Still Workin' On It

I haven't played Laurel since putting in my clean template, so I have to redecorate her apartment before I can do the next update. And I have to finish her store! Holy crap, she's been so worried about being ready for the grand opening in time and here I am goofing off and causing her delays! Bad Beverly!

Poor Nigel (and: So Much For The Hiatus)

Yeah, yeah, I am supposed to be working on my family tree project, but I couldn't resist a little Simming.

When I put in a clean template for Belladonna Cove, I unintentionally deleted the Drummond house, so I decided to renovate the Eaxis Witch Sisters House (the Cordial family, I think) and move Heidi and family in there.

I converted it to a four bedroom, four bath home. Sylvia (Grandma) and the boys have very small bedrooms, but the Drummonds are all about family togetherness, so they will be spending most of their time in their lovely new family room or in the kitchen.

While I was looking for some toilet paper for the bathrooms ('cause I am compulsive that way - my Sims always have TP and soap and towels and light switches and heating vents and so forth), I stumbled across a UNICORN.

I had to have it.

But, what to do with it?

I remembered that the last time I played the Drummonds, Nigel was constantly turning on the TV to watch the movie about fairies. And I thought "Oh, no, what would Sophia say if she knew this?"

*Evil snicker*

So now Nigel is a sensitive boy who likes fairy movies and has dreams about unicorns.

He's going to have a rough childhood, but don't worry. I have a special plan to make it all up to him later.

Short Hiatus?

I think I'll probably take about two weeks off Simming. I signed up for a free trial at Ancestry.com and I want to get a lot of work done there before I have to cancel my trial subscription. 'Cause yeah, it's like $200 or something. And guess what? It's as user-unfriendly as an unpatched, un-Pescado'd version of the Sims!

I might get fed up and work on my Sims instead.

WTH? That's Unsavory!

I know that AL causes the Unsavory Charlatan to show up in all sorts of odd places, but the local elementary school? JEEZ!

I didn't see any children running away screaming "BAD TOUCH", so I guess he was just there to steal their lunch money.

Too bad for him - Sophia probably already did that.

Be Gone!

I just can't deal with the overabundance of townies and Eaxis playables SWARMING ALL OVER Belladonna Cove.

And I do mean SWARMING!

Just because I got interested in one Eaxis family does not mean I wish to be subjected to SWARMS.

So I cloned everysim of importance yesterday, installed a clean template, and am now busily making decent Sims to provide a background population for the hood.

Some notes of interest (or not):

-- Never, never ignore an error message in SimPE. I did and ended up replacing Laurel, Sophia, Marcus, the Drummond twins, and the twins' grandmother with clones of Kate Seldon. WTH. Luckily, I am aware of my ineptitude and had made a backup since I knew I'd screw something up. So it's all good now.

-- Even with a blank template, there are still over 50 characters required to run Belladonna Cove! I could do NPC replacements, but that's a bit too much effort for right now. I'll never see most of those NPCs, anyway. My main interest is decreasing the SWARM!

-- I've prosperity rolled about 15 or so families so far and guess how many teenagers I've gotten. One!

-- I said I prosperity rolled them, but that's a lie. I actually DO start the families out that way, I'll add, subtract, or split up families to make things more realistic. For example, I always seem to get a jillion single parent families, so after a while, I just start adding in another parent. Or, if I get too many elder-adult-children families, I'll break them up into smaller households.

-- I really like making Sim families.

Oh Noes! What Have I Done?!?!?

I adore Sophia, but I am starting to feel pretty bad about putting all these other innocent chillens in her path. First the Drummond twins, now poor little Brianna Seldon. Oh, bad, bad Beverly.

Do y'all ever feel sorry for your Sims after you make bad things happen to them?

By Request - AL Toddler Interactions

For those who were wondering what the new toddler interactions look like, here are some screenshots.

By the way, that's custom hair on the girl and a custom outfit on the boy. Custom clothes for the parents, too, but the Mom's hair comes with AL.

PEEKABOO

Or, as we say in the South, "Peepeye".

This is my favorite new toddler interaction, because the kiddos laugh so much.

In picture 1, you can see the little boy raring back in excitement.

In picture 3, you can see his sister pointing eagerly at Mommy. "Ah-ha, Mom, you can't fool me!"








THE HORSEY

A parent helps the toddler onto the horse. See Dad guarding the little one's noggin?

The kid rocks back and forth and when he gets into it, he does a cute little rodeo cowboy hand in the air thing.

Exit from the horsey comes via the Toddler Butt Flop. You know, that way they have of sitting down abruptly on their bottoms that would cripple the average adult.









THE HUGGLE

Although these toddlers can't yet walk, they did stand and lumber toward each other for the huggle.

The girl initiated this huggle. See her little arms waving in the first shot? Her brother didn't look too thrilled with the idea at first.

They kept huggling with their faces turned away from me for some reason.

I Love This Grocery Store!

Since I'm doing a realistic-ish Sim story, I decided I'd need a grocery store.

I tried building my own once for another hood that I had and it really looked great, but I'd crammed in too much stuff and couldn't play it without crashing my game.

So I downloaded this awesome one from MTS2. It's by sunni9676 and I love it!

It's beautiful and it did not kill my game. It has everything - all the grocery stuff, a meat counter, a cafe area, a little customer service desk, even an office and break room upstairs.

The only slight problem I noticed was that the cash registers look like they might have to be moved around slightly in order to be functional, but hey, it's wonderific in every other way, so I encourage anyone who needs a grocery store to bust over to MTS2 and download it.

Fires and Sweetness

Ever notice how retarded Sims are about fires?

"Oh, no, fire!"
"Let's all run over to the flames and panic!"
"Oh, the fire's out now."
"Hmmm, let's eat these burnt pancakes."
"Wow, these taste like crap."

Laurel really did have a cooking fire, but I re-wrote it for better effect. At least, I hope it was better.

Moving on to the sweetness - I played the Drummond family for several Sim days to see if I could figure out why Dr. D. hates Ben with a purple passion.

It was one big happy family love fest over there. They all adore each other, and they're sweet enough to give a person cavities.

But I finally hit on the one possible reason Dr. Drummond could have for disliking Ben . . . to be revealed once I get Laurel's fire drama a bit more settled.

Ben Can't Catch A Break

Since Ben has so much turmoil in his personal life, I had envisioned a peaceful, happy professional life for him.

Unfortunately, his boss will not stop slapping him.



This doesn't look too promising.

Character Backgrounds

Here's a bit on how this story came to be set up the way it is.

Laurel was a CAS I made to explore Belladonna Cove. Naturally, she was to be a witch. She was also a fortune Sim with a LTW to be a criminal mastermind. But, she had no interest in crime. I thought about making her a gambler, but she had a high interest in culture and I didn't feel like trying to find a custom roulette wheel for her, so I decided she'd just be a golddigger instead.

I sent her out to meet a witch and some rich guys. She met
Eaxis sim Benjamin Baldwin and fell for him instantly. Later, I downloaded ACR to check their attraction score. It was 245! (That was after about five dates.) Since she was so in love with Ben, she obviously couldn't be a golddigger any more, and meanwhile, I'd turned those two Eaxis sisters into witches, so I decided since Laurel had a high interest in fashion, I'd just have her date Ben and open a clothing boutique.

Then I noticed Ben was married.

D'oh. I'm forever hooking up my sims without remembering to check for wedding rings.

So now the big question was: Why is a married man so totally in love with some random woman?

I checked out Ben's household and was intrigued.

Here's Isabel, no job, and only one active point. On free will, all she does is goof off. She won't even eat unless Ben cooks and calls her to the meal. She just snarfs from the fridge. She was so bad about drinking from the milk carton instead of cooking, I thought that I'd accidentally installed a no-autonomy fridge hack, but nope, it really was due to Isabel being lazy.

So I decided Isabel must be a stay at home mom who does not care enough about her children to actually do the hard work required of a full time mommy.

This = tragedy + drama.

And a good excuse for Ben to despise her.

Marcus is mostly a blank slate, but Sophie's personality added some more fun. She has nine active points. Since she and her mother are almost totally opposites in that regard, I decided they would not get along. And, dear Sophie has a high interest in politics. What kind of politics would a child be interested in? Well, maybe she is interested in kiddie drama at school. I decided to make her the kind of girl that tattles and bullies and gossips and just generally messes with her classmates' heads.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

I adjusted a few more tidbits to make this work. Since Ben's job is "inventor", I made him an alternative fuel researcher. I moved his family into a house. I gave Ben and Laurel romance for their secondary aspirations. And since Ben had already given Laurel a fancy TV as a gift for a dream date, I put in a bit about him helping her set up her business. I had her buy the smallest store that came with Bluewater Village, and now she's busily sewing custom outfits to stock her store. Meanwhile, poor Ben is trying to squeeze in time to see her, but he's usually pretty busy taking care of his kids after work. He doesn't get much sleep.

I have no idea what's going to happen in this story. I'm letting my Sims do whatever they want for the most part, and working their actions into the story as I go. I've put a ton of CAS sims of different backgrounds into their hood, so they will have plenty of interesting people to interact with down the road.

With an initial set up like this, I think it's going to be a fun story!

Gameplay Stories and Aging Off

Doing a gameplay story is such a blast after doing a pre-scripted story!

It's fun to be able to play and write at the same time.

Just so y'all know, I'm playing Whistle with aging off. I feel too rushed if I leave it on. I like to take the time to get to know my sims. Plus, with aging off, I can put them in situations that take a long time to play out.

They'll be following their own realistic calender, too. For example, the Saturday that starts off the story is September 27. I'll try to think of a way to work it so that the current sim-date is more obvious.

I hope no one was feeling overly anxious to see what Marcus would look like as a child. :-O