#might make a megahood one day

[craftaspiration]

my last pleasantview save stopped working so it's time for a new one!

i found pleasantview with tutorial joe and tutorial jane by croconawsims on mts when i was reinstalling my mods and thought it'd be fun to play with another family in pleasantview!

i made this simblr so i don't have to run between different servers to share my sims gameplay with all my friends, but anyone's welcome to check out my sims story (once i start playing & posting it anyways lol)

[moyokeansimblr]

Update

Not feeling so hot and I'm not going to do anything impulsive at 8PM on a Friday evening but

here is a link to a sfs folder with ALL of my content that's currently only hosted on patreon.

I want to add individual sfs links to the tumblr posts but that's a lot and I'm now regretting never adding alt dl links this whole time... and sorry I don't think the downloads in the sfs folder are in order... it also might be some other things, like fixed meshes or stuff. tbh I just added everything I've made after April 3rd 2023 since that was the last time I uploaded anything to sfs.

I guess while I'm here... I was going to wait until after I finish up the last of my active requests (probably by Monday, I'm almost done) but I desperately need a break from CC. I sent a group message on the 17th to my $4 and $6 patrons encouraging them to cancel, but I know not everybody knows patreon even has dms so maybe you'll see this post and I'll reach out again in the coming days so nobody is wasting their money. I am so immensely burnt out and I need to not create for a while. This is completely my own fault, nobody made me work on CC for 8-10 hours 5 days a week for the last several months and I fully knew it wasn't sustainable ages ago but I kept doing it because it made me feel good, until it didn't. Quite honestly, even before I sent the group message the instant wave of relief I felt just having made the decision to take a break... that caught me off guard but just confirmed I need this. I do feel really awful about it because I feel like I'm letting people down but at the same time I don't want to hate creating which was already happening. That being said, I don't know how long the lull in CC is going to be, and if you're only following me strictly for CC I apologize. As said I am still finishing up one request I still had, I'm about 75% done with that as of this post. But that's gonna be it for a while.

There is a part of me that wants to stop using patreon completely and unpublish my creator page (which is what I'm not going to impulsively do tonight without properly thinking it through...since there are positives like how easy it is to download files and whatnot) but I'd again encourage not only those who joined the $4 and $6 tiers but also the $2 tier to cancel so that you aren't wasting your money. If I did do this I would definitely do the individual sfs links on everything first. I'd not just leave you guys unable to download my stuff.

So, what does that mean for this blog? I'll spare ye, impatient readers, who have already read a lot because I ramble⬇️

Well, as of posting this I still have THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FOUR Strangetown posts in my queue. And I'm not tired of playing that.

I'm looking forward to having an opportunity to do all of the things I've been neglecting. I'm finally going to go through the subfolder within my downloads of everything I'm downloaded the last few months and decide if I wanna keep it in my game or not. And finish default replacing everything. And all my other various little projects I haven't been doing.

Also, I want to start playing Veronaville 😮I've already started downloading lots from kattaty to replace the in-game ones, and I found a cool replacement for the neighborhood map. I am leaning towards making a new sub-blog for this so that you don't have to try and follow Strangetown/LFT posts and Veronaville/ALT posts at the same time. I've only ever played the Veronaville sims for like one day as part of a super failed megahood years ago so I'd like to get to know them.

So basically, I guess I'm a gameplay blog for now? Until I want to create anything again anyways, but I don't know when that will be.

I don't know how to end this post... I'm sorry for the disappointment, but thank you so much for enjoying my stuff 💛💛

[glowyjellyfish]

So a couple weeks ago, I got distracted from my assorted historic sims 2 hoods projects in favor of my Just Play the Game downloads folder, a collection of stuff I accumulated over time without fancy aging systems and traits and the like. Just classic mode with lots of CC. I got excited and downloaded a good handful of new sets and installed them.

Now my game keeps crashing utterly at random—sometimes shortly after starting to play a lot (as in a few game hours), sometimes a few (game) days in. One time it ALWAYS crashed when I took Morty Roth to a community lot to fish. So now I’m forced to do a lot of the clean-up work this downloads folder is supposed to avoid requiring.

-I keep running various scanners (DDO, SimPe GUID check, Clean Installer, Hood Checker, HCDU+), and nothing leaps out as a problem, particularly not anything newly added. I am constantly removing duplicate items, but it doesn’t seem to make much difference.

-I’m hesitant to run a 50/50 check because the crashing is very random. Sometimes I play a household for a full season and it’s fine, other times it crashes for no discernible reason. I have deleted a lot of objects so I doubt it’s my object mesh limit. It happens during gameplay, not in the catalog so it’s probably not a GUID conflict of some sort, although I could be wrong. I don’t THINK it’s all the new modern sets I downloaded, because that’s all furniture and a couple outfits—nothing mod or hack-y. I did download the LS bundle and some patches for it.

-My gut insists it’s a townie with bad CC trying to walk by, but I don’t have the faintest idea how to test for that or fix it. Maybe I could do a test lot and teleport in each townie looking for a crash, but if that works how do I find what item on them caused the crash?

-I did just discover and remove an unwanted default replacement amongst some X-Men characters I installed in this game—the last batch of CC I installed before this batch. So it might just be that, whatever it was? I don’t know yet. The only test is to try playing again, and I have to wait until after work tomorrow for that.

-the log always just gives me “access violation”. I did double check that the 4gb patch is still applied, and I believe it is, and I checked that the texture memory looked okay in GRM. It seems more like a CC problem than a game/hardware problem, although it COULD be the game running out of memory. Seems unlikely as I am not getting pink flashing, just the crash, but it could be.

-one thing I did in the cleaning process that could have been problematic was delete my Sun&Moon collection, deeming it Not Right for this particular setup. I don’t think I had touched it in this game.

-Now I am having the urge to start a new, clean Uberhood with all my nice new CC, except the one I started setting up has the same old copy of my main modern downloads folder, so it’s likely to be experiencing the same problems. Unless it truly is the X-Men content that’s the problem lol.

(I want to have Simlogical schools in districts, limit careers based on local buildings, use supernatural lifestates and 1 day = 1 year aging, follow most of the premade relationships instead of wasting time hunting for the perfect match for everybody, include the downtownie Tricou teens, and mix up the method for choosing a college—base it on expense rather than location as I have been doing).

But I would also very much like for my Just Play downloads folder to be ready to just play again and complete a round. I’ve had bad luck with Uber/megahoods even though I love them, I would like to get one off the ground. My last new one used Proportionate Aging and also featured a bugged taxi driver showing up as a walkby and forcing the game to speed 1 until I teleported him away, something that is probably fixable but not with my limited abilities. I just want to play the game.

[lunnaris-sims]

TW// fire, death

Let me show you what happened in the Contrary household in my personal DV+RBH megahood!

This is Venus Contrary, you might remember her from a post I did a few days ago. As you can see, she's an alien. She was born after Edward got abducted once while he was doing some research for his job. However, as you can imagine, history repeats itself: Venus has to go through the same mistreatment Rick had to go back in the day, but worse, because her parents sometimes like using her for their dirty expriments.

Venus is SICK of how her parents are treating her, always pretending they care about her when she tries to run away from that prison they call "home". One night, she decides to put an end to this mistreatment.

She knows what to do, as she's been thinking about doing this for years already, after growing up to a teen, so she proceeds to sneak into her parents' bedroom with the purpose of scaring them for life.

If you're wondering how she learnt magic, she was taught by a very powerful witch from very far away who uses a tool called "Sim Manipulator" to accelerate the process.

The plan is set, she hopes her parents finally appreciate her more after seeing themselves this close to death.

Little does she know about the true consequences of her actions.

Almost everything in the house is lost in the fire, one of the few things that remained was the bed Opal and Edward slept in for the last time (apparently they got time to make it while burning themselves to death), along with the two urns indicating their fatal destiny.

Now she's left basically homeless and with no parents... but she couldn't care any less, knowing she finally won't have to deal with the burden her parents used to be. Maybe she'll try to get in touch with that brother she never met... was Rick his name? Anyways, now she must try and survive off the little money that wasn't burned in the fire and start over.

However, this probably won't be the last time she uses her new powers: that sibling of hers might find them very useful in the near future...

This is what the new family bio looks like:

Venus' parents died under mysterious circumstances… rumor has it that a fire started in Opal and Edward's bedroom and spread to the entire house. Research has found some traces of dark magic, which makes everyone think that the only person who miraculously survived the fire hides something behind that facade. No matter what the truth is, she now has to live alone with almost no money in what her family used to call home. Will she be able to make it or will she have to get in touch with that sibling she never got to meet?

[glowyjellyfish]

Megakingdom grousing:

At this point it has taken me roughly a month to troubleshoot my game. Let this be a lesson to everyone, especially me: do not act incautiously when adding CC. And when you do get crashes, always 50/50 test; do not try to guess which file looks suspicious. You will probably be wrong.

I think I’m almost done, although I just realized as I headed to work that I got this last crash in community buy mode misc and i have been testing residential buy mode misc. so I might have to do another entire round of testing. I might be able to at least do some residential remodeling and family makeovers, though, and delay the BDC community lots. It’s hard to say. It would feel like a waste of time to stop mid-testing to play the game for a couple hours, but it also feels like a waste to take an hour loading the game just to test it, quit, and start again. I really need to get that load time down; I cut out and compressorized down to 17 GB in the main folder plus 4 GB outside, and although that feels more manageable to me it has not affected my load times at all. Definitely need to run a bulk renamer or something, that might help.

I am so ready to start though, and it is so frustrating how long it has taken. I have a spreadsheet full of Neighborhood Status, Citizen Census, Tax Information, Marriage Prospects, Historical Records, and Family Trees. I have my interesting plan of specializing each subhood. I really want to use the new mead stuff. I have all the major mods I need. I have a dating system/calendar in mind (...it’s very straightforward, days get dated like Summer 5, Year 1, but I have been tempted to name the years or something.) I have Ideas for an ROS (...like, having a chance of global disaster affecting the whole hood, like war or famine, which I’m sure the usual MCC ROS covers. But also, if too many happen in too short a period of time, do what I am calling an Upheaval event? which would include things like peasant uprisings, usurpation, and some more fantastical like a Dark Lord Rises, Wild Magic Surge, or British Schoolchildren (which I talked about in one of my Grimwood Abbey posts I think, it’s basically a little Narnia scenario. You make some preferably related kids and teens, dress them in modern or vintage wear, plop them in the hood, and declare them royalty outranking the current ruler. They were summoned in by magic from another world to bring an end to the troubles and rule in peace as destined. Of course, this not being Narnia, the displaced royalty and nobility might have more to say about that…) ...and then after an Upheaval you go a certain number of rounds without any global events and then it resets. Obviously, I need to think it through more but that’s the ballpark of what I would like to eventually do.

Anyway. If I truly am almost done with the troubleshooting, soon I will be remodeling the Cordial home, building a house for the Clevelands, and building the community lots of Village Green and Hedge Tavern at least, and continuing makeovers in Pleasantview. Remaining PV families are Lothario and Dreamer at the Peasant level, Burb, Pleasant, and Caliente at the Yeoman level, and Ramaswami and Oldie at the Merchant level. Pleasantview is getting its missing Gentry from Frances J Worthington III, but he will have to wait until I get up to College Student Makeovers.

I’m most proud of the family trees right now. Here’s an example—I first started making them in the spreadsheet for my standard megahood, but they are just perfect for a medieval hood. I’m going to be strict about tracking each family’s descent based on the title-holder and male heirs (whereas in the standard megahood, the family trees started merging like amoeba. No, no, we will simply note that this sim appears on another family tree and then move on.). Single female sims do not get a family tree until marriage, unless they hold a title or have a male heir. And by working on the family trees, I realized that at present, Justin Cleveland is Geoff Rutherford’s heir presumptive, which is all kinds of fascinating right now and exactly the kind of thing I wanted from making a kingdom out of premade hoods. Of course, Geoff is going to try to marry and have sons of his own, but Justin could inherit his Gentry position just as easily as he’ll inherit ownership of the food market. Wild.

[glowyjellyfish]

I started writing down an updated collection of thoughts and plans about my Megakingdom project, but they got very rambly and so I am beginning anew.

And no, I have not forgotten about Grimwood Abbey, but for my undiagnosed but likely adhd brain I gotta follow the fixations where they lead. It’s actually quite helpful to have several different Medieval Sims 2 concepts I want to play with while working on the excruciatingly long CC Sorting portion of the project, because I can bounce around from one to the other to find fresh things to think about without abandoning the CC project. I got through all the Teen and Child clothing, and everything in Buy Mode! I am halfway through Walls in Build Mode! I have some broken things to identify, some Star Factory stuff to check on updating (accidentally overwrote my fresh install of all those with some older duplicates and could not actually undo, Mia culpa), and a bunch of empty folders to check and remove. Then comes the real sorting. And a backup.

But today I am here to talk about the Megakingdom. I have realized I can’t just play it as a straight MCC, because I already have a king. And yet the Warwickshire rules are wayyyy too complicated for somebody who has yet to complete an MCC. So I am going to play mostly MCC, with a few Warwickshire rules incorporated early, using the advancements to replace unthematic community lots and make sure the community gets well-rounded. I’ll also be using the social advancement rules to earn sims the right to fill in a few empty class spots (for example, Pleasantview currently has no Gentry). I will probably start using some of the Warwickshire title guidelines once each subhood has a reasonable amount of sims in each class and sims start purchasing titles outside the basic ones. And I am thinking I might roll a THS for babies born in-game, but avoid randomized health hits and pregnancy health concerns until I get used to the system and/or those babies grow into adults.

The big difference I am planning from both rule systems is… frankly, I want to use the colleges and the college sims. The college sims are going to be a flexible marriage pool, but also, three is too many for just a couple of social classes to attend, and it really bugs me that college sims get more lifespan than non-college sims. So each college is open to a different selection of social classes. Academie Le Tour is the upper class university, and only royalty, nobility, and heir/firstborn gentry may attend. La Fiesta Tech is for non-heir gentry and merchants, and Sim State University is the trade school for yeomen and peasants who are sponsored by a noble. I’m not sure yet about the other two colleges, but SSU will for sure have a strong tuition fee, which peasants may request from a noble in exchange for becoming their serf. There will absolutely be many sims who still cannot afford to attend, and for those I’ll get some YA mods, but this plan will ease me into that play method AND will prep up some serfs for the megahood.

(I… will have to reread up on the lower classes and determine exactly how and who I want to set up as serfs, if I feel I need to start with any. For some reasons, I am constantly assuming that the lowest classes in these challenges do not automatically equal serfs and I might also just be wrong on that, and if I am I’ll figure it out.)

Some story plans and concepts:

Faith and Herbert Goodie are going to be church sims, with the Newsons moving in as a collection of orphans being raised by the church. Coral Oldie, meanwhile, is going to be a midwife (probably not the only one, but I haven’t identified anyone else for the role yet); I have set the Oldies as Merchant class, and so I might have Herb run a small business that complements her midwifery, perhaps selling herbs they grow or something.

I’m trying to figure out what’s to be done with Jessica Peterson; without the game lore she’s just an obvious peasant, but with it she’s divorced from Armand DeBateau, a duke, and therefore must be at least Gentry. I feel like the thematic way to handle this would be having her join the church or become an outcast, but I haven’t decided yet. By a similar token, I really want to keep Alexandra Teatherton nee O’Mackey’s “left family to become a pirate” story, but then I’d have to set up pirates and junk. Otherwise, she’s in the same position as Jessica.

Cassandra Goth is betrothed to King Malcolm Landgraab IV. I think that Don Lothario, a yeoman at best, has been trying to seduce her and making all kinds of promises in his efforts to bed her, but he never intended to actually try to marry her and is shocked at how seriously she took all his talk of running away together. That is way too permanent for Don Lothario, he just wanted to WooHoo her.

I did this same basic setup for a Steampunk Strangetown I played a while back, but I think the quickest and most interesting way to set up a kingdom in Strangetown is a. Olive Specter is the ruler, b. Ophelia has been raised as her heir, but c. Nervous is the true heir, kept secret because of his parentage but Olive plans to officially recognize him before she dies, and d. Loki learned the secret a while back and has been holding Nervous hostage in an attempt to either marry Nervous to Loki’s sister Erin or otherwise gain power. So that’s essentially what is happening here, Olive is the Duchess, Nervous is her heir, Loki is a mere Gentry trying some ruthless means of acquiring power and advancing his family’s status. Erin is a viable match for Nervous, but in my experience they usually don’t like one another; I think generally speaking I’m not going to force sims with X attraction to marry just because they’re a good match. Maybe for story purposes or if the pickings are too slim, but not in round one.

Oh, and I have designated a few ladies to be Duchesses of their subhoods, and a Gentry lady heiress here and there, but for the most part I will be sticking to full classic primogeniture. This is mainly for setup; I just picked the best/most interesting choices to rule each subhood. I.E., I’m not gonna make the Roths be the Ducal family of Riverblossom Hills when the Goths are right there ruling over Pleasantview, that is dumb, and Catherine Viejo makes a very interesting setup. Is Betty Goldstein her secret lover and/or lady in waiting? Is Andrew Martin her secret lover and/or gardener/serving man/serf? ...so Cleo Shikibu, heiress to the Duchy of Riverblossom Hills, and Florence Delarosa, Lady of Bluewater Village, will both have to find second sons or college sims to marry in order to preserve their respective inheritances (meaning, basically, they can marry Kent Capp or a college boy, because maxis families are really light on siblings generally). Olive Specter is technically another example, but since she has a male heir in Nervous, Ophelia is not being treated as an heiress and will just get married off wherever. (...not to Johnny, unfortunately for them. Johnny is a merchant. And thanks to Johnny’s heritage, it will be Difficult to cheat discretely. Sounds like Fun!) But I will be avoiding situations like this in the future, and will only allow heiresses if there is no possible male heir, and even then her duty is to marry a hapless guy and produce a male heir as soon as she can to preserve her family line.

I’m also pretty excited about my spreadsheet for the Megakingdom, making pages for simple round info, a full resident census, individual families and family trees, records of deceased sims and events, the neighborhood and treasury, maybe one day including full economic notes on sensible pricing for SMSF goods. And charts on viable marriage prospects for each class, which I am pretty proud of. They’re sorted by rank, red means not allowed, bright green is preferred, and light green is allowed. Generally speaking, sims get bright green within the same age group and light green outside it, making it easy to prioritize same age marriages over, say, adult-teen marriages or teen-child betrothals. Both of those are allowed but not preferred. And these charts will change as sims age, and sims will be removed when they get married and added when new sims are born or rolled.

I am very excited. The spreadsheets also give me something I can work on during down time at work!

[glowyjellyfish]

Gather round, children, for the legend of Grimwood Abbey

(that’s the tiny pre-MCC I mentioned the other day. I only came up with this concept, oh, over a year ago. Dropped it to play a nice easy modern Megahood. I don’t have much wherewithal.)

...so I have spent two days on the weekend so far just working on getting my CC sorted out so I can consider starting this. Yesterday the big issues were a. realizing it was super inefficient to delete stuff in-game one by one even though it’s nice to be able to see it, and becoming paralyzed with indecision about whether to take the time to hunt down unidentified files by hand, or continue spending time deleting dozens and dozens of recoiled by hand… eventually I did a little of both, but boy I gotta use some kind of tooltip renamed now huh… b. I am not good at Delphy’s Download Organizer. I don’t understand it. Why is there no “how to use” documentation. So then I set it to scan for orphans or duplicates, stare hopelessly at the results unable to figure out what is the best course of action, and then quietly quit it to yet again… move files around manually. Don’t get me wrong, I was able to use it to shove several file types into correct folders, but my real issue would be so easily solved if there was a thoroughly explained duplicate scanner that I was able to trust. Ugh, I probably should have started by moving all the files to one big folder and sorting them from there but WHATEVER.

Because, you see, like many simmers, I have been collecting my cc since roughly 2004. I legit cannot remember if I have lost the whole thing and had to start over, but this collection can certainly be traced back to my first laptop that could run the Sims 2. For the longest time, I merely collected a big pile of everything shiny and cool that caught my eye, resulting in a big mixed-up mess combining modern and medieval fantasy and sci-fi and random fandoms and steampunk and everything I ever enjoyed. That… was not sustainable. I tried keeping individual folders within Downloads for specific genres, with the idea that I could swap them in and out for different hoods. Alas, that was too time-consuming for my taste, and I ended up with the same basic downloads folder but very lightly sort of organized but not really.

Sometime within the last ten years, I started trying to cultivate different downloads folders of broad genre categories, all neatly saved on a big flash drive. That’s all well and good, but copying and backing up that shit took away precious hours I could be using to play. Not only that, but it was very rough trying to separate my downloads folder properly—some stuff worked well for multiple genres! So I ended up making copies of the whole downloads folder to build these alternates, which I could then whittle down to only the stuff I actually wanted in there. This medieval alternate downloads folder therefore also contained the folder I’d labeled Medieval CC in my last attempt at organizing, and just to be sure I copied everything over and back repeatedly. And you know how it goes—every time I got excited about the idea of an MCC, I had to go out and download anything new or shiny. And oh yeah, had to stock up on defaults because now I could be using a solely medieval downloads folder! And this new CC would get plonked right into the DL folder, nary a care for organization because I needed to play before I lost interest!

So I had at least two, possibly three copies of all the same content in a collection of medieval CC that’s been building for, let’s call it 15 years more or less. I can’t trust the download organizer—like sir are you showing me all of them? do I throw all these out or leave one behind?—and doing it by hand is extremely tedious, carefully removing all txt and preview files to improve my load time. And actually playing a year-old story concept is delayed yet again.

I’ve got a Megahood set up that I can start converting to medieval whenever I get my act together, and I still that that sounds like fun but also waaaay too big a project for me (latest issue: wait if the capulets and montagues are traditionally alike in dignity is it wrong to make the Capps gentry and the montys merchants? But if I make them both gentry it’ll be an entire damn subhood of nothing but gentry!). I also have the same old MCC hood I started building a year ago, restarting after years of having the concept ready (this one is Algary and it is the one i was building a castle for; it has a few interesting rolled families to start with such as the gentry family having no sim older than teen and me choosing to set that up as the direct heir and some cousins, and a peasant family that involved two elderly ladies who were in love and joined households after their obligatory husbands died, pooling resources to care for their families, but one of them was gonna feel obliged to head off to the church and repent while the other cared for the kids and became a midwife). And then there’s the new guy, Grimwood Abbey, whose concept is only a year old but I sure hope I can follow through on it because it is quite small. Even then I can’t decide yet whether to start with one household (everybody living together for protection!), two households (the church vs the knights), or several households (each knight beginning in their own household with their squire). The latter would make it easier for each knight to earn their own money and compete to purchase gentry approval from the church… but idk.

Anyway. After all that I am really hoping I am about ready to actually play a bit. Even just making some sims and buildings. Today I need to progress further in weeding out CC, try to find a way I can do that more efficiently, maybe find some nice standardized set of makeup and default eyes and skin to use rather than the haphazard collections I barely touch (I prefer to lean toward maxis match over Shiny Realistic skins where everyone has auto makeup, but I’m sure there is something nice out there that suits my needs), and I unfortunately saw some nice medieval clothes I don’t have while downloading a whole fresh set of Sun&Moon Star Factory stuffs (which, I had multiple copies of! Didn’t know what was updated and what was outdated or what! So I threw out everything I had and re-downloaded the entire collection, which may have been a bit drastic but it definitely worked. Also, why is there no complete user guide for this. A “how to get started” or something. Whatever.), so I also gotta download that. Then maybe I can make a test sim to make sure defaults and stuff work okay, and then maybe download some medieval lots to speed up the building process? And then I can play one of my various hood concepts finally actually? Maybe?

TLDR: I am getting frustrated because I have so many downloads, many of them duplicates within folder within the main folder, that it’s taking me all weekend just to straighten them out (and even then I might not be able to finish, despite it being a 3 day weekend where I live). I swear, it would be faster just to throw it all away and start over, except I can’t do that because I am clearly a CC hoarder and I might need a piece of CC that can no longer be downloaded.

...thus goes the preliminary legend of Grimwood Abbey and the horror story of Getting It Set Up. Someday, someday...

[glowyjellyfish]

Here’s the problem I’m having with playing a Sims 2 Megahood. Every time I play, I think “oh, this is an interesting story I should share,” but every time I play, I’m just in it for playing and never think to take pictures or do a full write-up afterwards. I want to change that.

I am, somehow, playing a perfectly functional game on Windows 10. Don’t ask me how. I had it installed for a few months last year before it suddenly broke after my software insisted on updating, couldn’t get it working again no matter how hard I tried, had the urge in January and it installed with no problems. Shrug. I… may have switched to using the UC version over the G4W version? And then used the G4W installers to cram in the missing expansion packs? Anyway, my whole intent was to set up different downloads folders so as to lessen my ungodly loading time and make Flavor Games capable of using Defaults and such. I… am not particularly far into this project, but my Modern Downloads folder is looking pretty clean. Might swap it out for Medieval one of these days and try to play MCC again, but not today.

I have a whole host of MATY mods, ACR and Inteen (partially because I collected the mods when all my downloads were in one folder and I was playing historic hoods, and partly because it just bugs me when teens can woohoo without any possible consequences. I don’t usually go for it, but it makes for fun drama if it happens), and recently installed Hat’s Proportional Aging Mod, which I’m still getting used to. I didn’t like that sims would stay in college for WAY TOO LONG and also didn’t like playing 24-hour semesters, but boy howdy is there an adjustment period for this aging mod. I’m just hoping to avoid a Young Adult Desert as the last of the sims who were already teens when the hood began has departed for college, and it will be Entire Rounds before the next batch of teens is ready. I usually have teens leave for college at any point when they are at 5 days or less to Adult, but might bend that rule in a couple rounds to prevent the colleges from going empty.

I’m also trying to use LTW-focused gameplay, as opposed to ignoring the LTWs that don’t fit how I usually play, such as the Business ones and the Pet ones, but at the same time I’m setting up a pyramid-style Career Slots scheme whereby each career level has a limited number of jobs available (10 at level 1, 9 at level 2, etc), to try and encourage diversified gameplay. I’ll use the job stoppinator when a sim cannot advance, and sims in a level with no open slots are required to use chance cards (which I often ignore in regular gameplay). I also have some standard rules for rolling a sim’s Aspiration, turn-ons, and orientation when they become Teens (the orientation is newer, and i don’t have many queer sims yet but I am hopeful), and a little program where broke college graduates can be ‘hired’ by households that are soon to lose their last guardian to housesit and watch the kids until the household family ages to teen or moves back from college; they’re paid in room and board, and a fair share of the household funds when they leave.

I’m using Google Sheets to have a massive spreadsheet for a census and record as I play, as well as record family trees (I figured out a way to simply write in family trees, so excited), and figure out potential pairings based on attraction.

I have a play order that spaces out the Main Three Hoods so I won’t hit a rough patch of too much Unfavorite Hoods or too much College to play before getting back to the good stuff. Currently, I’m in Belladonna Cove at the opening of a new round, and a lot has already happened in the four or five rounds I’ve played so far.

In Belladonna Cove, the Goodies befriended Bella Goth--the poor thing, stumbling around with no memory of her former life, clearly she needed friends! ...when in fact although she did lose her memory in the traumatic event that also resulted in a clone, she’s dimly aware that she has a family (ie she’s on the family tree), and she’s much happier just seducing sims and living her best life. She’s debating whether she’s interested in staying in Belladonna Cove, or would prefer to move Downtown, while Herbert and Faith have just been going hiking and entering cooking contests with their spare time.

Gavin and Ginger Newson managed to care for their siblings until they were ready to go to college. Gabriella and Gallagher are teens now, taking care of Georgia and Garrett, but are concerned they’re going to miss their chance for college before the kids grow up. They might end up hiring a broke college graduate.

Carlos Contender didn’t marry Chastity Gere, but she moved in with him and had twins Patience and Verity (girl and boy) with him before she unexpectedly died of disease. Carlos isn’t too far off from Death’s Door himself, and is looking into hiring some kind of caregiver, or possibly asking his family to take in his kids.

The Patels moved to a modest house and currently have three kids, Jaya, Kavita, and Umar. Jaya just grew up to be a child.

The Clevelands had two more children--a daughter, Melissa, and the result of an abduction, Sylvia--and moved Downtown; Justin’s currently attending Sim State University.

Kimberly Cordial successfully married Armand De Bateau, and moved with him and Tara out of the penthouse to a mansion nearby in the wealthy district--one that needed plenty of remodeling, by the way. Giant awkwardly shaped empty rooms do not a mansion make. Tara has departed for college (SSU, at the moment teens attend the next college that will be played in the order), and Kimberly gave birth to a daughter, Libby. Meanwhile, Samantha Cordial had unexpected chemistry with Luis Aspir, and got married to him. They live together in the Cordial family home, working on renovations, and have a daughter together, Sabrina.

Jessica Peterson had a fair amount of options to consider, but ultimately she moved in with Jason Larson in Bluewater Village, choosing a husband who shared her goals. They have one son so far, Stanley Peterson, and future children will have the Larson name.

Gabriel Green has been quietly working on his career as he waits for his girlfriend Jane Stacks to graduate college; she’s just about to move in. I hope to find a way to remodel Gabriel’s cool industrial building to retain the style but become a little more livable for a family, or else I might move them.

The Gavigans are struggling in a house that’s a little bit too small for them--they were unable to find anything larger in their budget, and BDC is short on homes that are appropriately sized for families anyway. It certainly doesn’t help that they’ve had three more kids--daughter Ruth, and twins James and Judith--and they’re working very hard at earning enough money to slowly remodel their home so they have enough space.

Vivian Cho and Timothy Riley fell in love and got married, as they are wont to do, and have moved to a remodelled Nightlife house that now has an attached garage (I love remodelling that unit!). Sally’s a teen, Etsu’s a child, and they have a toddler son together, Yeong Cho. Timothy’s fast making his way up the Medicine ladder and may become the first chief of staff in the tri-city area (...oct-city? How many hoods are there??)

The Baldwins moved Downtown, and had a third child, Rosa. Not a lot else going on with them, although they might take in Isabel’s uncle’s kids.

Geoff Rutherford has mostly been working on his career and the notches in his bedpost, but he is considering choosing one lady to carry on his family name. This is most likely going to be Nina Caliente, but could also be Bella Goth or DJ Verse. Meanwhile, his housemate Connor Weir has done a little pining over fairly-happily-married Cassandra Goth Lothario (...nope, not weird at all, moving along), but is currently happily involved with Blossom Moonbeam and waiting for her to graduate college. (...this is happening a lot).

Next in the roster is Downtown, which I’ve already described via the few families that have moved there. I’m hoping to make Downtown and BDC the only hoods with apartments, and populate them heavily when sims finally start graduating en masse. And after that comes Desiderata Valley, the bane of my Megahood, full of boring gimmicky families and ugly, ugly houses. I’m working very hard to change that, but we’ll see when I write up the next round.

Part of me wants to either wait until I take pictures to go with this, or come back and add pictures later, but see, that’s the kind of thinking that leads to me never sharing anything. I’ll share it now, dammit, and continue to share updates as I play through each round.