*drops in and hugs everybody*
Hey there! Still caught up with role play...
I've been looking at new sims 3 challenges, and I've created several groups of challenges which would be combined into bigger, single challenges. I have a Wishacy + Auracy + Rainbowacy challenge, a Wonderchild + Bachelor/Bachelorette challenge, and an A to Z Family + Four Immortal Sister + Going Solo challenge so far. I'm still looking at other challenges to throw into the mixes, but... I think that these are related enough to make it them fun combined challenges.
I just posted my new blog this am and I am so thrilled with its reception .. goodness never had so many views! A big
TY to everyone in here that I have been learning from!! I am so excited to continue with Snow's story ... https://lisabeesims.wordpress.com/2016/04/22/snow-white-new-beginnings-1/
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What a beutiful sim! Will read it very soon!
@Bloudwed OH TY so much .. my lovely Snow White She is a fav of mine for sure!
@Julyvee94 : That's always such a hard thing. *hugs* My grandpa passed away in 2006 (to cancer as well), which I realize is ten years ago now, but I still remember how difficult it was, and there are things that remind me of him all the time (just yesterday I was out at lunch with some coworkers and ordered something at the Japanese restaurant that none of my coworkers had ever hard, gyoza (potstickers), which was a favorite of his, which immediately made me think of him). Before my family moved out of state, we used to live around the corner from that set of grandparents, and I have fond memories of walking over there as a little kid to spend the night when there wasn't school... something I incorperated into a few chapters of Cat Chronicles with my elderly cat lady Rose and her granddaughter (I was sad to see Sims had no "stay the night" option for children, even when it's a relative asking! How cool would that have been to include in the Generations Expansion, for grandparents to ask their grandkids to come spend the night? How many of us have great memories of staying over with our grandparents? You missed an opportunity there, EA! ...I just had to move the grandchild between households for the "weekend with grandma", heh.) It'll be hard for a while, but hopefully in time the grief will gradually be replaced with pleasant nostalgic memories. Grandparents are really special!
@FayeShinomori : This is a place where we can share anything... not just stories. This is where we can share our every day accomplishments, or our griefs. Whether someone wants to discuss what is going on in a creative endeavor (maybe they have writer's block!) or just want to talk about what they are doing in their current game (like sharing a new nooboo they think is cute or a build they are proud of!) this is a place where friends can chat. In fact, it is far more about friends chatting than sharing stories, which is sort of the second function -- just dropping links without ever participating in any other way has typically been looked down upon in the past. That said, like Vee has brought up, a lot of us are busy enough we can't reply to everyone individually... I used to here in the past, but then I got so overwhelmed with maintaining my own threads, dealing with my own chronic pain issues, my fulltime job, and other things sucking up my time that something had to give, and those giant "block of text replies to the masses" were one of those things. That said, I still have a subscription to this thread, and I still drop by and check out every single post that is posted here, whether I reply to it or not. You know, for those of us that write stories, many of us have many more "anonymous" readers that don't ever leave a comment and are just sort of "there" in the background, too. It doesn't make them "less important" to us, though, and I'm sure they still appreciate the content that the writers produce, even though they never say anything. Not everyone is a vocal personality, and not everyone has the same amount of time to put toward forum posting, but that doesn't mean that each and every person who is a regular contributor to this thread is not welcome and happily accepted here. Because they are. This is my favorite hang-out on these forums and I really love all the frequent faces here!
So my Hygiene Need has plummeted, but before I hop in the shower, I figure I will share that I finally managed to spend an afternoon playing Sims! (I barely ever have time to get into game anymore these days, it seems!) So... Happy Caturday!
@ValoisFulcanelli: The resizing/optimizing looks incredibly useful...but I'm a skeptic. I'll admit to using big PNGs (~700-800kb) at the moment because I'm a big stickler for lossless picture quality. I even stopped posting stories at another forum half because the webmaster strongly urged everyone to post JPGs instead. Artifacts everywhere! I can't get over it when looking at others' pictures.
I want to get over my fear of artifacts (especially because your JPGs look fine) but I can't.
Fortunately, I have no readers because to date I have written nothing. But I do have a bunch of story-material visuals in my Wordpress.. I have yet to break the 1% mark but when I do, I'll optimize them, see if it goes back to "0" without deleting older pics.
If I ever get around to actually writing something I'll size them down as a courtesy, but, with all due respect it does beg the question, If one has a mobile service with data caps, why not refrain from using the device as a book until/unless one gets to a WiFi hotspot? Finite resources like limited data, or battery power for that matter, should be used judiciously so as to be sure the stuff you need is there when it is actually needed.
Just sayin'.
Again, I don't / won't own such devices so all this is easy for me to say, I guess.
Fortunately, I have no readers because to date I have written nothing. But I do have a bunch of story-material visuals in my Wordpress.. I have yet to break the 1% mark but when I do, I'll optimize them, see if it goes back to "0" without deleting older pics.
If I ever get around to actually writing something I'll size them down as a courtesy, but, with all due respect it does beg the question, If one has a mobile service with data caps, why not refrain from using the device as a book until/unless one gets to a WiFi hotspot? Finite resources like limited data, or battery power for that matter, should be used judiciously so as to be sure the stuff you need is there when it is actually needed.
Just sayin'.
Again, I don't / won't own such devices so all this is easy for me to say, I guess.
I agree! True, it is nice that we optimize our content for mobile devices and all, but I don't think the onus should be on us to make sure people don't blow their data cap. The reader should be monitoring their activity and responding accordingly, and it's not our fault that they ate through their data.
@Miki: SimLit is great for long car/train rides (AS A PASSENGER. No reading and driving!) or waiting rooms, wireless or not. Everyone should be smart with their data usage, but getting useful wireless isn't always an easy fix. I don't have any in cars, my state's commuter rail has poor wireless at best (and I don't know of any buses or subways anywhere with wireless), and only some doctors have wireless (I know of a dentist that does. My GP and my chiropractor don't, and the waits can get loooong).
It's nothing compared to streaming videos or music on mobile, but I tested it out on my own plan (RIP </3) and you could easily push the limit on some data plans by reading my story simply because of the amount of images (30-50 per chapter) and how un-optimized they are.
@Miki : I don't own a cell and have no plans ever to either! Always thought I was the only one...
That said, last night, on my home desktop computer, I was dealing with trying to read a story that had around 80-100 images in a single chapter, not a single one resized, that was KILLING the page trying to load it, and I have a very nice Cable Internet connection. I cannot even view that story if I want to read said story on my tablet using my own private wi-fi in bed if my desktop has a hard time loading that many images full size, and it is just Wordpress's "layout" that is then "resizing them" after the fact. So this isn't strictly a "mobile problem." I can only think that person is going to run out of their Wordpress space (if they are using Wordpress as their host) in absolutely no time at that rate!
@ValoisFulcanelli: The resizing/optimizing looks incredibly useful...but I'm a skeptic. I'll admit to using big PNGs (~700-800kb) at the moment because I'm a big stickler for lossless picture quality. I even stopped posting stories at another forum half because the webmaster strongly urged everyone to post JPGs instead. Artifacts everywhere! I can't get over it when looking at others' pictures.
I want to get over my fear of artifacts (especially because your JPGs look fine) but I can't.
It's entirely up to you. I'm not going to sit here and be the PNG Police Your PNG files seem to be resized (from the first chapter that I just glanced at) and you don't upload full-screen images and rely on your blog's theme to resize them visually. That's where the big problem lies, especially for readers who are unsuspectingly downloading large amounts of data and writers who wonder why they've suddenly exhausted their blog's storage space. It's those writers who I was trying to help
I suspect the people at the forum you frequented were probably optimising their JPG files too much. A 90% reduction gives barely any noticable difference in image quality, but it still drastically reduces the filesize. Below 90% (and many of the free online 'image optimiser' sites drag it WAY down to something like 30% which is far too low) and yes, you're going to start to see artifacts.
I just added up the image sizes on this chapter of my story (spoiler warning, if anyone plans to read it and hasn't yet done so!). The chapter contains 38 images, each at 650 pixels wide (with the exception of the large header image, which is 750px). I do a lot of post-processing on my images, but they are all optimised to web-safe JPG format using Photoshop once the work on them is done. The total size of those 38 images is just 2,738KB (2.67MB) for the lot, and they look perfectly clear to me.
The only reason I'll sometimes get artifacts is because I am such an inveterate post-processor, and many of the filters and other things that I use emphasise the pixels on darker swathes of the image. This means that the body of coats and jackets can sometimes look a bit blocky, and I'm not spending hours and hours in Photoshop blending it all out!
@Miki : I don't own a cell and have no plans ever to either! Always thought I was the only one...
That said, last night, on my home desktop computer, I was dealing with trying to read a story that had around 80-100 images in a single chapter, not a single one resized, that was KILLING the page trying to load it, and I have a very nice Cable Internet connection. I cannot even view that story if I want to read said story on my tablet using my own private wi-fi in bed if my desktop has a hard time loading that many images full size, and it is just Wordpress's "layout" that is then "resizing them" after the fact. So this isn't strictly a "mobile problem." I can only think that person is going to run out of their Wordpress space (if they are using Wordpress as their host) in absolutely no time at that rate!
Whoa. That's waaaay too many pictures lol. I wonder how many words that story was.
I've been using WP as my blogging host for about 10 years. I was never concerned about storage before because I never wrote simlit. I didn't always edit my pictures, and I didn't realize exactly how big the pictures were straight out of the game. So, for the first six months of writing Pruett Family Legacy, I was posting pictures at full size and not optimized. By the ninth month I was at 99% of my storage. Of course, that's when I took a look at the situation. Definitely an OMG moment lol. However, by then I was toying with the idea of a self-hosted WP site anyway, so it was the perfect time to make a break for it.
I like big pictures because I like to see details, so I resize mine to be 1000px in width. On average, my pictures are now around 230K opposed to 1MB.
@ValoisFulcanelli: The resizing/optimizing looks incredibly useful...but I'm a skeptic. I'll admit to using big PNGs (~700-800kb) at the moment because I'm a big stickler for lossless picture quality. I even stopped posting stories at another forum half because the webmaster strongly urged everyone to post JPGs instead. Artifacts everywhere! I can't get over it when looking at others' pictures.
I want to get over my fear of artifacts (especially because your JPGs look fine) but I can't.
I suspect the people at the forum you frequented were probably optimising their JPG files too much. A 90% reduction gives barely any noticable difference in image quality, but it still drastically reduces the filesize. Below 90% (and many of the free online 'image optimiser' sites drag it WAY down to something like 30% which is far too low) and yes, you're going to start to see artifacts.
I use Photoshop. When I first started editing mine, I experimented with this, and for me, 85% was my number. Ninety was perfect, but I wanted to keep my file size under 450K as much as possible. At 85, there was a very slight reduction in quality, but you could only tell if you clicked on the picture to view it full size.
Whoa. That's waaaay too many pictures lol. I wonder how many words that story was.
@Jes2G : I'm not sure how many words it is per chapter, but it isn't written in the chunky "plot-style" type of writing format, but rather the style more common of ISBIs and many other challenges, where the Simmer makes commentary and the Sims/Simmer directly interact with each other. Granted, I do find sometimes with this style the authors sometime have a tendancy to cram way too much into a single post when they could've easily broken it down into five posts which would've loaded much more manageably... usually I go read a chapter of something else and then flip back to the other tab when I'm done before reading the next chapter, just to give it time to load. O_O
usually I go read a chapter of something else and then flip back to the other tab when I'm done before reading the next chapter, just to give it time to load. O_O
I call those ones "teapot stories", in that I could go and make a whole pot of tea in the time they take to load. But good grief, 80-100 images is pushing it too far. And I thought I was near the knuckle with a maximum of 38 in that chapter I linked to!
@Jes2G Hi-fives for a fellow self-hoster! It's so much easier to manage, I find. I have my story set up on dedicated HTML webpages that I code up, then I have the feedback links at the bottom leading to a self-hosted blog dedicated to the story. That way, I can control the exact look that I want for everything.
@lisabee2, thanks for dropping by and looking at my story, I live in Wales, UK and I couldn't believe it but for about 10 mins it was snowing...yes snowing in April almost May but weather has gone back to normal lol which is wet and cold
@Jes2G Hi-fives for a fellow self-hoster! It's so much easier to manage, I find. I have my story set up on dedicated HTML webpages that I code up, then I have the feedback links at the bottom leading to a self-hosted blog dedicated to the story. That way, I can control the exact look that I want for everything.
Hi-five! I love hosting my own. The freedom and flexibility (and scalability) is amazing and exactly what I wanted. You code? Nice! I learned the basics of HTML in school like 10 years ago. It was fun, but I didn't practice after I graduated so my knowledge has declined a bit.
@Bloudwed NICE .. I have never seen nor heard of a rainbow challenge so I will love seeing it!
@lisabee2 : I featured Rainbowacies on my Weekly Reading Roundup thread a few weeks ago, so if you are curious to learn more or get a reading list of other Rainbowacies that have listed themselves with the Stories and Legacies Index, you can check it out here.
@Bloudwed NICE .. I have never seen nor heard of a rainbow challenge so I will love seeing it!
@lisabee2 : I featured Rainbowacies on my Weekly Reading Roundup thread a few weeks ago, so if you are curious to learn more or get a reading list of other Rainbowacies that have listed themselves with the Stories and Legacies Index, you can check it out here.
@Miki : I don't own a cell and have no plans ever to either! Always thought I was the only one...
That said, last night, on my home desktop computer, I was dealing with trying to read a story that had around 80-100 images in a single chapter, not a single one resized, that was KILLING the page trying to load it, and I have a very nice Cable Internet connection. I cannot even view that story if I want to read said story on my tablet using my own private wi-fi in bed if my desktop has a hard time loading that many images full size, and it is just Wordpress's "layout" that is then "resizing them" after the fact. So this isn't strictly a "mobile problem." I can only think that person is going to run out of their Wordpress space (if they are using Wordpress as their host) in absolutely no time at that rate!
Nope you're not.. We're not. But we are certainly in the minority.
I have nothing against those things, they're wonderful, from what I hear-- but my thing is (aside from the monthly bills that I never see with my Prepaid Dumb-Phone minutes) I wouldn't be able to leave mine alone, either.-- they're highly "addictive". I don't trust myself to be any better at self-discipline than the bozo in front of me downtown who walked into a utility pole this afternoon because his eyes were glued to his toy.
BTW Interesting screen name and avatar.. Story behind it? I'm not a frequent flyer in here so if that's already been talked about 'scuse the query..
@Miki : Ya, I've never had a pressing need for one myself. A call center job way in my past plus my sister constantly inviting me over and then ignoring me to text and play on her phone the whole time turned me off from the things (now I have to deal with my BFF playing Ingris the whole time we are on vacations together... argh!) So I don't foresee me paying an extra bill for something I don't really need. Sometimes I feel like the last person on earth with a landline. ^_^;;
I actually talk about my screenname early on in my blogaversary post, but I didn't think to mention the avatar. Of course they look like M&Ms, but at a larger resolution, the letters are slightly different, and I'm quite sure the forum would turn them to "plum" if I tried to type them, so that probably gives you an idea of what that is... I found the parody hilarious and just decided to use that as my avatar on pretty much everything from then on.
Comments
@SilentWolf101 hugs back ... missed seeing you!
LisabeeSims
New readers can visit here first: In-a-NUTSHELL
#EAgamechanger
@Bloudwed OH TY so much .. my lovely Snow White
LisabeeSims
New readers can visit here first: In-a-NUTSHELL
#EAgamechanger
@mastressalita LOL was dying .. those dumb 2 legs just cannot understand
LisabeeSims
New readers can visit here first: In-a-NUTSHELL
#EAgamechanger
@Bloudwed NICE .. I have never seen nor heard of a rainbow challenge so I will love seeing it!
LisabeeSims
New readers can visit here first: In-a-NUTSHELL
#EAgamechanger
I want to get over my fear of artifacts (especially because your JPGs look fine) but I can't.
outrun / blog / tunglr
Here is the first short story in my new Balderdash series! The word of the day is flimflam. I hope this cracks you up like it did me! Enjoy.
http://www.jes2gstories.com/flimflam/
Fortunately, I have no readers because to date I have written nothing. But I do have a bunch of story-material visuals in my Wordpress.. I have yet to break the 1% mark but when I do, I'll optimize them, see if it goes back to "0" without deleting older pics.
If I ever get around to actually writing something I'll size them down as a courtesy, but, with all due respect it does beg the question, If one has a mobile service with data caps, why not refrain from using the device as a book until/unless one gets to a WiFi hotspot? Finite resources like limited data, or battery power for that matter, should be used judiciously so as to be sure the stuff you need is there when it is actually needed.
Just sayin'.
Again, I don't / won't own such devices so all this is easy for me to say, I guess.
I agree! True, it is nice that we optimize our content for mobile devices and all, but I don't think the onus should be on us to make sure people don't blow their data cap. The reader should be monitoring their activity and responding accordingly, and it's not our fault that they ate through their data.
@Miki, I wrote chaptersin private for awhile then decided to publish but that was me. Show us the pictures otherwise as that would be nice
It's nothing compared to streaming videos or music on mobile, but I tested it out on my own plan (RIP </3) and you could easily push the limit on some data plans by reading my story simply because of the amount of images (30-50 per chapter) and how un-optimized they are.
outrun / blog / tunglr
Hey there! It's 10:00 here, so my day is just getting started basically.
@Lckygrl1975
LisabeeSims
New readers can visit here first: In-a-NUTSHELL
#EAgamechanger
That said, last night, on my home desktop computer, I was dealing with trying to read a story that had around 80-100 images in a single chapter, not a single one resized, that was KILLING the page trying to load it, and I have a very nice Cable Internet connection. I cannot even view that story if I want to read said story on my tablet using my own private wi-fi in bed if my desktop has a hard time loading that many images full size, and it is just Wordpress's "layout" that is then "resizing them" after the fact. So this isn't strictly a "mobile problem." I can only think that person is going to run out of their Wordpress space (if they are using Wordpress as their host) in absolutely no time at that rate!
Have a Sim story site? Please submit your link to the Stories and Legacies Index!
Check out my Simlit at Sim Stories: Hijinks from the World of Sims 3!
My Simlit Discussion/Updates | The Fringe | Short Story Challenges
I suspect the people at the forum you frequented were probably optimising their JPG files too much. A 90% reduction gives barely any noticable difference in image quality, but it still drastically reduces the filesize. Below 90% (and many of the free online 'image optimiser' sites drag it WAY down to something like 30% which is far too low) and yes, you're going to start to see artifacts.
I just added up the image sizes on this chapter of my story (spoiler warning, if anyone plans to read it and hasn't yet done so!). The chapter contains 38 images, each at 650 pixels wide (with the exception of the large header image, which is 750px). I do a lot of post-processing on my images, but they are all optimised to web-safe JPG format using Photoshop once the work on them is done. The total size of those 38 images is just 2,738KB (2.67MB) for the lot, and they look perfectly clear to me.
The only reason I'll sometimes get artifacts is because I am such an inveterate post-processor, and many of the filters and other things that I use emphasise the pixels on darker swathes of the image. This means that the body of coats and jackets can sometimes look a bit blocky, and I'm not spending hours and hours in Photoshop blending it all out!
Whoa. That's waaaay too many pictures lol. I wonder how many words that story was.
I've been using WP as my blogging host for about 10 years. I was never concerned about storage before because I never wrote simlit. I didn't always edit my pictures, and I didn't realize exactly how big the pictures were straight out of the game. So, for the first six months of writing Pruett Family Legacy, I was posting pictures at full size and not optimized. By the ninth month I was at 99% of my storage. Of course, that's when I took a look at the situation. Definitely an OMG moment lol. However, by then I was toying with the idea of a self-hosted WP site anyway, so it was the perfect time to make a break for it.
I like big pictures because I like to see details, so I resize mine to be 1000px in width. On average, my pictures are now around 230K opposed to 1MB.
I use Photoshop. When I first started editing mine, I experimented with this, and for me, 85% was my number. Ninety was perfect, but I wanted to keep my file size under 450K as much as possible. At 85, there was a very slight reduction in quality, but you could only tell if you clicked on the picture to view it full size.
@Jes2G : I'm not sure how many words it is per chapter, but it isn't written in the chunky "plot-style" type of writing format, but rather the style more common of ISBIs and many other challenges, where the Simmer makes commentary and the Sims/Simmer directly interact with each other. Granted, I do find sometimes with this style the authors sometime have a tendancy to cram way too much into a single post when they could've easily broken it down into five posts which would've loaded much more manageably... usually I go read a chapter of something else and then flip back to the other tab when I'm done before reading the next chapter, just to give it time to load. O_O
Have a Sim story site? Please submit your link to the Stories and Legacies Index!
Check out my Simlit at Sim Stories: Hijinks from the World of Sims 3!
My Simlit Discussion/Updates | The Fringe | Short Story Challenges
@Jes2G Hi-fives for a fellow self-hoster! It's so much easier to manage, I find. I have my story set up on dedicated HTML webpages that I code up, then I have the feedback links at the bottom leading to a self-hosted blog dedicated to the story. That way, I can control the exact look that I want for everything.
Hi-five! I love hosting my own. The freedom and flexibility (and scalability) is amazing and exactly what I wanted. You code? Nice! I learned the basics of HTML in school like 10 years ago. It was fun, but I didn't practice after I graduated so my knowledge has declined a bit.
@lisabee2 : I featured Rainbowacies on my Weekly Reading Roundup thread a few weeks ago, so if you are curious to learn more or get a reading list of other Rainbowacies that have listed themselves with the Stories and Legacies Index, you can check it out here.
Have a Sim story site? Please submit your link to the Stories and Legacies Index!
Check out my Simlit at Sim Stories: Hijinks from the World of Sims 3!
My Simlit Discussion/Updates | The Fringe | Short Story Challenges
Very nice! TY @mastressalita!
LisabeeSims
New readers can visit here first: In-a-NUTSHELL
#EAgamechanger
Nope you're not.. We're not. But we are certainly in the minority.
I have nothing against those things, they're wonderful, from what I hear-- but my thing is (aside from the monthly bills that I never see with my Prepaid Dumb-Phone minutes) I wouldn't be able to leave mine alone, either.-- they're highly "addictive". I don't trust myself to be any better at self-discipline than the bozo in front of me downtown who walked into a utility pole this afternoon because his eyes were glued to his toy.
BTW Interesting screen name and avatar.. Story behind it? I'm not a frequent flyer in here so if that's already been talked about 'scuse the query..
I actually talk about my screenname early on in my blogaversary post, but I didn't think to mention the avatar. Of course they look like M&Ms, but at a larger resolution, the letters are slightly different, and I'm quite sure the forum would turn them to "plum" if I tried to type them, so that probably gives you an idea of what that is... I found the parody hilarious and just decided to use that as my avatar on pretty much everything from then on.
Have a Sim story site? Please submit your link to the Stories and Legacies Index!
Check out my Simlit at Sim Stories: Hijinks from the World of Sims 3!
My Simlit Discussion/Updates | The Fringe | Short Story Challenges