More Awesome Than You!

You can fulfill the memory with just one photo, but then it will be delivered as just one framed photo.  If you have two pictures you get an album of sorts.

Does this give us a way to organise photo's in game or can you only use it for holiday snaps?

Some of my albums are huge and it would be nice to divide into sub-albums in game rather than messing around with dummy houses to store earlier chapters of a story.

Some of my albums are huge and it would be nice to divide into sub-albums in game rather than messing around with dummy houses to store earlier chapters of a story.

Well, what I do may be a bit too technical and it takes a bit more prepwork, but I like it better than having a dummy sim. Let's see if I can post clearly.

First off, you need two programs. One is SimPE. If you have BV, you'll need the QA version as it's not updated yet. This is available at MATY (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,9907.0.html) until the official is out. As always with SimPE, be careful what you change and follow directions closely. You'll also need the Storybook Viewer (http://transamerican.net/s2album/), which really is an essential for storywriting anyways.

Now the nitty-gritty. Whenever you move a sim over to college or out on their own for a bit, your game considers this a new household and generates a weblog (story file) for that household. If you send an heir to college the first generation, you already have an unused story file floating about in the ether, lonely and unused. Why not give it a purpose? Open up the Storybook Viewer, then click on the open folder icon to open a file. You'll need to bring up your MyDocuments/EA Games/Sims2/Neighborhood00X/Storytelling folder (Neighborhood00X is a wildcard for whichever 'hood number the 'hood you are playing in is). Now you'll see a whole bunch of garbled number-string file names starting with "weblog". Open one. Is it blank? Lovely. Write down the name of this file on your handy-dandy notepad. If the first one wasn't blank, keep opening weblogs until you find a blank one.

Now close the Storybook Viewer. Open up SimPE. On the top menu bar, on the far right, you'll see an icon that shows a bunch of little figures and says "Neighborhood Browser" on mouse-over. Click it. Pick your 'hood, then "Load" (or Start, I'm away from my game computer). Wait 10 years. Once it's done loading, look on the right side below the menu bars. There's a whole bunch of sorts listed for each file type in your 'hood. Click on the "Family Information" file tab. You'll see a list of your families come up on the left. Click on the last name of the family you are wanting to change the album for. (Note: If I'm recalling incorrectly, it may be in the Lot Info file section instead.) Verify that you have the right family by looking over the individual sim names listed. You should see a field called "Album" that lists a string of numbers very much like what you just saw. Change that to the number of the new blank weblog, entering just the portion you see shown (it's like x9F295G9). Save on the left side above the pane, save on the top right corner.

Shut down SimPE. Go into your game. Load the family. Fresh new album right there on the lot you are playing, and you don't have to go in and out of the lot/game to write your story. All the pictures you take in the lot will be right there organized in reverse order as per usual. The original album is still in your files, just floating in the ether. Your old photos are still available for use by clicking on the + icon. You can link the old album back the same way you just changed everything above if you ever need to.

Quoting myself, from BoolProp. This is how I organize things, and it works really, really well for my story telling style.
What I'm wondering, and am planning on trying on my test account, is if you can't just wipe the album reference in SimPE and the game will create a new one.

Storybook Viewer. That's the one I meant, but the Transamerican link does not work anymore, so the program is only available at MTS.

What you do with SimPE sounds unnecessary complicated to me (and I am also using the story files from college). What is the advantage? You can not edit the original/first album in-game anymore, so why not simply overwrite it (after saving a copy of it in a different folder)? Overwriting the .xml file does not result in loss of the pictures, so I don't understand what you are gaining with this method.

Where are you posting these? Are you uploading to something like livejournal? In that case, sure, you can overwrite the .xml file and then change the name before uploading to livejournal. I'm posting to the official site. If you overwrite the original .xml, when you upload to the official site it deletes the first copy. By linking another album in (preferably before you start with the new chapter) you can have your photos available in order on the lot so that you can write while on the lot. No switching around. No searching through a lot of unrelated crap in the + tab. I know the photos aren't lost completely, ever, unless you actually go in and delete them from the /Storytelling folder. (Which I do, but I'm anal about keeping my photo folders clean).

I also don't like that I can't delete photos in the + tab. So ridiculously annoying. If they are in the main tab, I can delete them at will.

Anyways, it's not that complicated...my explanation is probably at fault. Setting this up takes me all of a minute and a half...including waiting for SimPE to load the 'hood.

The Transamerican link does work. It's where I got mine at home. It's where the link at MTS2 sends you. Try the link.

heh, for stories, I just crop&resize screenshots, number them in the order I want them and then write/type the story up in Notepad.  ...my game dosen't save half the pictures I take with the c key so I don't have much choice. I don't mind too much since I get better pictures from the screenshots.

How is that more flexible than printscreen? Printscreen captures the entire screen and lets you put it in any paint program of your choice.

I only take printscreen screenshots also, cropped in MSPAINT. This gives me the option to strategically include or exclude the UI as needed to show off how Awesome I am, plus remove any incriminating information from the photos.

How is that more flexible than printscreen? Printscreen captures the entire screen and lets you put it in any paint program of your choice.

I like SnagIt for screenshots -- it gives me more flexibility than a simple printscreen. I do use the crappy in-game camera for stories I'm going to upload to the Exchange, though. I used storybook viewer for a while, but eventually found it too clunky. Editing the .xml directly is a good idea, I wish I'd thought of that before.

I proof in Wordpad, but find actually writing in it troublesome since I can't see the photos. I'm a bad bunny, though, and am behind on everything.

I proof in Wordpad, but find actually writing in it troublesome since I can't see the photos. I'm a bad bunny, though, and am behind on everything.

Oh, sheesh, I am so far behind it's ridiculous. I'm procrastinating because I hate Uni when I can't cheat to shorten it, and I have 11 Sims to get through in this generation. Give me a nice romance Sim over an insane family Sim any day.

I wonder if there's an .xml editor that shows pictures. That's probably not even possible, is it?

I truly don't know what to tell you. When I click the link in my quote above, it goes to the page, and the download links work.  :-\