Hey all, just thought I’d do a quick post about what I’ve been up to lately. As you may have noticed, I ran out of steam with my Wishful Living Challenge family, sadly. Generation 6 (Jules’s heir) reached adulthood, moved into Goodwin Goode’s old house, and married a lovely woman. Last I left them, they had engaged in some post-wedding woohoo which resulted in lullaby chimes. For some reason, I never went back after that.
The last pic I took of the Shanleys
Actually, I think I know some of the reasons, and none of them had to do with the actual challenge, which I enjoyed. Mostly I wearied of all of the kids having predictable genetics — they always looked like one parent or the other, never a nice blend of the two. And then the townspeople started to become a hodgepodge of horribly generic — the game kept generating Face #1 for all of the new residents — and terrifyingly ugly. I had a tough time finding a wife for Marlowe, and in the end, he fell in love with a GenericFace, and I edited her in CAS to make her look more unique.
Anyway, I don’t mean for this to be a big grumpfest, but there you go. I suppose it didn’t help that Marlowe had a fancy house right off the bat (though I didn’t decorate the 2nd floor) and had chosen the Medical career, which didn’t excite me much, even with the Ambitions changes. Whatever the reasons, I fizzled out, so I guess we can toss that one onto my ever-growing heap of unfinished challenges. ;-)
And sheesh, I never even posted anything about generation 5. Jules ended up moving into one of the Poker Flats houses and married a Bayless! But she looked like her father and not her mother, good ol’ Chase Bayless. Thank goodness for that.
Jules woos his wife-to-be, whose name I have forgotten
I had Jules pursue the Private Investigator profession, which is another way of saying he ogled women all the time.
OK, so it only looks like he’s checking them out — he was actually just doing the usual private eye animations.
I thought Jules’s wife looked much better (or at least, less birdlike and sour-lemon-lipped) after her makeover — it’s amazing what some make-up and new eyebrows can do.
She became a writer, fulfilling the Professional Author LTW. Their daughter Christie completed the Perfect Aquarium LTW, and then their son Marlowe became the heir and moved out. Generation 5 in a nutshell.
Who knows, I may go back to them someday, but I decided I’d rather play a town where I have created all of the Sims and therefore don’t have to worry about generic folks moving in or people running around in hospital gowns or old ladies riding around on choppers, even if those things amused me enough that I had to take pictures of them. Thing is, I can’t decide on what kind of town I want to create, and it changes daily, so that project is creeping along at a snail’s pace.
In the meantime, I’ve joined the Living Sims forum and am trying out some of their building and decorating challenges. I’m downloading CC like a madwoman and using the lovely Redcliffs world from Awesims as my backdrop. The Living Sims magazines are great fun to read and always have inspiring photos — check it out if you haven’t already. I’ll leave you with a picture from the first challenge I entered at the LS forum — the Three Tones Challenge. I chose color palette #3, which is a pale blue, off white, and goldish. I had to use those three colors as the base of my living room, and I added rust and teal as accents. Anyway, it was a blast, and I look forward to trying out more challenges there.
How about you guys? What are you up to?
So, I’m not the only one finding that Sims 3 really doesn’t have a lot of steam to keep it running? I’ve got WA and Ambitions, and it’s all just so ho-hum now, and not really fun unless I’m doing something else at the same time, like reading a book. There’s not enough variety in 3, so I’ve gone back to 2 myself just to enjoy the fact that a new neighborhood is not an absolute nightmare to create, and the sims themselves don’t look like they’ve just stepped out of Attack of The Clones. Maybe Medievel or whatever it’s called will be better. Nice work, though, and I still say you have so much more patience than me :)
Thanks, Scally, I hear ya about running out of steam with Sims 3. I love the graphics so much (not the Sims, but their surroundings) that I would have a hard time going back to S2. So I’m trying to make S3 work for me, but it’s tough. I’m still annoyed that EA ruined my favorite game for me. ;-) Sims Medieval sounded interesting until I read that kids don’t age up and there are no horses. What the hey??
Please tell me you’re joking about kids not aging up and no horses… Man, without those, there’s no point, it’ll be Castaway with immortal brats instead of monkeys. What, in the name of Terry Pratchett, are Eaxis playing at? Are they trying to drive people away, or are they really that dense? I love the surroundings on Sims 3, too, but I really miss the weather effects, and Create-A-World is just one big headache.
it is nice to read a sims3 post for a change, everyone i follow are mainly sims2. I saw your entry in our Living sims forum, beautiful work!
I must be only one who still really enjoys sims3, tho with some mods and tweaks of course and a bunch load of CC.
I moved all the Sunset Valley sims into Neverglade and gave them all a makeover …hehe i know crazy.
Anyway hope you will soon post again.
Hi Speechless! Nice to see someone from the Living Sims forum here. :-) I think your blog is awesome – I love the houses you’re building for Redcliffs. Sounds like you’re having fun with Neverglade, too. Love the makeover idea!
I saw your 3 tone challenge entry over at Livingsims just a short time ago and thought it was simply amazing Jen! I’m compleatly jealous of you ability to get ‘retro’ inspired rooms just right, I loved all of your retro Sims 2 homes and rooms so it’s no surprise your sims 3 decorating looks just as great. As for me, I’ve had to put sims on a bit of a back burner due to uni (I loved being a photographer at Livingsims but had to change to a freelancer as I didn’t have the time :( ). Though I have been very slowly making my way through Riverview making over all the EA homes and community lots. I have some crazy plan to share a save file (I’m only using base game with no store/CC) but that’s a long way away. Yey to pipe dreams and uncompleated challenges!
Darn that uni! We need more Beatdoc pics! ;-) Your Riverview plan sounds awesome! I’m actually one of the few people that likes Riverview, and I would like it about a billion times more with stuff built by you! Best of luck with uni, don’t burn yourself out. :-)
jenba! It’s been a while. :O) How’re you doing, girl?? Yeah, I hear ya on The Sims 3. People, I don’t think, were terribly excited about it to begin with. I still enjoy playing it, but there are other games (MMOs mainly) that have caught my attention at present. With LOTRO gone free-to-play … I reinstated my account just to make sure I got VIP status. Once I get my old toons to level 20 … (so they can get the riding skill for free), I’ll be downgrading to the free account. But getting back to TS3 … I did go ahead and order (and received) the latest Stuff Pack (Fast Lane). Haven’t installed it yet though. Late Night looks interesting. It’ll nice to have vampires again … but I miss my aliens. *sigh* I think the franchise is puttering out. I’ll still enjoy it, but I’m not as addicted as I once was.
I love that painting you have on the wall of your Living Sims challenge room. Everything compliments so well in it. You’ve always been good at decorating. Are you sure you don’t want to be an interior designer? Good to see you doing something with the game though.
Hey Ange! I just installed Fast Lane Stuff myself — am kind of “meh” on it, and figured I probably would be, but when it comes to Sims EPs and SPs, I admit I’m a collector — gotta have ’em all! I have to say it’s fun to buy a Sim a racecar and see how fast he can drive from one of town to the other (the answer is: SUPER DUPER FAST). I am actually hoping the franchise is taking an upswing with Late Night — they’re going back to more open-ended gameplay instead of RPG stuff, but we’ll see how long that lasts. ;-) Thanks for your nice comments about my decorating. The funny thing is, I love doing it in the Sims, but I’m terrible at it in real life. Heh.
So you get a speed boost using the race car? Interesting …
As for the franchise having an upswing with Late Night … I guess we’ll see on that one.
Not good at it in real life? REALLY?? O__O
REALLY! Hehee. Well, it’s so much easier in the Sims. You can change wallpapers, flooring, furniture in the blink of an eye, and mess around with it until you hit upon something that looks good! In real life, you have to plan everything and spend oodles of money, and then when you put it together it can look like crap. Then it’s back to the old drawing board. :-p
And yeah, about cars — all of the cars in-game have different speeds. I noticed it when I was playing my detective — once he got his Yomoshoto Evasion, he was booking around town like nobody’s business. Much faster than the taxi! So basically the more expensive the car, the faster it is. So that §175,000 racecar from Fast Lane is INSANELY fast!
I’m having some similar attention span problems with the series. It feels like I’ve done all the careers and all the activities a million times. I can’t stand not to play with CC and mods, but then if I try to get past more than a few generations (something that could hold my attention because I’m fascinated by the idea of weaving together everyone into a crazy extended family tree), I have save errors and gameplay problems.
I’ll get Late Night, and that will fascinate me for a few months. Which, whatever, $40 for the number of hours I get out of it is still a better rate than a movie these days.
Excellent point. Even though EA likes to milk us like crazy, it’s still a good amount of entertainment for our dollars, that is, if you do play it for at least a few hours. And crazy extended family trees FTW! Stinks about the save errors, though. Grrr. They really didn’t design this to do what the fans wanted it to do, did they?