Update! - sadly the pc I play on could not handle Cotes d'Ambonnay. Sadly I had to uninstall it. So I've recently learned of Cotes d'Ambonnay by simmers xSorcier and Reachsims, no I don't live under a rock - but it came out during a time when I was not feeling well so didn't keep as up on the larger sim related goings on's, and wow just wow no wonder it got featured. Forum thread's here & here for those interested, second thread includes exchange links for builds and some additional files. Plenty of prebuilt houses, and empty lots. Eventually I'll get back around to the Twisted Apoc, or maybe not. Sometimes I feel like I was try to force that save in a direction it just didn't want to go. Fyi for those who haven't already heard the rules for the apocalypse challenge has a new home since wiki is shutting down some of it's pages. https://sims3ac.wordpress.com/ Meet the Founder Tuilelaith (Tuile for short) Flann-Raine Traits: brave, lucky, loves the outdoors, great kisser, workaholic Her name, which was found through Behind the Name, is derived from Irish tuile "abundance" and flaith "princess"; her last name means "red" in Irish Gaelic, and possibly based on the French word reine meaning "queen", according to the website. Her wardrobe is not impressive, as her back story is quite harsh. She was the only child of Queen Flann, who remarried after the death of her first husband to King Raine. Eight years into the marriage the Queen suffered from a fatal accident, whispers suggested that it was no accident. Within less than a year the King took a newer and younger bride. To further cement his off springs succession to the throne he had Tuile branded a slave and sold her off to a far away kingdom. Life being what it is, the universe took revenge on King Raine. The slavers had brought a plague with them, which wiped out the entire population. The crew, sick and barely able to function themselves, sunk the ship during a light gale. Through a miracle of fate, Tuile survived and was washed ashore on a tiny island. Her slaves clothes are much to hot and bulky for daily wear so she salvaged some torn sail cloth for a rough outfit. The irony of course being that her world has just entered a mini ice age. As to why she wasn't starting on the mainland,she is supposed to be unaware that the kingdom was just decimated by plague and is trying to avoid her step-father. Naturally once her shelter is up and she takes a job, she'll learn the truth. However in the interest of keeping herself safe from any remaining plague victims the isolation of the tiny island is in her best interest. Usual network, city hall, big park, library, and the three closest houses on the mainland. I'll be playing on "normal" 90 day sim lifespan. I've used tce unlockOutfits on to get her hair and cave person clothes, I will also be tce'ing her funds to zero day 1, which means she will have to work hard and fast to get a crude shelter up. (Roof lean-to) After that, her funds will fall under the regular apocalypse rules. Another key point where I plan on deviating from regular apoc rules, is that the heir will be moving to either an empty house or lot (depending on available funds) within a day or so of becoming a young adult. For generation 1, aka the founder, all npc's and townies will be getting cas makeovers to fit a medieval time period, but not the future generations. Home sweet home, day 1 - 8:00 am.
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As I mentioned previously I'm reusing Grey Steel, After I took Papa Steel to the bookstore (ea lot borrowed from Lunar Lakes) I double checked his traits in addition to transitioning him to elder. Eeep, one of his traits was wrong so I swapped great kisser (he won't need that) for slob (he does need that). Here's the town as is for now. Big Park Their corner of the island and the neighbors. Alternatively the starting corner. All three of the neighbors houses meet starting standards. Graveyard, which was created by Rflong. I mined it from the built version of the island. The network, sort of. I need to decide whether or not I'm keeping City Hall, the school, and the hospital in the same place that Rflong has them in the built up version of the island. It's all about being to close to the graveyard. Hospital by graveyard not really a 'erm?' for me, but the school & city hall are. For now I'm using the Lunar Lakes (EA built lots) rabbit holes. I was considering using some of the Sunlit tides rabbit holes but they sit directly on the ground, which won't mesh with not touching the ground build rules (gasp yes, I'm applying those rules to the rabbit holes) from the naturalist clear. Even though it will mess with townies once naturalist, politics, and architecture are cleared the rabbit holes & lots will get replaced/rebuilt with more normal looking buildings. As per the set up rules after moving the steels onto the 40x40 lot I reduced their funds to $8,308. Then took Papa for the books, as mentioned above, then waited just a smidge longer for the ITF portal to appear before building their home with the remaining funds. At the end of the day 1 building they have $68 left in funds. More walls and furniture will get added as Grey earns money from writing books. A point of note, for reasons known only to the game mechanics the copy of Grey I'm using left cas with 8 days until teen transition. Last challenge I turned off aging for two sim days this time I'm not. Also as soon as Grey transitions to teen the age for elders gets set to 4 days, because I want to work in this handicap. "
I think that about covers everything regarding the set up. Oh yeah here's the base game rules for clearing Education or as I'm calling it Education - Primary school for children & teens only.
METHOD
Pps, I'm counting on nraas SP to fill the 3 vacant houses, fingers crossed. I'm using the Steels for some test play of a twisted Apocalypse. I'll be using the apoc rules as the base rules. Here's where the twist comes in: Only a few lots will be built at this time, founders lot, the big park, the needed bookstore, and their career role. I considered playing with the no free food fridge mod, that however forces me to take naturalist for the first clear as well as making the grocery store the rabbit hole for the network, so I'm leaving the mod out. For some careers/clears I'm bringing back some of the old prerequisites. I'm looking to make an already tricky challenge even harder, but not impossible. ;) To accommodate all of the lots that come with both the store content and ep's I'm using Rflong's build version of Legacy III island. From the setup page.
(Not rolling, not an option since it determines which building, if needed, will be the rabbit hole for the set up.)
I rolled a 3 so Grey, once she's grown up will be attempting education - primary* base game method. Which makes the network, city hall (to be built eventually), big park, the (future) library, and the 3 neighbors who will be lots close to the founders lot. This also helps me determine which part of the island to settle on. While it was tempting to select one of the more remote residential lots, I'll be using one (40x40) just slightly less remote in the farm area of the island. Dealing with boat travel for an apoc is not ideal when you have to deal with curfew. Other than work full moon days will be a full day curfew day. I'm keeping the extra handicaps from the tourney attempt, although I'm going to give myself a little more fluidity on 'the eyes have it' so that it's not just hair color. The one non network lot to be added, as mentioned above, is the bookstore. Getting skill books is semi essential to the founders beginning. I say semi essential, because through game play there has been more than one occasion where an active sim has received a skill book with their promotion. That bit of good fortune is not predictable though, so following the rule of buy books, especially gardening, is best. As with other apoc challenges any residential lot not being built on just yet is being converted to community lot, the one change I'm making so I don't have to much headache later as I need more than 4 residential lots is before changing lot type I'm labeling the lots "residential". My why convert to commercial is because it cuts down on homeless sims & game lag, it also forces the game to only populate the apoc builds I place. As with the first portion of the Verde's randomcy play I'll be mining** pre-built rabbit hole lots from ea worlds. Not sure which ones I'll use and which ones I'll build as needed, but it's good to be prepared. Determining How Many homes to add with each generation can get semi tricky. Happily There's a great tutorial on populating worlds which has a handy "Resident Numbers" chart towards the bottom of it. So for education the minimum working population is 2 and the max is 5. Therefore one my founder clears education I'll add 2 more residential lots, and when the heir rolls their career I'll add another 2 lots. Essentially adding 1 to 5 residential lots with each generation. The exception's will be if there is an alternate method of clear for the career rolled, in which case I'll probably use random.org to decide method. By necessity of how I'm playing and setting up the game, at least the first heir will also have to roll for their career on the day of their transition to YA. Once a sim clears Architect, I'll do a mini build boom for any remaining rabbit hole/employment community lots. *I'm splitting education in two. Education - Primary is the original apoc education, however it only unlocks education/school for tot to teen, and does not include college or classes at rabbit holes. With education Primary, in addition to adding the school building I'll be adding a preschool to the town that includes store education content. Eventually I'll go over education - secondary. ** Mining lots takes time, part of which is due to having to fully exit the game & restart it when switching worlds so as to avoid code overlap. The code overlap glitch was caught early on in s3's run by those with better coding tech skills than me. Essentially as I recall when you close a town, return to the main menu and then open a different town, some bit of code from town 1 tags along and causes eventual corruption of the second town. Sadly I don't have a link anymore for the better explanation. Rules & restrictions might flux as I play, if I scrap any as I go I'll try to remember to explain why. Speaking of "why", while I prefer wordpress over weebly, the way weebly handles picture media, means I (at this time) don't have to worry about a storage cap, so for now here I stay. Meet Grey Steel, again. I aged her down in cas to child, new save - new sim. I was happy when she kept her ambitious, workaholic, and lucky traits. From here out her traits are random. Meet Papa Steel, Grey's assigned guardian. Hates the outdoors, unlucky, slob, natural cook, friendly. He loves hot dogs. After 1 trip to the store he is senile and uncontrollable. There network consists of: City Hall, the Big Park, the library, 90 James Dean Drive, 78 & 79 Dragnet Drive Additionally I updated the rest of the town. Removed a couple of empty houses, because I had accidentally placed a few to many. Rezoned all remaining lots to community no visitors allowed, and brutally ran all homeless out this time. Although I did forget to go around and fix my planted townies, oh well. First attempt ended with the social worker, header image, showing up two days before Grey became a teen because Papa Steel f'd up their food supply. So take two is going to have some readjustments. Here's a copy of my entry form.
Player name: Melinda (***Just for fun***) Apocalypse Family name: Steel Occult Set Up chosen: NA, base game only Advantages: none Handicaps: (copy pasted from the wiki)
World used: BYO Neighborhood http://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=4186997 (granted industrial island would be a better fit, but I really need a break from industrial island.) EPs used: None, not even store content :( Network (community lots): Big Park, City Hall, Library Curfew Day: Wednesday's Will be trying for one of the following end requirements: (copy pasted from the wiki) "Look at all the Shinnies!" You must have every possible "Base Game" gem in every possible cut on your lot. Below is the gem list and cuts required.
"The Landlord" You must own 5 level 3 lots with one of the level 3 lots being the Big Park you started with at the beginning of the challenge.
"The Writer's Guild" The household Sims must have written, collectively, a best seller in every book category in the list below.
Took a bit but I think I finally have the town set up the way I want it. Although I might have one or two houses to many, so I need to delete a few so that not counting the founders house there are only 30 houses. I also need to edit a few lots to see why sims were getting stuck. I also need to fix some of the sims in cas. My approach to populating the world was to take my sims, and fill the larger 'compounds' (borrowed the Brokes trailer park from Riverview) with groups of 8. I filled about 12 lots this way. One lot was set up as an orphanage. I then let nraas storyprogression handle lot relocations, within 2 to 3 sim days the sims had spread out around the entire town, including a few relationship surprises. I have a sim set up for founder, who I'll be using. Since I've opted for a rainbow range of colors for the town, I picked steel grey hex code for the founders color. She looks pretty neat, the down side is she's not very photogenic in a barely lit room, let alone in the full light of day. Meet Grey Steel. Traits: Charismatic, Workaholic, Ambitious, Lucky, Great Kisser LTW: Renascence Sim; reach level 10 of 3 skills If I had ambitions or store laundry content installed, I'd pre-pick medical for the first lift. Since I don't, jobs fall to the luck of the draw on what is offered 1st in the paper. For heirs, the goal this game is to go with sims who are the closest blends of both parents. Game play outside of a few glitches went well, and her selected traits helped the career ladder climb go so smooth I never had to have her ask for a promotion. I did run into the stuck time glitch because I forgot to have the mods run the homeless out of town. I also forgot to delegate all empty residential lots to community lots. As with most of my past challenges I did the trial run with a below ground bunker. Starting with just 1 level and the barest of furnishings. By the time, she reached level 10 of the paper assigned career track the home was decently furnished. There is one non regulation chair, which I thought was okay because it's under the cost limit and only has 1 (+) for comfort, so I'll have to ask about it. A big mistake I made was forgetting to get the grill early on, even though it doesn't get used until after there is more than 1 sim in the house. Something I reflected on while building the lowest level is that starting with an above ground shelter might be a better option, as adding on will go faster. Plus windows. I don't fret space overly much, as I've successfully managed houses of 8 in an 8x8 for several generations before. So to me to levels of 8x8 is luxury accommodations for an apoc start. It's all in how the space is managed, so things that are considered regular such as cribs get banished from my personnel list of items to include. Yes it would keep the babies happy but they will sleep on the floor, another factor is that a crib like all other 2+ square items can't be moved around until after athletics is cleared, so other than the bed I try to minimize items larger than 1 square until after athletics. One other glaring variation, I have not downloaded any store content into the base game which means no laundry, and no laundry hamper. Although there are dirty laundry piles available in buydebug. The lack of dirty laundry was a nice factor, as my sim didn't constantly have a negative moodlet from the stinky piles everywhere. While very sparse in furnishings the park proved to be very popular, and no your not imagining it but there are duplicates of all the sims that got planted, triples in a few cases. I probably spent most of my time sim watching at the park while the founding sim was off at work. Since the park is part of the network my sim spent almost everyday after work there, except for the one curfew day, which for those with SN is the day of the full moon. One of the changes I'll make between the test run and actual game play is until my founder has met 25 sims I'm only going to have her great other females first. That way once it's time to meet coworkers & male teens/children (best way to get a ya partner) she gets the instant boost on the friendship. There is one major not a glitch potential fail situation, for which I happily take the cheat points ding on to fix. If your sim is working a career, like science, where they can get singed at work, you are s.o.l. for any bedroom romance beyond making out on the bed. As in no woohoo or try for baby options are available. All other regular romance options are available. If a sim gets singed while a YA, they will appear to change on their transition to Adult, however they will still have the singed moodlet. Which causes them to switch back to the singed appearance at a later time. The only ways to get rid of the singed moodlet buffer in game mechanics without using a mod, is to have the affected sim take a shower or bath. Swimming might work, but it's not something I've play tested. On a side note, the singed buffer on a near black sim makes them look like their walking around with nothing on. lol. Feeling the need for a break from the Verdes, so I'm going to switch over to an Apocalypse Challenge play for a while. I've stashed the other save out of the way so it doesn't have anything happen to it by accident.
For full Apocalypse Challenge rules check out the wiki. There's also a facebook group for the challenge. While not what many would call barren looking world or a disaster struck world like Rflong's Industrial Island, for the AC I'll be playing BYO Neighborhood by auntielynds from the exchange. It's a decent size world and it is completely empty, so it's going to take me a few days to get it set up as I want it & populated with a starting population. So it's going to take me some time before I create my founder or pick the options I'll be playing. I'm thinking of going rainbow colors for the sims this round, I love seeing the genetics play out. As to it's lush greenness, I'll pretend that it's all fake plants. ;) I'm still playing base game only, with the only added content being from Riverview. As to the mods for the AC I need to strip down to only the following: overwatch, error trap, storyprogression, and no cd. The other mods, especially the empty fridge mod, are incompatible with the challenge as you can't go harvest plants as needed without naturalist cleared. Ps, I'm journaling/charting the progress here instead of WP only because on weebly I don't have to worry about running out of room for media. |
The Restrictions
Additional Handicaps - Applies to all generations
Rite of Passage: In order to prove their worthiness as heir, before your sim can marry they must have made at least 4 good friends not including their future spouse. The Age of Aquarius: May only marry (or breed with) sims with compatible zodiac signs The Eyes Have It: All heirs must have the same eye/hair color as the founder. No Country for Old Sims: With a lack of proper healthcare, sims don't live very long and easily die of common diseases and complications of elder-hood. Elders living more than a few days are a rare occurrence. Change the Elder lifespan of your sims to only 4 days for the entire challenge. Greedy Gangsters: Not only you have to pay the mob on Mondays, now you have to do it on Thursdays too! You must continue your Monday payments even after you lift Criminal. Archives
September 2019
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