Christmas in July..

 Yup, it's christmas time! ;)

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.

Chapter 13.2 - December 2023: part III – Christmas Magic With You - this is the first part.
Chapter 13.2 - December 2023: part III – Christmas Magic With You (continued). - this is the second part.

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...

Well, I think I just died...

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.

New chapter posted, finally..

Chapter 13.1 - December 2023: part II - The Curious Family

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...

The chapter is posted here:

Chapter 13.1 - December 2023: part II - The Curious Family

Hope you enjoy it.

Just some pictures.

 

After the riots ended, welcome to the post-apocalypse...

                                                    ..atleast we still got music....

 

 

...heading for a new world?

 

                                                                    Destruct/rebuild....

Drums

 

This could be something... or it could be nothing. So... I'll just leave this here and say... no more.

The Bushweeds first music video, Nightmare Lullaby

 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.

Somebody is singing, and something is in the making...

Getting ready...

..to sing... what could this be?