A Sims 3 Simblr brought to you by the same idiot responsible for this glorious mess. Go there if you prefer Sims 2 crap.
Beware of cursey words and the occasional butt cheek. All non-Sims-related nonsense is tagged as "non sims," so block that tag if you don't want to see that kind of bullshit.
There's also some Green Hell pics here and there, too, since that's apparently a game I play now? I guess?
Oh, and you can find my TS3 hair retexture archive here. If you're, y'know, into that sort of thing and all. I need to get back to that project...
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into TS3, I smack you with a new Tempest preset. :)
I made this for my "runaway teen" thing because I'm playing it in Lucky Palms, which is kind of a weird world. It's obviously got some Las Vegas influence, with the casino stuff and the not-native-to-the-area palm trees and some other flora, but the canyon scenery and all the water and the "houseboats" are all much more like the Lake Powell area, which is a huge man-made reservoir pretty far to the east of Las Vegas, straddling Utah and Arizona. Don't get me started on the interstate politics of it and the fact that a big chunk of my state's ever-dwindling water supply is funneled to it for freakin' southern California's use, but it's a nice, scenic place to visit.
Anyway, for my runaway thing, I was just going to use the Las Vegas preset I made because "close enough," but I decided to edit it to make a more-detailed 18-day-season version because I was using 18-day seasons in that save for Reasons. And then when I was in there poking around I decided I wanted a slightly cooler climate, so I decided to lean more on the Lake Powell side and make a new preset for that region, using climate data from Page, Arizona, one of the "gateway towns" for the lake's recreation area. So that's what this is.
There are two versions, both included in the same download. One is a "default" one that you can use with seasons of any length, and the other is the one I made for my save, which requires you to use all four seasons, each 18 days long, for it to work properly. The latter 18-day version has each season broken out into three six-day-long "months" within each season, which gives more granular control over temperature ranges and weather patterns and whatnot.
As always: This is a preset for use with theĀ NRaas Tempest mod. General info about this project as well as installation/use instructions areĀ here,Ā andĀ hereĀ is a link to the tag page for all the presets Iāve posted so far.
Further details about this preset are behind the cut, but if you don't care about that, HERE'S THE DOWNLOAD LINK up front.
Overall Climate: Is desert. Is warmer during the day but cools off at night, year-round. Is very sunny and not very rainy/snowy year-round, 'cuz desert. Is hot in summer and chilly-to-cold in winter (with some snow). Is quite pleasant in the transitional seasons, with spring being especially nice, temperature-wise.
Snow: OK, enough of the broken English. :) It can snow throughout winter. That said, during the entire year, sunny/no-precipitation weather greatly outweighs precipitation, and if precipitation happens in winter, rain outweighs snow where their allowed temperature ranges overlap. (It can rain down to 35F/2C, and it can snow if the temperature is 40F/4C or below.)
Fog: None.
Hail: None. The real place can get hail sometimes during the wicked thunderstorms that can happen there, but I just didn't want it for this preset. So there.
Precipitation: As advertised, this is a desert climate. So, rain/snow is far less likely to happen than sun/no-precip, year-round. Sometimes, precipitation is 10x less likely to happen than sun, in fact, but precipitation is always pretty strongly outweighed. Also, the duration of any incidence of no-precip will be pretty long, year-round, especially so in summer, so any periods of precipitation will likely be pretty far apart. Year-round, the maximum length of a single incidence of either rain or snow is 2 hours, so you're not very likely to have long stretches of rain/snow unless the game trips out and picks precipitation twice or more in a row. A period of precipitation could be as short as a 15-minute-long shower. Also, for most of the year, precipitation intensity will be light or medium, but there's a fair chance of a heavy storm in summer (and in the first "month" of autumn, in the 18-day version, as well), to try to make some monsoon-season thunderstorms happen.
Additional Settings:
Fireplaces that are upgraded to auto-light will do so on active lots if the temperature falls below 50F/10C.
Any fallen leaves will be removed at the start of winter.
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Last time, it was hairs that would be suitable/believable for middle-aged men, maybe even with receding hairlines and shit.
Today, it's miniskirts/short dresses for the girlies (of either sex) that, if they existed in real life, would actually cover the sim's ass and crotch when moving around like a normal Homo sapiens.
I'm not calling anyone out here. Dress your sims however you want and make/convert and share whatever CC you want. But can we please, PLEASE for the love of wifi, have some miniskirts/short dresses -- tight, loose, whatever -- that are longer than barely crotch-length but still well above knee-length? I don't know, something solidly mid-thigh? EA made some, and people who edit EA stuff have even made them better, and I use them....but I'm tired of them. And most of the CC ones? Another story. I don't want all of my mini-wearing girlies to look like they're getting ready for a booty call. Mini can be classy, too!
And while we're at it, more shorts of a reasonable, loose, comfortable-looking mid-thigh length would be nice, too. Not everyone wants skin-tight shorts with their ass cheeks hanging out. Again, I have some, but I could use more.
Just some random scenes from the first few days of my "runaway teen" Itka's life in a version of Lucky Palms, in that I edited some lots, added some lots like consignment shops and a laundromat, and added the missing rabbitholes and stuff.
She still hasn't escaped her "squatting" stage, but I also haven't opened the game much because real life has been busy and I haven't had time.
Disclosure: I nicked this image from a post that someone reblogged; I just didn't want to reblog it and wanted to rant a bit about inflation and the narrative about it, but I'll put my rant behind a cut.
The rant only applies to USians, by the way. I have no idea what things are like elsewhere. Anyway...
See, here's the thing about inflation.
Generally speaking, it's a good thing. It means that the economy is growing. (Deflation is a bad economic indicator because it means that the economy is shrinking and then wages go down and when that happens personal debt becomes much more impactful and harder to pay off and all sorts of other bad things.) HOWEVER, inflation is good if AND ONLY IF wages keep commensurate with it. And that's the problem here in the US. Wages have been stagnant for a long, long time but the prices for everything keep going up. Corporations continue to make massive profit off things you are forced to buy -- like food, and not just non-necessary things like soda -- at ridiculous prices when compared to your wages. (Think about it: A gallon of milk is approaching $6, on average, and if a person's only making $7.25 an hour or a little above at their job...) The fact is, you get poorer and poorer while they laugh all the way to the bank. Because once prices go up, THEY NEVER GO DOWN. (Except for things like gas and fuel oil and anything else petroleum-based, because oil is a commodity, and commodity markets are a whole different thing. Other things besides oil are commodities as well. Precious metals and natural gas, for instance.)
Anyway, the federal minimum wage has been $7.25/hr for SEVENTEEN YEARS. Since 2009. Yes, some states (and some areas within states, like large cities where the cost of living is higher) have higher minimum wages, generally because they have more worker-friendly and union-friendly state governments, but they are not required to and many states do not. And, wages that employers pay are generally based around the state's minimum wage. So, even if you earn above that, you're not making as much as you would in that same job in a state/area where the minimum wage is higher. (Though, to be fair, your cost of living would probably also be higher in those states.)
So, if you're feeling pinched, you have two places to look. One is your state's government. If the minimum wage in your state is at the federal minimum or at least is still a single digit in front of the decimal point, then you have a very anti-worker state government, and you need to get involved to change that, up to and including running for an office yourself if that's in your wheelhouse. More generally speaking, you need to vote blue in local/state elections. It's imperative, and arguably state elections are more important than federal ones because they will more directly affect you. Because the second place to look at is the Republican party. While Republicans used to be the more worker/union-friendly party (like, back in the 1950s) and they're still (bafflingly) regarded as the party that's "better for the economy" (which is bullshit), that party is now the Democrats. Yes, they don't do as much as they should. Many of them, especially the old-ass ones, are still corporate shills who take money from Israel, but the party is also, slowly, becoming younger and more progressive, and progressives are the group that are worker/union-friendly while not taking money from Israel in exchange for supporting their genocidal aims. YOU can help to continue that progress by supporting and voting for progressive candidates.
So, if you're feeling the pinch, look for progressives to vote for, on all levels of government. If there isn't one for you, then at the very least do not vote for fucking Republicans and for pie's sake do not simply not vote. Never do that. In the current political climate and economic state of the US, any Democrat is better for you than any Republican, even the shilliest of Democrats. This financial pinch you are feeling is ENTIRELY 100% Republican doing -- from market manipulation, to tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy at the expense of everyone else, to endless wars that raise your prices (which they'll bill as your "patriotic duty" to pay or as "short-term pain for long-term gain" which it NEVER is) and that only benefit their donors and military contractors -- and it's been very, very deliberate since the Reagan years. (I'm old enough that I know and have watched it happen.) Unless you happen to be a white supremacist and/or a billionaire, there is absolutely no reason to vote for a Republican, not in the current political climate.
And hint: Unless you are already a billionaire, you will never be one. Not with the way the US is currently run, at least. That's a fact. And if you're a white supremacist? You'll still suffer under Republicans, but I guess you can take solace in the fact that other people will suffer more. But wouldn't you rather just...not suffer? As in, everyone not suffering? Yes, Republicans will talk up culture war and fearmongering bullshit about immigrants (and "demographics") and LGBT people and people getting "free stuff" to distract you, but the only important thing, right now, is what I talked about here. Well, that and keeping the country from falling apart...but, really, the economy is ultimately the thing that's killing it, because it's easier to cause division and to gaslight people who are financially suffering and who are desperate to believe something and to look for people to blame. That is exactly what Donald Trump exploited.
bug reporting is going well! here are some known issues that weāre currently working on, thank you for your patience į( ā¢Ģ į ā¢Ģ )į
More fixes coming soon to Paralives. But I'm posting this mostly for @papermint-airplane because:
You were heard, m'dear! :D
This is why reporting things and making suggestions is so, so important, at least when you have a developer who is actively seeking bug reports, feedback, and suggestions!
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OK, I know I said I wasn't going to post much about Paralives, and I'm not, yet, but.....
LOOKIT MAH CUTIES, GODDAMMIT!!!!!!!!
The guy in the green plaid shirt is Kareem, one of the pre-made households whom I selected to play, and the other is Sylus, a guy Kareem met right after he moved in and now they've moved in together and are adorable. Sylus was a "homeless," and I don't know if those are all the same in every game or if the game generates new ones for each save, but whatever. CUTIE!
I actually thought Sylus might be set as nonbinary because he has a bit of boobage and also gets wants to have a baby with Kareem. So I figured out how to edit Paras and it turns out he's set as male, but then I clicked on the "advanced options" and found this:
So.....like....Does this game have (or maybe will have) male pregnancy AND breastfeeding? Without mods???? I dunno, but I checked those options for Sylus, and we'll see what happens....
I named her Itka. Thanks to @bbcopperdaisy for the suggestion as well as to the others who offered names. I went with Itka because I liked the sound of it and, after doing a little research, also liked that it's a diminutive of several Eastern European/Jewish names that have associations with prosperity and hard work. I thought that was fitting for a sim who will work her way up from nothing. If I post some of the gameplay pics I took while I was playing, you'll see that her surname was, for a while, literally "Placeholder." LOL. But, I have now changed it to "Jeziorska," which is a name that was generated by a name generator and that I liked the look of, though I don't know how to pronounce it. (If anyone does, let me know!)
The sim generator I used to generate her characteristics decided that she would have "unnatural hair," and I decided to use her favorite color (lime green), but didn't want it all green. So, I decided her "natural color" would be brown and then give her lime green tips, like so:
But the control on the hair I gave her also uses the tip color for lowlights, so she has a bit more than green tips.
Anyway, I know an actual "runaway challenge" exists out there, but I don't know its rules. I'm just doing my own thing. Which, overall, is that Itka has to live on the lot I built for her with only a tent and a campfire (for roasting food) until she has enough money to buy a "real" lot. If anyone's interested in more details than that, they're behind the cut.
The only thing she's allowed to buy that she can't carry with her is one four-slot planter box to grow veggies in to both eat and sell and to fulfill gardening opportunities. Otherwise, she can't buy anything until she has an actual house, which she can't buy until she has enough cash on hand to buy a fully-furnished lot** in cash. She doesn't go to school and she's not allowed to have a job. She also doesn't get any bills, because she's squatting. She makes money by collecting and consigning what she collects, dumpster-diving and consigning, and doing "odd jobs" via Ani's "Job Board" mod. She can also use the wishing well in Lucky Palms once a day to wish for wealth.
To get "Job Board" jobs, she needs skills, though not every skill has associated opportunities. I use an RNG to decide which skill (out of all of them in the game, including hidden ones) that she's going to work on unless she herself rolls up a want to get or improve a particular skill. She has to go to a community lot to work on that skill. (I have made sure that there's at least one community lot that has at least one skilling object for each of the skills in the game.) Once she gets a skill point in a randomly-chosen skill, I RNG for a new one unless she rolls up a skill want herself. She can also make money by doing "jobs" that some skills provide, if she develops those skills up to those levels. (Like training when you have enough athletic skills, selling scientific samples when you have enough science skill, etc.) And there's busking, if she chooses to get instrument skill.
She has a strict curfew of 2100 (9PM for you heathens who don't use the 24-hour clock) when her butt needs to be back on her lot, and she can't leave it until 0800, which I did mostly just to limit her skilling time. And that's pretty much it. Once she's in a house, she'll become just a "regular sim" and she can find someone to partner up with (if she wants) and have a job (though the sim generator "decided" she'd be a self-employed photographer) and a typical sim-life from there.
**I was going to allow her to buy a bare-bones lot with just a shell on it, but she's honestly making money pretty quickly because collecting/consigning is pretty lucrative, so she's gonna have to have enough money for a fully-functional house instead of a bare-bones one before the challenge is, essentially, over.
So this will be my "runaway teen" to play in Lucky Palms. I lucked out with good, useful traits for a person who won't have money to buy food... and won't have a fridge even if she did...and won't have a job to make money because I'm going to use Ani's job board, so she'll have to skill up at the library and live off opportunities for a while. She got an easy lifetime wish, too. And I don't think I've ever played a sim who was a photographer whose sole source of income was photography. She'll have to save up money to buy a camera and wait for one to be up for sale on consignment.
I need a good Polish name for her, though. Paging @rollo-rolls! Or any other Polish folks who might be out there. I want a good name for her, first name and last name. Something pretty, not too common, but also not too weird. I could just use a name generator, but since I'm not Polish I'm not going to know if it spits out a dumb name or a weird one or a good one. So if anyone's out there and has an idea.....
This is a lot that I'm building for a "teen runaway" to squat on in Lucky Palms. It overlaps the remains of the lake on the "poor" side of town, so it's down in the lake bed, nowhere near a road.
It has a squirtier "spring" than I'd like, but the medium-sized squirty fountain object was too small and the large one (which is what I used) is a little too big. But it'll do.
It's not done, but I want to make and move my runaway onto it to make sure that it's actually accessible and all that jazz before I spend time doing more to it.
Also, I tried to control myself with flowers, but I didn't succeed very well. My excuse is that there's water.
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Y'know, if I had to pick one of the Abrahamic religions to follow, I'd definitely be a reformed/secular Jew. Why? Because the diaspora is currently in a holiday where an appropriate part of the celebration is eating cheesecake and a good, cheesy pizza. What's not to love?
So, Happy Shavuot to any Jewish folks out there! I'm being a Jew in spirit, in that I ate pizza for lunch and am now eating cheesecake as I type this. (Although both my pizza and my cheesecake is non-dairy, given that I'm a filthy vegan, which kind of defeats the whole eating dairy thing, but I choose to see that as part of the "in spirit" thing. :) )
This is the only Paralives gameplay that you need to watch. It's hilarious. And the corridor of clown doors at about 20 minutes in is peak. (The sounds!)
No, seriously, this guy is pretty much the only guy I (occasionally) watch who streams life simulator games. He's entertaining and takes the subject matter with as much seriousness as it deserves. Which is none.
So, I watched a bit. I didn't watch much past the clown door corridor because I don't really want to have all the gameplay spoiled, but what I saw made me laugh so hard I almost peed myself. (Because Old. Yay.)
But anyhoo...Back to fucking around in Lucky Palms I go. I'm ALMOST ready to start this "teen runaway" thing, and since it'll be something I can post about, maybe I will....although in all honesty, sometimes posting about my gameplay kills my enjoyment of it, sooooooo I dunno. We'll see.
I know this game is, like everything else, youth-obsessed. And sure, I know there's a general dearth of male hairs, but styles more appropriate for older men are even rarer. It'd be really nice to see some receding hairlines without being completely bald on top, for instance. There's only two or three EA hairs, even, that I think work for older men, and I can't use them because the scalps don't match my default skin. :p Almost every custom hair I have or see is a style that looks like someone scalped a member of a K-pop boy band. Not that I have anything against such styles -- They're fine for younger guys, of course -- but...you know.... Younger guys grow up. Eventually.
So, I always end up putting what I consider a "professional" style on my older men and then I rely on Consort's Age mod to gray it appropriately, at least. It's still to much hair, though. :p I guess we just have to imagine that the male pattern baldness gene doesn't exist in the Sims universe. :) Either that or Sim males have so little testosterone that they don't lose their hair as they mature...
For this runaway-teen scenario I want to do in Lucky Palms, I wanted to make a little lot for said teen to live on until they accumulate enough money to build/buy a starter house. I wanted it to have a tent, a campfire, and some water for a fishing spawner (for food) as well as for washing up (thanks to the "One With Nature" mod).
So, I plunked down a lot on the "poor" side of town overlapping the remains of the "lake" on that side of town. I decided to see If I could use the decorating tools mod to create a little spring/waterfall for the lot, and the above is what I came up with. It doesn't really "work" because the "waterfall" is made with a bunch of fountain gushers placed at different heights (so in live mode, the water squirts up), but it looks nice in stills and the sound is nice, so I'll probably keep something like it. (But will definitely make something a lot smaller. LOL )
Thereās roughly 5 days until Paralives comes out in Early Access, and I gotta say, Iām a little shocked at the lack of hype around it, esp considering how excited ppl seemed to be for it around the time of its announcement and early development.
Well anyway, hereās the part where I insert a poll.
Will you be getting Paralives?
Yes!
No
Iām still thinking about it
<<< RESULTS BUTTON >>>
Voting ended onMay 23
Feel free to reblog, and/or elaborate. This post is open to share any thoughts, gripes, or excitement.
i will always respect paralives and its devs for pushing the envelope and daring to try things the sims has never attempted. that being said, the game as it stands now has this overly safe, cozy, "spiritually sims 4" vibe to it that doesn't really appeal to me.
ts2 is my personal north star when it comes to life simulation, so for me, paralives doesn't delve into the weird and bizarre quite enough.
paralives also doesn't excite me visually. the environments are lovely, but don't really care for how the paras look. however, i do believe i could be swayed once i see people mod, customize, and push the game to its limits. definitely interested to see what you'll do with it @tau1tvec!!
simply put, i'm not the target audience, though i'm ever so slightly intrigued.
Oh I will certainly be doing things with it š, and also ty for your honest opinion, itās always good to see people willing to form their own one of those on the internet these days. š«¶š
Iām actually kinda surprised ppl are picking up on its much more cozy vibes, I honestly thought I was the only one who saw it, and was wanting it more bc of it, esp since I think itās a lot of the reason The Sims 3 is my favorite of the four, bc despite it also being quirky and chaotic, it has these surprisingly chill moments that make its open-world that much more appealing and immersive to me. Which Paralives also seems to have achieved.
In regards to the Paras, which Iāve seen to be the most common issue with some folks, I feel for me the issue isnāt so much the Paras themselves, but that their more comic book like aesthetic clashes a bit with the objects and environment. Iāve seen more recent gameplay tho, and idk whether they noticed and kinda fixed it, but it certainly looks more cohesive and polished to me now.
Otherwise I try not to worry too much about character models, esp in games with character creator, that from what Iāve seen seems quite solid with all its customization tools, and can only grow with the possibility of modding in its future, much like The Sims did. I think like with a lotta other similar games it rlly is what you make of it, and I actually like that it has a style that feels fresh and new and nothing like anything else out, it adds to its ālovingly crafted by a small studioā feel, esp in a sea of similar games that seem to just go for whateverās objectively cute, hot or pretty to grab pplās attention long enough for them to get looped into paid content hell, bc to me thatās what I find to be āsafeā these days in the gaming industry.
Iām also weird and consider character creation to be its own entire game in a sense, so I honestly welcome the challenge of a new character creator, even if it isnāt in my preferred style.
I honestly wasn't looking forward to Paralives much BECAUSE it seemed too much like it was trying to be "Sims, just with better tech." Like, the same damn game, just with different graphics and some nice, more modern features. I also wasn't a fan of its cel-style art, but that has grown on me in the intervening years as I've played other games with similar styles.
However, more recent revelations of Paralives's gameplay have demonstrated to me that Paralives isn't just "Sims with a different paint job." It is, in fact, more of an actual game than the Sims games are, with game progression beyond just skill progression and career progression. It has storytellers similar to Rimworld that affect difficulty and events. It has card-style gameplay, in that the cards you choose from within a selection that you are given at particular times affect the direction of your para/household and perhaps the entire town. It has the collection-and-donation mechanic from games like Stardew Valley. And, yes, it has a very definite "cozy" feel and, I think, less wacky "drama" than Sims games have. (And I, for one, appreciate that. The wacky stuff is fun for a short time, maybe, but for me it becomes very annoying very quickly.) It also has a quite different (and perhaps more difficult) mechanic governing how Paras interact with each other, so you're not likely to meet someone and then be best friends/committed lovers with them two minutes later. I imagine some simmers, who only want the open-ended gameplay that they can use to tell a predetermined story that they have in their head before they even start a save won't like that as much. I, however, am going to like it. I can already tell.
I also imagine that for those Sims-players who only or primarily like to create Sims in CAS, then pose them and take pics, then edit those pics out the wazoo to post on Tumblr or other social media probably aren't going to be as thrilled with the game's art style, unless the game's overall look can be greatly modded to look more "realistic." But me? I'm "famously" allergic to CAS, so I couldn't care less about that aspect, really. I'm a gameplay (and building) gal, and I think that Paralives even from Day One (not to mention all the planned development during just the early access period) will have enough mechanics to keep me interested, especially combined with the building aspect, which I'm very much looking forward to exploring....though admittedly I have concerns about roofs. I am, however, aware that that is likely a bit of "trauma" carried over from the Sims franchise and its notoriously god-awful roofs. LOL
Anyway. Enough blabbing. I wasn't really looking forward to Paralives, but since I looked into it further, I have become a fan. I'll be buying the game on Day One, and I plan to give lots of feedback to the devs. That is, after all, the entire point of early access. You get to be an unpaid beta tester, and in return you get the game sooner and for a little less money than it will cost in full release.
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I'm guessing y'all probably saw this. Well, those of you interested in Paralives, anyway.
I didn't know the game would have storytellers, sort of a la Rimworld, and I'm loving it. Now I can yell "Goddammit, Randy!" at the screen while playing Paralives, too, not just Rimworld....although in Paralives it will apparently be "Goddammit, Ricardo!"
Poking at Lucky Palms pre-mades with long sticks. I don't remember the names of these people at all (yay for being old!) but I kind of have a fondness for the guy at the top. I do remember that he has a teenage daughter who hates him...
Anyway, yes, I want to play the save I talked about looooooooong ago (with an alien playable pulled from a different save), and I've also decided that I want to do a "teen runaway"/rags-to-riches sort of thing in the same world. But, I just can't stand EA hair, and while I'm in there picking new hairs for people, I can't resist taming some of the most egregious facial features while I'm at it. And sometimes I poke at clothes/accessories, though I only bother with the everyday outfit. So...yeah. Takes a while. And I have to be in the mood to screw around in CAS which, honestly, I'm not often in the mood to do.
BUT! I am trying to get some prep stuff done for these saves I want to do before Paralives releases.
