Beautiful, beautiful ladies everyone. I'm especially partial to Akira Liang for two OBVIOUS reasons...lol. Here's a few of my lovelies.


Elena Bruno


Sharice Tyson


Whisper Hargrove


Esther Lieberman


Lucia Halford


Wanda Kittles


Raquel Baker

What urks me most about game developers in general, not just EA, is with the new era of internet connectivity in games, be they PC or console, and the invent of add-on content, developers have become lazy and inclined to release buggy, craptastic games with the notion of "we'll fix the glitches with a patch later on". What ever happen to releasing a complete, bug free, beta tested game that requires no patching? Don't answer that, I already know. The all mighty dollar. Back in the late 90's when the gaming industry was still growing, there wasn't the pressure of releasing big time, blockbuster games. Developers had the time to iron out the kinks in a game because there wasn't any pressure to bring it to market. But once gaming reached the level when it became a medium of entertainment on par with movies and TV, it all went to hell. In the case of The Sims series, it was a matter of progression. TS1 was a ground breaking piece of gaming history. A game about living a normal life through a virtual avatar. There were "God Games" before it like Sim City and Sim Earth long before it, but never something that emulated day to day life of a living "person". TS2 improved upon that formula tendfold, ramping things up 10 levels and adding to the experience even more. Granted, there were technical issues the game had. But those issues where fixed either by Maxis or the community itself. In this day and age, you can tailor make your TS2 experience to whatever you want using the various mods available (Some harder to find the others, but if you want it, you can find it). That's the core reason why now more then a year after TS3's release, and over 6 years after the TS2 base game was released, it still endures.

Now we take into account what TS3 brought to the table. Not much. In fact, for most long time Sims players (Those of us who have played the previous two versions, and even the console versions) it offers little if anything in the vein of innovation. As was stated by a number of people in this very thread, many of the new "game changing features" TS3 has could have easily been incorporated into TS2. By every account, and I say this being someone who actually works in the Video Gaming industry, TS3 is a failure. Once a publisher starts pitching ideas in any way for a sequel of a game, and the IP (Intellectual Property) is just barely in market for long, it either means it was a complete success, or an utter bust. TS3 was the later. And there's no denying it. EA will use their bottomless pockets and endless PR campaigns to deny that fact, but I'll use one prime example to prove my point. How many TS3 ads have you seen since Ambition's release?

Need I say more.

Rockstar Games is advertising the CRAP out of Red Dead Redemption, easily the best game they've ever released. It's even surpassing their franchise Grand Theft Auto. Hell, here in NYC, there's a billboard in Times Square advertising it. When a game is doing well, you market it until it hurts. I've flipped through channels like NatGeo and The Food Network and seen RDR commercials. Whereas for a game like TS3, I saw a few youtube adds the week the base game, World Adventures and Ambitions came out, and TV spots for the base game alone when it released. And nothing since. Why you ask? Because from a business stance, it makes no sense advertising something that ISN'T SELLING. But you'll never hear it on any of the so called "major" review sites like IGN, 1up.com or Gamespot, because they get revenue from advertising games as well as reviewing them, and there's a reason why EA is nicknamed "The Evil Empire".

It all came down to dollar signs. EA bought out Maxis. They bought the rights of The Sims franchise from Will Wright, and decided to hand it to a development house that to this day has only worked on RACING GAMES, and not even particularly good ones. End result? One of their most lucrative and storied franchises has fallen to the wayside, and most likely will never recover from it's pitfall. TS3 has the potential to still be a solid entry into the series, don't get me wrong. Problem is, by the time it is actually something a long time player of the series can stomach playing, no one will even care anymore. Add to that equation that the community continues to, and WILL continue to keep TS2 alive and well, and EA stands to take a huge shot to the chin, as if they haven't already. Biggest mistake I believe they made in all of this is entrusting The Sims IP to anyone aside from those who had a hand in it's creation. Was Maxis experts? Hell no. We all know what kind of complaints we had with how Maxis did things, or shall I say, how Maxis was made to do things because EA was in their ear. But at least Maxis had some insight on what the community at large wanted to see done. We used to pan Maxis back in the day, but in hindsight, they only did what EA told them to do. And in hindsight, they did pretty well by us in the long run. But once EA got their hands on The Sims IP all themselves, they opted to make it something other then what the community at large wanted, thinking we'd all flock to it and leave TS2 behind. And a lot of people did actually. But how many of them are now back to playing TS2 again? I'd have love to have been a fly on the wall at their annual marketing meetings. There was probably more chewing out then a Laffy Taffy convention. Hell, even at E3 this past week, the biggest gaming expo of the year, EA did more to promote EA MMA, their new Mixed Martial Arts game, Madden NFL 11, NCAA Football 11, Need For Speed: World and All Points Bulletin then they did TS3. The ship isn't just sinking, it's already capsized.

She's going to fit in juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust fine in my hood. Thanks for sharing her, Dasi.

And now, something different from yours truly...

If anyone is familiar with Marvine and BBB's awesome BBG (Body Builder Girl) bodyshape, you'll know that the skin texture options for the shape are well...lacking. Most skins are just conversions of Navatsea's skin texture mapped to the bodyshape. Not that her textures are bad, but I like my BBGs to actually have some tone and definition to them. So I decided to make one myself. And the sim below is the prototype of the skin. Her name is Zelda Lomax...







...and as you can see, she's RRRRRIPPED. Once I've created a pale, tan and dark version of the skin, I'll be releasing them in bulk for all the BBG fans to enjoy.

SUPER BUMP!!!!

Someone needs to wake this thread up, so I figure I'll do so myself by posting my newest fave pair of sim teens.


Rocco Giovanni


Ava Hargrove


Two chatty teens.

Resizing a low res texture to hi also degrades the image quality substantially. The draw back of this is that a low res texture will end up looking grainy and stretched if you try and make it hi res. Shrink hi res textures to low isn't as big a problem, as it does the opposite. For low res textures, you could stand to maybe sharpen them a bit before you try to change the resolution to limit the image distortion, but distortion will almost always occur. Best advice I can give you is to edit the textures as is. If you zoom in (Control +) the image you can work a little easier on it without ruining the texture. Or you can just deal with hi res textures exclusively.

In summary: Zoom in the image, make your recolors to it, and save it in the same resolution as the original. Far less time consuming and you lose no image quality. Hope this helps you some.

That character is what's affectionately called the "Token Negro". Even if the black guy is central to the plot or a main character (Like Chris Tucker in Rush Hour and Samuel L. in Die Hard With A Vengeance) they still have "Negroisms"...lol.

188: No matter how many shots are fired in a gun fight, no one ever needs to reload unless it's the "critical" gun fight against the main badguy, where the hero miraculously runs out of bullets just as he's gained the upper hand against the antagonist.

189: The hero will always defuse a bomb with exactly 3 seconds left on the timer.

190: At least one car always gets blown up in a chase scene.

191: The antagonist's female henchperson/lover is ALWAYS an expert of Martial Arts or some other form of CQC (Close Quarters Combat).

192: The antagonist's 2nd in command is usually even more morally corrupt then him, he just lacks the "leadership qualities" to be the boss.

193: When facing the protagonist in a fight, the badguys will always fight him one by one (Unless it's Jason Statham or Tony Ja, of which they attack at once, but still get their wigs split...lol).

194: By the end of the film, the character who dislikes the protagonist for whatever minuscule reason always has a change of heart.

195: If the protagonist has some form of mentor at the start of a movie, he either ends up dead or double crosses him by the end.

Anyone caught listening to Disney pop over the age of 13 needs to be beat about the head, neck and shoulders with a human size version of Jimminey Cricket's cane. That or they should use it to interrogate international fugitives. No better way to make a treacherous spy spill his guts then subjecting him to 12 straight hours of High School Musical.

I happen to know of a number of sites as well that are solely committed to Sims2 content. And indeed roerzman makes the most valid point of them all in the fact that EA has a LOT of damage control to do. But like MaryH said, the damage is most likely done. The only way I see a Sims4 even being a remote possibility is if EA pulls together the original Maxis team, including Will Wright, gives them a blank check and says "Fix the mess we made of the franchise". Sadly, that will most likely never happen. So the franchise will more then likely die a slow death following the last EP they churn our for Sims3.

Thankfully for the modding community of Sims2, the game will well outlive it's follow up. There's just to much content out there. Even with the number of sites that have disappeared over the years, there's STILL sites out there with quality CC, and creators, though not is as great a number as 3 years ago, who still put out stellar content themselves. Modders can keep a game going long after it's shelf life has ended. I used Counter Strike and WWF/E No Mercy as examples. Both are games that are nearing 10 years of existence. But with tools created by a multitude of modders, the games take on completely new identities. There are HUNDREDS of mods for No Mercy. You can practically (If you have the no how) build your own wrestling game from the ground up. A lot of the programmer friends I have in various developers got their basic knowledge from modding No Mercy. Sims2 poses the same possibilities. There will always be a demand, if even just a small scale one, for CC for the game. As such, there will always be creators willing to make it.

As far as the 3rd installment of the series, I wholly predict they will continue making new EPs and SPs for it, but market it to the few (and I do mean few) users that have not jumped ship from the game. Make whatever capitol they can from it, and when the demand finally and inevitably dies off, put the game (and most likely the series) to pasture. There's a lesson to be learned from this. Never entrust a franchise anyone aside from whoever had a hand in making it the success it was. The results are 90% never positive.

All the blue means is that it's compressed. It isn't bad, just a means by which the system identifies a compressed file or folder. For future reference:

Regular Color: Uncompressed
Blue: Compressed
Faded: Hidden (These files you generally don't want to lay a finger on. Messing with hidden files can not only ruin your game, but your whole system as well. Never alter a hidden file until you know what it does and if it's safe to alter, move or delete. You can usually do so by typing the file name in Google...chances are some other curious soul in the past has asked if it's safe to do anything to said files as well.)

You need the Huge Bodybuilder V.2 mesh in your download folder. You can find it here.

Why didn't I think to check GoS? Thanks Engram, I just so happened to have found exactly the kind of deco I was looking for there.

I'm looking preferably for anything that has an inner city feel to it. Graffiti covered walls, run down dumpsters, fire hydrants. Anything that can be used to create a run down, decaying urban neighborhood.