Satisfying Saturday
Jul. 6th, 2024 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickNo absurdly loud fireworks this evening; no feeling wound up for what seemed like no reason and all; and I accomplished everything I wanted to do and then some --
Tumblr: Still nothing happening over on The Valice Multiverse, but I kept up as best I could on the Victor Luvs Alice dash today, and got the Chill Valicer Save update for the week (featuring the end-of-summer weenie roast) drafted! Usual five posts – I got the main text and tags all completed before my Sim adventures below (completing four posts before lunch, and the final post after), AND I spent a little time this evening getting the image alt text done on the first post! :D So I have one out of five completely done – hopefully I should be able to finish off the remaining four tomorrow without too much issue!
Sims 4: Well, despite having the World’s Laggiest Sims Game today (at least in terms of frame rate), I actually got through a full day with the Chill Valicer Save trio! In only about two and a half hours too, which is good for me and a Sims session. What did they do? Allow me to tell you –
A) Picked up where I left off after all the building and redecorating the other day, which saw Alice making grape nectar in the new basement area; Smiler making mechanisms in the barn; and Victor chilling out in the séance room on the second floor. Having spotted some spooky hands and symbols down on the first floor that were upsetting the pets, I had Victor pop down there to deal with them (though I learned in the process he apparently can’t Transportalate directly into the first floor hallway – he has to go in through the study), then had him move the laundry out of the washing machine and into the dryer, fill the new pet feeders in the kitchen, and comfort a scared Kelly with pets and offers of friendship. :) He then got himself a nice breakfast of leftover pumpkin spice waffles while Alice finished up her grape nectar (poor quality, sadly) and plopped herself down for a nice wolf nap –
And Smiler, having finished off the last mechanism they needed, started work on a Servo! :D We’re finally gonna get the robot, yay! I am very much looking forward to it – I’ve never had a Servo in one of my families before. Good practice for possibly getting a Wheatley Servo for my potential Tiny Town challenge in the future. :p
B) Anyway – with Smiler occupied building up their new robotic family member, and Alice occupied with getting her zzzs, it was up to Victor to keep me occupied, and vice-versa. :p Having spotted a specter in the study while he was getting his breakfast, I had him go and give the ghostly blob a Potion of the Nimble Mind once he was done, which was received well and got him a nice little ectocake for later. He then calmed down Shadow, who apparently had been spooked by the specter’s appearance, grabbed the now-dry clothes out of the dryer –
And then, because I’d seen her poking around it before, took Shadow out to run the newly-rejiggered obstacle course! :D This took a couple of tries, mostly because doggo went out the wrong door first, but she got there in the end – and had a PERFECT RUN. :D She even did the obstacles in exactly the order I’d intended – poles, short hoop, curved tube, medium hoop, ramp, platform! I mean, she went up the ramp the wrong way (going away from the platform instead of toward it), but that’s probably my fault for placing it the wrong way around or something. XD But still, Victor and I were VERY pleased with this result. Shadow was more interested in chasing her tail and then going and chewing one of her balls. XD
C) While Victor was wrapping up with Shadow, Alice woke from her nap – I sent her to also get pumpkin spice waffles for breakfast (as they were the thing most likely to go bad in the fridge), which she did by going to the minifridge in the greenhouse. Because why wouldn’t she. *shakehead* Anyway, I decided this meant she could help Victor in the greenhouse, so once she was done eating and had put her dish away in the new dishwasher (and petted Surprise), I had her go help Victor with the weeding for a bit –
Which, uh, didn’t last long, both because Victor kept pre-empting her attempts to weed by hand with his vacuum, and because this is the point where the game started getting really laggy (just when it started raining in-game too, so I am mildly suspicious this had something to do with the weather. But I’ve had it rain in-game without tremendous amounts of lag before...). *sigh* Oh, and because Alice suddenly got really tense because her werewolf instincts were demanding she go outside. I thus had her instead go clear a twisted tendril from Moory’s pen, then chat with the cow while Smiler took a break from Servo-ing to feed the chickens and clean their coop. I also managed to remember that Victor had a bunch of animal treats in his inventory and had Alice take a chocolate treat to give to Moory (resulting in her getting a bottle of chocolate milk along with the regular milk), and Smiler a pumpkin treat to give to white hen Leghorna so she’d lay an orange egg later. I always forget to use those damn things, so here we are!
D) And then, immediately afterward, Alice started showering in the rain, because Erratic Sims. *sigh* I let her get on with it, as she WAS starting to trend downward hygiene-wise, and instead had Smiler try joking around with the rooster to give the chickens some attention. The rooster was not interested in their human humor today, though, so Smiler retreated to the greenhouse to chat with Victor – a decision made much more difficult by the fact that Victor was moving around a lot as he tended his plants (lot needed to be done in there today), and by the massive lag. *sigh* I eventually gave up and had Smiler harvest their plasma fruit, poison fireleaves, and noxious elderberries before sending them back to the chicken coop to get the eggs (two hatchable – immediately sold – and three normal, which I ended up forgetting to put in the fridge, whoops). They then fed Toothy, and bred the Whirlyflower and Spotted Dirt frogs in their inventories in hopes of getting the Dirtwhirl frog they needed for their collection – and to my delight, they did indeed get one! I quickly sent them upstairs to plop it into the right spot in their collection. :D They now just need a plain Heart frog and a plain Eggplant frog, and they will be DONE, yay!
While all this was going on, Alice finished her rain shower, so I had her collect her Delicate negative-moodlet-reducing bracelet from the charging grid and complete her Raw “find extra Simoleons doing chores” bracelet. :) She then shooed Phantom the fox away from the chickens before chatting with the hens – fortunately they were much more receptive to her today then Smiler! I then had her go and start repairing all the broken wind turbines in the wind farm (because, as usual, most of them were busted) while Smiler flew down joined Victor in the greenhouse to start super-selling all the produce as Victor finished his tending and did a little evolving. And then knee-walked his way into the house for a desperately-needed pee, poor guy. XD Sorry, Victor – I didn’t realize it was going to take so long to tend all the plants today!
E) Around this time, I had to stop Alice from running in and lighting the fireplace again (seriously, shouldn’t YOU of all people not want to do that?), which alerted me to the fact that we had a visitor – Felipe Sisson, hanging out on the front porch taking photos of Shadow after being sprinkled by one of the local specters. :p While I wasn’t originally planning on doing anything with visitors today, Smiler WAS feeling a bit thirsty, so I had them go out and greet him while I had Alice do some painting in the study and Victor, after having a bit of forbidden candy to boost his energy, go work a bit more on the piano song that’s been sitting in his inventory for ages. Smiler and Felipe had a nice chat, with Smiler learning that Felipe dislikes yellow but likes blue and works as a Waterperson for The Other Sports Team. *nods* This exchange of information and a bit of enthusing about humanity was enough to get Felipe to agree to give Smiler a drink, and they happily chomped down on his wrist for a nice glug before sending him on his way. If only all human interaction were that simple. :p
F) And with that out of the way, I decided “maybe traveling will help this annoying lag” and decided to have the trio spend the rest of their day at their San MyShuno grocery store! As I’m still determined to empty the damn thing after spending so long filling it. They arrived at around 1 PM to find it still raining (and still laggy, bleh) – Alice opened the place up while Smiler cleaned a particularly-nasty toilet in the bathroom and Victor headed down to the basement to do some potion-related experimenting on his work cauldron. Their first customer proved to be none other than B-Lister celebrity Holly Alto from De Sol Valley – though, because she was a celebrity, Alice couldn’t actually greet her. That honor went to the second customer through the door, Rita Coombes. XD The price of fame. Anyway, Alice chatted with her a while as more customers poured through the doors – Smiler, once done with the toilet, decided to concentrate on a visitor named Jules, while I eventually forced Victor to abandon his cauldron in favor of saying hi to Morgyn Ember (because spellcasters gotta stick together, even in retail). Alice eventually got Rita to buy a cherry for a few bucks –
And then, one Last Exception later, she was outside showering in the rain again. *heavy sigh* Oh, Alice… I am DEFINITELY avoiding making any future Alice Sims Erratic, this just isn’t her. Though I was at least able to use the opportunity to get her to change her outfit to one of her short-sleeved ones, then put on her new Delicate bracelet so she could take advantage of its mood-chilling properties. Made the damn thing, might as well use it!
G) Anyway – once Alice was done shocking the customers, I had her head back inside and into the break room, where Victor used Delicioso to conjure up a couple of salads for them to eat for lunch. Alice took the opportunity to read him some romantic poetry and get kisses in return. <3 Smiler, meanwhile, continued working the sales floor, closing the deal with Jules and greeting newcomer Kalama with a hug (I – have completely forgotten when Smiler met this Sim. ^^; On the other hand, Smiler is the Most Likable Sim in this save, so they make friends at the drop of a hat, meaning me forgetting when they made a friend isn’t exactly surprising…). We had a few more “out of the fridges/fruit and veg stands” sales while Victor and Alice finished up – Morgyn ended up buying a raspberry while two other customers, Eleanor and Clyde, bought a quill fruit and an orange egg respectively – then Jules and newcomer Mao indicated they wanted to make PROPER purchases. I had Alice and Victor ring them up respectively – Jules got a lovely Energizing Scent –
And Mao a Potion of the Nimble Mind! :D The first person to actually buy one of Victor’s potions! Sure, okay, it only sold for 12 simoleons, but it was free to make, and this family has plenty of money, so I don’t think anyone is complaining here. :P Just glad to see Sims WILL buy them if given the opportunity!
H) With that lovely sale under their belt, I had Victor and Alice continue chatting to and ringing up customers while Smiler cleaned up one of the salad bowls from earlier (Victor had put his in his inventory). Victor rang up teenager Aurelio for a Flirty Scent (for prom, perhaps?), while Alice ended up having a bit of a prank war with Kalama in between offering information and closing the deal (trading scares and “what’s that spots” :p). Kalama finally decided to buy something as another customer Victor was working on, Rangi, grabbed an apple from the fridge –
But when I tried to have Alice ring her up, for some reason KALAMA kept acting like she couldn’t get to whatever she was trying to buy. Like the shelf she was standing at was somehow in the way. Causing the interaction to constantly cancel out. O.o I had Alice go see to Holly Alto (now ready to buy herself) while I had Smiler attempt to ring up Kalama instead – however, before they could try, the fun store-specific lag (where almost everyone idles for a bit because I guess there’s just a little bit too much stuff going on) caused Kalama’s shopping bubble to time out, causing her to leave the store in a huff. *shrug* Sorry Kalama! We tried, I promise!
I) Anyway – despite that glitch, the trio continued having a good day in the store, running around making sales and keeping customers happy as best they could. Alice rung up Holly Alto for a nice expensive Inspiring Scent before going to to have a wolf nap in the break room (her instincts were demanding one), while a dude named Krishna bought some grapes from the fridge and Victor rang up two children, Karmine and Reese, for a box of custard and a commercial-sized sack of sugar respectively. XD Yeah, that feels like the sort of things kids would buy! Smiler meanwhile got a teenager named Noah rung up for a box of dried sage, and a woman named Judy for a box of cheese (because you gotta love cheese – not sage, though, my dad thinks it tastes like dirt). Victor then took a moment to Scruberoo one of the stands before ringing up a guy named Afu (with a similar haircut to Smiler – just brown with purple tips instead of black) for a box of fish cakes. Things were definitely hopping –
But they were also getting late, so I resolved to have the gang close the store around 9 PM so they wouldn’t spend the whole night at the store. I thus had Alice busy herself removing signs while Victor and Smiler spent the last few minutes of the shift sharing a big old embrace, prompting Smiler to decide they liked Physical Intimacy (as I have always pictured them as someone who likes hugs and cuddling, this felt very right :) ). A dude named Justin managed to snatch one last plasma fruit from the shelves before Victor officially closed the place up a couple of minutes later, leading to a final total of 16 items sold, for a profit of $5,506! Not bad for an eight-hour shift! :) I had the trio spend a bit of time cleaning up the store (scrubbing displays and getting spoiled food out of the fridge – and it occurs to me that this place should have a dishwasher too, someone remind me to buy one the next time I visit) –
J) And then it was back home around 10 PM! Where they were greeted by Shock, herself back from off-lot adventures for the day. :p I had Alice give the kitty some pets while Smiler went to scavenge the trash piles she’d created from her earlier attempts to repair the turbines for parts and Victor Repairioed the remaining turbines and one busted water collector. Smiler then got put on recycling duty (recycling all the various bits of trash in everyone’s inventories, the eggs they forgot to put in the fridge, some of the muckleberries and morel mushrooms in the household inventory, and a fancy Crystal Creations square shelving unit that I apparently forgot to delete out of the household inventory earlier) while Alice serenaded Victor. This put him very much in the mood, so I sent them upstairs to have a little woo and hoo while Smiler got put back to work on making their new Servo buddy (they’re up to the torso!). I ended up ending the playsession with Victor taking a post-woohoo pee while Alice decided to mop up the puddles outside because, again Erratic (hilariously, it started raining again on their lot the moment she decided to do so) –
K) But before I left the save file entirely, I took a moment to hit manage worlds and visit Newcrest – then popped into the Gallery and looked up Petey Plays It’s user ID. Because, you see, tomorrow in-game is Spookfest – and as I have plans to send the trio on a group date tomorrow (because it’s the Valice(r) Anniversary – 7/7, my preferred date for any Valice and Valicer weddings), I wanted an appropriate place for them to go. So I swung by Petey’s to grab their Haunted Museum lot from the “better museums” video of theirs I watched a little while ago! :D I have plopped that down in Newcrest not far from the Freezer Bunny arcade I made – it looks a bit emptier than I expected, but I’m hopeful I can jazz it up a little before the gang heads there tomorrow. Though that might depend a bit on my game NOT being a laggy mess...we shall see!
So yeah – this was a little unexpected, but I really DID want to get back to the store at some point and do another day there, so I’m happy that I was able to fit in a full day in the save instead of just a half. :) Hopefully the Spookfest Group Date tomorrow will also go relatively smoothly! Keep your fingers crossed...
Writing: I finished off Chapter 3 of “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of” today! :D I had a little over a page to go in the chapter, so I figured I might as well go straight to the end. Said end being Emily possessing Barkis, discovering he had electroplasm bombs on him, tossing one to Alice to help her with her “unwanted suitor raped my sister and then killed my family” problem –
And then using the other to blow herself and Barkis up. *wince* Yeah, Alice did not take that very well, and Victor and Smiler were pretty horrified too. And, of course, it’s only after the situation was resolved that the Bluecoats actually showed up…though as Chapter 4 will soon reveal, it would have been better for Alice and company had the cops never appeared at all…
YouTube: Finally achieved my aim of getting the rest of my Sims-related videos out of my Watch Later while also keeping up with Gray’s latest nonsense –
A) First up, another recent video from onlyabidoang – “The Sims 4: 50 MORE PACKS FEATURES You Might Not Know!” As you might expect from the title, this was Abi going over a bunch of stuff from packs that people might not know about. Some of the stuff I did already know (the special computer glasses and mech suit you can build in the two branches of the Engineering career from Discover University; the Mother Plant vines invading plumbing in StrangerVille if you progress the story past a certain point; the fact that lightning strikes can leave behind rare crystals, metals, and elements if you’re lucky in Seasons), but there were a fair few things I didn’t (the light-up signs from Get To Work can be updated with animations if your Sim has sufficient handiness skill! With Growing Together, Sims can look at their marriage certificates and “Reminisce,” with their reaction and moodlet changing depending on the state of the marriage! If you eat curry in City Living and then play basketball, your Sim will have enhanced skills as a nod to an NBA player named Curry! Bearcula the giant stuffed toy from Vampires doesn’t have a reflection! And if a Sim makes their money rain using the interactions from Get Famous in front of other Sims, they’ll try to catch the money!). So that was all cool – and very informative too! :D I’m gonna have to remember the sign thing the next time I go to the Van Liddelton Groceries store – Victor and Smiler should both have enough handiness to give the bakery cupcake sign some animations…
B) Then we had a video from The Red Plumbob – “♦️ Sims 2 vs Sims 3 vs Sims 4 : Photo Booth!” A comparison of the various photo booth objects we’ve gotten in the series, how they work, and who can use them. In my humble opinion, the Sims 2 version is the best due to having a proper interior, taking four photos, having the photos visible on the piece of paper the Sim collects out of the slot afterward, having kids be able to use it together and with older Sims, and having the best woohoo animations. XD Though I think Sims 4 is good simply because you can get a greater variety of pictures depending on what mood your Sim is in – the previous two generations had a very limited number of poses to remix. And Sims 3 gets a few points for the special seasonal festival photo tents where, apparently, whole families can take seasonal “greeting card” photos, which is cool. Basically every game has something to recommend it, but I still think Sims 2 is best. It’s just more fun when the actual object spins around from the force of the woohoo. XD
C) And finally, we had the GrayStillPlays video of the night – “Every time I crash CHAOS happens faster in GTA 5!” Yes, we had a return to the “Gray must find his way to various checkpoints across the GTA V map while also dealing with the fun of Alex’s version of the Chaos Mod” challenge today, with the twist here being that the timer for the chaos happening started off at the standard sixty seconds – but every time Gray crashed, that timer went down by one second (there was a grace period after each crash, but it was very short). Meaning, if Gray crashed enough, chaos could be piling up every second. Oh, and there were chaos effects that could speed up the timer independently of crashes, and of course the beloved “Combo Time” which granted multiple chaos effects at once. XD AND Alex and his team made sure that Gray HAD to use a car to get each checkpoint (basically they all required ramping in one way or another), so there was no getting around the whole mess by staying on foot.
Yeaaah, as you might imagine, Gray was SUFFERING throughout this entire video. XD I mean, I think he lost like five, six seconds just trying to get to the very first checkpoint, given he kept getting Combo Times and effects designed to make him crash as often as possible (like “DVD Screensaver,” which reduces the visible portion of the screen to one bouncing square, or “Ping-Pong Cars,” which make cars violently bounce off things when they crash). And the hits – literal and metaphorical – just kept on coming, with stuff like Gray getting the first checkpoint on a running track, only to immediately get “Turtle Time” (upside-down camera) and smack into a wall; Gray getting randomly teleported around thanks to a “Teleporter Malfunction” on the golf course – and discovering that it took his tetanus-riddled car with him, meaning it could crash into things without him even getting a chance to avoid it; Gray getting into the city streets – and getting the “Let’s wrap it up” effect that makes the credits roll as the screen goes black, forcing him to abandon his car because people kept crashing into it when he couldn’t see; Gray finding a checkpoint at a jump off the overpass, only to have his current vehicle replaced with a big old truck/bus thing while he was lining it up – he foolishly then got frustrated and tried to do the jump anyway with the bus, smacking into everything in his path and only abandoning this plan when he ended up with a 69% alcohol level and started weaving wildly; Gray finally making the overpass jump in a hilariously rusty old car – only to hit a recycling truck while landing and reduce his timer again; Gray finding a checkpoint that required him to ramp off a dumpster – and of course smacking into the dumpster on his first attempt; and Gray finally reaching the end checkpoint – only for chaos to be happening every damn second, making it very, VERY hard for him to actually GET there and make the jump. XD Oh, and his GAME kept crashing thorough the video as well, as this mod is NOT kind to PCs. XD But despite all this (and with the help of the occasional GOOD thing, like an epic save while racing down the hills toward the first checkpoint that kept him from crashing into a wall, and a chaos that actually made things FLY AWAY from him early on – I mean, he still managed to reduce the timer by hitting a fire hydrant, but still XD), Gray persevered, stole lots of cars, endured lots of chaos, and made it all the way to the end. Just proving that, with enough determination, you can survive anything! (In video games, anyway.)
*nods* MOST acceptable. I love it. And with that all under my belt, it is time for me to go to bed, so I can get up at a decent hour for the Valicer Anniversary. My must-dos for the day are to finish up as much of the image alt text on my Chill Valicer Save drafts on Victor Luvs Alice before lunch; play Sims 4 and have the Valicer Spookfest Group Date to the haunted museum; get in a workout; and keep up with Jon of Many A True Nerd's latest Sim Settlements 2 shenanigans. I would also like to start the editing process for posting the next chapter of "Start At The Beginning...Sort Of" and keep up with GrayStillPlays as well, but given the Sims 4 stuff may take up more of my day than anticipated, I am making those things optional to give myself more time for that if necessary. Trying to keep myself from getting too stressed here! We'll see if it works. :p Night all!
Tumblr: Still nothing happening over on The Valice Multiverse, but I kept up as best I could on the Victor Luvs Alice dash today, and got the Chill Valicer Save update for the week (featuring the end-of-summer weenie roast) drafted! Usual five posts – I got the main text and tags all completed before my Sim adventures below (completing four posts before lunch, and the final post after), AND I spent a little time this evening getting the image alt text done on the first post! :D So I have one out of five completely done – hopefully I should be able to finish off the remaining four tomorrow without too much issue!
Sims 4: Well, despite having the World’s Laggiest Sims Game today (at least in terms of frame rate), I actually got through a full day with the Chill Valicer Save trio! In only about two and a half hours too, which is good for me and a Sims session. What did they do? Allow me to tell you –
A) Picked up where I left off after all the building and redecorating the other day, which saw Alice making grape nectar in the new basement area; Smiler making mechanisms in the barn; and Victor chilling out in the séance room on the second floor. Having spotted some spooky hands and symbols down on the first floor that were upsetting the pets, I had Victor pop down there to deal with them (though I learned in the process he apparently can’t Transportalate directly into the first floor hallway – he has to go in through the study), then had him move the laundry out of the washing machine and into the dryer, fill the new pet feeders in the kitchen, and comfort a scared Kelly with pets and offers of friendship. :) He then got himself a nice breakfast of leftover pumpkin spice waffles while Alice finished up her grape nectar (poor quality, sadly) and plopped herself down for a nice wolf nap –
And Smiler, having finished off the last mechanism they needed, started work on a Servo! :D We’re finally gonna get the robot, yay! I am very much looking forward to it – I’ve never had a Servo in one of my families before. Good practice for possibly getting a Wheatley Servo for my potential Tiny Town challenge in the future. :p
B) Anyway – with Smiler occupied building up their new robotic family member, and Alice occupied with getting her zzzs, it was up to Victor to keep me occupied, and vice-versa. :p Having spotted a specter in the study while he was getting his breakfast, I had him go and give the ghostly blob a Potion of the Nimble Mind once he was done, which was received well and got him a nice little ectocake for later. He then calmed down Shadow, who apparently had been spooked by the specter’s appearance, grabbed the now-dry clothes out of the dryer –
And then, because I’d seen her poking around it before, took Shadow out to run the newly-rejiggered obstacle course! :D This took a couple of tries, mostly because doggo went out the wrong door first, but she got there in the end – and had a PERFECT RUN. :D She even did the obstacles in exactly the order I’d intended – poles, short hoop, curved tube, medium hoop, ramp, platform! I mean, she went up the ramp the wrong way (going away from the platform instead of toward it), but that’s probably my fault for placing it the wrong way around or something. XD But still, Victor and I were VERY pleased with this result. Shadow was more interested in chasing her tail and then going and chewing one of her balls. XD
C) While Victor was wrapping up with Shadow, Alice woke from her nap – I sent her to also get pumpkin spice waffles for breakfast (as they were the thing most likely to go bad in the fridge), which she did by going to the minifridge in the greenhouse. Because why wouldn’t she. *shakehead* Anyway, I decided this meant she could help Victor in the greenhouse, so once she was done eating and had put her dish away in the new dishwasher (and petted Surprise), I had her go help Victor with the weeding for a bit –
Which, uh, didn’t last long, both because Victor kept pre-empting her attempts to weed by hand with his vacuum, and because this is the point where the game started getting really laggy (just when it started raining in-game too, so I am mildly suspicious this had something to do with the weather. But I’ve had it rain in-game without tremendous amounts of lag before...). *sigh* Oh, and because Alice suddenly got really tense because her werewolf instincts were demanding she go outside. I thus had her instead go clear a twisted tendril from Moory’s pen, then chat with the cow while Smiler took a break from Servo-ing to feed the chickens and clean their coop. I also managed to remember that Victor had a bunch of animal treats in his inventory and had Alice take a chocolate treat to give to Moory (resulting in her getting a bottle of chocolate milk along with the regular milk), and Smiler a pumpkin treat to give to white hen Leghorna so she’d lay an orange egg later. I always forget to use those damn things, so here we are!
D) And then, immediately afterward, Alice started showering in the rain, because Erratic Sims. *sigh* I let her get on with it, as she WAS starting to trend downward hygiene-wise, and instead had Smiler try joking around with the rooster to give the chickens some attention. The rooster was not interested in their human humor today, though, so Smiler retreated to the greenhouse to chat with Victor – a decision made much more difficult by the fact that Victor was moving around a lot as he tended his plants (lot needed to be done in there today), and by the massive lag. *sigh* I eventually gave up and had Smiler harvest their plasma fruit, poison fireleaves, and noxious elderberries before sending them back to the chicken coop to get the eggs (two hatchable – immediately sold – and three normal, which I ended up forgetting to put in the fridge, whoops). They then fed Toothy, and bred the Whirlyflower and Spotted Dirt frogs in their inventories in hopes of getting the Dirtwhirl frog they needed for their collection – and to my delight, they did indeed get one! I quickly sent them upstairs to plop it into the right spot in their collection. :D They now just need a plain Heart frog and a plain Eggplant frog, and they will be DONE, yay!
While all this was going on, Alice finished her rain shower, so I had her collect her Delicate negative-moodlet-reducing bracelet from the charging grid and complete her Raw “find extra Simoleons doing chores” bracelet. :) She then shooed Phantom the fox away from the chickens before chatting with the hens – fortunately they were much more receptive to her today then Smiler! I then had her go and start repairing all the broken wind turbines in the wind farm (because, as usual, most of them were busted) while Smiler flew down joined Victor in the greenhouse to start super-selling all the produce as Victor finished his tending and did a little evolving. And then knee-walked his way into the house for a desperately-needed pee, poor guy. XD Sorry, Victor – I didn’t realize it was going to take so long to tend all the plants today!
E) Around this time, I had to stop Alice from running in and lighting the fireplace again (seriously, shouldn’t YOU of all people not want to do that?), which alerted me to the fact that we had a visitor – Felipe Sisson, hanging out on the front porch taking photos of Shadow after being sprinkled by one of the local specters. :p While I wasn’t originally planning on doing anything with visitors today, Smiler WAS feeling a bit thirsty, so I had them go out and greet him while I had Alice do some painting in the study and Victor, after having a bit of forbidden candy to boost his energy, go work a bit more on the piano song that’s been sitting in his inventory for ages. Smiler and Felipe had a nice chat, with Smiler learning that Felipe dislikes yellow but likes blue and works as a Waterperson for The Other Sports Team. *nods* This exchange of information and a bit of enthusing about humanity was enough to get Felipe to agree to give Smiler a drink, and they happily chomped down on his wrist for a nice glug before sending him on his way. If only all human interaction were that simple. :p
F) And with that out of the way, I decided “maybe traveling will help this annoying lag” and decided to have the trio spend the rest of their day at their San MyShuno grocery store! As I’m still determined to empty the damn thing after spending so long filling it. They arrived at around 1 PM to find it still raining (and still laggy, bleh) – Alice opened the place up while Smiler cleaned a particularly-nasty toilet in the bathroom and Victor headed down to the basement to do some potion-related experimenting on his work cauldron. Their first customer proved to be none other than B-Lister celebrity Holly Alto from De Sol Valley – though, because she was a celebrity, Alice couldn’t actually greet her. That honor went to the second customer through the door, Rita Coombes. XD The price of fame. Anyway, Alice chatted with her a while as more customers poured through the doors – Smiler, once done with the toilet, decided to concentrate on a visitor named Jules, while I eventually forced Victor to abandon his cauldron in favor of saying hi to Morgyn Ember (because spellcasters gotta stick together, even in retail). Alice eventually got Rita to buy a cherry for a few bucks –
And then, one Last Exception later, she was outside showering in the rain again. *heavy sigh* Oh, Alice… I am DEFINITELY avoiding making any future Alice Sims Erratic, this just isn’t her. Though I was at least able to use the opportunity to get her to change her outfit to one of her short-sleeved ones, then put on her new Delicate bracelet so she could take advantage of its mood-chilling properties. Made the damn thing, might as well use it!
G) Anyway – once Alice was done shocking the customers, I had her head back inside and into the break room, where Victor used Delicioso to conjure up a couple of salads for them to eat for lunch. Alice took the opportunity to read him some romantic poetry and get kisses in return. <3 Smiler, meanwhile, continued working the sales floor, closing the deal with Jules and greeting newcomer Kalama with a hug (I – have completely forgotten when Smiler met this Sim. ^^; On the other hand, Smiler is the Most Likable Sim in this save, so they make friends at the drop of a hat, meaning me forgetting when they made a friend isn’t exactly surprising…). We had a few more “out of the fridges/fruit and veg stands” sales while Victor and Alice finished up – Morgyn ended up buying a raspberry while two other customers, Eleanor and Clyde, bought a quill fruit and an orange egg respectively – then Jules and newcomer Mao indicated they wanted to make PROPER purchases. I had Alice and Victor ring them up respectively – Jules got a lovely Energizing Scent –
And Mao a Potion of the Nimble Mind! :D The first person to actually buy one of Victor’s potions! Sure, okay, it only sold for 12 simoleons, but it was free to make, and this family has plenty of money, so I don’t think anyone is complaining here. :P Just glad to see Sims WILL buy them if given the opportunity!
H) With that lovely sale under their belt, I had Victor and Alice continue chatting to and ringing up customers while Smiler cleaned up one of the salad bowls from earlier (Victor had put his in his inventory). Victor rang up teenager Aurelio for a Flirty Scent (for prom, perhaps?), while Alice ended up having a bit of a prank war with Kalama in between offering information and closing the deal (trading scares and “what’s that spots” :p). Kalama finally decided to buy something as another customer Victor was working on, Rangi, grabbed an apple from the fridge –
But when I tried to have Alice ring her up, for some reason KALAMA kept acting like she couldn’t get to whatever she was trying to buy. Like the shelf she was standing at was somehow in the way. Causing the interaction to constantly cancel out. O.o I had Alice go see to Holly Alto (now ready to buy herself) while I had Smiler attempt to ring up Kalama instead – however, before they could try, the fun store-specific lag (where almost everyone idles for a bit because I guess there’s just a little bit too much stuff going on) caused Kalama’s shopping bubble to time out, causing her to leave the store in a huff. *shrug* Sorry Kalama! We tried, I promise!
I) Anyway – despite that glitch, the trio continued having a good day in the store, running around making sales and keeping customers happy as best they could. Alice rung up Holly Alto for a nice expensive Inspiring Scent before going to to have a wolf nap in the break room (her instincts were demanding one), while a dude named Krishna bought some grapes from the fridge and Victor rang up two children, Karmine and Reese, for a box of custard and a commercial-sized sack of sugar respectively. XD Yeah, that feels like the sort of things kids would buy! Smiler meanwhile got a teenager named Noah rung up for a box of dried sage, and a woman named Judy for a box of cheese (because you gotta love cheese – not sage, though, my dad thinks it tastes like dirt). Victor then took a moment to Scruberoo one of the stands before ringing up a guy named Afu (with a similar haircut to Smiler – just brown with purple tips instead of black) for a box of fish cakes. Things were definitely hopping –
But they were also getting late, so I resolved to have the gang close the store around 9 PM so they wouldn’t spend the whole night at the store. I thus had Alice busy herself removing signs while Victor and Smiler spent the last few minutes of the shift sharing a big old embrace, prompting Smiler to decide they liked Physical Intimacy (as I have always pictured them as someone who likes hugs and cuddling, this felt very right :) ). A dude named Justin managed to snatch one last plasma fruit from the shelves before Victor officially closed the place up a couple of minutes later, leading to a final total of 16 items sold, for a profit of $5,506! Not bad for an eight-hour shift! :) I had the trio spend a bit of time cleaning up the store (scrubbing displays and getting spoiled food out of the fridge – and it occurs to me that this place should have a dishwasher too, someone remind me to buy one the next time I visit) –
J) And then it was back home around 10 PM! Where they were greeted by Shock, herself back from off-lot adventures for the day. :p I had Alice give the kitty some pets while Smiler went to scavenge the trash piles she’d created from her earlier attempts to repair the turbines for parts and Victor Repairioed the remaining turbines and one busted water collector. Smiler then got put on recycling duty (recycling all the various bits of trash in everyone’s inventories, the eggs they forgot to put in the fridge, some of the muckleberries and morel mushrooms in the household inventory, and a fancy Crystal Creations square shelving unit that I apparently forgot to delete out of the household inventory earlier) while Alice serenaded Victor. This put him very much in the mood, so I sent them upstairs to have a little woo and hoo while Smiler got put back to work on making their new Servo buddy (they’re up to the torso!). I ended up ending the playsession with Victor taking a post-woohoo pee while Alice decided to mop up the puddles outside because, again Erratic (hilariously, it started raining again on their lot the moment she decided to do so) –
K) But before I left the save file entirely, I took a moment to hit manage worlds and visit Newcrest – then popped into the Gallery and looked up Petey Plays It’s user ID. Because, you see, tomorrow in-game is Spookfest – and as I have plans to send the trio on a group date tomorrow (because it’s the Valice(r) Anniversary – 7/7, my preferred date for any Valice and Valicer weddings), I wanted an appropriate place for them to go. So I swung by Petey’s to grab their Haunted Museum lot from the “better museums” video of theirs I watched a little while ago! :D I have plopped that down in Newcrest not far from the Freezer Bunny arcade I made – it looks a bit emptier than I expected, but I’m hopeful I can jazz it up a little before the gang heads there tomorrow. Though that might depend a bit on my game NOT being a laggy mess...we shall see!
So yeah – this was a little unexpected, but I really DID want to get back to the store at some point and do another day there, so I’m happy that I was able to fit in a full day in the save instead of just a half. :) Hopefully the Spookfest Group Date tomorrow will also go relatively smoothly! Keep your fingers crossed...
Writing: I finished off Chapter 3 of “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of” today! :D I had a little over a page to go in the chapter, so I figured I might as well go straight to the end. Said end being Emily possessing Barkis, discovering he had electroplasm bombs on him, tossing one to Alice to help her with her “unwanted suitor raped my sister and then killed my family” problem –
And then using the other to blow herself and Barkis up. *wince* Yeah, Alice did not take that very well, and Victor and Smiler were pretty horrified too. And, of course, it’s only after the situation was resolved that the Bluecoats actually showed up…though as Chapter 4 will soon reveal, it would have been better for Alice and company had the cops never appeared at all…
YouTube: Finally achieved my aim of getting the rest of my Sims-related videos out of my Watch Later while also keeping up with Gray’s latest nonsense –
A) First up, another recent video from onlyabidoang – “The Sims 4: 50 MORE PACKS FEATURES You Might Not Know!” As you might expect from the title, this was Abi going over a bunch of stuff from packs that people might not know about. Some of the stuff I did already know (the special computer glasses and mech suit you can build in the two branches of the Engineering career from Discover University; the Mother Plant vines invading plumbing in StrangerVille if you progress the story past a certain point; the fact that lightning strikes can leave behind rare crystals, metals, and elements if you’re lucky in Seasons), but there were a fair few things I didn’t (the light-up signs from Get To Work can be updated with animations if your Sim has sufficient handiness skill! With Growing Together, Sims can look at their marriage certificates and “Reminisce,” with their reaction and moodlet changing depending on the state of the marriage! If you eat curry in City Living and then play basketball, your Sim will have enhanced skills as a nod to an NBA player named Curry! Bearcula the giant stuffed toy from Vampires doesn’t have a reflection! And if a Sim makes their money rain using the interactions from Get Famous in front of other Sims, they’ll try to catch the money!). So that was all cool – and very informative too! :D I’m gonna have to remember the sign thing the next time I go to the Van Liddelton Groceries store – Victor and Smiler should both have enough handiness to give the bakery cupcake sign some animations…
B) Then we had a video from The Red Plumbob – “♦️ Sims 2 vs Sims 3 vs Sims 4 : Photo Booth!” A comparison of the various photo booth objects we’ve gotten in the series, how they work, and who can use them. In my humble opinion, the Sims 2 version is the best due to having a proper interior, taking four photos, having the photos visible on the piece of paper the Sim collects out of the slot afterward, having kids be able to use it together and with older Sims, and having the best woohoo animations. XD Though I think Sims 4 is good simply because you can get a greater variety of pictures depending on what mood your Sim is in – the previous two generations had a very limited number of poses to remix. And Sims 3 gets a few points for the special seasonal festival photo tents where, apparently, whole families can take seasonal “greeting card” photos, which is cool. Basically every game has something to recommend it, but I still think Sims 2 is best. It’s just more fun when the actual object spins around from the force of the woohoo. XD
C) And finally, we had the GrayStillPlays video of the night – “Every time I crash CHAOS happens faster in GTA 5!” Yes, we had a return to the “Gray must find his way to various checkpoints across the GTA V map while also dealing with the fun of Alex’s version of the Chaos Mod” challenge today, with the twist here being that the timer for the chaos happening started off at the standard sixty seconds – but every time Gray crashed, that timer went down by one second (there was a grace period after each crash, but it was very short). Meaning, if Gray crashed enough, chaos could be piling up every second. Oh, and there were chaos effects that could speed up the timer independently of crashes, and of course the beloved “Combo Time” which granted multiple chaos effects at once. XD AND Alex and his team made sure that Gray HAD to use a car to get each checkpoint (basically they all required ramping in one way or another), so there was no getting around the whole mess by staying on foot.
Yeaaah, as you might imagine, Gray was SUFFERING throughout this entire video. XD I mean, I think he lost like five, six seconds just trying to get to the very first checkpoint, given he kept getting Combo Times and effects designed to make him crash as often as possible (like “DVD Screensaver,” which reduces the visible portion of the screen to one bouncing square, or “Ping-Pong Cars,” which make cars violently bounce off things when they crash). And the hits – literal and metaphorical – just kept on coming, with stuff like Gray getting the first checkpoint on a running track, only to immediately get “Turtle Time” (upside-down camera) and smack into a wall; Gray getting randomly teleported around thanks to a “Teleporter Malfunction” on the golf course – and discovering that it took his tetanus-riddled car with him, meaning it could crash into things without him even getting a chance to avoid it; Gray getting into the city streets – and getting the “Let’s wrap it up” effect that makes the credits roll as the screen goes black, forcing him to abandon his car because people kept crashing into it when he couldn’t see; Gray finding a checkpoint at a jump off the overpass, only to have his current vehicle replaced with a big old truck/bus thing while he was lining it up – he foolishly then got frustrated and tried to do the jump anyway with the bus, smacking into everything in his path and only abandoning this plan when he ended up with a 69% alcohol level and started weaving wildly; Gray finally making the overpass jump in a hilariously rusty old car – only to hit a recycling truck while landing and reduce his timer again; Gray finding a checkpoint that required him to ramp off a dumpster – and of course smacking into the dumpster on his first attempt; and Gray finally reaching the end checkpoint – only for chaos to be happening every damn second, making it very, VERY hard for him to actually GET there and make the jump. XD Oh, and his GAME kept crashing thorough the video as well, as this mod is NOT kind to PCs. XD But despite all this (and with the help of the occasional GOOD thing, like an epic save while racing down the hills toward the first checkpoint that kept him from crashing into a wall, and a chaos that actually made things FLY AWAY from him early on – I mean, he still managed to reduce the timer by hitting a fire hydrant, but still XD), Gray persevered, stole lots of cars, endured lots of chaos, and made it all the way to the end. Just proving that, with enough determination, you can survive anything! (In video games, anyway.)
*nods* MOST acceptable. I love it. And with that all under my belt, it is time for me to go to bed, so I can get up at a decent hour for the Valicer Anniversary. My must-dos for the day are to finish up as much of the image alt text on my Chill Valicer Save drafts on Victor Luvs Alice before lunch; play Sims 4 and have the Valicer Spookfest Group Date to the haunted museum; get in a workout; and keep up with Jon of Many A True Nerd's latest Sim Settlements 2 shenanigans. I would also like to start the editing process for posting the next chapter of "Start At The Beginning...Sort Of" and keep up with GrayStillPlays as well, but given the Sims 4 stuff may take up more of my day than anticipated, I am making those things optional to give myself more time for that if necessary. Trying to keep myself from getting too stressed here! We'll see if it works. :p Night all!
