I just wanted to take a few minutes to talk about a few hacks that helped me immensely when I was redoing the first seven parts of this beast, hacks that I'll no doubt be abusing in all my future simmage. They're not exactly new hacks, but apparently I'm quite good at my hermity existence, and thus didn't really know about them until quite recently.

The first is the Freezer Clock by treeag (requires the Apartment Life EP). I've been using this pretty much since it was released back in October, and it's, hands down, the most useful tool I have. With it, you have the ability to pause sims individually rather than hoping like hell your anims sync up well. I wouldn't exactly call it a time saver, however, because now I've found myself spending ages making sure everyone is absolutely perfect. XD

The next one is the Facial Overlay options on the Custom Modeling Poses Overlay Hack V2 by decorgal. Yes, this has been out forfreakingever, but I never bothered to download it as the poses were of no interest to me; turns out I was missing out on a fantastic tool in the facial overlay portion of the box. These allow you to run basic facial expressions over other animations, therefore salvaging some pretty great poses that were otherwise ruined by goofy faces. Another great thing about it is its ability to combine several expressions, thus giving you an even greater degree of control. I get a lot of use out of the neutral expression, using it to tone down the otherwise over-the-top expressions sims are famous for.

Finally, the Look At Me global hack by maybesomethingdunno. I'd attempted to use the 'look at me' option from the allmenus cheat, but it always caused my sims to throw an error. This hack actually works. With it, I'm able to control exactly what an individual is looking at. Before, if I wanted a pair of sims to look at one another, I'd spend ages moving one of them in and out of the room, hoping the stupid things would look in the right direction. Now, with a click of the mouse and a small amount of camera maneuvering (I spent quite a bit of time literally in sims' heads over the last few weeks), I was able to get perfect results in almost no time. It is a bit tricky to get the timing right on it, as the 'look at me' function has a finite amount of 'run time,' but it's worth the occasional fight.

Part 23 is a good example of all three hacks in action.

That's it for now.