Just a quick update

I feel a little sad just to go to my Sim game. :( Starting September 25, the rains did not stop here until Sunday morning. My husband and I thought it's just an ordinary rainy day, I even cooked breakfast before he left for duty. Not until lunchtime did he call and ask me to watch the news, that there is a Typhoon. At the time, he was on duty and checking me at home. He said that on his way to work, the streets are already flooded, rain is heavier and some areas, water levels are already above 15ft. Tropical Storm Ketsana or Ondoy as it is called here hit our country very hard. I started to panic when I saw the heavy flood on tv news and what's going on in greater Manila {where my hubby works}. I can talk just right to him until 9pm and he said he's on his way home, but after that, all cellphones went dead already. No network coverage anymore. I waited. Hope he'll make it home safe. 12am, 2am? I was so desperate and asked anyone even a landline operator if he needs to get rescued. My husband was stranded for more than 6 hours. The rains did not stop from Friday night to Sunday very early morning. The flood was so bad and some areas were evacuated already. Residents are already trapped on their houses' second floors. I was so thankful my husband made it home safely and that me and my family live in areas where it does not get flooded. I feel very sad for all the other Filipinos who are affected by this tragedy. Most especially those residing in Marikina, Pasig, Rizal, Bulacan, and the rest. Many people lost their homes. Last I heard there are more than 278,000 families already affected. There are reported deaths already. According to PAGASA, the storm is now moving westward going to Vietnam, however, there's a new low pressure area building up [far southeast of Philippines] and expecting to hit Phillipines again by Thursday. We are hoping that this new low pressure area won't be another full-blown tropical storm. The rescue operations are not even done yet. Watching the news is heartbreaking. Our prayers goes to all the affected Filipino people. Do not lose hope.

Poll results and a little rambling

Heya. I still am leaving my poll open. Sims 3 got 13 votes and Sims 2 - 11 votes

Thing now is I am going to take a little break from TS3. I do not want to destroy my computer just because of the hardware errors I am encountering from the game or at least have sorted this out. So it will take me a while to post Sims 3 screens. :/ I wish that  TS3 do not have this bugs. To be honest I never encountered hardware problems like this with my TS2. I have a high-end gaming PC in which TS2, TS3, and my other games - Crysis, Tomb Raider, Second Life and Lost Planet are installed. I am really disappointed that I can run my Sims 2 games [All EP and SP plus big, big game modifications] plus almost 16GB of CC's as well as all my other games with no problem at all. [that includes another EA game -- Crysis but with TS3?] :(I really don't want to think its complete waste of my money. But is it?

The gaming tower was built especially for TS3. More than enough than the actual TS3 game requires. Has Quad Core Processors, ginormous RAM, 750GB hardrive, 9800GTX graphics and all the fancy stuff. All drivers updated, scanning viruses and spamwares everyday... For every CC I install in TS3, I play my game and test for about 1 hour max. Even double checking all downloaded CC's [scanning for virus and such]. While working on my video I started to get BSOD. I haven't encountered BSOD's until I started to play with a newly created family for the video. My Sim family actors, they are 5 in the household. One Mom, 2 daughters (children), one father and one son. None of them are using custom content even in their houses when I'm not filming. Prolly thinking it's the number of Sims per household? I have other household with 8 residents and have no problems playing with them - NO BSOD. In the first 20 scenes that I already filmed, I did not encounter any problems. Now, the headache started when I played with the family with kids. It's driving me nuts. My game will either quit to desktop or ka-boom get BSOD. I looked for whatever I could have missed in the process. There's two lighting hack I have in the game, plus four more mods that kills certain unrealistic animations in TS3. They are fully tested and working in my game with no conflicts at all. But to be on the safe side and since most of these are still in its beta stages, I am only using that for filming. They are uninstalled when I'm on gameplay. Other than that, I don't have any heavy hacks or core mods installed. My TS3 game is still pretty clean and CC's very organized. I clean all the cache files once it get to a certain limit or installing new defaults. When I played with the family, [they aren't dressed to the max with CC's for the movie, just skilling them and developing their relationships] I don't get BSOD. I zoom in and out and can play long, 2 hours at the max - that's my limit. Now when I'm ready to film and shoot them with the correct CC's I need for the scene, in less than a minute, my game will get a BSOD! I really don't know what to do because all the CC's I have are tested. The only possibility I was looking to are the two custom hairs from Rose. They are fully tested and working in my game. No crash or quit to desktop. However, the BSOD's are only happening when my Sims are using those hairs. :/ I have tested and retested them for how many times, and they seemed okay, my game never crashed or quit to desktop. Only this time, Sim kids are wearing them. I'm going to delete these particular hairs from my game and will still have to see. I tried playing with other families and don't get BSOD at all. Only in that particular household. I really do not want to delete them just yet. I still have to shoot 8 more scenes with them. :( Starting fresh/Redoing the family would take an awfully long time and am really not looking at that as an option. *Sigh* I guess the most reasonable fix for this atm is to clean all my TS3 saved games that I have and start clean again. Geez, I'm already tired. :( This game is built this way and it will stay this way for long...

I'll just take a break from TS3. I know BSOD has something to do with faulty hardware installation but is not likely in my case. Only happening in TS3... I know my PC that well, hardware or whatever is causing the error, I am not going to risk destroying my PC by playing TS3.

Too bad, I actually love TS3. :(

Hello!

I didn't realize I can only have 5MB worth of images here (and my images are pretty huge, averaging from 100KB to 1.5MB depending on quality and colors XD ), 5MB is not enough for me. That's only 3-picture-equivalent of pictures I normally process. I bought more storage here in TSR and I have two gallery now here in my mini-site. One for TS2 and one for TS3. It's still unorganized but I'll be updating them soon.

This weekend, I will be playing and updating my TS3 game. I went on a full CC shopping spree today. I'll get back on TS2 after I get done testing with the new TS3 goodies and capture scenes for my upcoming TS3 video. ^^ I'm so happy to find more, more custom objects! I haven't played TS3 for a week, so lol, I'm excited to go in my game, build more sets and decorate!

So yeah, that's about it for now. Have a lovely weekend.

Started a Poll

You will find on the lower right area of my mini-site. ;)

New Sims 3 Screenshots Up

Well, hello there guys! I haven't posted here in ages, just want to let you know that I've been sick. On the road to recovery, I have spare time to capture more screenshots from my game. I'll be posting Sims 2 and Sims 3 Screenshots alternately to both TSR Screenshots Archive or my Mini-Site Gallery. Haven't really used the gallery features of my Mini-Site, but I'll be adding more to them so you can browse them easily rather than digging on all the screenshots here in TSR. Alright? ;)

Videos can't be posted here I suppose at this rate yet. All my works are huge and have either high-res or high def quality. Due to the limit here in TSR, my screenshot uploads here are kinda compressed. You, however, are welcome to visit my Flickr Sim Gallery if you prefer to see my works in their original filesizes. :D

Will be uploading a series of screencaps in a few in my gallery. Have a great day everyone. ^^

Sims 3 Time!

Haven't updated my blog in ages! Thanks to everyone who bookmarked me or left me comments on my shots. It's much appreciated. Playing Sims 3 is quite addicting isn't it? Fun factor is there and reminds me strongly of Sims 1. Stuff that they did not add to the Sims 2. I might venture on creating styles for the Sims 3 and submit my works here. As for RL, I need a lot of catching up to do in my job, feel free to check out my Sims 3 styles in my Sims 3 page in the meantime.

Feel free to add me as a friend:

http://www.thesims3.com/mypage/ticticc13

Hey!

I haven't answered a lot of feedbacks in my screens here yet, thank you guys! I read them all, it's always appreciated, just not much time to reply back but I will.  :D

Happy February!!!

About time I update here. ^_^ I've been preoccupied with work too much. I said to myself its the end of the Sims 2 but am happy to see that the release of Sims 3 is moved to June this year. I hardly have time to play now really and I missed the old days. What else is new? I was interviewed by Pier in Koinup and an article about how I do my Sims 2 screenshots can be read from this link.

Since there is still 4 months to enoy this game, yes, I am going to finish another music video. The concept and storyline is actually by my husband. I just am gonna translate it to Sims 2. XD Hope to finish it before Sims 3 is released. I'm so happy to find more stuff that is helpful on making realistic animations for the game and since my game suffered a meltdown last month from a corrupted NPC memory file, I'm glad to say I have tweaked my game back to that old cinematic settings I have before the meltdown.

I also found a very cool, talented, webdesigner who can finally fix/help me manage my Sims 2 story/movie site. I payed a hefty 200USdollars for it but I can't for the life of me tweak it. I'm so happy this webdesigner, and a special friend joined my team! It will be a surprise! She's well known Sims 2 figure on storytelling, photoediting ~ frankensteining, webdesign and make the awesomest CC's and hair recolors! (She did one for my simmie Kyle. ^_^) I'm really excited to work with her.

Okay, I won't bore you much! Just keeping everyone updated! Thanks always for adding me to your bookmarks, the screenshot comments and the visit! I always appreciate them. Belated Happy V-day.

Chilly Saturday, still sick

I think I'm getting the hang of TSR v7. Sometimes though it still crash my browser or very slow. I want to thank everyone again for stopping by and leaving comments on my screenshots. And yeah, for my Photoimpact tutorial too. I know it's redundant but I appreciate it all. ^_^ I noticed that in the long time, Photoshop is still the best and most used tool in editing. I might try making another tutorial using Adobe Photoshop CS3/CS4 this time. I'll have to ask permissions first because the technique I'm using for Photoshop is from the tutorial made by my friend Celeste (simangel234 here in TSR). She makes gorgeous pictures too and the overall aura of her pics are one of my inspirations in the Sims 2 community. I was gonna link on that but her tutorial is gone now. The effect I'm giving to my Photoimpact pictures can also be done in Photoshop. Like I said, it's another story. Let's play by ear and hope to hear inputs from you.

It's been a week now since I started having this terrible cough, and the colds aren't even getting better. Maybe because I really don't rest and still go to work with these. It's chilly where I am at now and my husband made me some hot coffee. I feel less sick now. I was tired ~ all work ~ no break. I wanted to play long with my Sims 2 game but I kept on falling asleep on it while it loads. lol.

I've submitted pictures for the Yard and Garden screen competition. ^_^ It was fun making those pictures and hope to score a place. lol. I hope to make more but I really feel sick today. Maybe because of the weather.

My Tutorial is Out

Hello guys. My tutorial has been out at the exact day TSR upgraded to v7. You can download it as pdf file now. I doubt if it will get noticed or even make it on frontpage like the articles published in v6. I'm not sure if I like this whole new lay-out. It's hard to navigate and very slow. I had a profile page counter before, now gone. I don't like this really and or it may take a long time before I get used to this...

This is the link to the tutorial. Download here in TSR.

If you find the images to be of low quality you can refer to my Flickr copy for all the tutorial's screencaptures' actual sizes...

View from my Flickr.

Happy Editing!!!