Journaling our sims

[joandsarah]

Yikes! That isn't much., I have 4GB and now I'm looking to upgrade to 8 to see if that will allow Sims 3 to play.
Can't wait to see it Amy, I love it when I can finally get to those scenes that got planned out so long ago as they are always the best ones. ;D
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A post on MTS has made me add something new to my Apple valley Hood. Sims motivation. Katya Stevens posted about how she has sims with low, average and high motivation so I took a look over her LJ and really liked the idea. I've made my own rules up for it and changed the scoring a little.
Her journal ideas eien-herrison.livejournal.com/209637.html

I've set it so it only deals with skilling and jobs and much simpler rules. I made it so average sims start at one point higher and fortune and knowledge sims have slightly more asked of them. But basically put down a sims active score and minus it with their serious points.
So for example if Sims A has 7 active points and 2 serious their score would be 5, making them highly motivated. Sim B with 4 active points and 3 playful points would score at 1 and be average, while Sims C with 3 active and 7 playful would score -4 and be of low motivation.

I'm sure I will come up with more rules but the highly motivated sim can be told to skill in any way you like and they should be set as smart on the bat box. These are your genius sims, hopefully the ones who will become to towns Doctors and scientists.
Average Sims can only be told to skill if they roll a want to. Any smart milk aeffect needs to be taken away on the batbox, because they are only average not brilliant. A fun skilling item is always preferd over a boring one.
Low motivated sims cannot be told to skill at all unless they have had the want unlocked for at least 3 days straight. Otherwise skilling is a free will decision. (best to have an easel or something they would want to use available)
They can only take unskilled jobs or maxis jobs up to level 3. They cannot go to uni unless their parents can foot the whole bill.

I've also added that orphaned teens can not try for private school unless they are highly motivated. I played the Newson clan and got them all into private school due to the youngest Georgie who is highly motivated. She did 8 greets, gave a tour of their flat and got in!

[amylu1988]

Ha, the vast majority of my Psychs would be highly motivated, they almost all have 8 or 9 active and 1 or 2 serious, the serious points are still there from Freud! That's an interesting concept though, another thing to add to the list for my eventual new 'hood next year. Good idea with the extra rules for fortune and knowledge, too.

I've written a lot more today, over half of the chapter is written now and all but 12 slides have pictures. But I've not been able to shoot anything as my anti-virus updated and decided to scan everything; I usually turn it off when I play sims, but it wouldn't let me while it was scanning. *sigh*

[joandsarah]

Can't wait to read your update Amy. ;D

Ugg anti-virus's can be such a pain! You know I have to turn mine off or I have terrible things happen to my game.

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Jumped over to the Doctors house and while she isn't highly motivated I will continue to play her as if she is. Guess I could fire up simpe and change her, but I'm too lazy to bother. I need her to reach the top and have enough money to buy the hospital. I made her in CAS and I'm wondering why I didn't make her knowledge and more serious. *head scratch* I'll play the rest to their motivation which is average except for the youngest who somehow is a genius. A very shy, tidy and serious little girl. All three kids have the science hobby as well.
I downloaded a get well potion of plumbobkeep and added it to their home based surgery clinic. It will cure any sim who has a cold or flu. They also sell elixcer set at $30,000 but so far only one townie has bought any. Her husband Troy (past AL blond townie) just learned how to dazzle and that's what sold it, so he just needs to dazzle another 100,000 out of townies to reach the amount needed for that hospital...

[amylu1988]

Some sims will probably be exceptions, maybe the motivation could be changed if they're working well on a hard career path? But yeah, science sims are a very common occurance in my game. I think about half of the youngest generation are all science, and only one of those is in Penny's line!

I do that in CAS too, I either plan it all out, or I just pick stuff at random and then look at the sim later and think 'why on earth did I give them that aspiration?'

Good idea for the doctors to have the potions, the get well potion sounds really useful.

Really hoping to get some more of chapter 28 done tonight, I realised I need another two shots of Penny actually talking, she's doing too much listening for Penny at the moment. Then the final scene to shoot and now something like 35 slides to write, which are all planned in note form, so it shouldn't take me too long.

I really want to have some teens around for my usual Halloween picture, and Hypothesis' 4th birthday in early November. Fingers crossed I can get chapter 29 shot in a couple of weeks once 28 is done (it's a very easy chapter, for me) and then I'll have at least 4 teens to work with.

Nervous about what aspirations they'll all roll though, I've been very close to pre-rolling a couple of times, but I think I have most of them written so they can suit any of the aspirations. It's LTWs I struggle to write in.

[joandsarah]

You're on the last generation though aren't you? In which case you won't have to write in their LTW as the story would be done. Unless you wanted to keep going and call it a legacy.

[amylu1988]

It's just kind of writing it in until they get to adult, they won't have to achieve them but I like to keep their characters as true to the game as I can, unless the game gives me something silly like it did for a couple of them last generation. I find it easier to stick with as much of the game content as possible when they're teens, to get their personalities right.

Well I've done the most boring part of the chapter this evening, editing Penny's hair back onto the pictures. It's disappeared through her collars and shoulders at every lifestage, I can almost hand draw (with the mouse) her hair back on now.

[joandsarah]

Some hair (Rosa's) is so annoying like that. I have one picture last chapter where she has her head turned and I couldn't really do too much about it as I had to have the angle looking at Adri eating birthday cake and I tried to touch it up by hand but the more I did the worse it looked so I left it at just a small touch up. Bet nobody but me notices anyway!

What are you going to do with the hood once the OWBC is done?

[amylu1988]

I always think the same thing, my image editing is usually editing out skilling bars or adding in hair, which I'm glad if no-one notices. I'm particularly pleased with a shot in chapter 28 where I edited Tommy's whole hand back in though.

I'll be leaving this neighbourhood as a backup on my hard drive. It's starting to show signs of breaking, so I'll play Hypothesis to the end, hope to extract the sims I want, then leave it and not play it again. Once I'm done, my plan is to either buy a new computer, if we have enough money, or reboot my laptop, really clean it out, and start a new game with a single custom neighbourhood. I'm looking forward to it. ;D

[joandsarah]

Thinking of trying a self sustaining type hood? Or is it a secret?

My download folder is at the point of exploding I should think. I've gone on a downloading rampage from being in this MTS makeover contest. When you're up against people like Phaenoh and HugeLunatic it makes you more aware, twitchy whatever you want to call it-or it does for me.

I've downloaded the compresorizer and I'm going to do all those I know are not compressed. I'm not really sure about using it on already compressed things as I've heard people say it's fine and others say it's bad. I made a new smaller farm to test out a new harvest plant set. Started going through wall papers to try and toss some and discovered my bathroom in the contest had TSR paper. I don't know if it's free or not so I quickly edited it now. MTS has such strict rules. So that's about all i did today. I'll have to start cleaning, ironing and packing for a short 4 night holiday we are having starting on Wednesday. I'll have dh lap top and my base game Sims with me. I was planning on adding Nightlife and ACR just to have something different on it but Dh said he doesn't want any downloading on it or any EP's. <_<

[amylu1988]

I'll be doing a BACC, but I'm keeping an Excel spreadsheet filled with ideas about it at the moment, it will most likely be self-sustaining though. It's all still about 9 or 10 Hypothesis chapters away, so it'll be a fair while yet.

I'd heard mixed things about compressorising too, is it just the compressoriser that does it? I got confused when uploading my CC and thought putting it in a zip file would be enough, but probably not... There's so much to learn about creating.

Yeah, I'm the same, in Good Genes at GoS I always make sure the preview shots and clothes are exactly as I want them, because everyone on there is so good. I'll have to go and have another look at the MTS competition, I bet it's moved along a lot since I last looked, sorry about that.

Hope the holiday is nice for you, boo to only base game, Nightlife doesn't take all that much room up. ;D

[joandsarah]

Sounds good. ;D That's how my Apple valley started.

Yeah it's just the compresorizer. You double click to open it, add a folder with extracted files, press go and it does it's thing. The things I got off the Booty last night said it saved 2MG. I figure places like the Booty and older sites would not have compressed files.

We are waiting on the score for round one and I've submitted my makeover for round two. One of the judges got a toothache which is why the score isn't up, but I've found another TSR item *slaps self* so I'm glad, as now I can go change it. I probably won’t do a cc garden on our makeover now as this is taking up all my time and I don't feel like making over the Pleasant’s garden again. I think we are just waiting on the last person to post. I'll get the poll up on Sunday.

Maybe I'll pack Nightlife and ask while we are there.

[amylu1988]

I'll have a look at the compressoriser then, looks like it could save me some space too.

I posted in the What Are You Up To thread about the contest, but the entries are amazing, especially yours and Esme's. ;D

I opened up my game yesterday to shoot the last 6 slides and realised that in my download clean-out, I'd deleted Tommy's hair. He's one of three sims in the final 6 slides. I was not impressed! So now I've redownloaded his hair, and am getting ready to finally shoot these darned slides!

[esmeiolanthe]

EDIT: The motivation system sounds really complicated to me, but I'm glad you're enjoying it, Jo! It sounds like it's making the game a lot of fun for you.

I've gotten a lot of Simming done, what with the waiting and all. (I feel like I'm whining about this weather too much, so I'll try to stop. )

I finally, finally finished this rotation. For whatever reason, it was like pulling teeth for a while, and not necessarily because I don't like the Sims. But it's done, and there will be something of a baby boom, and I'm sure I will regret that when I have to find personalities and Things To Do for all of them.

I wrote up roughly 95% of the next asylum chapter, got the two shots I needed to finish the next OWBC chapter, and have all pictures except G&SL for the next AiP chapter. Right now I am running my second backup in 24 hours because of how much I played and wrote.

You're too kind about the MTS contest, Amy! I figure I'll get 25 points per house (sort of the minimum; don't knock down any walls and don't go over budget and you'll get 25 points) and comments that won't change much of what I do. Jo, no peeking in the spoiler!

SPOILER: Click to show

Do you mind if I use your purple butterfly wallpaper in one of the houses? I think it will go nicely for one family, but I expect that someone will ask where I got it and the polite thing to do is to tell them and provide a link. I just want to be sure that's cool with you.

I've been thinking about maybe doing an orphanage/vocational school thing with one of my families. It will severely inflate the population, but I'm thinking to train them all up to run various businesses that I don't want to play on a regular basis (and use up extra funds from families that are too rich) and take them out of the rotation. Would that be not-acceptablle to readers? Since the folks here at DD make up a significant percentage of my readership, it's a good place to ask.

And something I'm kicking around for reasons of Plot... (Anyone can read this spoiler, but I understand if nobody wants to because it really is spoiler-ish.)

SPOILER: Click to show

There's room in the asylum for Leila to have a baby, there are lots of other babies out there right now, and there's motivation to shuffle it off somewhere else as it's against the rules. But it has to happen NOW if it's going to happen. What do I do?!

Finally, I went on a downloading spree, because that's what I do when I'm anxious nowadays (I guess it beats binge eating, at least?) and snagged a bunch of actual mods from MTS. A whole 0.1 GB! I think that's about 100 MB? I feel so guilty!

[joandsarah]

Spoiler...spoiler? What spoiler? *whistles* Sure I never saw a thing...








































sorry!! I couldn't resist! But you know I will have forgotten all about that brown bird wall paper in a few days.


Also whenever you say you went downloading I feel guilty!

[esmeiolanthe]

LOL!