Väinö Mikhailov is really enjoying himself in downtown Veronaville. On Friday, when he arrived, Micah took him to the Comandgo Emporium where he bought him two pairs of shorts, to help him "fit in" better. While there he got into conversation with a boy from Bluewater called Julius Osprey, and they became friends. Then on Saturday Noah and Julius took him to gay venues PaintBoyz, and then Gaia. After that he went back to the Comandgo Emporium because he wanted to buy more sexy clothes! I suppose it's what one does when visiting Veronaville. A boy he'd met earlier met up with him at the Emporium, and came "home" to Greaves Avenue with him.



It's early days yet, but @pinkdynamite, I can't help thinking that red-headed Ben Strawson might be the boy whom Väinö eventually takes home to Portland with him. Väinö thinks it might be better if his dad doesn't see this picture. Väinö and Ben have a mutual crush on each other.

Considering that his name sounds Russian, I have to wonder if he's met the resident Russian royalty yet?

Brianna Landgrab's funeral home is booming! There were so many deaths in town last rotation that her funeral home ended up providing 7 burial services! Its perfect timing too because she and her daughter have birthdays coming up. It's always bittersweet seeing my sims age. I remember when Brianna and her siblings were born. They were given up to the foster system since their birth mother was a young teen who couldn't afford 1 baby, let alone a set of quadruplets. I was really hoping Brianna and her husband Shane could have a second child but it just never happened. It's okay, it'll make everything easy when it comes to passing down her business. She's expecting her daughter, Piper to take over eventually. It'll be interesting to see what aspiration Piper ends up rolling on her birthday.

With the business doing so great, Brianna's husband Shane is really able to focus on his creative passions. He's an artist so he loves to paint and has been learning photography. Brianna's mother in law Victoria was also able to quit her dead end job and instead help Brianna out at the funeral home. I wouldn't be surprised if you saw Piper restocking the flower arrangements on the weekends too.

I'm thinking a family trip to Simwaii is in order to celebrate not only their birthdays but how well the business is doing. And while they're away, they'll get some much needed renovations done. The kitchen will get gutted and upgraded, all new furniture where needed and she's also thinking of adding an art studio for the family. That way she can still make flower arrangements during the winter and Shane can keep his "creativity" contained and not spilling everywhere in the living room. Victoria likes to sew as well so it'll give her more room in her bedroom.

Brianna should really watch her spending because its going to be a while until there's another another "death boom" in the neighborhood. So don't even think about renovating the backyard too!

Ah, those days when your sims, raised from birth, turn into elders - always a bit emotional (and very special too)! On the one hand, you are happy, because they lived a long and hopefully happy life, on the other hand, the time to say good-bye is not that far away.

I recently started playing again, after quitting in early January.
For a while (before starting the game) I wondered what had happened in my little peeps lives until I realized that I was dealing with a time capsule and not TS4.
So what was I doing before I abruptly quit playing?
Wedding season is underway, some of my Sims have turned into elders (I've been avoiding it for the longest time, but now the grandchildren are starting to arrive), I'm going to appoint one of my sims as the Librarian and start a library with all the custom written books, I am building a shopping street with separate shops for different things like lamps, pots, christmas items, pets, etc. (just for fun, not actual use), I've been thinking about building or converting places for after-work hangouts since I've downloaded a visitor controller (I don't remember from where), I've been creating groups (using Nopke's Bigger groups mod) so that families where the children have moved out can get together without me having to invite everyone one by one (I've also been thinking about making one for everyone who has grilled cheese as their second aspiration) and I'm manually counting the sims life stage, careers, aspiration, zodiac sign etc.. so I can do some statistics, but I've been counting incorrectly so all the numbers are messed up. (Does anyone know how to easily get statistics from the game? Thanks.)
I think that's all

There's a way to do it using SimPE. https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=616359

After ten months mostly away, I seem to be picking up again with TS2.

My interest has been piqued by the North to Alaska challenge...it's a bit light on guidance, but I like the premise. I'm starting it in a nearly-vanilla test game, just to keep things simple (although I couldn't look at vanilla sims for long at all, so some defaults went in before I let any NPCs/townies spawn!)

It will give me some distraction for a short time, and then perhaps I will be ready to go back to my real neighbourhoods.

Hilariously, the point is to start with an empty lot on which nothing can be built or placed, plus one community lot with fairly minimal allowances. As an inveterate builder, I just spent two days creating two suitable community lots, so I have a little choice, and can see which works better.

Anyway, nice to open my game again at last!

Not yet. I think he may have passed one of the Romanov women ladies in the street, but they didn't speak. The Romanov that he's most likely to meet is Alexei, as the former Tsarevich does quite often go to PaintBoyz. Alexei is the only one of the Romanovs so far to buy new clothes since they arrived in Veronaville, but he hasn't exactly adopted modern dress -- the outfit he chose is a sailor suit, something he occasionally wore in Russia. However the sailor suit he chose includes the shortest pair of shorts known to Simkind! (It also includes quite long stockings, so not much leg is actually exposed. I'm not sure what Nicholas makes of his son's choice: quite glad he chosen something traditional, but. . .
As I know that in real life Alexei suffered badly from haemophilia, it worries me every time he goes near the dance sphere.

Väinö's surname is Russian, but his forename is Finnish, which makes me think his ancestors must have come from the borderland between these nations.

Väinö hasn't met any of the old Imperial family yet, but he has met your friend and mine -- Jack Gill. . .

Despite my break from the game, I'm still gaming! Well, you've gotta test the mods somehow!


I have started running a penitentiary for housing troublesome members of Pleasantview and beyond. There really are not many convict candidates since most members of the society are affable and don't do anything more wrong than simping and being infuriatingly stupid. Therefore, most convicts were victims of my cruelty, who should pray for their deaths and erasure, and some tourists whose cringe jokes led to them harassing locals and themselves alike...

The convicts were supposed to be milked with convict labors, but wellbeing of the warden and "officers" takes priority. All convicts thus spent most of their time Poking, Shoving and Slapping each other, before ending each spat with a fight only to restart the process 30 minutes later... I ended up playing favorites and banded half of them together so they could carry out the gardening duties I aimed to test a new mod on.

The "justice" side is led by Jeanne Burb and her 1st cousin Annabelle Pleasant. Tagging along are Laura the Former Grand Vampire, a families contractee menial slave for Guenievre's store and 2 sons of Annabelle. Jeanne Burb is a wicked witch and simply feasted on the noises of convicts demeaning each other. Annabelle joined the penitentiary because she thought Jeanne would be lonely otherwise. Her sons are homeschooled and benefited from my updated school works, and them rolling homework Wants every day was simply good of them. Jeanne and Annabelle worked hard to reach as far as possible in their careers, with Jeanne becoming the Head of SCIA\SKI5 in the end.

Marque Burb arrived in the end, and he struggled to befriend other convicts before their terms would be served in addition to repairing his relationship with Guenievre. Marque is most likely to spend what little left of his life here, willingly. Him being in jail will help rein him back into the families and he most likely will enjoy the Pleasant-Burb privilege, even behind the bars.


The convicts, having served their terms, were forced to live through another 15 days so they would meet their ends sooner. 2 teenagers perished as they literally fought to death from starvation, and so did another elder tourist I liked yet failed to get him to pass away in the gold. Thus, 2 cranky dudes carried on with the gardening, aided by my newly-concocted Faster Gardening(, Damn It!) mod. They enjoyed spending only an hour every day tending all those 20 plots and had more time to get to work and write a restaurant guide each, compare to 4+ hours and no time for skill building or friendship of before!

I think that he'd be more concerned about his son going to a gay nightclub lol.

I feel sorry for Jack (for once lol). Ousted out of bed at midnight to do chores for people who couldn't be bothered paying for a repairman. Shame upon them.

Soleil Aspir surprised me by suddenly rolling a want to adopt a kid a few days before turning into an elder, so I had her and her wife Amaya adopt a baby. It was a girl, who got the name Aurora.
Aurora's youngest older brother Ilya became a teenager. He rolled to be a romance sim, like 90% of the sims around here, but I fumbled with the randomizer so to compromise he got family as a secondary aspiration. I then realized I could give secondary aspirations to others as well to get some variety between all the romance and pleasure sims. First I tried randomizing that too and ended up with two pleasure secondaries and the rest to have no secondary. So much for variety. But I decided long ago that once I started using secondary aspirations in the apocalypse challenge I would choose them freely while still rolling for primary, so I disregarded all that. Romance sim Giorgio still got a pleasure secondary though, and pleasure sim Nikolai got romance, because it just felt right for them. Then I had romance sim Saria Bell get popularity, because she's always up to make friends, and Paulette Aspir, also romance, got knowledge.

Luca Jocque married Sophie Dallas and they had a daughter, Marlene. She was born right before her older sister Delphine (Luca's daughter with the late Caryl Chung) became an adult. Most other sims in that generation also became adults. Nikolai had an aspiration breakdown seemingly out of nowhere. Giorgio became enemies with former child townie Amy Bendett for some reason, which is inconvenient since she's his brother Ilya's best friend, and the two got into a fistfight at Saria's birthday gathering.

Saria's old parents moved in with Luca and company, and her aunt Miriam moved into Soleil's household, while Saria stayed at their house, and Giorgio, Paulette and former townie Trevor Haggerty moved into to become her roommates. Trevor and Giorgio fell in love.

Levi Aspir and the music and dance hobby instructor fell in love. I've never even been to that hobby lot with Levi, so they've managed that autonomously while I've been there with other sims. Unfortunately Levi's roommate and best friend Luca is enemies with her, just like he was enemies with Levi's last romantic interest Sadie Bruenig.

Just got back into the game after hiatus as a result of starting a new business IRL.

I forgot to install Fraps on this new rig (finally using a desktop instead of laptop; school board auction PC paired with DA’s office auction monitor, lol) but it’s nice to see Lily bonding with her adoptive parents. Basically the same place I left off, but it never gets old (to me anyway)

Happy endings are cool. Especially when Lilith (according to the story I wrote for her) she was the victim of horrible abuse. Can’t wait to free Angie from DJJ so they can be reunited.

Edited because the first time didn't include the picture.

Keller family is dealing with death of Hank.
Two of his three adult children are doing ok-ish. Emily is now dating a townie named Adrian McCarthy. She has wanted to re-marry and have more children since the moment Grace was born but never had time for romance. She is sad that Dad won't ever meet Adrian or their future children as he always tried to set her up with random dudes he brought home from work. He would be happy that she found someone.
Cherry and her husband Tyson adopted a toddler. They have biological daughter Kai but are too old to have more children and Tyson really wanted at least two. Cherry was reluctant at first but she is very happy with how things turned out. The game gave them a girl named Kelly, and, even though they now have two toddlers and things are overwhelmingly hard, their family feels a lot more complete. The only thing is, they now have less time for Pedro the dog, but Jake's shelter has a adoptable small dog, so they might get him a company.
Speaking of Jake, he is not doing well. His everyday life is filled with household chores and shelter work (even though there is only one dog currently at shelter) and he has little energy for anything else. He started an affair with Lyla. He knows its inappropriate to woohoo with his father's widow but all his other prospective relationships have come crushing down. Leopold is dead. He has low chemistry with all the townies he had ever met. He tried to go after Gerry Romm but was rejected (and being with your dead lover's son might be even more inappropriate). Don't come at him. He is just depressed. At what if Emily marries and moves out with Adrian? Having company and responsibilities is what keeps Jake from crying 24/7.
As for Lyla, she is not proud of herself either. But she doesn't want a real romantic relationship with Jake, she just needs to keep that aspiration bar high enough to show up for her kids. Hank's ghost showed up one night and scared her almost to death and she suspects it's because of the affair. But ghost should cut her some slack. HE was the one that died during their daughter's birthday party and left her alone. She now has to deal with private school applications, homeworks, dinners, pet care and all the other stuff that used to be Hank's job. Rude, really.
Liv is now a knowledge teenager. Lyla threw her a roofraising pool party (that she knows how to do) with all their friends and family members, and Liv grew up well. That's great news, but she still misses Hank. His ghost showed up to her as well, and, unlike her mother, Liv finds it cool. She now knows that her Dad is still around AND that paranormal exists! If ghosts are real, maybe werewolves are! Maybe she could turn into one! Would she be able to talk to Scout, her dog that way? Oh, the possibilities...
Lyla does not understand this obsession with dogs or the paranormal and that makes her even more angry at Hank. Liv is so like him, how is she suppose to parent her all alone? Does she look like somebody who can discuss aliens and zombie apocalypses?
Lotta, on the other hand, Lotta she understands. That is a popularity sim in a making if there has ever been one. Growing up badly (because of Hank!) will affect her but hopefully not cause lifelong issues. Lotta is funny and charming, and likes to chat with people. Her most complex problem these few rotations has been the fear of jumping in a pool, and Lyla knows how to help with that.

In Duma Key, there was another engagement, of two people who have been each other's bestie since they were small:

Jennifer Pleasant and John Burb.

I do believe they have always been fated to marry one another because while others exist, these two have never strayed far from one another.
(so canon is still kicking in)

I've been staying away from sims 2 because it was such a chore for my laptop to run it, but lately we've realised this laptop is not gonna last that long, so I'm playing til it finally dies. I've built a small neighbourhood with mainly one-floor villas, I have some defaults and some mods I didn't feel I could do without, but otherwise it's very clean to be one of my saves. So far, it's been a very drama free neighbourhood. One of the founders, Kelly Stakset, married Julien Cooke who came home with her after work one day, the other two founders, Esben Stakset (Kelly's brother) and Thalia Grusk both married random townies. The first teenager, Ramona Stakset, Kelly's CAS daughter, grew up and went to college, then came back with a fiancé, Omar tesa. They got married and are expecting their second child, their oldest, James, just grew to schoolchild. Ramona's cousin Sharona Stakset (Esben's CAS daughter) is also back from college and married a townie. They just had a little son who's name escapes me and adopted a dog. No ACR, so not much cheating, though Sharona's husband still caught her cheating because she had a stubborn slow dance-want that she needed to get rid of and he walked in on her when I had just directed her to slow dance with a male friend. I like Sharona and her husband, so I spent plenty of time working them up to "in love" status again before they had the baby. Today even my most chaotic household was an idyll - Alma Stakset was skilling up in a miraculously enough tidy kitchen (they can't afford a maid at the moment) and her husband Esben took care of their youngest son Sindre before he too went upstairs to skill some more. He aims to be a rock star, she wants to be a celebrity chef. Just a nice, relaxed time. But I'm so happy to be with my sims again!

A rock-paper-scissors craze is sweeping through Desiderata Valley. In other news, the apocalypse challenge's showbusiness and dance restrictions have been lifted. Not many more to go. Ilya Aspir has gotten five creativity points on the synthesizer, so according to my own conditions for the music restrictions, someone just needs to get five points by singing karaoke, which can be done as soon as Ilya's brother Giorgio lifts the entertainment restrictions providing access to the karaoke machine.

Giorgio's and Ilya's younger sister Aurora has become good friends with her cousin Marlene, which is sweet since apart from being very neat, they're polar opposites in terms of personality. Aurora is very shy, lazy, playful and nice, while Marlene is very outgoing, active, serious and grouchy.

The adults of the currently youngest generation have all moved together now, and they switched to the old Aspir apocalypse residence, a building meant to resemble a former office or something that the family used as their home during the apocalypse's early days. Back then, most of the building was inaccessible to meet the living space restrictions, but with them gone the new household suddenly had a bunch of space in the back that they made into a large hobby/activity/working room.

Luca Jocque got the Hall of Famer chance card about whether to speak up against the misuse of funds building a lavish sports facility in an underfinanced area of SimCity. There was no doubt in my mind he would speak up, and he ended up with a bonus as the sales of his autobiography skyrocketed. I've only gotten that chance card once before, and that guy also made the speech but got the bad outcome and was fired, after which I had him write a novel, pretending it was his autobiography in which he told his side of the story, and it ended up becoming a bestseller. So I thought it was pretty funny that the good outcome actually 'canonically' involved an autobiography.

Luca also bought this funfair kind of community lot that I made using a bunch of cool conversions by Jacky93Sims. And, to celebrate the dance restrictions being lifted, I also made a small nightclub. It's evident these people aren't used to that kind of thing, though. I got people to dance for a little bit but otherwise they were more interested in doing things like hanging out on the veranda blocking people from entering/leaving the toilet booths or playing catch on the dancefloor.

The blueprints for the first schoolhouse have been finalized! Construction will begin soon. Our goal is for the interior to be complete by the fall in preparation for the upcoming school year so the children don’t have to homeschool another semester. The volunteer schedule for construction will be posted on the community bulletin board. Of course we couldn’t have done this without the Landgraab’s generous donation of $70k. And a special recognition to Aaron Williams for helping with the design, without them none of this would have been possible.

Alice Williams and Emette Milad had a wedding celebration to remember! Everyone was invited! (Except Laura and Julian Ari, they’re still being shunned) It was probably the biggest wedding celebration in their community to date. (In the past, the church’s wedding celebrations were originally more intimate but as more members have joined, they’ve slowly become more extravagant.) But the Milads weren’t just celebrating their union, Emette and his parents, Jason and Kessi Milad had recently converted and wanted to include them to celebrate. No expense was spared! It was a catered event with a bartender and live music. (No surprise there, the Milads are probably the second wealthiest family in town. It's no coincidence the church wanted them to join. ) Congratulations to the Milad family and their newfound journey with The Order!

In a much more traditional wedding celebration, Janus and Halley Williams have also finally tied the knot. Little Venus was the flower girl and Phoenix was the ring bearer.

Newlyweds Malcolm Landgraab IX and Lyra Landgraab have recently welcomed their first child! Measuring at 21cm and 8lbs, baby Lyra Landgraab II may be named after her mother but she looks just like her father. Invitations for the reception to follow.

Congratulations to Bellatrix Williams, Aaron Williams II and Leo Ari who have recently graduated and will be heading off to Sim State in the fall. Bellatrix Williams hopes to continue to pursue dancing, Aaron will be majoring in biology and Leo will be studying culinary arts.

“Word on the Street….”

Looks like Lyra Landgraab’s constant nagging worked. Malcolm Landgraab IX finally gave in and agreed to donate the $70K to their church for the schoolhouse so that her family could score some brownie points with the leaders. Lyra’s parents are currently being shunned so she’s hoping a little cash might help the situation.

Malcolm’s been feeling stressed with all of these huge expenses recently. Along with the donation for the schoolhouse, Lyra wants to throw a huge party to celebrate their baby’s birth and he overheard her on the phone with a friend about planning a huge celebration for the school’s opening ceremony in the fall. Sounds like she’s trying to keep up with the Milads. Lyra and Alice did room together at Sim State so there's always been a playful competitiveness between the two…Looks like Malcolm better get to the store and make some money.

The church is planning a surprise send off party for the teenage trio before they head out for Sim State. (Everyone knows it's really for Bellatrix since she’s the leader’s daughter and because they’ve never done this for anybody else before)

It's autumn again in Emerald Heights which means that I have played this town for a full sim year. I have never done that in any of my previous hoods, so I am quite happy and excited.
Anyway, town is going through changes. It's still an election season after the death of previous mayor Hank Keller, but the new mayor will be called at the end of the next rotation. Adult playables are growing old one by one, and their oldest children are entering colleges. First born in game sims are turning into teens. And world is expanding as new college towns, downtowns and shopping districts are added.
Students can now attend thee universities: Twikkii State University that specializes in Marine biology and cultural heritage studies, Fourtlake Tech that specializes in all things trees (from hugging them to exploiting their resources; in other words from philosophy to economics) and EH Community College that is here for sims who want to stay close to home.
On a Tiwakki island, a neighboring community to Twikki island we all know, a new biodiversity research and protection center is developing. Soon they will be headhunting for employees.
Fourthlake City, an urban business center close to Three Lakes and Fourthlake Tech is emerging. As a new attraction for startups and tech business, Fourthlake city is growing despite having three winters and an autumn for seasons.
We hope that the next year for Emerald Heights will be as fun and capturing as this one.

Julien and Kelly Cooke's family have been the most affluent sims in the neighbourhood of Minor, and Julien Cooke had made it to celebrity chef. I was just gonna let their oldest daughter Winona age up to teenager, then they were moving to a bigger house in the poshest part of town, and buying the local pub, the Hag and Hare. That's of course when a Lobster Thermidor caused a fire and the fire took lots of their stuff before the fire department got there - I managed to save the sims. Then Someone Stupid (Me? Yeah. Yeah, it was me.) forgot about their bills and the repo man took some crucial skilling items and an expensive counter. Then the chance cards were against us: Kelly lost lots of money on one, Julien got demoted on another. When it was time to move to the new house, they suddenly couldn't afford more than just the house, and some basic furniture and skilling items, so no community lot buying for a while yet!
In any case, Julien worked hard and is just back up to Celebrity Chef status, his wife are hopefully becoming a celebrity chef herself next time she goes to work. Winona has randomised as a knowledge sim (third one of the -ona:s in her family tree with the knowledge aspiration) and wants to max out seven skills, so she's working on her creativity now and selling her paintings to help saving up for the pub. Little Catriona will age up to school child next time I play them. The picture shows them in front of their new house, and I kept winona's speech bubble in, because it's amusing to me how well it fits: I forgot to pack her genie lamp when they moved...

In Duma Key:

Mr. and Mrs. Flamenco Caliente are pleased to announce the engagement of their beloved daughter, Nina to Mr. Don Lothario, son of Mr. and Mrs. Nicolo Lothario.

The happy couple will be married after they have graduated from college. The groom to be is majoring in history and the bride to be is majoring in culinary literature.

I ran into an old friend that made me throw out an old hood:


Last time, I didn't know how the game worked very well under the hood. This time I do.

So, I did some digging. See those notifications? Those are the object numbers of the objects the sim has tried to look at.

Do a bit of digging and:


Now, these objects were in the last save, and this one. I have the culprit (or two of them anyway.) and have now stopped those objects from causing the squished icons.

Are they not corruption, then? How did you stop them?

I also wondered for a while why an old friend of yours made you throw out an old hood lol.

I meant the bug as an old friend, not a person. :P

As for how, it's easy. Just simply follow the functions. To explain this simply, let's start at the interaction itself, we can see it calls the "Show Something" BHAV, this BHAV is what gives you your thought bubble icon when looking out the window:


Going into that function we can see the first thing it does is run the Show Person Away BHAV:


Looking inside this function though, we can see already that it's unlikely to show a corrupt sim - as in most cases corrupt sims either can't be found or have invalid data which may prevent spawning (there may be exceptions). This function however, only checks for sims on the lot. As you can see here:


It's using set to next person, which tldr means find a sim on this lot. It checks for sims that are out of world (E.g, at work, gone jogging, etc.) and for any sims that are outside. In any case, it'll be a sim on your lot - whether out of world or actually outside.

If that function does not return an icon it will then start checking objects outside (Room set in temp 0, which is first set to 0, therefore, outside):


This is where the missing icon was coming from, as it was finding objects which do not have an icon. So, when it tried to show it it reverts to the squished icons.

You can see Maxis already added a check for object categories, where if the object is in a particular category it is skipped and the next object is checked. In this specific case the problem is they did not add the modular staircase to this category check.

So, I simply added that:


And bobs your uncle - the modular stairs will no longer be considered for a thought bubble and you shouldn't see the "squiggly lines" again unless another object has a broken icon.