So anyway, life continued in the Newbie house. Bob continued to be as slobby and kooky as ever, and Betty loved him in spite of it all. (She puts up with a lot.)
With more apologies to Simbil, I gave Betty a slight makeover just to soften her features a bit. It’s the pregnancy, you know. All those hormones made her look different. (That’s my in-game rationale, anyway.) And she wanted to start a garden, so I helped her with that. She looks so serene watering her plants.
She didn’t look so serene later on, when she went into labor outside of the bookstore.
Bob sped over in a taxi to pick her up (I guess she sent him a telepathic message that it was hospital time), and minutes later, Brandi Newbie was brought into the world.
I’m still not a fan of the TS3 pillbug babies, but I liked Brandi anyway. Bob’s cute with her. Yeah, I’m a big old sap.
The nice thing about Bob is that, even though he’s a Slob and a Couch Potato, he does like to help around the house from time to time. He’s really into cooking, for some strange reason. I guess it has to do with the Angling, because he spun up a wish to learn a fish recipe. I had him learn how to make Fish and Chips. I then made it his favorite meal (didn’t cheat this time — I actually used Lifetime Happiness points to change his tastes) because it just makes sense.
And even though he makes a huge mess everywhere he goes, he happens to be Handy, so he can upgrade everything and make it self-cleaning. This is a man who knows how to work with his flaws.
Here he’s upgrading the stove to be self-cleaning while Betty eats some of his homemade fish and chips (red herring and chips, to be exact).
It wasn’t long before the little pillbug Brandi became a toddler. It’s too bad toddlers are so creepy-looking in TS3, because they do have some cute animations sometimes.
And here’s Betty and the daughter for whom she so fervently wished.
I’m excited to play the Newbies again and see where their story goes. One cool thing is that I’m also using Twallan’s story progression mod, so when Brandi was a baby, I played the Goths for awhile and let the Newbies continue on their own. That way I didn’t have to deal with the annoying baby stage so much. I plan to do the same for the toddler phase.
The Story Progression mod makes playing multiple households so much easier. While I’m playing the Newbies, I can click on the Goths’ home and choose “Story Progression (Dream Catcher)” to switch to the Goth household and still retain the Newbies’ wishes and promises. No more having to go back to Edit Town mode to switch households! Woot. I can click on any Sim or house in town at any time and make them active to see what they’re up to. It’s a blast to bounce around the neighborhood in this way, playing random Sims for little bits at a time. And the story progression tells me what everyone is up to, so I feel like I’m playing the whole town, in a way. Great fun.
By the way, I added the rest of Simbil’s families (the Kat family, Claire Charming, Goth Sr., and a few others) to the game along with some of my own homes/families, so the town is growing quite nicely. The Pleasants had a baby boy and one of the game-generated NPCs got married and is pregnant, so that’s kind of cool. Using Twallan’s Super Computer I was able to connect all of the Goth family so they have each other in their family trees. Awesome. As with TS2, fantastic mods are allowing us to mold TS3 to suit our individual gaming styles, and I like it.
I’m sure I’ll get back to my island soon, but for now, Simsville has captured my interest. After all, it’s fun and inspiring to explore a world someone else has created. There’s a sense of discovery that you don’t quite get when you play your own world, where you yourself have built every single lot and placed every single tree. I’m usually too much of a control freak to play with other peoples’ worlds and Sims, so this is a weird situation for me, but I’m just going to roll with it. :-)
Happy Simming, all!
What a fun looking hood! I’ve heard about Simsville but I’m yet to try it out but I might have to now. I’ve been playing a bunch of my own Sims in a hood I downloaded called Fort Sim.
I always liked the Newbies. I remember making over that little house so many times! I don’t know why I restarted the hood so often but I’d always make over that patio to be a second bedroom as well. I don’t think it was ever as nice as your makeover here though!
Ooh, Fort Sim! I’ve installed that one but haven’t checked it out yet. It looks epic, though. Ehaught is a fantastic builder. Thanks for the nice comments, Carla!
Um, Jen… that creepy kid is staring right at me… Still, she’s only creepy-looking. One of mine looked like he was a cross between Freddy Kruger and something that had been put through a meat grinder. Great update, though, and I love the term ‘crazycakes’! I may have to borrow that :)
LOL, Freddy Krueger? Oh dear…that’s bad. I honestly HATE the toddler/child years in TS3, which is why I tend to stop playing families once they have a kid at that age. :-p But I want to see Brandi grow up, so I’ll just bop around to other families while until she’s out of the creepy stages.
Yup, he looked more like Freddy than the Freddy skin that used to be available for sims 2. And, he just got worse as he got older. Or perhaps I’m being insulting to poor Freddy?
I never played the pre-mades much either, but this does look like so much fun!
Maybe it’s just me, but it sounds like “Bob and Betty Newbie taught me how to play The Sims” would be great on a shirt, lol.
And TS3 toddler and children are very creepy.
I know, I never thought I would have so much fun with the pre-mades. Maybe it’s because these versions aren’t Maxis/EA. :-) (Did I already say that in my post? I’m tired today. :-p LOL)
Totally agree on the high creepiness factor of the TS3 kids. I keep hoping for a family/kid-themed expansion and a total overhaul of their looks/animations. :-p
Tehehe jen, I love your commentary :D
I remember the newbies all to well. Yes they were the first family to introduce me into the world of the sims (darn bob and betty, they got me addicted!). I’ve got simsville but haven’t really explored it (just opened it up to see if it was worth keeping around, as I do for most hoods I download) but now I’m almost itching to snag those origional sims and go nuts. It’s funny though, I’m going to want to give everything a makeover right away. No offence to the wonderful creators at all, that’s just what I do with maxis/EA stuff, and I suppose it’s because that’s what they’re based on. I’m currently enjoying the Neverglade hood by Pyronium (well apart from building my school), I love creating cabins and the whole ‘mountain town’ theme. Thanks for those links too! Deleting that cache file does fix my edit-in-game issues, but I’m going to try your method of loading the hood with the actual game because I need my CC too :)
Haha, yes, I blame my whole Sims addiction on Bob and Betty…if they hadn’t taught me how to play, maybe I would have taken up gardening or something more productive instead! (Just kidding, I can’t keep a plant alive to save my soul!)
Wow, Neverglade looks amazing! There are just so many nice worlds popping up now, it’s hard to keep up with them all. I’ve never seen such nice mountains, though. I’ll definitely have to check that one out.
Excellent! I’m loving this! I have Twallan’s Story Progression (got tired of the error message that you get with Awesomemod). But alas … I haven’t played my game since installing it. I wanna get that super ‘puter, too. :) This neighborhood you mentioned sounds interesting. I may have to look into that.
I didn’t really play Bob and Betty much in Sims 1. I did boot them out of their house, though, and used their house for my sims. It was one of my first renovation projects, lol!
I hate Sims 3 pillbug babies so very much. And the ugly factor of the toddlers (Sims 2 toddlers looked so cute!) and even the kids. Which is pretty sad for me, since I’ve always loved Sim kids and have done about eleventy thousand “Have 10 Kid” wants in my playing through of Sims 2. I’m dying for them to add new things for kids/toddlers (and PETS, dangit!) but it looks like anything for them will be several months off, still. Ugh.
Nice revisit of Sims 1 sims, though! I’ll have to consider getting that neighborhood into my game.