Pete Wilsonoff just had the worst date ever.
He is a teen, asked out a female teen townie, and they had a date at home. So I'm only paying them some attention, checking on my other Sims and letting them on free will a little bit.
Wen I check on them, they are outside - it's raining and Pete has a blackish skin color and crazy hairdo which can mean only one thing: lightning!
They seem to be having fun though (crazy young people nowadays) but I direct Pete to have a shower - because it's only proper. But while I'm clicking on him... lighting strucks him again! o_O
His motives go down enough for him to pee himself - and, no, that did not impress the girl at all.
He runs to the bathroom (now you want to have a shower, don't you?) while she leaves right away muttering that it was an awful date - no surprise, but hey, she ought to have some nice feelings for the poor guy instead of leaving a burning bag of shit right by his door.

And you know what's worst of all. I DID NOT TAKE ANY PICTURES!
Argggh!!

I've heard that the Maxis townie aging that came with Freetime is buggy. I forget exactly what the problem is, but I recommend using these two mods instead:

Cyjon's "No Townie Aging" - suppresses the dialog box that allows you to age up townie friends.
http://www.cyjon.net/node/145

Syberspunk's "Grow Up Townies" - click on a townie that you're tired of looking at and age them up. If the townie is already an elder, they'll die of old age instead. Be sure to read the instructions thoroughly. There are several versions of this mod. I use "norel" which has no relationship requirement. Should work with OFB and later.
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...pic,4842.0.html

AFAIK the only bug with it is, that children don't get assigned an aspiration when grown up to teen. And there's ways around that. Teen to Adult and Adult to Elder shouldn't be a problem.

The problem is that most of those sims are NPC's, not townies. You can't age up NPC's or social group townies.

(Of course, you can always move them in, age them up with the SimBlender, and then make them regular townies.)

Finished off my Veronaville rotation.

Helena Summerdream, an abandoned teenager who has lived in an orphanage her whole life recently found out she was a witch! She decided to try to contact the Summerdream family, as they're the only witches in the whole neighbourhood and she shared their last name. They soon invited her over, and she quickly became one of the family. She still lives in the orphanage, but provided things keep going the way they are, she'll probably be adopted very soon and learn how to use her magic powers. I think Bottom Summerdream is going to be slightly horrified when she finds out the baby she gave up for adoption in college (that she never told anyone about) has just become her new sister

I let Martha Goth and Phillip Capp have a really big wedding for some reason. I guess I felt mean that so many simmers go to the effort of giving their sims proper weddings and I usually just let them get married wherever. Phillip invited his Mum Juliette and Step-Dad Orion, younger brother Oxford (but not any other siblings) and some close friends, Martha's parents (Mortimer & Dina) didn't attend; as Mortimer passed while Martha was a toddler, and Dina remarried and never bothered to look back. She did however invite her half siblings - Cassandra & Alexander, both of whom spent time raising her while she was younger, and Cassandra's oldest sons Henry & George, and Alexander's children Eric and John, all of whom Martha grew up with as siblings. Then there were Martha's sorority sisters - including Bella Goth's daughter Vanessa. Even though they're not related, Martha and Vanessa treated each other as siblings during University. It's fairly safe to say, with what Martha lacks in parents, she certainly makes up for in extended family.

Over on the other side of Veronaville, Ursula Monty found herself pregnant. I've already forgotten who the father is. I don't like Ursula, poor sim, she was in my game for years before I met someone with the name 'Ursula' who I hated with a passion... and now I torture the poor sim over it. Maybe I should just rename her. But hey... not all sims can live happy lives... I switch from "eugh, Ursula" to "she's just a sim like any other!". She's not too pleased with the pregnancy though. I'll probably let her put the baby up for adoption though.

On the old soil farm, Harmony Cho gave birth to her second child, another son named Ocean. Her older son, Aspen, is still a toddler. The ducklings grew up and it made for a perfect oportunity to take some pictures of Aspen and Ocean with the ducks. Abhijeet is not excited to be a father again, and went into aspiration failure. I'm not sure how much longer he's going to stay on the farm before packing up his stuff and leaving. Harmony already wants another baby.

I've also played few a few families in Strangetown, but nothing much happened. Mostly just taking cute pictures of toddlers. Galileo DeBateau-Caliente, as well as twins Oliver and Halley Smith grew up. I've decided not to fund the house crisis on Strangetown. It's quickly becoming overcrowded, but due to the "No aliens outside of Strangetown" rule, there's nothing much that can be done about it. I feel like the Mayor wouldn't remove that rule (with the military being so heavily against aliens) and won't be willing to make more houses, when there's plenty of small starter homes to the East of Strangetown. Just too bad those are all small two bedrooms, and some sims living in those starter homes have around $40k, but can't move to bigger homes. Luckily, the younger generation of military brats are a little more open-minded. Maybe that harsh rule will go out the window eventually?



(Wooo! Just became a 'Mad Poster' )

Finally finished my townie hood and reporting in from my Pleasantview with a Twist hood: all of my townies appear to have made the transaction without any problems, their names have been randomized and most have no relationships with the others (a select few have friendships with the Pleasantview townies). One thing I'm looking out for is the sims I made that had the 'Had [x]!' memory when pairing them up with teens/kids, but I think it's safe to say those memories have been wiped, fingers crossed!

EDIT: turns out moving one sim in with the Sim Blender who had those memories removed them so I found a workaround for that! Looks like I don't need the TownieNoMemoryLoss hack any more. I do believe my work here is done, I have a backup of my townie hood and I'm ready to add it to my uberhood

Testing out my hospital...

Last night I played Farnham-was at Peter and Lucy Gerard's house. Being very tired after a stressful day, I briefly nodded off.

When I woke up, Lucy had been promoted at work, gotten pregnant and had just had a baby girl the next day in the rotation. I had to use the SimBlender to name the baby Joan because I was so surprised by it that I had not named her and she was "Baby girl".

Parents and baby are doing fine. Me, I gotta get more sleep....

Poor Tom Freshe.

He and Emily Lee had just graduated and, since there didn't seem to be any chemistry between them, I'd decided to have them each find their own place in the "real world." To keep their finances separate, he was just paying his final student stipend into his bank account when his computer went phut. Moving out of student digs and leaving behind a broken computer is Not An Option and neither of them has much in the way of mechanical skill, so rather than fork out for a new one they decided to wait for the repairman to come the next morning.

But then Emily woke up feeling suddenly romantic, wanting to flirt and kiss now that all the hard work of studying was over. So while they waited for the repairman, they had a little romance; they are now in love and Emily wants to get engaged to Tom.

I moved them into a house in Riverblossom Hills, and Tom promptly rolled a want to marry a rich Sim. I'm sorry, Tom. If only you could have told me that before Emily got romantic notions. But you don't know any rich Sims anyway, and Emily wants to marry you, so . . .

Poor Tom. Having computer problems doesn't usually result in having to get married!

My toymaker sim has a lifetime want to reach his golden anniversary. He and his wife are both elders, so it's party time!

Sim Sample invited himself, and got slapped before he even made it in through the front door.

I now know how y'all feel when it comes to pink flashing; sent my sims on their honeymoon (the game says 2nd even though they weren't married before :0?) to the Campgrounds in Three Lakes and I almost fell out of my chair, everything was pink and black . Went out to the main Three Lakes neighborhood and it was like Armageddon. I never had any problems with the vacation hoods on my laptop so this is the first time I came across this on my desktop. I sent them to a different hotel and everything appears to be fine... for now

EDIT: nope it's back . Once I saw them T-posing with floating heads I sent my sims back. I expect a full refund since they didn't get a chance to meet Bigfoot

EDIT: The newspaper started to flash so I closed the game. But it looks like the problem has been solved hopefully, my Thumbnails folder was too bloated and cleared it out. Still, I don't think I'll send my sims on vacation ever again after this experience :p

Scaredy cat. Your computer was probably overheating. Not going on vacation won't prevent it from happening again.

Try deleting the thumbnails before starting the game.

In Farnham, Lady Martha Fitzwilliam gave birth to her 5th and last child-Nicholas. 2 of his siblings do not like him from the start. His father wants 10 children in all, and Lady Martha has had enough for anyone. She intends to go back to work as soon as possible.

Lord Hugh, and (at least) 2 of his tenants have a very nasty trait-they're kleptomaniacs. This explains why Lord Hugh has a huge horde of gold and silver coins stashed in his locked gate house. He's been stealing them blind. One hopes the tenants never find out.

Still setting up my hood...

First picture: The Sim I made to help move in townies (who is no longer necessary, silly game spewed out townies and dormies for me to hand-replace using Alt Sim Surgery) getting pickpocketed. Said guy was supposed to be the summoner from Fire Emblem Heroes, hence the hoodie. An accurate description of what Intelligent Systems is doing to Fire Emblem Heroes players.

Second picture: Taken after the summoner moved a grave of a character that was supposed to have died before the story, to what will become the cemetery (I need to decorate it), and right after the old guy joy-buzzed the younger guy as I noticed while driving back. Those two guys will be among the playables...

Sir Armand DeBateau managed to set the kitchen on fire while making grilled cheese. A firefighter hurried to the scene, but she had barely got the fire extinguished when Sir Armand very rudely ordered her to get out so he could take a sponge bath.

He subsequently had a call from the Fire Department informing him that they have a Zero Tolerance policy on that kind of thing, and that his smoke alarm has now been disabled. He'd better not set the kitchen on fire again, because they won't be coming out!

In Tinsel Town, the kids are (barely) getting on in college. Most of them do not want to study or learn anything. They (and I) will be glad when they graduate. There are about 4 more kids to send off to college and one hopes they will at least have some ambition to do well, but given the track records of their friends and relatives, it's not very likely.

For the first set of pixels to go to college, they're a vast disappointment.

The Starr "family" had enough money to pay their taxes. BUT, First Maccabees had never even lived on his own until now, much less been in charge of a household. And even though he's an elder, and his wife is, at best, indifferent to him, he was so happy to finally be able to make decisions, that, he..well, spent the money.

So, here they are in the prison colony, a totally mismatched couple, and poor room mate, Alaska Janakova, along for the ride. They weren't able to buy a lot with a structure already on it. So, they are stuck with a couple of tents and a battery-operated fridge. When that food goes, they will starve if they haven't started planting.

So, instead what they've been doing is pretty much nothing. They ramble around the land, kicking the clods of dirt, muttering about finding water. First Maccabees has no idea what to do because, as I said, he's never lived on his own before. He and Alexa aren't talking to each other, so he does spend a lot of time with Alaska, who really should have had orthodontia as a child because her teeth all hang out of her mouth. Alexa pretty much sulks, but I did see her chatting up Jace yesterday as he walked by gawking at their lack of progress.

Building! I finally buckled down and started building the kind of apartments I've been wanting for my Main Street. Although initially inspired by brownstones, I pretty quickly veered off into various styles rather than making them mostly the same with just some cosmetic differences. I would have loved for the first two floors to belong to one unit while the third floors (where they exist) belonged to another but alas... the game throws a hissy when you combine different level entrances. So there are four garden level units with access to backyards while the four upper units will have varying degrees of balcony to use. I may scoot the lot over and put in another to build some that fit more an actual brownstone style. But, for now, I'm liking how these are turning out!

Had an epiphany to use my townie folder as a default replacement townie pool so I won't have to bother renaming my townies every time I create a new uberhood. Should've realized this sooner but alas :P. I can probably do this with my uni hoods as well, haven't figured it out yet though.

Also finishing up the last of my house makeovers in a separate hood, now I can finally decorate my uberhood the way I want it to look, complete with road overlays I forgot to add in the first time.

Just finished killing off the Pleasantview townie teens/kids. You haven't played The Sims proper until you've killed off an entire household of randoms. I moved in one of my custom townies to watch the house so I could move the Summoner to a lot that will be haunted. Tried to make them drown - no dice, the lot was too small for a pool that didn't cause routefails. Tried using fireplaces - still nope. I stepped it up to the fire jets and boom. Kids can get rescued and put into the adoption pool if they would have starved, so only Hunger was cheated up. Otherwise, I kept buying rugs to burn. I then used the Tombstone of L&D to generate new townie kids. I like them a lot better. They don't have the baggage of being from Pleasantview, so I can more easily see them as average citizens of my Fire Emblem world.

However, my playable teens at the moment have romances planned out except for Lex and Dew - who also aren't going to college. I will use college to ensure Finn and Lachesis, and Azelle and Tailtiu, fall in love - the former is a canon couple in a manga of the game. But looking at LTWs, Lachesis rolled a career LTW and Finn didn't. Looks like he'll be a stay-at-home dad.

You feel comfortable using the Tombstone of L&D, but never thought to activate Rodney's Death Inducer? It saves a lot of time and torture.

At Depression Riverblossom LGU, JoAnn Gutenberg is dating Hi Thyme and Dot Matrix is dating Andy Bellum - and Hi Thyme. Daisy mis-timed a party so that she had to go to class shortly after it started, and since she'd started it to pass the time while JoAnn and Dot were in class, this left only the newest band member (Lily Pond, keyboards) to get the party rolling, and she was making heavy weather of it, so when JoAnn and Dot got back I figured it was time to liven things up. Andy had come to the party, so Dot asked him on a date, and Hi hadn't, so JoAnn asked him over for a date.

The moment Hi walked onto the lot, before JoAnn could even greet him, Dot ran over to slap him silly. She's furious with JoAnn, too, but they're BFF, she'll get over it. JoAnn doesn't know what the problem is but wasn't going to let it spoil her date. Dot flounced back to Andy and started making much of him.

Now, the problem with Andy and Dot as a couple is that, in this iteration, they have incompatible turn-ons and turn-offs. With Andy's Popularity aspiration reducing his woohoo drive and my "no woohoo without a want" rule, Andy's still a virgin halfway through Junior year. Which, in the Depression, isn't as unusual as all that. Birth control is (theoretically) unreliable and I figure a lot of my young sims will be waiting till they're married. But it's driving Dot up a tree. And tonight is no different - she's still working on luring Andy into her bedroom, and JoAnn and Hi are making out in their underwear right in front of her door. So she redoubles her efforts to get him to roll higher-level romance wants, and the penny finally drops for Hi. Dot is dating his best friend! Who was dating her before Hi ever asked her out!

Getting beaten on by his best friend didn't put Andy any more in the mood, so the party and the dates ended without her getting any. Again. But Daisy got back from class to find her party score nice and high, and that was the point of the exercise, so it's all good. It'd be better if Hi'd managed to do something inappropriate with Dot in front of JoAnn so they could break up, but she never gave him a chance.

I'd tentatively like to match up JoAnn with Lily, and Andy with Jules O'Mackey, but Jules wants to get engaged to Jacob. Helen wants Jacob Martin to be her next unique woohoo (mysteriously, she keeps turning down Hi's attempts to date her; he'd be more than happy to advance her another notch). Sandra Roth, happily engaged to Hugh Knowe, sometimes rolls wants to fall in love with Jacob. Meanwhile, he - having stayed home to help his father with the farm he's about to inherit and bartend for his friend David's roadhouse - isn't thinking about dating at all. I don't know what they all see in him.

Okay, I know what Helen sees.

The Tombstone always scares me because I'm worried about death tokens going missing. That might be old, long debunked rumour, though.

I'm super pleased, because with lots of thinking and various wonderful mods, I've finally got a working repairman system happening in my hood. Because of my rules for skill building, Mechanical skill is highly difficult for my sims to build. Most are not capable of unclogging their toilet in a few goes, let alone a tv. Hence the need for Eliott Tellerman, my nominated guy, who I simply teleport using the Sim Blender to the household that need repairs done, then make him selectable. $100 for plumbing repairs, $200 for electrics! Payable by Pescado's money order. It's certainly better than being electrocuted!

My only gripe is that of course, Eliott or any of his future employees won't earn skill points on the job as they're technically visitors on the lot. Is there another 'make sim selectable hack' that makes this possible without doing anything messy like adding him to the household?

I've been wanting to try running service businesses in my hood like this for some time and I'm so pleased it's working roughly as intended!

Killing off everyone (preferably Sims you have no positive feelings for) is almost a Sims rite of passage. Once I got things burning, it became much easier and more fun.


Link to more? I don’t want to have already blown up my world.

I've had a bit of a google, and I think I might be getting the issue confused with the Tombstone failing to remove death tokens when used to resurrect, which is also a problem, but a different one of course. Hope I didn't put you into a panic!