Anger

I thought the fucking sale lasted until the 11th at midnight, but apparently it is over.

I've been sitting with my dad trying to fix the internet problem on my desktop. In a brief instance of internet connectivity, he was able to load the Town Life anniversary page. We then observed this fucking mess: both of our pages had different end dates. My page said that the sales ended on the 14th, his said the 10th. I remember a couple of days ago reading the 11th as the end date in the exact same place. The 10th must have been the correct date, because the fucking sale ended and everything's back to regular price which means no University and Seasons for me. Mother fucker.

I'm going to be leaving this a little longer because when I tried to get to doing the manual patch of my game, shit got confusing and it's nine thirty so like fuck are we tryin' any more of this shit tonight. First we need to fix the internet connection on my desktop, then we can focus on my game. I already got Town Life assigned to my Origin account, so there's no worries there. Come to think of it, if I'd used my brain for a fucking second, I could have purchased those games over the weekend when I had internet and while they were on sale because they would not need to download and install, they would simply remain in the Origin library until I was ready to bust 'em out. God fucking dammit. I only purchase when shit goes on sale 'cause like fuck am I paying the same price as the base game to get an expansion pack (that's an excuse, I'm just a cheap motherfucker, I could totally afford to pay full price).

So that's where we're at. Maybe I'll go in this weekend and take a couple shots anyways since this problem obviously is not going to be resolved any time soon.

Graphics Card Driver Updates

Before I begin, thanks to Vid for the advice! I will be following the steps provided and seeing what happens.

The first step in my magical adventure attempting to fix the texture problem in my game was updating the drivers on my graphics card.

My dad had to do a manual install because the internet connection on my new computer is kinda shitty (it's too far away from the router and picks up a two bar signal at best, and that's when it can connect at all) and it kept fucking up some other shit. He got that installed, and found a place where it gave optimal settings for my game. I am very happy to say that not much has changed. All of the recommended settings were at their highest, save for edge smoothing, which I had to turn from high to low. It was also recommended to turn advanced rendering off, but I never had that on in the first place, so no problems there. However, neither of these things fixed my game's texture problem.

I'm hoping to manually update my game this weekend, the next step in the plan. After doing that (regardless of the state of the grass textures in my game) I'll get that free download of Town Life Stuff. I'm also going to purchase University and Seasons while they're on sale. I will then be fully satisfied with the expansion packs in my game. I've looked at all of the other ones I don't own, and I have no interest in them. I wouldn't mind Island Paradise and Showtime, I just wouldn't use them much, so it's not worth the money. Supernatural and Into the Future are a whole other story. I do NOT want to deal with supernatural infestation problems. I find the vampires with Late Night pesky enough. I'm the type of person who prefers a more realistic game, which is also a contributing factor of my dislike of Into the Future. Another reason would be that I find the aesthetics of Into the Future to be clunky, overdone caricatures of the stereotypical Jetsons future vision. The geometric designs and the sleek steel-y look of everything really bothers me. I'd never use the items or the features. I have no more interest in seeing my sim's future than I have in seeing my own (that interest is nil, by the way). I've also heard that the thing's riddled with glitches, but I suppose we can't expect any better from EA (I guess Maxis is partially to blame now too, aren't they?).

Sorry for the delay in game pics. I've decided that before I take any more pictures, I want to fix the problem so they don't all look like shit. Hopefully things will be up and running properly again by the end of this weekend. Wish me luck!

Fixing My Game

You know that texture problem I mentioned in the last post? I tried to fix it by turning down the graphics settings, but that wasn't the problem.

I tried first turning down the texture detail and reflection quality settings one notch (since I noticed that pool water had lost that gorgeous clear ripple-y effect I know it's supposed to have). Still nothing. I turned every other setting down one notch. Nothing.

I'm too much of a prick to attempt turning any of my settings any lower than that, but since my computer runs the game smoothly with all of the settings at their highest, I very much doubt that my graphics settings are the problem. Thing is, I don't know what else it could be.

I know it's not all textures, 'cause this is what's happening:

The wood chip texture underneath the tree is clear as day. There are also other small patches of texture where it differs from whatever the default grass texture is.

Here we see a random patch of what would normally blend perfectly into the grass to create a nice variation in texture.

Here we see three other textures clean and clear: the dirt in the garden, the asphalt driveway, and the stony pathway up to the door. And then there's the blurred mess where grass is supposed to be.

As I started looking for more examples around town, I noticed that the default texture for the mountains is also a blurred mess. It seems like it's not just grass, but any dominant world texture.

Here's a closer look at the park in the last shot. Wood chips under the trees and park equipment, nice clear pathways, but the grass and mountains are all blurry.

The ripple texture of the oceans and such are still lookin' gorgeous.

Pools, however, are not so fortunate.

I don't get it. I have no idea why this is happening. My game was perfectly fine before this. Maybe it's a glitch from installing the three new expansion packs and not updating my game? But I can't update my game, because every time I try, Origin downloader fucks it up and "pauses" the download at like 2%, and whenever I try to 'unpause' it, it's slow as shit and totally unresponsive. My game is currently version 1.57.62.023001.

I swear to fucking god, this shit's pissing me off so fucking much. It's not that big of a deal for just playing the game, but since I'm thinking of getting back into modeling comps and storytelling, I'm going to need my backgrounds to not look like blurry-ass pieces of shit.

Anybody got any ideas of what the fuck is up and how the fuck I can fix it?

Adventures in China

For once in my fucking life, I'm actually following through on getting some pictures up here! I played all day yesterday, and got some pretty neato shots of my new household. I also installed the three expansion packs I own but had yet to install on my new computer, World Adventures, Late Night and Ambitions. It made me realize just how much I miss that game, and how much fun it is to find the right angles and capture every moment.

I made a household of three lovely ladies and moved them into 103 Forest Drive in the wonderful town of Anne Arbor, which can be downloaded over here. It's a fantastic city, it's got one half rural and one half urban so it's a wonderful balance of all of the features of Late Night without having to live in the urban sprawl if you don't want to. It requires Late Night, Ambitions, World Adventures and Generations to run though, you have been warned.

Without further ado, here is my new household!

This here gal is Grace Hesdox. Her traits are rebellious, dramatic, virtuoso, perfectionist and lucky. Her lifetime wish is One Sim band, mastering all four instruments (guitar, upright bass, drums, piano). Favorite colour purple, favorite food autumn salad, favorite music songwriter. Her star sign is Scorpio.

She is currently playing the drums in her music room, which used to be a bedroom with two single beds. I converted it and added two more doors, one connecting it to her bedroom and the other connecting it to her bathroom.

This gal's name is Kaleigh Olivend, and she wants to be a Master Mixologist, which means owning a professional bar and mastering the mixology skill. Her traits are star quality, party animal, natural cook, charismatic and heavy sleeper. Star sign Sagittarius; favorites are hot pink, key lime pie, and hip hop.

She is currently mixing drinks at a professional bar which I added to the house in place of an island with bar stools.

And here we have Nadia Ramlin, who we will be spending a fair bit of time with today. Since her lifetime wish is Martial Arts Master, mastering the martial arts skill and obtaining Grad Master rank in tournaments, her first wish was to take a trip to Shang Simla, so off she went. Her traits are loves the outdoors, shy, disciplined, genius and athletic. Her favorites are turquoise, egg rolls, and Chinese.

I tried to get some good shots of her training with the training dummy in the Phoenix Academy of Martial Arts. There are a bunch more shots like this, with her in various belt outfits.

Earned her white belt. I tried to get some fancy shots with the mirrors, but the mirrors on the opposite wall blanking out the background fricked it up a little.

I decided to have her go purchase the martial arts book from the local market to get things done a little quicker.

Through this reading she earned her yellow belt!

Bonus shot: I never realized that at this angle it looks like she's rubbing her belly and her ankles are broken.

Back at the Academy playing around with board breaking, since that's what a yellow belt unlocks.

 Doing this she earned her orange belt.

Somewhere in there Nadia spent the first night in the base camp, but I sent her out to the tent camping site for her second night. In this here screenshot we see my game's wonderful inability to load the basic grass texture. I have no idea why, but the base grass texture will not load in any town. I'm pretty sure it's different in Anne Arbor and Shang Simla, but it won't load in either place. I've got all of my graphics settings at their hightest, but that's most likely the problem.

On the last day of her Shang Simla adventure, Nadia was called upon by this missy whose name I cannot find and did not write down. She wanted Nadia to explore the tombs below the Halls of the Lost Army and bring her back a relic. She then provided the key for this adventure to ensue.

So off Nadia went.

The following is a photo montage of her journey through the Halls of the Lost Army.

 Finally, the relic!

Good bye, Hall of the Lost Army. Quest complete.

She seemed happy to receive her  relic, and rewarded Nadia with Visa points and ancient coins.

Getting in a little more training time before her vacation ended at midnight.

I forgot to take screenshots of her arriving home and the first couple in-game hours after that, but here's a picture of Grace playing her piano from when I remembered to start taking pics again.

Nadia running on the treadmill in her room. She joined the athletic career, so she's gotta get her skill up.

I placed her relics on display in her room as well.

In the meantime, I sent Kaleigh out to buy the mixology books from the local book store...

...and Grace played guitar out front. I have no idea why, but it won't let her play guitar in the house. The game sent her out front from all the way upstairs in her music room. There's even a nice space on the landing upstairs, but apparently it's not big enough. So she plays guitar outside as the sun sets behind her.

Again, my game is demonstrating it's inability to load the base grass texture.

Kaleigh reading her mixology books after getting home from the book store.

Nadia makin' everyone some autumn salad for dinner.

There is so much detail in this autumn salad. Turning up your graphics settings is fucking fascinating.

The gals eating dinner together out back.

Grace heading to bed. Wall objects added by me.

And Kaleigh heading to bed. Again, wall objects added by me. I tried to inset a little bit of their personalities and aspirations into each of their bedrooms.

I missed getting a shot of Nadia going to bed, but she hit the sack just before them.

Kaleigh had to get up first, for her first day on the job in the film career. 5:00, rise and shine!

Kaleigh showing off her work uniform.

At 6:00, Nadia woke up...

...as well as Grace. It's the first day on the job for both of them too, but with Nadia in the athletic career, her shift starts at 3:00, and Grace's job in the music career has her starting at 3:00 as well.

Nadia's bedroom, and her makin' her bed.

That's it for now! I plan on getting some more pictures done tonight.

See you then!