Category Archives: Hobbies

Training Dummies V. 3.0 – Now Also for Lefties!

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Category: Hobbies -> Exercise
Poly Count: Canvas Low poly (980); Armoured Medium poly (1210); Invisible Low poly (12); Swords Low poly ( < 500)
EPs Required: Nightlife or above

UPDATE, 1 NOV 2019: By request, I’ve added a “no sword” option to the “Select Sword” pie menu, that lets your Sims fence with – you guessed it – no sword (or rather, with a tiny, invisible one). This in case you instead of my TSM swords want to equip your Sims with a handheld accessory, be it a different sword or something else entirely (wands, lightsabers, cucumbers…).

I’ve also cleaned up the interactions a bit (you no longer get the “watch” option if you click on the dummy while the active Sim is fencing, for one thing) + have fixed some mega bork with the child sword selection. Also fixed the swords so they actually work with v. 2.5, for those of you who have both versions. (Yeah, I was seriously sleeping on the job when I tested these. 😳 )

Please redownload if you want the updated versions!

 

 
I blame the fellow in the title pic for this. This wouldn’t have been necessary if it weren’t for him. He’s one of the main characters in my upcoming story – the first one you’ll meet, in fact (I know, I know, I’ve been talking about that danged story forever, but it’s getting close now!) – and he is, amongst other things, a pretty good swordsman. He’s also left-handed. Granted, he can use the sword just as well with his right hand, but when he can choose, he prefers his left. Which causes a bit of a problem when the sword-fighting happens on camera, since even though I can use my training dummies to stage it, all Sims fight right-handed with those.

Now, I’d never force a fellow lefty, pixellated or not, to use the right (or rather wrong 😉 ) hand if he didn’t want to, so of course I had to update my training dummies for him. (Polished the swords some while I was at it, too.) So now your Sims can choose not just which sword to fight with, but which hand as well. Left-handed high-five!

BTW, all this has put me in a sword-fighting mood, so you know that sword mod I’ve been talking about? That’s what I’ll be doing… not next, I’ve got a request I need to see to first (that’s well under way, even though it’s kind of… I was going to say “snowballed”, but “avalanched” is probably a better description), but after that, there will be swords, yes, there will. 😀 (Just as a heads-up, I’ll probably need testers for it, but we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.)

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Training Dummies v. 2.0 (and 2.5) – Now with Sword Options!

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Training Dummies with Sword Options

Category: Hobbies -> Exercise
Poly Count: Canvas Low poly (980); Armoured Medium poly (1210); Invisible Low poly (12); Swords Low poly ( < 500)
EPs Required: Nightlife or above

This download post was actually inspired by you, my downloaders – or at least by some of your screenshots. 😉

Back story: a while back, I made a couple of training dummies (cloned from the brilliant Rebecah’s duel dummy), one armoured and one invisible. One change I made from Rebecah’s duel dummy was to make Sims use swords instead of the original cutlass; the armoured dummy had one kind of sword, and the invisible one another.

Now, in the screenshots I’ve seen with my dummies, people almost always seem to prefer the armoured dummy over the invisible one – obvious to me from the sword – even when it means moveobjects’ing it out of the way (which they wouldn’t have had to do with the invisible dummy). Maybe I’m over-analysing things, but to me this seems to indicate that people aren’t too keen on the sword for invisible dummy, and/or preferred the armoured sword even if meant more work when they set up the shot.

And this got me thinking. Wouldn’t it be great if people could choose which sword they wanted their Sims to use, instead of being stuck with whatever sword I’d picked for that particular dummy (which they might not like)? And not just choose between these two swords, either, but from several different ones? I had a fairly good idea how to go about setting this up… so I did.

So, my offering today is three training dummies, that each have no less than eight different swords for your Sims to choose from. En garde! 😀
 
Update, 19 October 2015: At the request of Charity322, there is now a v. 2.5 of the training dummies available, where adults can choose different swords for their children as well. Scroll down to the menu screenshots for more info.

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Blacksmith’s Crafting Station for Custom Objects

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Blacksmith's Anvil for Custom Objects

Category: Hobbies -> Misc.
EPs Required: Open for Business
Cost: $945
Poly Count: Medium poly (1227)

Update, 6 April 2019: After almost four years (!), I’ve been told there’s a problem with the enthusiasm gain, that would make Sims gain enthusiasm super fast. I have no idea how I could have missed this in testing, but at least it’s been fixed now.

Please, everybody. Please. If you find an issue with one of my objects, I’m asking, no, begging you: let me know about it! There’s a “Report Issues” tab at the top of the page you’re welcome to use if you don’t want to leave a public comment (you can be completely anonymous there, it doesn’t even require a screen name). I don’t do telepathy and I also don’t watch every single Sims forum on the Internet, so if don’t tell me about it directly, there’s a good chance I’ll never know there’s a problem. So help me out here, would you? Please? With sugar on top?

Important! I very strongly advise you NOT to include this item with lots but to link to it instead. It will not package properly with lots!

If you include it with a lot anyway, you need to add the tools and the crafting objects (all found in the “AnvilCraftingItems” folder) manually to your zip file or the anvil won’t work properly for your downloaders.

And if you still include it with a lot but don’t add the crafting items… then that’s on you, not me. 🙄

So, a while back I made a blacksmith’s crafting station, cloned from the OFB robot station. I also made some default replacement bots to go with it, to give it more of a medieval feel. One of my commenters wondered if it would be possible to make those default replacement bots custom ones instead, for the players who’d like to have both Hydrobots and flying water buckets in their game. Unfortunately, after trying and failing spectacularly quite a few times, my answer had to be “no can do” – I couldn’t get Sims to craft custom anything, least of all custom bots. So that was that. 😦

But the idea stuck with me, to have a crafting station where your blacksmith Sims could make custom… not bots, obviously, but other custom items, and gain skill and enthusiasm in the process. I knew that building something like this from scratch was waaay above my current modding level, though… so I asked the brilliant Rebecah @ Affinity Sims if I may use the BHAVs from the candle maker she made with G-Knee – and kind and generous simmer that she is, she said yes. 😀 (So in case you're here from the Keep: No, I did not clone one of Sun & Moon’s crafting stations. I cloned Rebecah’s candle maker, and this with Rebecah’s explicit permission.)

The result was this: A blacksmith’s crafting station for custom items (not bots).

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Pottery Table for Kids

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Pottery Table for Kids

Category: Hobbies -> Misc.
EPs Required: Open for Business + Free Time
Cost: $750
Poly Count: Low poly (700)

You know the Yeti I told you about before? The one who wanted an outhouse for their blind date? Well, before they decided that an outhouse was the most romantic way to go, Yeti and I brainstormed a bit about what might be a good thing to bring to their date. One of the things that were on the table, was something that would let children gain pottery skills. At first, I tried to add pottery skilling to a custom object, but after failing spectacularly a number of times, I decided it would be easier just to clone the pottery wheel and make it so that kids could use it. (Yes, I thought it would be easier to do it that way. That’s how spectacularly I failed. 😛 ) So, I did. But then the nice Yeti thought it wouldn’t be fair to keep it just for their blind date, they thought I ought to post it on my site instead. So, I am. :mrgreen:

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Exercise Mat for (Almost) All Ages

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Exercise mat for Sims of (almost) all ages

Category: Hobbies -> Exercise
Cost: $75
Poly Count: Low poly
EPs Required: Base-game compatible unless you have the Kitchen & Bath SP; then Free Time is required

UPDATE, 28 APRIL 2022: A helpful anon let me know that pregnant Sims would throw an error when they stopped exercising if the player didn’t have a mod installed that lets pregnant Sims wear everyday clothes (which I had in my testing game, oops. 😳 Bad Nix for not testing in a vanilla game!). This has now been fixed and the download has been updated.

Thank you very much for reporting, anon! ⭐

 
Over at LeeFish, we usually have a themed challenge each month; it can be something specific, like decorating a certain house, or something more general, like winter. For January, it was suggested that the theme should be Fitness, since January is the month of New Year’s resolutions, and exercising more/getting fitter/losing weight are popular ones. So, in line with this, I’ve made an exercise mat that Sims aged child to elder can use to gain body skill and get fitter – and if you have Free Time, they’ll gain Fitness enthusiasm as well. And it’s not just for present-day Sims, either; medieval (and other) Sims can use it, too, it has recols for that. 😉 (And yes, I know there are other exercise mats out there already, but I wanted one with my own little quirks, so.)

Update, 11 March 2019: PenelopeT @ MTS has made ten wonderful recols for this here. Go get ’em! 😀

Update, 1 Jan 2020: PenelopeT has made ten more great-looking recols , yay! :mrgreen:

Update, 2 Feb 2023: The one and only Almighty Hat has recoloured this in Pooklet’s Project Mayhem Naturals, Aelia’s Autumn and CuriousB’s ACYL. That’s 82 recols for ya. 😮

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TSM Book Stacks as Bookcases

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TSM Book Stacks as Bookcases

Category: Hobbies -> Knowledge
Poly Count: Low poly ( < 700)
EPs Required: Base-game compatible (provided that you get the base-game variation)

Not all of my medieval Sims are into bookcases. Some might like to keep a pile of books on their desks, to have them readily at hand when they write letters. Others might be wizards or philosophers, who have so many books, they just don’t have shelf-space for them all. Others again might have spent their very last Simoleon on that precious, precious book, and can’t afford a bookcase as well. And still others might be the kind of Sims who think the floor is a perfectly acceptable place to put their books, clothes, food…

So, to meet their varying needs, I took the decorative book stacks from TSM (except for one that didn’t want to play) and turned them into functional bookcases: three larger ones that go on the floor only, and two smaller ones that can be placed either on the floor or on tables (or other surfaces).

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Skill-building Haystack

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Skill-Building Haystack for Medieval and Rustic Sims

Category: Hobbies -> Exercise
Cost: $25
Poly Count: Low poly
EPs Required: Base-game compatible unless you have the Kitchen & Bath SP; then Free Time is required

Of all the objects I’ve made, my body-skilling trampoline is my absolute favourite. All my Sim families own at least one – or two or three, if they’re a big family.

Well. My modern families do, anyway. No matter how much I love it, the trampoline is much too contemporary-looking for my medieval game, so my poor medieval Simmies have to do without. I still think it’s a pretty nifty item, though (not that I’m in any way impartial), and I’ve missed it in my medieval game – so I started thinking. What’s a medieval Sim peasant – or a contemporary, rustic Sim who doesn’t like neons and chrome, for that matter – gonna do if he wants to have some fun (and do some body-skilling) after working hard in the fields all day, bringing in the hay?

Why, jump in the hay, of course! So – I made a haystack. 😀

Update, 4 March 2019: Mortia has made four seasonal recolours for this here.

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Secret Scuba Gifts, Part II: Blacksmith’s Anvil + DR Bots

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It's Hammer Time!

Category: Hobbies -> Misc.
EPs Required: Open for Business + Free Time
Cost: $1100
Poly Count: Low poly

Important! If you package this item with lots, you will need to include the tong and mallet manually since they won’t package properly, but are needed for the anvil to function.

 
At leefish.nl, there was recently a Secret Scuba event – you know, like Secret Santa, except you were scuba and scubee instead of santa and santee. We’re all fish of the same pond after all. 🙂 This is the second – and final – part of my gifts; the first one can be found here.

One of the things my scubee Jo wished for was a blacksmith’s crafting station for her medieval game, which made me squee with delight because I am ever so slightly insane. So I promptly extracted the blacksmith’s anvil from TSM (and tweaked the textures a bit to make them look more TS2-y), cloned the OFB robot making station, and combined the two into a crafting station anvil where your medieval smiths can make… robots? O_o Yeah, that didn’t make much sense to me, either – so I threw in some period-appropriate default replacements for the bots as well.

I’ve seen this being referred to as a “default replacement station” a few times, so I want to stress that the anvil is NOT a default replacement for the robot crafting station, but a stand-alone object. Only the bots are default replacements – and they’re completely optional, you do not need them for the anvil to work.

I repeat: The anvil is NOT a default replacement for the robot crafting station! It is a stand-alone object!

Now, if we’re all clear on that. 😉 Since my scubee had all EPs installed and this was made for her, the anvil requires OFB and FT. I might make an OFB-only version later, but for now, you need both.

Update, 14 June, 2017: Downloader beradan has reported that the DR bots conflict with a mod for buyable craftables (that may or may not be this one); nothing will crash, but the bots won’t display properly if you have this mod installed. It might be possible to solve this by load order (i.e. having my bots load last), but I haven’t yet been able to check this myself. Just a heads up, in case the bots aren’t behaving as advertised in your game.

Thank you, beradan, for the report! ⭐

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TSM Armoured Training Dummy

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Armoured Training Dummy

Category: Hobbies -> Exercise
Cost: $350
Poly Count: Medium poly
EPs Required: Nightlife or above

So after I made my invisible duel dummy, I thought that it would be nice to have a visible training dummy as well, to give my medievalish Sims some body skill building options – and as usual TSM had just what I was looking for. Now, I know that the TSM training dummies have already been converted over at the Plumb Bob Keep, but just as with the invisible dummy I wanted my Sims to use swords and not cutlasses, and there were some other things I wanted to tweak to my liking as well. So once again I cloned the amazing Rebecah’s duel dummy to make my own. 🙂

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Invisible Duel Dummy with Custom Swords

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Invisible Duel Dummy

Category: Hobbies -> Exercise
Cost: $5
Poly Count: Low poly
EPs Required: Nightlife or above

While we’re on the subject of knights. 😉

Over at Affinity Sims, the brilliant Rebecah has extracted the BV duel dummy so Sims can use it to gain body skill and sports enthusiasm. 😀 This is absolutely great, of course, but for my own storytelling purposes, there were two things about it I wanted done a little differently: I wanted it to be invisible so I wouldn’t have to keep moveObjects’ing it out of the way for screenshots (I know, I’m lazy), and I wanted the Sims to use swords instead of cutlasses. More knightly that way. Thanks to Rebecah’s generous policy, I could clone her dummy and tweak it.

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The Sim Bouncer

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The Sim Bouncer

Category: Hobbies -> Exercise
Cost: $95
Poly Count: Medium poly
EPs Required: Base game compatible unless you have the Kitchen and Bath SP. Then, and only then, Free Time is required

I don’t know about your Sims, but most of mine like to stay fit. Problem is, not all of them like to push weights on a benchpress, and others think that going jogging or running on a treadmill is mind-numbingly boring. Of course, for Sim kids the options are even more limited. So what’s a Sim to do if he wants to increase his body skill without being bored out of his pixel skull?

Why, get a trampoline, of course! 🙂

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Two Kirk-style Bookcases with Deco Slots

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(Oil lamp by Parsimonious, potted plant by Ohbehave, other somewhat repetitive deco by Maxis and me.)

Category: Hobbies -> Knowledge
Cost: $600 (wall version), $650 (standing version)
Poly Count: Low poly
EPs Required: None – base game compatible (BG version)

Sometimes when I’m watching a film or a tv show, I come across something I know I’ll just have to make for the Sims. That’s what happened when I spotted Kirk’s black-and-chrome bookcase/display case in The Wrath of Khan – the thing was just screaming to be simmified. So I made like the Borg, and complied. 😉

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