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simmingwormly · 4 years ago

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The Strange Case of The Strangetown Metamorphosis

There is a mysterious Sim that appears in Strangetown.

That's like saying "there is a fish that appears in the ocean", I know, so I'll be a little more specific.

They are an adult whose memories show inconsistencies with those of their family members. Something is missing!

Alright. That's also not saying much, that's like half of the premades in vanilla, non-clean hoods.

They are immediately recognizable by their appearance and, dare I say it, have distinguishing features unique to them.

Well, that also kinda fits everyone...

They feature in more than one installment of the series.

Again, not that helpful. I mean, almost everybody from the base game hoods is (for better or worse) represented in TS3 or TS4.

They appear in TS2 for PSP!

Hmm...

They are a member of a wealthy family connected to science and paranormal.

And...

They are somehow connected to (possible) cloning.

I imagine that now you’re probably rolling your eyes and asking: Why didn’t I just simply say I was going to talk about Bella Goth?

Because... I’m not!

It’s Loki Beaker. In this mini-essay I’m going to speak about Loki, what is the mystery around him, what hints are there and what are some of the theories and which one do I fancy.

It’s basically a routine round of the popular game “connect EAxis’ oversights and glue them together into a headcanon”.

So without further ado, let me introduce you to:

The Mystery of Loki Beaker!

0: Preface: Loki who?

“As soon as he perfects his latest invention, Loki is sure to get the recognition he knows he deserves. In the meantime, he keeps himself busy by trying to assemble a nuclear reactor out of common household items.”

On the first glance, Loki as a Sim seems quite straightforward. He is a Knowledge Sim with a very eccentric personality. All his trait points are in the extremes, as you can see:

He is a scientist, a competent one at that, as proven by his high career level and the fun fact that some of the game’s horrible machinery you can buy for Aspiration points is attributed to his creation.

(It explains why are the Beakers the only ones who have the stuff lying around by default. It is normal for a Strangetown family to own a non-buyable reward object or two but those are career rewards, the Beakers are the only one who canonically own Aspiration points rewards.)

Even though he knows his stuff when it comes to his profession, he is very corrupt and tests his questionable projects on his captive, Nervous Subject.

To say that Loki is unpopular would be an understatement. No one but his wife Circe likes Loki, even his own sister is indifferent towards him. Yes, he has a sister. Her name is Erin and she also lives in Strangetown with a colorful collection of roommates.

Nothing mysterious about him so far. (apart from his eyebrows)

1: Characterization fallen apart

And then The Sims 3 happened. It was actually quite late into the game’s life cycle, the early 2013, when a beautiful nordic-themed world was released on TS3 Store. Its name was Aurora Skies and it featured Loki, Erin and their parents.

TS3 Loki is a child and Erin is a toddler.

Now I haven’t actually played Aurora Skies. I own (and love) TS3 but the price range for the Store worlds is too high for me, content-to-money wise. So there might be some hidden clues about the Beakers in their house or relationship panels that I haven’t been able to inspect but... not to sound cynical but I doubt it. I doubt such attention was given to detail of this family in Aurora Skies, as they don’t even have individual bios.

But... that is... fine? I mean, we have Loki’s TS2 bio...

Nope. Sure we do. And it would be fine if hair color and ambitions weren’t the only thing Loki and his younger self (from now on referred to as smol Loki) had in common.

Let’s take a look on smol Loki’s personality.

The first noticeable thing is that there is not a trace of Loki’s trademark villainy. He’s not Mean Spirited, he’s not Evil, he’s not even a No Sense of Humor Sim. His extreme neatness and hyperactivity are nowhere to be seen either. While it is true that TS3′s capabilities of defining personality are very limited as it picks “outstanding points” rather than a position of each trait on a scale, and it only has 5 slots (and tiny teeny 3 for children), it doesn’t make any sense still for the devs not to pick some more loki-esque traits for the precious slots they had.

Unless...

They didn’t care about Loki’s personality and there were no deeper intentions.

Unless the devs were trying to purposefully show us new angles of his character that either got suppressed while he was growing up, or manifest in ways that TS2′s scale system wasn’t able to show.

Could the Lucky trait in particular have had something to do with the change?

(Also, those traits of smol Loki are reason why I usually go for a Family Secondary Loki in TS2 and thus make Strangetown the purgatory of two unstable blonde Knowledge/Family sciency guys.)

We also must not omit that even though smol Loki didn’t display any of them, he still had all of Loki’s signature traits in him, as Loki in TS2 has his actual personality synced with the genetic one, meaning that there was something in there that caused him not to act so mean that got lost as he grew up. In other words, something brought up the worst in him.

And that’s not all. Smol Loki is not a regular TS3 child. You see, in TS3, premade children aren’t particularly known for being highly skilled experts. Neither are in TS2, for that matter, and it’s okay. It’s realistic.

Smol Loki has a skill maxed.

It is very rare for a premade regardless of age to already start with a maxed skill and I personally don’t know of any other premade children that do.

And it’s writing.

What does writing have to do with Loki? Does Loki write? Probably he has to, those academic papers aren’t gonna spawn out of thin air, but that’s not what the writing skill in TS3 (or the hidden writing skill in TS2) are about. They’re about creative writing only.

Ok, ok. How high is Loki’s Creativity skill, then? In TS2, skills are much broader, they more resemble skillsets than individual skills, and writing categorizes under Creativity. Bring out the skill panel!

Two. He has 2 points in Creativity. That is... low. That is actually very low, especially for a Sim that has supposedly been writing for fun since childhood. (and was a prodigy, while we’re at it) It is safe to say, I think, that if the player doesn’t make him do it, Loki doesn’t write anymore and he hasn’t been doing that for a long, long time.

While I would cynically admit that the dissonance in personalities might be just the lack of damns given from EAxis’ side, this seems to me too on the nose to be unintentional.

They would have no reason to bring the Beakers back without the “evil scientists” thing in mind. I mean, that’s what they’re iconic for. That’s what they’re recognizable by. (apart from their eyebrows)

So the person who was in charge of creating smol Loki probably knew they were recreating “Loki the mad scientist”.

So when they were picking the skill they use to demonstrate that this kid is gonna go far, they thought... “evil scientist = writing”...?

I would understand going for Creativity in general. I mean, Loki’s an inventor. That comes with the territory. But creativity as such isn’t really a skill in TS3. It’s divided to different activities.

Wouldn’t it make more sense just in general to pick logic, then? I mean, Loki isn’t that extremely logical by default but it is his second strongest skill and a feature unmistakably connected to being a scientist.

That’s what leads me to believe that writing plays a role in the story and it was chosen on purpose.

So how did a sweet little family-oriented boy talented with words transform into the ruthless catboy inventor we know and love?

And that, my friends, is the mystery of Loki Beaker.

2: A closer look at our environmentalist friends, the Beakers

If we want to get the full picture and come to a satisfying conclusion of some sorts, we need to inspect smol Loki’s surroundings. Maybe there is a clue to the continuous force or a traumatic event that shifted smol Loki’s direction in life?

Loki’s and Erin’s parents are named Gundrun and Bjorn. Even though their age would still allow it, they’re not present at the start of TS2′s Strangetown play, they’re long dead. Bjorn died before Erin became an adult and Gundrun died shortly before her son’s engagement to Circe. Because they died by the time Loki had (presumably) already long enrolled in his current life-path, we can safely rule out any tragic early death of parental figures scenario as a possible answer.

Gundrun is the only Beaker that canonically also writes. She has 5 points in the writing skill. She also shares some traits with Loki, namely the smarts and ambition.

But she has little to do with science and is way more business-oriented which is a trait she shares with Circe’s ancestors, for example her father. Maybe the families knew each other from business ventures even before they moved to Strangetown? It is stated in their memories that Loki and Circe first met when they were children. But I digress!

Anyway, I don’t see anything in Gundrun that would suggest any abusive behavior towards her son that might have triggered his drastic change. Possibly but not necessarily she might’ve been a bit absent but nothing out of ordinary.

And now the father, Bjorn.

Bjorn is the sciency half of the couple and works as an Aquatic Ecosystem Tweaker. Again, he has zero traits that would raise any red flags and he shares 4 out of 5 traits with either smol Loki or Loki. (I don’t know if Loki is a “natural cook” but he cooks quite well, so I think that counts.)

What’s interesting about Bjorn, though, is his speech that serves as a flavor text for the Aurora Skies store page.

(Image transcript: “Do it for science! Science is everywhere around us, but at Aurora Skies it’s not just something you learn; it’s something you do! We need bright young minds to make the dreams of the future a reality. Even now we’re finding more uses for garbage to help the planet. Charging batteries, powering machines - the sky is the limit. Just this last year we created a modified Hot Air Baloon using garbage as fuel and turning it into pure air with a pine breeze scent. Now you can have efficient travel and an amazing romantic adventure with no cost to the ozone (or your nose)! Every year we’re creating more and more exciting things in the world of science. Garbage-powered hearts, heart-powered cars, solar-powered cats; what will you think of next! It’s all up to you. Do it for Science! Did you know? Hot Air Balloons are an epic form of travel based around the simple principle that hot air is lighter than cold air. They lift in the air based on the heat system in the balloon. Increasing the temperature of the air inside the balloon makes it lighter than the air outside and the balloon begins to float. More air is required to lift heavier things; that’s why the balloons have to be so huge! How cool (or hot!) is that?”)

From this piece of text we can see Bjorn’s passion and dedication to “green” science. Nothing in his traits suggests he fakes it, so I think it’s safe to believe that this peppy idealist is a glimpse into Loki’s father’s genuine self.

He might have encouraged his children to follow in his footsteps (”We need bright young minds to make the dreams of the future a reality.“) and smol Loki, who later in life seemed to have similar levels of enthusiasm (science is his One True Hobby), might have been receptive to that.

Now just close your eyes for a second and imagine an alternate reality in which Loki picked up where Bjorn left and instead of a energy-refilling machine that electrocutes you if you’re not happy enough, he invented “solar-powered cats”.

Still no hints on what could’ve messed Loki up, though.

Let’s take a look at the parents in TS2. Even though they’re not present and aren’t even resurrectable, they’re still coded in the game for purposes of genetics, memories and family trees, so some of their characteristics are salvageable.

And by the Watcher, they were both Romance Sims.

They were workaholic Romance Sims who cared about the environment and liked recycling (and Hot Baloons).

And they were both extremely Nice and very Sloppy, if their personalities on wiki are something to go by. Which they unfortunately aren’t, at least not completely because most ancestors don’t simply have “their own” personalities and use presets instead, so they tend to be quite similar.

The same goes for most of the Beaker clan, unfortunately. Fun fact is that there is no Knowledge Sim in sight (before Loki, of course). Maybe they weren’t a scientist family, but a bunch of Romance Sims who used to spend their free time in between woohoos saving the planet with eco-science. (3 out of 6 of Loki’s and Erin’s ancestors were Romance Sims, 2 were Fortune and 1 was Family)

But! There is one outlier. Her name is Gertrude Beaker. She is Loki’s paternal grandmother.

And similarly to her grandson, she certainly has a personality to remember.

She doesn’t use a preset, this is a personality that someone went and manually assigned (...or generated) for her. And she is Neat, Outgoing and doesn’t have a nice bone in her body. But unlike Loki, she has a sense of humor (which makes her even more dangerous, in my opinion) and is extremely Lazy.

She is a Fortune Sim and the only Beaker who shares the darker sides of Loki’s personality. (to be clear, I don’t mean their taste for cleaning but the round 0 of Nice points)

Because she doesn’t feature in TS3 at all, it is safe to say that she wasn’t in her grandchildren’s lives until the family moved to Strangetown. Could she be the corrupting influence on smol Loki?

As far as personality comparison goes, she seems to be the only possible culprit, the only one who’s personality shares the same unpleasant qualities he became infamous for. But! That’s not saying much. There is no evidence she actually did anything.

There’s not even any evidence that she ever met her grandson, given he has no memory of her dying which means she might have died before he was even born. That would be a solid evidence on the contrary and would rule her out. But I’m leaving some maneuvering space for theories here because she is the only Beaker ancestor with custom personality, after all, and that is suspicious.

That’s all the Beakers we know of if not counting Atom and Ceres, who came after Loki, so they’re not relevant to the question of his childhood. Or... are they?

3: And that’s when the trouble began

Another part of this question that might help us discern what happened to Loki is the when. All we know so far is that there is a big void of unknown between smol Loki and regular Loki and the point of transformation happened in there somewhere.

Thankfully, we have something to give us an idea. It’s this snapshot in storytelling pictures for the Beakers:

It shows smol Loki destroying a dollhouse. It seems to be in an impersonal environment of some sorts. The cheapest bed in the game is against a bare white wall, the window is hid behind blue curtains and there doesn’t really seem to be anything else but the dollhouse, a teddy bear in the background and that... very unpleasant bed.

It clearly tells us that Loki’s shift started in his pre-teen years.

And seeing that room which is definitely not in the Beaker Castle at 1 Tesla Court, it makes me think of a hotel or a cheap apartment the family was staying in while moving from Aurora Skies to Strangetown. Maybe the castle-like something the household inhabits at the start of the game wasn’t a property of the Beakers at all, maybe that was where the Salamises used to live and now it belongs to Circe?

Anyway, could it had been leaving Aurora Skies that sent smol Loki down an existential crisis and settling in the not exactly welcoming environment of Strangetown, enrolling in a local school, that sealed it?

But why all the stuff with writing? This would work with any other hobby but somehow it had to be writing and it’s our task to find out why.

4: Not your average tragedy

Now in our search we already have some ideas but it wouldn’t be thorough if we didn’t take into account smol Loki’s actual personality. I mean, we went into what traits he doesn’t have but what about those he has?

Namely Lucky and Family-Oriented.

I think Lucky is a very interesting choice. There’s nothing inherent about Loki Beaker that would make you go “that’s one lucky guy!” (if you don’t count his relationship with Circe as a stroke of luck, that is) and the same goes for smol Loki.

But... it could be a clue. His metamorphosis either couldn’t be triggered by trauma because he’s lucky and it would avoid him, or it must’ve been something tremendously horrid so he’s lucky he’s still alive.

Now we know we are searching for something that happened in his late childhood, verging on the start of his teenage years. His family was going through the turmoil of moving to a desert and he has already known his future partner Circe. Meanwhile Erin-

Oh, wait. Erin.

Smol Loki was Family-Oriented which implies he would probably have a good relationship with his little sister, as he would’ve naturally inclined to protect her and help his parents take care of her. But!

Not only do they have an amicable but distant relationship as adults but Erin seems to forget that Loki even existed in her childhood.

He has the usual set of memories of a sibling growing up well but she doesn’t, she has no Loki-related memories at all, not even of his marriage, which was a quite recent event.

Could the reason for Loki’s “downfall” be somehow related to his sister? Was there a dramatic event in which she lost a part of her memory?

5: Theories!

Ok, we’re finally here! Now I try to present some theories about what might’ve happened.

1. Burdens of the golden child

In Aurora Skies, Loki used to be the little wonder every relative was gushing about. With his father as an acclaimed scientist and a very liked person in general, there was little to no adversity his son had to face. He followed his passion and having nobody to really compare himself to, nor anybody who would terrorize him, he prospered.

But then the Beakers moved. Strangetown was... different. It was way smaller than Aurora Skies, so everybody inherently knew everybody and everybody had to interact with everybody... because the small space of a desert community didn’t leave them with any choice. And it was bleak and unfriendly. No one except for the Salamises knew the Beakers, so they found themselves under scrutiny from their new neighbors.

So Loki, who used to live thinking he was unique, was now sitting everyday in a much smaller classroom with Pascal and Vidcund Curious, whom he was immediately being compared to. But he wasn’t like the Curiouses. He was a kid of a scientist but wasn’t a science kid. He didn’t have much in common with Pascal who approached him and tried to befriend him at first but he wanted to. In Strangetown, nothing seemed to be cooler than being really, really into science. Pascal’s and Loki’s communication attempts were rather poor, though, and in the end, they never made friends. Loki slowly began to disdain the oldest Curious boy and it culminated a few years later in high school when Pascal made an attempt to woo Circe. It was even worse with Vidcund. Ever since Loki’s first day at the new school, Vidcund had been eyeing him with a disgusted look and Loki became quick to reciprocate.

In Strangetown, nothing seemed to be cooler than being really, really into science. Even Circe was on it! She was the only person his age he has know in Strangetown before his family moved in and he liked her. Not “like” liked her, yuck! But he thought she was cool. Her family used to visit the Beakers in Aurora Skies and they played together. She was a friend! Or so Loki thought. She seemed to like hanging out with the Curiouses much more.

In Strangetown, nothing seemed to be cooler than being really, really into science, yes. But not in the eyes of Buzz Grunt, the son of a general who lived in Strangetown. Their family were the self-proclaimed protectors of the hood but at the same time they weren’t shy to show a strong distaste for all that made Strangetown an important desert settlement in the first place. And little Buzz, although Loki doubted he understood the nuances, was very fond of asserting his dominance over his less sporty and hyper-masculine classmates.

Suddenly jealous of the Curious brothers, under pressure from both the adults and his peers comparing him to them and bullied by Buzz, Loki’s social life fell apart. He started having problems... and he came up with solutions. He has always liked science but from back then on he hyperfixated on it to prove everybody who picked on him for being a worthless parody of a science kid wrong.

Not only his social life and self-confidence were busted, though. Moving away from Aurora Skies to Strangetown that had much higher prices for housing because of the limited space, the living standards for the Beakers lowered. It was chaotic and uncomfortable. Plus, almost everybody in Strangetown was loaded. Why, Circe and her parents lived in a small castle! Loki felt like they’re the only “poor” family around and it played into his new-found insecurities.

And then there was Erin’s accident. She suffered a severe head injury and even though she fortunately survived, she was never... the same. She had issues with her memory. Loki tried to convince himself that he’s big enough not to cry but when they were visiting Erin in the hospital and she didn’t recognize him, he cried. It was his little sister! And... it was all his fault anyway! If he was quicker and pushed her to safety, she would’ve been fine! Or even better, he wished the car would’ve hit him instead.

Loki was becoming more and more snappy, focused on his grades and projects, unavailable. The siblings never mended their relationship, Erin, even though she recovered, never got to make new memories with her brother. Not remembering them growing up together, he was like a stranger to her. A scary mean teenage boy she didn’t know and, even though she was a very friendly child, she was too intimidated to willingly spend time with him. And Loki was always busy and moreover, he felt guilty and inexplicably angry, so he postponed approaching her, until it was too late, he was in college, she was in high school and it was too awkward.

And... there was no time to write anymore.

2. Gertrude the Neat and Mean (and Lazy)

Ok, Loki doesn’t have any memories of his grandma. But hear me out! Erin does not have any of him either and yet they met. This theory doesn't require any additional write up – he simply got under the influence of his 0 Nice points granny and she cultivated him to be just like her.

My personal take: This is maybe my least favorite theory of them all, even though it is quite straightforward. It doesn't take much into consideration and demonizes Gertrude, who as far as we know, might not done anything wrong.

3. The accident

This theory takes advantage of TS3's canon sciency machinery, namely Cerebralizing Brain Enhancing Machine 2.0.

It can, among other things, change a Sim's personality. There is (quite unfortunately, in my opinion) no chance of consequential failure in the actual game, the most it can do is to (non-fatally) electrocute your Sim. But...

Imagine smol Loki sneaking into his dad's laboratory, most probably at his workplace.

He was curious. Ever since his father showed him all the equipment in there, all he could think of was the machine that made people smarter.

Maybe it could make him smarter?

I mean, Loki knew he was already quite smart. At least, he's been told he was and he had no reason not to believe it.

But he could be even smarter.

He could be like his dad. Or his mom. Or Erin. Everyone was talking about how clever young Erin seemed. Loki was proud of her but part of him just wanted that, too.

So what if... he went to dad's laboratory, just for a little while, and made himself smarter?

He made all the necessary preparations. It meant to memorize dad’s schedule, so he knew just the time when he could sneak into the laboratory. It also meant to get a good costume so he won’t be recognizable on the security footage!

And then finally, he was ready. To infiltrate the laboratory was easy enough but it only made Loki more nervous. He was on the edge but determined. He wanted to make it big in the world. He needed to seize the opportunity. And fear... fear was there to be ignored! Hands, stop trembling!

His confidence grew a bit once he got to the machine itself. He knew how to run it thanks to his dad and it made him feel competent and ready.

Little did he know that there was a huge oversight. Although Loki could operate the technology on a very basic level, his knowledge went nowhere near deep enough for him to detect that the machine has yet another set of settings and those currently expect an adult user. It wasn’t configured for a child patient.

But unaware of that, the boy in his patchy dinosaur costume climbed on top of the machine and with his eyes wide open and his heart racing he connected the Brain Enhancer to his system. Then, with his hand sweating, he pushed a button on a remote he was clutching to.

When Bjorn, alerted by Loki’s screams, rushed into the laboratory, it was way too late.

As his terrified father was calling the ambulance, the child was alive and even still awake. He was too weak to cry. He just watched Bjorn, wishing for death and looking for signs of wrath in father’s eyes.

There were none. Only fear.

Physically, Loki Beaker managed to recover just fine. With the power of advanced medicine and plastic surgery, the burns he suffered were reduced to nothing but almost invisible scars.

But inside, he was never the same. Literally. Even though the procedure backfired horribly, it still worked to some extend - but even that extend was warped. Loki succeeded in giving himself the Genius trait but several of his traits were replaced also, including the Lucky trait that probably saved his life.

6: Conclusion!

I like Loki very much. (no sh*t, who would’ve guessed) He’s a very controversial and over-the-top character who tends to be rather unpredictable in the actual gameplay. I started writing this giant thing to find an answer to his backstory that would satisfy me and hopefully also some of you.

With a heavy heart I conclude I’m not successful.

First I have to admit I originally planned to present 5 theories instead of 3 but I scrapped 2 of them.

First was about Atom time traveling and replacing Loki, creating himself again and again in a time loop (would explain the huge personality difference between smol Loki and Loki-Atom) and it was very far-fetched but fun, alas I realized it was out of character for Atom, since he seems to love his sister and his Plumbot so much he would hardly leave them behind to pull that off.

The second was about Nervous and the corrupting power of Death he has inside that would slowly drive Loki and Circe “evil” even though it’s unclear whether they first adopted him with being a lab-rat in mind. But it would not make sense since a change like that would be visible on their personality panels. That’s not that important, though. What made me not include this theory is that it feels uncomfortably victim blame-y. It’s not directly since it wouldn’t be Nervous’ fault anyway but any attempt to shift the blame from Loki and Circe in this situation feels uncomfortable.

(To be clear, I don’t think the Beakers deserve demonization. In my opinion, the best way to treat them narrative-wise is like eccentric people capable of feeling love and doing good things sometimes, yet irredeemably self-centered, morally bankrupt and deserving a lifetime in jail for child abuse they have done on Nervous. Not one-dimensional but still villains and still objectively bad people.)

And those 3 theories above? They could’ve been better.

I think I like the first the most, even though I still feel like something is missing. I just tend to like relatively grounded explanations and this one doesn’t feature the supernatural nor any deus ex machina gadget.

What about you? And do you have any other theories? Sky’s the limit! It’ll make my day to hear them!

Whatever your takes are, they’re all valid.

#loki beaker #strangetown #premades #the sims 2 #the sims #simbrl #headcanon #ts2

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criquette-was-here · 4 years ago

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Replies

Anonymous said:

Hi Criquette! I love your work and tutorials, in fact, you taught me how to make hood deco buildings light up at night! However, I'm having an issue with the transparency. The day window texture and the main building textures have a transparent gap between them even though they line up perfectly in the image program and GMND preview. Do you know what may be causing this?

Hey anon! Thank you! I’m glad you’ve managed to get your decorations light up at night. As for the gap, sometimes, if a material has ‘alphatest enabled’ on ‘1′ it can interpret almost opaque (i.e. transparency at 50-70%) areas of the texture as fully transparent. Alphatest renders transparency strictly as true/false, or 1/0. I would recommend to turn alphatest off (set to ‘0′) and if you still need to have transparency in your day windows texture, make it work with ‘blend mode: blend’.

@saralynnx said:

I'm just in total awe right now. Feverfew completely blew all of my expectations out of the water, and is a prime example of 'TS3 and TS4 could never!' I seriously feel bad for people who are no longer active in the TS2 community for missing out on this masterpiece.

Oh, thank you Sara! Well, this game can wait (i’ve had a break for six years myself) and if someone decides to get back to TS2, Feverfew will be available :)

Anonymous said:

Any chances you could upload just the sc4 terrain for Feverfew?

Oh, dear anon. There’s no point in doing that. Because the unedited map for thins neighborhood looks like this:

You can still have the Vervainwort SC4 map instead, which makes definitely more sense.

Anonymous said:

Omg I’m so sorry. I really didn’t mind the look of it I just thought I did something wrong! Good to know I’m set. Thank you for replying I know you’re being inundated with messages! Bless!

Not to worry, anon! Happy simming :)

@impassingoveryou said:

Had to chuckle a bit at Mr. Bean‘s car. I didn‘t even notice it until my brother casually walked past me and pointed it out. Was that supposed to be an easter egg? :D

Well, I did show some WIP pics of this little car earlier. Not sure about an easter egg, but it’s definitely a mention :) As for the easter eggs, there’s one and it’s not related to mr. Bean ;)

Anonymous said:

Hi, thank you for Feverfew! I don't have a computer at the moment, so I can't dowload it and wander around in it like I want to, but I already love it just from the pictures. Just curious, are there spaces/suitable terrain for beach lots in Feverfew? I have a couple of ideas for beach lots and was wondering if I can fit them into Feverview.

Hi anon! There’s literally one single beach lot in Feverfew and it has a pub so you’ll have to make it over :)

@veetiesims2 said:

As a detail-crazy worldbuilder I really admire all the work you did on Feverfew. It's not my usual style but it reminds me so much of the village of my childhood that I think I'll adopt it as a side hood! Thanks <3

Ah, thank you Veetie! I’m so glad that so many people see Feverfew this way. I didn’t grew up in a town like this myself, but I really fell in love with small British towns and villages, so it was really something I wanted to try and recreate in-game.

Anonymous said:

This might be dramatic but I literally teared up when I opened up your neighborhood. I wish I was so detail oriented. Your screenshots did not do it justice because W O W

Ahh, thanks anon! Yes, Feverfew looks better in-game than on screenshots ^__^”

@ankapartizankaniko said:

Criquette, you're amazing! and your city is amazing! Thank you for a cool gift for the new year. Now I don't want to finish building my city ;)

Oh, please do finish it! :D You’re most welcome @ankapartizankaniko and Happy New Year!

Anonymous said:

Hi, I saw a YouTube-video about Feverfew, and there was this river-piece neighborhood deco. Would it be possible to share that piece separately? I love Feverfew, but I play medieval, so I can not use whole hood, but that river hood deco would be perfect!

Hello anon! You can download the whole thing, take the ‘FeverfewHoodCC’ folder and put it into your downloads folder without installing the whole thing. All the hood decorations, including river pieces, will appear as usual under ‘landmark’ and ‘misc’ submenu.

@pleasant-lives said:

I was watching the video review of Feverfew and I just kept thinking: I wish we had an open world in ts2! It’s so pretty and detailed, I am amazed

Yes, an open world in TS2 would be nice. But frankly, I’m quite satisfied with the one we have :)

Anonymous said:

2) or, e.g. is it possible to create a default replacement of impostor textures for a lot... by putting its custom textures in a separate package... which would override, upon each load of the game, those textures that game generates after each save? i've never done DRs myself so all of the above is probably nonsense, and even if it's possible it's too much work anyway... but i was mostly just wondering what your thoughts on this topic are. p.s. great worldbuilding in the Feverfew story mode! :)

Is it me, or the first bit is lost somewhere? :D Well, lot imposters work a bit different comparing to usual CC. Although there’s still left some place for experiments and who knows, may be at some point we will be able to improve them somehow!

#replies #pleasant-lives #ankapartizankaniko #veetiesims2 #impassingoveryou #saralynnx

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jenba · 5 years ago

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Hi jenba! Like you, I’ve been playing since 2000. I remember your name from the TS2 days and when I got TS4 last year my heart leapt to see you still active and with incredible builds. I was never good at building but I’d really like to finally challenge myself to improve. I wanted to ask, knowing that you put so much time and work into what you make: do you typically use floor plans (or did you start that way) or have you more been able to accumulate talent and intuition by practice?

Awww, hello dear Anon! I love hearing from people who visited my blog back in the TS2 days! That’s just too cool. And it’s great that you’re working on your building! It honestly just takes practice! And I use everything I can for inspiration and guidance - floor plans, pictures, other Simmers’ builds, whatever I can find. My first builds were not the greatest, but I just kept at it.

There is maybe a little intuition involved, because I’ve gotten super picky over time and can look at one of my builds and just “know” that it’s not right! And I’ll keep tweaking it and refining it until I’m mostly happy with it. But I believe that comes with experience, too. The more pics you look at, the better you get at being able to sense what’s good and not so good, how things should be proportioned, etc. And then by just building and building, taking pictures, viewing all of the angles, you improve your skill.

Think of it like learning to paint...at first you can just do broad strokes on the canvas, and then eventually you get better and better at rendering finer details.

Sorry if that’s a bit abstract! Floorplans can be great but if you follow them too faithfully you can end up with a clunky exterior (since Sims can’t completely match real life proportions). So you have to improvise sometimes. Find an exterior you like (the more pics, the better), and see if you can match it. Study it, note what you like best about it (the windows, the colors, the roofline), and try to get the same feel in your build. It doesn’t have to be exact.

OK, done rambling for now! If you would like more specific advice, let me know! Happy Simming and building, friend!

#jenba replies #Anonymous

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findingbxlance · 5 years ago

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I love The Sims.

Which is why I will never stop being disappointed in TS4.

Lets do some math, and I’m going to keep this mainly between TS3 & TS4. While I did play TS2, there isn’t a lot of information readily available on what the games themselves cost at the time of release. I have some information on that, but I’m not sure if it’s 100% accurate as I was baby when they came out and my mom had to buy them for me. I’ll release it later if anyone is curious.

TS3 launched with a base game priced at $49.99, and throughout it’s lifetime accrued nine stuff packs at $19.99 each, and eleven expansion packs priced at $39.99 a pop. This comes to a total of $669.79.

TS4 launched with a base game price of $59.99 (that price soon dropped to $49.99 because the backlash was immediate), and introduced the new game pack. In total (as of 4/15/2020), TS4 has sixteen stuff packs at $9.99 each, eight expansion packs at $39.99, and eight game packs at $19.99. That comes to a total of $699.67.

That’s not a huge price difference. All in all, it’s about $30 if you want to get the whole, complete collection, so why do I dislike TS4 so vehemently?

Quality.

Let’s compare a few expansion packs just to get a feel for what the difference is.

TS3 launched the “Late Night” expansion at $39.99, and it included:

A new world (Bridgeport) with 82 lots

Fame & reputation systems

Bars & night clubs

Apartments with penthouse suites

Subways

Elevators

Breast & muscle sliders in CAS*

Zodiac signs

A fountain tool*

Height adjustment for wall objects

Groups & bands

Butlers

Vampires!

The mixology skill

2 new traits (shy & star quality)

TS4 launched the “Get Famous” expansion at $39.99, and it included:

A new world (Del Sol Valley) with 11 lots

Fame & reputation systems

Active acting career

Multiple ways to become famous

Music, video station, etc.

And that’s about it.

Now I’ll be the first person to admit that TS3 wasn’t perfect. Although it was a very full game, it struggled in areas of performance. With such large, open worlds, and detailed customization systems, it was pretty buggy for a lot of people, but we’ll talk on that more later.

But what I want to focus on is the disparity between these two packs, as they’re supposed to be mirrors of one another. “Get Famous” is the TS4 version of “Late Night”, so where did all the stuff go?

Well, EA broke it into 3 packs.

To get the full experience of “Late Night” in TS4, or at least something similar, you would need to purchase, “Get Famous”, “City Living”, and “Vampires”. That’s 2 expansion packs, and 1 game pack. So, to replicate the experience of “Late Night” you would need to spend $99.97.

That’s almost $100.

So, for an experience we paid $39.99 previously in the last installment, we’re now being asked to pay $100 for.

Is that fair?

Lets do another expansion pack comparison:

TS3 launched “Ambitions” at $39.99, and it included:

A new world (Twinbrook) with 82 lots

5 new active jobs that take you all around the world your sims inhabit

Firefighter, investigator, ghost hunter, stylist, and architectural designer

Self-employment

Sculptors, inventors, painters, writers, gardeners, and so on can all profit from at home work

Laundry

Tattooing career

New traits (eco-friendly, good observer, weirdo, etc.)

Consignment stores

Inventing

Sculpting

TS4 launched “Get to Work” at $39.99, and it included:

A new world (Magnolia Promenade) with 4 lots

3 new active jobs that take place in one location

Detective, doctor, scientist

Baking & photography skills

Retail lots

Illnesses for sims

Aliens

There’s definitely more crossover here, but “Get to Work” still falls short. $39.99 for a full game and all we get is a world with 4 lots? Even in TS2 “Open for Business” we had more to do.

And, that isn’t to mention the fact that “Get to Work” launched separately from the TS4 “Laundry Day Stuff” pack. So, to get a similar experience to TS3′s “Ambitions” you would need to purchase both “Get to Work” and “Laundry Day Stuff” at a total of $49.98.

One more comparison for good measure.

TS3 launched “Island Paradise” at $39.99, and it included:

A new world (Isla Paradiso) with 118 lots, the most of ANY TS3 expansion

Houseboats that can move anywhere around the island

Resorts that you can either visit, or own, manage & edit

New transportation modes

Boating, skiing, and windsurfing

3 new careers

Lifeguard, resort manager, scuba diver

Diving into fully realized underwater scenes

Sims could also catch fish, explore underwater caves & find sunken treasure

Shark & kraken attacks

Mermaids!

Missions to discover and unlock new islands

Blueprint templates*

TS4 launched “Island Living” at $39.99, and it included:

A new world (Sulani) with 11 lots

Docks & new foundation types

4 new careers

Conservationist, diving, fishing, and lifeguard

Mermaids!

Boats

Missions to clean up the island

2 new traits

In the case of “Island Paradise” vs. “Island Living” there are a quite a few similarities, but the disparity remains. Thankfully, this time around EA didn’t break “Island Living” into multiple packs, but imagine if in a few months we get a resort style pack? Honestly, I wouldn’t put it past EA.

In these pack comparisons, I hope I’ve highlighted some of the issues between what should have been pretty similar packs.

And, to clarify, I’m not saying that EA should have just copy pasted TS3 packs into the TS4 style, but for the amount of money they’re asking, the quality should remain the same. There should be a similar amount of features between each pack, but there isn’t.

With each expansion, it feels like EA is spending less and less time working on the unique gameplay features, and pouring more time into the general aesthetics of the packs. So, while TS4 is the prettiest of all The Sims titles, it’s also the emptiest.

Despite the shiny veneer of a good game with solid graphics, TS4 ultimately lacks depth. It doesn’t feel like a game, but rather a character creator. I spend more time building sims and their homes than I do actually playing out their lives.

All in all, I find that the “life simulation” part of TS4 is severely lacking. It mostly comes down to the little things, which is exemplified whenever I go back and replay TS2. Sims would cuddle their partner in their sleep, burglars were a real and present danger, raccoons would topple your trash can at any given chance, and friends would call all the time to ask if you wanted to go downtown.

It’s been 6 years since TS4 came out, and, from what the dev’s have said, they aren’t planning on pushing out TS5 anytime soon, but let’s dream a little bit about what could be.

In my perfect game, TS5 would include aspects of TS3 and TS2. The open worlds were great, but not many people’s computers were beefy enough to run them. The one thing I will applaud about TS4, is that its made with everyone in mind. We can’t all afford big, gaming computers, a lot of simmers play on their laptops, and we should all be able to play regardless of what type of machine we’re working with.

So, instead of fully open works with 90+ lots, I would like to see open neighborhoods. If we take the open concept of TS3, and combine it with the neighborhood style of TS4, we’d get an open world of about 15-20 lots. That’s nowhere near as big as TS3, but would allow for more fun neighbor interactions, and remove the constant load screens.

I’d also like to see a return of the color wheel. This is also a point of contention, where I understand that excessive customization really dragged down TS3 and made it unplayable for a lot of people. So instead of full customization, relegate it to just colors (instead of different materials like fabric, metal, wood, etc.,) and just CAS.

I think a lot of what gummed up TS4 was the fact that you could customize everything. Hair color, eye color, makeup, clothes, accessories, wallpaper, paint, tiles, flooring, chairs, sofas, decorations, and on and on. Restricting it just to CAS, and in a simple color wheel would give us so much more freedom.

A color wheel in CAS would also solve EA’s issue of diversity. While they’ve given us the ability to create trans and nonbinary sims (which is fantastic!), they’ve been really slow on any progress when it comes to skin tones. A color wheel would allow us to create sims of all colors, and give power to the players to create more realistic and diverse representations of their lives as sims.

The last thing I would really love to see is a return to the little details. Give us more randomness. Genies, walking skeletons, ruins we can explore that aren’t just rabbit holes, more active careers, more opportunities. Don’t be afraid to give us the weird things, we love the weird things! But don’t forget about the little things. Sims sitting in the grass together and chatting, sims leaving flowers at your door after a really great date, sims scooting together to cuddle while watching a movie together on the couch.

Overall, TS5 should just include more more, if that makes sense.

Leave your comments & thoughts below! I’d love to talk to ya’ll about this, its really been brewing for awhile.

*Features included in TS4 base game.

#the sims #ts4 #sims #sims 4 #simblr

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buzzliker · 6 years ago

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buzz lightyear and being reset

something that i wish we could have seen (that sadly, i don't think we ever will now), is some of buzz's fears/trauma relating to being reset in toy story 3. it would be a problem unique to him as a more electronic-based toy, and would be a fresh and deep side of his character to explore other than the thinking-he's-a-real-space-ranger-then- realising-that-he's-not-and-coming-to-terms-with-that-then-becoming-a-loyal-grounded-friend, which is by all means an incredible arc, it can just only go so far.

i don't think there was any way of naturally fitting this into toy story 4, due to it being woody's story, the end of his arc. but it still makes me wish we could have seen it explored in some way.

although the kingdom hearts cutscenes for the toy box level are canonically set between ts2 and 3, we see buzz have a strong emotional reaction to the robot toys in the store being possessed by xehanort and his minions, more so than any other character. to be honest i could rant for ages about buzz and woody's characterisations in these cutscenes and about how their roles in the story should 10000% have been switched around, but had this been set after toy story 3 it would have made buzz's reaction to the robots being possessed have more meaning. i know they're only game cutscenes, but considering that they're apparently canon to the franchise it would have set off a really good internal conflict inside buzz.

now in toy story 3, we see that buzz has no memory of being switched to demo or spanish mode when he returns to normal after the tv falls on him in the garbage truck scene. in the early version of ts3, we were going to have the explanation of why only buzz seemed to think he was a real space ranger when he first arrived, and we still did get it, just on a smaller scale. apparently, when buzz falls in the first movie *cries in i will go sailing no more* the fall jolted his switch from demo mode to play mode, which is what turns him back into the (evil) "astro-nut" in toy story 3. except in ts3, he has no memory of this reset, as we can see him turning against his friends. however when this supposed jolt from demo to play mode happens when he falls in ts1, he still has memories of everything that happened before, he's just had a bit of a reality check. also, it makes no sense that if his switch can jolt that easily, why didn't it work when the toys held him down to switch him back from demo to play mode? that way the continuity is a little weird, but i'll let it slide plus i'm lowkey thankful it didn't work bc we got spanish buzz gjfhghsfdgd. toy story 1 makes it out to seem that buzz falling just makes him realised manually that he's not a space ranger by falling in the first place, which debunks the whole switch-jolt thing. i'm not 100% sure that the ts1 thing is canon, so i'm sorry if it's not and I've just rambled about some misinformation ':)

but running with the whole buzz-loses-his-memories-when-reset thing, i'm absolutely sure that jessie, woody or one of the other toys has filled him in on what happened to him and what he did in both demo mode and spanish mode. this must have then left a HUGE impact on him, especially learning about how he was poisoned against his friends in demo mode. get ready for some angst here, but i'm sure it would eat away at him. he'd get super paranoid about anyone touching his back compartment or screws, and dissociate when the fear and ptsd get too much for him. blacking out/not remembering something like that and only being told it second-hand from somebody who suffered it can't be a pleasant thing.

"don't come any closer! with just the flip of this switch, i could be unrecognisable. i could hurt you! that's why... it's better if i just leave."

being one of the only electronic toys in the room that functions that way, i can see an arc happening where buzz's fears consume him to the point of spending every day alone. it's then how woody and the others bring him back from that and make him remember that he's not a villain, and they're here to protect him and fix him in any way they can if he ever does get reset again. it's beyond his control, and they're his friends, after all. this would be a good emotional growth for buzz, and explore a plot point i feel should have been touched on again.

sorry for the long post, but let me know your thoughts on the matter! perhaps i'll write an angsty fic on this somewhere down the line because i love making myself suffer :'D

thank you for reading!!

#also i know extremely little abt kingdom hearts i just watched the toy box cutscenes for that *claps* sweet sweet prideyear content #so forgive me if anything is off when i talk abt it!!#buzz lightyear #toy story #toy story 2 #toy story 3 #toy story 4

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dramallamadingdang · 6 years ago

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Time for replies!

These be for @princesspiratecat, @jennamaxon, @criquette-was-here, @nimitwinklesims, @eulaliasims, @greatcheesecakepersona, @alienbirthqueen, and @niamh-sims...

princesspiratecat replied to your photoset “Tree’ing a bit. :) Mostly to break up the monolithic terrain texture...”

This actually reminds me of where I live, Lake Arrowhead in Southern California when it's dry. Except I don't see a lake.

alienbirthqueen replied to your photoset “Houston, we have a terrain. :D FINALLY! OMG, what a ginormous pain in...”

this is so gorgeous!! it reminds me a lot of northeast california/nw nevada, which is where i grew up of course haha

Yeah, it’ll work pretty much for any desert-y place in North America. Like, anywhere from the Okanagan Desert in Canada, to the less mountainous parts of Montana down to New Mexico and west to the more interior parts of California, Oregon, and Washington in the US, and then down into interior northern Mexico. Mostly my inspiration for the look of the place is the Great Basin (so Alienbirthqueen is right on!) and Chihuahuan Deserts, though. Not so much the Mojave or the Sonoran because those are generally flatter (and lower in elevation and therefore much hotter/drier) and the vegetation is different. Like, there’re no saguaro cacti, which is the signature plant of the Sonoran, of course. But the Lake Arrowhead area (or the Lake Tahoe area) can work, too, given that I’m adding pines to break up lot-view textures. :) In that, it resembles my home turf in SW Colorado, as well.

Except yeah, no water. The place may or may not have some on-lot water, though, which wouldn’t be big enough to be a lake. I’ll imagine it/them to be springs magically stocked with fish. But I haven’t decided on that yet. I mean, I DO like to build my fishing spots, but I’m trying to go for some authenticity here, trees notwithstanding. ;)

Anyway, basically any higher desert area that’s not a “sandy” place will do, at least with the season set-up I’m giving the place. (Which of course can be changed to make it whatever anyone wants.) It has spring and autumn...mostly because I like to use season-enabled trees/shrubs so that there’s a visual change with the seasons. I get kinda visually bored, if you will, otherwise. :)

jennamaxon replied to your photoset “Tree’ing a bit. :) Mostly to break up the monolithic terrain texture...”

Rest rather green - much better in the second pic. For a moment, I thought you were frowning at the rubbish cart

Well, if we’re being all green and environmentally-conscious, rubbish is bad, right? :) But no, just frowning at the uber-green trees, I’m afraid.

criquette-was-here replied to your photoset “Tree’ing a bit. :) Mostly to break up the monolithic terrain texture...”

Oh, this neighborhood makes me want to create this type of climate setting too! Somehow it feels like a place from a good old 90's road movie. Love the new texture for the pines. Looks way better!

Well, that would certainly be different for you! All your neighborhoods and pics are so green and European and pretty. Which isn’t a bad thing, of course, but I’d be very interested to see what you’d do with a more desert/wasteland sort of environment....

nimitwinklesims replied to your photoset “Houston, we have a terrain. :D FINALLY! OMG, what a ginormous pain in...”

Cool cool cool! It looks so much like your photo!

That’s what I was shooting for. But I tell you what, it was hard! I couldn’t figure out how TS2 decided which terrain images from the terrain default to paint where. It just seemed kind of random, and in some of my attempts, when put into TS2, the terrain was only using 2 (of the four) images in the terrain default, which looked really weird. So in the end, I put in an existing terrain, and then redid the road structure and resculpted most of the hills and such. Then, I still had to edit the terrain default to rearrange the images to suit this particular terrain to get it to look how I wanted. So it was more complicated than I’d envisioned. I could’ve probably put more time into figuring out what was going on with all that, but I just wanted to get ‘er done so I could start building.

eulaliasims replied to your photoset “Aw, c’mon, you didn’t really think I wouldn’t do rocks, did you? :)”

oh, this looks fantastic. I love the scrub--that's always something I've felt some desert neighborhoods need. it adds a lot!

niamh-sims replied to your photoset “Houston, we have a terrain. :D FINALLY! OMG, what a ginormous pain in...”

That looks fantastic! I love the scrubby scrubs- perfect for that environment!

Yeah, for this kind of desert -- the American kind, as in all of North and South America -- there’s gotta be scrub. Pretty much the only American desert that doesn’t have scrub is the Atacama in S. America, since it’s like the driest place in the Americas. :) But even it has some scrub in places. I mean, this ain’t the Sahara or Arabian deserts!

The lack of scrub really, REALLY bothers me in Strangetown, since that’s obviously supposed to be inspired by Roswell, NM. I am still going to play that neighborhood one of these days, but it has to undergo major terrain/deco renovation before I’ll be able to look at it without screaming bloody murder. :)

greatcheesecakepersona replied to your photoset “Houston, we have a terrain. :D FINALLY! OMG, what a ginormous pain in...”

Lovely! Now all that's missing is the Breaking Bad van :)

HAH!. Yeah, I’ve never watched that show (though it’s on our list to watch), but I know that it’s set in New Mexico, though I don’t know if it’s actually filmed there, so...yeah. :)

nimitwinklesims replied to your post “You sound like such a cool person! It's really nice to hear about...”

I often have a hard time keeping the classical composers apart (I'm embarrassed to admit), but Smetana's Ma Vlast always makes me cry -- it was played at my Czech grandfather's funeral... It's heartwarming to read that you like the Czech composers a lot. I'm Dutch but because of my děda I have a fondness for Czech things as well. Also, sort of related, I have played Händel's Harp Concerto at one point (when I was still taking harp lessons).

Yes, Ma Vlast is one of the best pieces of music ever written. IMO, at least. :) I’m not a person who’s into patriotism/nationalism, but I do tend to love music that has a concrete feeling for place, both physically and emotionally, and Ma Vlast has both. It’s why I love stuff that incorporates folk music from a particular country or area, because of that sense of place and time, and the Eastern European composers tend to do that really, really well, which is why I find myself drawn to them. Aaron Copland did that well, too, for American themes. Appalachian Spring (with its incorporation the Shaker “Simple Gifts” song) and the Billy the Kid and Rodeo ballet music and whatnot. Great stuff. I think that this is why I was ultimately drawn to film/TV scores, both in terms of performance and my own compositions. Film scores are designed to have a sense of place and character and sometimes history about them. So I guess it’s not surprising that that’s where I ended up spending more time, professionally speaking.

That said, for all that I am a classical musician, I’m not a walking compendium of knowledge about all of classical music. Certainly not now that I’ve been away from school/academia for *cough* like 30 years now! I have forgotten much of what I did once know, but frankly my knowledge was always pretty specialized. I know much about the body of work of specific composers in whom I have an interest, but much of the rest...I don’t care to know about it, frankly. All the baroque stuff? Meh. I mean, there’s bits of it that I like -- Handel wrote lots of good stuff, for instance -- but much of it just sounds all the same to me, and I’m just not interested enough to know more. Like, while I appreciate his technique and innovations and all that, I just don’t much like Bach’s music, for instance, and I took/take a lot of ribbing for that, but...I like what I like, and the rest of it I’m content to ignore. Which is pretty much my attitude in general, when it comes to music. *laugh*

jennamaxon replied to your post “You sound like such a cool person! It's really nice to hear about...”

The Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis is an outstanding piece of music. Real hair on the back of your neck stuff. If you like 20th C English choral - my recommendation would be Holst's The Evening Watch. I heard (and sung) it first at college. I was breathless after the first listen.

You know, Holst has a lot of good stuff that no one seems to know about. :) If the average person knows any Holst at all, their knowledge tends to begin and end with Mars and Jupiter from The Planets. Which is a shame. I need to listen to more of his stuff, myself, now that you mention it.

#princesspiratecat #jennamaxon #criquette-was-here #nimitwinklesims #eulaliasims #greatcheesecakepersona #alienbirthqueen #niamh-sims #replies

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nikatyler · 6 years ago

Photo

Last replies before I move to my dorm tomorrow! Prague, here I come.

I’m in this weird state of freaking out and being calm at the same time. It’s hard to explain. It’s very different from how I felt the day before starting high school, I remember crying about how badly I don’t want to go there. As for today, I’m actually looking forward to the classes. Especially the history ones. Oh my god, and I’ll see my new friends again on Thursday! Maybe even tomorrow, but I’m not counting on that. I’m so exciteeeeed.

I don’t think I can give you any updates on my sims saves at the moment. I played a bit of Roses (finally!), a bit of my Realm of Magic save, a little bit of NSB...but mostly I just recoloured stuff. I’ll release it for simblreen I think, even though it’s not Halloween themed at all. For one of the tops I’ve even taken the preview pictures and the only “spooky” thing about them is that they were taken in Forgotten Hollow. But oh well. I mean, at least you’ll be able to use my simblreen treats all year!

elisabettasims replied to your photo “So basically, I’ve come to conclusion that high free will is broken in...”

Something I had to do in TS3 when I attempted something like this was remove almost EVERYTHING that was fun to get them to socialize at ALL. Because they would rather do something fun than talk. Before that, I would manually tank their social so they would have a NEED to talk. Yeah, it's kind of cheaty but, jeeeeesh.

Here’s a tiny spoiler: I moved the whole BC household to Twinbrook, which is most definitely smaller than St Claire (and, being an EA world, it has to be somewhat optimalized to run on all PCs I believe)...and suddenly my high free will is working, there are interactions between the sims...I love that! Wish I had realized that earlier though, it could’ve made the BC more interesting. Oh well, it was a learning experience. I might do another BC in the future. Keyword might. It definitely won’t happen next month.

poisonfireleafs replied to your post “You would think that signing up for classes is no big deal...but the...”

I'm almost done with my studies, but I really know this feeling

plumbobhart replied to your post “You would think that signing up for classes is no big deal...but the...”

im at the end of my uni studies and i still get anxious about signing up for classes D:

plumbobhart replied to your post “Phew, that was fast! The best times were gone in less than five...”

that sounds horrifying. my university is so small that some courses are self study cause it's very possible you're the only one taking it (love that). i'm taking a course in chinese though, and we're over 40 ppl on the course and it's kinda terrifying.

I’m going to the oldest and I think the biggest university in my country, so yeah, so far quite a lot of my experiences have been terrifying because there’s just SO MANY PEOPLE EVERYWHERE. I signed up for an optional class today though, and so far there’s six of us. But for the other ones, there’s about 20-40 students in every group, and then there’s one lecture where there’ll be 250 students. It IS scary.

1o8percent replied to your photoset “Glimmerbrook Home I know, I know. Not the most creative name but hey,...”

I love it!

Thank you! I really like it too. It’s not too complicated because I just wanted to play the game.

elisabettasims replied to your photoset “Tao: “This is getting more fun with every second.” Annemarie: “I...”

I miss the TS2 days when your neighbor would come yell at you for peeking in their windows.

They would WHAAAAT? That’s so funny! Wow, I really should give TS2 another try, every time I hear about these little things I’m so amazed.

tashsim replied to your post “�� yeah!”

hah, no idea

Yup, that was the point haha!

toxoplasmajuice replied to your photo “Maybe my high free will isn’t as broken as I thought it was. I...”

ur doing great sweetie

lbr that would be me if I ever entered a BC

swinging outside while everyone else is socializing

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “So what exactly is happening here? Tao is flirting with Hannah and...”

They are just exploring their options in case they get eliminated XD

I’m not surprised...but in front of the bachelorette? The girl they’re fighting for? Ruuude

1o8percent replied to your post Closing ts3 now because I need to take some pictures in ts4...in the...”

From your NSB I like Valentine. As for your Rose legacy I’ve always liked Reagan and Sammy from your current generation.

Aww yeah, they’re my, let’s say, secondary faves too!

Secondary faves sounds so sad tho

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “Scarlett: “Why did you do that? Of course we’re not supposed to do it...”

It was expectable... Especially from such sim. I actually feel sorry for her - she isn't that lucky so far... Except for winning a challenge but it didn't save her from a further failure...

I felt so bad when I rolled the dice and had to pick this interaction. But also, I was curious. Maybe it would work out. Well, it didn’t, and then I felt twice as bad.

lilleputtu replied to your photo “The title for the most useless BC host goes to…”

She is doing her best and I appreciate her efforts of absolutely ignoring the whole BC moderating business :D

She’s a whole mood in this challenge and I’m living for it.

toxoplasmajuice replied to your photo “Scarlett: “It’s happening, isn’t it? We’re running for the worst BC of...”

i mean. it could be worse, scarlett. nobody's dead. *yet*

*nervous eye emoji*

(i’m not saying anyone died, but there might have been some uhhh...near death experiences)

melien replied to your post “Hi I just wanted to come in and say I hope you’re having a good day...”

Wow damn this is so organized, it inspires me to clean out my mess at least a little bit

It’s the curse of being taught to think like a librarian for four years and having some slight OCD on the side

melien replied to your post “Closing ts3 now because I need to take some pictures in ts4...in the...”

Gen 6 of the Roses was pretty fun, and I especially liked Lydia (even before I got to make a spouse for her)

Ahh...I really, really want to love gen 6 as much as I love gen 4. If anything, the storylines (especially Regan’s) are so much better than anything og gen 4, and I’m proud of them. But I guess it’s kind of like dating a new person while still missing your ex. You love them but you miss what you had before. Which totally makes sense coming from a person with zero dating experience.

berryconfetti replied to your post “simmeronnie? Doing simblreen this year? It's more likely than you...”

i did it for the first time last year and it was pretty fun. Crazy to keep up with, but fun ��

I hope I’ll be able to do it! I have my cc ready like I said, but will I be here to have my porchlight on? I don’t know. I mean I should. Just because I’m moving to uni and have already made plans with some people doesn’t mean my social life will suddenly make me unavailable for simblr stuff. If anything, that might happen over longer time period, not in a span of one month.

elisabettasims replied to your photo “Happy Bi Visibility Day to all my fellow bisexuals! ��”

*raises a fist* That me.

*high fives you* *gives you awkward finger guns* Yayy!

#replies #elisabettasims #poisonfireleafs #plumbobhart #1o8percent #tashsim #toxoplasmajuice #tiny-tany-thaanos #lilleputtu #melien #berryconfetti

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cornyregans · 6 years ago

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Since this headcanon is depressing and requires a lot of background information that I may or may not have touched upon in the past, I’m going to be adding a read more so I don’t throw a giant wall of text at you all.

Here’s a little headcanon about why Contessa and Cordelia’s urns are in the master bedroom, as opposed to out in the cemetery with the rest of the ghosts.

Placing Contessa and Cordelia Capp urns in the master bedroom were Consort’s doing, not only because he misses both of them dearly, but also to punish himself since he blames himself for both of their deaths.

Even though there’s nothing in the game’s programming that implies Consort is keeping the urns in there to punish himself, I have added some things in previous essays that led me to interpret things this way.

Cordelia’s Death

Let’s start with Cordelia since the bulk of this revolves more around her than Contessa (who will only get a cursory mention at the very end). I brought up her canon cause of death being due to fire in my “Six Veronaville Tragedies” essay.

In the theory part of that essay, I had this to say about her death:

“…While most of the patrons left the restaurant in a panic [when the fire started], Cordelia, always the kind of person to help others, instead ran off to the kitchen to make sure the staff was okay.

By the time Caliban got outside, he realized his wife was nowhere to be found, and rather than secure his safety, he ran back into the burning restaurant to look for her, despite pleas from Goneril and Regan to wait for help to arrive. After not seeing her in either the dining room or the bathroom, Caliban knew there was only one place he had yet to check, the kitchen. Upon walking into the kitchen, however, he found Cordelia on the floor not too far from the fiery inferno that emerged from the stove. When he saw death’s visage looming above her, his worst fears were realized, and it wasn’t much longer until he too died of smoke inhalation.”

Look at the words I used to describe Cordelia and Caliban’s deaths, “smoke inhalation.” Now, you’re probably wondering just what this has to do with Consort, and I’ll get to that; however, I first want to make a distinction between Cordelia’s death and her husband’s.

The distinction between the deaths two lies the words used to describe the fire. The restaurant was described as “burning” when Caliban realized Cordelia was nowhere to be found; however, when he finds Cordelia in the kitchen, the room was described as a “fiery inferno,” meaning the fire was stronger when he died than when she died.

“And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!” —King Lear, Act V, Scene iii

The choice to interpret Cordelia’s death in TS2 being due more to the smoke from the fire than the fire itself was not an accident. The reason for this interpretation makes much more sense when taking Shakespeare into account. As for why this is the case, here’s another quote from that same essay, this time about the fate of the Shakespeare character she was named after:

“…[Lear and Cordelia] are sentenced to death for treason. While Lear is able to escape his sentence by killing the executioner, the pardon that would have saved Cordelia arrives too late to stop her death by hanging.”

“If that her breath will mist or stain the stone” —King Lear, Act V, Scene iii

“And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never!” —King Lear, Act V, Scene iii

Both deaths involve suffocation in some way, shape, or form. However, to tie these two deaths together, I spent quite a bit of time researching a specific, well-known medical condition that impacts one’s breathing: asthma.

When it comes to the correlation between smoke inhalation and asthma, New York’s State website states:

“Individuals with cardiovascular or respiratory conditions (e.g., asthma), fetuses, infants, young children, and the elderly may be more vulnerable to the health effects of smoke exposure.”

If you haven’t already guessed, one of my headcanons about Cordelia is that she had mild asthma. Unfortunately, as luck would have it, the smoke from the fire triggered her symptoms before she had a full-on asthma attack, which was not helped by her dropping her inhaler in the dining room during the chaos (which Caliban later found when he was trying to find her).

Ancestry and Asthma

Back when I was working on my “Beginning of the Feud” essay and theory, I realized that I put myself into a bit of a corner when discussing some of the supporting players: the parents of Contessa, Patrizio, and Consort. The reason for this ties into how two of these sims, Scribonia and Octavius Capp, died due to old age despite being adults, and eventually I came to this conclusion:

“…I tend to look at these two and classify their deaths as being due to natural causes. While this might sound similar to death by disease, I believe there is a distinction between the two. In TS2, the diseases that cause death tend to be contagious or acquired from external forces; however, the conditions that I believe could be in play for determining Scribonia and Octavius’ deaths would have been internal and non-communicable, like heart disease or cancer.”

The examples I provided for the non-communicable conditions were the ones I ended up going with when touching upon Scribonia and Octavius’ deaths, the former dying due to cancer, and the latter dying from a heart attack (or a defibrillator malfunction since Octavius’ cause of death is electrocution in TS3).

Scribonia and Octavius are the only sims in this group with canon causes of death, meaning that the player has more room to play around with when interpreting the deaths of Consort’s and Patrizio’s parents. However, for this headcanon, we only need to look at how I previously interpreted the death of Consort’s mother, Andromache, whose death by old age in Greek Mythology is contradictory to how she died as an adult here. As a result, I instead came to this conclusion about her death:

“Andromache also did not live much longer after her husband’s death, as she ended up dying of respiratory failure.”

I will admit that, at the time, I just picked her cause of death out of a metaphorical hat, so there’s not a basis for it anywhere. However, as I thought about it more, I looked up some conditions that fell under that umbrella (asthma being one of them), and things suddenly came together.

The Thebe Family

Part of why Consort blames himself for the deaths of his wife and daughter ties into the reason the Thebe family became extinct in the female line in the first place. Personally speaking, Andromache and Hector only having a son who was unable to carry on the former’s family name is something that always made me raise a few eyebrows. While this probably has more to do with how the family trees tend to be structured among the premade families; however, that doesn’t help things in a narrative sense, so I came up with this instead.

I think Andromache and Hector not having a daughter to carry on the Thebe name wasn’t exactly their choice. Instead, I think they probably considered it a necessity to stop once Consort was born out of fear for Andromache’s health since she, like Cordelia, had issues breathing.

While researching things that could potentially cause asthma, one of the causes that stuck out to me was hormonal changes, specifically that one can develop asthma while pregnant. This is what happened in Andromache’s case. She developed asthma while pregnant with Consort, and the severity of her symptoms combined with the lack of medical assistance she had available to her back then, ended up causing her death before she could see her son get married.

Why Consort Blames Himself

Like Andromache, Cordelia’s asthma came about during one of her pregnancies (her third, to be precise). This, combined with being more susceptible to asthma if the condition ran in the family, is why Consort blames himself for her death. His feelings of guilt were not helped by one of the firefighters finding the inhaler next to Caliban once they found the bodies.

The reason he blames himself for Contessa’s death is pretty self-explanatory since I believe that her death, like King Lear’s, was in large part due to a broken heart.

Even though I covered Contessa’s death in the past, I want to highlight what I said regarding Consort’s reaction to the event in a prior essay:

“Contessa’s widower, Consort, was absolutely beside himself. According to him, Contessa had never been the same after Cordelia died, and no matter how much he tried to console her, she would always talk about wanting to be with her daughter again. Though he knew Contessa was deeply saddened by their daughter’s death, he never in his worst nightmares imagined that the resulting despair would end up claiming her life.”

Final Thoughts

This is a headcanon that I’ve had for a while now, but never really had much of a chance to touch upon before. Part of this is because there are all these little interwoven parts that I needed to get in order, but also because I wanted to put out some shorter, fun headcanons before I began tackling some of my more serious and long-winded ones.

Most of my headcanons have some basis in outside sources, mostly Shakespeare, but there’s some history and mythology when it comes to some of the ones I have for certain ancestors. One of the many reasons why I find Veronaville so fascinating and why I write about it here is because of the variety of sources one can use in interpreting things. Sure, it can be convoluted sometimes, but it also helps in things like character and world-building, two things I greatly enjoy.

I hope to cover more of these bigger headcanons in the future with all of you. They’re not all this depressing, I promise.

#consort capp #veronaville #capp family #sims 2 #sims #cordelia capp #contessa capp #veronaville headcanons #headcanon humpday

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teanmoon · 7 years ago

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My thoughts on Get Famous

Del Sol Valley:

The size is rather limited but since I typically only play with one or two households per world, I did not find it to be a problem

The details are stunning! It captures LA beautifully and really feels alive.

I love the premades. Venessa is adorable and is sure to be one of my favorite premades for a long time to come.

There do seem to be a few floating buildings and trees in the background if you look closely. It’s kind of annoying for scenery shots but not a major flaw.

The venues aren’t terrible interesting. As is expected they’re sparsely furnished and laid out in way that lack any dynamic flow. I look forward to replacing them all.

CAS:

As a historical player, this pack is fantastic. Beautifully detailed meshes everywhere.

The costumes are imaginative and I think I’ll get a lot of use out of basically every outfit.

The content is very much YA focused, but the few pieces for kids and tots are adorable.

I cannot wait to see what the community does with these meshes, because as beautiful as they are now what I’m dying for are the edits.

I’m not a huge fan of some of the shoes...but that’s about it. This is one of those expansions where I really feel that nearly every piece of cas cc is a huge hit or is useful to frankenmesh with or for a story. Even the furry suit is cute this time round.

Build/Buy:

I’ve only explored the catalog a little bit so far, but even the gaudy stuff really seems useful to historical game play

I think this pack really adds quite a few must have items for me, especially for historical gameplay.

The drones and new streaming desk are so much fun to play with!

I have so many ideas for custom content based around the drones O.O

Acting/Fame System:

So far I’ve found the acting career to be virtually glitch free! This is fantastic because some active careers are buggy at best.

I’ve so far found the fame system to be fairly challenging. I have to focus my gameplay fairly rigorously to make consistent progress. I’m very pleased that I don’t level too quickly

The dialogues are hilarious and really remind me of TS2 in the sense of humor.

The fame quirks are actually challenging! Especially for players who use emotional inertia and no happy environment mods the negative moodlets from the quirks make it quite difficult to keep your famous sim happy. The more famous my sims get, the moodier they are!

Free Update Content:

Terrain tools look magical, but I haven’t played with them yet. I have seen many reports of issues with roofing and I hope that problem will be addressed in the future.

I’m really hoping for an expansion of terrain tools capabilities before I dive deeply into them. I want split levels.

So far the work from home options for the Style Influencer Career are so buggy its hard to make progress without simply sending your sim into the rabbithole. If I were you, I’d wait a patch or two to fully explore the new career. That or wait for UI extension to update so you can work around the glitches.

#EAGameChanger #EA Game Changer #Get Famous #TS4

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plumbobpost · 7 years ago

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Fanfic Friday: Spotlight on Skell’s Fortune & Romance

Sul sul!

Today Week of Woohoo continues with a very special twist. I have had the opportunity to ask Skell a few questions as part of a new series of posts about storytelling in The Sims community.

Skell’s Fortune & Romance serves as a prequel to the Pleasantview and Strangetown storylines in The Sims 2 from the perspectives of the Caliente sisters, hence the title which references their aspirations. Her story takes place in the time period between the first and second games and fills in the gaps between the contradicting timelines of The Sims, The Sims 2, and The Sims 3. Although the story is largely from Dina’s perspective, it features most of the iconic The Sims 2 characters ranging from Olive Specter to the Tricous to Bella and Mortimer Goth, establishing its own vivid mythology in the process.

In addition to writing, Skell has also created beautiful Maxis-Match content for The Sims 2 and is a frequent contributor to the Totally Maxis Tumblr and the fansite Garden of Shadows.

Without further ado, I’ll let Skell speak for herself.

You’ve said in the past that Fortune & Romance started out as your attempt to make sense of Maxis canon for the premade characters of Neighborhood 1, Pleasantview, and Sunset Valley. How did this evolve from your personal headcanons into a full-fledged story?

“I had played TS2 off and on for years before I was part of the fandom, mostly just goofing around but I had a lot of fun taking pictures and experimenting with posing. One day I discovered Strangetomato’s “Strangetown Here We Come” on TVtropes and was amazed at the way she fleshed out the premade stories from the game. Through her comment section, I discovered the whole fandom and started paying better attention to the premades. Eventually I came up with a backstory for Dina that I really wanted to write and share.”

Why did you choose Nina and Dina Caliente to be your protagonists? Did you ever consider different lead characters?

“It was always gonna be Dina because I was intrigued her backstory with the mysteriously inconsistent Michael Bachelor and the fact that she’s part alien. I wasn’t as interested in Nina until I noticed that she was shy (like me in RL) and also autonomously beating people up all the time. That’s when I realized she was gonna be a co-star and balance to Dina’s antics.”

Instead of ignoring Maxis’ characterization of Dina as a gold digger, you embraced it and made it a focal point of her character. Similarly, you fully acknowledge Nina’s romance aspiration while not making her a heartbreaker. How did you find a balance between their implied “villainy” in The Sims 2 and making them more sympathetic characters?

“I enjoy classic movies where Marilyn Monroe or Thoroughly Modern Millie is like “teehee I’m gonna marry a millionaire,” and it’s quirky rather than villainous. In those stories, she usually falls for a poor guy and chooses love over money (and often he turns out to be secretly rich.) Since Michael didn’t give her a “married a rich sim” memory, I wanted to write Dina the gold-digger as a modern version of that kind of story.”

“Maxis kind of setup Romance sims for “villainy” by not allowing for casual or open relationships, but of course that can be fixed with mods. With Nina, it’s interesting that she doesn’t really fit the “outgoing party girl” type. I think of her as a quiet person with a very intense energy. She needs lots of exercise and woohoo so that she doesn’t explode.”

There are a lot of unconventional relationships in your story. Nina and Servo. Olive and Ichabod. The Tricous. Even Dina and Michael. That being said, there is very definitely a theme of “love conquers all.” What motivated your approach to these relationships? How does that relate back to your attempts at reconciling Maxis canon throughout different games?

“I have a thing for mixed supernatural relationships. Dina and Mike bonding over their hidden supernatural heritages was always key once I figured Michael had a magic side. I knew I wanted to have Nina be intimate with a servo because that’s HAWT, but I didn’t foresee how intimate things would get until I figured out Servo’s character. The Tricous’ happy polyamory was my explanation for all the weirdness going on with their relationships and family tree. And I wanted Olive, Ichabod, and DJ make up this very loving and weirdly “normal” Unholy Family.”

Speaking of reconciling Maxis canon, you created your own version of Michael Bachelor in order to match his appearance in The Sims better and to create a resemblance between him and his famous sister, Bella Goth. Why do you think Michael was depicted so differently throughout the first three games? What did you draw inspiration from in creating “The Ultimate Michael Bachelor?”

“I think it mostly comes down to them wanting to use a familiar name for Bella’s brother/Dina’s husband in TS2, and carrying that forward. In TS3, I saw a boy who had his life all planned out for him by his father. In my headcanon, he screwed that all up and became the graduate of TS1 who had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. His relationship to Bella is the reason why he’s still single by the time he reconnects with Dina, who helps him find direction.”

There is an abundance of strong female characters in F&R, some of which were not originally portrayed that way. Why did you feel that it was important to write them as such?

“Well, because I’m a proud “SJW,” of course! But seriously, it’s less about being strong and more about seeing them as people?”

^Best answer that I could have asked for.

A large portion of Fortune & Romance is dedicated to the mythology of The Sims universe(s) and to supernatural sims. How did you go about the process of world building? Did you draw inspiration from different games in the series and/or from outside sources?

“My biggest worldbuilding is the explanation of where the supernaturals came from. The fairies are sort of fallen angel types who each have an animal form, and their magic rubbed off on human sims to create the supernatural life states.”

“I try to base the worldbuilding off things in game or aspects of game play. The fairy backstory was heavily inspired by fairy tales, in the way they morally test humans for punishment or guidance.”

Aside from premade supernatural sims such as the Smiths, Calientes, and Summerdreams, how did you go about deciding which premade sims were supernatural and which weren’t? How did you decide what life state they were?

“Bella has that awesome bio about being descended from “occultists, decadents, and mystics,” but then in TS3 the Bachelor family is uber-normal, so it eventually became that Jocasta is a squirellier version of Samantha from Betwitched.”

How has Fortune & Romance evolved since you started? Are there things you would do differently if you were to restart it?

“I was such a younger, different person when I started it, and yes there are many things I would do differently. (Michael’s skintone, for example. I tried to split difference between games with a custom skintone in between S2 and S3, but everyone assumes he was whitewashed to S2.)”

“When recreating families for TS4 I came up with a backstory for Dulcinea and Nestor’s relationship as well as a backstory for Don that explains how he got to be the way he is. I still can incorporate these things, but it would have been nice to bring them in earlier.”

With your story having reached a climax, many readers are wondering whether or not F&R will come to an end sooner rather than later. Not to spoil anything, but will the story continue after the party and if so, do you intend for it to last until the events of The Sims 2?

“I never intended for it to last until the events of TS2 because then it would be really depressing. There is more stuff planned for after the party though!”

Aside from writing Fortune & Romance, you have also created a variety of Maxis-match custom content. Why do you prefer working in this aesthetic? How do you feel it complements your writing?

“The game is cartoony, and I like to use that style to tell the story. I prefer to keep things heightened and silly rather than realistic, which very much fits into The Sims aesthetic.”

Speaking of Maxis-match, you have been working on a project for The Sims 2 that involves adapting Maxis-based custom content to blend in better with the game files. Would you mind elaborating a bit on The Maxis Match Repository Project?

“The TS2 repository project is made up of conversions/separates/or otherwise adapted Maxis which pull their textures from the ones that are already in your game, rather than creating new ones. This makes the files much much tinier. I also wanted to create a catalog where you can easily find it all in one place rather than hunt all over the internet. Check it out and don’t miss out on the gems in the back of your catalog!”

You’ve played every main game in The Sims franchise, and you’ve even made some very popular 2t4 recreations of the Calientes and Michael Bachelor. Do you have a favorite game for playing? Creating sims? Making Content? Building?

“I enjoy a lot of things about TS4. The game looks great and CAS and Build Mode are the best of any game. My favorite aspect is making sims, especially that you can share sims with traits/careers/skills so they have their own little story packaged with them. However, it is much more difficult for storytelling since there’s not even a way to pick up sims and move them around.”

“TS2 is still the best as far as premade sims go, and it’s the only one I make content for. I’m a bit of a control freak with my sims, and TS2 has been mastered by fans at this point where you can have ultimate control.”

Why do you continue to play The Sims? Do you feel that the games provide a creative outlet?

“I always loved playing with Barbies as a kid and The Sims really is the ultimate dollhouse. The first time I ever heard about TS1 I knew I HAD to have it. My aunt bought it for me while I was on vacation, but I couldn’t play it until we got home! During the car ride back home and I read that manual from cover to cover multiple times, so many ideas buzzing in my head.”

Any parting comments, teasers, spoilers, public service announcements, etc.?

“I’ve been on hiatus a long while and am just now getting back into the swing of things. I’m currently working on finishing up the chapter I started posting on Tumblr but never finished. It was FreddyAirmail who got me back in the TS2 spirit by asking me to help out with the Crystal Springs neighborhood project. It’s a community hood with houses based on each of the Stuff Packs, and I made the families for Teen Style and Family Fun!”

Thanks again to Skell for answering my questions. To those of you out there who aren’t familiar with her work, go check out her Tumblr and make sure to catch up on Fortune & Romance.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, feel free to visit my ask box. If you are interested, give Plumbob Post a follow, and reblog for anyone else who you think would enjoy this blog. Stay tuned for upcoming posts!

Dag dag!

*Photo Credits go to Skell*

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redhotchilisimblr · 8 years ago

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Some of you showed interest in one of my recent creation called the Nikki. I thought it was interesting to show you step by step how I proceed - especially because it was my first Dutch Colonial house. The Nikki is a small lot built on a 20x15 lot in Willow Creek.

First, I decided to do not build the lot in the direction preset by the game. I always thought it was a shame that most simmers do not try to build differently than how the game force you to. I used the “highlight floor” from Spa Day to delimit the pathway (blue) and the landscaping zone (red). My plan was to surrounder the house with an amazing garden, even if it doesn’t have any backyard.

The Nikki’s layout is entirely based on a TS2 creation I saw a few weeks before. I tried to replicate it the best I can. There’s 3 different parts in this structure : the main one - which is where the entrance will be, the one on the right and the one on the left (which is another small porch area).

I added another “landscaping zone” (yellow) where I’ll put flowers from another palette. Then, I deleted the walls to make room for the porches area. I replaced them for the regular sized half walls. I also elevate the house a bit, added the white stairs (Base Game). The hardest part was to start the second floor... I placed them at random (to be honest) just to have a global idea on the shape of the house.

The most time I spent on this house was the roof. It was really tricky because they’re from different sorts. For the main ones (the Dutch Colonial’s signature), I used a combination of the regular one and the inclided one. When done, I used the copy tool to duplicate the roof on the second part of the house. Even if these two parts are not the same size, I can do some adjustment rather than start from the beginning.

The other roofs were quite simple : I just placed them and make them a little bit flatter. (Hope it makes sense, lol). Don’t forget to press the Alt key to have them at the perfect heigh ! The columns are from City Living. These are my favorite columns in the game so far *o* Perfect for suburban builds !

Time to place the windows ! I always thought it was one of the most difficult part of building (with roof and landscaping). Because most of the time you either have too much of them or either not enough...

After hours of building in the sims 4 I came to the conclusion that the best way to do it is to have miss-matched windows with different size. I usually placed the widest one at the first level where you usually have all the common rooms (kitchen, living room etc) and the narrow on the top level for the bedrooms.

Here, I used a set of windows from the Base Game (which are one of the most used pieces in my save, lmao), 1 window from the Vampire Pack (at the top right), 2 windows from Get To Work. Same for the main door. The second door on the porch area (not in the pic) is also Base Game. I’m always surprised to see pretty and underated items from BG!

As for the sides of the house, I only used the BG windows. I switch from a combination of 1 and 2 and usually leave 3 wall spaces in between.

I often place the wallpapers at the very end. Personal choice. It’s easier for me to do so because I can see more easily if a window isn’t at the best place with the blank ones. For the Nikki I used the beige-thingie from the BG, the rock walls from Bowling SP, and as for the foundation the rock ones from Get Together. I was amazed how the two rocks walls matched each other during the process of picking the perfect walls. I added Get Together thin white columns at each end of the walls to make a contrast with the beige walls. I also used a brown roof border (I don’t know it real names, lmao. Excuse my french).

Now, time to landscape ! It’s time to show you how much the “highllight floors” are useful. I picked a Vampire GP floor for the path, just press Maj and then the whole blue zone is remplaced!

I’ve put fences all around the landscaping zone (red) and then I’ve deleted the floor. I think it’s a fence from the Base Game too, not sure. But it’s one I used the most for my suburban builds.

Deleting is a 20 seconds job but you have to make sure you didn’t buldoze a fence piece by accident - which is really annoying. Also, for the porches floor I used 2 ones from the BG. I love to miss-matched the floor. I think it’s more realistic and add a neat touch to your build.

The terrain paint is a part you shouldn’t skip if you want a cohesive build. I used to say : “Yeah, I’ll pass. I don’t see the need to spend times on something I won’t even see or notice” But I was all wrong. From certain angles you can actually see if the landscaping was done properly or not. From now on, I always do it. I usually used 3 differents brushes and add light brown touches here and there.

Also, this item from Get Together is a real gem when it comes to pathways. There 6 or 7 different swatches and it’s perfect to make the floor looks more “urban” and not totally out of the blue. I don’t know how to explain but I somehow hate how the floor look superficial outside without a proper boarding.

For the landscaping itself, I only used pink and white flowers to stress the contrast with the house walls. I sized up some of them a bit, overlap by using the Alt key, combine them... The possibilities are endless. I mostly used flowers from the Base Game and some from the Backyard SP. Try to squeeze the trees in an a place where you can still have a good view on your house. I often use the trees to hide the part I like the least, the unflaterring angles. ;)

Don’t forget the outside lightings ! Hide them in each corner of your landscaping zone but keep them 6 square apart far from each other. It’s a suburban street not Las Vegas, lmao. Play with the outside lightings color. I personaly really like the orange and dark yellow shade ;). Oh, and I love to place a wall light above the main door and 2 or 3 one the other sides of the house. I tried to have the “main light” different than the others for realistic purpose, lol.

Later, I used a liberated wood fence from plasticbox but the build is mostly cc-free.

Well, I think we’re done ! :))

If you’re interested in more “How to build this”, let me know ! If you’ve spotted something in my build you’re curious to know how I did, or if you want something special...tell me !

You can also check my previous tutorials *here*

#ts4tutorial

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simmingwormly · 4 years ago

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Playing Favorites (part 2)

Here we go again! Another 4 TS2 premades that really strange my town! (I’ll see myself out.) Anyway, I have to preface this with saying that so far I’ve only played the 3 base game hoods and although I really enjoy PV and VV, I added them to Strangetown just recently, so I’m still getting acquainted with their casts. That’s why my Playing Favorites posts are so dominated with desert-dwellers - but I definitely plan on including more non-ST Sims once I got to play with them more!

And I also low-key love everybody in Strangetown.

TOP 15 TS2 Premades (according to my personal tastes somewhere in May 2021) (not in any particular order) (and I can’t guarantee I stop at 15 either)

Tank Grunt (Strangetown)

Yes, I am one of them. I am a Tank Grunt apologist. Brace yourself!

Similarly to the Pleasant twins, I view Tank as a victim of his father (Buzz Grunt, the esteemed Strangetown's Worst Parent Award nominee). Of course, that's not to say he's innocent. He is absolutely guilty of bullying Ripp and Johnny and equally guilty of being a bigot. And, most importantly, totally guilty of casually wearing camo face-paint. (that he canonically gets tatooed on his face down the line, which is... its own kind of tragic.)

But that is exactly why I like him so much!

Let me elaborate.

Tank is a very multilayered character, albeit a bit cliché. He is very artistic a eager to always do his best, whether that is in school or home where he competes for his father's affection and approval. Buzz provides both of that but it always feels conditioned – if Tank was to stop getting A+, stop parroting his opinions, stop working out, stop following in his footsteps, would that go away? Even though the answer depends on your interpretation of Buzz and his levels of horrible, Tank definitely thinks so. Just take a look on how his father treats Ripp!

I read Tank as somebody who believes firmly in order and good but has a very twisted understanding of both given his militaristic and hyper-masculine upbringing. He has an enormous potential for character growth. Can he gain (psychological) independence of his father? Can he follow his dreams and become a dancer? Can he free himself of his father’s biases now that he’s out on his own? Can he mend his relationship with Ripp and Buck? (...or maybe even Johnny?) It makes him so fun to play.

Also, I think that it was indeed very cowardly of the developers not to set his gender preference as gay.

Conclusion: Tank is fun! (Although he would probably resent me for saying that.)

Dina Caliente (Str- wait, Pleasantview)

Finally someone who doesn't live in the desert! Both Nina and Dina are such interesting characters, with their connection to Bella’s disappearance, their alien bloodline and their opposing personalities and ambitions.

I feel like the sisters are often getting unjustly demonized. (or mixed up together, I’m looking at you, TS3 and TS4) They’re young, very attractive and in unconventional relationships, thus often labeled as predatory. They’re not.

Dina is a very nice Sim, with Nice points above the average and many Playful points and she tends to roll wants to start a family by the start of the game, although she is not a Family Sim. She’s actually a Fortune Sim, smart and business-oriented. She’s a widow who wants to remarry and has her sights set on the husband of her missing former sister-in-law.

I know that doesn’t make her sound that nice but there is nuance. First of all, the man in question is Mortimer Goth, well in his twilight years, a father of two, simply an adult. He is not a hapless trophy, the decision to start an affair with Dina not long after his first wife got pronounced missing, is his own. He knows he won’t be here for long and doesn’t want to die alone, he wants someone who can make him feel young again and loved once more. Dina, on the other hand, pursues a shotgun wedding to take an advantage of the Goth fortune that will kickstart her business ventures but she is ready to provide what Mortimer needs. She canonically loves him. (proven by the love flag in her relationship panel)

In my personal gameplay, I had Don take Dina on a date before their marriages to their respective Goths, and Dina kept rolling wants to flirt with Mortimer instead. Later down the line she also helped out the Brokes financially, and after her close friend Brandi died young in childbirth, she took in her youngest children, so that her oldest son Dustin could go to college and not worry what’s gonna become of his younger siblings in his custody while he’s gone. I figured it made sense because of Dina’s Nice points, her relationship with Brandi and her now being partially in charge of so much money it isn’t even funny.

In conclusion: I support and condone Dina! Even if it’s somehow implied that she and her sister might’ve just staged her rival’s alien abduction.

Circe Beaker (Strangetown)

Circe is yet another... unwholesome character on my list. She canonically tortures people, namely Nervous Subject, and her bio eludes to there being more in the past or the future. She's cunning, ambitious and very mean.

But she is also very fun to play! Her aspiration being Fortune (not Knowledge) puts an interesting spin on the whole evil scientist routine. She doesn't do it for the love of discovery like the Curiouses and she doesn't care about credit as her husband does. She's out for power and she may as well get it.

Her rather extreme personality would lead one to think she has to be rather disliked around the town but her default relationship panel says otherwise. She doesn't have any close friendships except her husband, though. That makes me think she is superficially charming and tends to act diplomatic to obtain people's loyalty without necessarily caring about any of them. It makes playing her unique from most other Sims.

She is also canonically bisexual! I personally have a deep appreciation for each and every Sim that Maxis sneakily preset to be LGBTQ+. I may not seem like a big deal now but it is.

Conclusion: "She could gaslight, gatekeep and girlboss me any day.” - half of Strangetown’s population

Lazlo Curious (Strangetown)

Lazlo is a ray of sunshine in the Curious household! A very sloppy ray that makes messes wherever it goes, true, but sunshine nonetheless.

I’m very fond of Lazlo because he’s the type of person that looks like he can barely count to five with his easy-going and messy nature but is in fact very clever and, by some measures, the most competent Curious brother, since he is the youngest and it seems like he’s fresh out of college, yet holds a higher career position than his older brothers. “A smart person that doesn’t necessarily seem smart on the first glance” is a trope I have a big soft spot for. (...and it shows)

In my current gameplay, Lazlo wanted to resurrect Vidcund (who died in childbirth), so he switched from Science to Paranormal to swipe a Resurrect-O-Nomitron and, like the madlad he is, succeeded before their round was over (in a span of few days). It was a combination of dumb luck and him having a compatible degree that gave him a hefty bonus but it still made me realize Lazlo could achieve whatever he sets his sights on.

Luckily, his sights are generally set on pizza and video games.

(relatable)

Anyway, I find Lazlo somehow cute, most probably for his constant and very unfruitful attempts to make Vidcund laugh, and in general, how friendly and easy to get along with he is. While he doesn’t have that many Nice points (5, which is a pretty average number), combined with his playfulness he usually tends to act very amicable.

In conclusion: I simp for Knowledge Sims and it shows.

Ok, I’ll be back with another 4 when my horrible procrastinating gruel of a brain feels like it. See ya!

#the sims 2 #ts2 #premades #simbrl #the sims #lazlo curious #circe beaker #dina caliente #tank grunt #strangetown #pleasantview

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bearpillowmonster · 5 years ago

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Kingdom Hearts 3 Full Review

Here I am 6 years later and I've beaten Kingdom Hearts 3. Was it worth it? What did I think of it? This will be an extensive review. So bare with me because I'm going to cover almost every little detail however I'm going to try and keep it spoiler free in terms of story! (I'll nod to the people who finished it with vague comments as you already know what happens) I spent a lot of time on this review so it will work out to fully explain my thoughts on this game without hesitation, I don't want to hold back from criticism even though it's my favorite franchise and the most long awaited game for me.

I will say this to both people who haven't played the games and casual fans. DON'T COMPLAIN YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN THE STORY. The negligence of some of these reviews is appalling because they haven't played the past games. Square Enix has went out of their way to go and rerelease all of the games ebfore the release of this one, put up a summary video, put nods in the intro to the game. As well as put seperate summaries in the menu of the game, so I don't want to hear the whining, if you want to play it so bad, play the other games first, that's all there is to it. Yes it is confusing, but make an effort to understand it.

There are no more pesky text boxes like the other games, this is all cutscenes baby! So it may seem like a lot but think how many text box scenes were in the previous games and translate those into full cutscenes.

Let's talk about the menu. Yes, the menu. It's BRILLIANT. I love the transition from the past games, you look at the first two games, Sora with that fish in his mouth looking to the side, then the second with Sora turning slightly but with a sea salt ice cream, and now we have Sora turned all the way around with a paopu fruit. The way the music is presented is excellent, I couldn't get enough of it. In fact a lot of the music is great, both Utada songs are top notch despite me not originally seeing why she made those songs specifically, they make some sense now. Now the actual battle themes and stuff were instant classics for me in KH2, I would unintentionally hum some of the tunes, in this game I might have to get used to them though and familiarize myself. I'm sure if I heard the theme out in the open, I would recognize it though.

I worked my way to try each of the keyblades a decent amount (about one world each and that don't need unlocked through version exclusives and Ultima weapon yet but I never get ultima weapon anyway) The fun part about that is that each keyblade has a different ability and a different form so no more drives. I especially love using all of them in the Monsters world because it changes the color of Monster Sora.

I'm not going to talk about all of the worlds but just the ones revealed through trailers because I want you to experience them blindly or to their full capacity without the knowledge of what's ahead so I won't mention anything in any particular order either. I'm going to refer to the movie they are from and not the actual world name, to make it easier on you. Let's start with Pooh since that was the shortest. The minigames are just eh, I mean I love Pooh as a character and I like the idea that he's in the games but I've never really found his actual world all that because it's just minigames, I can't really bash it because that's what they did in the past games. Also at the end of Winnie the Pooh, why was that happening? Was something made to throw us off?

Now let's talk Twilight Town. I love Twilight Town, it is my favorite non-Disney world to explore in Kingdom Hearts 2 and when I saw we would return and see the characters we love, I got all excited. This Twilight Town however seems kind of condensed because it's just a section of it. You don't get to explore as much of Twilight Town as I would have liked but they do make references to it through the townspeople such as mentioning Seifer. There's a certain group of characters we saw a lack of but after the secret ending I'm starting to understand story-wise.

Frozen. We all saw it coming and I can say to you that it's not a rhythm based world. YAY. They do sing at times but you don't play those parts. I just think Frozen is ok as a movie so this world wasn't too hyped, I did like seeing Marshmallow though, that part is fun in fact any part you fight an actual Disney character I just adore. As for the actual landscape, it's different than I would have imagined, the heartless are interesting but there's no draw back to make me want to go back to that world. This, technically Pirates, and Tangled are the two world that just follow the movie plot, the others have their own new plot.

Toy Story. I have to say that I like the Toy Story 2 game and I really like the idea of exploring the Toy Story world, even just exploring Andy's house. I knew we weren't going to see the whole house like TS2 but it was still fun to see everything there as I remember it. Galaxy Toys is a new area though, pretty cool to play through because it's not hard to navigate, there are 3 floors and you go through all the stores, interact with objects, and get this really cool and interesting mini boss. There are these mech robot things that I've come to love and each color has a different ability, making it just that much more fun to play around in. I particulary like the purple one because it's the fastest but even when you're in a keyblade form the mech will change colors with you (usually a bluish green in my experience) but that was a cool little tidbit I noticed. The story just surprised me with how involved it became with it's characters especially Woody.

Pirates. This opens so nice, it begins with Sora being excited to be brought back and then we eventually get a mini-boss (there are quite a few compared to the other worlds) where you can ride the heartless, that's really cool. We get some ship gameplay where you can shoot down other ships and basically sail around all the islands, they aren't all required so exploration is pretty vast. A really cool idea is that with the shotlock command you can shoot on over to wherever it can lock onto, that way instead of making your way all the way back to the ship then trying to find a way to climb back up it, you just use the shotlock and boom you're back!

In the Tangled world, it takes the time to show you some of its great design with Rapunzel pointing things out such as how nice the grass is and how when you use Aero on the dandelions, they fly all over the place, then you can splash in the water, it's her first time experiencing it but it's also a nod from the developers showing you the amount of work they put into it and it's well deserved.

Monsters Inc. I mentioned about how the forms change the color of your monster and I really adore that. You can actually go into Roz's place! There are some places that would be interesting to see but wouldn't do much for story, just be to explore so I can kind of see why they aren't in the game, same with Big Hero 6. This is where the railriding really comes into action and I must say is pretty fun. There is also a dive option when you get up to a certain height then it will have you free fall and you can press X to dive bomb, it's all over the place in this game but it's just another good addition.

Olympus. Not the Colessium, we saw that before. This is brand new ground and is quite a joy to explore, I would be disappointed if Greece didn't actually look like that. I beat it the first night I had the game and I've revisited multiple times for other content, this was essentially my first impression of the game as well as everyone elses and it delivers. This as well as Tangled have a town full of people. I love hearing the little conversations they have and even going around and interacting with them. There's a side mission to collect these Golden Herc dolls (I finished after the game) that reminds me of the odd jobs at the beginning of KH2 that I actually have come to love, however those were mandatory, these are optional.

The Gummi Ship system is awesome, I mean I don't see any multiplayer coming to this but it's fun. I like being able to customize my own gummi ships and unlock new parts to put on it. The only complaint I have with it is small and that's when you're creating a gummi ship, it's not always easy to know which way is up considering you can change all different angles, so you may end up building your gummi ship upside down if you don't pay attention when you start. I've saw this problem quite a bit in the community as well as experienced that mistake myself but it's nothing too major, can probably be fixed in a future patch to just have a little note pop up that says "This is the front". Big Hero 6 is the best world in my opinion. I love all the worlds in their own unique way but this has momentum. A lot of the worlds have their own original story but this one seems to use that to the best effect. This one has an atmosphere that is open and easy to navigate, it's all one big area. You can fly with Baymax during a certain part which I would have loved to do that all the time but then what would be the point in using your fly ability you get at the end of the game?

At a certain part at the end we see some of the heartless move slower, like the framerate is down. It does not affect your gameplay and the thing I'm talking about is only visible stuff, but once you reach that part you will understand why it's like that. Voice acting is pretty good, they didn't get all the same voice actors for some of the characters such as Buzz and Woody, Mike and Sully, etc but they got a pretty decent amount of the characters their original voice actors and I respect that. The ones that are standing in, do a really good job though to the point I had to actually listen to try and find faults that differ from the originals. Old man Xehanort also has a new voice actor, I mean nobody can beat Leonard Nimoy but this guy seems to do a different take on the way the character sounds so it might take some getting used to but it's nothing bad just different I guess. I think they should've given you more space in your camera because there's a whopping 90 hidden mickeys and 100 slots, so you better make those 10 extras count if you want to get that secret ending. (However you can delete pictures so I don't know if the hidden mickey still counts if you delete it but I wasn't risking it) If you try to take a picture of a character (mostly any character) they will pose or smile, I love that.

Kairi doesn't get enough. I'll be honest. We don't get enough Kairi, she was great in this game and we see her grow, in fact I'll argue we probably see her more than the other games but they could have given her more spotlight.

The final battle is interesting, I like how it turned out but I will say you take on a lot at once. I liked the change of pace, but at the very end with the final 4, I say you should have taken them one by one. I also expected a different order because (we all knew this was coming so it's not a spoiler) but I thought they were going to make us fight Xemnas and Ansem then Old Man Xehanort because if we beat Young Xehanort first then wouldn't they all disappear? I mean it does work out in a way that makes sense but I just would have liked that way too.

Also aging, we can see visible changes to Sora, Kairi, and Riku from age but what about the rest? Will it just continue like nothing ever went wrong or…I mean they left a few things open for future games but don’t think they ended it on a cliffhanger to where you feel cheated in any way. It’s not like that, it still makes you want to play future games without cheating you of the full experience. I know that’s a concern for some people. Critical mode doesn’t make an appearance but that’s fine, if they end up releasing it in a patch or something I might play it but it’s nothing bad, just some people complain about it and say that they left it out on purpose for DLC but I highly doubt that and even if they do put it in a DLC be rest assured that won’t be the only thing. I don’t know Square Enix to cheat fans, you get what you pay for and DLC is a new avenue for KH if it decides to go that way, if it does I’ll be there for it but I think it’s fine without it. Look at FFXV for example, they put out full episodes based on the side characters with new gameplay, story, and various weapons and skins, I’d say that’s a pretty good deal and if I get far enough in the game I might get it and I’m not one who buys DLC at all unless it comes with the deluxe edition. So stop complaining about that, you don’t know what will come of this game.

I love the recovery command, I never used it in the older games (inexperienced noob) but this is more or less my first experience getting strategic. As well as the kupo coin where you get one last shot after a fatal blow. I can't tell if I actually got good at the game or it's just that easy but because of that Kupo Coin, I only actually died once or twice.

I cried. Once (before all the soras ;)) and of course at the end and even just thinking about the end afterwards. They throw back to one of the most well known gameplay parts in KH2 and in my opinion made it even better. Goofy is the smartest one in this game, like I found myself surprised at how aware he was. I knew the Big Hero 6 keyblade would be my favorite the moment I saw it in the trailer, I was right, I played with it until the very end and upgraded it (The monsters keyblade is a close second along with the one you get from Classic Kingdom). However...the snowball is the most powerful weapon hands down.

Flowmotion is fixed, but the shimmer effect doesn't need to exist. The sparklies that indicate that you just hold the control stick in that direction and they'll parkour it wasn't always as functional as you might like, I found myself just jumping my way up whatever villain had it some of the time, but again it's no big deal, it gives you that freedom to do whatever you want.

The attraction flows are fun but what threw me off is that you get more or less all of them from the start, you don't progressively unlock them. This led me to think that they will get repetitive but no they really weren't, I ended up skipping some of the events from time to time just to challenge myself but I never found myself bored with playing with any of them. I will say that once the command pops up, there can be another one above it and there's a time limit for each of them, I actually didn't know that you can choose between reaction commands (using L2) until after I finished it...so that happened. As well as learning that you can change keyblades on the fly just using the D-Pad.

My favorite attraction is either the teacups or the Buzz Lightyear blasters because the train is awesome but you only get to use it in certain parts of the game. The worst one is probably the carousel in my opinion just because it's more rhythm based and overall doesn't seem to do much damage. Some of the finishers get stuck or caught and I think that's a little bit of a problem, like the Pegasus chariot that you get with the Hero's Origin keyblade; I wish you could actually control that rather than Pegasus doing whatever and you just press X but there's such a variety of them so there's bound to be a few that aren't as good.

This game reminded me why Sora was originally my favorite character. You can look at him as naive but it's part of his character, I actually want to be friends with this dude in real life. All of them really but Sora has that vibe where he'll accept just about anything and find a way to work through it. You can play as a few of the characters and they all feel different to me, I like the subtle differences in gameplay but having the same core, it's very fun which makes me wish there was more of us playing as them.

How does it stack up versus the rest of the games? Well it's hard for me to say because I love them all, KH2 is my favorite game of all time and this is actually giving it a run for it's money. I do like this better than KH1 though (KH1 is my second favorite KH game so it's better than the rest too)

The graphics are impeccable, like I literally can't say they could have made this look any better, even going farther into the game it almost looks better than the rest (given there are more higher quality cutscenes such as the end of the Disney worlds just because of their importance) I was a bit worried about a few of the characters from the trailers such as Xemnas and Young Xehanort. In the earlier trailers they looked just eh but in the actual game they look way way better. Mickey even has fuzz on the top of his head but just by the secret ending alone, I was blown away by how real it looked for a cartoonish styled game.

Speaking of the secret ending I mentioned earlier, it took a hot minute to realize what it meant exactly, until I found a post on tumblr (on reddit too) about it. I won't link it or anything but just know there's an explanation/theory out there if you end up watching it. It makes me give it more credit for what it's worth.

Now the big part...how long was it? I won't tell you how long it took me to beat but I will say it logged more hours than any of the other games. I knew this was coming, because no matter how long this game was, I was going to want more, I'm actually going back to play through some stuff since it lets you keep your stats and puts you back before the final bit, so I will keep playing it and I will more than definitley play it again. I've played the beginning of the first game so many times, just haven't beaten it as much, same with KH2 (though I always end up farther in KH2 than 1) . I want to challenge myself, I want to take on hard mode, see how far it goes since I beat standard already, collect the secret reports, get ultima weapon (first time in a KH game if I can beat this stupid Frozen minigame). I kind of see where they changed some stuff from its original state, perhaps way back from the conception in 2013 but still to see the growth and adaption makes me feel really connected to it.

I will probably post updates to the review whenever the DLC comes out or once I get level 99, ultima keyblade, etc. so take what you will with it. It is currently up there with my favorite games of all time which isn’t so easy to get to.

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