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Wound Up Friday
Jul. 5th, 2024 11:46 pmYeah, I dunno what happened, but I was kind of weirdly wound up for a good part of the day. O.o I think part of the problem was that I had a smoothie for breakfast this morning and struggled with getting some of it together (prying apart frozen slices of banana and chopping up apples and all that takes more time than I'd like in the mornings), which means I started off my day slightly annoyed, but other than that... *shrug* I really wish my body would stop trying to ruin my time off sometimes. Can we save the bad moods for work days, please?
Despite the whole "I am tense for no good reason" thing, though, I still got a lot done today --
Tumblr: Started on this later than I wanted, but I still managed to catch up on the Victor Luvs Alice dash and, after getting caught up in rereading the “Valicer Three Player AMA” AU post again, did some work on my next “oh my god I have so many story ideas for this universe” post for Valicer In The Dark (mostly cleaning it up a bit, expanding on some of the ideas I had listed, and removing a few others that I could stick in another post of “scores inspired by other things”). And then, this evening, I made sure to get all the pictures for the next Chill Valicer Save update sorted – a mere 70 this time, covering Summer Friday and the weenie roast over at Totter Park. We’ll get that started tomorrow! (And yes, once again, nothing happening on Valice Multiverse, so… *shrug*)
Sims 4: Whew – had a more intense session than anticipated in the Chill Valicer Save today – finishing off the newly-expanded kitchen, the newly-expanded séance room, and the crafting barn with its new basement area at the Valicer farmhouse! I won’t bore you with every last little bit of fiddling I did (suffice to say there was a LOT of me poking at various displays and shelving options, especially for the séance room) – instead, I’ll try to quickly take you through what I did room by room –
A) Kitchen – I ended up replacing two of the full-sized wall cabinets with two half-tile ones with a really nice Cottage Living kitchen shelf (with cutting board and various large metal kitchen utensils hanging under it) tucked under them beside the stove, then moved the salt and pepper shakers and the new Home Chef Hustle spice rack I picked up last time up to sit atop the shelf (though I had to use “move objects on” for the spice rack, because for SOME REASON the damn thing doesn’t fit up there normally. It totally fucking SHOULD, I shouldn’t have had to use MOO and then fiddle around with raising and lowering it until I got it onto the shelf in a way that actually looked good, but that is not the world we live in), and put the Horse Ranch and Cottage Living utensil-holder clutter on the counter beside the fridge, and some canisters I got last time that I couldn’t find a good space for on the counter underneath the new shelf (so they were all on either side of the stove). Made sure Gino the pizza chef MySim trophy was in a good spot next to the pizza oven on the island counters, and declared the kitchen done.
B) Seance Room – Oh, this took SOOO much time, especially with me trying to figure out the crystal collection and how I wanted to display the specter gifts the gang have gotten (like Soul Scraps and Specter Sips) and what other cool knickknacks I wanted to put in there, but I FINALLY got this into a state I like. Or at least that I’m reasonably happy with for now. We now have –
I. Alice’s mediation corner with her stool, the fancy Werewolves moon mirror, and the three pictures she took of one of the gang’s trips into the Magic Realm in the left corner by the door
II. A Paranormal Stuff sideboard between the two windows with the fancy palmistry hand that keeps Guidry away, a Vampires bird skull under glass, and a cute Werewolves multicolored mushroom terrarium on it, with a Vampires Gothic shelf over it with the Werewolves crescent-moon salt lamp and two Specter Sips upon it (one empty, one full – unfortunately the Paranormal bohemian shelf that was previously there no longer fit above the sideboard when I started fiddling and adding new stuff to display, so I had to change it out)
III. A display wall along the back consisting of two fancy Vampires urns (in black and white) atop Paranormal Stuff accent tables (in blue and gold) in each corner, then two white fancy display cabinets from Crystal Creations containing the Soul Scraps the gang have collected flanking the spare broom Victor got and the Realm of Magic curio cabinet with Victor’s collected familiar orbs in the center. What can I say – I liked the look of the Crystal Creations cabinets, and they seemed to contain the Soul Scraps the best! (Though I did have to MOO one of the cabinets into place, because FOR SOME REASON the game kept insisting it was intersecting with another object ON A BLANK WALL. *huff* Sims 4 sometimes, I swear...)
IV. The painting Alice did on one of their trips into the Magic Realm on the right-hand wall, next to another sideboard-and-shelf combo mirroring the one on the left-hand wall – the shelf on this side is empty, but the sideboard has the cool Crystal Creations terrarium, one of the Bizarre Idols the gang has picked up, and the Paranormal Stuff mini-cowplant terrarium. I thought they were cute and gave the right vibes!
V. And then in the right-hand corner by the door is the display shelves for the special Werewolves artifacts collection, as before
*nods* I think this all looks good and gives the right vibes for the room. Though you may have noticed something missing from the séance room now – the old crystal collection! What did I do with that? Well…
C) Crafting Barn: First Floor – I moved it over to the crafting barn to make a display around Alice’s jewelry-crafting bench! Because I just didn’t have room for it in the séance room with all the other displays I was trying, and I realized that it would be thematically appropriate AND look cool for her to put those around the bench. So I moved the bench over to the spot where Simsonian Library’s food processing machine was previously; made a display of six box shelves from High School Years around the bench on each side in a “corner” configuration (three in the top row, two in the second row, one in the bottom row, like that, over each side of the bench); recolored them and the bench a nice red color; and filled them boxes with crystals – small on one side, big on the other. :) Looks pretty cool to me so far – Alice DOES need another small crystal to fill out that display, but otherwise, it works!
Oh, and while I was moving stuff around, I also moved the shelf with Victor’s three statues from when he was doing woodworking over by the candle-making station, so they weren’t just tucked in the corner by the stairs going down for no reason. :) Gotta have ‘em in a spot people will look at them!
D) Crafting Barn: Basement – FINALLY got this configured more or less how I like it! In here we have –
I. Smiler’s Nectar Corner, which is the nectar-making machine and nine nectar storage racks (three columns of three) tucked away in the corner behind the stairs going down. I had to use ALT free-placement to get the nectar machine in the right place without the game complaining about it clipping into the wall – fortunately I was able to get Alice to start making some grape nectar during a pop into Live Mode, so I can confirm it all still works, yay.
II. The Food Processing Corner, which is the Simsonian Library food processing machine tucked into the opposite corner facing the nectar maker, with three Horse Ranch counters sitting next to it to store created items, like industrial-sized bags of flour and sugar
III. Victor’s Alchemy Space, which is basically the entire other half of the room on the other side of the stairs because all the alchemy stuff is much bigger – you have Victor’s cauldron on its special stone circle with glowy sigils (recolored black because I ended up going with dark swatches on all of the other furniture) near the “front” wall (lines up with where the entrance is on the actual barn), with the Vampires fancy book on a stand and a Realm of Magic set of scales on I believe a Crystal Creations accent table on one side (to look like a spellbook he’s consulting and scales for measuring out ingredients); a display of Crystal Creations glass box shelves for all of his alchemy potions on the wall, flanked by the decorative Realm of Magic side cabinets with all the bottles and such in them (one is even called an “apothecary” cabinet!), themselves flanked by two Realm of Magic pictures taken from the séance room (they depicted things like bottles and potion ingredients, so I figured they made more sense down here); and the couch I took from the back porch to the left, recolored blue with a dark frame and facing the cauldron so people can watch Victor brew if he wants. :) I’m quite happy with it!
E) Miscellaneous Other Touches – And here’s everything I did that didn’t fit into any of the categories above –
I. Pet Obstacle Course – Took a moment after finishing up the kitchen to play around with the terrain paint under here and around the nearby tree, making it look appropriately dirty and like the pets run through it a lot. Which, honestly, they do – I’ve spotted Shadow out there running the obstacles a few times. (Hell, she was out there investigating while I was doing my building!)
II. Upstairs Hallway – After a little fussing around, I got the fossil collection on its CC shelves and the Sulani shell collection on its shelves settled on either side of the doorway into the séance room, with Alice’s apple painting now on the wall next to the stairs where the Sulani shelves were before. Just made the most sense to me to position everything that way!
III. Barn Basement/Party Loft – Since both these spaces have electric lights instead of the candle chandeliers used in the rest of the house (to keep electricity usage low), when I spotted the “light switch” wall decoration in the catalog looking for stuff to put on the walls, I decided “why not” and put one in each space by the stairs. Might as well add that little extra touch of realism, right?
IV. Inventory Management – Oh, and I took a moment to look through everyone’s inventories and see if I could move anything anywhere – Smiler’s Soul Scraps and Specter Sip got donated to the séance room, while all the herbalism stuff in their and Victor’s inventories went into the box by the cauldron. Just makes their inventories that little bit cleaner!
And there you have it! The building and redecorating and such is DONE for now. I’m pretty happy with what I accomplished, I just wish it hadn’t taken so long or involved so much fiddling. @.@ Ah well, that is the way of it in Sims. . .but yeah, looking forward to actually PLAYING the family again as we move into the weekend proper!
Writing: Got another page edited on Chapter 3 of “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of” – the confrontation with Barkis is going – okay, let’s say. On the one hand, Victoria has successfully escaped, having dropped the bombshell that her parents don’t have any money and are relying on him to keep them out of the poorhouse and then run for it the moment Barkis lowered the knife from her throat and Smiler started throwing distracting rocks; on the other hand, Barkis, now with very little left to lose, is trying to attack them with his knife, having already been open to murdering Victor before he disappeared. But, stupidly, he has paused in his attacks to say a few mocking words to Emily...which is going to go even more poorly for him than when he toasted her with the poisonous Wine Of Ages in the actual movie...
YouTube: Only time for GrayStillPlays tonight (though I did actually get something out of my Watch Later earlier – see the “Workout” section below), with “When you make the sun 1 degree colder every minute,” aka Gray plays more Universe Sandbox 2! Today’s experiment saw Gray slowly make the Sun colder and colder – starting by taking the surface temperature down one degree every so often, then five degrees, then ten, then one hundred, then finally (after evening out the temperature) one thousand. What did that do to Earth? Why, slowly but surely made the ice caps grow and everything freeze over, of course! Though it took a little longer than Gray anticipated, and the life likelihood actually stayed very high for a WHILE – in fact, it actually went UP a few times while he was doing his experiments. Apparently life on earth really likes the cold. XD Along the way, Gray picked up a sidequest to see if he could get Venus’s horrible 400+ F temperatures down into a range where humans could survive (well, THEORETICALLY – he didn’t do anything about its heavy and toxic atmosphere) – turns out he could, but only by bringing the sun’s surface temperature down to about 2,000 degrees C. Meaning that any surviving Earthlings needed to figure out the atmosphere situation fast as Earth was just a total ball of ice by that point. At least Gray was nice enough to throw a bit of water on the planet for them. :p Good stuff, and interesting to watch – Earth can apparently survive more nonsense than you think! Well, mostly, anyway. :p
Workout: Last night on the bike this week saw me get through the following –
A) The end of “I fixed my mistake in the Every Occult Challenge! - Part 7” by James Turner! Which saw James wrap up the episode by getting Semaj up to Wellness level 2 via yoga class (along with Vlad, Servo, and Tom) and then having him give the required “spa massage” to Nina Caliente, who was hanging around (as a massage therapist I believe XD); bringing the family over to the park in Willow Creek so Semaj could “find treasure” at one of the dig rocks (aka use a treasure map to get a MySims capsule, which James didn’t even bother opening); having the family wander the worlds a little bit more in hopes of seeing Night Wraith Eastwood spawn in so they could get him to join the family (with Vlad taking a brief break to go to his babysitting job); finally giving up and moving Eastwood into a house in Moonwood Mill so the family could go over and Semaj could use the Potion of Forced Friendship to become instant besties – only to discover that he didn’t have the option to move Eastwood into the household; giving up and going back home to pull Cletus out of his grave so Semaj could befriend HIM and get him to move in – only to discover he didn’t have the option to move him in on CLETUS either; and finally going back to his original plan and moving in Night Wraith Eastwood via “Manage Worlds” instead because he TRIED, damn it. XD So Eastwood is now officially part of the family, his million from winning the lottery is safely stored away in the vault, and James just has to build him a little sanctuary, then bring everyone to Selvadorada so they can get the idol that turns people into skeletons and transform Semaj to tick off the final challenge! :D Should be an interesting final episode!
B) “The Sims 4: New Trait, DirectX 11, and DAILY LOGIN REWARDS?! (May & June 2024 Patch Update)” by onlyabidoang! This is one of the videos that’s been sitting in my Watch Later, and I figured watching it during my workout was a perfect opportunity to get it out of the way. As per the title, this was Abi (back from a long hiatus due to his med school internship taking up all his time) going through the updates from the May and June patches, with a focus on showcasing all the login rewards from the “Happy At Home” Login Event. This is something I pretty much completely ignored last month whenever I played, and after watching Abi’s video, I feel justified in that – the CAS assets were nothing to write home about; the Build/Buy stuff was fairly “meh” in my opinion (the only thing I might have found useful is the one-tile counter bar, and even then it was hardly a necessity); and while the trait “Practice Makes Perfect” (which makes a Sim learn all skills slower at first, but if they really put in the effort in a particular category of skill for a while, they can end up learning those skills faster than regular Sims for a while) is interesting, I couldn’t see myself ever using it, sooo… *shrug* There was also a bit on the new DirectX 11 support for Sims 4 (which is still in beta, so you have to enable it yourself – and may fuck with mods, so I haven’t bothered), and all the bug fixes with the patch. Plus Abi very quickly going over all the previous patches and SDX drops to cover what he missed while he was doing his med student thing (not much!). A nice, informative video from him as always!
AND, on top of all that, I had a good time at game night tonight (we played Sequence, which is all about making lines of five tokens on a game board of various playing card combinations -- I won four games and Dad won four games), Dad liked his birthday card, and we all got cake and ice cream after our game. I think I'll go ahead and call this day good, even with me being "wound up." :p
And now it's time for me to head to bed, because I really do need to try and get to bed before 2 AM more regularly. Goals for tomorrow include getting the Chill Valicer Save update for the upcoming week properly drafted; playing Sims 4 and at least doing half a day on the Valicer Farm (because I have a specific thing I want to do on Sunday, and it might be easier if I do all the farm chores stuff tomorrow -- we will see what happens, though); working some more on "Start At The Beginning...Sort Of;" and watching more YouTube stuff (I'd like to at least get the remaining two Sims-related videos out of the Watch Later). We'll see how that all goes -- night all!
Despite the whole "I am tense for no good reason" thing, though, I still got a lot done today --
Tumblr: Started on this later than I wanted, but I still managed to catch up on the Victor Luvs Alice dash and, after getting caught up in rereading the “Valicer Three Player AMA” AU post again, did some work on my next “oh my god I have so many story ideas for this universe” post for Valicer In The Dark (mostly cleaning it up a bit, expanding on some of the ideas I had listed, and removing a few others that I could stick in another post of “scores inspired by other things”). And then, this evening, I made sure to get all the pictures for the next Chill Valicer Save update sorted – a mere 70 this time, covering Summer Friday and the weenie roast over at Totter Park. We’ll get that started tomorrow! (And yes, once again, nothing happening on Valice Multiverse, so… *shrug*)
Sims 4: Whew – had a more intense session than anticipated in the Chill Valicer Save today – finishing off the newly-expanded kitchen, the newly-expanded séance room, and the crafting barn with its new basement area at the Valicer farmhouse! I won’t bore you with every last little bit of fiddling I did (suffice to say there was a LOT of me poking at various displays and shelving options, especially for the séance room) – instead, I’ll try to quickly take you through what I did room by room –
A) Kitchen – I ended up replacing two of the full-sized wall cabinets with two half-tile ones with a really nice Cottage Living kitchen shelf (with cutting board and various large metal kitchen utensils hanging under it) tucked under them beside the stove, then moved the salt and pepper shakers and the new Home Chef Hustle spice rack I picked up last time up to sit atop the shelf (though I had to use “move objects on” for the spice rack, because for SOME REASON the damn thing doesn’t fit up there normally. It totally fucking SHOULD, I shouldn’t have had to use MOO and then fiddle around with raising and lowering it until I got it onto the shelf in a way that actually looked good, but that is not the world we live in), and put the Horse Ranch and Cottage Living utensil-holder clutter on the counter beside the fridge, and some canisters I got last time that I couldn’t find a good space for on the counter underneath the new shelf (so they were all on either side of the stove). Made sure Gino the pizza chef MySim trophy was in a good spot next to the pizza oven on the island counters, and declared the kitchen done.
B) Seance Room – Oh, this took SOOO much time, especially with me trying to figure out the crystal collection and how I wanted to display the specter gifts the gang have gotten (like Soul Scraps and Specter Sips) and what other cool knickknacks I wanted to put in there, but I FINALLY got this into a state I like. Or at least that I’m reasonably happy with for now. We now have –
I. Alice’s mediation corner with her stool, the fancy Werewolves moon mirror, and the three pictures she took of one of the gang’s trips into the Magic Realm in the left corner by the door
II. A Paranormal Stuff sideboard between the two windows with the fancy palmistry hand that keeps Guidry away, a Vampires bird skull under glass, and a cute Werewolves multicolored mushroom terrarium on it, with a Vampires Gothic shelf over it with the Werewolves crescent-moon salt lamp and two Specter Sips upon it (one empty, one full – unfortunately the Paranormal bohemian shelf that was previously there no longer fit above the sideboard when I started fiddling and adding new stuff to display, so I had to change it out)
III. A display wall along the back consisting of two fancy Vampires urns (in black and white) atop Paranormal Stuff accent tables (in blue and gold) in each corner, then two white fancy display cabinets from Crystal Creations containing the Soul Scraps the gang have collected flanking the spare broom Victor got and the Realm of Magic curio cabinet with Victor’s collected familiar orbs in the center. What can I say – I liked the look of the Crystal Creations cabinets, and they seemed to contain the Soul Scraps the best! (Though I did have to MOO one of the cabinets into place, because FOR SOME REASON the game kept insisting it was intersecting with another object ON A BLANK WALL. *huff* Sims 4 sometimes, I swear...)
IV. The painting Alice did on one of their trips into the Magic Realm on the right-hand wall, next to another sideboard-and-shelf combo mirroring the one on the left-hand wall – the shelf on this side is empty, but the sideboard has the cool Crystal Creations terrarium, one of the Bizarre Idols the gang has picked up, and the Paranormal Stuff mini-cowplant terrarium. I thought they were cute and gave the right vibes!
V. And then in the right-hand corner by the door is the display shelves for the special Werewolves artifacts collection, as before
*nods* I think this all looks good and gives the right vibes for the room. Though you may have noticed something missing from the séance room now – the old crystal collection! What did I do with that? Well…
C) Crafting Barn: First Floor – I moved it over to the crafting barn to make a display around Alice’s jewelry-crafting bench! Because I just didn’t have room for it in the séance room with all the other displays I was trying, and I realized that it would be thematically appropriate AND look cool for her to put those around the bench. So I moved the bench over to the spot where Simsonian Library’s food processing machine was previously; made a display of six box shelves from High School Years around the bench on each side in a “corner” configuration (three in the top row, two in the second row, one in the bottom row, like that, over each side of the bench); recolored them and the bench a nice red color; and filled them boxes with crystals – small on one side, big on the other. :) Looks pretty cool to me so far – Alice DOES need another small crystal to fill out that display, but otherwise, it works!
Oh, and while I was moving stuff around, I also moved the shelf with Victor’s three statues from when he was doing woodworking over by the candle-making station, so they weren’t just tucked in the corner by the stairs going down for no reason. :) Gotta have ‘em in a spot people will look at them!
D) Crafting Barn: Basement – FINALLY got this configured more or less how I like it! In here we have –
I. Smiler’s Nectar Corner, which is the nectar-making machine and nine nectar storage racks (three columns of three) tucked away in the corner behind the stairs going down. I had to use ALT free-placement to get the nectar machine in the right place without the game complaining about it clipping into the wall – fortunately I was able to get Alice to start making some grape nectar during a pop into Live Mode, so I can confirm it all still works, yay.
II. The Food Processing Corner, which is the Simsonian Library food processing machine tucked into the opposite corner facing the nectar maker, with three Horse Ranch counters sitting next to it to store created items, like industrial-sized bags of flour and sugar
III. Victor’s Alchemy Space, which is basically the entire other half of the room on the other side of the stairs because all the alchemy stuff is much bigger – you have Victor’s cauldron on its special stone circle with glowy sigils (recolored black because I ended up going with dark swatches on all of the other furniture) near the “front” wall (lines up with where the entrance is on the actual barn), with the Vampires fancy book on a stand and a Realm of Magic set of scales on I believe a Crystal Creations accent table on one side (to look like a spellbook he’s consulting and scales for measuring out ingredients); a display of Crystal Creations glass box shelves for all of his alchemy potions on the wall, flanked by the decorative Realm of Magic side cabinets with all the bottles and such in them (one is even called an “apothecary” cabinet!), themselves flanked by two Realm of Magic pictures taken from the séance room (they depicted things like bottles and potion ingredients, so I figured they made more sense down here); and the couch I took from the back porch to the left, recolored blue with a dark frame and facing the cauldron so people can watch Victor brew if he wants. :) I’m quite happy with it!
E) Miscellaneous Other Touches – And here’s everything I did that didn’t fit into any of the categories above –
I. Pet Obstacle Course – Took a moment after finishing up the kitchen to play around with the terrain paint under here and around the nearby tree, making it look appropriately dirty and like the pets run through it a lot. Which, honestly, they do – I’ve spotted Shadow out there running the obstacles a few times. (Hell, she was out there investigating while I was doing my building!)
II. Upstairs Hallway – After a little fussing around, I got the fossil collection on its CC shelves and the Sulani shell collection on its shelves settled on either side of the doorway into the séance room, with Alice’s apple painting now on the wall next to the stairs where the Sulani shelves were before. Just made the most sense to me to position everything that way!
III. Barn Basement/Party Loft – Since both these spaces have electric lights instead of the candle chandeliers used in the rest of the house (to keep electricity usage low), when I spotted the “light switch” wall decoration in the catalog looking for stuff to put on the walls, I decided “why not” and put one in each space by the stairs. Might as well add that little extra touch of realism, right?
IV. Inventory Management – Oh, and I took a moment to look through everyone’s inventories and see if I could move anything anywhere – Smiler’s Soul Scraps and Specter Sip got donated to the séance room, while all the herbalism stuff in their and Victor’s inventories went into the box by the cauldron. Just makes their inventories that little bit cleaner!
And there you have it! The building and redecorating and such is DONE for now. I’m pretty happy with what I accomplished, I just wish it hadn’t taken so long or involved so much fiddling. @.@ Ah well, that is the way of it in Sims. . .but yeah, looking forward to actually PLAYING the family again as we move into the weekend proper!
Writing: Got another page edited on Chapter 3 of “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of” – the confrontation with Barkis is going – okay, let’s say. On the one hand, Victoria has successfully escaped, having dropped the bombshell that her parents don’t have any money and are relying on him to keep them out of the poorhouse and then run for it the moment Barkis lowered the knife from her throat and Smiler started throwing distracting rocks; on the other hand, Barkis, now with very little left to lose, is trying to attack them with his knife, having already been open to murdering Victor before he disappeared. But, stupidly, he has paused in his attacks to say a few mocking words to Emily...which is going to go even more poorly for him than when he toasted her with the poisonous Wine Of Ages in the actual movie...
YouTube: Only time for GrayStillPlays tonight (though I did actually get something out of my Watch Later earlier – see the “Workout” section below), with “When you make the sun 1 degree colder every minute,” aka Gray plays more Universe Sandbox 2! Today’s experiment saw Gray slowly make the Sun colder and colder – starting by taking the surface temperature down one degree every so often, then five degrees, then ten, then one hundred, then finally (after evening out the temperature) one thousand. What did that do to Earth? Why, slowly but surely made the ice caps grow and everything freeze over, of course! Though it took a little longer than Gray anticipated, and the life likelihood actually stayed very high for a WHILE – in fact, it actually went UP a few times while he was doing his experiments. Apparently life on earth really likes the cold. XD Along the way, Gray picked up a sidequest to see if he could get Venus’s horrible 400+ F temperatures down into a range where humans could survive (well, THEORETICALLY – he didn’t do anything about its heavy and toxic atmosphere) – turns out he could, but only by bringing the sun’s surface temperature down to about 2,000 degrees C. Meaning that any surviving Earthlings needed to figure out the atmosphere situation fast as Earth was just a total ball of ice by that point. At least Gray was nice enough to throw a bit of water on the planet for them. :p Good stuff, and interesting to watch – Earth can apparently survive more nonsense than you think! Well, mostly, anyway. :p
Workout: Last night on the bike this week saw me get through the following –
A) The end of “I fixed my mistake in the Every Occult Challenge! - Part 7” by James Turner! Which saw James wrap up the episode by getting Semaj up to Wellness level 2 via yoga class (along with Vlad, Servo, and Tom) and then having him give the required “spa massage” to Nina Caliente, who was hanging around (as a massage therapist I believe XD); bringing the family over to the park in Willow Creek so Semaj could “find treasure” at one of the dig rocks (aka use a treasure map to get a MySims capsule, which James didn’t even bother opening); having the family wander the worlds a little bit more in hopes of seeing Night Wraith Eastwood spawn in so they could get him to join the family (with Vlad taking a brief break to go to his babysitting job); finally giving up and moving Eastwood into a house in Moonwood Mill so the family could go over and Semaj could use the Potion of Forced Friendship to become instant besties – only to discover that he didn’t have the option to move Eastwood into the household; giving up and going back home to pull Cletus out of his grave so Semaj could befriend HIM and get him to move in – only to discover he didn’t have the option to move him in on CLETUS either; and finally going back to his original plan and moving in Night Wraith Eastwood via “Manage Worlds” instead because he TRIED, damn it. XD So Eastwood is now officially part of the family, his million from winning the lottery is safely stored away in the vault, and James just has to build him a little sanctuary, then bring everyone to Selvadorada so they can get the idol that turns people into skeletons and transform Semaj to tick off the final challenge! :D Should be an interesting final episode!
B) “The Sims 4: New Trait, DirectX 11, and DAILY LOGIN REWARDS?! (May & June 2024 Patch Update)” by onlyabidoang! This is one of the videos that’s been sitting in my Watch Later, and I figured watching it during my workout was a perfect opportunity to get it out of the way. As per the title, this was Abi (back from a long hiatus due to his med school internship taking up all his time) going through the updates from the May and June patches, with a focus on showcasing all the login rewards from the “Happy At Home” Login Event. This is something I pretty much completely ignored last month whenever I played, and after watching Abi’s video, I feel justified in that – the CAS assets were nothing to write home about; the Build/Buy stuff was fairly “meh” in my opinion (the only thing I might have found useful is the one-tile counter bar, and even then it was hardly a necessity); and while the trait “Practice Makes Perfect” (which makes a Sim learn all skills slower at first, but if they really put in the effort in a particular category of skill for a while, they can end up learning those skills faster than regular Sims for a while) is interesting, I couldn’t see myself ever using it, sooo… *shrug* There was also a bit on the new DirectX 11 support for Sims 4 (which is still in beta, so you have to enable it yourself – and may fuck with mods, so I haven’t bothered), and all the bug fixes with the patch. Plus Abi very quickly going over all the previous patches and SDX drops to cover what he missed while he was doing his med student thing (not much!). A nice, informative video from him as always!
AND, on top of all that, I had a good time at game night tonight (we played Sequence, which is all about making lines of five tokens on a game board of various playing card combinations -- I won four games and Dad won four games), Dad liked his birthday card, and we all got cake and ice cream after our game. I think I'll go ahead and call this day good, even with me being "wound up." :p
And now it's time for me to head to bed, because I really do need to try and get to bed before 2 AM more regularly. Goals for tomorrow include getting the Chill Valicer Save update for the upcoming week properly drafted; playing Sims 4 and at least doing half a day on the Valicer Farm (because I have a specific thing I want to do on Sunday, and it might be easier if I do all the farm chores stuff tomorrow -- we will see what happens, though); working some more on "Start At The Beginning...Sort Of;" and watching more YouTube stuff (I'd like to at least get the remaining two Sims-related videos out of the Watch Later). We'll see how that all goes -- night all!
