The Bookacy Family Alphabet Journal

Alright, so I thought I'd start shooting on the epic wedding of Chris and Cyrus, and I did. My first observation was that no, shooting a wedding that's supposed to have basically the whole town invited in the method of having the whole town present is no longer feasible. Go figure. I'd show you a picture but apparently my machine was so stuck that Gadwin didn't even get one. Pity, the whole extended family crammed into Chris and Cyrus' tiny house was quite a sight.

Well, have a non-spoilery picture instead:

( 2 pictures and a problem )

So, I've got good news and bad news.

The good news is: my game is up, I've downloaded SimPE, Clean Installer and CEP, checked my hack situation, re-downloaded some floors and walls that were installed before I got Clean Installer, and placed empty neighborhood templates. The game runs, and my sims seem to be safe and happy, and so far I haven't even noticed CC oddities. So after all the installation and careful tuning, my game works. Hooray!

The bad news is, my picturetaking isn't doing so good. I don't seem to get Gadwin to work. Or more precisely, I can't get it to work with my sims. Here's the thing: if I press the PrintScreen button when I'm in Windows, possibly with different programs open and so on, I get a picture just fine. If I launch my game in full screen mode as I usually do, and while in the game, take a picture, that doesn't work. When I go back to Windows to see the picture, I find that Gadwin has taken a picture of my Desktop, and not TS2. Only the game icon shows in the toolbar, so the picture I get is as if I'd alt-tabbed out of the game and then gotten the screenshot.

I've tried tuning the Gadwin settings, tried different "source" options but with no luck. I've tried changing the in-game setting for "screen size" (a friend suggested it might have to do with resolution differences), and while some settings looked better than others, none of them helped Gadwin. The only way I found I could get Gadwin pictures from my game was to run it in windowed mode. And otherwise I might be fine with playing so, but apparently the game then opens itself in a window which is maybe one fourth of the size of my screen and the size of which I haven't been able to change.

Has anyone had the same problem with Gadwin? I'm suspecting that it might be that now, after the hard drive change, I got Windows 7 for this computer, while previously it was running Vista - and perhaps Gadwin somehow doesn't like that. Or maybe it's something simple that I'm overlooking? If anyone has an idea what I'm doing wrong, help would be much appreciated. Thanks. :)

If nothing else, I suppose I will just have to fall back on the in-game camera, as I didn't particularly like Fraps. It's a little disappointing after just having gotten used to the nicer picture quality and all, and not having finished the painting recolor project yet. (Well that's one eternity project anyhow.) On the other hand, I would not particularly miss having to edit out action queues from every other picture just because I'm forgetful. Oh well.

My next chapter is going nicely. Or would be, if I didn't suck at shooting scenes and all the surrounding stuff. I've been trying to shoot the final scene of the next chapter for a couple of days now, and have pretty much nothing. Apart from the fact that the weather's been way too good for simming most of the time, why is that?

( Lots of rambling ahead, stories of how I fail )

So that's what's up with my sims. Me making them stand around while I try to figure out how to shoot a scene. Poor things. If anyone had the patience to read through this long and boring ramble, thanks for listening. Oh and if you happen to know how to make over townies, I'd appreciate a tip. =)

Now I think I'll quit this rambling and go to bed, maybe I'll figure something out later. For now, g'night all!