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!