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genlisaeNo, I still do not have an update ready to go mostly because I am basically a chickenshit. No, really. I listen to the nagging voice in the back of my head that keeps telling me what I have sucks and won't make any sense because I "can't do this without the pictures there to tell half the story" and get really, really depressed about writing in general.
Which is just stupid. I know this and eventually I will get really, really pissed off instead and tell the voice to sit the hell down, shut up and leave me alone. That stage doesn't usually take long to get to. I just have to get to it. Everything that comes before I get there? Yeah, that is why I will never write for anything other than fun (I am having fun, I swear!) because if I had to go through this with the added pressure of deadlines and editors and all that other stuff? Just ugh, no. My personal standards are enough thanks.
So, what have I been doing instead of writing? Well ...
If all I had to do was sit down and write out the detailed history of the world my sims live in I would have been done ages ago. It would have been hugely long and rivaled most encyclopedia collections in size, but it would have been completed in. nearly literally, no time. Of course it would have been dry as concentrated toast powder, but I could tell you all about it. I can tell you how humanoid life started on their world ...
<--- might have had something to do with it. I know it takes exactly 360 days for their world to orbit the small sun which is the center of a 5 planet solar system (they live on rock #2). I could even give you the local lore and legend about who settled where, when and why (most of it is even Maxis compliant!) and tell you what exactly makes Strangetown so strange .. aside from the residents of course.
You know what I couldn't have told you? Anything to do with the geography of the area in general. I had a vague idea of how all the 'hoods connected to each other, but it was really vague and lead to more than a bit of confusion on my part tyring to work out how far away things were and if it was plausible for things like Ripp walking home from Bluewater Village to actually happen. I tried sketching a map once, it didn't work well. Things never seemed to fit where I thought they should while looking at various pics of the hood layouts. Not really a big deal, I know, but it kind of bothers me sometimes.
Apparently one of those times it bothered me was while I was looking into options for an uberhood containing the least amount of characters possible since I am pretty sure at least part of the issues I am having with my game is the sheer number of character files. Dead sims, NPCs, Townies, downtownies, dormies, roomates, pets, vacation locals, travelers, premade playables and then throw in several hundred custom playables as well. I am getting dizzy just thinking about it. My game can't have been doing much better. So I was looking to at least get rid of the townies when suddenly it occurred to me that maybe the dead sims don't have to be there either. Ghosts have always been more annoying than anything for me, especially the ghosts of characters I never played and only appear 3 branches back on the family tree of a premade I don't really play anyway. And what about those premades I don't really play, do I really need them (and their ancestors) adding more junk? Sure, there are cleaner, less buggy versions of uberhoods available now, put together in less hacky ways but even the base game premade hoods never seem to run as smoothly as a custom hood with all custom sims, so why am I not making my own hood and adding the sims I need as I need them?
This (after a few conversations with others who thought that was probably the best way to go, knowing I have a bad habit of randomly creating sims I will only ever play for an hour or two and will then become background filler at some point in the future) led me to trying to work out what my new hood would look like and which terrains I would use. None of them were exactly right. Pleasantview is a given (the real version, not the one which is not actually pleasantview EAxis shipped with the game) but in my image of it is a suburb while the layout lends itself to a small town feel at most. The others all have really large blocks which is hard to give anything other than a sparsely populated feel to when you don't ever use anything larger than a 3x4 lot for residential areas and really, not even on community lots is there usually much call for the larger lot sizes. That tends to leave a lot of space which can't be filled. I would like to fill that space when I can.
That was when I started opening up the SC4's for all the premade 'hoods in SC4 and seeing what I could do with the roads. Leaving them still feeling like the hood they started as, but with a much more smaller lot friendly infrastructure. When I got to Belladona cove (which didn't really need much done to it) I realized it felt to me like it would be right next to Bluewater Village. Like Bluewater Village was what made it a cove and not just Belladona Beach. Next thing I know I am dropping all (I do mean all!) of the premade hoods into a new region in SC4 and:
Click for fullsize
I finally have my map (*note "Terrain Test 4" is Riverblossom Hills as named by Maxis and I have not renamed it yet).
Only in TS2 it would look more like:
or, without the (now backward) labels:
Most of the premade hoods are exactly as they originally were still. A couple of them had cosmetic changes around the edges (slightly altered shorlines/mountains) but they are still completely recognizable as the 'hood they always have been, only I have a terrible suspicion I flipped downtown around all wrong (which I am not really worried about. I don't plan to use the default downtown, so this version will work just as well). I still need to go in and make the road changes and tweak a few of the interconnecting areas (my daughter really wants to play this SC4 region when I have it done, so I want to make sure all of the landscape works for her), and I am undecided on if I am going to recreate the uni 'hoods here as well. I might just leave them out and chalk it up to "going away to college". Really, really away. Then I just need to drop them in TS2 and get building, this time with fresh sims and only a few custom townies (if any, I haven't decided for sure on that yet). Not all of these terrains will be put in TS2, just the needed ones. This was just done so I have a clear image of the entire region.
I plan to update a few looks (even from their appearances in Pleasantries) when I recreate the sims I need. Most of the premades will eventually be recreated and moved into their houses, though a few of them will be getting all new/completely made over houses. I figure if I am going to this extent, I might as well save the poor sims from having to live in the really fail houses while I am at it.
The only bad thing (for my attention span at least) is some of the interconnecting hoods created in SC4 to fill gaps and connect up roads are trying to worm their way into my head and tell me stories when I know if I was to add all of them as hoods in TS2 I would end up with more character file bloat than ever! :( I already know one or two of them will sneak their way in, they are just too interesting to leave out.
So there you have it. The total extent of the progress I have made toward the rebuild of my game. Very little of it was actually useful ... well, except that maybe, given all of the rambling I just did about a simple map, anyone who is still reading at this point will probably steer well clear of any of that world history I was talking about earlier because it will most likely be way less interesting than this post was!
Which is just stupid. I know this and eventually I will get really, really pissed off instead and tell the voice to sit the hell down, shut up and leave me alone. That stage doesn't usually take long to get to. I just have to get to it. Everything that comes before I get there? Yeah, that is why I will never write for anything other than fun (I am having fun, I swear!) because if I had to go through this with the added pressure of deadlines and editors and all that other stuff? Just ugh, no. My personal standards are enough thanks.
So, what have I been doing instead of writing? Well ...
If all I had to do was sit down and write out the detailed history of the world my sims live in I would have been done ages ago. It would have been hugely long and rivaled most encyclopedia collections in size, but it would have been completed in. nearly literally, no time. Of course it would have been dry as concentrated toast powder, but I could tell you all about it. I can tell you how humanoid life started on their world ...
You know what I couldn't have told you? Anything to do with the geography of the area in general. I had a vague idea of how all the 'hoods connected to each other, but it was really vague and lead to more than a bit of confusion on my part tyring to work out how far away things were and if it was plausible for things like Ripp walking home from Bluewater Village to actually happen. I tried sketching a map once, it didn't work well. Things never seemed to fit where I thought they should while looking at various pics of the hood layouts. Not really a big deal, I know, but it kind of bothers me sometimes.
Apparently one of those times it bothered me was while I was looking into options for an uberhood containing the least amount of characters possible since I am pretty sure at least part of the issues I am having with my game is the sheer number of character files. Dead sims, NPCs, Townies, downtownies, dormies, roomates, pets, vacation locals, travelers, premade playables and then throw in several hundred custom playables as well. I am getting dizzy just thinking about it. My game can't have been doing much better. So I was looking to at least get rid of the townies when suddenly it occurred to me that maybe the dead sims don't have to be there either. Ghosts have always been more annoying than anything for me, especially the ghosts of characters I never played and only appear 3 branches back on the family tree of a premade I don't really play anyway. And what about those premades I don't really play, do I really need them (and their ancestors) adding more junk? Sure, there are cleaner, less buggy versions of uberhoods available now, put together in less hacky ways but even the base game premade hoods never seem to run as smoothly as a custom hood with all custom sims, so why am I not making my own hood and adding the sims I need as I need them?
This (after a few conversations with others who thought that was probably the best way to go, knowing I have a bad habit of randomly creating sims I will only ever play for an hour or two and will then become background filler at some point in the future) led me to trying to work out what my new hood would look like and which terrains I would use. None of them were exactly right. Pleasantview is a given (the real version, not the one which is not actually pleasantview EAxis shipped with the game) but in my image of it is a suburb while the layout lends itself to a small town feel at most. The others all have really large blocks which is hard to give anything other than a sparsely populated feel to when you don't ever use anything larger than a 3x4 lot for residential areas and really, not even on community lots is there usually much call for the larger lot sizes. That tends to leave a lot of space which can't be filled. I would like to fill that space when I can.
That was when I started opening up the SC4's for all the premade 'hoods in SC4 and seeing what I could do with the roads. Leaving them still feeling like the hood they started as, but with a much more smaller lot friendly infrastructure. When I got to Belladona cove (which didn't really need much done to it) I realized it felt to me like it would be right next to Bluewater Village. Like Bluewater Village was what made it a cove and not just Belladona Beach. Next thing I know I am dropping all (I do mean all!) of the premade hoods into a new region in SC4 and:
Click for fullsize
I finally have my map (*note "Terrain Test 4" is Riverblossom Hills as named by Maxis and I have not renamed it yet).
Only in TS2 it would look more like:
or, without the (now backward) labels:
Most of the premade hoods are exactly as they originally were still. A couple of them had cosmetic changes around the edges (slightly altered shorlines/mountains) but they are still completely recognizable as the 'hood they always have been, only I have a terrible suspicion I flipped downtown around all wrong (which I am not really worried about. I don't plan to use the default downtown, so this version will work just as well). I still need to go in and make the road changes and tweak a few of the interconnecting areas (my daughter really wants to play this SC4 region when I have it done, so I want to make sure all of the landscape works for her), and I am undecided on if I am going to recreate the uni 'hoods here as well. I might just leave them out and chalk it up to "going away to college". Really, really away. Then I just need to drop them in TS2 and get building, this time with fresh sims and only a few custom townies (if any, I haven't decided for sure on that yet). Not all of these terrains will be put in TS2, just the needed ones. This was just done so I have a clear image of the entire region.
I plan to update a few looks (even from their appearances in Pleasantries) when I recreate the sims I need. Most of the premades will eventually be recreated and moved into their houses, though a few of them will be getting all new/completely made over houses. I figure if I am going to this extent, I might as well save the poor sims from having to live in the really fail houses while I am at it.
The only bad thing (for my attention span at least) is some of the interconnecting hoods created in SC4 to fill gaps and connect up roads are trying to worm their way into my head and tell me stories when I know if I was to add all of them as hoods in TS2 I would end up with more character file bloat than ever! :( I already know one or two of them will sneak their way in, they are just too interesting to leave out.
So there you have it. The total extent of the progress I have made toward the rebuild of my game. Very little of it was actually useful ... well, except that maybe, given all of the rambling I just did about a simple map, anyone who is still reading at this point will probably steer well clear of any of that world history I was talking about earlier because it will most likely be way less interesting than this post was!
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no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 12:43 pm (UTC)And just a small little voice back here saying "you can write this without pictures; it will be awesome!"
no subject
Date: 2012-04-19 10:07 pm (UTC)Oh wow, I am a total history dork. Seriously, even though I hated history all through school. It wasn't until later, out of school that I found the real history, the little things you don't find in the usual books and such. I volunteered in our local archives for a while and I loved ever second of it. I spent weeks pouring through the files in the back which had no real significance to anything, so they had just been dumped in the cabinets undocumented. Personal communications between the government officials from the early 1900s, it is fascinating to learn what the real catalysts were for various bylaws or just exactly why one city donated a complete set of street lamps to another (the mayor's 16 year old daughter was involved in that one!). The journal's kept by coal miners and the old woman who ran a local farm and supplied the mines with eggs and milk. Even the menu and guest list for the area's first hotel (when they wanted to draw in the traffic from the 25 or so automobiles that passed by each year on the brand new, 2 "real" lane Island Highway!)
Then there was the one year where all the marriage certificates issued at one church were very ... *ehem* specific and no one noticed because the (very disgruntled for an assortment of reasons) young man responsible for keeping the official records had terrible hand writing and no one ever read them anyway.
There were sad tales as well buried in all of these papers (and plastic greeting cards! Plastic!). Letters asking after friends, family, or in the case of one young woman from England, several letters spanning years looking for word of what became of her husband after he arrived in Canada.
This is the kind of history that should be included in text books. So many times I hear "But history is so boring!" It is sad that most view history as nothing more than a collection of names and dates. It isn't. There are people behind those names and events that lead up to those dates, I think more people need to know that side history, the people and the stories their lives told.
... Right, coming back off the tangent ... One day I may write down the history of my sims world (you know, for the all 4 of us that might enjoy it! lol), First though is getting the next update out, 'cause, yeah, that really needs to happen if for no other reason than so I can stick out my tongue at the little voice and go "Ptttttttttth! Told ya I could do it!"
no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 03:04 pm (UTC)I had started a thing like that (only all new) for my "special neighborhood" but I wasn't happy with my results so far and I ended up just using Belladonna Cove with a desert terrain (no subhoods yet, I have begun againagain).
edity: add my voice to the ones saying "go ahead, write with or without pictures, or with a tiny few of them, or whatever. It wil work."
no subject
Date: 2012-04-19 10:24 pm (UTC)"It will be written!" has become something of a mantra for me the last week or so.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-17 06:08 pm (UTC)Push forward woman! Just go forward...and stop overthinking (if you can help it XD) about stuff that really shouldn't matter in the way that it does to you.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-19 10:27 pm (UTC)The style change is certainly not helping right now. It is kind of leading to things being rewritten three or four times actually as I realize I have included only dialogue, rewrite to include detail and then it ends up OVER detailed ... yeah, the style change is not helping.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-19 10:30 pm (UTC)Even w/o photos, I end up re-writing stuff I've written - mostly because I realize I must've been writing late at night and it later looks like a damned drunk must've written it it's so awful :p
You sound like what my high school teachers would tell me about my papers LOL!
no subject
Date: 2012-05-12 07:26 am (UTC)Don't suppose you'd be willing to share that region at any point?
no subject
Date: 2012-05-12 10:31 am (UTC)I can definitely share the region. I have added roads to a few of the hood (pleasantveiw, strange town, veronawille) since I took these pictures but I believe I have a backup of the region before I altered the roads. Which would you prefer?
no subject
Date: 2012-05-12 10:54 pm (UTC)Either's good for me! You are going to be updating us with more pics as you go, right? :3c