Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Why I'm so Quiet

Well, yes, it's because I've been playing other video games.

Here's why I've been playing other video games:

Ever since installing Pets, my game has become laggy and unstable enough to more or less suck all the fun out of playing it.

This has been a gradual and measurable decline.

Before World Adventures, I could do as I liked with the game - play in any town I wanted, have a large CC collection, and live with a family of any size in any lot I fancied.  There were still some problems, but overall, not that bad.

By the time World Adventures rolled into Ambitions, I had to trim my CC collection down, and houses with more than 4-5 people in it, or lots of more than 40 x 40 size, were un-doable.

By the time Generations came around, to keep my game performing, my CC collection was bare-minimum at just default replacements, a few skins, and a handful of Twallan's mods.  I was unable to play in a town with more than 50-70 people in it.

When I installed Pets, I tried out Appaloosa Plains with a single sim in a starter home, and crashed three times in the first day.  I pared down my Twallan mods even more, moved to a small custom world with a population of about 30, kept my lot modest, and even then, by the time my singleton sim had acquired a decent collection of pets - a couple horses, a cat, and a dog - I was back to laggy and unstable.

So let's go over that again:

- I cannot play in any EA worlds, or any custom worlds of similar size and population.  I will crash.
- I cannot keep a normal custom content collection.  No custom hair, clothes, furniture, cars, or the like.  I will crash.
- I cannot live on a large lot, no matter how wealthy my sims are.  I will crash.
- I cannot have a household of more than 4 playable individuals, including pets.  I will crash.
- I could theoretically remove Twallan's StoryProgression to try and ease the load, but before I got SP, no one in my towns married, bred, worked, or did anything but age until death.  Boring.

And this is in addition to all the normal bugs that come and go with each update.

My computer is NOT crap.  I have a proper desktop machine, 2.66ghz quad-core processor, 8GB memory, and a 1024MB graphics card.  However, EA cannot code for Mac worth a crap.  They just wrap the game in a Windows emulator and call the bloated result OSX compatible.

So, at this point, I am finding a lot of other things I'd rather be doing than playing Sims 3.  I'm not gonna jump on a soapbox and scream at EA for it - they won't listen anyway -  but I will find other things to do, and stop giving them my money in the meantime.

Friday, November 25, 2011

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Her Name Is Skittles

Just a little treat for you before bedtime...

I got the idea in my head to make a populated cemetery.  The graveyards filled with nondescript "Remains" that most custom worlds boast are boring.  This involved killing a LOT of sims in rapid succession.

Which soon led to the realization that none of my sims have diddled with an active Grim Reaper since before Late Night came out.

Heh.  That strut...



And with our new critters running around Simsland now, the cemetery just had to have a pets section.

So, in the interest of collecting victims to fill my graves, I adopted a kitten and threw it into CAS to tweak its appearance.

... Have you seen what happens when you try to use a preset body shape on a kitten in CAS?


Isn't she precious?

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Thwarted

(#&*%*$

So, the only way pets can die is old age?  Really?

My simself fulfilled her Lifetime Wish of owning 2 of each pet type (all the way down to beetles!), and after a couple days of that chaos I decided to off some of the excess for the sake of game stability (big households = crashy crashy) and being able to move around my living room.  Also because I like ghosts.

Built a pool, threw the dog in, built a fence and dragged the energy bar down.  The minute the Drowning moodlet appeared, she auto-teleported out of the pool.

Built a shed with no door, put the cat in, and set it on fire.  The minute the fire caught the cat, he auto-teleported out of the shed.

Sent the dog and the cat out for a long walk into an empty field.  Dropped a meteor right down on their fuzzy little heads.  When the explosion cleared, they were standing around, safe and sound, next to a giant space rock.

And of course if you try to starve them, the social worker comes to get you.

I imagine electrocution isn't going to work either, and I probably can't order a kitten to attack an angry mummy.

Seriously, where's the fun in indestructible pets?

Monday, October 31, 2011

Intermission

So where've I been?

Eh.  Things.  I dunno, I got distracted and it's a video game.

I got my mitts on Pets a few days ago, though.  And you know what?

I rolled my eyes with the rest of them when I heard about the new Occult type that came with this expansion.  I really did.

But Sim-Unicorns?  Actually pretty cool.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Everyday Unusual

Ah, the same old thing, really.  I logged in, I simmed, I took pictures.

With my last town having exploded on me for no good reason, I made a new one.

I picked Winslow Lane.



It's deliciously tiny, but not so itty-bitty that there's no room for a gene pool to swim in.  There are only 17 residential lots, making for a maximum Sim population of about 60 if your game cares about making sure everyone has their own bed.

(I'd recommend waiting until it gets out of Beta, though.  There are a couple bits of routing weirdness on lots that are being sorted out.  Nothing that makes it unplayable, but a bit of remodeling is needed to make these lots work.)

I also made an entirely new population from scratch using the Opals set from the  Scatter Genes skins.  Because I think they're an awesome idea, and I'm a masochist.  The only exceptions to this are Mikayla and Amelia, and the girl I picked out to be Amelia's mate in the last town - Therese.

However, with a population cap at about 60 sims the gene pool is shallow.  That's why all the rest of these pics are so girly.  I decided to make it easier for sims to find a date by making the entire island's population one gender and setting up Story Progression so everybody's gay.

I mean look.  You see this?  That's the entire high school class, right there.

... Getting told to GTFO because some nosy neighbor called the cops on Amelia's little mom's-away party.


Now, new world (and negated Mummy Curse) or not, I'm still determined to off Mikayla.  I'm done with her.  I just wanted to do a few parent-teen things first.

Oh, DebugEnabler, you make my simming life better.


And aside from losing her only parent as a teenager, Amelia's life has been... alarmingly normal.  I dunno.  I'm not interested in posting all that "Normal" stuff.  "Here's my sim growing up".   "Here's my sim flirting with their mate."  "Awww, look at them getting married!"

I feel like I've done too much of that already.

So here's the weird stuff instead.

It is not fright which made Amelia pass out.  She has the Brave trait.  She passed out because the Grim Reaper is a terrible bore and managed to babble her into unconsciousness before helping himself to her nectar.


Therese aged up a couple days ahead of Amelia.  Game settings being what they were, they still had most Romantic options available, so I decided to see what a Teen making out with a YA looked like.

It does not work.  It is not worth complaining about the game normally not letting you do this.


(Kissability improved dramatically after a couple days.  Thaaaat's better!)


Don't think I ever took a proposal screenshot from this angle before.

She looks.. not at all thrilled.  More like she's saying "please don't do this" instead of "OMG YES!"


What followed next was one hell of a bachelorette party.


And a wedding in which everyone gathered bawled their eyes out like it was some kind of funeral.

(Actually, Mikayla's funeral went a lot better than this wedding did.)


And the two have now settled into a life of hijinks...

... I'm not sure if I'd be playing my piano right there, if I were you.


... Told you.


And after a moment of fuming and flailing..


The Pink Pianist walks over to Amelia and.. apologizes.  I dunno.


A few days later, while out on the town enjoying an idle afternoon together, Amelia and Therese came upon a protest...

... Down with Llamas?  I am pretty sure that's blasphemy in the Sims world.


They seemed pretty passionate about the issue, though!

Even the giant rock was protesting against the Llama Regime.


Whoa.  Okay guys, I think you're getting a little carried away, there!  No need to turn this into a full-scale riot.


Of course, in the face of such a highly-charged display of political activism, what else could Amelia and Therese do but join in?


This woman?  She has problems.


But I don't think Llamas are to blame, here.

No, for her issues, I blame Ford.


And that's it for today.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Happens Every Time

It was all going so well...

Mikayla completed her Lifetime Wish:  6 tombs in each country.


Once her daughter, Amelia, got old enough to join her, she'd tag along on some of her mother's expeditions.  Kids can't do too much in tombs, but they can run around scooping up loot while the grown-ups are busy clearing rubble and shoving statues around.

They're also immune to traps.  Lucky brats.


Much of the time, though, when Mikayla was off on go-fetch missions for visa points or canoodling with one of her foreign flirts, Amelia was left to her own devices - an unattended child in a foreign country.  Isn't Mikayla a great parent?

She developed a taste for booby-trapping the base camps for amusement.




And entertaining the locals with ghost stories.  Amelia just loves telling ghost stories.


I noticed the first warning signs, though, when Mikayla started getting calls for tomb quests she'd already completed.

No matter.  Lifetime Wish done, I didn't need to travel anymore, so I returned home.

Amelia enjoyed a relatively normal childhood. She made friends with the other kids in town..


And got creeped at by her Imaginary Friend.


Mikayla became the best Private Eye in the city.  But she's still not fooling anyone with those leafy pom-poms..


Amelia kept up her hobby of telling ghost stories to random crowds.  It's like instrument-playing in its friend-making utility, but with a higher Fun gain and available to children.  Love it.


She also kept up her taste for pranks and booby traps.

You've got nothing to blame but your own rotten parenting, Mikayla..


Oh, and if you notice something... strange about the edges of that picture there, that's because Mikayla really should've picked up a little Sim Fu while she was in China.


Eh... she's completed her Lifetime Wish, reached the top of her career, earned an awesome romantic reputation, and I've got aging on.  Nothing left for her to do but get old and die, so I decided to cut to the chase.

I gave her just enough time to see Amelia age up to Teen and have a few days to do stuff with her before she crumbles to dust.

One thing I failed to consider with Amelia's age-up:  a birthday party full of her child-stage friends and classmates..


 ... means she spends the rest of the party as a teenager surrounded by little kids.

Oh well.  She can still entertain the crowd with more ghost stories!


I like Amelia as a teen.  She's the first teen I've had (for more than 2 days) since Generations.  She's learning to drive in her mother's sweet muscle car, tormenting everyone with her mood swings, and has her prom coming up in a few days.

Managed to find herself a really cute date for said prom, too.  My second-generation townies are a good-looking bunch.


And then...

The town exploded in a BFBVFS.

I dunno.  I can't go a sim-day, or even a few sim-hours, without an abrupt crash to desktop.  I tried resetting the town.  Other towns play just fine.  But this one is broken.

You know, I don't think I'll ever be able to play one town long enough to see grandchildren happen in it.  They all get hopelessly corrupted by the time the first batch of kids grows up.

@*#&!

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Brightens My Day

Just a little random misfortune...

Mikayla is one tomb away from her Lifetime Wish of completing 6 in each location.

Dart traps suck.



You know what else sucks?  Travelling during a midlife crisis immediately cancels it with 0 wishes completed.  I was a bit disappointed because I'd been letting her go crazy doing whatever youth-reclaiming stunts she wanted.

She has a daughter now, Amelia.  A tomboyish little thing that I like just enough to try my luck with making it more than 2 generations before my town implodes.  I don't think it'll work.

She makes the cutest little squeals when she's on fire.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

A Momentary Distraction

So I got roped into trying out Sims Social. This also got me roped into finally getting a Facebook account, but that's beside the point.

It was a lot of fun for the first couple days. I've always preferred filling my towns with my friends' sims - they make much more interesting friends, mates, and torture-toys than anonymously-created townies. And the whole point of Sims Social is to make neighbors out of your friends, and then go visit them and then squeal about what you and they did together. In that respect, it captures one of my very favorite parts of the game.

However:

The item selection for sims and their homes is very limited. Without any colorization options, I quickly found myself smacking my head against the keyboard trying to find a look for my sim and my house that both matches itself and feels individual.

You live alone. You cannot invite your friends over. You can only go visit them one at a time. When your friends visit you, you don't get to see it in action. There are also no community lots. No parties. No moving in together. No breeding. You're either home alone or visiting a solitary friend.

The energy limit is stifling for long term play. With the cap and refresh rate being what they are, you get maybe ten minutes of play before you have to rest for over an hour.

There are four skills, and no careers. You make money by grinding one of these four skills or mowing your lawn. Grinding skills and mowing lawn takes up energy. There's also no death, no infidelity, no hilarious mishaps, and no moodlets.

Oh, and it's buggy, too.

Basically, once the "oo, shiny new!" luster faded, it's starting to get boring fast. The quests are pretty good at giving you something to do, but... meh.

I already have my friends' sims in my Sims 3 towns, and I'm enough of a nosy shutterbug that anyone who cares to know gets kept up to date on what's going on.

And if I want to watch Kali diddle around with Gabriel?  (And I'll confess:  I do)



Well, that also looks a lot nicer in the main game.

I really need to pick up their story again.  It was fun.  And it's still sitting on my desktop.  Taunting me.

Anyway, enough griping.  Have some more random:

Time travelling in her undies. M'yep.  But then, keeping Kali dressed in a game where woohoo is autonomous is generally a losing battle.



Word to the wise:  Don't skinnydip with kleptos.  Unless you want your clothes stolen.

Of course, with the look on Kali's face, she's probably saying "well, if you want me naked that much, dear, go right ahead..."



Did I mention story?  Because I totally mentioned story.

In the same story in which Kali and Gabriel are main characters, this girl has a prominent supporting role.  I was tweaking her the other day, and I am liking the results.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Hauntings Not Included

Better!

Now…

It's never too early for Halloween. In fact, if displays in grocery stores are to be believed, we should've started preparing for Halloween weeks ago.

I see people lament about Store-content-heavy builds, including in my own direction, and it makes sense - not everyone can or wants to shell out the 30 or so bucks a month it takes to keep up with all the new sets. And of course not everyone has every single expansion and stuff pack ever made, either, and it put the idea in my head to make something completely basegame - something I haven't done since basegame was all we had.

So I made this Gothy little thing. It's old, weathered, and spooky. Dark, but just enough - going overboard on black and purple makes taking pictures hard, after all.

Here's what we've got:

- Sits on a 20 x 20 lot - easily placeable in almost any world.
- 2 bedrooms, furnished for a couple and one child
- 2 full baths
- 2 fireplaces, both upgraded to Fireproof
- A large and presently-unfurnished attic.
- Parking for 1 car
- Basegame! No CC, No expansion/stuff pack, and only a couple FREE store items (Like 3 decor objects, completely nonessential).
- Pricetag: About $45k after playtesting

It's been playtested at full capacity, and all is well. It's a petite house, though, and while you *could* fill the attic with extra beds for litters of children, I wouldn't particularly recommend this one for a large family.

Exchange Download
(Includes list of Store objects used, which in this case are all free downloads)

Mediafire Download

Pictures: