I’m on the verge of a mental breakdown...

Okay, I’ll tell you what happened: the hard drive I use for mass storage (an HDD) failed following a Windows update.

This has pushed me to my breaking point; I suffer from depression, and this is a massive blow.

As I write this, I’m on the verge of tears and ready to quit creating UI mods for The Sims 4.

Why? It’s simple: I can no longer update my mods—whether to fix an incompatibility or release an update—unless I recreate every single file from scratch.

The worst part is that Windows recognizes the hard drive and can read it, but once it’s installed, my laptop becomes very slow and nothing opens properly.

I want to recover the drive without losing anything, since all my work, program backups, and so on are on it. I was planning to take it to a technician, but I don't have the means right now; I need 20,000 Mexican pesos (almost $1,000 USD) to repair it.

Why? I pawned my wedding ring because I had debts.

• I had to pay for my daughters' uniforms because the principal decided to change the uniforms for all grade levels, rather than just for incoming students as in previous years.

• My partner’s SUV had an issue with its automatic transmission; since she has supported me with my daughters in the past, and we can’t be without a vehicle, we split the cost.

• Furthermore, my laptop had already failed back in August, and I spent nearly a week unable to get anything done—which set off this chain of expenses and bad luck.

  • I have my laptop back, but there's a catch...

• I’ve renewed the ring loan and made a principal payment twice now; I received 25,500 Mexican pesos (almost $1,400 USD).

• not to mention other common day-to-day expenses.

I’m at my breaking point, working extra hours at the clinic, since everything goes toward paying off debts at the end of the month. I can’t work on my mods the way I’d like to because I’m just so exhausted. My job is consuming all my time right now.

I can share that tomorrow I will release an update for the dark mode, in which I’ve addressed several issues related to Clubs, Dynasty, third-party mod patches, and the interface color. Furthermore, patches will now be handled as a separate installation—a new approach designed to avoid the need to update the entire mod in the future, focusing instead solely on resolving incompatibilities with third-party mods. Since The Sims will no longer be receiving major updates, mods are becoming more complex, which in turn leads to more conflicts.

If you would like to help me, any amount—no matter how small—would be welcome. I need at least 170 dollars to be able to send my hard drive off for recovery. For now, I cannot provide a date for when things will return to normal.

Jajajaja, a few weeks ago was my birthday, and my girlfriend and daughters gave me some "pingüinos" [snack cakes] as a birthday cake. They know we can’t spend much right now, since there are other, higher-priority expenses, but what matters is that they were by my side.

And no, this does not affect these mods, since they consist of game code; nothing has been written from scratch.

• No more positive reactions due to reputation

• Feed babies without parental restriction

• No more autonomous reactions to decorations

• The observer trait is now improved.

• No more random singing on holidays

• No more holiday goal completion animations

• Spawn Control: Random NPCs and Services

I also rely on the Tuning Builder for The Sims 4 by Lot 51 for my work, as it makes it easier and more intuitive to see exactly what I am moving or modifying.

Thank you so much; I still want to keep making mods, but this has really hit me hard emotionally, and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to recover.