Posted in Notes on June 12, 2017| 5 Comments »
I had a major freakout over the weekend. I had sent Lucas and Baine off to university, since it was time to play the fall semester. Now back when I had sent Lucas the year before, both semesters went fine and he returned home without any problem.
But this semester was riddled with problems. I took some screenshots to show what was happening and to help anyone else who may be experiencing it.
Posted in Notes on February 7, 2017| Leave a Comment »
I finally updated my education notes for Sims 3 gameplay! I always like reading other people’s gameplay notes, so I wanted to mention it in case you like reading them too. 😀
Posted in Notes on October 14, 2014| 5 Comments »
It has been a long time since I posted on this blog–over two years! I did post on Tumblr for a while, but I haven’t played regularly in several months. Then my computer died and I didn’t reinstall the game until last weekend.
I’ve been playing again and enjoying my Sims a lot. I have missed them! I plan to start posting here again, though I don’t know how much of a “story” it will be. We’ll see as it goes.
I’m still in the process of setting all my families up in a new town and deciding what Sims I want to play with. I have favorites that I know I want to play with and others that I might pop into from time to time. I’m really trying not to set anything in stone though, I’ll just go as I feel like it.
One thing I want to tell you: If you use a custom Sims 3 world for your game, make sure that you save a backup of the original download file of that world along with your game backups! I was using AweSims’s Redcliffs world, which is no longer available to download on her site. I had copied over my backup of my save, but it still wouldn’t let me into that world because it said it was missing some expansion pack data. I had installed all of my EPs, so that didn’t really make sense to me until I figured out that it must be talking about the custom world. That was when I discovered that the file was no longer available to download. I started to panic, but further digging through some of my other files luckily turned up a copy of the original Redcliffs world file. Once I reinstalled the Redcliffs world, I was able to open my old game save and save copies of my families to the Sim bin. I’m using a different world and an entirely new save now though because one of the reasons I stopped playing so long ago was because my world because so full of errors and started lagging so much. I decided to try a smaller world this time, so I’m using Meadow Glen from My Sims Reality.
In addition to a new world, I’m also jumping ahead a little in time from where I was the last time I updated this blog. I did play through a bit of time while I was posting to Tumblr, so I had moved forward somewhat. At the moment, I’m at the year 2025, starting in the fall season. Some families have changed a little–George and Dorothy are married now, Madison and Bryant are married and have a daughter, Jason and Lilly have two kids. Others are still the same, only older–babies are now kids and kids are now teens, or some Sims may no longer be with us. I’ll do a bit of backstory on the posts to catch you up on where each family currently stands as I play them.
So far I’ve played Xander and Chelsea Gates’s family and I’m currently playing Lucas Craig at his first semester of college. I’ll start posting some updates from my playing soon. In the meantime, if you didn’t follow me on Tumblr before, you can head over there to see some pictures of what happened with my families since my last posting here.
Thanks for reading! 🙂
Posted in Notes on August 17, 2011| 8 Comments »
Be warned: this is a “how I play” post and not a story post and it’s kind of long. Feel free to ignore if you’re not interested. 🙂
I’ve been meaning to write about my switch from TS2 to TS3 in terms of gameplay and Mao recently asked some questions about it, so I thought now was as good a time as any. 😀 One thing that was important to me in making the switch between the games was that I wanted to play all of my households from TS2. I wanted to keep up the “prosperity style” gameplay in which I would switch from one household to another after a few days without too much happening with my families behind my back. Normally, with the open hood in TS3, this wouldn’t be possible or would be difficult to arrange (because EA story progression is terrible). Thankfully, we have Twallan and his mods to make this possible. Before Twallan, when I had first thought about the idea of switching, I had considered using one of the very long age spans for the hood because that would at least allow me to play through all the households without the others aging obviously, but these mods are the much better option.
The crucial Twallan mods to my gameplay are: StoryProgression, MasterController, Woohooer.
Posted in Notes on April 19, 2011| 17 Comments »
I just (as in within the last five minutes) discovered I had a Sim Secret to me posted a couple weeks ago. I never read that site unless someone specifically tells me to look at something, so I had no idea it was there until now.
Anyway, I did want to have a chance to voice a response to the secret explaining my reasons for switching to TS3.
Basically it comes down to this: My options right now are either to stop Simming and updating this blog entirely, or else switch to TS3.
My computer refuses to run TS2. I’ve reformatted, I’ve dumped all downloads, I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled, and yet every time I start up the game there is a continuous string of errors. I had hoped that reformatting would solve the problem, but it didn’t. I had planned to eventually–at some point in the unknown future–switch to TS3 by way of ending Pine Hollow and starting fresh with a new hood. I thought that might be a year or so from now. But when this problem happened I found that I wasn’t yet ready to give up Pine Hollow and the people I had come to know there. I knew I couldn’t just end the story with the unfinished round that I had managed to play before my computer started acting up. There was no satisfying ending with what I had and I didn’t want to leave the readers of the blog left hanging with an abrupt end.
So I decided to recreate my characters in the TS3 version to continue their stories. There will be some differences, yes, but I have tried my hardest to make the TS3 versions still feel like the same Sims you’ve gotten to know. I’m adapting TS3 to my play style and not the other way around. I hope that you all will continue to read the stories in the new version, but I can’t force anyone to and would not want you to keep reading if you don’t want to. Honestly, you don’t have to feel like you need to be anonymous to say that you won’t be following this blog to TS3. It’s not going to hurt my feelings. In my career I take criticism regularly and have grown a thick skin. 🙂
I know you guys have put up with a lot from me for disappearing during a rough time for my family and I appreciate each and every one of you that has read my blog (even those of you who lurk without commenting!). I’ve enjoyed my years as part of the Sim blogging community and have met a lot of great people through our Sims. In the end, I still see this as a gameplay blog and not a story blog because I let my Sims and the game decide the storylines (I’ve done Sim stories and they are way more work than I want to do regularly). The switch is a continuation of the gameplay and I’ve tried to make it less jarring to my readers by giving you plenty of notice that it’s coming and sneak peeks into the Sims and the new world. I hope you’ll continue reading, but if you don’t, I do want to say thanks for following along with me this far. My next household update (Zane and Belinda Smith’s house) will be the last Sims 2 post, and the first Sims 3 post should go up next week.
And I hope this doesn’t come across as an attack on the poster. It was not meant that way at all! I’m not angry or upset about the secret. I just felt like I should fully explain my reason for switching because I may not have made the issues and my thoughts clear before now. 🙂
Posted in Notes on April 12, 2011| 15 Comments »
I’ve finished getting the Sims 3 hood mostly set up to how I want to play. There are still more things for me to do, such as building a working police station, a restaurant for The Willow, furnishing and decorating everyone’s houses. I hate rabbit holes, so they’re all being replaced with working lots using the custom rabbit hole rugs. The hospital, school, and City Hall have already been replaced. But the others will come as I play and as they’re needed. My first family to play was Tucker & Cynthia’s house, so their apartment was first on the list to be decorated. Then the next household was the college group, so I had to set up my Arcadia University area within the hood.
Posted in Notes on April 7, 2011| 8 Comments »
I ended up installing Redcliffs last night and moved my Sims from the previous hood I had linked. I LOVE this world. It is beautifully laid out and landscaped and there are plenty of commercial and residential lots available. I’m doing some minor tweaking to suit what I want, but not as much as I would have done with the other world. So maybe this is the one I’ll keep! This is the fourth hood I’ve moved my Sims to since I started recreating them in Sims 3. I keep changing my mind about what I want to use, lol. (I’m also on my third different set of default skins because I keep changing my mind on those too.)
I did want to give a couple of sneak peeks, just some pictures I took while moving the families into their new homes.
Posted in Notes on March 29, 2011| 6 Comments »
I’m sorry about disappearing for the last few months! I think I got burned out and needed a break, then life went a little crazy. My husband’s mother passed away last month, work has been nothing but stress, and ever since the beginning of the year I’ve felt like I’ve been fighting to get things back under control so I can catch my breath.
After three months of not looking at my Sims at all, I have been back at work on building the Sims 3 version of Pine Hollow. Some of the Sims look more like their Sims 2 counterparts than others though. It’s hard to get some features just right! But most of the families are created now, just a few more left to do, then onto setting up the town and homes the way I want them.
I missed it during my break, but Pine Hollow’s third birthday was at the end of February!
I do still have a couple more updates from the Sims 2 version that need to go up, so I’ll try to work on those soon. Thanks for reading!
Posted in Notes, ros on August 3, 2010| 8 Comments »
This schedule is subject to change as I play because sometimes I change my mind about what order to play the households or something happens that causes a need for a storyline to be moved around. I’ll update this list if/when that happens and try to keep this up-to-date, and will add in mini-update as they occur.
Posted in Notes on July 7, 2010| 12 Comments »
After a lot of searching, I’ve been unable to find a career like what I really want for Audrey so I’m going to attempt to create my own. There is this psychology career that was recently added to MTS, but what I’m looking for is more of a focus on family and relationship therapy. More of a counseling psychology career. (Random thought: why is there a psychology major with the University EP, but no psychology career?)
But I wanted to get some input as to what you all think about these career levels I’ve come up with based on some research I’ve done online. I don’t have salaries or descriptions worked out yet, just the titles.
Maybe the last two levels should be switched? Any changes you would suggest?
Pine Hollow 