Em's Random Sim Pics and Projects

I've been playing my Founder's hood lately. I'm just getting started on the fourth generation and trying to push my neighborhood to advance since it's seemed very stagnant, but they're slowly starting to make some progress. I introduced them on page 20 of this thread. I decided to finally go in and take family pictures. I wish I had done it earlier when the first generation was still around or at least before my second generation started to reach elderhood, but I'm glad to took time to do it while all of my second generation sims were still around. I've been keeping a family tree, but it's gotten very convoluted.





Al and Celeste one of my original couples, had four children. They had a particularly difficult time, because Al has a fairly lazy personality and was always complaining about being uncomfortable and Celeste was drained from pregnancies and nursing infants, so they seemed to struggle a little more than some of the other households.



Their eldest child, Collin, is a confirmed bachelor. As a teen he was in love with a boy named Jay, but that relationship drifted apart when Jay married and started a family. There were 11 boys and 10 girls born in the second generation and Collin ended up being the odd one out. He lives on his parent's original lot with his youngest sister, Callie, and her family. He is the first sim in the hood to earn a talent badge. Since it was on the toy making (woodworking, as I think of it) bench, he sells tables and chairs at the business lot he inherited from his father. For breeding purposes (and so that his genes could be carried on to the next generation) he fathered a set of twins, later in life with Jade, a boy-girl set named Jolyon and Cady. They live with their mother, half-siblings, and step-father.



Their second child, first daughter, Alyce, ended up partnered with Ray. Together they have 6 children. Ray dabbles in pottery, but it was their eldest son, Alistar, who was was first to earn a talent badge from pottery. My plan is to have the pottery badge unlock indoor plumbing as soon as Alistar (or Ray, maybe) had saved up enough to open a community lot. This family has mostly been focusing on having babies (for future breeding purposes), but as Alyce is approaching elderhood, their baby making days are at their end, but they're looking forward to the next generation as Alistar and Olivia are expecting a child together.



Alonzo has also spent much of his time focused on raising a family. (Since Al and Celeste didn't have as many kids as some of the original founding couples did, their children have to make up for it to keep the colony going as I make sure the next generation of sims aren't too closely related to have children.) At first he was involved with Ilia (and had a son with her named Elian), but ultimately he ended up with Ilia's younger sister, Lara. I don't remember if that was a conscious decision on my part or just how things ended up. Ilia got engaged to someone else at some point and it seems like one of the sisters (Lara, maybe) wasn't getting along with other potential partners very well. But looking back my screenshots don't suggest that. Anyway, Alonzo and Lara have had 6 children together (so far). I neglected to put this on the picture, but I think Lorenzo and Alana are twins. Lorenzo is a new father, having just had a baby boy with Jayne, named Zane, so Alonzo and Lara are starting on grandchildren now. Lorenzo and Jayne are raising sheep and wool and have started their own business to sell their goods.





Callie is the youngest of the second generation. She lives on her parents' original lot with her oldest brother, Collin, partner, Finn, and three children. They all kind of help support Collin's carpentry business and the family raises dogs.





James and Raya had a difficult relationship. First they had two sons, Jay and Ray, then their relationship deteriorated with Raya caught James having an affair with Felicity and did not forgive him (all of this in spite of James being the family sim and Raya the romance sim. ) Luckily for the breeding pool of the colony, they managed to patch things up over a long period of time and James spending many nights sleeping on the floor and went on to have two beautiful daughters, Jade and Raymie.



Jay, like many of the sims in this generation, had trouble settling down with just one sim. He had a long lasting affair with Collin, had a son, Elijah, with Ilia, and a long term partnership with Hannah, who bore him four children. They own a small community lot where they sell fish and items found on the beach. Jay and his children have been working on a toymaking badge, but have yet to earn one. They adopted a pet wolf and live a fairly typical life in this community. Their eldest daughter, Johanna recently married Eilan and had a baby girl, Yvonne. She's started on the natural science track (so far the only sim in the hood who has been allowed to take a traditional job - I'm still trying to figure out how that's going to work in this hood), while Elian is still settling on an occupation. Jayne also had a child with Lorenzo (see above).



(For Ray, see Alyce, above)



Jade is the mother of twins . . . three sets and one singleton daughter. She had her first set of twins by Finn, courtesy of ACR, her next set and her only singleton child with her partner Liam, who she moved in with when her first children were small, and her third set of twins are by Collin (orchestrated by me for future breeding purposes). Jade and her brood of seven live with Liam who has accepted all of them as his own. The older two have been great help around his garden and at the farmer's market lot he owns. (I have to say Jade looks great for a mother of 7 and 3 sets of twins!)



For awhile Jade and Raymie lived together on their parent's original lot, but when Jade moved out, Raymie ended up being the one to inherit. She lives with her partner, Hal, and their two children Jaime and Ralph. Raymie also owns the family business that sells the usual fish and beach items. She's also tried raising honey (from a hacked object), but it hasn't proved very lucrative so far.

(That's about half of my families, but I'm going to stop here because this post is getting really long. Stay tuned for part 2.)

(I saved these families for last since they are the largest, but I've already shown a lot of them in the previous post.)





Ian and Lana were probably the most successful of my original couples.  They didn't have the personal drama or Raya and James and seemed to do a little better financially than the other two couples.  They were the first family who was able to save up enough from fishing and beach combing to buy a business lot.  They had six children, 3 boys followed by 3 girls.

Liam, their eldest child, was a bachelor for a long time.  Living either alone or with his trusty dog, Daisy, he started a small farm and local farmer's market.  He's easily been able to grow more than he's been able to sell.  It was a pretty lonely life for a family sim, until Jade moved in with him with her two young children.  They added 3 more children together, then Jade had another set of twins by Collin (see above post for picture).  Liam never seemed to care that half of the children were not biologically his.  He was always helpful with the kids when they were small  (I'm sure he was used to that being the oldest in a large family.) and he treated the oldest twins like his own children, taking Dean with him to work at the farmer's market and entrusting Jen to take care of the garden plot that were his livelihood.



After they reached adulthood, twins Ivan and Neil moved to their own lot together, along with Helen, who was a potential love match.  I was hoping they would be able to sort out who she would end up with on their own, but apparently she liked both of them.  First Ivan and Helen had a set of twins together, then not long after Neil and Helen had a daughter.  I eventually moved Neil out of their shared lot and in with Helen's younger sister Fiona.  The children continued to live with Ivan and Helen, who went on to have a set of twin boys.  This family hasn't done anything remarkable.  They sustain themselves by fishing.   They have at least one workbench, but so far no one has earned a badge on it.  Nina did get a sewing badge after moving into a lot with a group of her peers, including Olivia, who is, as you can see, expecting.  The family seems to live a pretty pleasant existence, playing on the beach and taking frequent hikes together as a family.



Neil went on to have 4 children with Fiona, living on her parent's original lot.  He's into art and has recently opened a home business to sell his paintings and other items found on the beach.



Liana got married to Felix young.  I believe they are one of the few couples that actually decided to get married, most are just living as partners.  They own a recreational community lot that fulfills their frequent wants to visit a community lot or freestyle for tips.  So far the lot has a hot tub, a poker table, and a dart board.  I really wanted to add musical instruments, but I don't like the modern look of the default ones.  I need to find some more primitive instruments to download and they need to save up the money to buy them.



Ilia somehow ended up with three sons by three different fathers.  I think her oldest son, by Jay, was ACR's doing.  Her middle son was by Alonzo who she'd been involved with since they were teens, and her youngest son is with her live-in fiancee, Frederick.  Ilia inherited her families' original lot and business.  She had the want to read a novel, so I had her write one and that has inspired me to start converting her business to a bookstore.  Elijah is the first in the hood to earn a robotics badge, so the business has also started selling small electronics.  Elijah and Elian did not get along and I had to constantly monitor them to keep them from fighting until Elian moved out and married Johanna (and gave Ilia a grandchild).  However both of the older boys seemed to get along great with the youngest, Elden.  Elijah currently still lives at home.  Currently there aren't any girls in the hood that aren't his first cousins and are old enough for him to become romantically involved with.

I discussed Ian and Lana's youngest, Lara, above, with Alonzo.





I feel back that I couldn't find a better picture of Henry and Felicity together.  They had a tough time because their first pregnancy turned out to be triplets.  Later they added two singleton daughters, and a set of twin sons.  At one point they had to borrow a couple of fish from their neighbors to keep from starving, since it was difficult to stock up while caring for so many little ones and providing enough cribs for them all.  The neighbors were glad to help though.  Even though Felicity had an affair with James, it didn't seem to affect her relationship with Henry.  I'm pretty sure they kissed each other right in front of Henry and he didn't blink an eye.  He was cool with it.  (All of the children are his, not James.)

I think I gave the back stories on all of their children already when I was discussing their partners.  I went ahead and took some extra family portraits though for those who had children with multiple partners (or whose partners had children with other partners)  Felix and Hal had no changes from their partners (Liana and Raymie) and I think I posted Helen's already, so you can see their families above.









I also decided to start tracking traits in this hood.  (I've done this in one of my other hoods before.)  I tried to start out with an even mix of hair, eye, and skin colors.  I did make a mistake though and accidentally had two gray eyed males and no green eyed males at the start.   There might be some mistakes in my counts, especially when it comes to skin color.  I sometimes have trouble distinguishing one tone from the one next to it and I have geneticized skin tones in my game, so some sims have skin tones that are different than the default 4 I used and are easily to misinterpret.  For example, I thought Callie had the lightest skin tone, but based on her parents genetics, that wouldn't be possible, so I think really she has the tan skin, but the cc makes it look lighter.

I went through and did all the Punnett squares and calculations and the results came out pretty closes to expected, except in the case of skin color where my sims are tending towards the light side, part of that could have to do with the assigned values on the non-default geneticized skins.  Maybe some that look medium are really dark or light are really tan.

Cher wrote:Em, do you remember which replacement mailbox was causing problems for you?

Em wrote:

I'm not sure, but I think I ended up downloading an updated version here.

Em, I didn't realize I hadn't come back here to thank you. I wasn't having the same problems you were, but removing the outdated file fixed the problem of my recolors not showing up.

It's been fun reading your updates. You've been very busy! I haven't done it this time, but in the past, I often took great care to make sure I had an even representation of genetic traits, just so I could see how the offspring turned out. This time, I've just been downloading sims (including all the Sugah's Place self-sims) and sticking them in my game. I had so few blonde sims I had to hunt down a couple more sims. I'm starting this hood with about twice as many sims as I usually do.

Very interesting update Em! That's a lot of work! lol

Em, I am going to try to catch up as much as I can in your game thread while Parker is napping.
She may be waking up soon, so if I disappear in mid-thought/mid-post, you'll know why!

I LOVED seeing all of your Founder's 'hood families.
The presentation was terrific.
Well done!

You've got some very attractive Sims in that 'hood (as well as a few pig-snouted ones   ).
Some of the beauties look familiar.
Thank you, again, for offering your lovely Sims at SP.  

I honestly do NOT KNOW how you are able to run such a heavily populated family and keep up with all of them.
WOW!
Do you take lots of notes?

Em wrote:

I have to say Jade looks great for a mother of 7 and 3 sets of twins!

I'll say! She's such a beauty, Em.

I love that Liam spent time with and cared for Jade's children (not biologically his).
How endearing that he treated the oldest twins as his own. Awwww!  

I'm getting a kick out of all of your Sims in Tiki Island type garb.

Bummer for Elijah (love that name) that all the girls in the hood are currently his first cousins, and therefore, NOT love match possibilities.  

I am going to have to stop here, as I hear Parker waking up but will try to finish catching up soon.

I enjoyed all of your families' snapshots and hearing about your Founder's 'hood progress so far, Em.

Sorry it's taken me so long to return to your thread, Em.
I hope to finish catching up in here now...

I want to mention again that I enjoyed all of your Founder's 'hood family portraits.
I can't imagine how much time it took for you to get all of those cool snapshots!

You were searching for primitive-looking musical instruments last time you posted.
Did you ever find any?
Did Elijah ever find a love interest though surrounded by mostly first female cousins?

I am fascinated by your genetics tracking and charts!    
I can understand how determining & categorizing skin tones could be a challenge.

You said you started out with an even mix of hair, eye, and skin colors (except for the oopsy of the two gray-eyed males and no green-eyed males).

So, if I am understanding your charts correctly...

Blue and Brown eyes are dominant in the gene pool as well as dark hair.
The skin tones seem rather evenly distributed, more so than I imagined.
There aren't too many more tanned & medium-skinned kin folk than light, are there?
Interesting stuff!
You were not surprised by the results?

Thank you, again for sharing your Sim antics with us, Em.
Have you been able to play your Founder's 'hood lately?

No need to apologize, Sugah. I should be apologizing for not stopping in and replying to everyone's comments sooner. I appreciate all of the feedback.

Cher wrote:

I haven't done it this time, but in the past, I often took great care to make sure I had an even representation of genetic traits, just so I could see how the offspring turned out. This time, I've just been downloading sims (including all the Sugah's Place self-sims) and sticking them in my game. I had so few blonde sims I had to hunt down a couple more sims. I'm starting this hood with about twice as many sims as I usually do.

Both sound like fun ways to start a hood. That's the great thing about the sims, there are so many different ways to play and always a new style of gameplay to try.

Sugah wrote:

Do you take lots of notes?

Not really. I've made lists of the names of the sims in each household and make note of who their grandparents are (just by their initials) so I can keep track of who is eligible to date each other and to make sure I have enough potential partners to keep the neighborhood going without adding in new sims. I've kept the kids' names similar to their parents' so it's easier for me to remember. At this point all of their names are starting to sound similar to each other, so I'm going to use a new naming system. I looked at the pictures when I took them to collect the genetics data and if I want to know anything else about them that I don't remember (like aspiration) I look it up with SimPE.

Sugah wrote:

I can't imagine how much time it took for you to get all of those cool snapshots!

It took a little while. I wanted to pose them all for fancier pictures, but I was too lazy to do so. I just teleported everyone in to my placeholder lot, a family at a time and used "move objects on" to group everyone close together. I started with the smaller families and tried to get all of the pictures I needed for that group before I started teleporting those sims out and other sims in.

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You were searching for primitive-looking musical instruments last time you posted.
Did you ever find any?

No, I didn't.

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Did Elijah ever find a love interest though surrounded by mostly first female cousins?

I haven't played much at all since I posted here last, but he's still single. I think the only girl that is not his first cousin is Kaylynn and she's a fairly young teen still. They seem to get along okay so far, but I think she might be more interested in someone else . . . I guess it must be Jim? That seems to be the only other eligible bachelor for her. Nathan is another sim in my hood that is still unattached and last time I played, I realized he's getting older. He might be halfway through his adult stage already. He was the first born in that generation. All of the eligible bachelorettes for him seem to be interested in other guys or just don't get along with him.

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Blue and Brown eyes are dominant in the gene pool as well as dark hair.
The skin tones seem rather evenly distributed, more so than I imagined.
There aren't too many more tanned & medium-skinned kin folk than light, are there?
Interesting stuff!
You were not surprised by the results?

That sounds right. I think with the skin tones none are dominant over the other so they should be equal. I should have more dark skinned sims than I do. It's either just chance or maybe some of the geneticized skin tones I have might appear lighter than they are. It will be interesting to see if it evens out again later on.

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Have you been able to play your Founder's 'hood lately?

No, I haven't played the sims at all lately. Chase got minecraft for Christmas, so I've been learning to play that with him and awhile back there was a free 48 hour trial of TS4 offered, so I tried it out a little bit. (I wasn't impressed.)

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I've made lists of the names of the sims in each household...
I've kept the kids' names similar to their parents' so it's easier for me to remember ...
... and if I want to know anything else about them that I don't remember (like aspiration) I look it up with SimPE.

Em, it seems you have your own system for remembering important info about your Sims and it's working for you.
I get to play so rarely, I have to revisit each family to recall anything about them (including names, aspirations, hobbies, careers, etc., etc.).
That's how bad my memory is, even with small lapses between playing my game.
I always forget that people look to SimPE for information and to make changes in their Sims, too.
I posted elsewhere yesterday that I only use SimPE for recoloring CC, but other Simmers rely on the program for so much more!

You'd mentioned you hadn't found any primitive looking instruments.

The Ceremonial Pahu and Bongo Drums converted from Castaways might serve the purpose.
Here is a pic of Elle's Kimberly (now KimberLee in my Tres Lago's 'hood) playing the Pahu Drum:



HERE is a full image of the drums.
They can be downloaded at MATY HERE, if you're interested.

Bummer for your Elijah and Nathan! I hope they find love with someone they aren't related to some day.

Interesting you weren't impressed with Sims 4. My sissy plays and she loves it...Was singing it's praises!
I've heard mixed reviews and to be honest, don't think they look much different than the puddin' faced Sims 3 Sims!

I hope you get to play again soon, Em. Or are you still dwelling in the wonderful world of Minecraft zone?

Ooh, thanks for the link, Sugah! I downloaded the drums and a few other things in that post. I can't wait to try them out!

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I have to revisit each family to recall anything about them (including names, aspirations, hobbies, careers, etc., etc.).

Most things, beyond names (and sometimes names too), I have to look up in SimPE or by visiting their household, unless there was something really memorable about those facts during game play that stuck with me.

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Bummer for your Elijah and Nathan! I hope they find love with someone they aren't related to some day.

Let's hope so. *fingers crossed* Maybe if they wait long enough some younger sims grow up enough to become a match with them or maybe when some of the older sims start to pass on, they might find a nice widow to partner with. If all else fails, I can extract them and give them another chance in another hood.

I didn't mind the looks of the TS4 sims too much, but I found the game play awkward. I think one of my biggest annoyances was the lag. Maybe I would have liked it better if I was playing on a different computer.

I found things hard to find, like items in the buy and build mode. It took me awhile to figure out how things were laid out. (I searched forever for a phone so one of my sims could look for a job, only to finally figure out there are no buyable phones. My sims automatically have cell phones.) Everything is in a completely different place on the UI and the scrolling was backwards from what I'm used to. (I could change the scroll settings, but I never got it completely right for what I'm used to.)

The neighborhood screen is ugly. It's very flat, like the TS1 neighborhood screen, but sections are grayed out (for no discernible reason) until you hover over (or click on) the group of houses.

It seems like it takes forever for sims to do anything and they don't respond as quickly to things you direct them to do. In the first household I moved in, one of my sims got a book and then sat on the toilet to read. I was trying to direct her to do other things or other sims to interact with her and the actions just queued up and she sat in there for hours until I finally had to cancel the action. That household was a family of five, which I thought might be too much to handle, so I switched to a family of two (my simself and my son, who was technically my brother in the game, because I couldn't find the place to change family ties in CAS. Not that it seemed to make any difference.) It still took my sims ages to do anything, like cook a meal or take a shower. They seemed to require less sleep though. SimChase would have to stay up half of the night taking care of his needs and doing his homework, but he'd wake up fully rested in time for school in just a few hours with no problem. Their needs would seem to drop very suddenly. Like one minute everything seems to be in the green, then suddenly all of their needs are dropping low and it takes so long for them to take care of any one need, that the others, meanwhile, are going into the red.

The emotions are weird. The third household I made as a single mom and her two teens. All of a sudden out of nowhere the two teens get embarrassed and start hiding in their beds and I have no indication of why. The best I could guess is that it was because their mom burned her dinner.

I like the customization of the sims and I like the add a room feature, once I figured out how it worked. I had a lot of trouble lining things up just right because of the lag, but it's really handy to just drop a pre-built and pre-furnished room right on to my house. And if doing that interferes with any of the other items in the room, those items get sent to a house inventory, so you can put them back in if you want to.

I probably would have liked it more if it didn't lag so much for me and if I had some mods to make their needs not drop so fast or take so long to take care of. The trial was for 48 hours and I only ended up playing it for a couple hours before the time was up.

I'm working on getting my game set up again. I just got a new computer and I'm anxious to see how The Sims does on it. I ordered a desktop this time, hoping it will be less likely to lag and overheat than my laptop, but I didn't order a monitor with it. (Funny, because the main problem I had with my laptop was the screen.) I figured I could buy one separately rather than having it shipped and in the meantime I could use my TV as a monitor. I looked all over for the right type of cable to hook up the computer to the TV and ended up having to order on from Amazon. I finally got it hooked up last weekend, so I'm moving my files over and trying to figure out a better set up. Right now I have to sit on the floor to play or when I need to use the keyboard, which isn't the best. I may need to go out and get a monitor and set it up in the other room. We discovered my new computer came with a trial of Plants vs. Zombies (which made me think of Mac and Maikki) so Chase has gotten me into playing that now. (Whenever he fails a level, he has me give it a try.) I'm going to have to decide which hood to play again. It's been so long, I'm not sure where to jump back in.

TS2 forever!

YES!  

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Ooh, thanks for the link, Sugah! I downloaded the drums and a few other things in that post. I can't wait to try them out!

Yaaaay! You are welcome, Em!
KimberLee's family seems to be attracted to playing the Pahu drum. It's a fun addition to their household.  

Thank you for sharing your thoughts about Sims 4.
Maybe it would've been a more pleasant experience without some of the lag being caused by your old computer.

But this...

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I was trying to direct her to do other things or other sims to interact with her and the actions just queued up and she sat in there for hours until I finally had to cancel the action.

and this...

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The neighborhood screen is ugly. It's very flat, like the TS1 neighborhood screen, but sections are grayed out (for no discernible reason) until you hover over (or click on) the group of houses.

and this...

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Their needs would seem to drop very suddenly. Like one minute everything seems to be in the green, then suddenly all of their needs are dropping low and it takes so long for them to take care of any one need, that the others, meanwhile, are going into the red.

Would've reallllllly gotten on my nerves!

Congrats on your new desktop!!! Wooooohooooo!!!
That's great, Em! I'm happy for you!  

Mac wrote:

TS2 forever!

Em, I played Sims 4 for a couple of hours at my SIL's house a few months ago. My experience was very much like yours. I didn't like the way things were set up and couldn't easily find the screens I wanted for both buying things and for checking on the sims' statuses. The look of everything from the hood to the sims to the furniture was kind of cartoony, which I didn't like. I also noticed that their needs would drop quickly, and rise slowly. I didn't think it was as balanced as in Sims 2.

Mac wrote:

TS2 forever!

Absolutely!

Sugah, I keep notes on my sims and their families for the same reason as you -- a very poor memory! Also because I'm compulsively organized and I can't seem to stop myself from making a note of everything that might be important.  

Em, I hope you're enjoying your new desktop system and that it's made it easier to play Sims 2. I remember the kind of lag I had with my old computer and I wouldn't want to be dealing with that again.

SimEm wrote:

I didn't mind the looks of the TS4 sims too much, but I found the game play awkward.  I think one of my biggest annoyances was the lag.  Maybe I would have liked it better if I was playing on a different computer.  

I found things hard to find, like items in the buy and build mode.  It took me awhile to figure out how things were laid out.  (I searched forever for a phone so one of my sims could look for a job, only to finally figure out there are no buyable phones.  My sims automatically have cell phones.)  Everything is in a completely different place on the UI and the scrolling was backwards from what I'm used to.  (I could change the scroll settings, but I never got it completely right for what I'm used to.)  

The neighborhood screen is ugly.  It's very flat, like the TS1 neighborhood screen, but sections are grayed out (for no discernible reason) until you hover over (or click on) the group of houses.  

It seems like it takes forever for sims to do anything and they don't respond as quickly to things you direct them to do.  In the first household I moved in, one of my sims got a book and then sat on the toilet to read.  I was trying to direct her to do other things or other sims to interact with her and the actions just queued up and she sat in there for hours until I finally had to cancel the action.  That household was a family of five, which I thought might be too much to handle, so I switched to a family of two (my simself and my son, who was technically my brother in the game, because I couldn't find the place to change family ties in CAS.  Not that it seemed to make any difference.)  It still took my sims ages to do anything, like cook a meal or take a shower.  They seemed to require less sleep though.  SimChase would have to stay up half of the night taking care of his needs and doing his homework, but he'd wake up fully rested in time for school in just a few hours with no problem.  Their needs would seem to drop very suddenly.  Like one minute everything seems to be in the green, then suddenly all of their needs are dropping low and it takes so long for them to take care of any one need, that the others, meanwhile, are going into the red.

The emotions are weird.  The third household I made as a single mom and her two teens.  All of a sudden out of nowhere the two teens get embarrassed and start hiding in their beds and I have no indication of why.  The best I could guess is that it was because their mom burned her dinner.

I like the customization of the sims and I like the add a room feature, once I figured out how it worked.  I had a lot of trouble lining things up just right because of the lag, but it's really handy to just drop a pre-built and pre-furnished room right on to my house.  And if doing that interferes with any of the other items in the room, those items get sent to a house inventory, so you can put them back in if you want to.

I probably would have liked it more if it didn't lag so much for me and if I had some mods to make their needs not drop so fast or take so long to take care of.  The trial was for 48 hours and I only ended up playing it for a couple hours before the time was up.

Your experience is really funny, and you're not the only one to observe the slowness of TS4. It was supposed to be dumbed down so it would work on slower computers.      The whole idea was to gull people with slower computers to buy it. I'm afraid that TS(you fill in the number) is living on the brand name now.

Cher wrote:

Sugah, I keep notes on my sims and their families for the same reason as you -- a very poor memory! Also because I'm compulsively organized and I can't seem to stop myself from making a note of everything that might be important.

I hear ya, Cher, and am the same!
I started a few new index cards documenting some other 'Hood/Sim info recently, too.
But more on that in my Sim antics thread later.

mac wrote:

Your experience is really funny, and you're not the only one to observe the slowness of TS4. It was supposed to be dumbed down so it would work on slower computers.

That's what I thought too.  

Last night, I got this notion to go into bodyshop and makeover one of my sims and I kind of got carried away and started tweaking a few sims in my simbin to try to make them better looking.  With the first sim I edited, I was really surprised how different she turned out.  I didn't realize how much I had changed until I saw them side to side.  So I started tweaking some other sims to see how they turned out and I thought it would be fun to share how the better ones turned out.  Some changes were minor cosmetic changes.  Others got some major plastic surgery.

Here's the first sim I played with, Deborah.  She's the one that I had changed way more than I had realized at the time.


Lucy, who has been in my game a long time.  She was originally a TS1 townie, way back when.


Will 2.0


And his brother, Gus, who was actually the sim I went into bodyshop for in the first place, but realized he wasn't there.  So I extracted him tonight.

What a fun thing to do, Em. Some of those changes are fairly major, but what's more interesting to me is how a few little changes made such a big difference.

Cher wrote:

What a fun thing to do, Em. Some of those changes are fairly major, but what's more interesting to me is how a few little changes made such a big difference.

Deborah Before & Deborah After do not resemble each other much at all, Em.
They are both so pretty.

And is that the Lucy Stuart of Arrendale Heights fame?
Single, successful mother of Vince & Maura?
I like her new makeover. She looks lovely.

WILL!!! Love him (before AND after)!!!
He and his brother Gus don't resemble one another much, except for similar bone structure, do they?

This was a neat, fun little project/experiment, Em.

Sugah wrote:

Deborah Before & Deborah After do not resemble each other much at all, Em.

That was so surprising to me.  I didn't realize how much I was changing until I saved and went back to look at the original.  The changes added up to way more than I had expected.

Sugah wrote:

And is that the Lucy Stuart of Arrendale Heights fame?
Single, successful mother of Vince & Maura?
I like her new makeover. She looks lovely.

Yes!  I thought I'd see if I could get a more realistic, less cartoonish look to some of my sims.

Sugah wrote:

WILL!!! Love him (before AND after)!!!
He and his brother Gus don't resemble one another much, except for similar bone structure, do they?

No, they have their own distinct looks.  I didn't change much on Will except to try out some different skintones and make-up options.  I think his bone structure was fine the way it was.

Em wrote:

Yes! I thought I'd see if I could get a more realistic, less cartoonish look to some of my sims.

I think you achieved that with Lucy.

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I think his bone structure was fine the way it was.

 

And we both know he's got great genes. Just look at his beautiful Callista!  

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And we both know he's got great genes. Just look at his beautiful Callista!  

And so does lovely Anais!

I need to catch up in this thread so I can share what I want to in my other thread.  The neighborhood I'm doing my offspring project in is called Waterside Park (I hadn't mentioned it before, because I'm mediocre at names. ) It's my miscellaneous hood, where a lot of my challenge families end up, like from the Baby Boom Challenge, Asylum Challenge, and SP Sidekicks Chronicles (who have the last name LaFemme, so it was from that version of the challenge, but with other members added later.)  Sims I share for download end up there for taking preview pictures, and there's a bunch of families Chase made too, so I have a pretty eclectic group of sims for my SP sims to make friends with.  It's especially fun to see some of the SP gang make an appearance.

Here is my infamous apartment building where all of the singles start out.  (The building with the orange roof, by the water.)


I'm a minimalist when it comes to decorating, but these apartments were too drab to be lived in as they were, especially for sims with such strong personalities.  The girls' apartment (Ming, Tempest, and Ciara) is the one I decorated first and spent the most time on.  Enrique's place got a fairly decent makeover and I made some effort with Patrick's (and later Stefan's), but did next to nothing with Ava and Drake's (later Angelica's and Anais's) apartment, because I lost interest in decorating at the point and just wanted to play.  Here is the girls' apartment before. It's downstairs on the left.


And after.


After Rain was born, I had to make room for a crib in the corner of the bedroom.


I'm kind of disappointed that I didn't move someone else in before they all moved out so that the furnishings would have stayed.  And I'm kind of disappointed that the girls found love and started their own families so quickly (thanks to ACR).  I was hoping they'd stay together a little longer first.

They had very strong opinions about their neighbors from the start.

Here is proof that not ALL the ladies fall for Enrique's charms.  Ming knows better than to fall for a sweet talking guy.


Ciara was equally unimpressed with Patrick.


And they gossip about him, right in front of him too.


There was some outright hostility between some of them.


I had to move out one sim and exclude her from the project because she and a couple of other sims were constantly getting into fights.  What I don't get about apartments is how every morning at 6-something A.M., if your door is unlocked, all of the neighbors will come into your apartment and stay until 10-something P.M. regardless of their relationship.  I kept directing my sims to say goodbye to anyone who wanted to pick fights, yet two minutes later they would be back and the only way to keep them out was to lock the door and lock all of the neighbors out.  

The girls' apartment is really neat; it's a shame you lost all the decorating when they moved out. It must have taken some time to get it so nice.

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After Rain was born, I had to make room for a crib in the corner of the bedroom.

Alyssa's trailer is pretty crowded, too. Sometimes we have to get creative about cramming all the baby and toddler stuff in.

That Ming was a smart girl from beginning!

Poor Patrick. It's pretty rude to talk smack about him while he's standing right there.

I usually play with my doors locked, but not always. I've noticed the same thing in the apartment building where Elle, Mac, and David Cook live in Isle of Demeter. People just come over and hang around for hours. They'd sit around and watch TV even if the apartment resident was in bed asleep.

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The girls' apartment is really neat; it's a shame you lost all the decorating when they moved out. It must have taken some time to get it so nice.

At least some of the changes stuck, like the changes I made to the walls. The new residents weren't stuck with the drab gray.

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Poor Patrick. It's pretty rude to talk smack about him while he's standing right there.

Ciara and Ming were acting like they were still in middle school, weren't they?  I don't think Patrick minded too much, especially once he met Ava.

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People just come over and hang around for hours. They'd sit around and watch TV even if the apartment resident was in bed asleep.

Asleep or at work, they don't care.  And what's worse, they seem to have no problem woohooing on their neighbor's sofas and even stand outside and complain about not being able to do so when the doors are locked.  My sims are so classy.   I don't think EAxis got the apartments quite right.     There needs to be an option to decide who's allowed in and who's not or to invite certain sims without letting any and everybody in.

Here are some more snapshots that didn't make it into my project thread.  I didn't take time to plan my sims' other outfits in CAS, so I was pleasantly surprised at some of their formalwear choices at their friends' weddings.  Tempest and Ciara's outfits really fit their personalities and styles.


Stefan's formalwear cracks me up.  He shows up to Ming and Drake's wedding looking like he's already been to the party.  (And lost his shoes!)


It's kind of sad that Ming didn't keep up her relationship with her best friends very well after she married, but between raising children and pursuing her career, it was hard to make time.  The girls did come visit and help out at least once after the twins were born.

Tempest's outfit:

I know! She was definitely dressed to turn heads! She certainly caught Enrique's eye in that outfit.



Here's some pictures of Ava and Patrick's honeymoon that I was unable to share before. Patrick had wanted to go to the Far East, but once they got their neither of them had any wants to do any vacation things. All of their wants were about being with each other. But it was their honeymoon after all.



Eventually they did start to take an interest in going out and taking in the local culture.





This picture is so cute of Stefan comforting an upset Rain. Some of the sims in my apartments don't get along. Stefan was just one of several who kept getting into fights with fellow neighbors. Rain did not like seeing her dad fight with others. I really hoped this would inspire him to turn over a new leaf and be kinder to others.