They have to go somewhere!

I can't keep these under wraps because I think they're too cute. And I don't want to put them on the main blog, I don't think.

If you don't read Ruin, this will probably make no sense. And even if you do read Ruin, you'll still be confused, I assure you, lol!












Who could that little boy be? Just in case...

As for the woman, you've seen her already.


Ah, if they could have taken pictures...





Just one of those times where stories from the past are pouring forth, and having TS3 there to help illustrate helps me focus. It's handy to have faces to put to the characters in my head. It gives them a bit of extra dimensionality other than in my head. I really want to reach out and hug that little boy considering all that I know. This was probably the only time one could even think of doing something like that.

Big week for TS3 story tellers!

Lots of exciting news this week.

Over here, Goggalor reported his findings on the fog emitter from Ambitions. We have weather! And lots of other cool things.



There are some issues when it comes to placement though. Sometimes it's high up and far away from the lot. I haven't quite mastered it yet, so I still have to fiddle around with it to get it to work.



It seems that the fog emitter can pretty much produce any effect in the game, which is pretty handy story telling-wise. This will require lots of play testing I think as some effects loop, some only happen once, and some won't happen at all.



And I just found out while I was updating my hacks that Jonha has some more height sliders in testing. These finally make a sim shorter. The issue before was that sims would get this weird bendy knee thing going, so Delphy could only release the taller slider.

Jonha's way around this is to have separate sliders. So instead of one height slider, you make sims shorter by shortening their legs, their arms, and their torso.


In this picture, Paula and Brandon are the normal heights for sims their age. (For anyone who doesn't know them, Paula's the black haired teen girl, and Brandon's the black haired man.)

The girl in red has been shortened just a bit. And waaay in the back, Henri, the oldest male, has been lengthened to the tallest height using Delphy's slider. I might be able to use Delhpy's slider in combination with Jonha's to actually make him taller if I want.


Aaaand lastly, Buzzler at MTS released a vanishing objects script. At my request, he added classes for some items that are handy for us story tellers, and I them made clones of the necessary objects and enabled them to take advantage of the vanishing script. They're in the comments, post #23.


Real Image:



Invisible couch:





Invisible lounge and invisible chair:






My game was working at driving me nuts tonight for the first time, so I couldn't really test out the bed like I had wanted to. I know the bed's too high for the sofas, but I'll find something it matches up with or I'll just fake it.

Customization in TS3

*ahem*

PLEASE pardon me while I geek out here. Jay started to laugh at me when I told him how awesome this was. "You only get this way for nerdy things," he told me. I know! I'm a nerd!

It has taken a very long time to get used to TS3. And now that I have, I'm convinced more and more of its awesomeness, and less and less convinced that they set out to mess shit up.

For instance- it is as simple as pressing down the "alt" button to move stuff around off grid including at angles other than 45 degrees. This includes sims when used with the move objects cheat.

Not only can you color pretty much everything, but you can freakin' color pretty much everything. I rather enjoy giving sims who are of age a little gray without having to go outside of the game. Or giving my elders a little color or different shades of gray or letting them completely color their hair.

Now with the release of Create a World, we can build our own worlds from the ground up, including terrain paints and the sounds and road textures (and multiple road textures in the same world too). The sounds that are included are amazing and include the sound of low water, knee deep water, broken glass, concrete, different dirt and sands, grass and dry grass, and more. I am huge on sounds like footsteps for some reason.

But that isn't all. It is SO much easier now to actually mess with the INI files and make yourself a world with custom water color at different times of the day, change the size of the sun and the moon, and when it rises. A tutorial is here. And you can mess with the INI files while the game is running to see the effects.

Compare:




We have the normal water shipped with the game. It's like a murky blue. Then there is the water color that I made for Ruin.













For Ruin, I wanted the water to have a different tinge to it. It's almost purple at its base color. It almost look iridescent to me.


The color of the water can be changed for every state and for different times of the day. And best of all, you can do this while the game is running. As soon as I save, the color of the water changes.

I can change it for the world alone once I'm done, but I find that there is a plus side to swapping out the INI files. If I wanted, I could keep the sea looking like a separate color from the lakes in town. Changing the INI files changes both.

But I haven't really decided yet.



Okay, so random playing with it here is my finding. GAH! It is so awesome!


So I was playing around last night, just testing the color capabilities. Right now I'm just playing with the water.


As the sun began to set, I wanted the water to move into a slightly more redish tint. It was close to 6pm, and in Sims 2, that means sun set to me. With the lighting mod, I loved that redish glow everything got, so that's probably what I'm thinking about when I wanted this tint.

This was the moment that I found out that the sea color is a blending of the two values that sit at different times.






Wait, does that make sense? Here's what I mean.


Ok, in my Sky_ClearSea ini text, this is what I have. At 1600 (4:00), the sea is more lavender in color. At 1800 (6:00) I tinted the sea to be more redish. Originally, I thought this meant that the sea would be those colors until it hit that time of day. (Did I really picture it suddenly changing color as soon as 6:00 hit? Yes, yes I swear I did.)

But no, that isn't what it does. It moves from lavender-ish in color to redish in color. So when I was messing around with the coloring at 5:30, messing with one block or the other actually affected the coloring of the sea because it was using both values to calculate the color of the sea.


That is not all. It also does the exact same thing over two files when the sky is changing. There are files for each state of the sky. There's partly cloudy, stormy, overcast, and clear.

While my sims were sleeping, I was wanting to mess with the sea color at night. I wanted to make it pitch black. But I kept having a redish tint to it.

It's kinda hard to tell in this picture, but you can sort of see it. If you looked at it overhead, you'd definitely see it. I was very confused.

So I looked up at the sky. It turns out that it was moving into a partly cloudy cycle, so the two values I needed to mess with were in the Sky_ClearSea file and the Sky_PartlyCloudySea file. And of course, I then had to think about the extra values that the sea was heading towards. You know, what color it would be at 4:00am.


There's more that can be customized, including the lunar cycle, and cloud color, and stuff with the sun and the moon, supposedly reflection colors too. It's pretty amazing. I'm thinking my next building will have to be a proper scientific building, or maybe I'll just set one up in one of the apartments over the market, and we'll have to make a point of watching the moon and the sun.


If I do this right, I could probably mimic seasons and just swap out the INI files. Since I can do this while playing, it's much less of a hassle than using a package file.

Anyway, whoops. I let the inner geek out. Well, I suppose we all know that's a risk when we get talking about Sims. I still have a game play update coming up, and I have to do some testing because there are some things I am not satisfied with in the village and I need to go back to CAW.

Sim to share and a game/peek

First up I offer a sim!


This sim was inspired by a good friend who gave me a link to this doll. I wanted to create a sim to resemble her.






I was playing with her looks, so this was the last outfit I actually had her in:


It's definitely a store outfit. Part of the steam punk set I think.




Heck if I know where I got the hair from. Pretty sure it's one of Miss Bonbon's recolors which can be found at GOS. The eyes are actually contacts by Heiret which I can't seem to find, but they were linked over at My Sims 3 Blog. And the eyeshadow here is Tri-tone shadow by arfmoo at MTS.

That's it. I didn't use any slider hacks so she should be fine in anyone's game. I gave her a random name and some random traits.

Sim to share (Mediafire link) Just put the file in your savedsim folder and she'll appear in the pre-made sim folder of CAS with traits and everything.




Also, over at TSR (I know, players are all, "TSR??" But I like the forum. Generally friendly and pretty drama free even if it's a little stifling with so many rules), we had a discussion about the faces of sims. That's why I was asking on Twitter what faces people recognized easier.

Even before I liked their faces, I could tell TS3 faces apart right away. With TS2 sims, unless they look really unique or they're my sims, I can't tell them apart. Give them different hair, and usually they look the same to me.

I think that shows in my sim creations. I can see the differences and I have a lot of fun molding them.

For the story, I play around with the faces, and I don't rely on the game's aging system to age their faces realistically. Instead, I tweak them to make them look older or younger. They're story sims after all, so they aren't meant for playing really. I've even gone so far as to age up toddlers with the edit in CAS feature of the supercomputer, edit their faces, then age them back down and save.

So here's a little game. I saved some story sims to the bin and de-aged them. Lets see how well I did it and how distinguishable they are.

There's probably only one that is really randomly tossed out there, but you've seen her. Once on this blog, and very recently in the story blog. ;)



Sim 1



Sim 2
(TS3 toddlers will eat you. Do not turn your back. Seriously. *walks you backwards to the next pic*)


Sim 3


Sim 4

Michael & Edith's household

Where to start with these guys? They are not necesarily the same ones you know from the story. These are alternate reality Edith and Michael.

They live with the Old Man. He has a name, but Michael started calling him that before he even took them in and it pretty much just stuck. He used to roll his eyes and repeat his name which would make Edith laugh, and a laugh from her in those early days was a rare thing. It became a game after a while that Old Man and Michael both secretly enjoyed just to hear Edith laughing.

When they came to town, they had nothing. The city leader set them up on the site of a failed construction project. They were just thankful for anything at the time. Michael has nothing but complaints about it. Meanwhile Edy sees all the possible good that can come out of it. She wants to grow a beautiful garden and use the fresh fruits for her cooking.

New to their little group is Selene Toma. She doesn't say anything about her past, and that makes Michael highly suspicious. He was very against letting her stay with them, but Edy made a plea so convincing that the old man couldn't refuse her. (It's not easy to refuse a girl who rarely makes requests and then asks for something for someone else the first time she does.)

But rest assured that Michael sleeps with one eye open as the three teens share a room.



On this night, the teens are working on their homework after school.

Michael and Edith sit at the kitchen table together pouring over their work. It's no trouble for Michael. She knows he'd be done already if it wasn't for her slowing him down, but he never complains about it. (The one thing he doesn't seem to complain about.)

What she doesn't know is what is actually slowing him down. It's not stopping to help her that's the problem. It's that she has a habit of drawing attention to her lips when she thinks by nibbling on her pencil.


Dirty thoughts in her presense always make him feel a little guilty even if they're caused by her. He scratches the back of his head and looks away towards the ceiling, trying to banish the thoughts and focus on his work, but you just try thinking about formulas with her sitting so close poking at her sweet lips with the tip of her eraser.

By the time they actually do finish, it's about time for bed. Everyone in the house is really exhausted. Her from all the cooking, cleaning, and homework she did, and him from work and the exertion of trying to keep his thoughts distracted from distraction.

They fold up their notebooks and put them in their backpacks which they leave by the door so they can run off and catch the bus tomorrow at the last minute like usual.

And that's the moment when Michael slides something out of his backpack and turns to her. "I got you something."

It's a book on gardening that makes her smile. Not a cheap book, he probably had to use a day's wages to get it for her. She'd been ready to just spend a lot of time at the library after school.


Before she even takes the book from his hands, she throws her arms around him unexpectedly. "Thank you." It's the nicest thing he's done for her-- or anyone really.

That's when Selene comes out from hiding to head to bed. "Oh get a room, you two." She rolls her eyes. She did her homework in the Old Man's room because she can't stand to watch Edy and Michael working (or not working) while together. Sure, she's here only because of Edy's moving plea, but it doesn't make things better. In some ways, it makes it worse.



Michael glares after Selene, but Edy manages to catch his attention. She thanks him again, slightly leaning towards him, the corner of her mouth turned up in a very shy and yet welcoming smile, like she knows what he'd most like from her as a thank you.

And that's when Old Man stomps in, kicking the dirt from the build site off his boots. Michael catches his suspicious glare. "It's time for bed, you two. School in the morning."


I know you must be wondering. The only reason Michael and Edy can share a room is because you know Selene would rat on them in a second if there was any funny business. Besides, while Michael probably would have no shame, Edy has more than enough for both of them, and so nothing would ever happen. At least not there where people can see it.

***********

And so there was a scene from one of my first proper play sessions where I actually focused on a family instead of bouncing around checking things out. Also, sorry about the lack of Selene's picture here. I thought I'd taken a shot of her somewhere. Guess not. Oops, poor kid.

Selene and Edy jostled for a place at the dinner table to do their homework, and Selene finally settled for hiding out in the other room. When Michael got the want to kiss Edy for the first time while they were working on homework, I knew why. Awkward!


So I'm going to play with the life span on long though I keep bouncing between that and epic. But I figure that on epic, I might as well turn off aging. On long, they get like 100 some sim days per age group.

Time to experiment

Anyone remember TS3 Amberle?

I have not really been playing Sims 3. Various reasons, mostly that the neighborhoods were too large to control I think. I need to know the sims in town to have it have meaning for me.

So, with the creation of this little village world for my story, I've decided to give this another go and actually try playing the game the way we do TS2. I want to create a town, fill it with Sims that I care about, hopefully give it room to grow. (Though I didn't give it a lot of room, I admit. There's not even 30 lots on this world.)

The sims I'm using to populate it are some-- strike that, most of my story sims. Because they are faces that are familiar to me and that I can spot around town.


A couple of hacks I've picked up to help with game play:

Twallan's Story Progression and Sim Selector

The Sim selector is very essential right now. It allows you to hop from household to household without having to press all those extra buttons. (For any non TS3 players- you normally have to go to the main menu, select Edit Town, then select "change household," then you have to select the house hold you want to play). Now, with this mod, I just click on the sim I see walking around town and I can pick "make sim active" and then I'm seamlessly playing that sim's household without having to go to their house. No issues so far, and I've hopped around town on it's first actual test runs.

Still have torn lots

The lot tearing is a lot worse than I thought, to be honest. But I'm going to just ride with it. My fix had been to just delete a lot and plop a new one down, but somehow that doesn't seem to help at all (In fact it my have made it worse in the case of my meadow).

Mmm, pie!

With World Adventures, I love that we technically get shops in a way. You can buy food, and then eat it right there. So here is a semi-random sim enjoying pie. You can also buy a plate and eat it elsewhere, so I've got some outdoor eating areas. Same thing for the nectar. You can buy a bottle and then share it later on elsewhere.


I have managed to find some really gorgeous lots. Like this one which I have very near my forest.

It has a hidden little secret in the center of the lake. Sims can swim in it. (I did a little renovation though to try and make it mesh into the surroundings a little bit more because it had a fence around it.)

Here are three of my teens enjoying a dip in the pool. That's Selene (not introduced yet), Michael, and Julia (who was Killer's odd girl that stood behind him).


Right now I'm just wandering around patching up the town. Indispensable right now are MelissaMel's Rabbit Hole signs. But they're a little tricky. Place them wrong and sims either can't get in or end up getting stuck.





Here's my school that's right outside of the library. I had an issue where it was too close to the road, and sims all got stuck. I had about three standing there on top of each other. Paula just doesn't know. Teresa (the girl in front) is still traumatized about being one with two other people.

Lots of work to do still decorating the town. I think I have managed to completely gorge myself this weekend properly. It was all fast food and sims this weekend. Weekend well spent I think after the beginning of my week.

Lot tearing Boo

I'm lucky I don't have this issue. My world is so small that there are few lots. (Maybe 15? I have never counted.)

But if anyone stumbles across this blog and somehow doesn't know about the lot tears, I'd like to throw up this link about lot tearing and now about saving which I got from Poida of Wasteland. SO sad! I guess once I'm done with this world, there will be no meddling with it or adding onto it.

Right now, the problems are easy to fix. I guess the deal is that you'd have to sculpt, then lay down the roads, and then lay down the lots. Yikes. That would take some serious in depth planning so that you aren't figuring that out in game.

And that is probably a little too much for me! But that's probably why they took so long to release the tool.

Though I will have to say I disagree with LeeMortis. Even with these issues, I am very glad to have this tool. It has come in very handy.



And a sneak peek... at my lot tear.


Boo lot tear. Luckily, it's been easy so far to fix. Minor ones I've just decided to completely ignore. This tear was in a pristine picture taking area, and the lot is completely by itself, so I can't screw this up. Even if I do, the world is mostly done and I've already exported it, so so even if something happens to my saves, I'm pretty good. *knocks on wood*

More World Adventures

They started out the morning early. Henri was nice enough to make french toast. While in China.

"Seriously? French toast? Isn't that, like, a slap in the faces of the Chinese? And you're using chop sticks? Seriously?"

He's used to ignoring her by now having to take a lot of test shots with her already. Besides, at least she isn't talking about the red sparkles anymore. Though she still gets a moodlet from him every time she glances at him. WHich is gross, she's 16 and he's close to 50 now.

So he thought he'd take her into one of the ruins. (As something of a reward for NOT mentioning the stupid sparkles.) She's not exactly the bravest. Every sound made her jump.

Though she did get a hang of it after a while. Even stuck her hand in some of the holes in the walls to help him look for secret switches.

She won't be doing that again for a while.


It seemed she needed some toughening up. And Henri sim is the perfect one to do it.

"Uh, like this? Maybe this would work better if I had some proper gym clothes on. I might feel, like, fiercer or something."

It took some time. A lot of yelling on his part. Finally, she was worthy of the white belt.

It seems that when given the white belt, you're also taught exactly how to pose and look awesome with it.

"Did you get the picture with the camera? I wanna put that up on my wall. You didn't? What were you doing?"


Practicing. I told you, he's rather used to ignoring her by now.


If he wasn't sparkling, this would be a fantastic shot!

Fun trivia (so I think): the draw distance on my game is always set to short/minimum because I can't build my world yet. I don't want you to see that Michael and Edith actually live on a hill looking over a "village" that's supposed to be miles away, or that the Southlands is actually just one street in the middle of green rolling hills.

Anyway, I mention that because of the mist in the background of that last shot.