Sims & other stories

HOW TO TURN OFF GOOGLE AI in GMAIL:

Open Gmail in your browser

Click on the Gear Icon ⚙️ in the upper right

In the General Tab, scroll down to "Smart Features" and UNCHECK THE BOX. It is about halfway down.

Then, right below that is Google Workspace smart features. Click on the "Manage Workspace Smart Features" and make sure both toggles are OFF

Townieville!

A little project that was supposed to be just for fun, but felt so cool I decided to give it a little more character, make it CC-free and share it.

I adore the original townies of the base game. At some point I noticed that some of the adults share similarities with teens and kids - so I figured out how to merge them into whole families, based on their shared face templates, genetics and/or last names. Sadly, some last names were lost in the process, so I kept a few of them alive in street names.

VERSION 3, updated June 2025!!! NOW ALL NAMES SHOULD BE ENGLISH REGARDLESS OF YOUR GAME'S LANGUAGE! No more incoherent names of playables. I edited all character files, so pets and service Sims too. BUT the Repo Man and one Social Worker will be written in English as well, possibly along with the repo's notification, because I got ahead of myself and can't change it back anymore... I'd have to do all files all over again. Sorry! Pay your bills lol. I'm surprised SimPE even allowed that, as the Social Bunny cannot be changed to "US English Only". If you see a clearly pre-made Sim or pet with a name in your language, let me know! I had to open and edit about 150 character files, so oversights are more than probable. Also, I fixed a weird family relation between Orlando Cox and Joe Sims that resulted in Orlando getting memories about Marsha (as if she was his cousin).

DOWNLOAD (SFS)

POLISH VERSION (MIASTOWICE)

And there are two things that annoy me about this town. First, FIVE (5) Sims use the 7th face template (Marylena, Melissa, teen Ivy, Orlando and Chandler). Second, the names Ivy and Orlando are doubled. But well, they're townies originally!

There are 12 families, that's quite a lot for a starting neighborhood, but many of them are single Sims (often single parents), so they have the potential to merge.

The families:

Bendett-LeTourneau Marisa Bendett and her daughters Sophie and Meadow, Brandi LeTourneau and her kids Alvin and Chloe.

GilsCarbo Goopy GilsCarbo is married to Marylena Hamilton (now GilsCarbo) and they have a teenage daughter named Ivy.

Cox Kennedy, Melissa and their two sons: Orlando and Chandler. They own a dog named Otis. Chandler is not Kennedy's biological son, see Melissa's memories for details.

Copur Ivy Copur and her roommate Abhijeet Deppiesse.

Tellerman Jan living alone, next door to her brother Komei.

Tellerman Komei, Christy and their daughter Brittany. There's a new baby on the way!

Centowski Orlando and Ricky living alone as teenagers after both their parents passed away.

Sims Benjamin Cox (Kennedy's brother), his fiancé Amin Sims, and their cat Heidi.

Sims Joe Sims (Amin's brother) and his daughter Marsha.

Lillard Brandon and his a lot younger sister Tosha.

Hogan Andrea and her teenage son Randy.

Bruty Sandy.

Other population notes: Anything other than the Pleasantview game folder has been cleared out of character files, so there are no vanilla pets, social groups, garden club members etc. All service Sims are Maxis because they belong in the Pleasantview folder. The only typically Maxis pets are Otis and Heidi that are replicas of the original adoption pool pets made in CAS. Other pets have been spawned completely fresh. Since the townies are now playables, I made a few townie children, teens and adults. They are CAS Bin Sims. There's also the founder Sim that I needed as the first playable to spawn all the townies on the lot (his name is Deighton Freeman) and Nerissa Bee who's supposed to be the clothing store owner. This neighborhood has no subhoods. Feel free to add them if needed.

Genetics I fixed all "dyed hair" genetics, so e.g. Brandi LeTourneau now has brown hair genetically. I also gave everyone recessive genes, so they're not homozygous.

Townieville landscape: Made on the Sedona map but in lush, the town gives (as one of my viewers pointed out) the Blue Ridge Mountains vibe! So it could be located in North Carolina or Virginia.

All the houses are Maxis, just furnished by me. Some of them have been reconstructed on the inside so the families have enough space. Four families live in an apartment building that I built from scratch.

There are many needed community lots: a town pool, a clothing store, a convenience store, a game arcade, a tiny bistro, a park, a graveyard. Some of them are built by me and some are Maxis lots from the bin (often edited by me). There's also a lake beach on the hill, close to the Sims family.

The town revolves around a big hospital building where Brandi and Marisa work as doctors.

DOWNLOAD (SFS)

Hope you like it! Happy Simming!

I chose to use the premade teens from all eight neighborhoods and moved them all into the same house, so they came in with their existing skill sets, relationships, wants & fears, aspiration level, etc.

I built a lot with half as many beds, toilets, fridges, etc. as I thought were necessary, though honestly sims are so inept that you could stick them in a fully stocked mansion and the deaths would probably still pile up.

The main rules are simple:

The loser of a fight (Attack animation) is automatically killed

At midnight on the first night, the two sims with the fewest total skill points are killed. Every night after, the sim with the fewest skill points is killed.

If there’s a tie, flip a coin.

That’s it! The last sim standing is the winner.

Download on Mod The Sims

What Sims 3 world would you live in?

I used to be *good* at search. It was a whole thing - I found people's "lost songs" or their unknown-source childhood stuffed toy or whatever from Google.

Now, you can't search for the exact brand/design name of something and get accurate answers. It drives me spare on Amazon - if I search for XYZ and you don't have any, or you only have 2, tell me that.

I used to be able to search for recipes and easily eliminate unwanted ingredients with a -. For example I'd look for low-carb desserts but without the zillions that use peanut butter simply by searching for something like:

low carb chocolate dessert recipe -peanut

And I'd get a slew of on-point suggestions. For some time now if you do -peanut Google ignores the - and assumes you want recipes stuffed with peanuts.

Where it's even worse now is now you get directed to sites full of bogus AI recipes that don't even make sense. But they have peanuts in them.

I used to be able to use reverse image searches to find out who made that awesome art so I could give credit in my share. They've removed that ability entirely and replaced it with Lens, which is AI BS just showing you more like what you looked for. (Rebecca Watson complained about this in her recent video about JD Vance jizz cup rumours and I apologise for that sentence but...yeah. Watson is great, go find her on Youtube and subscribe because she went into detail about how Google has become less and less useful for debunking.)

This isn't just about Google inserting shopping ads instead of what you wanted to learn about. That's bad. But the results now are just *broken*. The tools we used to have to make searches better have been removed. Google no longer wants us to find the answers we seek, but the answers they want us to have, and that's super creepy and dangerous.

And the alternatives are either using Google in the back end or have other significant barriers to use.

decisions decisions

i really missed this hood!!! and this kind of genuine enjoyment and fun, idk, it's what ts2 is all about to me. i've been thinking about how nice it is to have been playing a hood for 8 years, haha. the amount of affection i have for the sims is unreal! especially the ones in veronaville