The Millers Close the Chapter

The final family for jones' Veronaville Home Makeover for me was the Millers. I had been looking forward to them all contest. I was pretty close the being right with which houses I had guessed throughout the contest and this layout was the one I wanted for them. My intuition was correct. Though, with how jones set up the families, there really wasn't much of a better way to arrange the families per house. The twins from the last house wanted their own bathroom and aside from the double house (which was pretty obviously meant for the Winters) the only house with two upstairs bathrooms was the one most of us picked for it. The Williams went nicely with the first house because they wanted to downsize and it was one of the smaller houses jones gave us. Anyways, this house is awesome because I made the Miller's house a MILL. (clever right? :facepalm:)

I'm most pleased with myself about my movie reference and the way I wove a fairy tale into this family. I'm thinking I'm going to want to continue sneaking in fairy tales into this hood now. I recently read a fantastic little book called The Rumpelstiltskin Problem that probably had a bit to do with this is, and also the TV show Once Upon A Time. See the rest of the house in my post!

This concludes the contest. I'm not going to be anywhere even close to placing, but I'm ok with that. I only ever really lost points for changing the structure; I lost 9 points over the course of the contest for that. If those were not taken into consideration, I'd be in third right now instead of 9th. I don't regret it though. Neither this contest, nor her first cycle, was I actually playing to win. Quite the contrary, in the first cycle I was actively sabotaging myself. I already have the cute little blue ribbon icon, so I don't need another win (yet...)

I had a chance to create some fantastic houses, kickstart my medieval hood and download a ton of fantastic CC to add to my collection. I still have so much of it to sift through and clean and purge, but that's a never ending task. My one regret was that I wasn't able to play these families enough to get them aged up and married and having kids to the point where I could have put them in my pictures. I'll try to remember to make a post later with all of the families in front of their houses when I do get them that far.

Pirates!

For the third round of jones' Veronaville Home Makeover, I've chosen the Johnson family. While this is what everyone else is working with:

Stacie, Brian and the twins, Hannah and Teresa (aged 9) love the beach. They can't afford to move to the shore, so they'd like to bring the beach to their home. BONUS The twins don't mind sharing a room, BUT they would LOVE to have their own bathroom (their parents would love it too.

Because I'm doing this in my Medieval hood, things are a little different.

Stacia, Brian, and the twins, Bethany and Betryse (aged 9) love the ocean. Brian is a Captain of a "fishing" vessel. Their house is safely hidden from the coast so Brian doesn't have to worry that his family might be in danger from his high-seas "activities".

Yup, I made him a pirate. :) The best picture of their house is by far the little stream running through their property. They love pulling fish out of their little stream and are just as comfortable in the water as they are on it. Across the little bridge is a still pool that the family uses for relaxing in. The girls enjoy playing under the waterfall and love pretending to be mermaids. The statue near the falls likely had something to do with their choice of make believe worlds.

I can't choose just one more image to tease you with, there are a bunch that are really really good. Check out my whole post.

Adjusting to a New Schedule

For anyone unaware, I started a new job a few weeks back. I'm still trying to get into the swing of things; waking up early, going to bed early, packing a lunch the night before, wearing professional clothes, commuting, and only having 2 or 3 hours of free time in the evening.

Because of this shocking lack of time in the evening, I've been late with both of the last two rounds of the housing contest I'm competing in. I'm trying to juggle my schedule around and might have a solution. My lunch hour is a mandatory 1 hour and I usually only use 15 mins to eat my sandwich. On days I pack my lunch, I can bring my lappy in with a copy of my Medieval hood and sim on my lunch hour. I like this idea a lot, sim-withdrawal is harsh!

For the second round, I, like many other contestants, chose the family with the live-in mother. This house is well suited for the family because it's actually one of the double houses in Veronaville. When I was setting up my hood months ago the last time I was playing, I'd actually converted all of those lots to apartments. Apparently, I'd also made some structural changes as well to my copy, so I just used jones' and deleted my original. I'm very pleased with the result, take a look!

First Round House and Some Rather Morbid Mods

I've finally got my first round house up! I had asked jones for an extension because I recently got a job and moved back to Cinci. This happened during the same week that the house was due. I'm very committed to my sims, but after job searching for over 9 months, I do have my priorities straight.

As part of the contest, jones gave us bios for 4 families, and we are free to pick whichever family we want for each house, but the catch is that we don't know what kind of house will be next and we can't reuse the families. After some figuring, I decided that all 4 families could be related and proceeded to make them in game. I started a generation back so that the future adults will be able to have good skills and such, but it put me a bit behind. At the time of having to turn in my house, I haven't yet gotten the families all aged up and appropriately matched.

The Williams family (empty next of 5 kids) is the main family. Hugh is the oldest, and he has already moved out and settled into the Application house with his bride-to-be, a romance lady who may or may not be having extramarital affairs, and who will die in her third childbirth. (See below about this morbid issue.) The next oldest is Stacie, who is still a teen and just starting her relationship with Brian Johnson. According to jone's bios, they will be having twin girls. After her is a son named Richard, who was added to bring the count up to jone's required 5. I decided he needed to be a boy and in the middle to help explain the age differences between Stacie and the other two moms-to-be. After him is Johanna, and her betrothed is Lowrie. (I really dislike the name Larry, Lowrie isn't much better, but it is better imho.) Johanna just recently grew up to a child, and the toddler of the house is Lora.

I've got a lot to do to get them all grown and fixed up with their partners, who are also at the same ages in their own households. Little Lora and Joshua are going to be my Round 2 house, and they are the furthest from adulthood! I need to step on it. I think this weekend I'm going to start work on the house and get it a fair amount done first just in case I run into trouble meeting the deadline again. I really prefer taking my pictures with the families in the house and in the shots, but I only have so many hours to play now that I have a job. Anyways, here's the house:

Cycle 2 of ‘Renovating the Base Hoods’ Contest

Jones has posted the second cycle of her Home Makeover Contests. This time we are in Veronaville. Unfortunately, for anyone hearing about this for the first time from me (seriously?), I just barely squeaked in and filled the 20th and last spot in the contest. As some of you may be aware, Veronaville is my medieval hood, so instead of following everyone else and creating lovely contemporary houses like I did in the last cycle, I’ll be doing my best to rework them into lovely little Shakespearean cottages. I’m excited and a little nervous about a few things. The main challenge will be of course to satisfy the families’ requirements that are part of the contest. One family in particular enjoys the beach, I’m not quite sure how to translate that into old-timey decor yet. The second challenge is going to be not reusing all the same CC over and over again. I’ll have to do some more hunting for quality items. The quality with the medieval CC I’ve seen is usually hit or miss. It’s either fantastically well made, or the textures look like something ripped out of a poorly scanned-in magazine page from the 80s. The final bit I’m nervous about is what the judges are going to do with my houses. There are rules about things, and I think not having an indoor bathroom might be something they’d dock points for. If anyone has some links to good medieval CC, put the link in a comment please!

Making Medieval Veronaville: Post 5

It's been a while but I've done some more work in my Medieval Hood. I've added Nightlife to my game setup so I could use Hexameter's awesome vehicles. I also included Apartment Life because a)witches are SO medieval material and b)apartments make things pretty easy living arrangements for serf and gypsys. I created a terrain that is 'downstream' from Veronaville, my Fae Forest. I plan to move Tatiana and Oberonthere after Puck is old enough to marry his sweetheart. They will leave him their estate and go back to the forest. Tatiana and Oberon will remain engaged but never marry. From what I remember of the play they were lovers that enjoyed toying with each other, so I think it will work out nicely having them live on separate lots. Tatiana will gather herself faery servants and Oberon will take up with the satyrs. I haven't decided what to do with Bottom yet, maybe she will stay in the house, maybe move in with Tatiana.

The rest of the Forest will be inhabited with other creatures. I'm going to introduce satyrs, plantsims, elves, witches, and trolls. On the other side of the river will be a small town with a gypsy camp and a Midwife (good witch!). High up above the town I'll be raising a few vampires to add to the Fear of the Forest. I'm having fun with this sub-hood.

My three MacBeth witches are named Hecate, Graymalkin, and Paddock. I realize those aren't the real names, but Shakespeare didn't give his three witches names. These are the closest things to it. I believe they were their pet's names. Their lovely green skintone is of my doing. They are wearing many of Sherahbim's gorgeous dresses. My troll, Gruff, is living under a bridge. I've used Mootilda's LotAdjuster program to let him have both sides of his bridge. I'm not entirely happy with how I have his lot set up, so I might be doing more work with that, but he is definitely a part of my hood now.

Making Medieval Veronaville: Post 4

I've added Peasants! I originally was only going to add 3 serf families and a carpenter, but one of my serf families turned out to be perfect as tailors. The first family pictured is the Haysons, mom Hadriana and son Anton. Dad tragically died in a plague of flies as did all of the other relatives in all the families, no 'mystery sim' business for me! Next is the Barley's, grandad Jessup, mom Kadith, dad Eamon, son Caemon, daughter Kaea. The middle family is the Wheatly's, grandad Cliff, dad John, and son Paul. The next family was the one that shouted seamstress to me, so the Webbers are sisters, Evelyn and her daughter Selina, and Audrey and her teen daughter Ava and son Teagan. The last picture is hottie Matteo Woods, my carpenter. To create these sims I first did some random number generating to determine how many were in the family, their genders, their ages, their aspirations, and their zodiac sign. Then following those numbers I hit the random sim button in CAS until I had a half-decent looking sim. For the children I hit the Pacifier. I want genetically correct sims dag-nabbit! Also, PLEASE don't ask me where I got stuff, almost everything I pick up I got from MTS2. Do a bit of searching here and I'm sure you will find it too.

Now, for the interesting part about these families. I have only 3 women of childbearing age, and 2 of them are ROMANCE! Kadith is Romance and her husband is Family, and the other lady is Audrey. Grandad Cliffe Wheatly is also Romance and so is Kadith's teenage son Caemon. And of course Romeo is also Romance. I've never had so many of this aspiration to deal with! I haven't even opened up the brothel yet! GAH! I hope Eamon dies of the plague soon so Kadith can be the town Lady. Everyone who walks past her seems to think she is hott.

The Montys have bought and started up the Farm. So far we have planted a lot of tomatoes. Thanks to a still-in-testing mod Patrizio was able to stay all day at the Farm and when I was done playing him there, I returned home, played the rest of the family and he came home at the time he left the farm. Community Time is kinda sweet.

Back to the technical stuff. I've downloaded Risky Woohoo and Hide Try for Baby to simulate the lack of birth control. : thinks about all those Romance sims, shudders : And I have been given permission from the original creator of the country roads mod to upload my version so when I get the terrain paint that matches done you can expect that from me. I have not had too much luck getting the UI edit to work correctly, I have gotten it to work if your AnyGame happens to not be in US English, but thats not really what I was going for. I don't have much more for you because I went camping (medieval style!) over the weekend so I wasn't simming. Yes, I'm a geek and I'm in the SCA, but if you think its fun to play medieval sims, its way more fun to play medieval yourself!

Making Medieval Veronaville: Post 3

I finished making over the families and the picture above is what they look like now. It took me a long time but I finally finished townifying all the custom clothes I downloaded (a LOT). I decided to only townify clothes that are fit for peasants or low-class merchants. I plan on having my higher class citizens go to the town tailor to have their clothes made. I've also divvied up all the money for each of the families so they all have their own manors and have around 5,000 left over to furnish their manors. I'm planning on having a carpenter be one of my first CAS sims to move in. They will be the only ones allowed to buy from the catalog. I also plan on seeing if I can make a mod that will force furniture to break once it reaches it's depreciation level. That is the one main reason furniture stores fail, our sims are perfectly content to use the same furniture for generations, nothing ever gets too old, outdated, or broken.

I have also finished making up a farm for the Monty's to run. The 'Old Farm Ruins' I think it is called starts out as a residential lot, but I'm going to change it into a community lot and have the Monty's own it and run it as a farm. I plan on rolling for random sims to be my first 3 serf families. Depending on what I roll will determine if I move them all into one lot or not, but I think I need them to be separate so when they move in there will be enough money to pay to the Montys (for the land) to buy that farm.

I also want to move in a midwife soon, but I don't think I will need that till someone gets sick or has a baby. Speaking of that, I need to look into a deadlier diseases mod (fixed version by piopiou on page 3), health care and preventative medicine were almost unheard of back then. I also want to mod the time for each age, I don't want my elders living to be a billion years old, life expectancy wasn't that high either. Though I'll let the midwife and any Man of Science be as old as dirt because they obviously have discovered the secret to life, or at least good hygiene. I want to go slowly starting out so I don't mess things up, but I don't know how quickly I should add families in to keep the town growing. I also have no idea when I want to start adding in more 'creatures' but I think perhaps when Oberon and Titania move back to the forest would be a good time to have some of their subjects join them. Its kinda scary (I'm one of those who likes to have EVERYTHING planned out) but I think I'm just going to have to jump in and play it by ear!

Making Medieval Veronaville: Post 2

Update on Medieval Veronaville:

The image you see above is a sweet UI edit that I made, but it doesn't totally work properly yet. The image shows up fine in the neighborhood chooser, but I wanted it to show on the load screen so I know I am loading the right game! The other day I downloaded a country roads terrain mod, and while it was pretty, I didn't love it. I edited the images a bit and now I'm TOTALLY in love with the roads in my hood. As for the hood itself, I've completed enough preliminary work outside the game (genetics, finding hacks, clean hoods) to start work inside. So far I have gone through and 'cleaned up' all the houses in the neighborhood, I delete out furniture and replace ugly carpets.

I've also given the Summerdreams their new Enayla fantasy skins and new elf/nymph outfits. I've also just finished making over both the Capp and Monty Manners and their residents. I've chosen a dark green as the Capp Color and dark red for the Montys. Next on my to do list is divide up their extreme wealth to their extrended families and get them settled in and changed clothes. And not a moment to soon either, I nominate Albany Capp's household for WORST DRESSED SIM FAMILY EVER. I plan on moving the two Capp households into the two empty large manners on the Capp side of the river and the two Monty families into the two empty large manners on the Monty side of the river. If they had enough money to do that from the beginning it might have been a little more obvious that that's where they belong!

I plan on creating 'serfs' and 'merchants' or 'artisans' for my town as well. They will be beholden to the family on who's land they live (side of the river). I haven't really worked out all the details on that yet, but I'm working on it. I decided to include Pets in my AnyGame even though I originally planned against it. I remembered all the great farm animal 'pets' that I've downloaded and just couldn't keep them out of it. I plan on having farmers grow crops and raise animals (sheep,lambs, pigs, and goats) I've seen more pets made to look like animals, but these are the best in my opinion and the most appropriate for my game. Most farmers will come to work on their lords land (thank you OFB!) and garden (thanks to a hack over at Paladin's Place.) Thanks to two other hacked objects from the there the farmers will also be able to pack their produce (and fish!) into cute little sell-able crates. A few farmers will 'own' their own farm, but they will still have to pay taxes to their lord.

The next class will be the merchants and artisans. These people will not be farmers but instead potters, tailors, barbers, painters, carpenters, and crafters. They will also include townspeople with 'jobs' such as the Midwife, the Tinker, bakers, innkeepers, 'town ladies', drunkards, and such. Many of these characters will only be providing flavor to the town but I'll try to see it that everyone has at least some purpose, like the Midwife will show up for births but also provide medicine for people who are sick. I'm thinking about getting a hack for deadly diseases, Maxis illnesses are a joke and this hood is supposed to be in the same time frame as The Plague. Some of the town buildings I'd like to see pop up in my new hood include a bakery, market, carpenter/blacksmith, tavern/brothel, orphanage (plague victims' kids have to go somewhere!), inn, convent/school, and a graveyard.

The next class is the extended families of the Capps and Montys, basically the families that start out in the sim bin. They are part of the family so they should get special treatment, but only one person can be the lord (or lady!) at a time so, they can live free of rent in their own house and employ their own servants. (Servants is another job for the middle class, I need housekeepers, cooks, and gardeners) I haven't completely figured out the economy of the hood yet, as far as who pays what to who for what, and it's still kinda shady on what the Family is supposed to do all day. Oh, that reminds me, NOBODY is getting a Maxis job, and I've made a mod to make sure no one wants to be the 'Top of Whatever' career as their LTW. I really like trying to fulfill those, and I didn't have the heart to tell my sims that no, they could never be a Superhero. I'm thinking that the upper class could be teachers of the arts; music and dance teachers, scholars, and maybe painters. Like I said, don't really know yet.

The Summerdream's are my inspiration for supernaturals. I think I'll be adding in a few more elves, nymphs, and satyrs to my hood. They will live off the land and not pay rent to the lord. I don't really know what they will do either, enjoy their FreeTime and skill up Gold Gardening badges prolly. I don't want to add in too many of these, because I still prefer the slightly more realistic side of things. The Summerdreams have enough money to finance en devours such as building a woodland retreat and they will also possibly build a park for the town.

As for the future of Veronaville, its looking like Romeo and Juliette will indeed get together, and as she is the heiress and he is the second son, they will be inheriting the Capp Manor. Mercutio will be the next Monty lord but I haven't decided who his companion will be, there are a few Capp girls, but I'm kind of intrigued with the idea of giving him Tybalt. As soon as Puck is an adult, Tatiana, Oberon, and Bottom will be moving back to the forest so he can offer the Manor to Hermia. Now that Tatiana and Oberon have their fantasy skins and nymph outfits, they don't feel quite right in that house anyways. Puck's skin doesn't have leaves or designs on it, but he is not a natural color. Hermia enjoys it. Kent Capp and Bianca Monty will eventually get together but not before Romeo moves in with Lady Capulet. Not sure if she will still be young enough to have kids but she should have time for at least one or two I think. I'm going to try to keep the town decently time synced. I'm not going to be obsessive about it though, that doesn't sound fun to me. Antonio is going to stay at home to raise the twins, I'm hoping that works, depends on how the Monty funds get divided. Though, I'm pretty sure those kids will need a Governess, I'll think about that. The large Capp family is going to be emulating I believe Nostra Damus's family. He had like 16 kids and to get away from the noise built himself an observatory on the roof. I check in SimPE and Albany's thing is Science, so its pretty darn sweet. I'll be replacing his pimp coat with another equally embarrassing, but period, cloak, fit for any Man of Science. Not sure what Regan and Whats-his-face have in store for them, I really hate playing the work-a-holic no-time-for-kids type sims. And since I'm taking away their jobs, what will they do instead?

Well, thats it for now!

Making Medieval Veronaville: Post 1

Ok, so the reason I haven't been frantically uploading things like I usually tend to is because I've finally cleared enough crap off my little lappy to set up my medieval neighborhood!! I'd been planning this out for a while but its hard to even work much less dream about a new hood when I have less than 1% free hard drive space (I know thats REALLY bad). I deleted stuff and moved other stuff to my external and magically had enough space to throw my hands out and even twirl!

You get to follow along with this project, you can even make your own based on how mine is set up (but I won't be uploaded much of anything for it, I am HEAVILY editing other peoples files for this project and reuploading is generally a no-no.)

For starters I set up an AnyGame using Numenor's great tool. The reason for this is so I can have a separate downloads folder for all the medieval stuff and keep my regular game from crawling to a complete stop. I decided to include the Holiday Packs, OFB, SSN, and FT in my game. OFB so I can run an integrated hood (plasticbox made it sound so fun), SSNs so my peasants can freeze in the snow, I mean grow stuff, and FT so everyone has more things to do because TV ain't an option. Holiday packs are in there because some of the clothes are nice and they gave me some nice candles too.

The next step was to get myself a clean hood to start in. I had already decided that I wanted to turn Veronaville into a medieval hood like months ago, so I finally get to get that started. I started out with a clean template (Veronaville on bottom of page 10) and pretty much have been following this thread loosely. I had my friend CarmeeKitty make up a Medieval Names list and she plans on uploading it here eventually. This will ensure that I won't be seeing Goopy GilsCarbo or Benji Long running around my hood. Next its time to get all the custom content ready for the game. 

I have decided to use a mix of skins, HP's Idolarty of Flesh skintones and a genetisized version of most of Enayla's fantasy skins. I've made myself 3 more skins of HP's to fill in the spaces between them so I have a nice blended range. These skins and the fantasy skins will all be rearranged on the genetic scale so that the pale normal skins are next to the pale fantasy skins. That way when Hermia Capp and Puck Summerdream get together, their kids will still have light skin. (The Summerdreams are all going to get their tacky face makeup removed and will receive Enayla's skins instead.) As for eyes, I'll be using HP's Precious Jewels set because I think they are pretty. They are not cartoony but not realistic so they win. Also, there are a lot of them and that was another deciding factor, I don't want my townies to have only 5 different shades of eyes. This thread has been helpful for decustomizing things.

The next step is finding clothing! I've finished gathering the clothing I like, and almost all of it came from right here. (MTS2 is the best!) There is too much to directly link to, but these are the main creators work I am using. Its all very well done and beautiful, so check them out! AlexasRosa, Aligeth, Earendil, EnblithTheFair, Helaene, iamliz13, sherahbim, SussisSoGoodSims, tabala, tiggerypum, and zoej. Many of these creators were collaborators in the Midsimmer Night's Dreamand Dark Project sets. I highly recommend those sets as well. There are a few more random pieces of clothing that I'm using but you can find them here by searching for Medieval. As much as I originally hated Maxis Clothing Hiders (because I prefer to replace ugly Maxis textures), they are really coming in handy for this hood. I plan on editing mine a bit to exclude any Maxis outfits that I deem 'medieval enough'. Making all these clothes townie friendly is going to be a very long project. I've tried using the Wardrobe Wrangler but to no success. It's useful for changing the categories that the clothes appear in but it's 'Townify' feature doesn't seem to work for me. Though, maybe I was using an old version... I'll give it another shot. Editing 700+ clothing files individually with SimPE is not really my idea of a great weekend project.

I've also been slowly starting to pick up mods and objects that will help out this neighborhood, but since it doesn't actually exist yet (have to have the genetics and clothes ready for townies) I haven't put much focus on that yet. I'll be using a terrain mod to get dirt roads (there are a couple here, haven't decided which one I like best yet) and some other things.

So yeah, that's where I am and what I'm doing!