Laura brought this up, and it's a good question. Basically, she wanted to know how I wrangle in the cast of characters I've got. Since she's not a TS3 player yet, this will be semi-heavy on the TS3 explaining.
First off, this happens to be the main benefit to using TS3 versus TS2 for storytelling. From my studies, you can pretty much do anything you want to your sims without anything really horrible happening. The reseting tricks are a bit different (like you do not want to use move objects and delete your sims), but really, they're more like dolls and it's really easy to move them around and do things that in TS2 are HUUUUUGE no-nos.
That took me a while to get used to, and then I started experimenting.
With Sims 3, you don't get different neighborhoods, you get different save game files. It's like the old school RPGs where you'd do a save as and be able to save games in different save states in different slots.
I'm thinking like Monkey Island and King's Quest type games. Remember how you'd make extra saves just in case you needed to go back or you got stuck and realized you needed something? TS3 is actually the same.
When I first load up the game, this is what I see. It's a listing of all the save games I've got. There's a lot more than four, you just have to hit the arrow. The description box would be filled if I had a description for the house lot. If I were smart I'd do that rather than rely on my memory.
"Beginning 3" got it's name because there was Beginning 1 and Beginning 2 which have since been deleted. Basically, when I made some drastic changes, rather than deleting the save file, I made a new one so I could go back. (From memory, Beginning 1 was the file I used to try and make the video. The sims were set up in a way I was sure I would have to revisit.)
Notice Mary is older. This was the file I most recently used. Also, it's the one where I have Paula from her story living.
Another save file, notice Mary is younger here. This one I did some drastic changes to the street because I took a lot of shots above ground and didn't want it to be obvious she is on the exact same street Paula lives on. Also, I had to move Paula's home lot so an Older Brandon and Jimmy wouldn't appear in the background of shots.
Hopefully that makes sense if you're not a TS3 player. Each game can be the same world in a different state of play or it can be a completely different world.
Once I get in the game, this is what it looks like from overhead. I started Ruin and
Paula's story before there was the World builder. So I had to try and make it look like a different place from the street view. I try very hard to hide the fact that they're right next to the river.
Paula, Brandon, Jimmy, Angel and Mitchell, Henri, and a bunch of other characters actually live in that large building at the top of the street. Awesomemod makes it so that you can have more than 8 sims in the household.
Mary lives on the lot right now that's just a park. It's easy to package up lots with sims in it. Since they don't have memories, there are no complications with it. You can package them up for use later if you think it might be necessary.
This picture also shows you the old sim bin, now called the "library." I keep sims I've created there also in case I need them elsewhere. I've been in another save file and found myself going, "Dang, I need the teen Brandon, but I don't want to re-create because I fear inconsistencies. *looks through bin* There he is, just like I left him."
Here's another important tool. Inside CAS, there's the old premade sim bin. The difference is that these pre-made sims are created in CAS, then saved to the bin for use or editing later on. When I load them up in CAS, all their details are saved like their personality traits, their favorite foods and their bios even.
These work also as extra backups. When I go into my document folders, there's a saved sim folder where you will find all these guys listed by first and last names.
Very handy. So I back this folder up pretty regularly because for me, the faces are more important than the lots really.
As far as the other details like aging and all that-- they don't really age that quickly. I do forget to turn off aging all the time because I have been playing quite a bit lately.
Each time I update, they might loose a day of their lives. Maybe. Usually, I save at a particular time of day and then when I'm done, unless there was something that was difficult to set up, I don't bother saving.
Plus, I bounce around a lot from one save file to the next.
Since the world I'm using is so large, I rarely ever run across any other sims unless I summon them in. But I will say Michael, Edith, Gina and the rest do live here, so I get notifications about them from my story progression mod. Like Michael's hit level 1 in gardening. I think it's sweet he's taking an interest in Edy's hobbies :)
And somewhere in the world, Cheryl lives. She's in the military track in one of these save game files and doing pretty well!
