I am trying to keep myself at bay this time, but it’s easy to see a farm at MTS2 and go “oooh, I really want to start with farmers”, you know?

Thing is; I already have my families planned out, heck, I’ve created all of them and they’re in the family bin! All eight of them! (families that is, not sims) And I won’t go adding people until I’ve gotten these guys settled (and moved in) because my “to-do” list will just grow, and grow and grow! And I’ll never get anywhere.

I’ll be posting quick intros (family picture, name, ages, quick backstory maybe (if I have any)) now and then as I move people in and build things, I’ll also post neighbourhood shots for that matter, but only as I actually have houses down etc.

Until then however, my farmers, my working class, my lower classes and my poor will have to wait. Why? Because I usually start going from the bottom to the top, this time I’m going from the middle. Sure, some of these guys are lower middle class or lower class even, but there’s aristocrats, nouveau rich families and several middle class families.

This doesn’t mean that I’m a) ignoring the working man or b) being unrealistic. It just means I wanted to have these kind of families in the ‘hood before I began playing. From here on (except if a ROS happens) anyone else (townies, npcs etc) will be lower-middle class or lower. This also goes for townies that fall in love and so forth.

I just know that if I HAD to start with say, 3-5 working families and almost no middle class families I’d go nuts. I like my middle class, they’re comfortable enough to do things, but not so comfortable that they can afford to sit still for too long.

This (somehow) also reminds me that I do need to create some ROS scenarios regarding aristocrats and their wealth, after all in the 19th century these families (if not all, several conservative families at least) were losing money and finding themselves with money issue as industry grew. Which in turn moved several new families up the ranks and established the middle class, lower-middle class and the working class further.

The second thing (which I’m not quite sure how to do) is to add a few ROS’ regarding gambling, particularly horse races (flat races and national hunt) as this was something they did in their freetime (”they” being the men).

On the topic of men, I do think there might be a suffragette popping up now and then, not one I’ve created but I think it might be a ROS (or basically, where Laura has her ROS about people moving to Flordia, mine will focus on girls that are teens or adults and will basically involve them getting involved in the movements and moving to the city). They’ll still live, but as suffragettes weren’t exactly treated nicely, I’ll have to roll some “danger” ROS’ now and then regarding whether or not they’ve been imprisoned, died, gotten sick, lives on the street etc. etc.

As for the city, I’m planning on creating that as well, as it’s where my lower-middle class – royals will be having their seasons, balls, not to mention that the house of lords and house of commons would be there as well (speaking about that, I’ll likely go with a bastardisation of the houses opposed to having to deal with actual parliaments, at least at first (I only have eight families after all!)). So the suffragettes will have somewhere to be, as will any farmers who escaped to the city to work in factories etc.

However, the city will wait a bit as I need to get everything else settled first!

See, this is what I mean by having too many plans! XD

I haven’t a clue when the “new” project will be up, as it is I’m taking my time and trying to figure out what I want to do and such before I go ahead with anything. I do like it though, it very much suits my general needs though exactly how often I’ll play and update I’ve no idea (which reminds me, I really should cut back on work or something <_< Blergh.) but I’ll figure it out as I go I guess.

Anyhow, I wanted to give a quick update just to keep myself in the “mode” I guess, even if there’s no pictures or anything else I do like rambling about sims anyhow <_< Even if only for my own enjoyment.

But yeah, right now everything is stretched between uni and work, both which take up a lot of time and make me very tired (I really need to cut back, working 3 days one week which adds up to 18,5 hours is just too much for me. I can deal wit 5-10 hours, but not 18,5! I don’t have many lectures, but I have 300+ pages to read for each lecture and I’m already behind /rant)

*Cough* Back to sims, current project is humming along. It’s Victorian based (not in London though, I prefer to keep things fictional, less pressure to be exact about the streets etc.) and I already know (and have created) how many families I have etc. what I need most is houses, community centres etc. I’m trying to be good and building first, but I really really hate it so we’ll see how many houses I build before I cave!

The second, very much on the backburner, is present-day Victorian ‘hood, that is Rotham (the name of the Victorian based ‘hood) in our time, with the descendants of the families from Victorian-Rotham and such. However I need to finish and play (but not finish playing the ‘hood, that’d take ages!) the Victorian ‘hood first, but I’m kinda-sorta working on the modern ‘hood now and then too.

As for how it’ll work, I’ve basically decided that the Victorian ‘hood will only impact modern ‘hood up until a certain point (thinking  up to 1900-1910) after that I’ll likely just let the Victorian ‘hood move through time without anything really impacting the modern ‘hood. But as I’m starting in 1830 this isn’t really something I have to be dead certain about just yet.

A part of me did wonder about letting the ‘hood move through time naturally, but a) that’d be a lot of CC to download as time went by, not to mention removing some of the older CC as it would no longer be used and such without making entire houses go blue and b) I’m an impatient creature who’d like to play in the modern age without having to play my way up until the modern age.

We’ll see how it goes as the Victorian ‘hood falls more into place, everything else is still up in the air I guess.

Yeah, I really do like biting over more than I can chew it seems. Still, I should be able to work things out.

Harrington however, is gone. I got my computer back, but with a whole new hard-drive so none of my old content is there anymore. I could’ve asked them to try and get it back, but it would’ve been 100+$ which I didn’t really have at the time (poor student, that is me).

So yeah… Second time in a pretty short timespan that it’s happened. Beginning to wonder if perhaps this is a sign and that I should stop blogging about sims I’d have preferred less… Bothering ways of getting hints, like the game disk not working compared to having to get a whole new hard-drive (even if it was for free).

I haven’t started the big re-install-a-thon (anyone who’s ever re-installed sims 2 knows it’s a pain in the neck, I have 8 EPs and 8 SPs to install… I suppose I’ll be getting my uni-reading done in-between at least) just yet, but I’ll get to it later this evening and hopefully get it done before tomorrow (which is my big read-a-thon-so-we-can-get-back-on-track-with-studies day) and then we’ll see.

I do have an idea, or two, but I’ll have to look at schedule/studies etc. and see how I can work around it all without driving myself up the wall. An idea Laura offered back when Vivienne went bottoms up popped into my head, albeit somewhat differently, so I’m going to attempt to work that out and hopefully that’ll be my new project.

Until then this blog will likely remain as quiet until I decide where to go from here.

That said, I have sim-blogs to catch up on and eventually a whole lot (not just sims) stuff to re-install. Oh joy.

I don’t have any new images as I haven’t had the time to take any, but if you wish to see what meshes are included you can find them by checking the preview post for this project, just keep in mind that the images are from BEFORE I edited the meshes a bit (the gypsy mesh is still huge though).

The .RAR consists of all 9 files, clearly labled with AL, FT and CELEB to make it easy for you to identify them.

Download

Hopefully you’ll find these somewhat useful

Want to take a guess at who’s writing yet another post that have absolutely nothing to do with Harrington? It just might be me, but this time, I feel very justified (I did last time as well, but shhh xD). You see, a certain someone (that’d be me!) have been fiddling with things. Well, not just any thing but the dreaded Milkshape and came to the conclusion that, hey! I want to try something, what something? Well, you’ve either guessed by the preview picture, or you’re about to find out

Thing is, I’ve been wanting to try out Milkshape for a bit, but since I had nothing I wanted to make, I just couldn’t be arsed, you see, I rarely bother with things I don’t want to do or get something out of, the main exception is university and work, and I’m not very keen on making myself do something in my spare time. Other than cleaning, but I find that oddly relaxing.

Anyhow, I don’t really remember how, but I was looking through ModTheSims and searching around for conversions, no reason other than that there tends to be some nifty things now and then. Then it struck me, there’s very few meshes with pregnancy morphs for teens, which, isn’t really surprising given the general mindset when it comes to the Kitten Killer (more fondly known as InTeen) and her various step-siblings (who’s name I’ve long forgotten).

At any rate, after playing around slightly with Milkshape I decided that the only way I was going to learn anything was to give myself a project. And so I started my fight against the “fancy” (as I call it) outfit from the Stuff Pack Celebration Stuff, a struggle, which I’m sad to say, is still raging. I suspect it might be my own fault though. We’ll see how it looks after some sleep and food.

For now, there are only previews, sorry, but as you’ll soon see, there are some bumps and bimps that I’d prefer to deal with first, that and I see this as an opportunity to ask if there’s anything else that should be corrected. Tummy size, boob size etc. I’ve never been pregnant, nor for that matter seen all too many pregnant tummies, so I used my gut (+some google images) as well as simply going with what suited the mesh best. Still, I’m open to change, though I have to try and stop fiddling with them soon or I’ll go nuts!

Anyways, onto the other preview images! (You didn’t think you’d get off that easy, did you? )

We’ll start with the ones I’m most happy with and make our way down, hm?

Oh, and unless I or the image says otherwise, they’re all in their first trimester.

As the image says, it’s the long summer dress that came with Apartment Life, I decided to show both normal+preg and fat+preg to give you an idea of how it looks

I have to admit I’m not entirely certain which pack this came with, I think it was Freetime, but I’ll check before I upload them and such and make absolutely certain that I know where they all come from

Because I know it might be a bit hard to believe than the ones above actually are in their first trimester, I thought I’d add one where one is in her second trimester wearing the same outfit. It’s partly due do how the mesh is layered and partly because I might have felt a bit along the lines of “bigger is better” when making it, I think.

All I know is that it came with Apartment Life, I didn’t pay enough attention to catch its name though, so I termed it “classy”.

I really rather hate outfits with jewellery, it’s annoying to move it and try to avoid it getting swallowed into the stomach while keeping it in place. With this, I think it worked out okay, but bleh, not much fun.

I know the pregnancy morph on the normal one might not be quite big enough, I does look okay in the second trimester though, I’ll probably play with it a bit tomorrow and see, there’s three-four layers though (top jacket, top, stomach and pants) so it takes a bit of tinkering to get it right. (For me, who’ve never really done it before)

I know this technically came with Apartment Life but I was pretty tired near the end and well, I’m still a bit miffed because we got so many converted outfits from Freetime with Apartment Life. The blonde is wearing a wedding ring because she’s an aged down adult and the others were busy standing still for me so I needed another model.

This came with Freetime, right? Or was it Apartment Life? *Sigh* I guess I’ll add that to my list of things to check for later. This is also what I meant with extremely bothersome jewellery that I haven’t quite worked out yet. It looks good here, but second trimester is a bit different (and boy, I might have to downsize a bit too!)

You can see what I mean about the jewellery (slightly at least) on the white shirt, I might just remove it, or fiddle a bit more, we’ll see. And yes, the fat morph + preg morph for this equals a BIG tummy. I’m torn between leaving it that way or fiddling with it… We’ll see.

The sweater dress from Apartment Life, yes, I can see that it’s a little too pointy to the right, it doesn’t get better in second trimester (see below) so I’ll be changing it, no worries!

Same dress, now in the second trimester, left tummy I really really like, the right one I’ll toy around with, shouldn’t be too hard to fix really

This one, this one has been giving me a headache since I started and I think it might be all my fault for not updating the right mesh before putting it back. It looks okay here, but fat morph with or without preg morph has breasts that look like they’re being squeezed into a mammogram machine. For some reason I made a custom fat morph, I don’t know why, I think I’ll just start from scratch and mould the tummy after this one, since the tummy does work (I think? Any protests?) and save myself the double headache.

And that’s it, that’s… 9 outfits with added morphs! Yay! Go me! Go me! Go sleep! Go zzzz…

Right, sorry! Like I said, no upload since I’m still fiddling with it and testing it (I have gotten to the stage where I’m 99% certain it won’t blow up anything, I just have to test how all the morphs look in different lights, ways etc. since I didn’t really feel like doing it when I took these pictures (which might have something to do with someone being an insomniac and staying up all night dosed on coka cola, you choose)).

Oh, and for no reason, other than it amuses me;

Yes Tara (that’d be the models name), a baby will indeed costs some money. Not to mention attention, time, energy, space etc. lucky that you’re just a model, no?

I skipped making separate pages for this one. But if people prefer it I’ll add the tags, takes me two minutes Regular updates will have pages regardless (makes it easier for me to write as well).

2014-2015: Raiden Aspen is 33, Celia Garnet is 31

Oh well, on the bright side of things, I did get some shopping done at the new clothing store, Velvet. I should try to coax some of the more… interesting looking inhabitants of Harrington down there.

I did however get on the phone with Poppy to tell her about the store, and the apartment, especially seeing how her wardrobe needs a bit of a makeover as she’ll be around kids for the most part. I’ve suggested, twice that Pomona try something other than pigtails, but no go so far. Perhaps when Regina starts wearing pigtails too she’ll change her mind, I hope so! I can think of so many other looks that’d suit her so much better!

Raiden… Well, obviously, he’s the first person I’m dragging with me the minute work lighten up and Raiden stops acting like a reclusive hermit, honestly! Would you wear that? Even if you lived alone in a windowless box? Didn’t think so!

Still, Raiden does act like a reclusive hermit, and it’s starting to worry me. Now, he was never a big ladies man, not like Arthur Mungo seems to be at any rate, and though Raiden has made some questionable choices regarding the females he’s gone out with, he hasn’t left a string of broken hearts behind him. The deal with him and Clary – really changed him, he’s mostly quiet and contemplative and winces whenever Clary or her family is brought up. He hasn’t even visited his son yet, but since neither Baptista nor Clary seem to enthused about having him over, he doesn’t really have an opportunity to either. And he can’t very well call him without Clary or Baptista overhearing. I think I heard him mumbling about going to court over custody once he’s a bit older, so he can have him over with him and get to spend some time with him. It’s true that Raiden wasn’t the best of men when he first found out, but he does pay his child support and he does set aside some money for Jaden now that he knows. Still, he doesn’t really speak to anyone about it, Arthur, Socrates and Geraint are more or less either Clary’s or Baptista’s friends (I’m so glad I don’t really know them! The general atmosphere over at Poppy’s was weird enough when I was there!).

I found Raiden painting the other day, it was a rather odd experience seeing that he really doesn’t strike me as an artistic kind of guy. He said it was relaxing, I said there was no chance we were putting any of his works up in the apartment, he grinned and asked if we couldn’t hang it up in the bathroom or outside near the gates to scare thieves away. It seems to be a routine these days, go to work, paint, watch TV, talk to me, paint, go to bed and repeat. I really need to get him out, which means I’ll have to start looking through the phone book for any suitable place to go, why is it that Harrington doesn’t have club venue yet?

What about me? Well, I’ve been working, the world of business and entrepreneurship is a challenging one and I have to keep up with it if I want to stay in the game. Still, it’s a rather interesting form of work, if a bit hectic, Raiden tells me that’s why he quit working in Politics and took up Oceanography, I think it’s because he wants an excuse to go to the beach and watch ladies in bikinis! (Okay, so that’s completely out of character, but I can’t help it if the thought of studying plankton and fish make me yawn!)

Poppy calls me often, and I call her just as often, I really feel bad about the triangle (or whatever it is, it looks more like a really confusing drawing that toddlers make!) she’s gotten herself into, but she seems to have figured something out, a plan of action. I told her she should put it to life and get herself some new shoes, buying shoes always helps when it comes to lightening the mood. She asked if I wanted to go with, I wonder if I should drag Raiden with me?

Speaking of Raiden, he seems to have somehow (how I can’t imagine, true our neighbours are somewhat weird, but none of them have gotten to the point of wearing that just yet) come across this rather… interesting female. I nearly fell over when I saw her hair. One is fine, but two…? Is this some horrible trend that I’ve completely missed out on? If so, I think I’ll pretend I don’t know what it is, much like shoulder-pads and poodle-hair, I just know it’ll look horrible when looking at pictures 10 years from now!

So, I decided to use the magic of Bodyshop to give me an idea of how it’d look if I changed, normally, I would skip showing off, but I’m proud of myself for being very good about remembering which content was used with each image. So, show off time!

This is what I started with, I removed his glasses so I could see how the eyes would look when I tested them, also ignore the fact that the images are differently sized, I couldn’t be bothered to keep them in a standard size while testing;

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Okay then, onto the eyes, for the record as long as it says “sim + something” it means that there’s something default on the sim still, if there isn’t anything default on him anymore “sim” disappears. I mean, I know there’s a sim there, obviously xD I don’t need to note that down to remember it!

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The thing that I like about Yumedusts eyes vs. Rensims Retooled eyes which I’m currently using, is that they’ve got more depth to them, I do like the maxis-like look that Rensims skin has, but the eyes leave me wanting just a little more, well, life. There isn’t a huge difference between Yumedusts regular Eye Love set and Pooklets edits of it, other than that the edited version seem more “open” whereas the original Eye Love eyes seem a bit heavier and make me think of “bedroom” eyes.

However! I also tested Pooklets “My Poor Lover” skins because I use them as defaults in another Sims game I have, and like them there. I’ve pretty much made up my mind as far as the skins goes, but, I took pictures and so I’m sharing!

I think you can see why that particular pair of Rensim eyes work best with “drier” (as I call them anyhow) skins. I do like them a bit more with a more “lively” skin, but they’re too odd-looking and the white is too sharp for my liking.

Lastly, all custom eyed and skinned is Pooklets “My Poor Lover” skin + Yumedusts Eye Love eyes/Pooklets edits of Yumedusts Eye Love eyes with Anva sclera:

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I do adore Pooklets “My Poor Lover” skin with Yumedusts eyes (any of them) but I don’t like how it’d make Clary, Poppy etc. look. They’re Rensim gals all the way and changing the skin (at least going from Rensim to Pooklet) would take away that charm. Using a maxis-match or maxis-like skin other than the one I have would have worked, but out of all the maxis-like skins out there, I like the ones I have best, so it’d be stupid to change it.

The eyes though, well, I really do like them, but the one thing that keeps me from going through the hassle of figuring out GUIDs and who has what eyes is that while Yumedusts (edited or not) have a lot of options, they’d still have to match semi-decedently with the ones I have as far as colour goes. With the particular eyes I chose for this test, it wasn’t that difficult, but look at the light green eyes that Rensim has vs. the best combo that Yumedust have:

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Top: Yumedust Eye Love eyes Chatreuse

Left to right: Yumedust Eye Love eyes Spring, Rensims Retooled eyes green, Pooklets edits of Yumedusts eyes Spring.

Bottom:  Pooklets edits of Yumedust Eye Love eyes Chatreuse

Though, Yumedust does have some lighter, greener eyes as well, that also works as you can see.

The verdict? I don’t know, don’t think I’ll change things around just yet, but if I do, it’ll be Yumedust I change to. Which version? I lean towards the non-edited ones really. We’ll see.

This post was in part inspired by Wellingtons really beautiful sims, and in part inspired by me looking through some old pictures.

I think I’ll  just go play now, and I’m pretty certain I’ll end up falling back in love with Rensims eyes xD That’s what usually happens when I have this dilemma.

Aspen-Garnet post coming up after though!

Regulations – a page with the general rules for Harrington as far as marriage, tax, university etc. goes, it’s still in development so I might shift things around as I try them out. Its content is heavily based on Lakeside Heights and Sullivan Sims (especially the latter), with some influences from the Build a City Challenge and me.

Stats – a page for well, stats, it’s horribly barren right now but that’s partly because I couldn’t come up with much to add and partly because Harrington is still a small hood. I’ll change as I go I guess

Custom Content – you probably figured that one out, but yeah, links to some of the custom content I use, it’s pretty much ripped from Vivienne Hamlet, but I’ll update it sometime soon (it’s still pretty darned accurate in some aspects)

Hacks – this too, is ripped from Vivienne Hamlet, though it’s pretty much exactly the same hack cocktail that I have now save a few newbies that I’ll get around to adding

You may, or may not, see a few pages dedicated to the various Households and their stats popping up soon, I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to do it. (If I do, it’d sort of be like Sullivan Sims’ sim profiles, only it’ll be separated by households as I doubt I’ll like the thought of maintaining individual sim pages).

I am however going to implement the season system that Sullivan uses, it’s easy enough for me to do without getting too detailed. It also allows me to keep track of birthdays if I want to. I won’t be able to put this into motion until I’m done playing this round though. If you’re curious these are the households I have left to play for this round: Enthycia-Gale, Eldon-Sweet and Mungo. I’ll hopefully get some playing done tonight and/or get the Aspen-Garnet update up.  Either way, it’s only three households and shouldn’t take me too long, after that Harrington will officially have a sensible season-centered system.

2014: Baptista is 33, Clary is 32, Jared is 7 and Jaden is 4.

It all felt very stupid, irrelevant, somehow. She wasn’t sure how she liked Baptista’s reaction in the first place and she wasn’t sure how he felt about it either. She felt like her life was on hold until they came to dome sort of decision, she couldn’t leave, couldn’t go back to their bed, couldn’t do anything really until they let it out. Until they did she’d continue to walk around, trying to look put-together even if she felt fairly shattered.

For Jared, things seemed to continue on as usual, he’d play with the cat, do his homework and go to school, where Poppy, their headmistresses would often be seen walking around the school yard looking worried and tired, coming home almost felt like going back to school. Neither one of his parents (he had little contact with his father and had come to the conclusion that he might as well call Baptista his dad, after all, they’d done all the dad/son stuff together) ever said anything about anything being wrong. But he just knew, they didn’t really look at each other and rarely spoke. It was oddly quiet (despite the stereo blasting and the cat mewling, his brother singing or crying in his bedroom) in the house these days and so Jared felt less and less like spending much time at home.

Jaden only really noticed that his daddy and mummy never came in to say goodnight together anymore, and they never teased and joked with him when he was sitting in his chair and they were eating their dinner, nor did they play with him together. Mummy would play a little, daddy would play a little, Jared would steal his toy cars, but it was never the two of them at once. He didn’t really know what to make of it, and so, played with his toys and hugged the cat, occasionally looking at his brother curiously when his mummy and daddy simply walked past each other without saying hello.

Baptista on the other hand felt utterly miserable and utterly unsure of what he could do to fix it. He didn’t even know why he’d reacted like he did, it wasn’t like Clary to break a promise, especially not one meant to last for life, and he knew that. Still, it had upset him, much like it had upset him when he found out that she would be having Raiden’s kid, sure, he loved Jaden, but even so he couldn’t help but feel jealous that two men who had no great part in her life had become the fathers of her children, instead of him. They hadn’t wanted kids, he had, and it wasn’t looking much like he’d be getting any for awhile. Not that he could blame her, he knew he should apologise, but he had no idea how, he also knew that he’d thought he’d be a father before he turned 35. But then, Clary was more important and her wishes trumped his, they always had.

Although things seemed to even out a bit, settle into a bit of a rythm, Clary still slept on the couch and they still had difficulty talking without there being an odd barrier between them. Mostly they avoided one another and though Clary knew she should go and face Baptista, something in his eyes made her stop and wait, still, the couch wasn’t exactly comfortable and she wasn’t really certain how much longer she could wait for.

As Baptista put Jaden to sleep that night, he seemed to make up his mind, though when he entered the living room to talk to Clary, he saw her fast asleep and decided it’d be better to wait until she’d gotten some rest. Retreating to their bedroom he tried to shove off the guilt of not asking her to join him, it ended up being a very lonely and cold night, and he didn’t get a wink of rest.

So, I’ve been gone/dead/away for awhile, I went into part “goodness I am sick of sims” and part “oh god, university, oh god” moods which is a good recipe for “nothing gets done” as far as I’m concerned. University is going fine, exams soon *stress* and some second-thoughts I’m not sure what to do with. Hence, I returned to simming because between that, roleplaying and general writing I should be able to have some retreats and have some things that’ll function as carrots in order to make me read and such.

Photobucket chewed on my pictures and made them ewww, but I’ve uploaded them to my domain and replaced them so they should be back to normal now. Let me know if they aren’t though! Updates are (believe it or not, coming) I missed my simmies and have been wondering about them since I took a break. Sims 3 just isn’t for me, so, Harrington is perfectly safe.

Now I’m going to eat my late-at-night dinner, re-read some things and then things should get back to, er, whatever the state was before “long ass hiatus of d00m” <_<

I’m also getting back onto the blog wagon, might take awhile to catch up with some guys since I’ve been semi-reading, but then I love catch-up reading (yes, I’m odd, I know) so I’ll be enjoying it anyhow XD

See you!