What. The. Hell.

I can't help posting about this. I really can't. After watching the videos a million times over I'm still in complete and utter shock. My game looks worse than before, my build tools have been downgraded to a box, and my Sims are now moody. Great. That was my initial reaction anyways. I'm slowly beginning to calm down and really take a good look at The Sims 4. Don't get me wrong, I'm still so, so disappointed, but maybe there's a few good things coming out of this after all.

So the graphics aren't exactly the most amazing thing I've ever seen. There's absolutely no arguing that. But if you can get past that image in your head of how it's supposed to look, it can be pretty in its own way. It is a game after all, and cartoony can be adorable. I guess a less-realistic world is okay since I wouldn't want a super-realistic one. It'd be creepy if my Sims looked 100% real. With CC I'm sure those little things that really bother me, like those non-existent line eyelashes, could be fixed and made to look just a teensy bit more realistic. I guess my point is that we should try to get past the graphics and really see the game and how it has improved.

Some of those improvements are the new emotions and CAS. The emotions look like a lot of fun to play with. It's cute that my Sims' lips will quiver when they're really upset, or that their facial expressions really do have more that the standard happy and sad settings. Hopefully EA / Maxis hasn't over exaggerated a ton though. A little flair is great and makes the game fun to play since it has that little silly edge to it, but if my Sims are constantly in a completely over-the-top mood then I can see it getting really annoying really fast. Time will tell. And CAS looks amazing! Pulling at the body shape will make it so much easier to tweak my Sims. Instead of having to hunt through dozens of sliders and having to guess at which little detail each one changed, now you just click and drag whichever bit you want to change. We haven't seen the hair and clothing options yet though, or any other age groups for that matter which worries me, but at least this one thing seems so improved!

The build tools though! :( No more wall tool?! I don't want a box to click and drag! We can do that now but I hate building that way and never do. I'm hoping that the wall tool is still there and they were just emphasizing how easy it is to build houses for those players that don't like building. This is my biggest worry from the videos so far and I'm really gonna worry until I see build mode and can confirm for myself how it works.

The last thing has nothing to do with the videos. At this point in time you can only preorder a digital version of the game...I don't buy a game I can't have a physical copy of. And the company has seemed to hint that there may not be EPs any more but instead will sell new things online like with The Sims 3's store we have now. I will not buy The Sims 4 if there aren't physical copies. Digital copies don't stay forever. I want something I can keep and use years and years from now. This will be the deciding factor on if I move on to The Sims 4. I can handle the cartoony style, the possibly messed up build mode, and anything else but this...this would mean the end of The Sims for me. I guess everything rides on what they release about the game in the year to come.

No more burrito babies!

The greatest piece of CC ever to be released for The Sims 3 has come to my attention today. For the 1st time ever in-game, babies can have arms and legs thanks to QuizicalGin's Sleeper Footies! Goodbye burrito babies, hello normality. It's sad that somehow in the course of this wonderful game series our babies have devolved into little larvae...let's take a look.

The Sims

Babies were more of a object than a Sim. They were made in a weird way too, instead of woohooing Sims would kiss passionately 3 times in a row and get a pop-up asking if they would like to have a baby. It'd appear in a rain of flowers in its little bassinet. You never saw the baby unless a Sim walked over to interact with it, and then it couldn't be put down anywhere other than the bassinet or carried around. Those suckers were hard to keep too! You had maybe an hour of it crying before the social worker would call and threaten to take it away.

The Sims 2

Yay my favorite babies! These are the most realistic of all in my opinion. The little arms and legs, the diaper, the interactions...ah I miss it. They were always bald but their eyebrows reflected what hair color they'd inherited, and their eye color was an inherited feature too. And no more crib attachment! You had to buy the crib, and the babies could be put on the floor and carried around. They also could be bathed and the changing table came with the base game. Oh, and they could be interacted with by multiple adults! One would hold the baby while the other cooed at it, and they could hand the baby to each other.

The Sims 3

And now we devolve. Burrito babies, larvae, caterpillars...all nicknames for what EA did to the previously-adorable age. Before I could stand having a few babies in the house. They were cute. Now I skip through that particular age. What's the point? They aren't cute any more, there are less interactions, and they're just generally annoying. I was so disappointed this time around.

But now, hallelujah! Babies can have arms and legs in The Sims 3! I'm so excited for my next in-game baby. I might actually be able to stand having one in my family now. This CC gets the highest praise from me. Hopefully EA picks up on how much people hate the babies and make them much better in the future.

Pfft...well this blows me outta the water!

Guess I need to aim higher in my personal renovation of Sunset Valley. SimFans.de far exceeded anybody's dreams with New Sunset Valley, which was released earlier today. This world is so amazing that I'm speechless. Usually I can find some flaw that makes it a questionable download, but this time...just wow. It includes every EP's new lots and has an expanded neighborhood unlike any remodeled Sunset Valley that came before it. Somehow it still looks like the original, just a lot bigger. Take a look yourself.

The one thing that might turn people off is that it isn't populated. Makes sense though if you think about it. Like they say on their site, pre-population has been known to cause problems so it was left out. I figure if anybody was truly determined to keep their original Sunset Valley households, Nraas' porter mod would serve to transfer every household. As long as they were grouped by family ties, every family tree would be perfectly preserved and the neighborhood would stay the exact same. You'd need 2 or 3 total family packages. (Incidentally, this is my plan!)

New Sunset Valley is definitely worth checking out for those who want the full game experience without all the work of updating a world.

Adventures in Egypt and cute baby pictures!

I'm still playing the Slayer household, getting them all ready to move to Isla Paradiso as soon as my copy of the newest EP gets here. Marci is just so dang adorable and Elvira will always be my favorite premade. It's a good thing they'll be seen in my legacy, because they're my favorite Sims. I love playing with EP content with them! 1st up was a little vacation / adventure for Elvira and Barry. They got to visit Egypt and see the pyramids.

Barry had lots of fun taking pictures, Elvira explored several tombs and raided them for some very profitable treasures, and they both enjoyed the little break from regular life. Other than the mummy (which Elvira beat the wrappings off of by the way), it was a relaxing vacation. Next I think they'll be heading to China, but by that point Marci will be able to go with them...that's probably a good thing. By the 2nd day both of them were constantly popping up thought bubbles about Marci. They missed their baby.

They are just so dang cute! As excited as I am to see Marci as a child, I'm going to miss her toddler cuteness. Elvira doesn't age since she has that vampire LTW that lets her walk in the sun and also stops aging, so at least one of my Sims will stay the same. She's frozen forever at her current age. My next post will have an older Marci though!

I have one last picture and it's really a strange one. Barry is a painter and he's getting pretty good. His latest painting was clear, worth a small fortune, and...from The Sims 2?

The 1st is the picture that Barry painting. See, even he looks weirded out! The 2nd is the picture from The Sims 2. It's in the Specter family's photo album. I thought it was strange but cool and wanted to share with everybody.

Starting in on my legacy!

With my new computer in place and running perfectly, I finally get to start playing out my stories. The 1st thing I wanted to do is get the backstory for my legacy in place. This part of the backstory isn't for my founder, but for another Sim who will have a part in my story. I have a lot of families that I want to involve in my legacy in all sorts of ways, but for now this is all I have.

Remember the pictures of Elvira Slayer I posted a while back? I carried her over to my new game and started in on her story. She's supposed to be the oldest vampire in existence according to EA's premade backstory, so I adjusted her to be a complete badass vampire. She's the head of the Bridgeport criminal career, has a great apartment, and lots of little human Sims to feed off of...or she was anyways. Now she's a bit more caring.

These days Elvira has fallen hard for a photographer that she kidnapped, Barry Tenderlove. He's almost the exact opposite of her. Where she's tough and strong, he's sensitive and creative. It's a bit funny, I decided I'd let her pick who she kept as her plaything / love by letting her hunt on a community lot. Whoever she targeted would be the one, and he's who she picked. I redesigned him a tiny bit, but other than changing his hairstyle and switching out one of his traits for the photography trait, I didn't do much. He's now a self-employed painter and stays at home. Elvira is hiding her relationship from the other vampires since humans are food, not mates.

Oops...someone got busy while I wasn't paying attention and got pregnant before I wanted her to. I had been planning to take them to Al Simhara and possibly Shang Simla before a baby came along but apparently they didn't quite feel like sticking to the plan. I do love their faces in that last picture though. The baby was crying and both of them dropped everything to come make faces at it. They both acted exactly as I'd imagined. Elvira's about to lose it and Barry is resigned to days of dirty diapers. So I guess I should show the darling baby. Meet Marci Slayer!

She's essentially a clone of Barry. The really weird thing is that she's human in-game, but her character portrait and any thought bubble pictures of her show her with the vampire skintone and glowing eyes. Actually Elvira's thought bubble in the previous picture shows exactly what I mean. Strange. Ah well, I love her!

Exciting live broadcast news!

Today we got the final live broadcast about Island Paradise, which releases in exactly one week. I know that by this point a lot of people have calmed down about it, there's only a week of waiting left and we pretty much know everything by this point anyways, but the live broadcast was worth tuning into for me. Ryan Vaughan gave out lots of little news bits here and there that made it exciting. This is my little overview of all of the stuff worth mentioning.

First up is what the broadcast was supposed to be about: Island Paradise. Like I said, most of the information has been released already, so other than getting to see a bit more of the new world, mermaids, and underwater there was nothing new. Graham Nardone did take us into CAS and showed off the new mermaid coloring system that we get to use to change the color of our mermaids' tails. I was happy to see that there are 4 color channels on the tail. Should be pretty easy to create unique tails with that many options! The only bit of new houseboat information (to me at least) was that houseboats do have an autopilot if you want to have it steer itself to a new location while you're off doing something else. That'll probably come in handy seeing as they move pretty slowly. And of course the underwater lots looked spectacular! The amount of detail completely blows every other lot out of the water. It was a nice little demo that showed the hands-on aspects of the game fairly well, although the lag on that part of the broadcast was annoying.

Next is my own little personal excitement bundle. The Origin preorders hit 4,000 just before the live broadcast and that means that everyone who preordered gets not only the normal preorder bundle and the Origin preorder bundle, but Barnacle Bay too! Yay! Since worlds are so expensive, I refuse to buy them and sadly don't have any other than the free Riverview. So now I do! I know the world itself is the worst they've released, but it's a free world and I'm not complaining. Now if only they'd do that with Lucky Palms...

Finally I have what was arguably the most exciting moment of the whole broadcast. The date of The Sims 4's big information release has been announced! Everybody mark down August 20th, because that's when we will finally have our first little preview of the game!

Create a Plumbob

I'm really bored. My computer won't be here until June 17th, maybe a few days earlier, but that's still a week or so until I can Sim it up. It's pretty easy to tell that I'm bored too. My room is spotless, my CC has been organized, pretty much everything I could possibly do is done. Of course this had to be the worst possible time to have nothing to do too, because I'm not taking summer classes and am stuck drifting around...

But for at least a little bit I'm amused! EA put up the origami instructions on how to make your own little plumbob and it actually works. All you really need is the pattern and some tape or glue and you're ready to go. The paper plumbobs come out surprisingly realistic...or as realistic as a gaming icon could be anyways. I figured I'd share in case someone else was bored.

So have fun making your own little paper plumbob to sit on your desk, throw around, whatever you decide to do with it. At least you have a project to keep you busy for 5 minutes! The product's kinda cute too.

New computer!

So there have been several changes to my plans. I was originally going to buy a MacBook Pro with Retina Display since it could dual-purpose for both college and Sims. I really wasn't too thrilled because The Sims 3 has issues with playing on a Mac, but they're such nice computers that I just couldn't help myself. Then a miracle happened. The college I'm attending gave me a free MacBook Pro! So instead of spending my money on a laptop that had to be college-compatible, I'm now free to spend it on a purely gaming computer.

Meet the Alienware x51. Top-of-the-line gaming computer, incredibly speedy, and absolutely tiny which is perfect for college what with the moving and the sharing of small spaces. I've upgraded it and I'm in love. This thing is so powerful it'll have no problem running everything I could ever throw at it. Complete overkill I know, but I've been saving up for years to get myself a decent computer and this is what I want. Hopefully it'll still be advanced enough to handle not only The Sims 3 but The Sims 4 in its completion. I'll probably have to upgrade the graphics card halfway through The Sims 4, but everything else will hopefully be fine.

Operating System                  Windows 7 Home Premium, 64bit
Software                               Microsoft Office Home & Student 2013
Memory                                 16GB
Hard Drive                             2TB
Processor                              3rd Generation Intel Core (8M cache, up to 3.4Ghz)
Video Card                            NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660

Bring on The Sims 4!

They've finally made what a lot of us had already guessed official. Coming in 2014, the latest Sims base game will be released! This time around they've said that they plan on "returning to the game's roots," which I'm hoping means that the focus will be on the interactions between the Sims and all the little details that made the game so much fun in the beginning. I've been compiling a list of what my dream base game would have:

• More family interactions. (child dancing on parent's feet, family kiss, snuggling)
• Equal age group focus with a lot to do at each age instead of focusing mainly on young adults.
• No more cocoon babies! I want real arms and legs!
• At least the framework for big gameplay elements included in the base so that they fit in seamlessly later. (weather, pets, vacations)
• Better story progression and possibly more aging options. (whole neighborhood, just the active household, none)
• Plenty of build mode options like the ability to create a garage attached to a house on a foundation without cheats, greenhouses, and an attic tool.
• Better and more realistic animations. (getting in and out of cars, backing out of the driveway)
• Improved trait / personality system where the Sims are actually different people because of their traits / personality.
• In-game CAW where you can create your own lot sizes and edit the terrain.

Goodness I want so much! I know that there'll probably be very little of this, but a girl can dream right? All this new and exciting thinking has made me all nostalgic for those beginning days of The Sims 3, when they'd just announced its pending release and the community was in an uproar over that...remember those days?

That was what used to excite the community; can you image what The Sims 4's intro trailer will look like?! That's going to be a huge day. They've told us to keep the 3rd week of August open, so cross your fingers that we only have a few short months until we get some actual information!

Finally figured out my problem!

Well I now know exactly what causes my computer to freak out and crash while playing The Sims 3. Anything involving playing with the Sims themselves makes in go into panic mode. So CAS and playing a household are no longer options which leaves...building. That's all I can do these days is build. So no more pictures of Sims, just pictures of my buildings and my favorite EP information.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm assuming that the Island Paradise announce trailer is now old news even though it's only a day old. It's definitely exciting news! Finally the 1st glimpse and a bunch of brand new information from just a short little video. Watch it!

After watching that trailer there were 2 big things that were stuck in my head: mermaids and the fact that toddlers have swimming interactions! Both of which are shown clearly in the video, both of which are so dang long-awaited. Toddlers have been so left out of all the swimming activities; Generations was the hope of a kiddie pool but that definitely didn't happen. It looks like they'll finally get some action in Island Paradise since mommy can clearly be seen holding baby in the water. And mermaids make their 1st appearance too in the last few seconds of the trailer, swimming through the waves.

New lifeguard career, private island beach houses, boats of all kinds...this EP is looking better and better! Keep an eye on the date too, because a live broadcast airs on April 16th and the game will be released on June 25th. Not too far away at all. Keep your fingers crossed that EA gives out more mermaid information in the live broadcast!

And it's only the beginning...

Okay before I share my lovely new story, I want to update on my current computer status. I'm getting a MacBook Pro soonish. The date isn't really set in stone; it shifts back and forth. I could get it tomorrow, or May, or in August for my birthday. There's really no telling. :( But I am going to eventually get one!

Currently my desktop has all but given up. My ancient computer literally goes into a hysterical meltdown every 20 minutes or so, with flashy colors and the closing of many programs. Stupid computer. And I've tried everything to make The Sims 3 work too! I'm down to no CC at all, and only my EPs, SPs, and store stuff. Yep, the basics. But even then it can only take maybe 30 minutes if I'm incredibly lucky and then either the game CTD's or the computer has a hysterical meltdown...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Despite many computer issues, I'm still trying really hard to play a little. My latest idea has me chasing Sims around Twinbrook. I've always loved the old Sims 2 neighborhoods Pleasantview and Strangetown, they're easily the best worlds ever to be produced. Because of that, all the remade families that appear in The Sims 3 make me really curious...and speaking of Curious:

Bunny Curious, older sister of Notzo Curious, is a sweet little girl with a real love of horses and adventuring. Not quite the norm for her science-oriented family, poor Bunny usually feels a bit left out. It's not her fault she'd rather be out riding Carrot or searching the town for supernatural Sims instead of staying inside and messing with weird things in bottles or banging on pieces of metal.

Catch the joke? Bunny and Carrot, haha. Like a rabbit. And a carrot. Ok my attempt at humor is now over. But seriously I do love them; their adorable young moments are beyond sweet:

Since I love Bunny and Carrot so much, I came up with  a kinda different idea. Most backstories follow the main character. In the Curious family, this would be Notzo and his descendants, the famous Curious brothers from Strangetown. But what if I followed Bunny? She's close enough to the main characters that she could easily affect what happens in the story. I already have bits and pieces planned out. This way everybody gets a really unique and original view instead of the same story told with a slightly different twist.

If I can really get this rolling, it'll be posted over on Return to Sims, my blog meant purely for recreating Sims 2 stories. I don't have a lot of hope though since my playing time is severely limited these days. I'll try to at least get pictures of the rest of the Curious clan to share, maybe even upload them to the exchange since they are, after all, completely CC free.

The Strangerhood: Watch it NOW!

Oh gosh, I just find so many funny things from past games. Mainly The Sims 2. So this awesome company called Rooster Teeth made a whole series using The Sims 2, but with actually people voices instead of Simlish...and it's hilarious! It's all about how these horribly stereotyped Sims wind up in a strange town with no memories of how they got there or who they are. If you're looking for a laugh, or are just really REALLY bored waiting to for that new patch to finish downloading, watch a few little episodes. They aren't long, about 4 minutes each. The 1st is a tiny bit stale but they get so much funnier! Watch the trailer:

I just like the older stuff, sometimes it's better than the newer Sims 3 stuff. And this is definitely one of the funniest little series you'll find. If you wanna watch the full series either go straight to Rooster Teeth or use their YouTube account. I'm gonna wrap this up with one of my favorite quotes from one of the episodes:

"I'm sorry Tovar but I have to agree with Sam. 

A fish needs a name. How else are you gonna indicate 

which one you wanna eat? You can't just say 'I 

wanna eat Anonymous,' I mean really!"

So much EP info to rant about!

I just don't know which new EP I'm more excited for, University Life or Island Paradise! They both add so much gameplay and so many new and old things...picking between them is impossible! After EA's last live demo of the game there's just so much to take in and so many things to be excited about.

I guess I'll rant about University Life 1st, since it is coming out soonest and is completely done. We finally got all the info on death types, life states, and all the other awesome stuff that's heading our way. Thanks to this last broadcast (and the producer walkthrough video below) it has been confirmed that plantSims are making a comeback. From the trailer at around 5 minutes, you get your 1st ever look at a plantSim and a possible hint about how to create such a creature. Those people who were guessing that the science field's special item would be important appear to be right! The plantSim may be an accidental or completely-on-purpose discovery, kinda like Simbots from Ambitions.

The whole university idea is so improved from The Sims 2. Instead of having to get your diploma in one go, and at only one time, you can go to college whenever you want (young adult - elder) and earn it over several trips and get however many degrees you want. That's just cool, not to mention perfect for storytelling. And lastly, 2 new death types have been confirmed: being crushed to death by either the soda machine or the murphy bed, and protesting death to the extent that the Grim Reaper comes and takes your Sim.

Now for Island Paradise! Holy crap where do I even start?! There was so much that they showed in that live demo. They showed off houseboats, which are pretty much just houses on a floating barge which can dock in ports on land or archor anywhere in the ocean. Smaller boats like speedboats and rumored canoes will also be available but will be more like cars and not houses. It was also announced that underwater won't be just a disappear-and-get-popups thing. Instead of being like a rabbithole, the ocean will open up to a certain extent when Sims go scuba diving. They can die if they run out of oxygen, and rumor has it that merSims will indeed be the new lifestate...the SimGurus hinted just enough to drive me crazy!

Yep, there are even official pictures of the new scuba diving interaction and being underwater. :) I'm very, very happy right now with all this new info. That's all I have for today, but it's still a lot to take in! Hopefully I'll post again soon with more Island Paradise info.

A blast from the past.

Browsing YouTube is always fun, even more so when you accidentally click an old Sims 2 trailer instead of a Sims 3 trailer. Watching all that old stuff is still fun since I actually wasn't online at that point in Sims history. Then I found the oldest of the old: the original trailer for The Sims 2, which was included in The Sims Makin' Magic. It's even funnier than I remember!

We still can't do most of that. My children can't set things on fire, there's no ceiling fan antics, I've never seen any interactions with window blinds at all, and sadly the adorable napping with your feet on another Sim's lap still hasn't appeared. And Sims definitely don't rip their tops off! Lol at least not that I know of. It makes me wonder what future Sims trailers will show us...

More and more things to do!

I guess I'm just determined to add more and more to the pile of things on my already gigantic to-do list! And of course I really can't do much right now because of my stupid computer...but that'll be fixed in less than 4 months so I can hold on that long. It's like the light at the end of the tunnel. A brand new, top-of-the-line MacBook Pro! With an upgraded graphics card and a ridiculous amount of power. I'm pretty happy.

Anyways, I was flipping through all my old Sims 2 stuff and found a few pictures of Alexander Goth and how his life turned out. This was really cool to me (can't give too much away since I'm planning on writing a whole story about all that) and it made me remember the house I'd moved him into. It was the old 210 Wright Way mansion:

I'd edited the crap out of it as I usually do to any and all EA houses, but the basics stayed the same. I'm planning on beginning to build a highly similar house with my own special twists. I know people have already converted every old Sims 2 house there is, but I think everybody tends to do their own thing with their builds and that makes each one special. So I'll add my own little bits to it, upload it in case anyone wants it, and use it in the future.

To get it started I'm definitely gonna need some help building up the basic shape. To do this I'll need lots of pictures and I'm planning on using OkieOK01's pictures for that. Just wanted to share in case someone else would like to make their own version!