Oooo! Heaven's Peak is a journey through heaven. I love the views! I started my game with Meg this time. Jake, Ronnie, and Janet are in the game already, but Meg hasn't met them yet. I started working on a self-Sim, but am not happy with the result. I may create one of my alter-ego Sims instead from my Sim 1 days. Tammy Yaya would fit in nicely in this world.

Meg moved into a perfectly situated Victorian with gorgeous views of the mountains and the ocean. Her home sits on a cliff, overlooking the ocean.

Ooh! I love that Nymph gets to explore some more! I should send you my house I built the house I grew up in and plonked it in the game.

Meg only had $58 left over after buying her house, so she headed out in search of collectibles. After making a wide circle around her house, down to the beach and back, she came to a pretty park across from her house and fished for a while. That helped. Below are some screens of things she saw.

At the end of the evening, she found the place with the marsh grasses. It was a magical spot and she found some mushrooms. And I found a horse, already!

That would be awesome!

Meg had a great couple of days. She went to the library to get a book out on cooking and met Jake. He sells antique books in the library's lobby. Meg immediately stepped behind the counter and began talking to him about books. She wasn't going to buy anything because she didn't have any money, but she figured it was ok to look. Then she regaled him with a local legend.

She went home and cooked a new dish and then went to sleep, dreaming happily of books. The next day she learned about the Llama transportation system and went out to the place with the tall mushrooms and grasses to hunt for mushrooms and to try some fishing. The following day, she spent the day fishing in a larger park and cooked tofu pups on the community grills for the first time. Her fishing earned her enough to purchase an easel.

Included is a shot of an ice cream truck chugging up a very steep hill. It did it!

I've mentioned in other threads that the weather's been oppressively hot here for a while. My torpidity has impacted my posting, Comic-writing, and world-testing -- basically it has often been too hot to Sim, except very late at night.

During the break in filming, Janet and I continued having our long talks about everything.
But we dress for the weather, when it is just us.

The rest of this post will be a further report on our Library visit, in which we try some hidden rooms; and also, some time at the beach.
CAVEAT #1: The version of Heaven's Peak used here has been overtaken by a newer one.
CAVEAT #2: I wasn't running with World Adventures, which is known to be needed by this world.
So this isn't so much a useful Test Report, but more like a Letter Home to the Fangirls.

Now, about the beach: I recalled from a while ago that there had been some kind of glitch when my Sims entered the water to swim, but I'd only seen it once, and didn't remember the details, so I figured I'd better check it out.

Here, Janet is trying to explain to Jake what the problem is, and to suggest that they Go Swimming With... each other to examine it.


"There's no problem wading in. But I couldn't transition to actually Swimming."
"I guess I can take a look at it. Had you been trying boats or water taxis?"
"No, this was just regular Swimming. Hey Jake... ?"
"Yeah?"


"When we met uptown earlier, wasn't your hair longer?"


.
.


"That's an annoying subject for me right now. But I can help you test the water."

( ---- to be continued ---- )

Glad you like the world.

FYI: the library uses a bookcase door (the one from Supernatural). If you find it, you might have to pick it up and put it down in build buy before you can walk through ... for some reason, it bugs out if it's on a lot you place in edit town or just from exporting the world. I don't know which, I'll have to research it sometime.

I don't know if I mentioned it already but the world isn't finished lot-wise. Hannakand and The Maw are the two most noticeable on that front, so there's not much if anything you can do there right now.

After nearing halfway through the Young Adult stage, I figured it was time to settle down and take the relationship to the next level. Blake's long-term boyfriend proposed to her and of course she said yes. It was Janet's idea to have a bachelorette party and live a little but Blake was a little hesitant. Which leads us to Blake at a dance club at midnight watching a stripper and having none of it.



At least the other guests seem to be having a nice time. Even Fenton.



It wasn't long before Blake was convinced to have a few drinks and she loosened up. It seemed she had a little fun.



The wedding day went off without a hitch, here's Blake exchanging rings with Sam. The guests had quite an interesting reaction, Meg just had to play some soccer before the event and Janet cried profusely the entire ceremony. Nice.



"You may now kiss the bride"

...and more waterworks from Janet

Dylan Taylor

Your Sim is going through this stuff at a lightening speed! Cute family!

My Sims move more slowly. I just moved your Sim in with Janet and Ronnie, but if you'd like your new little family to be intact, then package them up and I'll move them into their own place, instead.

Meg has a new roomie She brought enough money for new beds for the two of them, but then I reduced their funds. They're just starting out, after all.

Here's my little family uploaded and attached! I think I'm going to take your advice and slow way down, Ver. Smell the roses as they say?

Fabulous! I'll move them into a home together next time I play. Do you want them in Glen Donnach, too?

Meg headed out to The Hollows to find more mushrooms. They sold for a nice little sum which would cover the cost of the daily bills and a little bit of food for the next couple of days. While there, she met Anna! They both talk with their hands. Anna lives in the marsh...so cool. Meg decided she'd go visit Anna soon.

@BlakeS5678 - I couldn't get your lil' family into my game....I put the package in Mods because it was the same type as the rest of the mods, but they didn't show up Would it be possible to package each one individually as you did your own Sim?

I got to spend some time outdoors with @Tsyokawe. In fact, we went to the very end of the Peak trail and a little farther on.

(I noticed that she had good sturdy shoes, and I got a similar pair in CAS before heading out. I did not want to be one of those Sims that goes places in wildly unsuitable gear, especially as I hadn't been that far up the mountain before & wasn't sure what the terrain was like, but I did know that I didn't want her to have to carry me back with a twisted ankle & have us end up in the OMG WTF thread.)

That's beautiful, Ronnie! I wondered what was up there...the summit, right? Nice shots!

A few more shots of Meg and Madison. Meg kept painting away and Madison hunted for shells and mushrooms until they had enough funds to buy a guitar for Madison. Madison was thrilled! She spent every spare second practicing while Meg continued to paint.

Jake commissioned a painting from Meg and paid her handsomely for it. It was one of her best and she almost didn't want to sell it. She hadn't seen Jake since that first week after she moved in, but they talked like old friends. On the way home, Meg saw Anna playing in the park and met Janet who was leading a protest. Meg decided that Janet was very interesting and that she needed to know her.

One of the local businesses offered Madison a tidy sum to talk to one of the villagers about their new technology. She smooth talked her way around Brett's objections and even got him to buy her lunch. She wanted to head to the beach to play guitar for the folks gathered there, but had difficulties getting out of the boat and then the ocean. She headed to the big park the next day to play for tips. Meg came to see her. It was a beautiful day and Madison played beautifully, but the park was empty. She wasn't discouraged, she knew she'd find her audience if she kept at it.

I think I should skip over our Library basement explorations, because we already know that a game without WA won't behave well down there. Perhaps Meg and I will visit those rooms again later, when I'm running a decent set of EPs upon Fenton's latest version of the World.

After the Library, Meg and I went down to the beach, where Jake and Janet were testing whether Swimming would work OK. With those two in shallow water near the shore, Meg and I undertook to build sand castles. This experience brought up a specific defect, not in the game, but in my personality.



Do you see how Meg just digs right in and makes something nice? That is the normal and healthy thing, but I'm very bad at it. I try to think of something to make, and the thinking gets in the way of the doing. I like sand, especially when it's just the right wetness for building. I ought to enjoy working with it. But I've gotten used to receiving a lot of Compliment Cleverness and I feel like my sand-sculpture should embody some interesting principle, or be somehow different or new, and I can't get into the proper Play In Sand mood.

It was the same thing with Play-Doh when I was in a Toddler School. By the time I could think of anything to make that wasn't trivial, it was time for us to put the stuff back in the can. And I wasn't even very good at that, because I had so much less practice handling the stuff than the other Toddlers who, well, handled the stuff.


See how happy Meg is? And she deserves it! Now, why can't I just get my hands into the sand and enjoy it like she does?

At last, an idea occurred to me that got me un-stuck:
"Meg, can I copy your design?"
"Sure!"
whew.

This is what Play In Sand should feel like! Now we were getting somewhere!



My sister and Jake, however, were not getting anywhere. It seemed to me that they had been treading water for quite a while. And, they had been treading the same water for all that time.



I ran to see if they needed help. But how (I hear you ask) would I avoid getting in the same trouble myself? On the theory that something about the "Swim" action was at fault, I entered the water with the intent to "Snorkel" instead. (It turned out to make no difference.)




Meg autonomously came in too, bless her.



We were now able to

1. tread water, and
2. watch one another tread water,

but that was really all. Other possible actions that were offered to us -- such as Splash, or Swim Here, or Go Home -- would simply disappear from our action queues without our having done them.

But there was one very important thing, as it turned out, that Meg could still do.




She could facepalm.

Doing this through the Pose Player -- and using Mikkusu's add-on so that the Sims didn't need to be on the same lot as the Pose Player -- allowed Meg to get un-stuck. She took the pose immediately (I had been worried that she'd need to wade ashore first, but no.) I am guessing that her elevation was set to place her feet at the level of the beachfront lot. In any case, now that she had been posed through the "Photo Shooting..." menu, she could also be Moved, and that is how I got her back on the shore.

Luckily, and for reasons I don't comprehend, moving Meg onto the land somehow un-stuck all of us. That is, once I moved Meg, then we other three appeared upon the beach near her, as if we had just waded ashore. It was as though our previously-attempted actions to get out of the water had finally been processed. Or something.



We were just happy to be there. Happy to be alive, and happy that we wouldn't be spending the night treading water.




"Why are you giving me that look?"
"This isn't a look. I'm just glad you're all right."




"Where did you learn to facepalm like that?"
"Oh frack, Janet, I've had so much practice facepalming."




I cannot stand to leave a game with my Sims all motive-stressed. So, everybody got showered & taken out to dinner at the Bistro -- indoors this time -- courtesy of the Comic studio, ka-ching.

I believe that my sheepish smile in this photo relates to my thoughts toward Jake. I noticed that he looks very nice in his Formal 1, right? But I could not Compliment Appearance because (a) it's illegal and (b) I didn't want him to think I had forgotten about fixing his hair.

I can see I need to get a pose pack. Ronnie, your shots are lovely and look so vibrant. My Sims have also been having a problem swimming at the beach. Madison typically loses a day whenever she tries and then will swim magically through the living floor at home when I click "come here" or something. Then she'll swim back to the beach, through the grasses and rocks, get out of the ocean, and run back.

I'm just about done playing with Meg and Madison for now. Meg's painting is starting to fetch good money and she's having a blast at it. One rainy day she took a break from it all and went over to visit Janet. She met Ronnie and hung out for the day. Madison went to the gym and had an audience of two and tips of $63 simoleans. There was a little girl there that was totally into Madison's music and kept rocking away and clapping. Madison later joined Meg at the DeNoube's for dinner and a little TV.

Madison may be the first candidate for romance. She's flirty by nature and while at the big park one day, she met the proprietor and felt an instant draw towards him. She quickly started practicing her charm which seemed like a good idea no matter how it turned out since he was the type of connection that could lead to some gigs.

Next, I'll quickly set up Anna and Tysokawe and then play some with Ronnie & Janet.

@VerDeTerre I might be totally crazy, but I believe the "Taylor Family" file I posted goes in "Electronic Arts > The Sims 3 > Library" not the Mods/Packages folder. Hope I could help!

It might! I'll give it a shot.

Yes! That did it! They're all together in my library now. Now I just need to download an affordable house for them or move the DeNoubes. Thanks, Blake!

Further pictures around the house & across the street.

What a pretty home!

The 502 house is lovely inside as well. I've moved a game into it. The first floor has a lot of details for which I think the right term is "Craftsman"? I feel like I can about run my hand over the wood.

Here we are watching the League of Legends championship:

I am not especially well-versed in League. But neither are some of the professional commentators (judging by Meg and Jake's outbursts), so that's OK. My point is, sometimes it is very pleasant just being domestic together.

I don't see it as grovelling because it comes from love rather than guilt. I would be pleased to grovel when appropriate, but I doubt he'd stand for it. Anyway -- the floors and furniture in that room are comfortable enough so, sure, wherever. :lovestruc

EDIT: I made that household too big: more Sims than beds. But the first night worked out OK, because there are pairs who are OK sleeping together even if they aren't, you know, "sleeping together"; also, whenever I tried to put Anna to bed she'd get up anyway to play computer games. I have the notion that usually Anna and I will do a lot of the cooking, but on this day, come breakfast time Blake got up to make the waffles and Anna took her bed. I'm sure we will get it worked out.