Project Heavy: Aligeth’s Robin Hood Tunic for Consort’s Heavy Male

Posted on 13 Apr 2021 by NixNivis

Before we start, I must apologise for being so bad at answering comments. I love getting comments and I read and appreciate each and every one, never ever think that I don’t. But I haven’t had the best spoon supply lately, and intelligible (or at least somewhat coherent) communication… some days, it takes a lot of spoons. And I just haven’t had those spoons to spare. Very sorry about that. 😦 But things are looking better now, and I’ll try to catch up post-haste!

But you’re not here to hear me whine about spoons, you’re here for Sim stuff. So let’s do Sim stuff! My last post was something of a teaser. Now I’m not teasing any more. 😉 Consider this the first official post for “Project Heavy”!

Project Heavy: VK’s TSM:PaN Admiral for Consort’s Heavy Male

Posted on 22 Feb 2021 by NixNivis

Originally I wasn’t going to upload this already, but then the wonderful Norica @ PBK was super fast in adding this bodyshape to the mfBSOK (thank you, Norica!) and that made me itching to show it off. 😉 Consider it a teaser for my Big Bodyshop Project of 2021.

PSA: About Animations and NPCs

Posted on 26 Oct 2018 by NixNivis

Since this is a question I’ve been asked a few times, and also something I’ve seen come up on other sites:

None of my animated objects are controlled by NPCs!

Contrary to what seems to be popular belief, animated objects don’t always require an NPC to run; whether they do depends on the type and complexity of the object and not just on whether or not it’s animated. Objects that move around the lot, like Rebecah’s farm animals, usually need an NPC to work, but simple animated objects like mine, that rotate/swing/rock in place, do not.

But if any object of mine did spawn an NPC (which I say again, they do NOT), I promise you it would say so very, very clearly in the upload post. I know there are creators out there who like to foist undisclosed features upon their downloaders, but I’m not that kind of creator.

Training Dummies V. 3.0 – Now Also for Lefties!

Posted on 31 Jul 2018 by NixNivis

Category: Hobbies -> Exercise
Poly Count: Canvas Low poly (980); Armoured Medium poly (1210); Invisible (12); Swords ( < 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.)

Blacksmith’s Crafting Station for Custom Objects

Posted on 26 Jul 2015 by NixNivis

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).

All-in-One Outhouse

Posted on 28 Mar 2015 by NixNivis

Blind Date All-in-One Outhouse

Category: Plumbing -> Toilets
Cost: $50
Poly Count: Low poly
EPs Required: None – base-game compatible

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Outhouses smell like sh!t
But you won’t, ’cause
You’ll be squeaky clean after using this one

(All right, so I might need to work some on my poetry skills. 😛 )

So, a Yeti was going on a blind date. Now, this Yeti wanted to give their date a romantic gift for the occasion, something they knew said date would appreciate and cherish forever. Obviously, they wanted to give them… an outhouse. But not just any old outhouse! No, Yeti wanted it to be something like Veranka’s all-in-one bathroom, that raises Sims’ hygiene as well as their bladder. They asked me if I’d like to collaborate with them in making it, and since I really like Yetis (especially this one), I said yes. 🙂

The result was the “Smells Like Roses” Outhouse.

Update, 28 April 2015: As requested by godlimpingby, there is now a variation that doesn’t raise hygiene. See the end of the post for more info.

TSM Book Stacks as Bookcases

Posted on 12 Dec 2014 by NixNivis

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).

Skill-building Haystack

Posted on 22 Nov 2014 by NixNivis

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.

Two TSM Teddy Bears

Posted on 17 Jul 2014 by NixNivis

Two TSM Teddy Bears

Category: Misc. -> Children
Poly Count: Medium poly ( <1200)
EPs Required: None – base-game compatible

I know at least one of these has been done before, but it’s Toddler Month and my medieval tots wanted some teddy bears to hug, and I just couldn’t say no to them. So I’ve converted the peasant teddy from the TSM base game and the pirate teddy from Pirates & Nobles. 🙂 (Yes, in the base game there’s a knight teddy as well, but that teddy was evil. Evil, I tell you!) Their poly count comes in at just under 1200 polys, but that’s actually some 400 polys fewer than the TS2 base-game teddy, so it’s not high in any way.

Many thanks to BloomsBase for his tutorial on how to transfer TS2 bone assignments to a TS3/TSM mesh, which saved my sanity, not to mention the bone assignments’.

TSM Rocking Horse

Posted on 9 Jul 2014 by NixNivis

TSM Rocking Horse

Category: Misc. -> Children
Cost: $75
Poly Count: Low poly
EPs Required: Apartment Life

In TSM, you have this charming little rocking horse – but even though it’s in the children’s category it’s purely decorative, so all your little Sims can do with it is to look at it. Now, this might be fun for scholarly Sims, but not so much for everybody else. So, in appreciation of Toddler Month, I converted it – and made it functional. 😀 Now your littlest Sims can use this rocking horse as it’s supposed to be used – and they won’t just have fun while doing it, they’ll build body skill as well!

This rocking horse requires AL. I tried to see if I could dumb it down, so to speak, and make it so that it would only require [some EP] or above, but it really didn’t like that. So AL it is.

Six Animated TSM Clothes Chests

Posted on 1 Jul 2014 by NixNivis

Six Animated Clothes Chests

Category: Misc. -> Dressers
EPs Required: None – base game compatible
Poly Count: Low poly (>950)

Yes, I know the TSM clothes chests have been converted and made into functional dressers before, and I wasn’t going to do them at first… only the chests I’ve seen have all been static, and as you might have figured out by now, I have a thing for animated objects. So, I started to think about any chest-like objects in game whose animations I could ~~steal~~ use to make these into functional animated clothes chests – and realised there was one. So I did. 🙂

Hunk Smith the Sim

Posted on 8 Jun 2014 by NixNivis

Hunk Smith

A simple ~~sailor~~ blacksmith, lowly born, unlettered and unknown, who toils for bread from early morn till half the night has flown…

So, the hunky blacksmith model (named Hunk Smith, because I’m witty like that 😛 ) I used for the blacksmith’s anvil I uploaded recently turned out to be quite the popular fellow. I hadn’t planned on uploading him originally, but several people have requested him. Far be it from me to deprive anyone’s game of a good smith (that is why people want him, right? Right?) – so here he is for download.

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

Posted on 31 May 2014 by NixNivis

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? 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! ⭐

Animated TSM Orrery

Posted on 23 May 2014 by NixNivis

Animated TSM Orrery

Category: Decorative -> Sculpture
EPs Required: None – base-game compatible
Cost: $2000
Poly Count: Low poly (>2300 polys, but on 5x5x2 tiles)

So. The TSM orrery. You know, that huge thingamajig that sits high, high in the ceiling of the wizard’s tower and rotates in fifteen different directions at the same time. That orrery. I’ve been looking at it askance for some time now, wondering if I were brave enough to attempt animating it. Yes, it would require a bazillion joints, but it’s just going ’round and ’round, right? And if there’s one thing I’m good at animating, it’s things that go ’round and ’round… so I did. Like so:

Five TSM Music Boxes as Animated Stereos

Posted on 3 Apr 2014 by NixNivis

Walls and floors by Lama at The Medieval Smithy

Category: Electronics -> Audio
EPs Required: None – base-game compatible
Poly Count: Low poly (848 – 912)

Update, 6 Feb, 2019: Meduza has updated these to have NL/BV/Pets/FT functions. Thank you for doing what I should have done ages ago! ❤

I love the TSM music boxes, I think they’re adorable, and so I really wanted to convert them and make them functional (read that: turn them into stereos. ‘Cause I cheat like that in my medievalish ‘hoods). Problem was, I knew for a fact this was something that had been done before, and I don’t like to repeat what somebody else has already done if I can help it. So, like Ol’ Blue Eyes I did it my way, and turned them into stereos… with custom animations. 😀

When the music box is turned on (do you turn on a music box?), the lid opens, and the figurine appears and starts rotating. It will obligingly keep on doing so until you turn the music box off; then the figurine disappears again and the lid closes. But you don’t have to take my word for it – see for yourself: