simgaroop | Behind the Scenes: Generation 4 (Reply)

Previous update: Helena's Story

One of the worst habits I have while playing my legacy is that I take too many pictures. I have my left hand ALWAYS close to the Tab and C keys (and the 0 key for pausing) to take a snapshot as soon as I find a hilarious face or an interesting situation. Of course, because I want to make sure I get the best angle or close-up as possible (so my readers can clearly see the expression or interaction I'm trying to show through the pic), I take a lot of snapshots of the same scene.

That leaves me with around 2000 pictures to sort out per update. I usually divide them in "scenes" or "days" (so I don't have to deal with 2000 pics in a single folder and kill my PC at the same time) and then choose the best picture from each interaction/expression. I then delete the rest of the pictures and that leaves me with 300 pics to work with. I end up deleting more pictures that I don't need for the story until I'm left with the final 200 pics that I rename (with numbers), edit at Photoshop (Actions are my best friends :P) and upload.
In short, I usually have a lot of "behind the scene" pictures that I end up deleting to keep my poor PC sane. Now I regret doing that, because there were a lot of hilarious pictures that I'd have liked to share as a sort of "Commentary" entry. Oh well...

I saved a few pics from Gen 4, though (well, the final update of Gen 4) and a couple from the annoying process of restoring Strangetown. I took some pictures to talk about the first three Generations as a special "Yay! I'm finally on Gen 5!" entry, but I decided to save them for the Storytellers Spotlight that I'll post on Monday at

simstorytellers.

I've returned from my job early (the classes were suspended because of the current heat wave we are dealing at my city), so I'll post my notes for Gen 4.7 (and 5.0) in the mean time.

I've said a lot of times that my sims (with the help of the most awesome hack ever, the ACR) love to throw unexpected plot twists at me.
Here's the proof of one of those times.
When Helena and Tim were at their first semester of college, I sent them (with Calvin) to Le Tour's cafeteria.
Helena rolled the want to "flirt" and to "ask out on a date" any sim, so I had her scoop the room to find a new "boytoy" for her current collection.

This is the guy she chose to flirt with. As soon as she "noticed" him, she approached Calvin and flirted with him on free will.
And this is how the whole "Helena and Calvin" love story began.
I haven't even planned to include Calvin in the main plot, but my sims decided something else :P.

When Helena graduated from College, Tim threw a graduation party for her.
Calvin wasn't invited, of course, because he was supposed to be "away" on the Graslaxian Ship.
That's why I was surprised when he showed up on the lot. At first I was annoyed, because he'd ruin the pictures I was taking at that moment.
But he didn't show up for the party... he just wanted to leave a present for Helena.
He left her the expensive telescope and the roses that I mention in the story later.
That was amazingly sweet, and I was quite pleased with Calvin's chosen present. It just made so much sense!

Want to see the best Sim faces? Just ask them to smustle.
Every time I throw a party in my game, I have them smustle. It's terribly amusing.
I'd love to include every single ridiculous pose and face they make while dancing!

Helena's party had its dose of drama, though.
Besides Dawson, Rose Mary was approached by several of her ex-boyfriends (back when she was cheating on Buck), who were also Helena's boyfriends.
She rejected every single one of them.
She's not as "Romance Sim" as I though, despite going on aspiration failure when she had Lyla.
Or maybe she's just faithful to Buck.

On the other hand, while I was distracted "awwww"-ing at Calvin's present, I suddenly hear the "OMG! You are cheating on me!" sound.
I looked around the house (BTW, this is a lot from the Teen Style Stuff Pack) and yup, I found Tim and Marsha flirting in front of Hobbes!
Poor Hobbes was devastated by their actions.

Then he was furious at her!

But Marsha didn't care, and continued flirting with Tim.
By the way, back then she had one bolt with Tim and two bolts with Hobbes.
Their engagement was off that night, and that's why I was able to marry her to Tim.
But more on that later,

Before Free Time, I had this awesome hack by Squinge that enabled the "Desperation Interactions" like crying, worrying and the silly animations when they break down.
When I was playing through the "Calvin's leaving" plot-line, Helena gave me plenty of autonomous crying scenes.
You may wonder what had her so upset, right?
Well... David Ottomas kept kicking the trashcan and I didn't notice it, so the house got infested with bugs.
Helena and Tim both caught the flu.
And Helena was extremely crushed by this situation, which makes no sense because she only has ONE neat point.

Tim wanted to cheer her up, though, so he invited her to the Student Center.
Originally, I wanted to take some pictures of the two of them talking outside, while Helena explained him her situation with Calvin.
But then it began to rain! :S
(And I had no time to do this again, because their final exams came up the following morning).

Helena and Tim had almost no money, and Tim was freaking out, of course.
So, I had him "Freestyle for Tips" to earn some money.
Because he had 10 creative and 10 charisma points, he usually earned around 500 simoleans per show (and that's another reason I sent him to so many places to "entertain", because back then I was working on his 100,000 LTW).
At the student center, he certainly caught the attention of his fans.
All of them male... and all of them had a crush on him :D.

Tim was also quite popular with the College NPC's.
Here's the Cow Mascot fooling around with him.

Helena's is a slob, but Tim's not far. He only has 3 neat points.
Therefore, he found the Cow's attempts to "gross him out" just plain funny.
They kept doing this for hours, until I got sick of the Cow and kicked her out.

Following a family tradition, here's Tim sponge bathing, despite there were two free bathrooms at his place.
There are pictures of Beau and Cosmo sponge bathing, and I deleted a picture that showed Andrew (from Gen 3) also doing it.
Good thing I married Rosie to Buck and his 10-neat-points, I'm sick of slobs!

But back to the topic of NPC's, here are two other annoyances from college.
This guy showed up at their lot every single day.
At this point of the game, Tim was "extremely" fit (aka he was at the top of the meter) so it makes no sense.
Helena was "normal", and she also got the same treatment.
But unlike Tim (who's ignoring the coach in this picture), she worked out like the good girl she is.

And here's the cheerleader also trying to catch Tim's attention while he was working on his term paper.

He found her boring and ignored her too.
Besides Opal and Marsha, he's ignored other girls while on Free Will.
I had to force him to flirt with other girls when he was on his senior year.

I love Lyran's eyes.
After trying several custom eyes, these are still my favorite.
Perhaps because they are "cartoony", they mix pretty well with the Sim's silly faces.
They make them more expressive in my opinion.
It's a pity her site is closing soon :(. I already saved and genetized them for my custom townies.

Anyway, another source for hilarious faces is the business animations from OFB.
Here's Tim's "I'm fed up at the cashier" face.
Behind him, you can see Cyd Roseland's alien son, Benjamin.
When I began playing with Strangetown, my sister had already played with Cid and had him spawn twin aliens, Felicity and Benjamin.
Cid was already an old man, so I aged him back to an adult (along with Felicity, who became a teen) and townified Ben, for a future update.
He became the reporter!
It's a pity I lost them at the "Strangetown's melt down".

Here's another silly face from the "browsing" interaction.
There are several mods that let you have these animations on your sims.
They look like "boxes" that you place at the lot.
I've been trying out the OFB one since I took Tim to J'adore Bakery and discovered these faces.
It's a pity that the Hula Mod won't include them ever :( (it's easier than placing and hiding boxes).

More stupid faces.
This one is from the "Play pool" interaction.

It looks like he's checking that girl out, right?

Silly Tim.

Another of my favorite "faces" is the one they make after they have a make-over.
Their "I hope you didn't fuck up my hair" expression always cracks me up.

Finally, another favorite, the "I'm pissed at someone" face that I'm sure all of you have seen in your games.
Tim was WAAAAY pissed at David Ottomas.
He was his worst enemy for a while.
He kept making that face for days!

Way to keep a grudge, dude!

Speaking of makeovers, I'm glad you enjoy your new look, Tim.
Unless I get sick of it, you are keeping the "bald look" for the rest of your pixelated life.
With more than 8 sims on a 4x4 lot, I needed new ways to keep my graphic cards sane.
I erased all my "high poly" custom hair and will make more use of the Maxis styles from now on.
And what's better than a low poly hair? A zero-poly hair like Tim's! (or so I think).
(Plus it suits him).

Let's move on to the final year of college.
Remember the girls Tim "wooed" back then?
The ones he supposedly brought back to his dorm after meeting her at the Student Center?
Well, the truth is that Tim only had a small affair with one of them, and they only kissed.

It was MARSHA the one he woo-hooed with in that scene.
I'm sure none of you recognized her! :D
After dealing with Tim's constant "booty calls" to Marsha, which I had to cancel over and over again (thanks, ACR), I decided to let them "have fun" and make good use of those pictures.

So, this was officially Tim and Marsha's first time... although story-wise they didn't do it until they got married.

Another silly smustle picture. For Tim's graduation party, I no longer had Insim to select and control other sims, so it was a pain to shoot this scene.
That's why I only invited his closest relatives, because I couldn't deal with more than three non-controllable sims at the same time.
Puck, Wanda and Rosie kept wandering around the huge dorm (downloaded from the Sims2Graveyard and it's a part of Nengi65's Factory Living series), so I had to pick up and place them in the party hall over and over again. The only way I could keep them "quiet" was through smustling and toasting.
By the way, there were two other guests at this party: Tim's Drama Professor (who fell in love with Puck in 10 seconds) and another girl who also kept swooning over Puck all the time.

The wedding was even harder to shoot, and that's why those pictures came out horrible (and the scene was so choppy).
I had planned a more elaborated scene, but in the end I had to work with the few pics I could take.
Someone asked who was the "green guy" in one of the pics.
Well, it was actually Hobbes :P. Stupid me didn't notice he was there in that picture.
Good thing no one recognized him!
When I realized I couldn't control him to "tell Tim and Marsha he had decided to join the Graslaxians", I had to make up the letter plot.
Originally, Hobbes was going to dump "Marsha" at the ceremony, and convince her to go with Tim.
I was using Merola's mind control mirror at that time, but it was awful, because I could only select one sim at a time, and as soon as I picked another sim, the "connection" (and all the actions I had queued) was dropped.
Then I learned I could still "control" my sims with the testing cheats :P.
Oh well...
I also needed all the NPC's that I summoned with the teleporter shrub to be wearing their formal clothes. The wedding took place at a lot that came with the Celebrations SP (The Abode Amour or something like that) and I turned it into a community lot. I had to select them with the mind controller, and then have them go to a dresser to change their clothes. It was annoying.
And THEN they kept leaving the lot! And when I teleported them back, they had their normal clothes again! ARGHHH!
So, I decided to catch their attention and force them to change into their formal clothes by marrying two sims.
Who?

Yup, Opal and David married right then. And that was enough to keep my sims sitting down and wearing their formal clothes for a little while.

I didn't know the Ottomas were rich, though :).

I got sick of the wedding lot, so, after I shooted the scene in which Tim and Marsha run away before her wedding, I moved him out of the Broke house.
He moved with Helena at her shop, and then I had him ask Marsha on a date.
And this is what happened...

They finished their date at the Londoste, where they got married.
Then, they conceived Thomas inside Helena's car right outside Londoste (they rolled the woohoo in a car want :P).
What a classy Honeymoon!

And that's all for the Gen 5.0 notes.
The only pictures I had saved from other Generations are a few Toddler Cosmo ones.
So, CUTE TODDLER SPAM AHEAD!

Yeah, that was short (and lame).

_______________________

After playing with Helena's lot for her story, my Strangetown blew up.
I already wrote about the many times I fucked up while restoring it :P.
But the good news is that it's back!

This is how the Brokes look at this point in my game.
Not many changes, besides Wanda and Puck’s new age.
Thomas is still a baby and I'm currently taking a break from them.

This is the lot I built for them.
4x4 and filled with mostly Free Time stuff, I hope it won't kill my game.
It came out better than what I expected, though :D.
And you can see their neighbors across the street, right?

DUN DUN DUUUUUN!

So, here's a short picture spam of the Broke's new house.
These pictures lack a few changes I made later, like adding an elevator instead of stairs (I wanted to try them for the first time in my game) and the finished front garden, which I decorated with a lovely set of desert plants from MTS2.

First Floor.

Yeah, my bathrooms are ridiculously large :P.

The small second floor
I couldn't fit Wanda and Puck's room on the first floor.
As soon as Tim and Rosie die I hope to be playing with just one heir, so I'll close that floor for good.

Once I was done, I realized that the house still lacked the career rewards I had earned through former heirs (especially Cosmo), the legacy portraits and the graves of Cosmo and Beau.
So, I re-created them at CAS (along with Helena, who'd be my guinea pig) and placed them on the lot.

As soon as I began to play, my game generated this little guy.
I'm fond of him already... I've got some plans for him! :)

OK guys, work on those legacy portraits!
I gave them high creativity points with the SimModder (that thing that looks like a baby that you can spawn with the testing cheats) and had them paint custom portraits with some special pictures I took of my past and current heirs.

And here are my legacy portraits finished!

Then, with the help of the SimModder and the Rodney's Death Creator (also from the testing cheats aka boolprop), I gave them platinum aspiration and killed them from old age.
You know what's funny? These pictures are better than the ones I took when they died in the first time!
As you can see, Cosmo was not amused.
By the way, when I re-downloaded him from my Box account, I noticed that 95 people already have him in their games! :)
So don't be sad, little dude, I'm sure you are having lots of fun on other people's games.

So, here are the graves of Beau and Cosmo.
I hope I won't have to re-create them again :P.

Helena was the place-holder (so I wouldn't lose my furniture) and I also used the career rewards cheat on her to get all the missing rewards to complete the laboratory and the game room. Then, I moved her out when I had the "main family" move in.
Helena was freaked out by the whole process, though.
Don't worry, sweetie, I'll re-create your two husbands and your children pretty soon.
And I'll make sure I fix your family-relations, because I don't want to deal with Tim having the hots for you :S.

And that's all for now!
See you soon! :)