Sandpaperback

Round 36: February 2042 (Summer)

last update/next update

Novak 3 household profile

James Novak is 68 and Madelyn is 63.
(Eliot is 57, Maia is 41, Calvin and Aaron are 40, Ethan is 37, Connor and Lila are 30 and Wren is 3)

Narrated by James Novak

I’ll really miss Novak Motors when I finally let go of it but I do finally have some concrete retirement plans.

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Download: Study carrel recolours

At the end of August, we at Neighborhood 99 ran our second annual August Goodies event and I actually got off my butt this year and made several things for it. The event is over now, so I'll be sharing those goodies here now, over the next few weeks or so.

If you're already a member (or if you'd like to become one - it's Membership by Approval but everyone is approved), you can also grab all the other amazing things that the rest of the team shared. I am so excited to use all these things in my game.

But anyway, my Day 1 contribution was these study carrel recolours.

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By my own hand

Round 36: February 2043 (Summer)

last update/next update

Carmody-Halmi-Whitney 1 household profile

Daniel Halmi is 36, Susannah Carmody is 33 and Zac Whitney is 9. 

(Kimberly is 72, Sarah is 38, Declan is 22, Sylvia is 17, Levi and Will are 11 and Theo is 8)

Narrated by Susannah Carmody

Daniel and I are happy in our current building but we’d like to move eventually. If we have another kid or two, it’s going to be a tight squeeze in here.

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Lot tour: Jade's Exclusive Villas

I'll warn you now that there is a spoiler for the last update included in this tour. So you might want to go and read that now, if that sort of thing bothers you.

Anyway, I did this lot fairly quickly over a few days (that's quick for me, for anything that's not a house!). Shannon asked in a comment if there was a Takemizu Village lot I wanted to make over. Yes, all of them! I think the EA vacation lots are so dire and they pretty much all need a makeover. But Takemizu Village is the weakest of the destinations, in my opinion, so I was never particularly inspired to work on any of those lots. Shannon's comment gave me a little prod though and I got to work!

A picture of the original lot is here. I had taken my own before pics but in my longstanding tradition of completely failing at before pics, I accidentally deleted them. Oops! So that one will have to do.

This is what the lot looked like after I was done with it. The first thing to go was that hideous green picket fence. 

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Liebster Award - Laura's questions

If anyone is confused as to what the Liebster Award is, I explain it in my first post here. You can also click the "liebster award" tag to find my answers to other people's questions. 

Shortly after I put up my first round of questions from Maisie, Emma and Shannon, I was nominated by Laura. At the time, I told her I'd put up my end of round updates and then do her questions. That was in May. Um...sorry? But here they are now! 

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Sail to the moon

Round 36: January 2043 (Summer)

last update/next update

Novak-Sitko 1 household profile

Connor Novak and Lila Sitko are 30.
(Josh is 29 and Oliver is 27)

Narrated by Connor Novak

I'm Oliver’s superior at work now, which is incredibly pleasing to me.

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I haven't abandoned the blog!

Just a quick apology for my absence lately. I haven't even loaded my game in a few weeks, because I simply haven't had the time. Then this week, when I did have the time, I got sick and didn't feel like playing.

But I think I'm on the mend now and I hope to play this Sunday. I have some notes written already - not a ton but it should be enough for me to expand on over the next couple of days. The next household is Connor and Lila and I'm really looking forward to visiting them and getting back to my game in general!

Lot tour: Sullivan High School, Version 3.0

So here it is - Sullivan High School, Version 3.0! Or maybe it should be Version 2.1, seeing Version 2.0 never really got finished (due to my hood going kaput) and this is based on what I had done so far and what I had planned if I'd been able to continue. 

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The world at large

Round 36: January 2043 (Summer)

last update/next update

Clarke 2 household profile

Calvin and Aaron Clarke are 40, Amy is 8, Natalie is 6 and Curtis is 4. 
(James is 68, Madelyn is 63, Maia is 41, Ethan is 37, Willlow is 8, River is 6, Alex is 4 and Wren is 3)

Narrated by Aaron Clarke

Amy’s birthday is right after the new year, so we had a party for her here at home, with some of her school friends.

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Assigning hobbies to sims

Ever since I found out how sims get their One True Hobby, I've hated it. The way it's done basically means that all of your sims of one particular hobby will have similar personalities. That makes sense for some hobbies - sims who are into Fitness or Sports should probably also be active, for instance. But why, for example, do Arts & Crafts sims have to be nice? Why do Nature sims have to be playful? A lot of the criteria EA came up with just seems really arbitrary to me.

So I started randomising my sims' OTHs at birth. I was satisfied with that for a while, but after I had been using Starr's careers criteria for a while (which is partly based on interests), I thought I might try tying interests and hobbies together. This was a good while ago now but it's only recently that I decided to fine tune my system.

I'm going to start by showing which interests I assign to which hobbies. Then I'll show you a couple of examples of exactly what I do with that information to decide on hobbies for my sims, using a couple of Sullivan babies as guinea pigs. Babies are sort of blank slates anyway and I'm not yet wedded to the idea of any one particular hobby for them.

Anyway, so on with the interests!

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