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18th Aug 2010, 11:11 AM
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 Editing Premade Worlds: Info & Help Plz?
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HystericalParoxysm
Original Poster
Administrator
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Mod edit: This thread is now continued at: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=447707 Okay, so, with the help of drowssap's instructions, I'm able to get premade worlds (like France) open in CAW. Here is how it's done: 1. Open CAW. Make a new world, large 300 flat map. Save it and close CAW. 2. Open S3PE. Open the .world file that you want to edit (in this case, France, from Program Files\The Sims 3 World Adventures\GameData\Shared\NonPackaged\Worlds\France.world ) - select all the resources and export as files, to an empty folder. 3. Close the premade .world file, and open the .world file made in CAW in step 1. 4. Import all the resources exported in step 2. Replace duplicates, use resource names, and compress are ticked. Save. 5. Open the edited file in CAW. It may take a while to open and may look weird at first (trees were black for at least two minutes after it appeared the file was fully loaded). I can also go to Edit in Game and it looks good there too - though any sims inhabiting the world are standing outside their homes. This is where it goes blah for me - I cannot save this edited file inside CAW - it errors at me. So I can't add a thumbnail and such. I'd get the exact text of the error, but the second time I tried it, it gave no error - just sat there for ages with the little spinny icon like it was doing something, and then finally told me CAW had failed to shut down properly, and crashed. I CAN export this world to a sims3pack file without error and install it with the Launcher - but when I go in-game, it doesn't show when I go to make a new game. I'd planned on working it up into a tutorial for ya'll, but since I can't seem to make an actual useful file out of it myself, I figured I'd post up the info and see if anyone else has any good ideas on how to get it working. I'm trying now with Sunset Valley to see if it's a general problem, or one only with the vacation worlds. |
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Last edited by simsample : 7th Jul 2011 at 02:50 PM.
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18th Aug 2010, 01:53 PM
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#2 |
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scoopy_loopy
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Fingers crossed it all suddenly clicks for you, and makes sense! It would be absolutely epic to get the pre-made neighbourhood to open in CAW... I've just about used the in-game "edit town" tool within an inch of it's life :p |
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Well that's what happens when you're on your own and you're alright at letting nice things go |
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18th Aug 2010, 02:37 PM
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#3 |
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VegaBlack
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18th Aug 2010, 03:22 PM
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#4 |
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HystericalParoxysm
Original Poster
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I was able to get Sunset Valley working just fine this way - was able to add a thumbnail and description and get it working in-game just fine. It did seem a little extra laggy in loading textures, and a couple things were wonky (the Goth's house was missing its name), but all the sims were in place and had relationships working, and nothing crashed or asploded. Sounds like it works okay with SV but not Twinbrook for some reason. If nothing else it can be used to export the terrain sculpting/ painting of these places though - I kinda want to do a shiny redone Twinbrook or Riverview (love the maps, hate the houses and trees) so this will allow those to be opened and exported. |
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18th Aug 2010, 04:15 PM
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#5 |
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Inge Jones
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You should be able to condense steps 2-4 by using the import from package option in s3pe. |
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simlogical Please do not PM me with questions about modding. Please post in an appropriate forum and send me a link to the thread if you would like me to try and help. |
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18th Aug 2010, 05:10 PM
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#6 |
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sleepalldaypartyallnight
Forum Resident
Join Date: Jun 2007 |
I just tried this twice. First try I did France and when I saved it, I got an error (I've attached a picture, just incase that's helpful.) But second time, I tried Twinbrook and it saved successfully! I'm not sure whether it's a fluke or something but with Twinbrook, I used save as and then saved it under another file name in a different location. Not tried exporting it yet though. HP, when you say you can get SV working, do you mean you saved that in CAW, or just exported it from CAW? EDIT: Okay, I can't export it, it gives me an error. 
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18th Aug 2010, 05:18 PM
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#7 |
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HystericalParoxysm
Original Poster
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I saved SV in CAW after changing its name and adding a thumbnail, and then exported it in CAW and installed it in-game. |
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18th Aug 2010, 06:25 PM
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#8 |
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sleepalldaypartyallnight
Forum Resident
Join Date: Jun 2007 |
Forget what I said about not being able to export Twinbrook, I was doing something wrong. I've managed to open China in CAW and save it. It exported and installed okay too, there just wasn't an option to start a new save game with it. I didn't alter the file in CAW though, dunno whether that would make a difference though. Sorry, I'm not being very helpful.  Like you said though, just being able to get the height maps and terrain maps is incredibly useful. As was seeing how EA had done their layers, and how many terrain paints in total they had used (or at least it was for me.) |
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19th Aug 2010, 10:24 AM
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#9 |
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missy harries
Forum Resident
Join Date: Dec 2006 |
This is great, I've been itching to get my hands on the Twinbrook map! I've been playing around all ways with the vacation worlds though and I can't get them to work or save for me, It seems like EA really don't want us touching them! Everything else is working like a charm though, thanks for this HP. |
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19th Aug 2010, 04:25 PM
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#10 |
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Robodl95
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My guess is that there is some piece of code that the destinations use that regular neighborhoods don't need which is the cause of it not saving. Have you tried any of these things? 1. Compare one of the destinations to SV or another hood, does the destination have any file types that SV doesn't? 2. Maybe try changing the lot type of the base camp since you can't have them in regular neighborhoods? |
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Hi I'm Paul! |
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19th Aug 2010, 06:38 PM
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#11 | |
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simsample
'Death, death, death' Until the sun cries morning
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You mean you managed to export Twinbrook? Could you let us know what you did, because I'm getting export failure for that world. | |
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I will choose a path that's clear- I will choose free will
RUSH Headlong Flight Performing Arts Award Star Rush OC Please check out my profile policies before PMing me! Thanks. |
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19th Aug 2010, 07:50 PM
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#12 |
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sleepalldaypartyallnight
Forum Resident
Join Date: Jun 2007 |
Err, yeah, I did. I'm not sure of the exact steps I took. I'll try and do it again. Okay: 1. (Obviously) Follow HP's instructions in her first post. 2. Open world in CAW. 3. Add world name, description and thumbnail. 4. File > Save as ... and save it under a new name. (I do this purely because when I tried just 'save' with France, the save failed and then all the trees started flashing funny colours, CAW crashed and a display driver or something stopped working.) 5. When the world has saved, close it. 6. File > Select World to export (navigate to where you saved the world.) 7. Then (hopefully) the export will be successful. Install and test. Is that different to how you've been doing it? Pics or it didn't happen! Not much proof, but Lillie Brook (can you tell I suck at naming things? :D) Though on all the houses I checked, this happens:  Most households also seem to have their descriptions, though some have a similar to description to the name of the house above. I haven't played much in Twinbrook, so can't say whether everything's intact. Though I guess, there's not much point in that anyway. The one house I have checked (Jones-Brown) the father-mother-daughter relationships were intact, but they're the only ones I've ever played in the 'proper' Twinbrook. I can also save a game, quit and then re-open it. Might be my imagination, but I think it also takes a bit longer to load. EDIT 2: Okay, maybe I was a bit too optimistic, I've never seen this before: http://thumbs2.modthesims2.com/img/...GlitchThing.jpg (The town from Map View.) http://thumbs2.modthesims2.com/img/...ivisibleSim.jpg And a transparent(?) or pitch black sim: (They also seem to slide instead of walking, and return to normal when entering their house. I can only tell where they are because of their shadows, well, and the plumbbob.) |
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Last edited by sleepalldaypartyallnight : 19th Aug 2010 at 09:12 PM.
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20th Aug 2010, 01:34 AM
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#13 |
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simsample
'Death, death, death' Until the sun cries morning
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Thankyou sleepalldaypartyallnight; I managed to get it to work eventually with a bit of persuasion. I think I must have 'lost' some resources originally when importing, as I had imported directly from the world file instead of exporting them to a file first. I managed to get other worlds to work, but not Twinbrook- but it's exporting just fine now, so I can edit the world to use. What I originally began messing around with this for was to try to use the Twinbrook objects (railway track especially) in another world. I was disappointed to find we couldn't access those items through the metadata panel. I saw drowssap's post on the Sims 3 forum and was hopeful she would get it to work, as I hadn't had much luck. But the last posts I read indicated that drowssap had the same problems as I did, so it's great that you got it working.  What I think would be the best thing to do would be to strip out all of the sims- you can do this in EIG if you use Awesomemod, for example. I personally want to get rid of everything except the hood deco objects, then I can strip the terrain paint layers off, import my own height map and effectively start a new world, as long as there are no more glitches. I can't say how 'safe' such a world would be to share, though. |
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I will choose a path that's clear- I will choose free will
RUSH Headlong Flight Performing Arts Award Star Rush OC Please check out my profile policies before PMing me! Thanks. |
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20th Aug 2010, 11:17 AM
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#14 | |
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sleepalldaypartyallnight
Forum Resident
Join Date: Jun 2007 |
Quote:
I'm glad I was helpful. But just to confuse things, I have managed to successfully export Twinbrook by importing from the world file too.  Doing that with the deco items had occurred to me, I wanted them for a world I'm making as well. Though I'm sure I read on the EA forums that drowssap was trying to get the Twinbrook things into CAW somehow. I'm not sure what she was doing or how though. With regards the glitches, I quit the game without saving and then reloaded the previous save (before it was pitch black) and it still happened anyway, very quickly. I did let it run and it didn't return to normal. | |
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20th Aug 2010, 11:19 AM
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#15 |
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missy harries
Forum Resident
Join Date: Dec 2006 |
Breahthrough! success replacement of china!!!!!!  Is it wrong for me to feel this excited??? This is what I did. 1. New flat ect 2. opened it in S3PE, Imported from China package and saved. 3. Changed terrain to something I'd notice, Edited name, decription and thumnail and Export. 4. Installed sims3.pack but like sleepalldaypartyallnight a no show in game. 5. Back up original china world file, renamed the file from the documents/installed worlds folder to china 6. pop'd it into programfiles/Electronic arts/WA/GameData/Shared/NonPackaged/World folder to overwrite the old china. The old china was still there on my saved game but the nice new pink one shows up on new games. 
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20th Aug 2010, 11:24 AM
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#16 |
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sleepalldaypartyallnight
Forum Resident
Join Date: Jun 2007 |
Wow, love the pink! So that suggests that there isn't anything wrong with the export, the game just doesn't recognise it as a proper base neighbourhood? I did have a quick compare of China to one of the base hoods in s3pe, and China had less resources (4000 and something) but the others have a varying number anyway (6000 and something.) I wonder if there's a missing file type like Robodl suggested? |
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20th Aug 2010, 11:29 AM
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#17 | |
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missy harries
Forum Resident
Join Date: Dec 2006 |
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Well there's obviously something in there it's just a matter of finding it but honestly I wouldn't want to bother since I'm just happy with custom destinations! The pink was just a test, I thought it would stand out...... | |
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20th Aug 2010, 12:52 PM
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#18 |
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sleepalldaypartyallnight
Forum Resident
Join Date: Jun 2007 |
Okay, so I compared SV, TB, and the three WA hoods. The WA hoods were all missing three resource types (TWNI, TWNP and WDDT) I exported these from SV and I *think* that they are something to do with the Neighbourhood description, name and image. The TWNI when exported is a png that is SV's image when creating a new game and the WDDT is a WDESCDETAIL file - so I think something to do with the description, and the TWNP is a IMGPATH file. Following the instructions I gave above, I imported the China resources into a new CAW world along with these three resources from SV. I opened in CAW, gave it a name, desc, and thumbnail etc. Installed, but no luck, there was still no option to start a save game with China. Something else I've noticed, Twinbrook has 6355 resources, but when I open my Lilliebrook file (which is an empty CAW neighbourhood with the TB resources imported into it, then saved in CAW under a different file name) it only has 1230 resources. EDIT: Something else that's a bit weird, has anyone else's CAW render panel started to be very brightly coloured when ever they close one of these imported worlds? (see screenshot) Normally it's kind of a reddish-burgandy colour, but it's been light grey, blueish and now bright yellow. Not a problem just a bit
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Last edited by sleepalldaypartyallnight : 20th Aug 2010 at 03:53 PM.
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21st Aug 2010, 10:45 AM
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#19 | |||
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simsample
'Death, death, death' Until the sun cries morning
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Ha, could be my ancient computer- it can't import too many things at once! Not sure exactly what Drowssap was doing, but I got the impression she was doing the same as us. Quote:
That's excellent, well done! Does the old China on your savegames work correctly too? I wonder what would happen if you were to change more than just the colour- if some information is cached you could end up with some oddities, possibly, if you were to move lots around. The China sim and world data is cached in the WorldCaches folder, I seem to remember- I'll have to see if there are any static caches anywhere. Quote:
The resource number I would expect to be different; remember that some of the resources are being split out into the Lots and Layers folder for CAW files. So as soon as you saved your Lillebrook, that change was written to disc. I've not encountered the yellow CAW background though- my guess is a memory glitch. | |||
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I will choose a path that's clear- I will choose free will
RUSH Headlong Flight Performing Arts Award Star Rush OC Please check out my profile policies before PMing me! Thanks. |
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21st Aug 2010, 03:33 PM
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#20 | |
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sleepalldaypartyallnight
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Join Date: Jun 2007 |
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Haha, okay, my noobiness is showing now. | |
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21st Aug 2010, 04:52 PM
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#21 | |
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missy harries
Forum Resident
Join Date: Dec 2006 |
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Well lot names end up in the same format as becca's imported Twinbrook but apart from that it seems to work fine, havn't tried ajusting anything else yet since I'm a bit more intrested in the Twinbrook map too! All sims, lots and unwanted objects have been deleted from Twinbrook and it exports and works fine without it blowing up so I imagine china will be the same.  I did look over all the files myself to find a diffrence but honestly every thing just started looking like letters and numbers to me! | |
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21st Aug 2010, 07:08 PM
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#22 | ||
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simsample
'Death, death, death' Until the sun cries morning
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 Not at all- I'm only guessing, so I could be wrong! Besides, I'm a noob at this too, I couldn't even get mine to work until you told me how! Quote:
The address name bit seems to be because we break some sort of link when we import; as though perhaps the game looks for a database which it can't find since we made a new world. I think that should be fixable by replacing the address lines in the lot properties in CAW. In Twinbrook, have you seen the water layer for the dammed area? It is not an object, but actually a separate water layer. If I switch off water in the layer view in CAW it disappears. But no matter what I do, I can't find out how to delete that. It seems to be stored in one of the UNKN resources, but I can't figure out which one! So, if you flatten and completely strip the world of all layers, objects, terrain paint etc., this is what remains:  We'd need to figure out how to get rid of that for it to be possible to remodel the terrain, although it could be useful if you wanted a raised water level as Twinbrook has. | ||
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I will choose a path that's clear- I will choose free will
RUSH Headlong Flight Performing Arts Award Star Rush OC Please check out my profile policies before PMing me! Thanks. |
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21st Aug 2010, 07:23 PM
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#23 |
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sleepalldaypartyallnight
Forum Resident
Join Date: Jun 2007 |
Yeah, I had noticed that it wasn't an object. I hadn't played around with it like that though. It also looks different in CAW (or at least to me it does.) Since the last patch, the water goes transparent in CAW if you turn the fog off, but the raised water doesn't. Just thought I'd share that. As useless as that info might be.
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22nd Aug 2010, 12:27 PM
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#24 |
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missy harries
Forum Resident
Join Date: Dec 2006 |
Well I wanted raised water so thats why I was intrested in Twinbrook. Have you tried raising the terrain level above the highest water level? I lowered the terrain near the dammed water and it spread out in a rather strange way......  Floating water's a new one on me 
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22nd Aug 2010, 12:33 PM
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#25 |
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missy harries
Forum Resident
Join Date: Dec 2006 |
PS. I think we're all noobs at this ; ) |
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