I have Simpotence

[ZephyrZodiac]

Even the biggest oak trees grow from tiny acorns, and this thread is beginning to grow!  I can't see why, if people want to play, there is any reason why they shouldn't join in.

[simmiecal]

Yes,  boo Yahoo Groups!

I would love to join so I don't go out and spend a bunch of money on Civ 4 and "The Movies." I hope I am not too much of a noob here to participate.

   I just blew $50 on Civ4.  Like it much better than Civ3, but my little simmies are starting to call to me....
Will also probably buy The Movies as I really like the making movie aspect of the game.

But, none of this will keep me from the neighborhood game.....(assuming I'm invited).

What's involved in setting up a board? I'm no teckie, so I don't know how to do it. I wouldn't mind contributing to a set-up fee for it if someone was willing to do the actual set-up of it.

[Andygal]

I'm curious about Civ 4 myself.

I'd probably suck at it though.

Bu this is derailing the thread.

[baratron]

I think I want to watch your Neighbourhood from the sidelines. I can't do the legacy thing or the aging thing (kill my sims! NOOOO!!!!) and I rarely bother with children.

But if you tell some interesting stories with lots of pictures, I'll be here reading & cheering for you .

[Brynne]

But if you tell some interesting stories with lots of pictures, I'll be here reading & cheering for you .

Well, I am pretty good at that...

[PlaidSquirrel]

First off, I want in on this "challenge" you guys are cooking up. Sounds cool.

Second, I have a crazy on/off relationship with my sims too.
Sometimes I'll be so happy to be home so I can play my sims but when I load the neighborhood I just stare at it not knowing what I was so anxious to do.
Right now though I have just created a new family and am interested in what will happen to them.
I often seem to create single moms. Don't know why. I am trying to resist the compulsion to invent an entire town of neighbors for them to associate with (cause the townies suck).
I think that is where I went wrong when I first got Sims2. Although that first neighborhood Harbor Mill was great fun and fascinating don't get me wrong. It's just overwhelming eventually to have so many playable households with inertwined stories and it gets difficult to keep things moving smoothly for everyone. I had over 15 houses. One had met the 10 kids want and therefore was going to increase the household count quite a bit and soon. And I really Wanted to play them All. I loved almost every one of them. Even the ones I had invented as throwaway charachters ended up evolving into integral parts of my towns on-going saga.
 It only came to an end because for my birthday I got both nightlife and a new computer at the same time and it was to big a hassle to move every house over. I still think I will end up packaging each lot and bringing them over (because silly as this sounds i "miss" them and it makes me sad that i will never see some of the babies grow up) although I plan on using memory in a bottle to give them all amnesia first. I can't just bring the neighborhood file over without taking out Veronaville because of a glitch that occured when I originally installed the base game on the old computer or I woulda done that. I used deleteallcharachters on the Veronaville over here so I could keep the prop set up but build my own people there.

[veilchen]

Well, I am pretty good at that...

Brynne, I enjoy reading about your sims far more than I enjoy playing with them right now. You and Ancient have the most entertaining playing style I have ever come across. Well, Ancient Sim's stories are more weird happenings than intentional, but it's still extremely funny.

I wish I had the time to join you all, but I don't. Please, whatever you guys do, don't make us sit on the sidelines, green with envy. I want stories, pictures, etc., and don't forget to tell the rest of us which site you end up choosing to play on, so we can follow your progress.

[Brynne]

Well, I'm working on a new site right now, as a matter of fact, because the Yahoo Groups thing is just kinda...bleah. It's going to be all about those crazy sims of mine, but I'm putting out feelers first to see how much interest there is for this. I have my pics going up on the group right now, as well as files and other random stuff, and the blog going on elsewhere, and I just want to consolidate it to a nice pretty package so I'm not jumping around from place to place. Plus I want feedback from people who've actually downloaded my sims. I want stories! But I don't want people thinking, Brynne, you're nuts. No one cares about your stupid sims so go away!  lol 

[veilchen]

It's a good thing I know you're kidding about that Brynne

But seriously, I think your sims are fabulous, and your pictures have me in stitches. Bad mood? Feeling blue? Go look at Brynne's pictures, specially the one with the kids doing the shmustle (SP?). That one picture alone is priceless, and I absolutely love Joe. I hope he lives a long and productive life.

[Brynne]

Joe is immortal. All of my Bayfields are. My great-great-great-great grandkids will be playing them. Probably in hologram form, no less.
 

[lechapeau]

Ahem...holds hand up! I don't post much, I just lurk!
Anyway, we did this on TSR. Zythe came up with the idea and asked for contributions.
Our neighborhood is called Maple Vally. We have about fifteen houses and various people made families and houses and we uploaded to the exchange, Zythe downloaded them, we all put storylines and things we'd like to do with them in the thread in the challenge forum and he put it all together in a neighborhood, did the SimPE work to establish family ties and added some odd memories to make it more 'real'.
We had a few teething troubles. Some of the families made had been played, which he said should not happen, and some included custom content, which we also had decided not to include so as not to annoy any creators by passing things around.
Anyway, somewhere along the line something made a few of the families not age. I found while checking on something else that by giving them new houses they were fixed, so I rebuilt (as close to the originals as I could get) all the houses and it's working very well. It really does give playing that extra something...I had a hand in doing it, so I actually care what happens. Some like to torture and that's fine, some are breaking everyone up...it's just funny to see what other people do with families you yourselves made.
It's been around since the weekend Nightlife came out. I don't know how many have it...at the moment it's being temporarily hosted by someone who had downloaded its boyfriend. Before that we (not everyone could stay around, so it dwindled to three of us) each took turns and uploaded it to yousendit.com and had the link in the thread and also our signatures. yousendit.com's download lasts for seven days or 25 downloads and it's a little bit tempramental at times!
TSR offered to host it if it we made it into a challenge, but we didn't start out with that in mind, and coming up with one after wasn't so easy.
At the moment it's the only neighborhood I'm playing because I got bored with the others too.
It's not perfect, there are things we'd do differently now 'we know'... it's had it's moments but I've really enjoyed it and had fun learning.
I made some University lots for it, they're on my Simpage, some others have done 'add on' lots for it. At the moment we're in the process of making a downtown family for it. They obviously won't have any connections with the main neighborhood.
We've gone with ‘Maple' = syrup/sweets/food as street names (Zythe's choice) with some random 'whacky' characters.
Zythe made a custom screen menu image for it and a story was put together to come up at the start.
He made it N004, but we put up instructions for changing it to another number if that was used already.
We're not all playing it together, which is how I thought it was going to go, but still there are a few contributing to the thread.
Good luck with it all… The chance card idea looks interesting.

[veilchen]

Joe is immortal. All of my Bayfields are. My great-great-great-great grandkids will be playing them. Probably in hologram form, no less. :D
 

Hologram form? Now that I really would like to see. Brynne, you're priceless :D.

[PlaidSquirrel]

That thing about re-numbering a neighborhood is possibly the coolest thing I have ever been told how to do. Thanks so much for mentioning it! I haven't tried it yet but I plan to.

For anyone else interested the page with the directions is
 
http://forums.thesimsresource.com/showthread.php?p=3060820&highlight=command+prompt#post3060820

post #1304  It is 4 or 5 down.

[Andygal]

Hologram form? Now that I really would like to see. Brynne, you're priceless .

Mmmmm...new and improved pixelated hotness...now in full 3D.

[Hairfish]

Y'know, if you're still feeling dumpy about TS2, you could try taking a step back. I don't get bored with the game, but I need to take a break from playing and creating once in a while...so I reinstalled my old SimCity 3000 Unlimited. Yeah, that old thing!

There's something mighty satisfying about the sounds of laying pipe and running power lines, etc., in that old game, especially at top volume with the sub-woofer kicked to 100%!  My neighbors hate me at 3 a.m.! Mwahhahahahahaahaaaaa!

[eaglezero]

A livejournal community sounds like a good idea. I've worked with them before and they're easy to set up, easy to moderate, etc. The one thing is that everyone would need to sign up for a livejournal, but it's free and easy, so that wouldn't pose a problem. I like the livejournal idea better than the yahoogroups idea, because I think yahoogroups are hard to navigate. Plus, I don't think anyone really wants their email spammed with messages from the group -- much easier to have a livejournal community. Plus, threaded comments = very good.

One thing I'm confused about is that there appear to be several different ideas floating around that everyone is talking about at once. The one I like most is the idea of each participant creating a house with a set-up, everyone who wants to downloading it and working with the creator's story, and then the creator of that house periodically having wildcards that everyone has to abide by. That sounds fun, like there would be some parallel play but you could still do your own thing. Also, this circumvents the custom-content and hacks issues, as you could upload the lots with no hacks or custom content and when you download them you can switch it all up. Also, wouldn't you be able to use Merola's painting in order to get people into the jobs you want, etc? I wouldn't know, as I only downloaded it about thirty minutes ago.

So like, as an example of what I was talking about, in case my explanation wasn't clear, I could upload a house that has John and Jane Doe, Jane's mother Mary, and Jane's very-distant-cousin Smurfette, who lives with them. Smurfette is a romance sim, and John has a crush on her, which Jane doesn't know about, etc. So then I could have it set up so that Smurfette is about to kiss John (and pull him from a crush, to love) while Jane is making dinner, and Mary is in the den watching TV. You download it, play however you want for a while (you could also then add custom content, play with hacks and mods, etc). A week later I put out a wildcard that says that you have to have Jane catch John woohooing with Smurfette. Well, whoops, John currently is angry at Smurfette because she got married to someone else. You've then got to get their relationships back up, have them woohoo, and have Jane find out. There is, of course, also the possibility now of Smurfette's husband catching them as well, and thus you having another whole drama to deal with. And so on.

It sounds complicated when I type it out, but I think the logistics would be a lot easier to figure out than switching neighborhoods, or having a neighborhood where everyone has one house and they only play that one house, but everyone's houses are in their game (I just don't get how that would work at all -- if someone does understand it, please explain).

[ZephyrZodiac]

I think whoever makes the website for the downloading etc. should have the final say in how the game should be organised, taking the best/most workable ideas from everyone.  Then someone could help with a set of rules for us all to follow.

Now, about the killing of ones elders?  If they are platinum and can keep drinking elixir, do they need to die?

[Zythe]

Oh wow, our little Maple Valley project got mentioned. I'll tell you now, when you get to modifying your characters, don't even bother with the new GUI for SimPE. You'll have to do so much of it that it will practically pay to use the Classic GUI.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I mostly use Classic SimPE, I only really bother with the new one for deleting townies etc.  It takes even longer to load than the Classic, and seems to get stuck on a page after you've used it, and won't always return to the main one.

[Zeljka]

I'm normally very good with software, but I can't figure that PE out at all, and use Classic.

I realize there are problems with sharing people's work, but Maxis content? Urrgh. I don't use it at all, I find it very difficult, nearly impossible to create a decent comfortable home with it, and what about Sims? Sims made with maxis content are hideous compared to what they could be with custom content. Skin and eyes, not to mention hair are genetic, the coolest Sims look just blech without custom stuff.
I know the Louis skins from simscribbling can be shared on the official bbs (only) Can we at least use those?

edit: Renaming neighbourhoods.
I used Oscar's file renamer  http://www.mediachance.com/free/renamer.htm and replaced N004 with N009 on the folder and subs and it worked with no problems.

[simmiecal]

I absolutely hate the Maxis skins and hairs. I know some people don't want to include hacks / mods in their game. At this point, I'm not sure how many that is (majority/minority???). If people don't mind generating sims with custom content that can be shared, I don't mind importing those sims. Once we get close to uploading the lots and sims, we will get the group to make a final decision about using custom content. We can always change their haor and clothes once we get them but you're right, we'd be stuck with those ugly eyes and skin.

[Brynne]

I think whoever makes the website for the downloading etc. should have the final say in how the game should be organised, taking the best/most workable ideas from everyone.  Then someone could help with a set of rules for us all to follow.

I agree a billion percent. The person who actually puts the challenge up should have the final say about it, in my not-hugely-important opinion. The thing that makes it a challenge are the rules, and they aren't going to please everyone. I think, for example, JM would have a good obnoxious laugh if we all started trying to get him to change his set of rules for the email challenge. 


edited to add: Again in my not hugely important opinion, Ancient would have a huge part in the rule setting, even if she doesn't actually host the thing on her site. It was her initial idea...I see this as the Ancient/Motoki challenge lol. 

[Motoki]

I use replacment eyes so no ugly eyes for me. There are replacement skins too.

I guess it kind of makes the most sense to make all the sims without custom content to start and then let people change them later because some people are really anally anti-custom content and it honestly does make the download a lot larger to have the custom content.

However, having just gone through a neighborhood and giving every damned sim surgery, new clothes, makeup and hair etc including townies and service npcs, I'm not looking forward to going through all that again. And changing skintones is a pain in the ass and can only be done via SimPE, but I guess we've no choice.

[Motoki]

I was thinking, in terms of custom skins and eyes, if there's a set that everyone can agree on that we like, I can make them into replacments for the defaults. Then we can put them up as an optionally download. Those who want them will have all their sims' skin and eyes replaced with them, those who don't will just have the Maxis skin and eyes, and then we won't have to create our sims with custom skin and eyes and they'll also always work normally with genetics.

For other stuff, maybe we could have a small list of approved custom hair and makeup etc. Those could be optional too but with the disclaimer that if you don't download them you may get some sims showing up with odd hair or makeup and may need to use a mirror to change that.

Personally, if we make such a list I would very much like to put Hairfish's eyelid folds and middle age wrinkles on that list.

[Issy]

Personally I don't think custom skins/eyes/hair would be a problem for most, is there really anyone out there that doesn't have custom skins etc for their sims?  I can understand houses perhaps cos you could accidently get a hack or two in if ure uploading a house.  That shouldn't be too much of  a problem if you use clean installer either. Just my humble opinion of course.

I certainly don't mind any custom content on any sims, and I can always change some of them after I get the families. I think it's actualy better to try and use the sims as is, cos everyone has different tastes, and I would actually prefer to play different looking sims etc.  I thought the main idea was for this to be different playing experience for all.

I agree with Motoki/Ancient being in charge somehow, I certainly don't mind, I'm in for whatever you guys decide on.(That's if you guys think it's OK for most of us lurkers just coming out of the blue like this ).