I found one of the most useless foods that is also somewhat realistically done. I ordered the Chinese Deliverator boxes for the first time for party guests. It takes hours to finish even without group talking through the bathroom door. My sim needs reading Glasses to see the 5 food pts she picked up between the rods. How about you go to the kitchen and fetch a spoon girl? Jesus.

I've not done anythig to prevent it from being dropped off in the bathroom. The Chinese Deliverator brought them to the back door.

https://i.imgur.com/chZfTF3.png

I just found out about the apartment contest that took place back in 2018, does no one miss those building contests? Why are there no more since? It looked so exciting.

It's probably because not enough people join them anymore.
I remember one time I tried to join one as a judge... And I hate building. Great logic there x)

We are hoping to have a contrest soon- see this thread:
https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=684681

Ah thanks simsample, that makes me hopeful! I'm glad I didn't miss it even though I missed the post. Sometimes life gets too sad to lurk here consistently and then I miss cool info and look back at posts from months before. I really admire everyone's regular engagement in this forum and seeing everyone's faces consistently for years - it's like we're internet neighbours in a sense.

Opened up Desiderata Valley for the first time in my 13 years of playing this game, in search for some building inspiration, because base game houses used to be crazy creative sometimes. Well, never expected a premade neighbourhood to be this dull. It looks like a hood I'd make only for playtesting; there's no love put in it I'm pretty sure. The houses are stocky and blocky and there's nothing interesting about the hood view layout. Families have nothing attractive to them story wise. It kind of made me sad.

Edit: on the other hand, love the huuuge Belladonna Cove park, wowsies!!

Never launch Regedit without administrator privileges again. Reinstalling the game isn't worth it! Changing the language isn't worth it!

How can it even be launched without admin privileges? At best I thought it would be read-only...

Uh-oh, what did you do? You can backup parts of the registry before you change anything in case you didn't know.

and funnily enough, despite having not so interesting families and starter homes that make '04 me look like Frank Lloyd Wright, the devs decided to make the ancestors actually have detail. They have makeup, facial hair, and even seem to be trying to have similar facial structures (albeit, loosely).

I just installed the 'new' SimPE by Chris Hatch, and I am impressed: it's definitely improved!

The 'Sim Browser' is one huge list, with sub categories of "Girls only", "Boys only" and you can keep it open while using the other functions; there's now a 'family history' that shows the basic numbers for a family throughout the game (number of sims, money, etc), and it's just generally far easier to look at and work with.

that's without even touching the new tool of changing the lot or maps.

Good job, Chris!

Usually I would agree, but there's a patio they could use instead!

I dropped off my laptop to get the cooling fan and battery replaced, plus some general preventive maintencance and all that jazz, so I have been using my old computer for work during this time. I also have the sims installed in this old computer, but I was never able to play with much cc because it never handled it well.

Just for curiosity, I did all the fixes and all, since I hadn't known the game required anything additional to installation back when I used this computer. I loaded up the game, thinking I would have the same game I have in my other laptop, but nothing could've prepared me for these graphics. I used to play like this and never thought it looked bad. I'm just spoiled and used to the better quality now.

That just looks like everything is turned to low. The blurred look is most likely "texture details" to low, and any "low-quality" looking meshes are "sim/object detail" set to low. Does look like smooth edges is on, (but possibly not turned to max, since there's a bit of pixellation around the sim). Those are two settings I recommend keeping on high if you want your game to look at least somewhat decent, and if you want to use CC (CC usually don't have low-def meshes, so they'll often not show properly). If you mix and match any of the other settings, it won't make too much of a difference, but those two are night and day.

I used to have quite decent graphics on my old potato laptop (2006), sans shaders (didn't even know I could turn those on - but the poor thing was already groaning under most of the packs, a ton of CC, and most settings on high, so probably for the best )

Tip for better performance + decent graphics on ancient laptops (if it's already having some performance issues, but you want everything else on high), turn off shadows and reflections, and have the light setting on medium. It helps. Shadows (outdoor shadows in particular) and reflections are very render-heavy, and a lot of CC objects have iffy shadows anyway. I used to only turn on reflections if I needed it for screenshots (the laptop would complain, though). I'm so used to no shadows I still play without...

I have posted the rest of the rounds for the hopefully coming up soon building contest here and will appreciate some feedback!

https://modthesims.info/showthread....0&cb=1737108237

I'm not good at building a house from scratch. There are too many degrees of freedom. I haven't built a single good house. But I enjoy furnishing and adapting existing houses as a problem of fitting something within constraints, one room at a time, or one corner a time, as money comes in.

I see that the "open plan" layout is recurring in houses both big and small. To me, it seems to be unwelcoming and exposed. If you opened doors on both sides and even just through the gaps with the doors closed, a draft would pull through all the heat in winter. A fireplace there seems to serve only as a decoration. I try to subdivide these rooms if I find a way. Usually the kitchen has only an "arch door," meaning that any cooking smells cannot be contained. The TV and the coats probably smell like food.

From the gameplay perspective it works less well except for events like parties. A phone or a TV can wake a person, jealousy is seen in a room. "Room" is the king divisor in the sims world for most things. You can't practically fit extra beds in there like you could repurpose a computer study to house a baby because of the waking thing.

Another strange element in construction is the ubiquitous "back door". In university like where Friends live, Mitch the lazy drama person has a back door in his bedroom. I have two consecutive winter quarters in my climate with -100 °S, and it looks quite silly to be sleeping near a thin looking entry door. If the back door is near a kitchen, it could be justified if a grill or a great big trashcan was placed there. Except that the trashcan cannot go there without cheats.

To me these two University houses look like small shops or offices. Like where a garden plot or homeowners' organization would come for an appointment. Besides the glass doors, the lack of fences is what gives me this vibe. Downtown does have fences, which, among other things, makes it attractive to me.

https://imgur.com/a/maBBIS8

Not sure how many people play Resident Evil, but I've recently noted something odd from Resident Evil Village.

Lady Dimitrescu's 3 daughters are named Bela, Cassandra and Daniela (which is the Italian version of Bella's name) - probably just a coincidence but can't stop thinking about the RE developers being Sims fan too lol

It's one thing when you're coming up with unique baby names when your cool downtown musician sims are having kids

But then they grow up and meet other cool downtown sims with unique names and suddenly Phoenix and Astaire are a couple and where do you go from there on baby names? Cycle back around to John and Mary?

I source names from scrolling movie credits. There are lots of people listed in a dense format.

Everyone's at LeTourneau Academy is "predestined" to be a bit of a naturist. Look at the empty space around most houses that needs filling up with plants. If all you do is study in books and chess, that space only generates Bills.

O'Feefee is about to graduate and has no cash. All invested in the house & car. If they kick her out for non-conformity, where is she gonna live?

Angela Pleasant is busted. She claims to be an environmentalist but carved out a tree to put ladybugs inside it. But O'Feefee sees them. That is so illegal from the queen of the Croisant Court.

Alexander Goth's garden looks like he has a mushroom kingdom, yoshi and koopa troopas living there.

I always giggle when you write that, because I always use the word 'naturist to mean this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturism

What would the word be for someone who loves nature? Naturalist is someone who studies nature (organisms), but I think the only term I know is nature lover, perhaps.

I didn't mean to imply any connotations of that kind, sorry. LOL.


What kind of Scam is the §2000 plantsim lamp with just regular gas tubes inside? Probably 2x the power of those that go into the cold warrior, no more.

This setup has rescued my pelargoniums during these couple winter months. I only paid for one bulb. It would have been better if I could suspend them above so the plants don't fall over, but I couldn't find a way.

https://imgur.com/a/3ivdMgr

I am sad that LeTourneau Academy is not destined to become the simworld's first nudist University. XD

The Plantsim lamp has some fairy magic inside that allows Plantsims to use it as sunlight. That's why they think that they can hike up the price.

I think La Fiesta Tech is for that. To have a distinction between the universities, I play the LeTourneau Academy as being rich and tidy without fooling around. We don't like the joke NPCs. There is luxury interior on some lots (although there usually is all over the place). We also don't have Greek Houses.

I loaded a Open For Business test neighborhood a few days ago with a university. It has few mods in it. Practicaly no person mods. I noticed that if I influence a Pledge to kiss/hug/flirt, she will not do it. Just says "eye gobo". Normally it is sure way of creating a mayhem, and they do it between any random people.

I know I've mentioned this before, but it's still surprising when I notice. This is the current running total of all my BIG sims in this hood:

Male: 383
Female: 397

I never reload to try again, so this is with 50-50 stats. I've always had way more females than males. Once in a blue moon, the boys will get within 10 and then I'll get 2 sets of girl twins to unbalance it again.

The current group generation aging to adult has limited male sims. Unfortunately this time, a bunch of them are cousins so I can't just pair them all off romantically like I usually do. So far, 3 have joined the military (which also now has more women than men enlisted), 2 became roommates and moved downtown to try to make it in show business, 3 are taking over their their family businesses (grocery store, salon, music store), and 2 did become a couple because they're not related and had good chemistry.

At first I wondered just what you meant by "BIG". Did you mean Adults and Elders? When I started school at five years old, "Big boys" meant six-year-olds! Eventually it dawned on me that "BIG" must be an acronym for "Born in Game"!

Here in contrast is a complete list of all the Sims born in my game (across all neighbourhoods) since I started playing in 2012 -- all nine of them!

I don't think I've missed anyone -- the birth of a child is a bit of an event in my game. Clearly my playstyle is a bit different! My oldest born-in-game Sims are still at primary/elementary school, so there's no way I'm worrying about finding romantic partners for them. Anyway in my game, especially among teens, I think gay Sims outnumber straights! So there's no need to bother whether there are equal numbers of males and females. I spend a lot of my Simming time playing boy-X-boy relationships.

I don't re-roll newborn Sims either. To me that feels too much like aborting a baby because it's the "wrong" sex. So my Sims and I just take what we get. So far it's given us six boys and three girls, but since I'll be playing them as babies/toddlers/children for the foreseeable future, it doesn't bother me. In fact, with my slow "aging off" playstyle, and the fact that I'm now an Elder myself, I think it's unlikely that I'll live to see many of them reach adulthood. Which is sad in some ways, but I suppose it's just life.

So I've got twice as many born-in-game boys as I've got girls. In comparison 397 females to 383 males seems near-enough equal numbers. Surely some of them will be gay and/or prefer to stay child-free. There are other things than procreating that one can do with one's life.