Category Archives: The Sims 2

Ahanu Bay: A Work in Progress

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So…I’m working on a second neighborhood in addition to Annabel Island. (You know, because I don’t have enough Sims projects going on right now. *weak laugh*)

The nifty thing about this hood, though, is that Fran will end up here eventually — so it’s a Fran project as well as a general hood-building project.

Having two neighborhoods in progress works out nicely for my Sims-related ADD (tm Kay). When I get the urge to play my Victorian Sims, I can visit Annabel Island, and when I want to play modern Sims, I can pop over to Fran and Ahanu Bay.

It’s all Jade’s fault — I am seriously hooked on hood-building! I haven’t gotten very far yet with either hood, but even the preliminary work — the planning, pondering, and downloading helpful mods and objects — is so darned entertaining.

Anyway, I worked on Ahanu Bay a little bit last night and thought I’d share it with you guys. Keep in mind it’s a work in progress, so it’s in the very early stages of development. I’m experimenting with building the hood somewhat organically; that is, I want the hood to grow from the Sims and from gameplay rather than the other way around.

Ahanu Bay
Overview of the hood

I’m using the Bluewater Village terrain, but I’ve redone the roads more to my liking. I wanted to have plenty of room for beachfront property and a little grid for the town proper. You can see my Mediterranean-style town hall in the center of the grid. The rest of the buildings will be placed on the streets surrounding it and along the shoreline.

I probably won’t use much of the rest of the land – I want to keep Ahanu Bay small and manageable. So as with Annabel Island, I’ll fill it up with trees, landmarks, and maybe the occasional “rural” home or business.

More about Ahanu Bay after the jump!

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Free Site of the Month: June

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My free site for this month is Parsimonious. (And since I missed April and May, they are getting three months’ worth of my donation money — they deserve it.)

I can’t say enough good things about this site. Aside from having a ton of great, imaginative downloads, the owners of the site are some of the nicest, most generous people in the Sims 2 community. I had the pleasure of creating houses for them for a short time (before my game went belly up), so I’m probably a little biased, but it was awesome to see how their staff works together to create such a unique and creative site. The whole thing is worth exploring, but here are some of the highlights:

– The huge array of walls and floors (some of which I could not live without in my Victorian homes)
– Kate’s Eponymous Garden (so beautiful and useful!)
– Christine’s lots (so inspiring)
– The “Theme” pages — content sorted by several different time periods and themes
– The Community Finds pages — I have found some great free sites through these pages!

I’m donating to Parsimonious this month because I would hate to see them disappear (and from the sound of it, running that site is quite expensive). I’d also hate to see them start charging for items, but I doubt they’ll go that route. I would love to see them stick around and stay free for everyone.

Also, they just had their 4-year anniversary (and offered 400+ items to celebrate it), so…Happy Anniversary, Parsimonious!

Books, Wine, and Bread

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Hey, peeps. I seem to be on a roll with Annabel Island; my brain is brimming with ideas for it, and I’m making good progress building the lots. So poor Fran is just going to have to wait a little bit longer (although I did pop in to visit her the other day; she says “hi!”). Also, I don’t have the Dunnavant Mansion done yet — I’m having too much fun building stuff for the working class. I hope you’ll forgive me — I gotta ride the wave while I can.

In the meantime, here are some more preview pics. Everything is still in the experimental phase, so there are no official tours just yet, but you can at least see what I’m working on.

First off is what will eventually be the Annabel Island Public Library and Historical Society (to be known hereafter as simply “The Library”). The first floor will be full of books (including some for purchase) and tables for quiet reading and research.

Annabel Island Public Library and Museum

On the second floor will be maps, pictures, and documents pertaining to the history of the island. Some local art may find its way up there as well. The actual “society” will meet downstairs in the library during off-hours and will probably consist of a citizen from each class.

The librarian will be Hope Krenzer — you may remember her as the maid from Dunnavant Mansion awhile back. As this is a community lot, she doesn’t live on-site, but will stay in the local boarding house and report here for work each day. As to why she left the Dunnavants, I’ll leave that for another time…

More pics after the jump:

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More of the Island

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Tonight I created the King family; they weren’t originally on Annabel Island, but have moved there since the hurricane (taking advantage of the cheap land prices), and started up a farm complete with orchard and enormous garden. They have more land than the Whidbees do, but they don’t have any chickens, and they grow apples instead of lemons and oranges. However, they do have a pair of dogs which they plan to breed so they can sell the puppies to other inhabitants of the island. Here’s a view of their property, which they call Kingstone Farm.

Kingstone Farm

The lovely country road is part of a terrain mod by Stev84. It adds a nice touch of realism to the ‘hood. I’m also using a mod which makes the garbage cans invisible, but I might get rid of it — it occurred to me that if someone knocks over the garbage can, I’ll be clueless. (At least until the cockroaches invade. Yuck.) So I’ll probably just get rid of the invisible garbage can and use move_objects on to place the cans out of view (otherwise they’ll be in the middle of the road! Not good).

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Whidbee Farm, Part I

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I didn’t get as far as I wanted to on the Dunnavant mansion last night, so I’m posting a few pics of Whidbee Farm instead. I plan on doing a full-fledged tour once I’ve moved the family in and played them for a bit. But I wanted to show you guys what I’ve been working on, so here you go:

Whidbee Farm
The Whidbee Farmhouse

This is the THIRD version of Whidbee Farm, so it looks a little different from the last preview pic I posted. The second one was on a lot that sloped downward from the road, and for some reason the roof got all glitched. It was also tough to maneuver the camera around. So I scrapped that one and built this one, which is on a completely flat lot. Much better!

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