Category: Counters and sides: Surfaces -> Counters; wall cabinets and sides: Decorative -> Wall or Surfaces -> Shelves
Poly Count: to
EPs Required: Varies

I’m still not at my best after Signe, but these have been finished for a very, very long time, so my uploading them is long overdue.

Backstory: Three years ago, in 2016, I made a set of Counter Completers – that is, add-ons for eight of the Maxis counters. It’s been one of my most popular downloads to date. Then, about a year ago (has it really been that long? Yikes!), the wonderful Croiduire very nicely asked me if I might consider making side pieces for the wall cabinets and counters with shelves, so they wouldn’t get eaten by the wall if you put them where two walls met. I thought this was a brilliant idea (much too brilliant for me to have thought of it myself; I’d noticed their being eaten, of course, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out a good way around it), so of course I agreed. And that was all this set was going to be: sides. Quick and easy. Should be done in a day or so. Uh-huh.

But as I was making the sides, I thought I maybe should make a some more wall cabinets as well; just a couple of short ones, for the sake of completion. And maybe a couple of full-length ones, too. And I could make a couple of new counters as well. And maybe polish my old counters some. And… then things went rapidly downhill from there. 😛

So here you have a second set of counter completers – completer completers, if you’d like. 🙂 As the name suggests these are meant to complement my first set, so if you haven’t downloaded it already, I really suggest you go and grab that one, too. (I’ve also updated some of the items in the first set – fixed some shadows and slot positions, and also did some remapping – so even if you have downloaded it before I’d still suggest you pop over there and get the updated set.)

Also, just so there aren’t any concerns or confusion, all of my counters work with drop-in sinks. (Yes, I know some custom counters don’t, but these do and have been thoroughly tested.)

Good? Good. Then on to the counters! 😀
 

Since Maxis counters don’t clone properly (of course they don’t *sigh*), all my counters are cloned from Numenor’s kitchen counter templates. They’re base-game compatible but all of them are repositoried to their Maxis counterparts, so if you don’t have the EP or SP the original counter came from, mine will just flash blue (they won’t crash anything, though). Same goes for the wall cabinets.

The poly counts are around those of the Maxis counters; some a little higher, some a little lower, depending on how the counter is set up. The counters are all prized the same as their Maxis counterparts; the wall cabinets (around) half that.

I’m going to do this the way I did the first Counter Completer post: I’ll start with the cheapest counter and work my way up, and then we’ll get to stuff like sides and OMSPs and various download details.
 

The cheapest counter being the one and only Value counter (“the single most useful counter in the repertoire“, in the words of the wonderful celebkiriedhel).

There are four counters, $140 each, base-game compatible. All of the counters animated and the shelves have slots. This time, I’ve paid better attention to the shadows than I did with my first set, so now they should match those of the Maxis counter much more closely.

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You also get nine wall cabinets, three short ones and six half-tile ones: three that sit on the left side of the tile and three that sit on the right side. (The game still thinks they are full-tile, though, so you’ll have to use cheats if you want to place something else on the same wall tile.)

If you have AL, the cabinets can be shifted up and down. Also, if you have FT, when Sims view them they’ll gain enthusiasm for Cuisine – IMHO this makes more sense than Art.

They cost half as much as the Value counter, so $68. (Click on the image for a close-up of the wall-cabinets only.)

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Next is the Epikouros counter. Also base-game and also four counters – but with eleven wall cabinets (thee short, eight half-tile) since I couldn’t decide how I best liked the doors on the half-tile ones. 😳

$325 for the counters, $160 for the wall cabinets:

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Our next contestant is the Blue Ribbon counter. Four counters but only three short wall cabinets – the mesh didn’t really lend itself to anything half-tile. 😦 For the wall cabinets, just as with the first set I’ve sto- borrowed an idea from CTNutmegger @MTS and repositoried the doors to the counter, but the frame to the Less Threatening Rack.

$365 for the counters, $182 for the wall cabinets, required.

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Click for larger image

 
Then we have the Forbidden Fruit counter, with four counters and nine wall cabinets – three short and six half-tile ones. (I’ve used the light wood counter/grey countertop textures for the screenshots for the sake of visibility – the dark wood counter and green countertop are still the defaults.)

$590 for the counters, $296 for the wall cabinets, required.

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Then there is the Castanoga counter. Four counters here as well (and again I’ve used the light wood texture for visibility):

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Then we have the wall cabinets. There are eight of these: three short ones, four half-tile ones and a full-tile one. The full-length ones are shelves only; I did try to make some with doors, but I couldn’t figure out how to make the meshes both line up with the counters and still look… not weird.

The reason there are two left-side and two right-side half-tile cabinets is that they have two variations, with different height shelves. Like so:

 
The two half-tile cabinets labelled “Original” have shelves that line up with those of the shelf-only wall cabinet from my first set of counter completers. The other two, as well as the full-tile one – the “Variation” ones – instead have shelves that line up with the first set’s shelves + door wall cabinets, as requested by rudhira @ Tumblr (actually, she just requested the full-tile shelf, but I added two half-tile ones as well for the sake of completion).

The three short cabinets, though, aren’t making any fuss; they’re nice and straightforward. 😛

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Next up, the Surfaco counter. Four counters, nine wall cabinets (and no shelf-height shenanigans), required.

The counters cost $755, the wall cabinets $378.

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Click for larger image

And then, finally, we have the Double Wood counter. (No, I didn’t forget the Neo-Quartzo; I couldn’t think of any other counters to make for it. I didn’t like the look of the shelf-only ones, and the mesh makes any door+shelf versions… challenging.) I love the Double Wood, it’s one of my favourites, but unfortunately the mesh limits what you can do with it. So the poor thing only gets one single counter and three short wall cabinets to play with. 😦 (I hope the other counters won’t tease it for it.)

$795 for the counter, $397 for the wall cabinets, and again is required.

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That about the counters. And now for the thing that started it all: croi’s sides. 😀 They really are just that: sides for the counters and wall cabinets with shelves, to make it so they don’t clip into the wall (or rather, to make it look like they don’t clip into the wall). Like so:

The sides can intersect other objects, so you don’t have to use cheats to place them. To make them a little easier to find in the catalogue, the counter sides are categorised as counters and the wall cabinet sides as either shelves or wall deco (depending on which cabinet variation you’ve chosen), but at a low price so you’ll find them in front of the catalogue.

The other sides look like so (you only get a “with sides” screenshot of these):

Nifty, eh? 😀 Thank you very much for the request, Croi! ❤
 

About Slots

Now, let’s get back to the counters for a moment. If you’ve used custom counters with slots before, you’re already familiar with this issue, but just in case you haven’t and aren’t I’ll give you a quick explanation. I don’t know whether the problem stems from the original Maxis counters or from the Numenor templates we all use (personally, I vote Maxis, Numenor usually knew what he was doing), but you can’t quite place items in these slots as easily as usual.

The only way to access a slot is by cycling to it with the M key, and this only if the counter surface is empty and all previous slots have been filled.

So in order to be able to place something in e.g. slot 4, you first have to fill slots 1, 2 and 3; only then will hitting the M key take you to slot 4.

I agree completely that this is roundabout and cumbersome and a pain in all kinds of places, but unfortunately there is nothing I can do to fix it.

I can try to alleviate it a little, though. 🙂

First, for those of you you can’t (or don’t want to) use the M key to cycle through the slots, I’ve made two sets of OMSPs: one set with three OMSPs, one for each height shelf, for all counters except the Castanoga, and one set with two OMSPs for the Castanoga counters only (this because the Castanoga shelves aren’t the same height as the other counters’, because of the glass doors). They can intersect other objects, so you can place them inside the counters without using cheats. This also means they won’t stack – which is by design and NOT an error. 😡

I’ve also made a slot blocker, just in case you don’t want to have to fill up slots with stuff you don’t really want just to be able to cycle to the next one. Everything (OMSPs + blocker) can be found in Surfaces -> Misc. for all of $0.

 
Once you’ve placed your OMSPs, if you want to make them invisible you don’t have to click on each one to recolour them with the design tool – you can easily make them invisible in Live mode. 🙂 You can choose between making just the individual OMSP invisible, all OMSPs of that kind, or all OMSPs at once. (The slot blocker has the same feature, but it only works for this item.)

You can still use the design tool if you want, though; just note that OMSPs recoloured this way won’t be affected if you then try to make them invisible/visible through the object menu.

Installation Instructions

IMHO, a set this size needs a collection file lest you go insane. You’re getting not just one, but two: one for the counters and one for the wall cabinets. They both have two variations, one for those who have Pets or above, and one for those who don’t – choose the one for your game configuration.

The counters and wall cabinets from my first set of counter completers have been added to these collections (but will of course only show up if you have them installed), so if you already have the collection file for that set installed, I recommend you delete it.

Speaking of variations, the wall cabinets have two variations as well: wall deco and shelves. Only choose one of them!

They have the same GUIDs, so they will conflict if you have both variations installed at the same time. Also, please note that you can only use the shelf variation if you have OFB or above – otherwise you won’t have a Shelves sub category.
 

I think that’s all you need to know. All that’s left is for you to