The Exchange Closing?

[Brianna]

I just saw on a update on the the Exchange that a fellow writer received word from a member that works at EA, and according to them the Exchange and Sims 2 Store are the only things shutting down -- the BBS will remain open. Nobody will be able to upload the Exchange anymore. It may stay open as an archive for a few years, but they'll shut it down completely like they did with The Sims 1 Exchange when TS3 came out.

I just wanted to get y'alls comments/opinions/concerns on the potential Closing.

Personally I fell that the second it closes MANY MANY more websites like this one, Boolprop, Writers Hangout and SWG will start to pop up, allowing writers to get more exposure and ppl to read their stories. Also, it may cause many ppl to stop writing sims stories all together, or just switch to Sims 3.

WHAT DO Y'ALL THINK?

[jillyson]

I think You're right on all counts, and if there's anything you wanted on the EX, now would be the time to grab it! I've already copied my story into Word, so I'm good there.

Thanks for sharing the news! I'm going to move this over to the S2 section so everyone can see it.

[joandsarah]

mY FIRST THOUGHT IS 'yIKES i BETTER GRAB MY OLD CHAPTERS OFF THE EXCHANGE' (oops sorry caps lock)

Apart from that I don't really care. It was a hangout for many horrible stories written by 11 year olds without any parental supervision it seems. There were also some horrible uploads of child sims with boob morphs. I only know about those things from reading GOS threads. So if this shuts down an avenue to those things it will be good. Hopefully reputable sites will refuse to house such things.

[Deleted]

yup. I spent yesterday converting my Bally legacy chapters to slideshows and slideshare. Now I'm going to do the Uglacy for my friend and my Phobian Legacy

[joandsarah]

How do you do that?

I just went and tried to grab an old tutorial of mine 'restraunt Rescue'

I put it on blog view and copied it all over to Word. But then the pictures are all tiny.

Do I have to copy and paste each page at a time?! I've got a lot of chapters on there.

[Deleted]

Jo-I used this program wtsims.livejournal.com/39347.html-it will tell you what verison to get. Then you extract the files, and then you put the id assesst number-it will convert it to a slideshow and then you can put it on slideshare/scrid

[joandsarah]

LJ might be mucking up as that link goes to page not found.

[Brianna]

Yeah I was wondering the same thing cause thats what I'm currently doing-_- page by page..

[joandsarah]

Okay so I went over to Boolprop and see a link there, it goes to the ladies page and her page goes to the download page. But there are three downloads.

I have not a clue what this means:

the Versions text file will tell you which version to grab.

Some instructions for the computer illiterate would be good! What text file and where is this thing?! I've downloaded two of them to my desktop, seem like they use Power Point which I also have not the foggiest clue about! I only use Word. I sure would like it to work because they say you can download your stories rather than grabbing each page.


Ashley I don't know how you can understand this stuff, but some help for us dummies would be muchly appreciated.

ladies page: wtsims.livejournal.com/39347.html Download link is hard to see, but it's in the text of her post there.

Well i got a black window up and tried typing the whole URL into it and got told it couldn't find it. I can't seem to copy paste in there.

[Deleted]

Yes, you can't copy or paste in there. But when you see the black box-did it ask for an id number? If so-put that in the box and hit enter and then it will say something about getting it from the exchange-press yes, then put the id number in again and boom you have it converted

[joandsarah]

So you don't need the whole URL? I tried typing the whole thing

thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?&asset_id=215925&asset_type=story&user_id=1604938&defTab=blog&showFrames=-1

And then it said it couldn't be found. I can't be doing that for 30 odd chapters.

Also how do you know which link to download? I used the .EXE one.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Okay so I tried the second number and that didn't work, tried the first and it says it's downloading-but where is it downloading to?

Then it says press centre to use the default -what does that mean?

How does everyone else seem to know how to use this?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well along with much hair pulling I think I have got the first story! Now I don't know how to use Power Point, but at least if all the tiles are done and in I guess it only needs an edit and then I can save as a PDF. This dervers a proper tutorial.

[jillyson]

And Jo gave us one!

desirablediscourses.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=gotopost&board=tutorials&thread=3123&post=84086

Thanks to Puddingroy & Jo for working this all out!

[joandsarah]

See a need, fill a need... as they say in the Robot movie!

[holleyberry]

Stupid EA!

[Tina ☺]

Hell, I saved all my stories that are posted there to Word almost the minute I uploaded them! All you have to do is switch the view to 'blog style', click 'view all pics', or whatever it says, and then copy the whole thing and paste it into a Word document. Of course it also copies all the little icons, etc along with it, but then all you do is go through and delete those.

Crap! ALL my freaking chapters of 'Villa' are posted there, except for the last two, I think! That means I am going to have to upload those to slide share and post them at LJ too... then the stupid things will be out of order! As anal as I am about such things, I'll have to delete the two chapters that are on LJ already and re-post them after the earlier chapters...

And THEN, I have my 'An Immortal's Dream' story in which ALL the chapters are posted at the Exchange. With that, at the first four chapters have crappy pics and will look horrible in slide share...

Ah well, just the other day someone got me to thinking about that old story and I thought about reshooting those older pictures and then posting the whole thing up on LJ through slide share, so I guess now I am going to have to get past the 'thinking about it' stage.