More Awesome Than You!

*sputter.curse.massacre* So, I've been playing something else lately, and haven't so much as looked at anything Sims related, nor checked my email until tonight. I saw in my inbox, some PM notifications from people at this site.. saying they couldn't download my stuff. Now, I know the thread explains how to get around Angelfire's bull-shit, so I was rightly confused. I checked my site only to see that it had been DELETED BY ANGELFIRE. What's wrong with this picture? I tried to be patient, I tried to give it time to work itself out, I held my tongue when Angelfire sent me a bull-shit response to my problems.. And now they decide to delete it, just like that. What the hell? What the HELL!? Excuse me while I go sob in the corner from frustration.

Well hell Dylan, that stinks. I'm sorry to hear that, and I hope that you and Reg can get something going soon. I know it'll be a while, because you all are still recovering from Katrina, and the holidays are coming up, and you have some personal worries with a family-members health, but that doesn't save me from being utterly selfish.

I am glad I downloaded your skins before angelfire acted idiotic, but I'm sad that people who wanted your superb vampire skin now have to wait. Maybe you could post at least that in the peasant section? Although I could certainly understand if you didn't want your great stuff all over the place, and rather wait 'till you guys get something going. I don't remember the size limit JM has set there, but if its up to a certain size, it shouldn't be a problem. (I have to read the RTFM again, sigh).

I happen to think that your skins are great, and only your vampire skin made me play vampires more. I hated the tint of the maxis skin very much indeed. Who ever heard of a grey vampire? I know they are a figment of Stoker's imagination (or not ;)), but bleed out things are pale, not grey.

Again, sorry to hear that they deleted you site right out from under you. I never liked angelfire, my browser absolutely hated anglefire and had to coaxed, bribed, or threatened to open their sites, but that's a new one.

I think he said it was around 700k-ish. He said he didn't want large files like skins. :P

You could try rapidshare.de. I confess to not knowing the particulars about how to put files up there, but I've seen a number of people on boards link to their files there and some of the files were quite large too. There's Fileplanet too, but people might have to wait in line for it sometimes. :P

Of course there's always *gasp* The Exchange. We'll all rate you high and give you benes so the download doesn't get removed.  ;D

You're right Motoki, he wants it kept around 640. Oh well, maybe you could consider the exchange Dylan? Just for a little while? I promise all my benes and five star ratings for it for as long as it's up, cross my heart.

Is the file in question DylanTK_DefaultVampirePaste (filesize 1,6MB)? Because if so, I have that on my HD and cound put it on my site temporarily until you find some other place to host it, or email it out to people who request it.

That explains why I couldn't get to it last night when I followed a link to it on a thread.  I think I remember seeing it once before and not downloading it because I had only just got NL and liked the red eyes (well, I still like the red eyes), but I'm finding now that the vampires are just too similar to the zombies, especially since I had a Grand Vamp shack-up with a zombie who keeps going from zombie-vamp to zombie and back to zombie-vamp depending on whether he gets to her that day before sunrise or not and how many vials of vampicillin she has in her inventory.  In other words, I'd like to download it now.

Dylan, I offered on another thread to email the .rar file to a couple people who asked.  I should have asked you first.  I am so sorry I didn't!  Do you want this to happen or not?  I will do what you say, as it's your creation.

PLease forgive my presumtuousness (sp?)

C

If you want, I could set up a section for you on my website. I've got plenty of extra space and bandwidth because I don't really use it. I don't have any of your files other than the alien replacement skin and pollination tech, though. If you're interested PM me and we could work out the details.

Hey guys. Sorry I've been MIA so much. Between my own health, life in general, and this new addictive game, I haven't had any time or energy left for the most part. My mom has given me the go-ahead to purchase webspace, so I'll try to have that all set up very soon. Anyone who feels inclined to share my skins, please do. And that goes for any point in time, not just now. As long as I get proper credit, I don't mind who puts it where. So if anyone feels like hosting it, you may do that as well.. I'll notify you guys as soon as the forum is all set up, if my mom doesn't beat me to it.

 Your skins are very nice GloamingMerle.     I used your violetwinkle skins to replace my aliens.   Everything
went well until they transition to teens.    Then I have a purple head with the old maxi alien green skin.  Any
chance of this being fixed?   Or have I just missed the boat? :)

Humour me: Go to MyDocuments/EAGames/TheSims2/, then delete the Groups.cache file (or move it to your desktop if your the paranoid sort, though I swear that deleting it is safe), run the game, and go check on your chimeric sim. I'd like to see if this works, considering someone else had teen transition issues. I'm sort of amazed that anyone is having issues, because my mom and I have been using it before University existed with zero issues this entire time. I don't doubt it though.. You never can tell what's going to happen on other people's computers sometimes.

Thanks for answering so quickly.    I am unable to do try this until later today.    When I get home I will try and post back to let you know how it goes.

Thanks Marg :)

I have your vampire skin and love it!  I know of a friend that wanted one and I had directed her to you just last night not knowing you had lost your site.  Since you do not mind us sharing your skins I would like to zip and email it to her and just wondered if it is only the one file I need to zip or if there is more.  The file I have is the DylanTK_DefaultVampirePaste.package.  Is that the only one I send or is there another part that I need to upload to her as well?

Yes, that was me!  My vampiric Sim-self doesn't look good at all.

I haven't done a search on here yet to see if the skins were anywhere to be found yet, though.

LOL  ;D  Yes Blue I was asking for you.

The full alien setup is three files, but for vampires it's only one.. That's the one you have listed, so send away. :)

Thanks for the reply.  I know Blue will be as happy as I am with your awesome skins.

I never did get the alien ones, when you have something back up and ready make sure to let us know.  I for one missed out on that and would like them as well.

I'm disappointed I missed the alien skins as well...  not inclined to play vampires, but I do have a few aliens running around

one quick question - if the alien skin goes in, does it affect existing aliens at all?

I would love to see the alien and vampire skins put up again.

I had decided to delete all of my downloads and figured that your site would still contain them. I know it is no fault of your own, of course, but I would love to have them back, lol! Your pollination tech. made such lovely aliens!

Yes, it most certainly effects existing aliens in the game. If they have big eyes and a non-existent nose, they will still look that way with the full alien replacement setup... However, they'll have changed skin and eye colors. New aliens will be born by a different father (in a sense), and have different physical characteristics.

ok...  I can live with that...

now, I just need to get hold of the alien skins!

*waits patiently*

 Okay, I did what you asked me to.   I removed the Groups.cache file and restarted my game.

 I still have beatiful purple heads and green bodies.

Here are a few pictures at photoBucket
http://photobucket.com/albums/v225/firth1/Sims2/?sc=1

Marg

Your poor little bi-colored sims..  :-\

Are you sure you don't have any other default skin replacements that may include aliens? Hmmm... I'll try to look up issues with default skin replacements, maybe someone else has run into this problem.

Yes my poor little bi-color simmies.    I thought that I had disabled the other skins I had in there.   I use the CI so it's not hard to do.   I will go in tomorrow and double check them again just to be sure.    I really like the color on these skins, and daddy poly tech makes very nice babies.   

Marg

Frustratingly enough, I found some people with the very same problem on the threads of other default replacement skins, but no solution listed.. Possibly they figured it out on their own, got help elsewhere, or gave up.  :-\

I'm done for tonight, but I'll start looking around again tomorrow.. If I can't find anything, I'll post on modthesims help section.. Someone is bound to know how to fix it, right? I'm not sure that JM or TJ could help, since they don't make that kind of stuff.  :P

I got the vampire skin (thanks Myth and GloamingMerle), and now my Sims are beautiful again.  Yay!  Thanks so much.  :)

If the incredibly awesome GloamingMerle doesn't mind, I have the alien skin and PoliTech files and could send them/links to them to those who are lacking the wonderfulness. Because not having laverwinkle aliens is a tragedy, I am telling you.

It sounds like the skins are corrupt or missing for those sims.  I would download them again if possible.  I would also check in SimPE to see if the correct number of files shows up.  I had downloaded a purple skin on MTS2 that had a missing texture for the teen female face, and it showed up as the normal skintone.  I figured out that it was missing from the file, and I tried to contact the person who made it, but she never responded.  So I took one of the other face files that was similar and pasted it in...it looked ok but I never really used it.  It wasn't a default skin. 

Anyway, I have all three files, the alien, vamp, and better looking PT.  I can put them up using something like Megaupload.com, or anyone could, really.  It's not hard, and it's free.  The links will remain valid until no one downloads them for 30 days.

I love this alien skin, but for some reason it doesn't look quite as purple in my game as it does in other people's photos.  Any idea why?  Is it my video card?

Feel free to pass along those files any which way you please, as long as you give credit to me, and don't try anything dumb like selling it.  ;)

The eyes and skin are seperate files, so don't forget that one if you actually have it.. Either way, the forum should be setup by tomorrow if everything goes as it should. *crosses fingers*

*crosses fingers too*

I really need Reg's houses, I've grown addicted to them. I did the right thing for a change with your vampire skin, and got it while the getting was good. Next on my list are your alien items :D

I've uploaded the following four files to Megaupload for anyone who wishes to download them.  Let me know if you have any problems.  Hopefully it will work out.

DylanTK_DefaultAlienLaverwinkle.rar (6.88 MB)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=0R093AH9

DylanTK_DefaultAlienEyes.zip (31.06 KB)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=0HEDT6A9

DylanTK_DefaultPollinationTech.zip (84.7 KB)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IODCRX8E

DylanTK_DefaultVampirePaste.zip (1.57 MB)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=UQK1YN5Y

Rainbow to the rescue (again). Why don't we just do the right thing and re-name the cavalry the 'rainbow' instead :D

Awww, you're too sweet.  Just trying to help out. :)

Is that sim in your avatar the Official Rainbow sim? I need a Rainbow sim to go with the Brynne sim.

Nope.

Well, where's the Official Rainbow, then? SimBrynne needs someone to whip!

I whip Hook, now, remember?

We can do that, too.

Want a Twinkie, Pescado?

Thank You rainbow for uploading GloamingMerle's skin again.    I downloaded them again hoping I had a corrupted skin file.     I have gone through everything in my game to make sure I didn't have another alien skin default in there.   I actually deleted the first set of violetwinkle skins in the hopes there was something wrong with one of them.    I replaced them with the new files and they still aren't working properly.    I still have very pretty bi-color alien teenagers and adults.     Also I noticed when I was in game, one of my old pre-existing aliens walked by on the street.   They also have purple heads and green bodies.    I don't use SimPe so can't check the skins in there.    Thanks for trying for me and allowing other people access to these gorgeous skins. 

You're welcome.  That is certainly strange about your bi-colored sims.  I think I would try removing everything temporarily from Downloads and Saved Sims to some place outside of The Sims 2 folder, like the desktop, and then just putting this file only in Downloads.  Load the game up, then see if they look normal.  Don't save, just exit after checking them out.  If they look normal, then you have a conflict somewhere.  If not, then...I don't know what, LOL.  But at least that will give us something to go on.  I think it has to be a conflict somewhere.

Dylan,

love the alien skin now that it's in the game - my twin alien teen girls look so much more attractive now...  until one got zits...  the zits are still green!

any chance of that being fixed?

  LOLOL ness.   That made me really giggle.    Do the regular simmies in game actually do that?    I have never seen it in my game.   

 Marg

only teens - if their hygiene gets low...  doesn't seem to matter what I do, I can't seem to avoid it happening!

I usually run a fairly frantic simmie household.   It's possible I just didn't notice either.   I will have to pay more attention.    These colorful zits must look really pleasant on those nice skins.     (sorry, just the thought of having green zits makes me start laughing.  A little bit too realistic)

Man, that must be some awful stuff in those pimples to be green! LOL

Yes, the regular sims get zits, but theirs aren't green, just pinkish, normal skin color.  But they sure are huge zits!

Off-topic, but I have found my teens get many fewer zits (indeed, almost none at all) with JM's bathroom uses you hack installed.  It makes the teens shower more often than I could be bothered doing before I had it, and so keeps their average hygeine level high enough to avoid them.  It makes the whole bathroom using thing much faster too. 

I agree, dusty.  My sims will get them occasionally, but not like they used to, when they would practically have them their whole teenhood.  And the acne cream never seems to work.  Poor kids!

Oh yeah.. Green pimples.. I never really considered it that necessary.. But if you want, I'm sure I could whip something up. Personally, I think it's funny that they have bright green zits.. They are aliens after all.

  I wonder if someone would mind checking something for me.     I have not yet moved my Downloads folder and Saved Sims out of the game and restarted it to check these violetwinkle skins.      I have been using CleanInstaller to delete some stuff and get a little more organized before I do this.   While I was in there I checked the default violetwinkle skin with CI.    All but one of the views in this file were the correct color.  One was quite pink.   Definately different.   
  If anyone else has the CI and Dylan's default violetwinkle skin, would you mind checking it in the CI and see what you find.    I am not a creator and really have no idea what I'm looking at.    I still think I have something wrong with the actual file I have. 

Yeah, there's something wrong with that.  The one I have has 33 textures, and they are all definitely lavender.

I did notice, the swirly lavender eyes are on these skins as well, which might explain why that one person was still seeing them even after removing the default alien eyes replacement from their game.  From what I understand, if the game cannot find the custom eyes for a sim, they use the default eyes which are a part of the skin they are using.  For normal skins, it's the default, flat brown Maxis eyes which I believe are a part of skin tones S1-S4.  So that might have something to do with it.  I had a strange glitch once where a sim with green eyes had those flat brown ones (I use default eye replacements), and I thought there was something wrong wtih him!  I exited the game without saving and did some poking around in SimPE, couldn't really explain what I did, but made sure his character file was pointing to "green" for eyecolor, and loaded it back up...and he was fine.  So I really don't know what happened.

 Thanks Again rainbow.    I didn't think the skin looked right.    You were asking last night about the color lavender your skins are showing up as.   Part of it could be your video card, but part of it could be the color
settings on your moniter also. 

Yes, that would explain why the violetwinkle eyes were still there.   Hopefully that person discovered the reason and removed the other file too. 

Ooops, sorry, I didn't read your post correctly.  I was looking at the skins in SimPE, not CleanInstaller.  When I looked at them in Clean Installer, I did see that bright pink skin.  I'm not sure what is causing that.  But those are just preview pics and shouldn't really affect anything.  Sorry about the misunderstanding. :(

 That's okay.    No worries.    I guess I will remove my Downloads and Saved Sims.   LOL
 Thanks for looking for me.

 Actually before I do that I think I will play my bi-color simmies and see if I can see some zits.     The body and head will be color co-ordinated then.   I MUST have a picture.

About the zits, are they really related to hygeine?

None of my stinky Email teens ever got them, yet two of my hygeine fanatic teens did.

I downloaded the alien skin and eyes as well as the PollyTech file and went to Strangetown to test it out. Mynew  little alien girl is beautiful!  :)

Now, the bad news. Lola Singles happen to walk by and she had the lilac head and green body. On the bright side, her eyes were a lovely shade of purple rather than black as they were before the install. :D

So Marg, you are not alone.  :-\

I found the thumbnails but can't figure out how to post them, sorry. :(

Maria

Edit: Not the best pic, but here's an example (http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/4140/snapshot109668b890967b7b0ox.jpg)

 Thanks for posting too MsMaria.    I love the color these skins are and daddy poly tech makes nice babies.  If you have the purple heads and green bodies for the pre-existing aliens, your new aliens will have the same once they transition to teens and adults too.   The alien eyes are included with the skin file as well as having a separate file, so they should work fine.   

I have the same problem of mismatched heads and bodies with the vampire skin. I am betting it's because of my default skin replacements. It's a shame, I really like the idea of pale vamps.

You still need the default replacements for the alien eyes if you want your existing aliens to have the swirly purple eyes instead of the solid black ones.

Also, I have default replacements for the regular skintones, and I'm not experiencing the problem.  Mine do not include replacements for alien skins, just the basic four skintones.  You might try taking them out and seeing if that solves the problem, and if so, either contact the person who made them or try finding different default skins.

Incidentally, do those of you who are having this problem know which default skins you are using?  Maybe there is something in common here.

 Yes I do know rainbow.     I have a couple of Duddly's defaults in and some of the Paradise skins.  The alien
skin is a default skin as well.   And I really don't have any other alien skin default enabled.    I'm actually beginning to wonder if I should totally remove the other dafaults and not just turn them off and on with CI.   
The check mark is not in the box when they are disabled.    I'm just wondering if the game is reading them anyways.

I"m not sure how that works...I know it's supposed to disable them but I always just move them out of the folder somehow just to be sure.

 I'll try that and let you know what happens.

Okie. :)

 :-*

   Eureka!!    I removed the Paradise skin defaults and I now have lovely MONOtone violetwinkle skins.

   So there must be something in The Paradise pkgs that interferes with this alien default.    I'm so glad you
   figured it out.    Rainbow to the rescue once again.

Awesome. I'll check mine tomorrow to see if that's my problem as well. Thanks Rainbow. :)

Awww, 'twas nothing. *blush*  :)  Since it was working for most people, it had to be something going on with your computer.  The first thing to do is remove all custom content so you know that there's nothing else for it to conflict with.  I have done this with hack problems many times.  I'm glad that you were able to find the problem!

 So am I.    Now I'm wondering if the people on MTS2 forum that had the same problem just gave up.   The paradise skins were some of the first ones uploaded there with the "proper" bits and pieces.    There is no way of telling by looking at the pkges, just what they contain, unless you use SimPe of course.   

Thanks for putting up with all my questions.    I will need to check my simmies to see if they need the "bits & pieces put back.    If they do I'm sure I can  find replacements that don't interfere with these nice skins.

Ack! I've not bothered to familiarize myself with SimPE yet. Will I be able to discern what needs to be removed or just remove all custom skins?

I think maybe just try removing the default replacements.  See if that works.  I don't think other custom skintones would interfere, but just try that first and see.

Don't  panic MsMaria.    I don't use SimPe either.    The Paradise skins are names para default 1 -2  and para
default 3-4  or something similiar.     All I did was go into my saved sims and start searching it for anything that said default.    Normally they will say light medium, etc etc.     I'm guessing the Paradise pkge's contain another alien default skin.

Apparently, they do.  I just looked them up on their site, (http://www.paradisesims.com/nude/nude.htm) and for the basic defaults, this is what it says:

basic: para3_defaults_1_2_5 (light_medium_alien)
basic: para3_defaults_3_4 (brown_dark)

If you really wanted to use those skins, there is a way to extract the skin tones you want or delete the alien skins from that package using SimPE, or contact Paradise skins and ask them about it.  The other choice would be to find new default skins.  There are many available now.  MTS2 has a lot of them.

 I'm not sure what I will use to replace them with.   There really are lots to choose from now.   The only reason I chose them in the first place was there were so few choices at the time and they looked good.
That will teach me to load pkges in with more than one skin tone in them.   I honestly forgot about the alien
default that was in there.    The original green in the game is really ugly.   At least I find it to be.

Me too.  That's why I like this laverwinkle skin!

Grr, the search box isn't working on MTS2.  I was looking for something and was going to post a link to the ones I use, but I can't.  I can't even access my User control panel to get to my subscribed threads.  It says there's some kind of script error.

EDIT:  Well, the problem has been reported here (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=107372).  It might be 6 hours, so we might as well wait until tomorrow. :)

 That would be very nice of you rainbow.    I can always check back later.   They may be doing updates or something to their boards over there.    I work full time days so usually I'm only around in the evenings anyways. 



   edit

     I just saw  your edit        There will be a number of unhappy people for a few hours.    I'll check this thread
              again tomorrow.     Thanks Again 

Well I removed my Para skins and went back into the game. I checked on the Singles and this is what I have:
(http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/6549/snapshot5097e6e69097e6f36xt.jpg)

What else should I do to get things back to normal? I have several other custom skins. As I understand it, I should be removing Default skins. Which ones? Thank you and kisses for your help. I so wanted beautiful aliens. :-\

Well, if that didn't work, try removing the other skins and see what happens.

Rainbow, thank you again for all of your help! :)

I decided to do a "search" in my Saved Sims folder and as it turns out, I had overlooked one of the default skins from Paradise Sims. I removed it and now my Aliens are perfect. :D

Maria

  YAY MsMaria      Now we can all have our beautiful alien skins.

 :)

Yay!  My bill is in the mail. ;)

 ;D

      My beautiful MONOtone simmies thank you.     Thanks rainbow.    I glad MsMaria got fixed up too.

I'm trying out the Paradise Skins after I deleted the alien skins from the first color pack.  They really should have made separate package files for each skin tone.  That would have made it a lot easier to just remove the alien skintone.  I would share it, but I'm not sure how they would feel about it.   :-\

I think rainbow that they are still the paradise skins.   You haven't really done anything to them but separate them individually out of the pkge.    Is there someone to ask?    I honestly thought the person that did them had their own website at some point.    I have a few things to do at home here for a bit, then I can go searching if you like.

 edit - here is his website
         http://www.paradisesims.com/paradisesims.htm

It looks like he only has them as pkges there too.  So unless we ask him they won't be available as individual skins.     I can just go looking for some other "bits and pieces" too.    I'm sure there are lots of other nice ones available. 

This may be stating the obvious (or the already-known, take your pick), but I'm going to do it anyway. There are two types of custom skins:  one type overrides the default skin on a per-sim basis and is only in effect when you use it when creating a sim. The other type is the Default skin, which replaces the Maxis skins for every sim in the game with that particular skin type. Therefore, it is important to have only one Default skin installed at a time for each skin type. In other words, have only one Default adult female tan skin, one teen male dark skin, etc. So if you have Duddy's default skins installed, you should not also have the Paradise defaults or any other defaults.

Some skinners make both default and non-default versions of their skins, and you can have all the non-default skins you like, since these only affect those sims for which you have used that particular skin. The non-default skins override the default skins . . . so if you have Duddy's default skins installed, and then create a sim using, for example, one of Allan Akbar's skins, you are in effect overriding the Maxis default twice--once with the Duddy skin and then again with the Akbar skin.

There was also in this thread a question about whether the Clean Installer really does disable files. The Clean Installer deactivates a file by changing the file extension from .package to .off so the game will not recognize it as a game file.

Thanks Hegelain.  I knew most of that already.   I have 2 of Dudlys defaults in and lots of non-default skins too.     The problem was with the way the Paradise skins are  packaged.    There are a number of skin tones in each package.   So unless you remember what you have in each one, you can't find the specific default skins to remove it or even disable it without disabling the whole thing.    My problem was I had totally forgotten that there even was an alien default in that package.    From now on I will only use single default skins so I can find them if I want to disable them or outright remove them. 

    It was me that was questioning my sanity.  I knew I had disabled all the visable defaults but I still couldn't get the skin to work.    I love the CI.