Simantics: Virtually virtual buildings

Jul31

While Charles was teaching Fabian how to fight, Viola Sharpe was harassing Michelle Yo in the foyer. I have no idea what the action means, but it doesn’t look nice.

 

Then they sat down and annoyed each other over dinner.

 

In addition to all the lights seeming to have disappeared from the Salon, the camera has gone bonkers when I try to take shots of action inside.

Behold:

 

 
Townie/Cross-Pollination Update

 

And here is Arlo Bunch Sharpe (Velvet’s husband), who decided to drop in unannounced on a tender moment between Fabian and Zahra.

 

This has been happening more and more. I thought they were paparazzi that I couldn’t keep out, but they’re not. They’re just random townies hanging out in the middle of the house. I’ve started using Twallan DebugEnabler to force them to go home so they don’t interfere with gameplay.

The lot they’re living on used to be a park. I’m wondering if EA still has a flag set someplace. Despite how much I love this lot, it might be a good reason to leave.

Townie/Cross-pollination:

Among the dearly departed in Sunset Valley are Jess Ursine-Hodgins (Sorry DragonWife!), Leighton Sekemoto (Sorry RedHead!), Michael Bachelor Alto, Emma Hatch Goth, and — perhaps less tragically depending on who you ask — Pauline Wan. And when Gus Hart-Williams reached 120 with no return visit from Grim, I killed him. The town is filled with grieving widows.

Morand Cagley is thrilled to call Bella Bachelor Cagley his wife.

Against all odds, Toya Ursine-Sample is expecting again! (Seriously, on Day 0 before aging up. Dang.) This will bring their total to five children plus their foster of Toya’s half-sister, though I fear Adjo will not see this late surprise child grow up.

Holly Alto spent about five minutes grieving for her lifelong love before going out with Mortimer. He asked her to be his girlfriend. She agreed and then immediately began two-timing him with newly divorced Sam French-Sekemoto. She also conned Malcom Landgraab out of a very large “campaign donation.” Wow, Holly. I guess Michael was the only thing keeping you honest.

Oh, wait, I just threw a party, and Michael Alto was on the list of people I could invite. So he’s not dead! HOLLY WHAT ARE YOU DOING??

Maya Langerak (no idea whose kid she is) persuaded Charmaine Ursine-Sample to accept her proposal of marriage. Can our free spirit Charmaine tie herself down to one woman, or is their love doomed from the start?

Arvid Voss and Darlene Branch welcomed their daughter Dayna — system crash — Katie into the world and still did not get married.

Brenna Ursine-Sample and Darwin Landgraab hate each other and are fighting playground wars.

Yet more people are nemeses with Genvieve Goth. She came up in an event I haven’t posted yet, and I looked up her traits. She really is almost the worst bitch you could create with this game. She is Grumpy, Coward, and Mean Spirited. (And Artistic and I forget the other.) Man, I’m glad that Charles couldn’t jump down that rabbithole.

4.27 The Battle of Midway

Jul31

Charles and Veronica’s birthdays passed almost unnoticed. They weren’t even able to celebrate together because Veronica had an extra shift at work.

 

 

 

 

The truth is that both of them were so exhausted from night feedings, toddler training, and long work hours that the best celebration they could come up with was sleep.

Here they were, halfway through their prime years. What did they have to show for it?

This problem seemed to bother Veronica a lot. She came home from her night shifts at work and woke Charles up to talk about it. Some of the reasons were obvious. She’d quit one career, had three babies, and picked up another. Most of her life was just starting out, so she hadn’t had much time to accomplish anything on her new path.

Still, her sense of uncertainty showed up in some strange places.

 

When she showed up at her regular appointment with at the salon to have her hair done, she asked Shanni to build her a completely new look.

“Tear me down and start over!” she said cheerfully.

Shanni raised her eyebrows. “All right. No looking back now!”

 

The first attempt was all right, but it was too, well, corporate culture for Veronica’s tastes.

 

“Let’s keep the hair,” she said.

“You hate it, don’t you?” Shanni asked.

“Just between friends? Yeah.”

 

The second attempt was much more to Veronica’s liking.

She went home and gave Charles The Eye until he clued in and complimented her on her new look.

[Insert missing picture of Veronica posing with her new look. As far ahead as I have played, and I don’t seem to have ANY simple poses of her. You’ll just have get an idea as we go along. ;-p. At least the shot of the game makeover above gives you a good look at her new hairstyle. I think her new clothes better suit an Eccentric.

ETA: OK, here is a totally out-of-context shot to show off the new look:

 
]

And then there was the car. Charles spent weeks persuading Zahra and Fabian to sell the gas-guzzling SUV monstrosity that Fabian had bought before he married Zahra. Neither of them drove it. Fabian preferred to tool around in his patrol car, and Zahra usually made her trips to the Science Center in the Prius because she felt that she ought to be using more advanced technology.

“Don’t worry,” Veronica said when Fabian finally agreed. “Leave it to me. I’ll take care of it.”

She headed off in the Tofunda Wagon in the morning.

 

And she came home in the afternoon with a shiny green Margaret Vaguester.

 

Sure, it had wiped out most of their savings, but MAN could that car go fast. Veronica looked fabulous behind the wheel, too.

 

For Charles, the whole growing older thing felt completely different. He had the Spirit Sample Dojo, and he’d spent half of his adult life finding and settling down with the woman of his dreams. What was so wonderful about recapturing his youth? His life now was better that it was then, and he hardly felt like he’d been wasting his time.

He did grow a beard that he was very proud of.

 

And he wasn’t at all happy to see the new car. “Forget how much it costs. Do you know what kind of gas mileage it gets?” he demanded. “You can hear the trees sobbing when you drive by!”

“We live out in the stix,” Veronica said. “I’ve cut my commute down to just minutes. Trust me. It’s really a very practical car.”

 

“That’s enough,” Charles said, and there was steel to his voice that Veronica had never heard. “You’re beautiful just as you are. You don’t have anything to prove. So stop trying to prove it. We don’t have to act young by being immature.”

“I’m not–!” Veronica started, but he held her gaze until the words trailed away. She dropped her eyes. “You’re right. I’m making a fool of myself. I’ll stop now.”

“Thank you,” Charles said. “I love you.” She did calm down, and that was the last they spoke of it.

But, Veronica still admitted in private, it really was a beautiful car.

———-

My ghost baby is middle aged!

Among the mysteriously missing pictures are the shots I took of both Veronica and Charles’s new looks. I have no idea what the heck happened to these shots.

Both of them rolled Midlife Crises as a matter of fact. Both of them wished to get a makeover, so I sent them to the Salon to get some cute shots of Shanni doing her job. However, when CHARLES arrived, I got a message saying that Occult sims couldn’t have makovers! What’s with that? So here he was with a wish locked in his queue that he couldn’t dismiss and couldn’t fulfill. I gave up on it and sent him to the hospital to get therapy instead. Stupid EA.

Veronica rolled the wish to buy an expensive car, but I did splurge on the fastest car in the game to reduce her commute into town. Their current lot is about as far from downtown as you can get, so she was wasting a lot of time during work.

Here’s Charles getting his head shrunk with Arvid Voss.

 

(Amhranai, “head shrinking” is slang for psychiatric therapy. I cannot keep my idiom under control. I do try :).)

I’m not sure if you can really get a good look at Charles’s new beard from that picture, but it really puts the crown on his John Lennon look. Middle aged Charles has delightfully chiseled features. I think he is my favorite sim so far, appearance-wise. I’m not sure the kids were quite as dominated by Veronica’s features after all; Charles’s cheekbones are quite distinctive.

4.26 Real Men

Jul30

More time passed with no promotion for Fabian. The harder he worked to model crime scenes in 3D, the more he might as well have been doing it in 2D. He felt himself tense up every time Malcolm Landgraab walked into the lab.

 

It just wasn’t fair.

Fabian wasn’t getting any younger. Plenty of men younger than he had retired to lives of leisure. Except Fabian didn’t know what he’d do with a life of leisure try to find more work.

The choice was quit so close to his goal or try something new.

“All right then,” he decided in one of his moments of quiet contemplation. “I’ll start acting the part of the hero.”

That’s how he found himself outside the Sample Spirit Dojo one evening after work.

 

Charles was outside, cooling off from a sparring match and looking at the stars. He looked up as Fabian approached, leaning on his glittery lama-head cane. “Fabian! What are you doing here?”

Fabian puffed up his chest. “It shouldn’t seem THAT strange that I would want to learn a thing or two about fighting,” he said. “Let’s go inside and see what you can teach me.”

 

“So this is the place,” Fabian said, looking around at the bamboo furnishings and artifacts from his stepson’s travel. “I’ve never been here before.”

Charles’s phone chirped, and he snatched it to put it on mute. “That’s right,” he said. “You haven’t.”

 

“It looks nice,” Fabian said. His voice sounded pathetic even to his own ears.

“So let me get this straight,” Charles said. “You want to learn how to fight?”

“What?” Fabian demanded. “You think I’m too old?”

Charles chuckled. “You wouldn’t be my oldest student. We get all kinds here. All right then, if you’re serious, let’s see what you can do.”

 

“What does that mean?” Fabian asked.

“This is a training dummy,” Charles said patiently. “Give it your best shot.”

Fabian took a deep breath. He’d never worked out more than Sunset Valley’s Finest required of him, and that had been when he was a beat cop half a lifetime away. He knew he was going to like an idiot. Backing down now would make him look even more like an idiot.

He dropped his cane and let it clatter on the polished floor. “Here goes!” he cried.

 

It was like opening up a cage and letting out Fabian the Animal. The dummy became Malcolm Landgraab, and he let the bastard have it!

 

Charles knew what he was doing, and Fabian found himself gently directed to strike in ways that hurt less and made the dummy make much more satisfying noises.

Finally, Fabian stopped and leaned on his knees. “I have to take a break,” he wheezed. Sweat dripped down his back and soaked into his shirt.

“That was a lot better than I expected,” Charles admitted. “You qualify for a white belt. Let me get you a gi.”

Fabian grinned. He qualified for a belt!

 

He was a one man martial arts machine, that’s what!

 

———-

I was desperate for anything to get Fabian’s job performance up, and he got an Opportunity to learn Martial Arts. Then he turned out to love it!

Finally got something out. Hopefully I can continue rolling before I drown myself in backposts.

The poll is officially closed, and I think we all know what I’m doing!

Populating Avalon

Jul24

OK, I swore that my next post would actually have story in it, but I lied. I’ve been staring at the next post on and off for days and not producing any text. I’m sure it will pass. There’s nothing wrong with the post plot itself; I think it’s cute.

Since 100% of you voters voted for Avalon, it’s not a big reveal that I’ve been working on it. I have almost all the public lots laid, and I LOVE it. It’s hard to create this many lots in the base game. I would like to download Create A World, but I am a Mac user. I’m casting about for access to Windows someplace so I can see how the more sophisticated lot placement works.

It’s listed as a medium-sized world, but it is LOT smaller than Sunset Valley. I think this will be a good thing for performance, but it has left me with only a few places where a lot as large as 40×40 will fit, and everything else has to be smaller. It was surprisingly hard to find an art museum and a library in the range of 30×30, but I’m thrilled with what I tracked down. I’ve been keeping a list of my downloaded lots and their locations so that I can both give credit and refer you guys to them.

I’m now working on residential neighborhoods. And here I get to the point of the post.

For genetic diversity, I’m going to be downloading a bunch of celebrity simselves and interesting faces from Mod the Sims. I’d really like to fill the rest of the place out with legacy families.

So here’s an invitation to export your family (it’d be nice if it were the whole family, since I need sims of all ages) and send me a link. It’ll be the ultimate in cross-pollination :).

And let me know if you’d like them to be made into Elves or not. By default, they’ll probably be Elfified :).

Got rid of the CAPTCHA?

Jul18

Dear readers, please verify:

I think I found the setting to turn off the horrible CAPTCHA (that code you have to type in from the unreadable image to prove you’re not a spambot).

Please verify that you’re not seeing it.

I swear the next post will actually have something to do with my legacy.

———-

BTW: Thanks for brainstorming with me guys. The newly tweaked story is now percolating in my brain. I think it’ll give me the stuff I want to play with while keeping the story one contiguous legacy.

Speaking of Polls

Jul18

I wanted to throw in a pitch for Amhranai’s heir poll over at Life at Appaloosa Plains. I’m really wrapped up in this one because she has such great choices and did such a fun job of introducing them. She needs more votes!

http://amhranais-sunset-valley.blogspot.com/2012/07/generation-4-heir-vote.html

It’s a good legacy too :).

The Fate of the Samples

Jul13

So, Gen 5 is about halfway through childhood in current gameplay. I’ll be in a position to lay down my story explanation for the elfland shakeup.

Background reading if you haven’t tracked this conversation:
SimDjinn, This is YOUR FAULT,
and The Plan.

I’m having mixed feelings about doing it as I see the characters develop, but I think it would work if I went that way.

After I spent so much time playing around in the Harry Potter world, yesterday the most fabulous little world showed up on Mod the Sims: Avalon! THIS is what I was looking for when I started messing around with the Harry Potter world. And the HP world is awesome, but:

A) It’s Harry Potter, and I don’t really want to do anything with the story

B) It’s from back in World Adventures

C) I’d have to add all the lots to this new world, but I already hunted them down, downloaded them, and installed them. Compared to that, placing isn’t a big deal.

So if I’m going to do pure fantasy, I’m inclined to go with Avalon. I can keep Hogwarts around and poke at it to see if I can come up with something fun to do with it.

As far as the sims in the town, I could:

1. Start with a brand new population and only bring along the Samples and a couple of families close them. Download fresh, current-generation cross-pollination sims and elfify them. Most of the ones I have have kind of run through their stories anyway.

2. Keep most of the current town population and turn them into elves.

3. Leave everyone as they are, but cull the population of sims the Samples have never met, then introduce a bunch of new elves to create a town of mixed genetics.

4. Hold off to do the elves in a different game.

As far as the town itself, I could:

1. Stay in Sunset Valley, which could add its own fantasy elements as it suits my whim.

2. Move to Hogwarts World.

3. Move to Avalon.

4. Move to Lunar Lakes, where anything can go on both the science fiction AND fantasy axes.

5. Hold off for the upcoming Supernatural expansion and move to Moonlight Falls, the town that comes with it. It is apparently inspired by the US Pacific Northwest, which would be pretty. And I suspect the expansion will be out by the time Gen 5 are adults.

I am not committing to doing only one more move. It seems to me that about the max I can expect to run in a given town is three generations.

There’s also the option of, whether I move the Samples or not, just leaving them as they are with no elves and cutting the legacy off at 7 generations to move on to other stuff. In a lot of ways, this seems like it would be truest to them and their personalities. The only reason I hesitate on doing THAT is that I’m tracking Pinstar points, and I feel like I lose my scoring rights if I don’t make it to Gen 10 like a proper Pinstar legacy. I’ve come this far tracking all the !@#$ points. I don’t want to invalidate it! Heh.

I am going to put up a poll to get you guys’s advice on what YOU think would be fun.

4.25 They’re Back

Jul10

A dark figure crept across the Sample lawn in broad daylight.

 

Peering in the windows and taking photographs as they went innocently about their lives.

 

“That guy looks familiar,” Ada said one day over breakfast. “Doesn’t he have a great hat?”

Veronica glanced out and saw red.

It was Kirby Hawkins, the former butler. Now he had a new career as a paparazzi, and he’d led the entire swarm of locusts down on their new hideaway.

 

“That bastard!” Veronica swore. “I am not going to let them peer at us like we’re in a zoo. Or worse yet, like we’re politicians!”

She was on the phone immediately, calling contractors. By the end of the week, the entire estate was walled off and gated.

 

Together, Veronica and Zahra designed a state-of-the-art security system that checked retinal scans and fingerprints at the door.

 

Let them get past this.

———-

Yeah, the first paparazzi just stood facing the wall the whole time he was there. The second shot would have been a whole lot more menacing he’d he’d actually been looking IN the window.

Yep, as soon as he was fired, StoryProgression made Kirby into a paparazzi. It was only a matter of time before he showed up at the house. I wanted to get a shot of his truly stylin’ everyday outfit when he was fired, but the game crashed JUST as I was taking the picture.

Simantics: Ghostly mishaps

Jul9

While I’m getting my act together for the next post, an interlude…

A closer shot of Latrice Hodgins, since she followed Veronica home from the salon for no apparent reason, then hung around the house until someone kicked her out.

Apparently, she found the Samples really entertaining.

 

It seems appropriate that Veronica should drive to her first day at work in an invisible car.

 

Poor Charles just can’t catch a break.

 

Here’s a fantastic animation fail.

 

I think that Hunter is supposed to be INSIDE the toy box.

 

Here’s a random shot of Mortimer Goth and Emma Hatch Goth’s son. He got a really bad roll on the everyday outfit. That muscle shirt really needs to go.

 

I removed a bunch of custom content while trying to debug my horrible lag (which is improved but still laggy). I think this picture is from some point where I accidentally removed Charles’s hair. But I honestly can’t remember.

 

He’s not bald. He had some kind of patterned buzz cut, which makes it even funnier.

And I really, seriously, have NO IDEA why I took this shot. I went to a lot of trouble to get it too.

 

That’s one Autumn Salad up close and personal.