Late Starting Saturday
Feb. 19th, 2022 11:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYeah, straight from waking up at 10:15 AM, then taking til nearly eleven to get up and get my breakfast made (another parfait, as we have plenty of granola for a change), then needing to change my sheets and -- it was after noon when I got dressed! I mean, it's relaxing in a way, but also a little stressful when that translates into all your shit starting later and later in the afternoon. . . Fortunately, despite my late start, I did complete my to-do list:
1. Edit Chapter 4 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica’s Vale Of Tears”: Check – I’m past the halfway point, page-count-wise! So that’s good, at least. . . Anyway, Alice has successfully found Lily hidden away in a locked room and freed her from her bonds (leading the death of one Phil), and then slammed Vandal up against the wall when he protested. So now Lily’s safely back with E and his group, and Alice is feeling a little better about life. :) Left it off at the next scene break, with her going to see Mercurio to ask if he knows anything about the missing Carson. . .tomorrow night, we at least start the Gimble sidequest!
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and watch at least Plumbella’s videos in the Watch Later: Check – even got in a bonus video! Though it all took a LOT longer than I expected – but as stated, it’s been that sort of day –
A) Started with a video from Carl’s Sims Guides, actually, summarizing the My Wedding Stories Livestream – how wedding events work, the new world, an example of a wedding, all of that. Carl was rather unimpressed, feeling like the game pack didn’t actually offer that much in terms of new gameplay. The new world is pretty, and the slow-dancing is nice, but as he pointed out, at least some of this should have been been in the BASE GAME, or at least added much earlier. Personally, I like some of the ideas, and the fact that the wedding events are kind of a hybrid of holiday and party – rather than having reasonably random goals come up – but I get the feeling this is gonna be a “wait and see” pack for me.
B) Then it was over to Plumbella in the Watch Later for her take on the new game pack:
I. “The Sims 4: My Wedding Stories Honest Review” – Plumbella reviews her Early Access copy of the pack! In a nutshell, she thinks most of CAS is good (though the “rainbow” swatches on some of the dresses are a bit much), but she doesn’t like how the only veil is part of two damn near identical hairstyles, and that some of the masculine full-body outfits are only differentiated by hats that should be on their own – also, again, not nearly enough stuff for masculine-frame Sims; Build/Buy is pretty great and she had a lot of fun building a custom wedding venue; the world of Tartosa is pretty but could use more collectibles and general interactive bits (she doesn’t even mind having more rabbit holes if necessary); and the gameplay is – BUGGY AS ALL HELL. Getting two Sims married at City Hall was damn near impossible; she couldn’t figure out how to buy or make the new, big wedding cakes that come with the pack; the wedding itself glitched out enormously (they wouldn’t get married, and when they finally DID exchange rings, it got stuck in a loop for a while); and she couldn’t even get drama by inviting one groom’s pregnant lover to the wedding – she cried, but only from happiness. She also didn’t like that everything was so micro-managed, and a lot of the other events (bach party, engagement dinner, rehearsal dinner, etc) are really similar because the list of activities you can choose for them is very small. O.o Also no custom buffs or rewards! What the hell? Where are my free appliances for having a good wedding, game? *grumbles* Yeah, I think I’m gonna wait on this pack, see what modders do to spice it up first, then get it on sale – the world looks worth having as a vacation spot, at least, and I like some of the suits in CAS and the stained glass windows in Build/Buy – but damn.
II. “My Wedding Stories but if it breaks, I quit the game” – inspired by a video FakeGamerGirl did about ending a video the moment Sims 4 experienced a glitch, Plumbella decided to apply this principle to My Wedding Stories! She loaded into a pre-made family in the game that needed to get married, planned the ceremony over the phone, kept it EXTREMELY simple, and then had it start.
. . .Nothing happened. She gave it one more chance, but still nothing. Wedding never happened, Plumbella had to exit the game and end the video, laughing despairingly over the glitches. The video itself was two minutes and 21 seconds, but the actual time spent in Sims? Well, who knows how long in reality, but gameplay (such as it was) took up only about a minute. *facepalms so hard* This game. . .
III. “My Wedding Stories is almost as unhinged as I am” – Plumbella decides she will fight against the buggy nature of the new pack to marry a couple of her fictional boyfriends! She downloaded herself, Mr. Darcy (with his sister Georgianna), James Potter, and the Black siblings (Sirius and Regulus), set James Potter as her first fiance, Regulus as her brother (as she doesn’t really like HIM romantically), then bought one of the empty lots in Tartosa, set down a styled wedding room, then married James! With a lot of really painful glitches, of course. She then promptly divorced him and set about wooing Mr. Darcy on one of the Wedding Venue lots, doing some goofy dancing (and some slow dancing, which GENUINELY looks good) to win him over. And then Sim!Jesse REJECTED Darcy’s proposal – real-Jesse was like “what are you DOING” XD Fortunately Darcy totally accepted Sim!Jesse’s proposal, and the two promptly got married at the lot they were on – though, again, had to fight through all the glitches, and a lot of looky-loos wanting to take up everyone’s time with chatter. But Darcy and Sim!Jesse eventually did exchange rings and vows, and then attempted a “spousal kiss” with Georgianna looking on. . .which proved very embarrassing as at least one version of that kiss is a VERY broken version of the dip kiss, in which lips never even touch. XD Jesse was laughing about it because, well, that’s all you CAN do in this instance, isn’t it? Ah well. . .
C) Then, after supper and cookies and all of that, it was time to catch up on the Subs! First up, Call Me Kevin and some truly chaotic Sims 4 nonsense – moving an entire neighborhood’s worth of people into the same tiny apartment in San MyShuno (Jim’s original home, in fact!). With the Chaos Mod on. Yeah, the episode STARTED with people randomly catching on fire, and it just got worse from there. You had people being sick all over the floor, babies being taken away, people turning randomly into new occults (one particular bathroom prisoner became a skeleton, and Jim himself spent some time as a mermaid on dry land), people becoming Possessed by the Mother and breeding new deadly diseases within themselves, a fire every five minutes, random chickens turning up to live on the lot, people burning to death, people freezing to death, the Grim Reaper joining the family, the replacement Grim Reaper showing up in a gnome outfit – the madness never stopped! It got so bad that Kevin wasn’t able to save his game for the longest time because of all the death – and when he finally DID get a chance to click the button, the game refused to save. The Sims 4 has its limits, and Kevin is all of them. XD
D) And then we had GrayStillPlays and Cities Skylines, where Gray used a map of the United States to create a city of pain. Literally – first thing he did was write the word “PAIN” in raised terrain across the entire map. XD This was rapidly followed by setting up living space along each major highway; putting down FIFTY MILLION WIND TURBINES BECAUSE IF HE HAS TO SUFFER SO DO YOU PEOPLE; creating dams between the P and A to break down later; shooting everyone’s sewage into the drinking water; refusing to build schools and only building ONE fire station so that the city was a tinderbox waiting for a match; and allowing disease to spread rampant. And then got down to ground level and watched as fifty million ambulances raced around the streets at all times (because whole neighborhood blocks kept dying) and the buildings kept catching on fire. It got so bad that a randomly-generated tornado refused to actually come anywhere near the city. Gray had to try and kill everyone via super-tsunami. . .and even THEN people insisted on moving in! It seems that PAIN is truly unstoppable, even for Gray.
3. Either play Sims 4 and work on making a better save with better community lots,or play Unpacking and get through the final level: Check on the first – after checking the status of my mods, patching my game, and restoring my mods and CC because I can’t go into the Chill Save without those, lest Smiler be nekkid in their dark form, I set about upgrading the save’s community lots! Here’s what I accomplished this time around:
Britechester – Pepper’s Pub is now PLUMBELLA’S Pub, as I downloaded her “British Pub” replacement for that lot. This one actually has a VARIETY of activities upstairs, who would have thunk? I also now have Plumbella’s version of Laurel Library, which is very nice – I did spruce it up a bit with an outdoors chess table and a soccer ball to kick around in the back garden. (Also added more lights to both lots, as they were rather dark in the “evening” setting.) Both Foxbury and UBrite’s Commons are now CatSaar’s updated versions – the new Darby’s Den looks like a bit of a castle, and has much more space for dining, debate, and listening to students on the mic; while the new Larry’s Lagoon has a full-on robotics lab upstairs, a basement cafe, and even a student laundry! I put in some of Snowy Escape’s proper vending machines into both, along with recycle bins. :)
Magnolia Promenade – The terrible “retail” neighborhood that came with Get To Work is now less terrible – thanks to me! :D Yes, I actually added my own two restaurants in here – the Ice Cream Conery and Optimist’s Bowl-N-Skate! :D The Bowl-N-Skate I didn’t do anything with beyond rotating it to face the “right” side of the road, but the Ice Cream Conery got updated with a new, fully-paved outdoor area, complete with a psuedo-busking area with the Freezer Bunny guitar, and some playground equipment – swings for children, a slide for toddlers, the cute fairy-tale tree dollhouse for both. :) Makes me want to actually VISIT this place!
Forgotten Hollow – I was wrapping up the session by this time, as making little updates to the lots was taking longer than anticipated – but as I’d been browsing my library, I’d spotted the “Bonewood Crypts” lot I’d downloaded from LifaSimmer after seeing it featured in one of Deligracy’s videos, and realized that it was probably perfect as a local community lot for that neighborhood. So I popped in and had it replace the blank residential lot, then reworked it a bit so instead of just being a “Generic” lot nobody would ever visit, it qualified as a park! This involved adding some chess tables and some monkey bars (as a park needs playground equipment for kids) – I then, just to give visitors more to do, stuck in a bit of tillable earth by one of the benches; put in the wishing well in one corner; stuck a nice easel up on the little crypt balcony; added some bookcases to the main crypt itself; marked out a wall mural in the basement level; and in the same place, put in a séance table because why not? XD Also a wild bird home and a wild rabbit home, just because. :) So now that’s a nice little vampire park, yay. This was honestly very satisfying, and I’ll probably take another day in the near future to replace another few community lots in other worlds to give my Sims better places to go. (Del Sol Valley is DEFINITELY next for a glow-up, especially with that shitty museum. . .)
4. Work on tumblr drafts and the next shipping meme: Check! Actually completed the next shipping meme – “Understand My Ship In 5 Minutes,” by GibSlyThe on Twitter – by poking at it both before and after lunch, and got it into my drafts on Victor Luvs Alice about mid-afternoon. :) So that’s all ready, and I’m hoping to get the pictures for Smiler’s next Chill Save update done tonight. :)
Not bad, not bad at all. Especially since part of me was worried we'd lose power this afternoon, what with snow squalls with high winds hitting us. . .all seems to be fine for the moment, at least! So here's the Sunday to-dos:
1. Continue the FO4 Playthrough Progression and edits on Chapter 4 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica’s Vale Of Tears”
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, clear out the Watch Later, and watch Jon's F:NV "Utter Chaos" video of the week
3. Play Fallout 4 and head back to Starlight before starting to move out toward Diamond City
4. Work on tumblr drafts
5. Get in a workout
Hopefully that's all doable -- probably help if I get up a little earlier tomorrow! XD We'll see. . .night all!
1. Edit Chapter 4 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica’s Vale Of Tears”: Check – I’m past the halfway point, page-count-wise! So that’s good, at least. . . Anyway, Alice has successfully found Lily hidden away in a locked room and freed her from her bonds (leading the death of one Phil), and then slammed Vandal up against the wall when he protested. So now Lily’s safely back with E and his group, and Alice is feeling a little better about life. :) Left it off at the next scene break, with her going to see Mercurio to ask if he knows anything about the missing Carson. . .tomorrow night, we at least start the Gimble sidequest!
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and watch at least Plumbella’s videos in the Watch Later: Check – even got in a bonus video! Though it all took a LOT longer than I expected – but as stated, it’s been that sort of day –
A) Started with a video from Carl’s Sims Guides, actually, summarizing the My Wedding Stories Livestream – how wedding events work, the new world, an example of a wedding, all of that. Carl was rather unimpressed, feeling like the game pack didn’t actually offer that much in terms of new gameplay. The new world is pretty, and the slow-dancing is nice, but as he pointed out, at least some of this should have been been in the BASE GAME, or at least added much earlier. Personally, I like some of the ideas, and the fact that the wedding events are kind of a hybrid of holiday and party – rather than having reasonably random goals come up – but I get the feeling this is gonna be a “wait and see” pack for me.
B) Then it was over to Plumbella in the Watch Later for her take on the new game pack:
I. “The Sims 4: My Wedding Stories Honest Review” – Plumbella reviews her Early Access copy of the pack! In a nutshell, she thinks most of CAS is good (though the “rainbow” swatches on some of the dresses are a bit much), but she doesn’t like how the only veil is part of two damn near identical hairstyles, and that some of the masculine full-body outfits are only differentiated by hats that should be on their own – also, again, not nearly enough stuff for masculine-frame Sims; Build/Buy is pretty great and she had a lot of fun building a custom wedding venue; the world of Tartosa is pretty but could use more collectibles and general interactive bits (she doesn’t even mind having more rabbit holes if necessary); and the gameplay is – BUGGY AS ALL HELL. Getting two Sims married at City Hall was damn near impossible; she couldn’t figure out how to buy or make the new, big wedding cakes that come with the pack; the wedding itself glitched out enormously (they wouldn’t get married, and when they finally DID exchange rings, it got stuck in a loop for a while); and she couldn’t even get drama by inviting one groom’s pregnant lover to the wedding – she cried, but only from happiness. She also didn’t like that everything was so micro-managed, and a lot of the other events (bach party, engagement dinner, rehearsal dinner, etc) are really similar because the list of activities you can choose for them is very small. O.o Also no custom buffs or rewards! What the hell? Where are my free appliances for having a good wedding, game? *grumbles* Yeah, I think I’m gonna wait on this pack, see what modders do to spice it up first, then get it on sale – the world looks worth having as a vacation spot, at least, and I like some of the suits in CAS and the stained glass windows in Build/Buy – but damn.
II. “My Wedding Stories but if it breaks, I quit the game” – inspired by a video FakeGamerGirl did about ending a video the moment Sims 4 experienced a glitch, Plumbella decided to apply this principle to My Wedding Stories! She loaded into a pre-made family in the game that needed to get married, planned the ceremony over the phone, kept it EXTREMELY simple, and then had it start.
. . .Nothing happened. She gave it one more chance, but still nothing. Wedding never happened, Plumbella had to exit the game and end the video, laughing despairingly over the glitches. The video itself was two minutes and 21 seconds, but the actual time spent in Sims? Well, who knows how long in reality, but gameplay (such as it was) took up only about a minute. *facepalms so hard* This game. . .
III. “My Wedding Stories is almost as unhinged as I am” – Plumbella decides she will fight against the buggy nature of the new pack to marry a couple of her fictional boyfriends! She downloaded herself, Mr. Darcy (with his sister Georgianna), James Potter, and the Black siblings (Sirius and Regulus), set James Potter as her first fiance, Regulus as her brother (as she doesn’t really like HIM romantically), then bought one of the empty lots in Tartosa, set down a styled wedding room, then married James! With a lot of really painful glitches, of course. She then promptly divorced him and set about wooing Mr. Darcy on one of the Wedding Venue lots, doing some goofy dancing (and some slow dancing, which GENUINELY looks good) to win him over. And then Sim!Jesse REJECTED Darcy’s proposal – real-Jesse was like “what are you DOING” XD Fortunately Darcy totally accepted Sim!Jesse’s proposal, and the two promptly got married at the lot they were on – though, again, had to fight through all the glitches, and a lot of looky-loos wanting to take up everyone’s time with chatter. But Darcy and Sim!Jesse eventually did exchange rings and vows, and then attempted a “spousal kiss” with Georgianna looking on. . .which proved very embarrassing as at least one version of that kiss is a VERY broken version of the dip kiss, in which lips never even touch. XD Jesse was laughing about it because, well, that’s all you CAN do in this instance, isn’t it? Ah well. . .
C) Then, after supper and cookies and all of that, it was time to catch up on the Subs! First up, Call Me Kevin and some truly chaotic Sims 4 nonsense – moving an entire neighborhood’s worth of people into the same tiny apartment in San MyShuno (Jim’s original home, in fact!). With the Chaos Mod on. Yeah, the episode STARTED with people randomly catching on fire, and it just got worse from there. You had people being sick all over the floor, babies being taken away, people turning randomly into new occults (one particular bathroom prisoner became a skeleton, and Jim himself spent some time as a mermaid on dry land), people becoming Possessed by the Mother and breeding new deadly diseases within themselves, a fire every five minutes, random chickens turning up to live on the lot, people burning to death, people freezing to death, the Grim Reaper joining the family, the replacement Grim Reaper showing up in a gnome outfit – the madness never stopped! It got so bad that Kevin wasn’t able to save his game for the longest time because of all the death – and when he finally DID get a chance to click the button, the game refused to save. The Sims 4 has its limits, and Kevin is all of them. XD
D) And then we had GrayStillPlays and Cities Skylines, where Gray used a map of the United States to create a city of pain. Literally – first thing he did was write the word “PAIN” in raised terrain across the entire map. XD This was rapidly followed by setting up living space along each major highway; putting down FIFTY MILLION WIND TURBINES BECAUSE IF HE HAS TO SUFFER SO DO YOU PEOPLE; creating dams between the P and A to break down later; shooting everyone’s sewage into the drinking water; refusing to build schools and only building ONE fire station so that the city was a tinderbox waiting for a match; and allowing disease to spread rampant. And then got down to ground level and watched as fifty million ambulances raced around the streets at all times (because whole neighborhood blocks kept dying) and the buildings kept catching on fire. It got so bad that a randomly-generated tornado refused to actually come anywhere near the city. Gray had to try and kill everyone via super-tsunami. . .and even THEN people insisted on moving in! It seems that PAIN is truly unstoppable, even for Gray.
3. Either play Sims 4 and work on making a better save with better community lots,
Britechester – Pepper’s Pub is now PLUMBELLA’S Pub, as I downloaded her “British Pub” replacement for that lot. This one actually has a VARIETY of activities upstairs, who would have thunk? I also now have Plumbella’s version of Laurel Library, which is very nice – I did spruce it up a bit with an outdoors chess table and a soccer ball to kick around in the back garden. (Also added more lights to both lots, as they were rather dark in the “evening” setting.) Both Foxbury and UBrite’s Commons are now CatSaar’s updated versions – the new Darby’s Den looks like a bit of a castle, and has much more space for dining, debate, and listening to students on the mic; while the new Larry’s Lagoon has a full-on robotics lab upstairs, a basement cafe, and even a student laundry! I put in some of Snowy Escape’s proper vending machines into both, along with recycle bins. :)
Magnolia Promenade – The terrible “retail” neighborhood that came with Get To Work is now less terrible – thanks to me! :D Yes, I actually added my own two restaurants in here – the Ice Cream Conery and Optimist’s Bowl-N-Skate! :D The Bowl-N-Skate I didn’t do anything with beyond rotating it to face the “right” side of the road, but the Ice Cream Conery got updated with a new, fully-paved outdoor area, complete with a psuedo-busking area with the Freezer Bunny guitar, and some playground equipment – swings for children, a slide for toddlers, the cute fairy-tale tree dollhouse for both. :) Makes me want to actually VISIT this place!
Forgotten Hollow – I was wrapping up the session by this time, as making little updates to the lots was taking longer than anticipated – but as I’d been browsing my library, I’d spotted the “Bonewood Crypts” lot I’d downloaded from LifaSimmer after seeing it featured in one of Deligracy’s videos, and realized that it was probably perfect as a local community lot for that neighborhood. So I popped in and had it replace the blank residential lot, then reworked it a bit so instead of just being a “Generic” lot nobody would ever visit, it qualified as a park! This involved adding some chess tables and some monkey bars (as a park needs playground equipment for kids) – I then, just to give visitors more to do, stuck in a bit of tillable earth by one of the benches; put in the wishing well in one corner; stuck a nice easel up on the little crypt balcony; added some bookcases to the main crypt itself; marked out a wall mural in the basement level; and in the same place, put in a séance table because why not? XD Also a wild bird home and a wild rabbit home, just because. :) So now that’s a nice little vampire park, yay. This was honestly very satisfying, and I’ll probably take another day in the near future to replace another few community lots in other worlds to give my Sims better places to go. (Del Sol Valley is DEFINITELY next for a glow-up, especially with that shitty museum. . .)
4. Work on tumblr drafts and the next shipping meme: Check! Actually completed the next shipping meme – “Understand My Ship In 5 Minutes,” by GibSlyThe on Twitter – by poking at it both before and after lunch, and got it into my drafts on Victor Luvs Alice about mid-afternoon. :) So that’s all ready, and I’m hoping to get the pictures for Smiler’s next Chill Save update done tonight. :)
Not bad, not bad at all. Especially since part of me was worried we'd lose power this afternoon, what with snow squalls with high winds hitting us. . .all seems to be fine for the moment, at least! So here's the Sunday to-dos:
1. Continue the FO4 Playthrough Progression and edits on Chapter 4 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica’s Vale Of Tears”
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, clear out the Watch Later, and watch Jon's F:NV "Utter Chaos" video of the week
3. Play Fallout 4 and head back to Starlight before starting to move out toward Diamond City
4. Work on tumblr drafts
5. Get in a workout
Hopefully that's all doable -- probably help if I get up a little earlier tomorrow! XD We'll see. . .night all!
