Moving Day Mods

I'm surprised this project didn't come to me sooner. For years I've been packing and moving, between houses and apartments and hotel rooms and boarding houses for my school. On one of my 'final' moves I really really wanted to have my sims pack with me. They've moved a lot for their poor little sakes. I'm still playing my original save game from over 8 years ago. I had a late start with them because I started on a Mac, but then we safely transfered them to a new temp laptop, then a new bitchin one, and now they are at their (hopefully) final computer - my graduation present, a new gaming tower!

This project is coming along nicely. I have the first part completely done, the middle is in progress, and the harder 'if I could do anything' stuff still isn't any closer to becoming a reality. Here's what's going on:

For Sale Sign:
This is a mix between two 'borrowed' things (as usual). I very much like Inge's Stay Things Shrub. But as usual, I hate it when the object has absolutely nothing to do with the mod it's performing. So Instead, I looked at how it was working, and figured out a new way of making it only 'stick' things in your house that would actually be left when moving. Things like plumbing, lighting, and most of the kitchen. Then, I needed a cute little object to run this. Being lazy, I found something that is already nice. When I upload this set I will make sure to change the mesh and do the textures myself, but for now, this sign by KiaraRawks was perfect.

Moving Boxes:
Next up if we are going to move, we should pack first. I always hated the idea of putting everything into my Sim's inventory. It's got a backpack for it's icon, but sims don't wear backpacks, so it's probably just their pockets, like where the cell phone ring comes from. What logic tells me that I can put 50 things in their pockets? Ok, so I can't fix that issue yet, but how about the hella long time consuming job of putting everything individually into and out of their inventory? Ok, so my plan didn't really fix that either, instead of into the inventory, you have to put everything into a box and then into their inventory, so we are actually adding a step, but somehow it makes the story better. And you don't have to pack or unpack all your stuff the second you move in. We could store junk! And, I even made labels for them. :) The idea here is a box with 4 or so slots in it, and in Live Mode, things in the slots are not visible, and in Build and Buy, the box isn't. I might need to make some part of the box stay visible so you can see where you are placing things and such, but you could also do all that though the inventory hand tool. Who knows, I haven't gotten everything worked out yet. I do have a nice mesh and a sweet texture though! Echo is helping me with it.

Moving Truck:
The final part of this project (that will likely never actually happen or work) is a moving truck. I don't like the idea of sticking all these boxes into inventory, but would rather put them into a truck instead. I also want to be able to call up a moving company on the phone and have a truck show up at my house. Then I can put all these boxes inside, and the larger furniture, and then have my family drive off for their move out. Then enter the neighborhood screen and pick a new house. The cinematic for moving in would use the moving truck and either the taxi or the family car. The moving truck would then not leave until I unloaded all the stuff and paid the driver. I'd love that to be how this all works. No idea how much of that is possible. If you have any ideas, let me know!

Added Bug Apperance

I was thinking more about this last night in the shower (water is my conductive thinking juice - bathing or swimming). What if having these bug houses on your lot increased the chance of having those bugs spawn on your lot as well. We already have mods that will do that globally, so why not? joninmobile, also known as TheNinthWave, made a very nice little mod that does that globally, he even made a flavor I like, with butterflies being a 75% chance in Spring and Summer and 25% in Fall, and fireflies 25% in Spring, and 75% in Summer and Fall. Very nice.

I don't want to just limit this to butterflies and fireflies, I also want to try to make it for the bees and ladybugs (make them spawn anywhere on the lawn like the other two do) and the little basegame butterfly moth things (I'm totally going to retexture them so they do this set justice) and even the awful flies.

Speaking of the flies, I'm thinking maybe some sort of mix between the flying version and somehow connecting them to a garden plot. Maybe have an interaction of taking the maggots from the house and placing them on the garden plot. I also want to include a tiny percent chance of the flies getting super mad and swarming, maybe a 5% or 10% only for the summer sorta thing.

My two favorite parts of a project are the planning stage (when everything is possible) and then when I have everything meshed and textured and its in my game (sometimes even before its actually working yet). I do really like when everything is working and done, but because I don't play much, that's usually the last time I get much fun out of my own stuff. Oh well. Eventually I will play again, right?

Stackable Chairs

This is one of those projects of mine that has been on the books for far too long. It's so old, I can't even find the original conversations about it between Echo and me. My family are packrats. We have boxes upon boxes of stuff still packed from the last couple of times we moved, and I really hate this one object per tile thing. (More about boxes in Moving Day Mods) What if you are having a party and you need a bunch of chairs? Forget this magical Buy Mode Catalog in the sky, where do you store all these chairs? Most normal people can either fold or stack their chairs, why can't we?

I went through the entire catalog looking at every chair and table and piece of furniture to see if it could realistically (in respect to physics) stack on top of itself or fold up. With the Murphy Beds in AL, the last part became possible but wasn't originally in the scope of the project. With a little help from my fave shiftable OMSPs, I was able to see what would work and what wouldn't. I think another part of the reason this project came up was because my drawing teacher at the time had assigned us to draw stackable chairs. It is much harder than you think it is!

I'll get you pictures as soon as I get something working. Echo made me a template a long time ago and I have been trying to duplicate it and I just can't get anything to work for me.

Beehives and Butterfly Houses

This project is about making lots of little insect houses. One of the biggest things that 'bugs' me is that there isn't enough movement in our sims' houses. Looking around at my own house I have to admit I'm pretty much the only thing doing any moving, but there are always bugs. Maxis gave us lots of pretty little icky bugs to play with. We have bees and flies and cockroaches and even some relatively unused (and badly textured) butterflies to play with. When Seasons rolled around we got better butterflies, fireflies, ladybugs, and those little icky white nits. I really love the ladybug loft because it adds cute little flying bugs, and I love the fireflies and butterflies. For this project, I'm going to make houses for all of them (except a Roach Motel, this is about the flying bugs). Now, while cute little flying bugs everywhere is adorable, it's not actually useful. I don't make stuff without a purpose (generally). I liked the idea of TwoJeff's Perfect Plants mod, but I don't like how it feels like cheating. By giving some of the garden care over to these little bugs, it feels less like cheating, cuz I had to buy them, and not every family will have a perfect garden. The other thing I don't like, and I feel like I might be in the minority here, is that when the flowers are properly trimmed and 'prefect', they don't look as pretty or happy. I might consider letting flowers keep their unkempt state for the summer if they have bees tending them or some such. I'll just try to make sure that it doesn't effect the gardener score or environment score or anything. And I won't let them go past that state of being wilty and dying. Though, bugs really have nothing to do with whether they are getting enough water. Oh! But it rains in the game. So maybe I'll go with that. Having bees or butterflies will disable the need to trim them, and in the summer the plants can let loose a bit. Bees and butterflies will do the job of the gardeners for trimming, and keep flowers from dying all together. I hate that the most. I leave my pretty garden for a while and forget to call a gardener and before you know it, everything is dead and I have to rebuy everything. Hate that.

Here's what's planned:

Bug	Visual Effect EP	Habitat	Behavior
Ladybugs	SSN	Loft	keeps SSN nits away
Bees	BG	Beehive	keeps flowers pretty, maybe summer growth
Butterflies	SSN	Mesh House	keeps flowers and shrubs nice (caterpillars eat the shrub overgrowth)
Butterflies (look better as Moths and at nighttime)	BG	Mesh House	keep shrubs nice and weeds from spreading (again with the caterpillars)
Flies	BG	Maggot Farm	keep soil fertilized
Fireflies	SSN	Glow Lantern	outside porch lamps

If anyone has any ideas on how you can help me pull apart TwoJeff's mods, that's really all that's holding me up at the moment. See this thread please!

Round Five: Graduation!

Our final round is the kids' graduation! Like the round before, the mini-theme comes first. You can't graduate high school without going to Prom! Well, technically you can, but it isn't any fun. You can choose whether your kids are graduating high school or university/college. I wanted my teens to graduate high school because I wasn't ready to breeze them through college. And that's why this is late, I spent most of my day doing age conversions from the Uni grad wear to teens - and I'll be uploading that soon for you all to use as well. Anyways, find your teen a sweetheart, buy her a dress or rent him a tux, and send them to the dance! Usually these dances take place in a decorated gym or cafeteria, but my senior prom was at a University Ballroom that my class rented. Now, it's not just a dance. Most Proms have an 'after-prom' and an 'after-party'. My after-prom was Casino Royale themed, we had fun pretending to be James Bonds and secret agents all dressed up fancy playing Texas Hold'em. Our after-party was a three hour bus ride to an amusement park, beginning at 6am after a completely sleepless night for all of us. Sleep deprived roller coasters are an interesting experience to be sure.