reason- Since modifying the bands to work with the singers would be an absolute necessity, this means that in order to have the complete band experience, one would need two expansion packs. Lots of people beg for cross-expansion features, but absolutely nobody wants to have to buy two packs to get one full feature. Nobody.

This is mostly speculation- but there's nothing countering any of it. If people can speculate "All they'd have to do is just DO IT", which is obviously wrong and a gross oversimplification, surely I can speculate "In order to integrate the performance-style vocalists with bands, they'd have to integrate the simple and hometown bands with the vocalists", which is at least grounded in reason. ;)

Would love it if the people on MTS saw and commented on this.

Friday, January 13, 2012

About Missing Downloads

Mediafire has seen to delete random downloads for no reason. As of right now, nothing I have is guaranteed to be available, and anything unavailable likely will not be re-uploaded, as I likely don't have it anymore.

I'm hoping to find a site other than mediafire. Mediafire will remove files if they get any sort of copyright complaint against them without attempting to verify those claims. For example, my Historical Society lot was recently removed from mediafire because a band did a sweeping search of all files containing "Historical Society" in the title and put claims against them! So my tiny little sims 3 lot file that maybe 70 people had downloaded was removed forever just because they wanted it to be. So I will not be using mediafire anymore as soon as I find a good alternative.

Smooth Motive Drop 1.29 PETS

This is a mod that makes the Hunger, Bladder, and Energy motives drop at a smooth, constant rate.

In the base game, motives change speed depending on how high or low they are. When Hunger is at -81 (the motives range from -100 to 100), the speed drops to a decay of less than 1 per hour. When hunger is above -61, it goes at a rate of 12 per hour. I changed this so that hunger drops at a smooth and constant rate. That way, when it's halfway empty, it is literally halfway empty. When it's close to empty, your sim is literally close to starving to death. The rate slows a tiny, tiny bit when a sim/pet is "Starving", but they will still actually be close to death a la The Sims 1 when that bar is way down in the red. So pay the hell attention.

The new rates are as follows:

Bladder- 30 Per Hour. Sims will go from full to empty bladder in 6.5 hours.
Bladder Toddler- 35 Per Hour. Toddlers will go from full to empty bladder in 5 hours and 40 minutes.
Bladder Baby- 35 Per Hour. Same as toddlers.
Bladder Elder- 40 Per Hour. Have fun tomb-raiding as an old person.
Bladder Horse-  35 Per Hour.
Bladder Cat- 20 Per Hour.
Bladder Big Dog- 30 Per Hour.
Bladder Little Dog- 40 Per Hour.

Hunger- 16 Per Hour. Sims will go from full to empty hunger in 12.5 hours. If a sim reaches significantly low hunger, they will starve SIGNIFICANTLY faster than in the base game. In the base game, mostly empty hunger still meant you had 24 hours to live. Now, mostly empty hunger means you've got a couple hours.
Hunger Toddler- 18 Per Hour. Toddlers will go from full to empty in 11 hours. Feed them breakfast and feed them before bed! No more feeding them once per day. The social worker is onto you.
Hunger Baby- 16.875 Per Hour. This is actually the default, but now it doesn't get slower the hungrier the baby gets. Babies may have to be fed during the middle of the night- like real babies.
Hunger Horse- 15 Per Hour.
Hunger Cat- 16 Per Hour.
Hunger Dog- 16 Per Hour.
Hunger Little Dog-  18 Per Hour.

Energy- 10 Per Hour. Sims will go from full to empty energy in 20 hours. This lets sims go to sleep at the same time each night without their schedule going out of whack, because they won't ever be fully tired before bedtime as long as they get a full or near full sleep.
Energy Baby- 20 Per Hour.
Energy Toddler- 8
Energy Horse- Unchanged. Sleepy horses are not good for riding.
Energy Cat- 20 Per hour! Cats are sleepy.
Energy Dog- Unchanged.
Energy Little Dog- 10 Per Hour.

This idea wasn't met with the best reception from people elsewhere, but screw them, I think it's a nice idea and I appreciate the idea that if my sim doesn't eat there are severe consequences, rather than a full two days they can go without me getting them any food. Some people might want it, so here you go!

This mod makes use of the MOTIVES xml. It will probably conflict with anything that edits WHEN moodlets show up. There are 4 total xmls dedicated to motives, but it will only conflict with those that edit this one in particular. It shouldn't conflict with any mods that make moodlets more or less extreme, and it works fine with Awesomemod.