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lea_hazelI think I mentioned that this summer I got two expansion packs for The Sims 3 (I know I've mentioned being obsessed with TS3). Both of these put a noticeable strain on my graphics card, despite my best hopes and the overall quality of my hardware. Nontheless, with some intelligent management my game is playable and enjoyable, though I'm looking forward to a point in time (possibly next summer, or even spring) when I can splurge on upgrading my card and bring my game back up to the level of speed and crispness that I enjoyed with the base game only.
Now I want to ramble about what I've been playing. Feel free to ignore this.
I've been suffering from a lapse in Sim attention span, but I think I've finally recaptured the spirit of monogamy that once spurred me to play a single Sim family through 7-8 generations, until I made the critical error of choosing the Lifetime Wish to raise five children. My attention span for raising Sim kids is severely limited, and I have tried twice to play this LTW and enjoy it, and have failed miserably both time. At this point I'm resolved never to choose it again unless for townies, for the purpose of spamming a town with Simlets. Or for a vampire. Heh. Anyway, I still get nostalgic for my Lin legacy sometimes, even though I've never considered pulling out my old save files and loading them up.
Since installing Late Night this summer, and Generations shortly thereafter, there were four main neighborhoods that I used to take advantage of their features. I started out in Bridgeport, the city world that came with Late Night. It was a trial and error of gameplay deal, and I don't see myself going back to that save. I may back it up, or even delete it. Likely I'll go back to a fresh Bridgeport at some future date, with a more specific goal than exploration. I don't know. I learned a lot of Mixology though, and I think it's going to be one of my favorite skills.
My second game was a save of the default world that I named Midnight Valley. I nuked the population and moved in a bunch of Sims that have been sitting in my Sim bin for ages. This is at least the second go-around for most of them. Then I went about creating or adapting community lots in order to give the world a more city-like feel and take advantage of LN's many exciting features. I adapted two residential houses into lounges -- the Goth Manor is atmospherically perfect for vampires. This is actually the save game that I'm playing devotedly right now. I spent hours in it over the weekend.
My third game was a yet-unpopulated, still in progress, citification of Riverview. Naturally I named it River City and I go in there when I feel like building. Eventually I think I'll upload some of the venues I built there, such as a dive bar with a fishing lake. It's a fun, lowkey project.
My fourth and currently abandoned game was a Twinbrook save populated by Nraas's story progression mod. I used it to experiment with the immigration options. I thought for a while I would settle down with the two roommates I created, a vampire musician and a teacher/mixologist. This was where I tried out Generations' bachelor party function with the dancer NPC. But, alas, the game crashed while I was marrying the secretly wild teacher to his sweetheart (in a romantic private beachside ceremony at sunset), and I lost my groove. Then I started playing Patrice again and I remembered how much I liked her. I got into a phase in her life where the Gen features get awesome, and it was just all good.
Patrice Marko is an actress in Midnight City. Right now she's an elder, has achieved her LTW of being a superstar actress, is married to her third and final (and younger) love interest, has three kids and is fairly wealthy. In her quest for celebrity-for-promotions she bonked two up-and-coming musicians from my Sim bin, and got knocked up by one of them. I don't actually remember if I planned the pregnancy or if I just let one of my mods take its course with a 10% chance. Once she had the kid she was "disgraced" in the public eye because the had a child "out of wedlock", a feature that I'd be glad to mod. This also caused her to roll a wish to get married. Since rock stars are typically not husband material, I spam-romanced her male maid, who turned out to want to be an astronaut. I changed that to 20 friends, because the friend wish I relatively easy and fun.
Adan Marko, nee Hines, is a charismatic ex stay-at-home dad currently making his way in politics. Since Patrice achieved the first four stars of celebrity fairly easily as an actress, when he married her he joined in on the whirlwind of stardom. Currently she's got five stars and he's got four. He helped raise her son Jonah, and since he's younger, I was going to let them have a second so they could have a daughter together. I got twins. Oops. Raising the kids was hard, I've forgotten a lot about toddlers and I couldn't get the timing right. Out of all three, only Wanda grew up well from toddler to child. I've been experimenting with Generations features, so she and Ralph are currently in prep school as kids, and they're going right back as teens.
Ralph and Jonah both developed undesirable traits due to bad conditions. Jonah especially is a pain in the ass, because his pregnancy was also bad. He's also gay, which is currently difficult since the only other gay dude in town is a fellow he doesn't get along with. Messing around with mod settings should help, but if things get drastic I can always create a few new Sims to meet the need. Jonah also has an imaginary friend named Bean, whom he successfully turned real after some misadventures. As kids, it's easy to keep IFs happy. Once you turn teen, though, it's harder to relate with them and also they get kind of clingy. Acquiring the Pinocchio potion was a minor achievement, but it took long enough that Jonah and Bean weren't best friends by the time he had it.
Once the twins' high-end education is complete, Jonah and Bean will probably be living on their own. i think I'll use the inheritance bonus to move them into a nice place, and then let story progression take its course. A career-related LTW is a must, then. Maybe Bean will be a director, since he's taking drama classes at school. The creepy thing about him is that apparently he's still not technically a full Sim, and he can turn back into a toy at will. Also, I thought at first that he was physically a clone of Jonah, but he just had the same hairstyle. I gave him a long braid, because he had Twilight Sparkle-esque pink-streaked purple hair, and it seemed appropriate.
Ralph will still make a good artist, and probably an architect. Wanda is a bookworm and I will get back to writing with her, which is one of my favorite skills. When I was playing the Lins, they had an enormous library of books written by the various generations of the family. I am also going to take full advantage of acquired legacy wealth. Once I've learned which LTWs/skills need funds to achieve, I'm sure I'll enjoy them a lot more. I also love having a butler, although if she'd been more efficient during the twins' toddler years... heh. Maybe that's also because of the lag I still sometimes get.
Midnight City also has some townie vampire celebrities that I created to help Patrice along with her career. I was assuming they'd cavort through the town, but they settled down in two married pairs almost immediately (!!!) and so now they are producing baby vamps at an alarming rate. Looks like the town may earn its name with dividends.
Yesterday was a horrid day and simming made me feel a lot better.
Now I want to ramble about what I've been playing. Feel free to ignore this.
I've been suffering from a lapse in Sim attention span, but I think I've finally recaptured the spirit of monogamy that once spurred me to play a single Sim family through 7-8 generations, until I made the critical error of choosing the Lifetime Wish to raise five children. My attention span for raising Sim kids is severely limited, and I have tried twice to play this LTW and enjoy it, and have failed miserably both time. At this point I'm resolved never to choose it again unless for townies, for the purpose of spamming a town with Simlets. Or for a vampire. Heh. Anyway, I still get nostalgic for my Lin legacy sometimes, even though I've never considered pulling out my old save files and loading them up.
Since installing Late Night this summer, and Generations shortly thereafter, there were four main neighborhoods that I used to take advantage of their features. I started out in Bridgeport, the city world that came with Late Night. It was a trial and error of gameplay deal, and I don't see myself going back to that save. I may back it up, or even delete it. Likely I'll go back to a fresh Bridgeport at some future date, with a more specific goal than exploration. I don't know. I learned a lot of Mixology though, and I think it's going to be one of my favorite skills.
My second game was a save of the default world that I named Midnight Valley. I nuked the population and moved in a bunch of Sims that have been sitting in my Sim bin for ages. This is at least the second go-around for most of them. Then I went about creating or adapting community lots in order to give the world a more city-like feel and take advantage of LN's many exciting features. I adapted two residential houses into lounges -- the Goth Manor is atmospherically perfect for vampires. This is actually the save game that I'm playing devotedly right now. I spent hours in it over the weekend.
My third game was a yet-unpopulated, still in progress, citification of Riverview. Naturally I named it River City and I go in there when I feel like building. Eventually I think I'll upload some of the venues I built there, such as a dive bar with a fishing lake. It's a fun, lowkey project.
My fourth and currently abandoned game was a Twinbrook save populated by Nraas's story progression mod. I used it to experiment with the immigration options. I thought for a while I would settle down with the two roommates I created, a vampire musician and a teacher/mixologist. This was where I tried out Generations' bachelor party function with the dancer NPC. But, alas, the game crashed while I was marrying the secretly wild teacher to his sweetheart (in a romantic private beachside ceremony at sunset), and I lost my groove. Then I started playing Patrice again and I remembered how much I liked her. I got into a phase in her life where the Gen features get awesome, and it was just all good.
Patrice Marko is an actress in Midnight City. Right now she's an elder, has achieved her LTW of being a superstar actress, is married to her third and final (and younger) love interest, has three kids and is fairly wealthy. In her quest for celebrity-for-promotions she bonked two up-and-coming musicians from my Sim bin, and got knocked up by one of them. I don't actually remember if I planned the pregnancy or if I just let one of my mods take its course with a 10% chance. Once she had the kid she was "disgraced" in the public eye because the had a child "out of wedlock", a feature that I'd be glad to mod. This also caused her to roll a wish to get married. Since rock stars are typically not husband material, I spam-romanced her male maid, who turned out to want to be an astronaut. I changed that to 20 friends, because the friend wish I relatively easy and fun.
Adan Marko, nee Hines, is a charismatic ex stay-at-home dad currently making his way in politics. Since Patrice achieved the first four stars of celebrity fairly easily as an actress, when he married her he joined in on the whirlwind of stardom. Currently she's got five stars and he's got four. He helped raise her son Jonah, and since he's younger, I was going to let them have a second so they could have a daughter together. I got twins. Oops. Raising the kids was hard, I've forgotten a lot about toddlers and I couldn't get the timing right. Out of all three, only Wanda grew up well from toddler to child. I've been experimenting with Generations features, so she and Ralph are currently in prep school as kids, and they're going right back as teens.
Ralph and Jonah both developed undesirable traits due to bad conditions. Jonah especially is a pain in the ass, because his pregnancy was also bad. He's also gay, which is currently difficult since the only other gay dude in town is a fellow he doesn't get along with. Messing around with mod settings should help, but if things get drastic I can always create a few new Sims to meet the need. Jonah also has an imaginary friend named Bean, whom he successfully turned real after some misadventures. As kids, it's easy to keep IFs happy. Once you turn teen, though, it's harder to relate with them and also they get kind of clingy. Acquiring the Pinocchio potion was a minor achievement, but it took long enough that Jonah and Bean weren't best friends by the time he had it.
Once the twins' high-end education is complete, Jonah and Bean will probably be living on their own. i think I'll use the inheritance bonus to move them into a nice place, and then let story progression take its course. A career-related LTW is a must, then. Maybe Bean will be a director, since he's taking drama classes at school. The creepy thing about him is that apparently he's still not technically a full Sim, and he can turn back into a toy at will. Also, I thought at first that he was physically a clone of Jonah, but he just had the same hairstyle. I gave him a long braid, because he had Twilight Sparkle-esque pink-streaked purple hair, and it seemed appropriate.
Ralph will still make a good artist, and probably an architect. Wanda is a bookworm and I will get back to writing with her, which is one of my favorite skills. When I was playing the Lins, they had an enormous library of books written by the various generations of the family. I am also going to take full advantage of acquired legacy wealth. Once I've learned which LTWs/skills need funds to achieve, I'm sure I'll enjoy them a lot more. I also love having a butler, although if she'd been more efficient during the twins' toddler years... heh. Maybe that's also because of the lag I still sometimes get.
Midnight City also has some townie vampire celebrities that I created to help Patrice along with her career. I was assuming they'd cavort through the town, but they settled down in two married pairs almost immediately (!!!) and so now they are producing baby vamps at an alarming rate. Looks like the town may earn its name with dividends.
Yesterday was a horrid day and simming made me feel a lot better.
