Inge just barely gets time to set foot on the lot of their dorm before she receives a message from Jefferey Dean about missing a party invitation..
The other students occupying their dorm arrive, and Oliver Freddy quickly walks over to Liz Tarry to have some friendly chat before asking her for a sample of her DNA.. he's going to need it to maybe, hopefully, one day figure out if its possible to create human/plant hybrids.. a pretty insane idea don't you think? :P
Liz is hesitant of his question at first, but once he has taken the sample she is happy that her DNA is now in his hands.. perhaps a little to happy...
Oliver Freddy continues the science-ing to make his first successful clone of a living thing, Ansgar the Anchovy. Even though the clone looks like a goldfish at first, it will probably find its anchovy form a little later..
Inge then spends her time playing games at the Student Union, before getting another party invitation from Jefferey Dean. It's of course a swimsuit party in the middle of winter, because, well, why not.... Inge is excited about the invitation, but in spite of a couple of the guests even removing their swimsuits, Inge is left with the feeling that the party never really takes off and she starts to question if she's just not enjoying it like she used to because she's 'getting old' (even though she's only 21...).
PS: Somebody dies in this chapter, but it's not a very prominent character, and in some way a version of this character may just exist for all eternity anyway.. :P
Yeah, so I finally got a new chapter posted again, starting (but not necessarily kickstarting) the story again. So... after last years christmas party over at the Holmesen-Fredriksen household, we are now back at Ranveigs home, where her oldest son along with his girlfriend is going back for their 6th semester at university.
That's really the gist of what happens in this post.
Robert Bråge as a teenager is still undecided about his future. Does he want to go to university and study science like his brother, or does he want to live a more free lifestyle and become and author? And perhaps maybe he is ever so slightly jealous about his two year older girfriend Margrethe getting start taking drivers lessons soon this upcoming summer. ;)
Inge makes sure to spend her last day in Sunset Valley for now wisely, hanging out in the park with her youngest sister and father.
The relationship between Oliver Freddy and Inge is as strong as ever, and Inge definately has their future mapped out... Maybe their relationship is going a little bit to strong for Ranveig still, but she has no choice but to settle with it...
..and then the kids are off again to start another semester of long
hours of studying, partying and silliness..
;)
As a 'bonus' I have added a couple of youtube videos, because I just got this idea to use Suno AI (which I have used to generate 'The Bushweeds' songs) to also make some theme songs for the Sims and the towns. First one up is Ranveig Motorsens theme:
..and second one up is the theme for the current town, Sunset Valley:
..and if you read the post that is linked to near the top, in there is also a short youtube video of Inge and Emmy in the park. :P
It's been a while since I've said anything on here, and I'm not yet motivated to continue the story line fully yet. Or, I am kind of motivated, but there's a little to much else going on right now to want to commit myself to story telling, so game wise I just want to mess around and do stuff that doesn't require any thinking or planning or keeping track of multiple sims story lines...
So I sent my simself to Shang Simla to meet the locals, and in doing so I thought it was kind of boring how the place didn't have a nightlife-esque hangout and how the towers on each corner of the Forbidden City were all seemingly empty.
So I built a restaraunt/bar/disco in the east tower. I left the exterior unchanged, with no advertising or other such ugly looking things to pollute the look of the historic area, so one kind of has to know it's there to figure out that there's actually something inside. ;)
This is your view after entering through the front door. Some lightweight walls have been put up to seperate the tiny restaurant area from the hallway and the stairs leading up into the tower.
The tiny restaurant. The rug is a diner. The restaurant itself only has four eating spots, the two chairs by the bar and the the ones by the table on the right. The bar is only for decoration or to serve as an eating spot.
View from inside the bar. A restroom is found behind the white door to the left (it's behind the staircase).
So where's the actual bar and the disco? Well... to find that, you have to walk around to the backside of the tower and locate an anonymous looking staircase down into the basement...
Your view from the foot of the stairs after walking down. Doesn't look like much..
..but as you turn right around the corner, youæll notice there's a pretty big bar there. Dimly lit in a comfortable flame light, just the way I like it. ;)
As you walk up to the bar and turn around, you'll notice what appears to be a dance floor and a couple of tables with dining chairs on them. Not the biggest place, but I wanted it to fit under the foundation of the tower, with the exception of the toilet and staircase area, which does extend outside of it.
The view from the dance floor reveals the location of the restrooms.
Top down view of the tiny restaurant.
Top down view of the basement. I haven't tested it yet to see if it fills with people.
Finally I finished this chapter.. which I have been postponing and sort of dreading to do for a while... because it was always the plan that it should involve the most difficult topic of all - romance! I really don't like writing romance, it's terrifying... :P
..but here it is..
It's a long chapter too, so it comes in two parts.
Page number part I: ~ 7-8 pages, not counting images. Page number part II: ~ 6-7 pages, not counting images. Quick summary part I:
The chapter begins on christmas morning with Beate wondering about why her father was sleeping on the couch yesterday, so she tracks down her mom (who is busy cleaning the house for the upcoming christmas party) to ask her about it.
The day continues with various objects breaking, a strange bathroom
situation and Martin doing a good job at playing the part of the grinch
in this story as he appears to grumpy at near everything from christmas
decorations to their tenant Tay taking a shower in the bathroom down in
the basement...
Like I said.... but anyway, after a while the guests finally arrive and the party can begin. Beate has a plan in store...
..and well, I don't want to give spoilers, but towards the end of part one it certainly looks like the part is about to fail.. so.. well, it didn't really go 100 % according to the plan, but maybe it turned out good anyway.... ;)
In part two
is where you will find the attempt to execute the plan, before the
party continue with the usual gift wrap opening.. as usual, maybe, not
everyone is going to be happy about what they got, but that's just how
it is..
Then towards the end of the second part another secret that isn't really
a secret is revealed, before its time to go home and get some sleep...
Ok, so pardon the dramatic headline, but seriously.
I just found a way to make Edit in Game work again!
It was a method I have seen before, but was skeptical of using, since it involved a piece of code with some.. inappropriate language in it, however.. after landing on this youtube video in portuguese (but with english subtitles), which was linked to from this Reddit post, I decided to give it a try... after all, I had nothing to lose... (and I already had a back up of my work on an external SSD, so if anything should go wrong...)
Proof that it worked. This is my unfinished city of Wad Nahadau.. as you see on this picture, there are many lots missing. I have finished building all the lots though, saved them to the library and put them in a save file for playtesting, but never actually saved them to the word file itself. Only the lots that I made while still using Origin.. before the EA app came along and ruined it...
So yeah, now it's time to start the lot placement. It's gonna take a long time though, as there are many, many lots to place.. and I hope I can make it work. Of course, it did crash while saving after this screenshot, so I'll have to see.. Maybe if I try it with smaller batches, though it's kind of not recommended.
What I did:
1) Downloading and installing Origin from this link. https://taskinoz.com/origin/ 2) Turn off the EA App if it's running. Opening Origin without logging in. 3) Locating the local.xml file in My Computer/Program Data/Origin (turn on hidden files to see the folder). 4) Opening local.xml in Notepad to insert the following code (without the vulgar url as suggested in the portuguese youtube video): <Setting value="true" key="MigrationDisable" type="1"/> <Setting key="UpdateURL" value="http://someadress.com" type="10"/> <Setting key="AutoPatchGlobal" value="false" type="1"/> <Setting key="AutoUpdate" value="false" type="1"/>
I inserted the code near the bottom of the file, but before the line that read
</Settings>
5) Then I logged in to Origin and waited for a while for a notification telling me Sims 3 was added to the library.
6) Clicked Origin in the top left corner and disconnected to go offline.
7) Created a new directory called 'Worlds' in my Documents folder outside the regular Electronic Arts/CAW directory.
8) Opened CAW and the world file I want to edit, and chose Save As to save it in the newly created Worlds folder. Remember to delete the file path and leave only the world name before saving, or you'll just be saving in your regular folder again...
9) Closed CAW and reoponed it again to open the newly saved .world file.
10) Opened it in 'Edit in Game' and was happy that it worked.
So... after a long break I actually opened my game to play again.. wanting to continue with the story.. However, I had to.. or wanted to.. do a chapter that was a little leisurely where perhaps not to much would be happening to ease myself back into it..
So.. for this chapter, I will be sort of picking up where I left off before I did this entire Bushweeds tour thing, that is with the couple Bhavan and Beate. The change here, which was planned all along though, is that I will make a jump to the household of Beates family - The Curious family. A family that I know very little, pretty much nothing, about.. so the reason for doing this was to maybe get to know them a little better. Though I ended up following Beate for most of this update anyway. ;)
In this update it is clear that Beate has some wishes for the future.. which I plan to have fulfilled - to the best of my ability - in chapters that follow, but none of them will be fulfilled here though. :P
For most of this update, Beate goes to hang out at the Red Rendezvous with her friend Smaragd, where she reveals her plans for the future and spots a celebrity she wants to impress...
So.. I have still had some more fun generating songs using Suno for what I imagine is now going to be 'The Bushweeds' second album. I'm not to pleased with their first album as it was rushed a little because the idea for it, name, album cover and song titles, was already there before I know about generating music with AI...
So for the second album, I want to do a different approach. My aim is (or was) to generate some 80 minutes of music that would eventually be cut down to around 40-45 minutes of music by 'killing a few darlings' and getting rid of the worst sounding tracks. For the time being, that process has stopped at around the 45 minute mark because I ran out of ideas for topics to make songs about... :P
Well, anyway, there are some useable songs in there, and for one of them as soon as I heard, I just almost instantly thought I had to make a video for it..
So I have since then spent almost a month or so figuring out how to make animations for the game to record this video.. Now again, I'm still not 100 % happy with this product, mostly because I filmed it in to low of a resolution, something which I didn't really think about until ZeeGee posted this video on the sims forums.. which looks a lot more crisp and clear then mine.. but at that point I was already more than halfway through this project and didn't want to re-record everything.. so I just continued in the same vein.. but if I should do this again (which is not at all given, seeing as how this was pretty work intensive to create these clunky animations in a low resolution...), I will of course try to make it look better, the best I can make it. ;)
Anyway, enough talk.. here's the video... captions are available.
In the below section I will reveal what is the topic of the song. If you didn't get it yet and want to figure it out for yourself, stop reading now and listen to the song a few more times. :P
Now that you've listened to the song and watched the video I'm going to assume that you understood that the song was about stage fright, and actually what inspired the song was this early chapter where I posted about the band where it was concluded that Gerda was suffering from stage fright since she played the first part of their concert with her back against the audience.
She has since dealt with it since they've had a few more concerts since then and most importantly, gone on tour in support of their first album, but of course, still with every show there's gonna be some nerves in the backstage area before they go on stage.. that's just an inevitable part of life as an entertainer... ;)
..and that was it for now. Hope you enjoyed the song. Until next time.
Yep, after spending some more time collecting strange images to put together to make some visuals to the songs, they're all now available to listen to on Youtube..
Emphasis and effort put into the visuals is varying, as that wasn't really the point.. just an addendum so that I wouldn't be uploading just a song with a black screen throughout...
I'll be starting this rundown on the fourth track, which is also the title track, 'Absence of Hope', as the three first tracks were covered in the previous post.
Since this is the title track, I.. err, I mean, the band, wanted it to be something that felt a little more grand than your average punk rock song. This track isn't really a punk song at all, but more some kind of slow I-don't-know-what-to-call-it kind of rock song.. I guess. It breaks the mold even more with the first track, so it seems that 'The Bushweeds' is not a band afraid to try different things.. for better or for worse.
It's not a bad song, but does it fit in? Thinking in terms of a complete album where songs are played successively.. an uncommon thing in this day and age where everybody just skips to the next song on their streaming platform, having a song like this is probably good to make an album seem varied and dynamic. Instead of having every song chug along at the same tempo and intensity.
Then comes the fifth track, 'Don't Eat Pencils off the Sidewalk', whose title is totally not a rip off from off this song by The Cramps... This one is probably the strangest track on the album, on first listen.. a song about eating pencils and the graphite industry!? What!? Yeah, not gonna say more.. this one also brings the tempo back up again, in preparation for their next track perhaps..
Number six, 'When the family arrives...'. This one starts of right away with a high tempo and shouted verse in punk rock style about.. well, what happens when members of the family show up to gather. Judging from the psychedelic images in the video (What were they on when they made this!? ;) ) it probably doesn't end well....
Track number seven, 'Dave Lost His Flute', is just the intro to the next track. Two minutes or so of flute playing.. nothing to say here, moving along... It's point though is to serve as a breather after the previous high energy song.
Before it gives way to the eighth track, purposefully or accidentally, numbered as the seventh track on the album. Another song in the punk rock style, but where the other one was a little more hardcore, this one has a poppier and more accessible sound which makes it sound a upbeat and enjoyable, in spite of the sad subject matter of being a homeless man...
Then it's back to the more hardcore punk sound again. This song, 'Promises from out of town', has the most abrasive intro of all songs on this album... Sounds like they were angry with something or someone here... Spokeswoman and drummer Kajsa Tangstad says they wrote this song after their visit to the record company in Cyme Ixotic, where they hoped to get a record deal...
Then after they've let out some steam on the previous track, they continue with this one, 'Thanks for Nothing', where they take it back to some kind of pop-punk song which turns out to be a break-up song! Ugggh.... give me a break! ;) Now, I don't hate the song, but this is probably my least favourite on this album... it's just not what I would listen to... what are you? Taylor Swift!? Blah!
..and then for their final song, they take it down, down, down to a dark and gloomy place in this stripped down track, 'Cash for a rainy day', about a mother in the city struggling to make ends meat... oh boy. This one is far, far removed from 'Party Punk', which they started off saying they were, but it is probably my favourite track here right now... there are no loud screaming guitars or bravado to this track, but that only makes the message stand out more..
The last track, 'Dave found his flute', is just another two-three minute flute track in a similar fashion to the previous one with almost the same name, but this one sounds a little more uplifting and.. heavenly (?) for lack of a better word.. it also gives me the feeling of watching some ending credits. Not sure if that is a property of the track itself, or just because I know this is the last song. ;)
..and that was it, clocking out on a playing time of 44 minutes and 14 seconds.. a varied punk-pop album with celtic influences.. that's what I would call it. ;) And actually.. the title does seem appropriate, as, apart from the first track 'We are party punk', where they introduce themselves, an absence of hope does indeed seem to be an underlying theme one way or another in every song that follows... the album is perhaps a little bit uneven in the way that it seems they don't know if they should be pop or punk, but on overall I'll say it's a job well done. ;)
So... lately I have been playing a bit with AI.. first with the image enhancer/generator krea.ai
just for testing purposes.. so, of course I had to try and generate an
image from the group photo of the band, "The Bushweeds", to see what the
AI would do with them..
First again, the original for comparison..
Then the AI version, just hitting the enhance button and not doing anything more..
This
is cool, but it's not quite there.. this isn't really what their faces
especially look like, I think, so... let's try again by increasing the
resemblance slider.. putting slightly over the halfway mark (it was
originally at 36) gave more or less the same result, so.. trying again
with the slider to above 80..
Ok,
kinda better, but not quite. Their facial expressions are not
maintained as well, but I'll stop here for now.. then, after a while, I
discovered something even cooler than this..
This thing called Suno
where it's possible to generate music through a prompt to an AI, by
either having the AI suggest some random lyrics, or writing your own...
So of course I had to try this too, by creatin g music that could be in
the style of the band.. Since the band has already released an album, I
was curious to figure out what it would sound like.. ;)
The
backside of their album, and what I have as a starting point to work
with. The first track 'Riot Rhythms' is only an instrumental intro
track, so I simply gave the AI the prompt 'Celtic Punk', as well as the
title, and it produced this..
This
was the very first results from my first attempt. I found it very
fascinating and was immediately impressed and I thought it was cool
enough to be used. Though the instrumentation is perhaps a little high
pitched in some places, I liked the melody enough to not want to ditch
it...
Then
it was time for the first actual track, or the second track of the
album, "We Are Party Punk". I used a little more advanced input here,
specifying the instruments and that there should be a female vocalists,
as well as giving the title, but everything else, lyrics and music, is
100 % AI generated..
It took a few attempts to get something I
could accept. Though it never sounded musically awful (to my ears
anyway...), the lyrics of the first attempts especially were really
corny... it almost gave me associations to Rebecca Blacks song 'Friday'
for those of you who remember that one..
And admittedly, the
lyrics are still corny also in this version, but I kept them that way,
because.. well, this isn't a very serious song anyway, and I think it
sort of works to kickstart the album and as a mission statement for the
band.. they're really just in it to party, have fun and muck around.. so
let's go! ;)
..before
they take it down a few notches again on the third track, 'Wet Torch
River', which is my favourite song of theirs so far. The title, which I
didn't put to much thought into when I made the album cover, is
nonsensical, but with some thought and help from AI generated lyrics,
this one turned into a song that actually tells a story.. of course, I
had quite a bit more input on the lyrics here for this one, but not to
much actually.. ;) And I suppose I'm a bit of a sucker to for downtempo
somber tracks like this one.. as fun and energetic as the previous track
is, this is the one I have found myself repeatedly listening to the
most...
..and that's it for now, but rest assured, the rest of
the album is probably gonna be uploaded to youtube as well soon enough.
;)
So I just somehow noticed there was a Steam sale for some old titles, and just in the nick of time I managed to take advantage of that to (re)buy a couple of games I used to play, the games where my interest in anything Sims related began... ;)
..and that would be, of course, Sim City 3000 and Sim City 4. I used to spend hours playing this, especially the former back in the day, so this is good trip down memory lane for me.. I have always enjoyed more chill games of this type. I was never to much into the action or shooting games, really..
I haven't revisited Sim City 4 yet, but that is on the agenda once I'm satisfied with playing Sim City 3000.. the goal is atleast to reach 1 million inhabitants before moving on. ;)
..and yeah, earlier this year I noticed that in 2013 I was actually 'clever' enough to have bought Sim City 2013 too.. at full price.. then somehow forgotten I had done so.. completely! Though upon noticing that I do remember playing it some.. perhaps with a slight feeling of disappointment with it, atleast at first, having an online/multiplayer mode if I'm not mistaken.. and to small city maps..
Though I think Sim City 4 originally also had some form of online play in the beginning, which is just stupid for a game like this, the Sim City series probably peaked with Sim City 4...
Cities Skylines does look tempting, but as I haven't actually played Sim City 4 that much, I want to complete that game first, before considering moving on to the next generation of city simulation...
Ah, I do wish I had gotten a Steam account earlier, since judging from other peoples comments about it, it seams to be superior to the EA App.. but I've never considered myself a hardcore gamer, and so I didn't know about Steam until I saw people discussing on the Sims forums, and by then it was already to late, I had already walked straight into EAs trap by buying Sims 3 and most of the expansion packs on Origin already..
..and then came the EA app to begin messing things up. Just recently though I did get the World Adventures expansion pack for Sims 3, because it was on sale, but rest assured.. from now on, I have used the EA app for the very last time. I'm not gonna use it ever again.... and I hope that Steam will be as good of a platform as I am expecting it to be.. well, it can't be worse than the EA app, can it?
Yup after some days of spending time with their loved ones, or just chilling, after spending days on the road the band is now finally ready to play their last gig to complete the tour!
People are already flocking together outside the venue.. ;)
Time to start the concert before the bartender starts complaining that you're not on time.. ;) Of course, this is The Sims, so the occasional strange surprise may just be in store, but overall their last concert was a success and the band can now take some well deserved time off for a while.. before they have to record their next album to keep the momentum going.. ;)
However, I don't think I'll build a story around this band that is this extensive again, because though it has been both fun and interesting it has on occasion also been a bit tiresome.. anyway, I hope you have gotten some enjoyment out of all this, because this is the end for them for now!
..or not quite, because I also made a bonus video to summarize everything, so if you have 9 more minutes of your life to waste, you can watch it here:
