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

Borked Genetics...

I bought the Seasons EP and it comes with yet another new neighbourhood, River Blossom. The 'hood has a number of ready-made families, two of which appear in the family bin. What this means is that any new neighbourhood you create will also have these families in the bin. This isn't normally a problem for me as I run with clean neighbourhoods i.e. I remove all the families/townies/down-townies etc that ship with the game. It's not that I hate them that much, it's just that it's the same faces, same personalities with every new hood/game that I play and this gets boring after a while. I started an 'Alphabet Legacy' recently and forgot to clean out the the Seasons neighbourhood and didn't realise this until Samantha Ottomas turns up to visit another lot in a pregnant state. Samantha lived in the family bin, along with husband Peter, mother-in-law Dora and 3 kids. Mother-in-law has a LTW to have 6 grandkids and Samantha is a family sim pregnant with twins, so it is feasible she will produce another child after that to send Dora off into the hereafter on a happy, platinum note. However EAxis borked the twins genetics so that the 'father' is not Peter but a random sim. In the River Blossom neighbourhood it seems to default to Patricia Wan but in my neighbourhood it defaulted to one of my alien pollination technicians, an altogether more interesting proposition. I decided to play the Ottomas family and see what happened.

















On the top is Star and on the bottom is Patti, both now children. I'm using a replacement default alien skin and eyes. In addition I use a set of 4 replacement pollination technicians as I like my alien hybrids to be a) not butt ugly and b) have some variety. Both girls are high neatness scores so enjoy bed-making and cleaning. I'm hoping they will grow up to be at least presentable, unlike their older half-sister, Sharla:


Sharla is on the right, she's just moved back home from uni with her girlfriend, Cherry Pescado (on the left). Cherry is sporting a geneticised version of one of Enayla's skins, hence the unusual look. Sharla was definitely dipped in the ugly bath as a child and on more than one occasion by the look of it. She has the strange, sucked in cheekbone look that the original Maxis aliens have.





Useful stuffeth:

Clean custom neighbourhoods/townie creation
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,5861.0.html

Empty and cleaned up templates
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.0.html

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

Geneticised Enayla fantasy skins
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,7230.0.html

Introduction

My plan is to use this blog as an outlet for my Sims2 addiction. I play a lot and usually have some sort of gameplan or purpose in mind with what I do. I use the story feature a lot and want to share but don't like the mechanism for posting to the exchange. I've seen a number of other players posting via blogs, so I thought why not?

I do not play a vanilla game, well I did for the first couple of months and that was enough. I use a lot of custom content (sims/objects/lots) and a fair number of mods to improve gameplay. I will try and remember where I got stuff from and tell you. If I don't and there's something you like the look of then just poke me (gently).

I also discovered today that I can't edit posts in Opera , so it's over to IE to do this.