April 2014 Update
Mood:  special
Topic: Game Status

A little of everything in this one:

Mare Barn Overhaul

I have too many horses; as if there is such a thing. But I ran out of link spaces in the Angelfire template so I needed to do something to make room. I decided I liked the new look of the stud barn, but the Mare Barn template is a different design so I had to figure out how to get the new layout on the old Template.

I kind of like how it's shaping up....All the Brood mares are getting their own barn and their foals will be listed on the Dam's respective profile pages. Fillies will be stabled in the Main Mare Barn with the performance mares (except for Sales who will go into the Sale Barn). The current Mare Barn link will become a Fillies and Mares landing page with links to the two new areas (Broods and Main) - this way I have more space to expand later on if I need to.

Also, the general layout will be cleaner, and, I hope, more professional looking. The basic design has been fairly simplistic until now as this site was one of the first I ever built and I had actually built it for a different game then converted it to TS3. Now that I'm more proficient with HTML in general and site building in particular I think I can really make this one 'pop'. 

 

That brings me to...

New Overall Layout

The entire site will be getting redesigned; redesign will be in phases as I get the time to work on it.

Stud Shed is done, except for the addition of new stock. Though I'm thinking of redoing it to match the new Brood layout, I'm more inclined to leave it as the current set up splits currently available studs from those not available.

Brood Barn is well in progress, missing a few links for existing stock, but those will be up as the profiles get built.

Sales Barn will be next done, now that the template conversion issues have been resolved.

Main/Performance Mare are will be getting built after Sales is overhauled; until that's live all those mares (and the fillies) will stay linked at the Mare landing page.

 

Naturally this will be a long-standing project; ultimately even the home page will be getting redone with updated pics and summaries and such.


Because I know you're wondering about it:

The Registries

CPHS and KSMH are still being overhauled behind the scenes. 

 

The CPHS portion is almost complete and will leave very little changed in the general layout. Other than removing dead links and adding new submissions, the Registry books will also see little-to-no change.  Stil having trouble getting Pearl to breed true - it looks like we'll just have to wing it and edit the foals (and grandfoals)to match appropriately.

KSMH is taking much longer as the Books themselves have to be extensively overhauled. Every horse is being checked for confo,  temperment, and pedigree to see which book they truly belong in, stables have to be tracked across (sometimes multiple) changing urls to verify certain details, and some stables are having to be tracked across a change in Communities - then, too, some horses are having to be tracked across changing owners and some have disappeared completely. Regardless of the Book a horse winds up Registered in, all Gaiting animals will have the Certified declaration and all non-Gaiting animals will be Approved.

 

Rescued Belle

 EA fubarred the save file she was on, along with 4 other horses.
All the others besides Belle had .sim or .sims3pack files they could be restored from (wild Heart had to be recaptured int he wild).
Belle was believed lost until Feb 2014 when it was discovered the game had a copy of her in it's archive memory.

Honestly not sure if I'm up for trying to restore her. Just letting her RIP is one option, or I could activate the copy, NRAAS or something it back to Adult (instead of Elder), and RP it as her full sister or daughter or something. EV is at S3BA, now, so pretty sure I couold get the "new horse" registered...I'm thinking on all this as I'm overhauling the site and will let everyone know what happens once I decide.

About EV:

Tilly and Tropic

Ok, so I bought EV Dawn Til Dusk and EV Orange Crush as foals when EV and I were at Equus-Sims and my game was installed on a different computer. Now they've aged up and there's a bit of a problem. They way they were built originally (which was actually quite brilliant on EV's part) was too involved for my game to process; she had the 100 layers mod and my system just can not handle that level of involvement in CAP. I had to rebuild the layers if I expected to ever be able to play them, though I did my best to keep them as close to the way she had them as I possibly could.

Unfortunately rebilding the layers put me in violation of her Terms of Sale. We've been in touch over FaceBook and I'm looking forward to reaching an agreeable solution to this with her; until that time I've put both horses back to Inactive and Tropic has been moved to the Studs Not Currently Availabe listing. Right now I still own them both, and I do still have their original files so a restoration is possible.

She did not ask me to take them down or to send them back (please don't anyone think she's an ogre or anything, she's actually quite nice), I did this voluntarily until we work out something we can both live with.

Real Life

Had a pet die this week so a bit bummed in my overall mood. After taking Easter weekend to update and patch my game and system and pick up some yummy new CC (like Lakesides new "wavy" muti-color mane) I figured I would have some time on Tuesday to make some serious game progress...until my Cockatiel up and died on me Monday night.

I got him as a baby, only a few weeks old and still being bottle fed. I rasied him, taught him to fly, taught him some tricks, and taught him to talk. We were in a local bird club and went to shows and we were working on some magic tricks. Then I went to College and had to leave him with my mom. He was really angry when I moved back home a few years ago, but it was understandable and we worked it out.

I think it was a heart attack; he wasn't all that old, either. We had a memorial service for him and he'll be buried at my sister's horse farm upstate so I can visit him anytime I want.

RIP, Sweetie. I love you, babybird. :_(
10 Dec 1999-21 Apr 2014

Happy New Year
Mood:  on fire
Topic: Game Status

It's 2014!...and I forgot to update you guys on my Autum Activities O_O

Ok so in October I wound up having a seriously klutzy moment and dislocated my wrist. Under doctor's orders I had to put TS3 away for a while; I was actually "banned" from the computer at large, not just gaming, so even FB was out of the question. I was in a brace and under heavily limited computer usage through November at which point I ran head first into the holiday scramble.

Long story short: it was Christmas before I could get back into my game and I had to go through 3 levels of patches before playing with my ponies :_( .

I'm back in and have taken the last few days to clear out some serious backlog:

every horse is getting rebuilt to be sure the coat layers are in sync with it's DNA of Record (they'll still LOOK the same, just be easier on my game and breed truer),

all stock are being inventoried and accounted for and sorted,

foals added before 1 Nov 2013 are being aged-up to adult,

outside breedings are (FINALLY) being made good on

 everyone (horses, humans, other large pets) are being packaged into a .sims3pack file for archive purposes,

the first full foal crop is in progress - Frisian-cross,

during editing, everyone is getting photographed and their profiles are being updated on the site,

 new stock are getting profiles made and added,

future breedings are being planned,

and genetics research is under way - part of that involves overhauling the Registries to incorporate new data.

Fyi: farm email is currently down -yes, again - so the current best way to get me is on FaceBook. I spend most of my TS3 time in the Sims 3: Pets group, but I can also be found at SIMply Equine (links to both are on the stable site).

I was in the process of updating the Mare Barn when someone tipped me to a new revelation in Dominant White circles: not only can it mimic Frame and Splash phenotypes, W20 is Homozygous-Viable AND it can co-exist with W5 O_O That means you can get a W20/W20 and a W20/W5 and it will be perfectly healthy!

Of course this means I need to draft a DNA section, but that's ok...that's actually something I can do offline in my free time (free time? what's that?) and then upload with a click.

 

Busy as always....if I bought a horse from you please know that it will have a profile up just as soon as I can manage it. I may not be wholly active 100% of the time, but I AM an active stable. Thanks for understanding.

A bit of everything....
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: Game Status
So we lost Belle. As in an EA patch fubarred the file she was on and I had no backup of her. Never got her to the clone lab, either, so she's gone-gone. I started building the cemetery and will move her profile there just as soon as the page is up in full; for now she stays at the Mare Shed.

I went through and overhauled the entire stud barn today: all the boys, including the ones in the Sales Barn, got spiffy new DNA profiles to reflect their base beeds and any twists caused by color genes. The acquisition of a new stud had something to do with this update, but I had actually been planning it for some time. Pal O Mine looks to be going on the "to geld" listing as his profile indicates he is a carrier for HERDA. You can wiki it, but the cliff's notes version is that it's fatal if the horse gets a double dose of it. Since he's a wild Palomino, and I have a slew of registered creams running about, it's not that big of a deal to turn him into a pure show/lesson horse.

A few mares got mini-updates as well, but that barn will start it's overhaul in the next few days. Feel free to surf through and check out the changes. I hope they make the site easier to navigate.

I also updated the Affiliates linking; I wish stables would just keep the same url, but whatcha gonna do?

I have 1 dog, 1 human, and 1 lot left to package then I can start moving everyone into the new map...I may take the opportunity, though, to finally reinstall everything.

And I do mean everything: I have a new graphics card and my OS is in dire need of a reinstall so I might as well do it all at once. I'll breed those two outside mares, first, then do all that labor-intensive programming. No sense making their owners wait any longer (especially as I feel bad enough about all the delays so far).

2 days to get all my Mods updated, old CC out, new CC in, game patched to 1.57, browser patched, plugins patched, Origin and CAW reinstalled, and site overhaul in progress....1 am, now, and it's off to bed so I can get up at a decent hour and get some game time in before lunch.

Breaking in the new Blog!
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: Game Status

Going to be moving all the site updates from the home page over here. Should make it a lot easier on the eyes ;)

Old Updates:

 May 2013 Advisory: After a hiatus to deal with Real Life complications we treated ourselves to a shiny new copy of Seasons. It occurred to us that this would be a good time to make some space on the Laptop so we spent the Early Spring moving the game files to an actual Gaming PC. Thanks to Delphy (one coder who deserves a MEDAL) the majority of the issues impacting our install have been resolved (sudden crashes, CAP-Advanced not functioning, Traits suddenly disappearing, etc) and we have actually been able to make some progress. Due to EA Patch configuration a new save file had to be started (we had no way to remove our pool so a new one will have to be built) and just as soon as all the tweaking is done our existing stock will be imported to that file.

ed note: It has been descovered that Rescued Belle, Wild Heart, and Golden Boy were on this file, but we should be able to restore them.

update: SER Silver Elegance (Ariela) was also on this file. The only one without a backup, though, was Belle. She will be greatly missed.