postcards from grad school

September, October 2088. Justin Nova is 28, Calvin Banks is 21, Amy Jones is 22, Natalia Deppiesse is 23, Andre Sylvester is 23. Cynthia Kim is 52. Selena Sosa is 25. April Hutchins is 25, Beau Jackson is 24.

#1: welcome to grad school

Grad school is happening at Magnolia Graduate College. 

Leading our group is Dr. Heather Thompson, Dean of Students. She specializes in biology. (Hi, Ingrid’s mom!)

Our students this year: 

Andre, Calvin, and Steven are all working on their medical degrees. 

The others are non-medical graduate programs. Justin (architecture), Amy (nursing), and Natty, (teaching).

end of round summary: 2086-2088

How about the 2-year round that took 6.5 real life years to write!? 

(photo gallery best viewed on web version — click for bigger)

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

     

Too many sims with too many beefy stories. 

Also, so much going on in my family and life, including that I had a whole new baby that has since grown into a whole giant preschooler. 

Also, Covid happened. 

The whole world literally changed during the writing of round 2086, lol! 

movie premiere: Final Fantasy XV Comrades

notes: There was a mention of Summer doing a fan event for her movie in a recent story post, so I wanted to take a quick minute to talk about her movie. This is a thing I'd like to do for my actor sims, whenever any of them are lucky enough to snag a role. 

I have always enjoyed giving my actor and writer sims "real" projects for their stories. Like Violet Deppiesse's sci-fi novel series having real titles and even plot summaries. Or describing what kind of short stories Aurora Harris used to write. Or that Nathan Lind once wrote a flop of a pulp legal thriller. Or knowing exactly what kind of soap opera Bella Bradshaw (stage name Isabelle Gibson) used to act in. My sims are never allowed to just make up filler titles and descriptions for their work. I suppose, as a writer in real life, I'd be annoyed that they got to fake it so easily, lol!

Summer was lucky enough to be picked  for this project before acting was even a thing in TS4. I needed a character to be my avatar in FFXV Comrades, and she fit the bill! The story goes that she was drumming with her awful band one night and a producer saw her banging on things and thought, hey, she'd look really great with a sword. So he asked her to audition. The film was meant to be a minor B movie spin-off in a niche franchise, so it was no big deal that she was a complete unknown to the acting world. She had the right look, so she landed the part. As these things sometimes go.  

Now that we have a real acting career in TS4, I've decided that my sims can enter it in two ways. (Because it would be no fun for me if every sim who ever caught a whim to be an actor could just become one, barring all skill, talent, and luck.)

1.) I might pick them, the way I picked Summer, hand out of the sky, to exist in some other non-TS4 game. I will imagine them to be actors in a movie based on that game, and I'll make up a little "movie" with the screenshots. Then in TS4 gameplay, I'll assign them a certain number of gigs in a corresponding genre that they're allowed to perform for money. 

2.) Otherwise, they'll have to wait for a role provided by a TS4 sim movie producer. I have a couple of aspiring directors among my sims. Whenever one of them is ready to produce a film, TV show, or commercial, they will audition hopeful actors and pick their favorites for the roles. That sim producer will assign how many gigs and what kind of scenes they can perform for their pay. As they work, I may take a few screenshots to make up a little "movie" and blurb to show off their project. 

Like this: 

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postcards from the new management

March 2087.


It should be noted that around the time the fires started, midnight, long after the cafe had closed, Ian Thompson was spotted eating a bowl of Fruit Loops at the counter. He claims to have had nothing to do with the fires, but nobody else could be placed at the scene of the crime accident at that time. The owner has graciously decided not to press charges.

elections 2086

A quickie history on TS4 world building: 

In America of my imagined future, there are six districts. We are following three of them in this story—Mid-Atlantic (states bordering the Atlantic from about DC to South Carolina), Lakes (states bordering the Great Lakes, particularly Lake Superior and Lake Michigan), and Pacific (states bordering the Pacific, as you might guess). The districts we are not following are New England, Gulf, and Mountain. (You can sort of see on my map how my played towns are clustered in the south-west, north, and south-east.)

I set it up this way because of, in part, the way TS4 is designed with towns that are pre-designed and not editable. If they ship me a world that looks like South Carolina or Arizona, there is very little I can do to change that. So they are what they look like, and that's that. That was the main reason that my story was written at first between two regions—Fort Palmetto and Sierra Nova—working from the first two towns we had, Willow Creek and Oasis Springs. Then they shipped me Windenburg that looked like Europe and I had no freaking idea how to fit it into my story. I ended up knocking down some mountains and opening up the water, and now it's become Copper County, my third region. As best it can be without world editing tools, anyway.

TS4 is still being developed and they're still making new worlds for us. That's great, because we desperately need the space! But it means that my game is still constantly changing, so new areas come along all the time that I need to figure out what to do with. I have decided that three districts is well enough for me to keep track of (since each district needs its own schools, communities, leadership, and economy), while having some variety and space for my towns. The three areas that I chose are differentiated enough in climate and landscape that I think I should be able to find a good fit within for whatever kind of world they give us next. (The world from the new Pets EP will fit nicely in Wisconsin for me!)

We will imagine the other US states of 2086 are doing just fine and carrying on off-camera. Just, none of my sims will ever be allowed to move to Florida or Colorado or Maine, lol!

Anyway.

Dresden College: fall 2086

October 2086. Josie Booth is 19, Ariel Beech is 18, Drake Cannon is 18. 


It's not exactly that I *want* to play more than one university. To be quite honest, it is kind of a chore, lol! But I find it unrealistic to have only one choice for higher learning for my sims.

So, to broaden their options, I would like to introduce Dresden Arts College, located in Old Town Ironwood. (Exterior of this building came with Windenburg, but I gutted it and redid the interior completely.)

Dresden Arts College is a small, quaint, quiet, and very specialized arts college. They get the same 3 sim-days of gameplay per quarter as SNU students, and they have excellent arts professors here. Tuition is a little cheaper at $900/quarter instead of $1200 at SNU because SNU still has the advantage of a large campus and a full range of majors, facilities, and opportunities. Admissions at Dresden are usually strict since it only accepts a maximum of 8 students rather than SNU’s 12, and it favors students who want to pursue arts, music, and humanities. Other students can study here if they are accepted, but it wouldn't make a lot of sense for them.

population explosion: notes on residence in my TS4 world

I have a love/hate relationships with sim townies. For as long as I have played sims games, I have had this same dilemma: who gets to be part of my neighborhood, to have their stories lived and documented, and who has to stay in the background? In a perfect world, I would be able to use all of my own sims in every available role and assign them where I want them to go, and I would have the tools to make enough space for them all to live in. But y'all know these games are not perfect.

Yet I have always fallen in love with my townie sims, the friends and ex-lovers of my born-in-game sims. Some of my very favorite sims started out as townies once. Every time someone gets dumped, I always feel so bad for them and want to follow their lives to happiness. You have to have a townie pool, but you can't play them all. It just goes on and on and on. Ex-lovers need new lovers and friends and family. I always feel like my townies need to have a family of their own. Only so many marry-in townies can be orphans before you get bored of writing the orphan story, lol!

Fall Festival at Coolidge House Country Inn

October 2086. 


Here is where the girls went while the boys were left home alone. Sharon asked Stephanie and Maria to bring their kids into work today—they have a very important job to do. They need to brainstorm ideas for the fall festival. Sharon doesn't have any kids of her own, so she needs to borrow her employees' children for this task.

gameplay notes on: lot decay, ghosts, and jail

on lot deterioration:

I guess all of these things in my monthly events posts—birthdays, anniversaries, health strikes, and home deterioration—fit a similar theme of aging. Which leads me to a new roll. For not having any ROS in my gameplay (as I so boldly proclaimed), I sure do have a lot of new ROS in my gameplay, lol!


I’m excited about adding the lot damage roll, which will happen every month along with the health strikes. I realized how unrealistic it is that our sims pass down these houses from generation to generation and they never age like the sims do. Also because we just got all of those neat decals with the vampires pack and lot traits and problems with the City Living pack. I want to have more of an excuse to be forced to use them!

In September, Tessa Morton was chosen for the first lot deterioration roll, which was to kill off three of her garden plants. Good thing she has so many!

an author's note on timelines and in betweens

So, that was just the NaNoWriMo that lasted seventeen months!

gameplay notes on injury damage

notes for inflicting gameplay upon story characters: 

This is sort of like the reverse of writing a story based on gameplay—here, I want to inflict gameplay upon my sims for something that happened in the story. Because otherwise, you know they'd walk around all smiley and happy and sim-like, even though something terrible just happened. TS4 sims don't have memories like TS2 sims do, so once their bad moodlets wear off, they completely forget that anything bad ever happened to them. No matter what it was.

And the moodlets are ridiculously short, most of the time. This brand new mod looks promising to help them last a little bit longer.

In game, the fight moodlet only lasts four hours, so that was kind of useless to me. I did let Justin and Jeremiah actually brawl in game, and yes, Justin loses every time against Jeremiah, lol! It must have to do with either their traits (Jeremiah's are much meaner) or their muscle strength (Jeremiah is stronger), because I think they're about matched on their fitness skill.

Anyway, this was more than just a little brawl, so I'll use several mods and cheats to inflict some lingering physical and psychological damages for these sims. (I am a cruel, cruel pixel-god, lol!)

download: Sierra Nova University, Dorms & Campus

These lots are probably among the least interesting things I've ever built since they are just a remodel of the lots that were already there. But anyway, somebody asked for them, so here they are!

Sorry, nighttime pics because I need my game to stay in nighttime for a scene I need to do.

In my game, they live in this neighborhood in Oasis Springs. 

The campus lot is 50x50, $296,309, zoned as a library. 

The dorm lot is 40x30, $180,015, zoned residential. 

gameplay notes: traits and aspirations

With the addition of toddlers in TS4, I have had gameplay on the brain. Before I launch into the next big chunk of stories, I thought I'd finally put this one up.

Traits:

I’m doing traits my own way (like I do everything else my own way, lol!). First of all, 3 core traits is just not enough for me. Five wasn't enough in TS3, so three would bore me to tears! And additionally, limiting my sims to just core traits is not enough either, especially when the game is full of so many really interesting and useful traits!

And I use [this mod] to enable debug cheats so that I may choose any trait in the game. I use [this mod] to allow my sims more than 3 core traits. The game already allows sims to have as may reward or bonus traits as they want.

Traits can only be chosen on the sim’s following birthdays. By the time they reach young adulthood, they will have grown into 6 traits, and they can have up to 10 by the time they reach their elder years.

false alarms

July 2086. Stephanie Nova and Justin Kim are 26.


Stephanie felt like she had been pregnant literally forever. While she would have loved for this pregnancy to be over and to meet her little bub, she was only thirty-five weeks along and it wasn't quite time yet. Soon it would be time, but not yet.

family day at the Copper Island Mines Historic Site

July 2086. Stephanie Nova and Justin Kim are 26. Willow and Lily are 4.

Lot tour of the Copper Island Mines, and assorted random picspam of their family day out on the island.



The Copper Island Historic Mines are located on Copper Island, just a short ferry ride from Copper Hill. This site is managed by the Great Lakes Historical Preservation Society, and after many months of work and rehabilitation, it is now reopened for the 2086 tourist season.

wedding prep picspam and chatter

June 2086. 


"Look, my sweetie is here," Stephanie mused. Stephanie never thought that work could be so much fun until Sharon's usual fix-it guy couldn't make it in for a Supper Club event, so Sharon asked Stephanie to see if Justin could stop by. Every time Stephanie turned around, there he was, her sweetheart, with his talented hands making broken things work again. She felt fluttery and charmed, but also distracted. She missed the tomatoes and spilled olive oil on the floor.

on randomizing genetics

Hi Anon, sure thing!

Lots of simmers I know use internet dice rolling to randomize stats, but still, after all these years, I prefer a program someone made for TS2. Hook's RandomStuff Roller. I hope those files are still available for download, now and always. There's a very little bit of a learning curve to using it, but after an hour or two I found myself writing up ROS scenarios and randomizing EVERYTHING. It's so much fun, lol!

So when a sim is born in my town, I give them two rolls. The first is my aging file and the second is inherited genetics.

hi ho, hi ho: Steffie's first day working at Coolidge House

February 2086. 


Off to work she goes.

In game, Stephanie is working in the part-time manual labor career. That career actually pays a TON of money. Like nearly $50-something an hour at entry level which is much higher than most of the adult entry-level careers, so I'm rather restrictive about who can enter that career. But Stephanie's quarterly wages will be deducted from Sharon's business account, and she did say that she paid well! Mostly I liked the hours, weekend mornings, so that Justin can stay home with the girls.

who gets the cabin?

* even though this story is from a novel, these characters are also sims that will continue to live in my neighborhood when I’m done with this part of the story. Then they'll be allowed to just be sims. So I wanted to draw up actual paperwork for Stephanie and Jeremiah, even if it's just for my own record-keeping to use in the future.

** at the bottom of these divorce documents (previous divorces and future ones, of which I think Bruce and Pamela were the only ones I had so far on this blog) I've added a section of notes and amendments as they go back and forth with their lawyers. I won't be writing a story update for every single little squabble in the divorce proceedings, but I'll note what things are happening "off-camera" as they happen in case anyone is interested and for my own notes.

*** also note, in case anyone was doing the math: I'm calling Willow aged 4 years old for the story because I feel like her character is 4-5 years old maturity wise and it suits the story I wrote. Although, as a sim in my gameplay world and according to the dates, she won't be 4 for nearly eight more months. That's totally a minor detail in a game where we don't even have freaking toddlers, lol! But, in real life, there can be a world of difference in a child's maturity between the ages of 3 and 5, and so it matters to me in the writing.

And so, the divorce papers...

then comes divorce... gameplay notes on marriage and divorce in TS4

We will call this a part two to my previous "first comes love... gameplay notes on love and marriage in TS4." Next comes divorce for an average 28% of my couples, who still happily reap a better chance of marital success than most real life couples do. Even so, I think I still let my couples throw in the towel much more frequently than most simmers do. What can I say? Relationship strife interests me? lol!

In TS4 in just a year of gameplay so far, I have had four married couples come to the brink of disaster, three of which are almost certainly going to make it through to their divorces. Bruce and Pamela, Keri and Justin, Stephanie and Jeremiah—I'm calling Bella and Cameron my fourth couple, even though they've decided to give counseling a try and not call it quits just yet, because they've given me enough chaos and fodder to be part of this study.