It's that time again! With the most recent chapter ending the first arc of Generation Two and ushering in the first time skip, in addition to being the approximate halfway mark for this generation, we are at the point where I get to dump out my photos I have taken of the random things going on behind the scenes. I don't really have much to say other than this, so let's just jump in and enjoy!
The honor of the very first shot of any 2nd Gen kids belongs to Hunter. I had put Eden and Rose together in a separate save before this in order to see what kind of children they would have, but in this instance of getting them to have a baby I determined that this was the one who was going to be the child for the story. Personally, I always envisioned them having a little girl. I almost influenced the pregnancy to make that happen, but I wanted to stick to a decision I made even earlier when beginning this project that, aside from the heirs and certain key characters, I wouldn't tamper with the genders, appearances, colors, and etc. of the babies born. That was how Hunter got to keep his role and actually go on to be one of my favorite Sims to include despite me not initially liking him all that much.
It was quite an experience opening up the world for the first time after placing down all the houses and Sims into their respective areas. The main house and its residents had a difficult time rendering the first time I took control of them. My Sims normally snap into their normal appearance when I zoom the camera closer to them when they're like this, but they walked around like this for about one in-game hour before they appeared as they should.
I got extremely frustrated with the game and myself when I was finalizing the main household before I began preparing chapters. One thing I really wanted to do was have the walls filled with family photos to give the place an authentic feel. I spent a good amount of time, thanks to issues like Cerise somehow getting stuck in the air when Ethereal was just holding her normally, going through poses and events to really give the pictures variation. I got the pictures on the walls in frames, saved, quit, and eventually came back to find that all of them were seemingly missing! The frames were there, but my shots were gone.
What I didn't know at the time was that closing and opening the game, at least for me, causes the frames to reset to its default, empty design, but it still stores the pictures in its inventory. Simply opening that inventory to drop the picture right back into it restores the image. Horribly irritated that I'd lost all the work and knowing I couldn't be bothered to do it again, I deleted most of the now, presumably, useless frames. You can imagine then what it was like when I finally found out that it was that which caused me to lose all my work. I still couldn't be bothered to redo it all, but you'll see with the new time skip that I'll steadily be adding photos to the walls again when I'm able.
I created the families for the 2nd Generation over the span of a few months while I was still working on Gen One. This meant there were some memory gaps of what I had done, particularly in what outfits I had given to the Sims. All of them I didn't catch until I started going in and taking pictures. Since Hunter had the more major role, Cyclone (yes, that is a colored version of Cyclone Sword) had to have his top changed.
Here he is with his new top. I also liked this shot because of Wisp's reaction. I had these two try to high-five each other multiple times, but they missed every single time! They actually got quite annoyed at each other because of this. I had to take whatever shot looked best of them before their inevitable screw up.
Frost was another one whose outfit needed to be switched around. I originally gave him and Eden the same sweater. I found I liked this sweater better on Frost anyway, and I decided to give it some gray since he has always been trying to bolster Sunflower's confidence since she has a few insecurities about her partly gray coloring. I like to think he does this mostly by pointing out how she is both his sun and his moon due to her yellow and gray mix (^^)
Quartz J. Prism: famous movie star then, humble festival stand employee now.
Coal thinks that the diving board is more of a catwalk. Look at that strut!
I really hate how the water distorts the Sims. It obviously does that to some extent in real life, but these kind of shots are just unusable. That's why it's no fun or I try to avoid taking swimming ones altogether.
Desire is still stuck in the duck face era. She just stood there and made this expression at Amaranth over and over again while he was writing.
Uh, Coal, buddy, what happened to you there? The poor guy must have gotten stuck in the floor somehow, which was strange because I hadn't been messing around with him too much. A reset got him back to normal no problem.
I wondered if I would have to let a few in-game days pass when I saw this. Coal walked in to talk to Azure, and Sap and Purity were right on the other side of the wall having some fun. They were just having a normal Woohoo though, so there was thankfully no need for me to have to include another pregnancy into the story.
Perhaps Prism and Desire didn't set up Coal's bike the way the instructions said to.
C'mon, Azure. I'm trying to take a serious picture of you all standing out in the rain, but you're making it difficult doing that. Don't make me put you in a pose or something.
I know I shared this picture on the official forums, but I didn't share it here (I don't think so?). When Coal was born, he did come out with a bit of green on him. He had to be changed to all red since he was the heir, but I went back and gave him green skin momentarily since it was requested to see what he originally looked like.
Another request I got was to see what Wisp would look like if his true coloring was a mix of blue and green instead of solid green like what this post from November proved. I didn't get around to trying to give him any combinations with blue skin, but I feel its pretty clear he'll look dashing no matter what color he is.
The trip to Tropic Luna was going to go much differently. The plot was supposed to take up two full chapters, and the main focus was supposed to be Coal, Holly, and Rosemary searching for the mysterious fountain. Unfortunately, I had to give up the story line because nothing on the islands wanted to cooperate with me. The Opportunity to find the hidden island was totally glitched. It would take hours for it to recognize I'd completed a requirement, and then it got stuck on the firewalk challenge no matter how many times I started the whole thing over. I even had Purity doing the walk for a full in-game day straight, but it was simply a no go. I cut the adventure short and merged the end of the vacation with the plot meant for the following chapter- Coal upsetting Ethereal and causing her to go off.
Another bizarre thing that happened on Tropic Luna was Sap coming across this watery ghost while he got stuck trying to complete one of the requirements. Is there a ghostly occupant in Isla Paradiso, because otherwise this guy shouldn't be wandering around during the daytime.
Poor Rosemary had barely even cast her line into the water before something about the rod or the fish tugging on it knocked her over. I didn't get to see exactly what the cause was thanks to it happening too fast.
Nothing too special about this picture. I just liked the shot of the three girls together.
Coal was more than a little happy to receive his early birthday present from grandma Field.
The game apparently decided to pull up a copy of Eden from the Bin to make him a taxi driver, because Ethereal watched him drive by while she was helping me take shots for that Christmas special you all loved so much.
Meadow, honey, I know you were genetically altered to do a lot of amazing things, but defying gravity and the force of motion isn't one of them. Keep your hands on the ropes please.
This girl clearly just wants to do what she wants to do though.
This actually gave my heart quite the jolt! I was taking a set of pictures of Coal and Desire talking at the table about what they should get Rosemary for her birthday. I pull back just a smidge once I'm done, and all of a sudden I find that Rosemary is right there standing inches behind where I was working! I guess waiting until her birthday to know what her presents were was too hard.
An amusing shot I got of Coal and Holly on the first day of school. I love the expression he's giving her. I was going to include this in the chapter, but I couldn't work it in without whatever conversation making that expression happen sounding really out of place.
Exactly like Mrs. Chamois, Mr. Trail gave me a whole heap of fun pictures to sort through when I went through animations to find good ones for him to use while teaching. It was during this point where I really began to like the guy a lot. He was meant to just appear briefly to fill in the role of Coal's teacher, but as he kept showing up at the lots where I was making the chapters I was persuaded to put him into the role of a plot I was thinking of doing. You'll see what that plot is soon (^^)
I found Allium stuck on the side of the road. He stood there motionless thanks to me turning back time to keep the sun up. I reset him to let him go on his way. It didn't look as if he was going to make much money doing magic tricks for tips on some secluded corner far away from any buildings anyway.
Malachite was seriously raging about the mosquitoes bothering him, and the kids from Coal's class who decided to crash Rosemary's birthday party were sure to run past him quickly to avoid getting that rage directed towards them.
This guy who showed up was a surprise. He's a Sim I made for another save I play. His name is Trent Akers, and he's meant to be a total playboy! He spent most of his time tanning in the sun or playing frisbee.
Ugh, another case of not being able to take a shot from the angle I want because a Sim has decided to get a smile stuck on their face no matter what I action I make them do.
Poor Coal had to drown a few times until I was able to get a decent position of him falling through the water. I thought he would sink backwards as he fell, but he actually sank face first. It took me three tries before I was able to snap something decent. Darkening the image helped a lot.
I find having Sims engage in a conversation with another Sim and then moving the Sim I don't want in the shot out of the way is the easier way to get the expressions I need than trying to find expressions using moviemakercheats. Mr. Trail was talking to Coal in this case, and since I needed him to face forward I had to put Coal on the other side of the wall. As I went to take the picture though, I realized I hadn't quite moved Coal far enough away from the window.
The autumn leaves in the game seriously drive me crazy. They should disappear off non-active lots once the fall season is over. Now I have a plot set during the summer, but there's all these stupid leaves all over the ground because I can't just rake the entire world clean of them.
Glade being born! She came out white, which meant a coin was flipped. She would either be all green or she would be albino. As you know from the story, the former happened.
In order to fill up the nursery, I added 8 Instant Babies to the household. I picked Blaze to be the father as he was the other adult in the household, and I picked the first other CMW character from the donator list to be the mother. That Sim turned out to be Rose. This amused me as a few readers during Gen One had suspicions that Blaze and Rose were getting together when it turned out to be Eden and Rose doing the deed. Seeing all those babies was also funny because Blaze can't have children of his own. This felt like an alternate universe where his habit of getting around but not having gotten sterilized resulted in all these children suddenly getting dumped on his doorstep.
That's it for this time around! I'm working on another little post I might put out either before or after the next chapter. I'm not sure yet, so keep your eyes open! And, as always, I hope you're enjoying this little tale I'm spinning! See ya!
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