Greetings Simmers!
I’m happy to report that I’ve made some good progress on Sims Legacy Hub in the last few weeks, and I’m getting ready to publish a new build to the beta server for our testers to break. During PacificCreative’s livestream about Sims Legacy Hub on March 17th, we talked a lot about the upcoming build. We also recruited five new beta testers from the community.
There are a lot of changes in the upcoming build to go over. I’ll start with some quick good (I hope) news- I’m increasing the free trial for new users to 30 days instead of a week. During the stream I was asked if everyone would get it, or if only new subscribers would. I answered only new subscribers, but then I changed my mind; I’ll give all free accounts 30 free days when I release the update live. You all are awesome, all 40k+ of you Simmers.
Legacy Gallery
The Legacy Gallery is a public gallery where any cloud-saved legacy tree (including the one from the free trial, and any subscriber trees) can be shown in the gallery and displayed for everyone to see. This feature is an extension of the existing link-sharing tools we currently have, which still exist. If your legacy is currently marked public and you don’t want it to be in the gallery, now is the time to fix it.
I’m also consulting with Sims experts to update the Editor with traits, careers, etc, from the content that has been released this year.
Updated UI
The dashboard, and parts of the editor have a completely fresh style and improved experience for alternatively-sized screens. For instance, this is the new ‘Add Sim’ menu in the Legacy editor:
Portraits
You might notice a few things. Besides the overall look (these shots are in dark mode, by the way), there is a portrait size option. This sets the size of the member’s portrait. This is a free-form tool you can use to design your legacy with (I use the small ones for pets).
You’ll also find a link to the Stock Portraits library. This brings up an in-editor gallery of pre-crafted portraits that you can use for your legacy members so they aren’t just boring squares. We’re gathering a variety of portraits and hope to have good representation. On that note, if you’d like to contribute, I’ve set up a form https://forms.gle/zxqH9TSeZ9aMzfzG7 that you can use to send me a portrait of your Sim for us to use in the Stock Portraits gallery. This form won’t be up forever, and please don’t abuse it.
Editor Toolbar
I’ve also changed a lot of things in the Editor. Here’s a pic:
That top bar across the top is the toolbar. It spans the full width of the page. Key features revealed here are the undo and redo buttons, the visibility menu, and the hub menu. Undo and redo speak for themselves; the majority of legacy-altering changes are undoable, with a memory of 100 changes. The eye icon to the right expands a dropdown menu allowing you to show or hide all instances of that type of relationship.
The hub icon on far right (the SLH logo) is a menu with options for opening, exporting, and sharing legacies. It also has switches for the Line Snap, Line Colors, and Line Outlines features. Line Outlines is a new feature that adds a black border around all the lines in the legacy, giving extra contrast against the background. The option to export an unlocked legacy file has been added to the menu as well, allowing you to optionally share your editable legacy files between accounts.
Below the toolbar, you’ll notice the Inspector, featuring Bumble Glum using a portrait from our new Stock Portraits gallery. The top button on the Inspector collapses it to the right, or back from it. The second button down brings up the editing menu to change their details. The third button down centers the editor on that member in the main view.
Legacy Colors
Customizable Legacy colors is a new subscriber feature, that all active subscribers will be able to utilize on their legacies. You can choose two colors to create a gradient behind your legacy, instead of the standard green or grey. Here’s a better shot, with more of the gradient:
I think that about covers the features that we talked about on stream. My goal is to get the beta build in the hands of testers by the end of this upcoming weekend; I work full-time during the week, so the weekends are my primary time to work on Sims Legacy Hub. You all have been very patiently waiting for updates and I hope this helps.
Thank you all, I appreciate you.
-DevPacific
