Date Posted: 9th May 2008 at 4:20 AM

Update:
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 divyied 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 manners. 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stores fail, our sims are perfectly content to use the same furniture for generations, nothing ever gets too old, outdated, or broken.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!

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Date Posted: 5th May 2008 at 8:15 AM

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!

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Date Posted: 3rd May 2008 at 12:44 AM

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 Dream and 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!
-Phae

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Date Posted: 27th Mar 2008 at 3:41 PM

Today is my birthday! Sw00t! I'm legal now... Going to see a movie with my mom and then to Harry's 'Chocolate' Shop (read alcohol). Tomorrow I'm going to a night club with my two best already 21 friends, and then when I get back to college (I'm on spring break, remember?) I'll be hitting the bars with one of my friends who has their birthday a few days apart from me. Life is good. (Don't worry about alcohol poisoning or anything like that for me, I still can't stand the taste of any alcohol, I'm just psyched I can get into the places, mostly night clubs, now!!)

Date Posted: 7th Feb 2008 at 2:32 AM

OMG! I got featured! The final post of my Katrina cottages got featured! (I'm guessing it was meant as a the entire set was worth one feature, thats why the other 4 didn't get trophy icons, but they are still 'Top Picked'). Whatever. I"M FEATURED. Snap, I finally get that little trophy icon next to my name that I've wanted so much!!! I can barely breathe. This has so made my night. eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Date Posted: 19th Dec 2007 at 5:13 AM

So yeah, contest entry. Sweet action Tire Swing. This is the first time you get spoilers, meh. Echo and Tig have been LOADs of help, Echo made the original package, and helped me with some of the beginning stuff, and Tig helped with the animation, thats right, 'Tiggerypum-Animation'. It took us far too long to realize that yes, it won't move if its not assigned to bones... I was hoping to be able to create brand spanking new custom animations for it, cuz right now they just kinda melt into and out of the tire when they want to get in or out, but from a rather lengthy explanation by Wes_h, its not looking so good, but I'm still gonna try!

I'm hungry,...brb sandwhich.

Date Posted: 11th Dec 2007 at 5:13 AM

Sw00t, cool. I got another little magic plumbob guy. Now I has 2 gold shinies under my name. I was just thinking today that I wasn't going to enter any more contests. I don't have time for my other projects anymore. Maybe I'll keep entering them, dunno. Maybe I'll just scale back so I can collect all the stickers. I like the stickers. I have 2 gold ones and 1 silver one. ... My teeth still hurt.

Date Posted: 7th Dec 2007 at 1:20 AM

I had all four wisdom teeth removed yesterday morning. So much pain. The pain meds are luckily doing an alright job of keeping it manageable, but I wouldn't recommend the procedure to anyone who wants a Happy Holidays... Its not all terrible news though, since I'm stuck here in bed (jaw is swollen so much its messing up my equilibrium in my ears, I can't stand without getting dizzy) I've got nothing to do except sleep and sim. I'm working on creating some custom terrain paint from Maxis floors right now, I always hated having angular well-defined paths, so terrain paint is the way to go. Please make it stop hurting.

Date Posted: 2nd Dec 2007 at 9:40 AM

Ahh, time to relax. I'm off till Jan 7. Though, who am I kidding about relaxing? I'll prolly be non-stop sim creating till then. Ok, not really, I'm scheduled to have my wisdom teeth out on Dec. 5, and I do need to spend some time making Christmas presents, and Mom is having me take a course on indexing so I can help her with her jobs. And I have drawing homework. But aside from all that, I'll be here simming stuff. Maybe I'll actually play for a little while too!

Date Posted: 16th Nov 2007 at 8:09 AM

I got started early with my idea, and then school knocked me back quite a bit. I'm starting to think I might not have enough time to finish my project. I need to make 52 outfits, I've got three done. About half of them require at least some mesh work. Then I've still got alot of other work and problem solving yet.

On the school front, the quarter is starting to come to a close, meaning all the teachers are trying to get in as many more projects as possible. For Monday I need to have 5 shaded geometric shapes, and 3 photos and at least 3 sketches of clay geometric shapes, which I have to redo, most of the class made them wrong, teacher was vague. Then there is also the Final Project to worry about. No idea what else is getting assigned between now and then. In my other class I have to get my saturation project mounted, do the optical project, redo the contrast project, and continue on the leaf project. Luckily the leaf project is also the Final project. Oh, and document everything in my journal. Ok, 2am? Time to go to bed!