Hi, everyone!

We're getting ready to release a holiday update for our mobile versions of VF2, and we wanted to make the new "stuff" available to everyone who plays our Windows and Mac games. Since there are significant obstacles to releasing an updated game on desktop, we want to give the modders in our community early access to the image files that will be included in the mobile versions (the mobile version updates are not available yet). These images include special holiday food, decor, and outfits that can be used to create a festive atmosphere in your game.

Please note that these images are not integrated into the programming of the desktop versions of VF2, so your little family members will not know that these special holiday items exist, and it will take knowledge of modding in order to use them (along with appropriate software for image manipulation, transparency, file names, etc.). The easiest thing to do is to create "holiday scenes" on the game's map images by placing some of the new items into the various rooms in the game. That will allow you to nicely decorate the house without a lot of intricate photoshopping. The most difficult to use will be the holiday outfits, since they will need to be "assembled" into the existing animation strips and carefully aligned. The "medium difficulty" way to get this content into your game would be to replace existing decor images with the holiday ones (including file backing up/renaming and possible image adjustments). That would allow you to move them around and place them wherever you like, but it does take more effort than simply placing the decor onto the map images. We hope that making these images available to our community will let you have some extra holiday fun with your families!

Kathy is working on a couple of mods that she will post in the VF2 Mods Forum when she's finished them. If you have any comments or questions about the images or about modding, please post them in the Virtual Families 2 Mod Comments and Discussion forum.

You can download the new images from our cloud server. We hope you have fun with them!

Please note: Please back up all of your game's existing image files before you attempt to work with these new images, so that you can safely restore everything in case of problems!!!

Also, these images are usable only in the Windows and Mac versions of VF2. They won't work on mobile, even if you have access to your device's file system, since the images have been converted to a proprietary compressed format and are not png files in the game. This new content will become available for iOS and Android devices, and will be fully functional in the game, when the updates have been released on the various app stores.

This ROCKS! I can't wait to start modding with these!

Im so excited about the update. I'm using my android tablet and was doing the happy dance when I got the update. Nothing wrong with a middle age woman getting excited over a game. This was very much needed. Something fresh. I was getting tired of seeing the same thing every generation. THANKS A BUNCH!!!