Friday, May 2, 2008

Making Medieval Veronaville: Post 1

Ok, so the reason I haven't been frantically uploading things like I usually tend to is because I've finally cleared enough crap off my little lappy to set up my medieval neighborhood!! I'd been planning this out for a while but its hard to even work much less dream about a new hood when I have less than 1% free hard drive space (I know thats REALLY bad). I deleted stuff and moved other stuff to my external and magically had enough space to throw my hands out and even twirl!

You get to follow along with this project, you can even make your own based on how mine is set up (but I won't be uploaded much of anything for it, I am HEAVILY editing other peoples files for this project and reuploading is generally a no-no.)

For starters I set up an AnyGame using Numenor's great tool. The reason for this is so I can have a separate downloads folder for all the medieval stuff and keep my regular game from crawling to a complete stop. I decided to include the Holiday Packs, OFB, SSN, and FT in my game. OFB so I can run an integrated hood (plasticbox made it sound so fun), SSNs so my peasants can freeze in the snow, I mean grow stuff, and FT so everyone has more things to do because TV ain't an option. Holiday packs are in there because some of the clothes are nice and they gave me some nice candles too.

The next step was to get myself a clean hood to start in. I had already decided that I wanted to turn Veronaville into a medieval hood like months ago, so I finally get to get that started. I started out with a clean template (Veronaville on bottom of page 10) and pretty much have been following this thread loosely. I had my friend CarmeeKitty make up a Medieval Names list and she plans on uploading it here eventually. This will ensure that I won't be seeing Goopy GilsCarbo or Benji Long running around my hood. Next its time to get all the custom content ready for the game. 

I have decided to use a mix of skins, HP's Idolarty of Flesh skintones and a genetisized version of most of Enayla's fantasy skins. I've made myself 3 more skins of HP's to fill in the spaces between them so I have a nice blended range. These skins and the fantasy skins will all be rearranged on the genetic scale so that the pale normal skins are next to the pale fantasy skins. That way when Hermia Capp and Puck Summerdream get together, their kids will still have light skin. (The Summerdreams are all going to get their tacky face makeup removed and will receive Enayla's skins instead.) As for eyes, I'll be using HP's Precious Jewels set because I think they are pretty. They are not cartoony but not realistic so they win. Also, there are a lot of them and that was another deciding factor, I don't want my townies to have only 5 different shades of eyes. This thread has been helpful for decustomizing things.

The next step is finding clothing! I've finished gathering the clothing I like, and almost all of it came from right here. (MTS2 is the best!) There is too much to directly link to, but these are the main creators work I am using. Its all very well done and beautiful, so check them out! AlexasRosaAligethEarendilEnblithTheFairHelaeneiamliz13sherahbimSussisSoGoodSimstabalatiggerypum, and zoej. Many of these creators were collaborators in the Midsimmer Night's Dreamand Dark Project sets. I highly recommend those sets as well. There are a few more random pieces of clothing that I'm using but you can find them here by searching for Medieval. As much as I originally hated Maxis Clothing Hiders (because I prefer to replace ugly Maxis textures), they are really coming in handy for this hood. I plan on editing mine a bit to exclude any Maxis outfits that I deem 'medieval enough'. Making all these clothes townie friendly is going to be a very long project. I've tried using the Wardrobe Wrangler but to no success. It's useful for changing the categories that the clothes appear in but it's 'Townify' feature doesn't seem to work for me. Though, maybe I was using an old version... I'll give it another shot. Editing 700+ clothing files individually with SimPE is not really my idea of a great weekend project.

I've also been slowly starting to pick up mods and objects that will help out this neighborhood, but since it doesn't actually exist yet (have to have the genetics and clothes ready for townies) I haven't put much focus on that yet. I'll be using a terrain mod to get dirt roads (there are a couple here, haven't decided which one I like best yet) and some other things.

So yeah, that's where I am and what I'm doing!

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