Alphabet Legacy Street Guide

The Alphabet Legacy 'hood has grown quite a bit since the challenge started. This was mostly my fault as I needed somewhere to accommodate all the excess spawn from the earlier generations. The additional bonus points for 5 and 7 children and meeting family sims' crazy LTWs seemed like a good idea back then! Now is a good time to provide a quick snapshot of who lives where in the community.


I started with an empty 'hood and added houses as needed. Most of the family names are pretty meaningless as there are lots of Pescados, Ottomas, Tamars and Daltons so I'll stick with a numbered guide and house names. There is something of a population reduction going on as I make way for incoming MATY self-sims. Rather than killing sims off, I'm going for the Chinese style 1 child per couple approach and using the tombstone of life and death to age sims on from adult to elder to speed up the process. The main legacy household are still played by the rules so are unaffected by the population control.

1) Valhalla Park. There is only one community lot, Valhalla Park, where all the graves are moved to after a sim dies. I've done the 10+ ghosts on a lot for an original legacy challenge and have no desire to go through that again. I've landscaped it and tried to group graves by family. Nobody has visited yet although there are community lot type facilities.


2) 1 Alphabet Street. One of the original two Tamar residences. It is now occupied by married couple Bast Ottomas (nee Tamar) and Tommy Ottomas with another couple, Basil Tamar and Desire Ottomas. They are all 'extras' so will follow the one child policy.


3) 2 Alphabet Street. This is the legacy household, currently headed by C generation heir, Chablis Pescado, who is partner to MATY sim, Trepie Pallus. Two of the three D generation heirs are still resident, Damask (teenage romance) and Devereaux (child). In a break with tradition it looks like Devereaux may be the first male heir of the legacy. Original legacy spouse JM Pescado is also still resident with his partner Cedric Pescado. I married them to avoid a repeat of the first 'D' generation heir as the game does not recognise a great-grandparent as being family. Pescado also seems to be hellbent on setting some sort of record for producing alien offspring. He's been abducted twice producing Jupiter first time then twins, Saturn and Venus the second. Since then he's been turning up at other residential lots and produced another two alien offspring, Iolanthe (child) and Orion (toddler), through dance sphere abductions. The youngest two are still resident.


4) Bedale Hacienda. This was another excess offspring lot where the original residents were limited to 1 offspring per couple. Denver, Duchamp and Dagon are the children. Denver has graduated and returned to the household, asking MATY sim, Hook Martell, to move in. They've got 3 bolts for one another so he gladly accepted and a wedding is on the cards. Duchamp and Dagon will move to uni soon.


5) Lothario Haven. This is where Beau moved in after Chablis kicked him out from the legacy house. He was the original C gen legacy spouse but got caught cheating with my selfsim. Chloe Pescado has now made an honest sim of him and they have a baby son, Daryl.

6) Marhis Villa. JM's first alien offspring, Jupiter Pescado, moved into Marhis Villa and married his uni sweetheart, Cresta. She's a pleasure sim and Jupiter's romance so things work pretty well as he keeps his straying away from the family home. They have two children with Devon staying at home for now. Jupiter also got himself abducted and had alien twins, Uranus and Tethys. Later, in a 'like father like son' move he also visited another lot and made use of their dance sphere to get himself alien probed again. The result of this was twin toddlers Mars and Rhea.


7) Eevilcat Haven. The residence of the Ramaswami household. In an entertaining twist the original inhabitants, Sanjay and Priya, never managed to produce any children as a couple. This was probably down to them playing so hard elsewhere. Sanjay had alien twins, Io and Venus, after an abduction. Meanwhile Priya had Cecil first with Benji Pescado then Jax and Saturn with Jupiter Pescado. This meant that once everyone returned from uni, I was free to marry Jax to Venus and Saturn to Io as neither couple were related. It's all part of the alien breeding experiment. Since then Io and Saturn have produced Neptune while Venus and Jax produced Juno and Orbit. (Jax's eyes have been fixed to correctly use the alien texture but Juno's haven't yet.)


8) Bachelor Pad. This was originally home to a whole bunch of B generation extras who have since shuffled off to sim heaven. The current resident couple are Camilla and Theo Chambers. Camilla is a full sister to Cedric Pescado while Theo was an original townie that I created. Camilla is a family sim with a burning desire to graduate 3 children from college. Just be certain of achieving this, she had five kids with Theo and a further 2 as the result of an affair with Lucian Tamar. Family sims are no longer allowed to have LTWs that require multiple children but for now I'm attempting to fulfil the wants of those that do. Camilla's kids include Darius (owner of Pleasure Domicile), Delice and Dionysus (late residents of Pleasure Domicile), Dana (Bella Casa). Still resident are Darren, Demeter and Drusilla.


9) Tamar Lodge. Home to original legacy spare Anya and her husband, Jermaine Tamar. I suppose this was where the family sim madness originated. Anya wants to marry off six children (whimper) and has amassed several more to make a grand total of ten. To top it all Jermaine got himself abducted so there are alien twins to deal with. Various offspring (Beryl, Benita, Bali, Baron and Bast) have moved out and some have been railroaded into marrying to meet Anya's want. Birgid has moved back in with husband to be, MATY sim Twain Sawyer. Meanwhile a small menagerie of offspring remain at home (Brandon, Barnaby, Belatrix, Barak, Ursa and Uranus).


10) Stellar Haven. Home to Patti Ottomas, Cecil Ramaswami and Draco Pescado plus Cecil and Draco's daughter Erica. This is an extras household that I haven't played since the new child policy was implemented so Draco is currently expecting a second child with Eric. It will be the last and the plan is try out a female abduction pregnancy hack with Patti then find an alien mate for her.


11) Pleasure Domicile. The very successful home business venture of Camilla's son Darius Chambers. He lives here along with various extended family members and friends. Star Ottomas is now an elder and her son, Crane (father Flamingo), recently moved to uni. Darius' alien son Edison returned from uni with Venus Ottomas. MATYian Witch proved that lightning can and does strike twice in the form of risky woohoo resulting in sons Eric (father Darius) and Franz (Elgin Chambers), both still at home. Eric, her first ACR son by Darius has headed off to uni. The final family member is Fleur Ottomas, Star's daughter with Elgin (Darius' other alien son).




12) Bella Casa. This was where a chunk of the 'B' generation extras holed up with the Chez Dalton, the mutual target of their affections. Poor Chez had a pretty unhappy life for a pleasure sim, if only he'd found woohoo fun. Sad fact was, he simply found it exhausting. Luckily SaraMK took up with Briony and joined the household. Both their children have since returned with their respective partners. Chelsea with Dieter Pescado and Chastity with Dana Chambers. Elgin and Benita Tamar have also moved in. Dana and Chastity have had Enya while Chelsea and Dieter have produced baby Erasmus.



13) Ottomas Holding. This is where Samantha and Peter Ottomas set up home along with Peter's mother, daughter Sharla and sons Tommy and David. Samantha gave birth to alien twins as a result of her borked EAxian pregnancy then went onto spawn Patrick Ottomas, the fugliest sim in the 'hood. Patrick married the second fugliest sim, Boron Tamar and they produced two kids, Conrad and Claret. Patrick also had a son, Edmund, with Star Chambers and an alien daughter, Rhea thanks to pollination tech #59 AKA Mr Blond. The house has always been very full with Sharla also returning with Cherry to spawn Desire, Diego and Dmitri. The current residents are:

• Diego and Beryl Ottomas, parents of twins Eros and Eragon.
• Dmitri and Saturn Ottomas, parents of Ellen Ottomas.
• MATYian Rohina and Conrad Butt, parents of Dexter and baby Daryl Butt.
• Saturn has also had an alien abduction baby, Aquarius.

The house acts as a mini fuglacy experiment though the addition of Rohina's nose seems to be improving looks.

When the Ugly Bug Bites

It looks like I'm set to have a fuglacy subplot to the legacy challenge. I'm interested in the sort of fuglacy where it can only get worse... but only through natural breeding. As we all know, Sharla Ottamas has a face that is best described as unique. After her mother gave birth to the (alien) twins, I thought why not see what the 6th one turns out like? The answer is special, in that very special sort of way. Meet Patrick Ottamas.

Patrick the toddler with dad, Peter. Peter always reminds me of a 70s porn star. You know it's going to be bad when a toddler looks like this.

Patrick the child.

Patrick the teen - he's a pleasure sim and has met his true love, Baron Tamar - a romance sim.

He goes to uni at the same time as Baron and manages to make it to class often enough to gain a respectable degree. He returns home with Baron whom he immediately proposes to then marries. I'm not so cruel as to let the typical romance sim fears trigger. Don't they look lovely.

They spent the first day home trying for baby as the jobs they wanted weren't available. After 3 attempts the lullaby was heard and Patrick is going to be a mommy.

Meanwhile Sharla's two oldest sons have aged up to teenagers. Here's Diego off to uni, he looks a lot like Sharla, right down to the impossibly pointy chin.

Dmitri is the middle child, just turned teen and still at home bumping up a few skills before uni.

We'll catch up on the Ottamas breeding program at a later date.

MATY Sightings 1

My Alphabet Challenge neighbourhood has been gradually metamorphosing into an Alphabet Challenge meets MATY Self Sims 'hood. This is good as it adds variety, not only in appearances but on the personality front as well. I usually create a MATY sim at the start of play, hitting the randomise button a few times first in order to avoid later in game first-born syndrome. I then move them into the launch pad lot and make them a townie using Inge's teleporter shrub. A fairly large number of the MATY sims are now present as townies though one or two have proved a little camera shy. Two (JM Pescado and Trepie) have married into the legacy family and another (SaraMK) is hooked up with one of the 'B' generation extras. Here is a random assortment of sightings so far.

My selfsim (Evi Felix AKA Eevilcat) visits the legacy household after work and, failing to realise he's pregnant, offers JM her services as a personal trainer. Cue one embarassed selfsim.

JM Pescado, co-founder of my legacy challenge and the genetic cause of many a Punch-You Punch-Me game, shows his alien twins the right way to go about fishing.

Marhis and Evi Felix visit JM's other alien offspring, Jupiter, who is himself expecting alien twins. Being a romance sim he thinks he knows exactly what to talk to women about. The visitors feign polite interest.

Twain comes back from work with Beau and hangs around for dinner after a dip in the hot tub. He seems a bit distracted by the fact that Beau's new wife, Chloe, forgot to dress after her shower.

Rohina also visits after work and gets on well with Chloe. She must have heard about Beau's previous indiscretion and divorce from the legacy heir, so figures he is fair game for annoyance.

Back at the legacy household for some gratuitous shots of nekkid men playing with their instruments. Way to go JM and Trepie!

Myskaal where I always seem to find him - in the hot tub with one of my playables. I think this shot was taken before one freeloading meal too many and waistline expandage.

SaraMK turned up at my 'B' generation spares house one day after work and it was instant 3-bolt attraction with Briony Pescado.

After several more visits SaraMK moved in and they went on to have two girls. The only downside to the same sex pregnancy mod is that both partners can try for baby so it there was some pregnancy overlap. On the left is Chelsea, who's still at home and on the right is Chastity who's at uni. Chastity looks a lot like SaraMK.

ACR Induced Chaos

I play with the ACR mod installed, or Autonomous Casual Romance to give it its full title. It's fab and fun, lots of fun in fact as it allows sims to spontaniously interact in a romantic type way and even woohoo or try for baby. One of the handy overrides it comes with is to set lot jealousy to none and I will admit to playing with this option enabled for almost every lot in every hood. Without it, the slightest hint of romantic interplay between a loved one and another sim will bring out the green-eyed, jealousy monster. Along with the jealousy comes the predictable slapping, arguing, poking, shoving etc which I'm not a fan of... unless playing a Black Widow challenge of course. The current epic is my Alphabet Legacy Challenge where I have tossed a bunch of CAS sims bearing geneticised Enlaya skins together with a bunch of Maty self-sims, so the no jealousy override has been deployed in force. This was fine until the ACR adjuster got reset somehow on my legacy lot and chaos ensued thanks to my own self-sim. Sheesh!

The legacy heir, Chablis, decided that being a rock god was one of the best routes to meeting her LTW of earning 100,000 simoleans which means she works 5pm-11pm. Her new husband Beau Pescado (nee Tamar) must have edged into the negative on his ACR timer so wanted some woohoo action. Alas Chablis was at work so he decided to get jiggy with a friend from work, my self sim AKA Evi Felix. Don't you just love free will?

Fair enough I reason, let them get on with it as Chablis will probably be too tired to attempt for an heir tonight. She returns and is exhausted with majorly low bladder and hygiene needs to boot. Let Beau have his fun methinks, not a problem with ACR no jealousy, and direct her to the bathroom. A short time later there is the ominous BOING sound of a sim catching a loved one having an affair i.e. performing an romantic interaction. Sim telepathy in action again. I immediately pause the game to figure out what the hell has happened and find this:

Oh dear (insert swear words here) methinks, but I have the no jealousy override set... it was working earlier... oh crapola!!! It isn't set now. Chablis is even less impressed:

There is a round of mutual slapping as their relationship stats fall through the floor while their furious bits are set to a bright, glowing red. Hmmn thinks me, there's not a lot I can do to salvage this situation without cheating, and I can't do that as this is the legacy lot. Excuses, excuses. Poor Beau, perhaps having 3 bolts isn't enough to make you the one after all so Chablis does what any sensible girl would do at this point and gives Beau his marching orders. Awww.

He's shocked. Just when you think it can't get any worse for them, it does. Beau falls out of love and they become enemies. Meanwhile Evi has decided the hot tub is the safest place to be and she's probably right... no user-directed interaction then no getting out for anyone, not even an angry, legacy heir.

It's over and Beau is about to leave. He's not happy at the break-up but Chablis is. I've never seen that before. Maybe we can find her a nice MATY sim?

The no jealousy override has been carefully reset and I will be rechecking it in future. I realise now that an earlier error in the game probably borked it. Despite the very occasional hiccup, it is probably the best ever mod for the game.

ACR (Autonomous Casual Romance) can be found here:

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4691.0.html

Alphabet Family Tree (part1)

I find it hard keeping track of families in Sims2 as they tend to be a)large and b)run to many generations. The alphabet legacy is meant to run to 26 generations (A->Z) with a minimum of 3 offspring per generation which means there are going to be a lot of sims. A while back I mentioned on MATY the possibility of my creating some sort of visual tool for viewing family trees outside of the game. However, I have been both lazy and distracted by actually playing the game so haven't got very far... I do have some code written but it's not doing much beyond opening the neighbourhood package file and reading/organsing a little bit of the data at the moment. My intention is to get back to the coding soon, but until then I will make do with using a combination of print screen and Photoshop to record family trees outside the game. So without further ado, I will introduce the first 4 generations to date:

Generation A: Eva Biblios, had a 3-bolt attraction with JM Pescado, they married and had 5 children: Aston, Aria, Alec, Aramis and Anya. Aramis and Anya are twins and Aria is designated heir.

Generation B: Aria meets townie Satori Luna, they marry and he takes her surname. They have seven children: Begonia, Byron, Boron, Bea, Briony, Benji and Bernice. Begonia is declared heir.

Generation C: Begonia meets townie Luis Cantor, they marry and he takes her surname. They have the required 3 children: Clyde, Chablis and Cresta. Chablis is declared heir.

Generation D: Chablis moves back home from uni and JM is still there looking as youthful as ever thanks to the vats of green gloop. Technically she is his great-great-grand-daughter, but sims being sims don't recognise family relationships beyond grandparent-grandchild. Before I know it ACR has kicked in with the allow unmarried override on try for baby and so we have Draco. The situation has now been resolved as Beau Tamar has moved in to keep Chablis company (3-bolts) while Cedric Pescado (another great-great) is there to distract Pescado. Cedric was dumped by JM's alien son, Jupiter, after uni so he's hoping for more luck with dad. Incidentally JM's alien twins have arrived and are now toddlers.

One characteristic of sims with low nice is that they like to play Punch You Punch Me all the time... in fact thanks to Eva and JM I have bred four generations of Punch You Punch Me addicts. Here are a young Begonia and Byron playing:

Unfortunately it's not a game without consequence, so I see this all the time:

Poor old Chez can only look on as Bea thumps Benji. Actually Bea is a pain in the bum as she doesn't just do this at home, she also spends her entire time annoying, poking, or arguing with any sims she visits.

Alien Abduction

I will admit to having a fascination with alien abductions in Sims2. There's something fun about sending your sims out to stargaze knowing that an alien spaceship might, just might, turn up andd whizz your simmie away. If it's an adult male sim and conditions are right, well that's how you get little, green babies. Of course, chances of that happening are remote, some sims spend their whole lives glued to the expensive telescope and never see anything more than a few stars. Others have a very different experience.

JM (husband to my late, legacy founder Eva Pescado), being a knowledge sim, fancies a spot of stargazing on his expensive telescope. Little does he know it, but stargazing in this 'hood carries a much, much higher risk thanks to TwoJeffs' increased odds of abduction mod.

Time passes... and passes... and passes... when all of a sudden, there's pulsing blue light and a strange, pulling sensation. That'll be the alien tractor beam.

Unfortunately hanging onto your telescope will not prevent the abduction, but it doesn't stop sims from trying.

Several hours later, a strange pulsing sound is heard... it's the UFO returning.

JM is uncermoniously dumped on the street and there is the tinkle of the baby lullaby. A quick check on the ACR adjuster tells me that it's twins, boy is he in for a surprise. Alien pregnancies apparently have a higher chance of resulting in twins.

Pictures of the twins will appear in a future post. For now here's a picture of the offspring from JM's first abduction... you would think sims would learn from experience, but no. The second abduction was the result of free-will being on and a sim deciding that he wanted to stargaze.

This was Jupiter at uni, he's now an adult and is living with his wife in another house.

Nope, Jupiter's not a normal out-of-the-box Sims 2 alien. Those guys are butt ugly as we can see from an early piccie from another hood. Interestingly this picture was taken just after I'd installed my replacement pollination technicians so we have original parent (big eyes, no nose, pointy face and thin lips) with a relatively normal looking baby.

The reason for the normal alien baby is the multiple replacement pollination technician hack from MTS2. Rather than having one technician doing all the pollinating, there is a choice of four with quite different looks. (Piccies taken from originals on MTS2.)

I also use a default replacement alien skintone and eyes to get an alien 'look' that I'm happy with for my game. Jupiter and the twin's mom is #14 (top right).

Things you might want:

Increased odds of alien abduction:

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,1194.0.html

Multiple replacement pollination technicians:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=71852

Amun-Ra's v7.5 default eyes from Insim:

http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=21918

JWilson's Hairy "Warlokk compatible" Louis skins custom + defaults, including alien, can be found on Sexy Sims 2 (need to be over 18 and have a login):

http://www.sexysims2.com

Alphabet Challenge(d)

I will admit to liking challenges as they give some structure to my gameplay. I've completed a legacy challenge, asylum challenge and freewill hostel challenge. I eventually got bored to tears by a black widow challenge after all you can only have the heroine procreate with then kill off so many townies before you run out of steam. I've seen the alphabet challenge mentioned so I thought I would give it a go and set up a new blank neighbourhood. Blank that was apart from the River Blossom interlopers but they've now woven their way into challenge (more on that elsewhere). The starting sim was an adult female called Eva Biblios; seemed like a good combination of a progentitor and something book or word-related. As it was a blank neighbourhood I had to create a bunch of townies, or rather create a bunch of sims and make them townies. I opted for a mix of MATY self-sims and some CAS creations of my own. Amongst the MATY sims was a certain JM Pescado and I was gobsmacked to say the least when he and Eva turned out to have a 3-bolt attraction. I'm not one to stand in the way of simmie attraction so Eva Biblios became Eva Pescado and the 'A' generation was underway.


The first three kids were Astor, Aria and Alec:



They were followed by a set of natural twins, Aramis and Anya:





I don't normally dress my sims in such awful outfits, but Eva's dress was my entry for the MATY Apr "More Awful Than You" CC Treasure Hunt: Whore Clothes. As 2 out 3 judges thought it was the worst adult female outfit I thought I'd celebrate by foisting it onto my legacy founder. The dress came from 2-for-U and is a bit of an aberration - I'd definitely rate them in my top 3 Sims2 sites for female clothing.

The genetics are interesting as I'm using a mix of geneticised Enlaya Pixie skins as well as quite a few of her fantasy eyes. Eva and JM produced 2 Pixie skinned babies and 3 normals skins.


Useful bits:
Legacy Challenge Rules
http://www.legacychallenge.com/index.html

Alphabet legacy Rules
http://www.forums.boolprop.com/viewtopic.php?t=1697
2-for-U
http://www.2-f0r-u.de/startsims2.htm