I am setting myself up for disaster with pictures for chapter 7. As I’m writing (several scenes now!), I find myself thinking what a bitch this is going to be to capture in the game. Massive editing or major trickery will definitely need to be involved.
I wish I could describe what it is exactly that I want to accomplish, but that would be revealing too much information. But I will leave you with this much:
- I wish sims could sit on beds. I noticed in chapter 6, I was all about the bed-sitting, and was able to accomplish sitting on the edge of the bed quite easily by moving them from a bar-stool. However, I want them to be able to sit cross-legged in the middle of the bed. I’ve never understood that “constrainfloorelevation” cheat to get Sims on objects, and I don’t think I have the patience for it either. So I’m going to have to result to editing for that.
- On a similar note, I wish Sims had blankets. Blankets are such a necessary part of life and it drives me bonkers sometimes that Sims don’t have them unless they’re sleeping on the bed–which is so insanely limited in that you really can’t get any decent shots of Sims in beds at all.
- I wish sims could appear wet. Or perhaps bubbly like after you wash the dogs in the Pets EP. *Snickers*
I suppose I could just alter my setting in these scenes to not including blankets or sitting on beds, and for some circumstances, that might work. But not these! I absolutely will not change what I have planned.
So somehow I’m going to have to figure out how to make blankets of the non-shitty variety in Photoshop. Oh, dear me.
By the way, I very much all the comments everyone has given me in regards to chapter 6—on my forum, on the blog, on my Flickr, at the Hangout and on my simpage. I am often terrible at responding to people’s comments they graciously hand out, but in my quiet and rather anti-sociable nature, I often just don’t have much worthwhile to add. But know that I love your comments more than anything, and probably would have given this up long ago if it wasn’t for them.
I’m going to make more of an effort to use this story blog to post my thoughts on upcoming chapters and all of your reactions to existing chapters. I let it go for a while, but I think I could make good use of it along with my forum. I’m just not so sure how many people check this area, so sometimes it was just easier to update the forum.
First, an obligatory warning–don’t continue reading if you haven’t read chapter 6 yet.
Okay, continuing on. I must say, I am quite amused by the varied reactions to Nik and Adeline’s marriage. I was quite nervous about that part and how well it would be received. Part of me thought, oh, this is too outlandish, but another part of me thought it was very typical to the characters–especially Adeline–to do something so drastic.
It’s very funny to hear people say, “I knew Adeline and Nik were hooking up!” Well, of course they were! Haha. In fact, one reason this chapter ended up so long is that I couldn’t end the chapter without getting Nik and Adeline’s marriage out in the open and dealt with to some degree by Jill. I’d been throwing out major clue bombs that they were together, starting with Nik and Adeline’s disappearance in chapter 5. I wanted to make it plainly obvious to the readers, but keep Jill in a sad state of denial. Of course, it’s only plainly obvious to readers willing to go that route, but to those who sympathize more with Jill’s situation, it may not have been as obvious because the idea of it seemed so ridiculous. Amusing to hear different sides!
Poor Jill has always looked at his sister through very thick glass, and up until this point, refused to create a mental image of her in his mind that was older than about 15 years of age. So that was really all we’ve seen of Adeline up to this point: a silly, slightly bratty, little girl with a possible crush on her brother’s best friend. And Nik, of course, is really just a big kid himself, so perhaps that’s why their coupling isn’t too hard to believe and perhaps pleasing to most–despite Adeline’s childish depiction.
I was worried the Vegas marriage would be too out there. And I’m surprised to hear some people say that was the first thing they thought of when Vegas was mentioned! Hilarious!
So basically, I’m pleased with the feedback in that regard. I think their spontaneous wedding and 8-year age difference is very stereotypical Hollywood, so I’ll be able to have fun with that in chapter 7 as Nik’s fame brings the “scandal” thrown in Jill’s face even more. We’ll have to see Kirsten’s reaction as well.
Thank you all again!
Chapter 6 is out! This has to be a major record. Under a month? Over 120 slides? Inconceivable!
However, words cannot express how annoying the exchange is. I think I was in denial about having to split it into two parts. Deep down, I knew I would…but there was always this glimmer of hope. Well, hope shmope. I had to make it two parts. I thought about just splitting it to chapters 6 and 7, but decided there was no good break point and that it would ruin my chapter structure.
So, at least it’s all in one piece here! I bother with the exchange for the added visibility, but boy does that system leave much to be desired!
I hope you enjoy chapter 6, and I appreciate all your comments!
So obviously, I updated my website layout. There was a lot of text I wanted to update, and while I was at it, I decided the other layout was yucky. One of the bigger changes is to my story reader! I decided to play around with Yahoo UI, and I made the pictures and text movable on the page. So, if you don’t like the text under the picture, you can move it where ever you want, as well as make the text frame whatever size you want.
I did this all this afternoon, and have not tested much yet. So hang with me another few days if you have problems. Out of laziness, I don’t have IE 6 or Opera on my computer, so I haven’t tested there yet; nor have I tested Safari. Oh, you know what, I can just remote into my work computer and look at it that way. Maybe I’ll do that. Ha.
Anyway, for those who don’t visit my forum, I’ve been sharing all kinds of teasers for chapter 6 there. Though, I haven’t worked on it this weekend because I needed a break, I still have quite a bit done on the chapter—95 slides written and 10 pictures.
That’s it for now! I’m pretty bummed about the weekend being over, how about y’all?
