I just can’t get into picture-creating with Sims 3. Maybe I haven’t given it enough of a chance. Maybe I haven’t seen enough examples to inspire me.  Maybe I’m too spoiled by all the custom content and pose hack resources we had with Sims 2.  I don’t know.

When I see Sims pictures now, I still see Sims 2 pictures. Has everyone else decided picture-taking in Sims 3 stinks, or have they just not moved onto Sims 3 period?

Anybody know of any pose hacks for Sims 3. Back in the day, my first stop to look for some would be Mod the Sims, but visiting that site now just plain gives me a headache.

One major problem I have with Sims 3 in general, but it particularly affects picture-taking is the fact that Windowed mode distorts the graphics in the game. So I have to play full screen mode, which is way too inefficient for picture-taking (and a whole lot of other things, actually).

Blah, I miss old Sims. Wish they could create a game just like Sims 2 + its expansions, with the performance and graphics increases of Sims 3. Haha.

INCONCEIVABLE! I know.  For so long now, I haven’t been very motivated to work through some plot developments, mostly because I haven’t been able to get beyond Mat and Jill MATJILLMATJILL obsession.

But somehow, in a half-dreamy-sleepy state, I figured it out.  I figured out the difficult details with the rest of Charlotte’s story, and how to tie it in to everything else going on.  UGH, FINALLY!  I’ve always had the broad outline of the story figured out, but not the meat in between.  I think now I’m at a point where I could actually finish this thing.

Of course, work is keeping me too busy at the moment to start writing or making pictures.  But hopefully things will at least cool down this summer and I can finally get it rolling again.

So yeah, not much is said here, and I won’t give away any real details, lol, but up until now this story has pretty much been on unofficial hiatus.

Now I’ve got something to work with.

I’m still way too busy with work; in fact, all I did this weekend was work. I currently have three projects that I get paid extra to do outside of my day job. Normally this is okay, and I rather like the projects. However, when all three of them get busy as hell all at the same time, things get a little crazy. And that’s pretty much how things have been for me since January. Not to mention my work from 9-6 everyday is full as of late too.

Blah blah blah, yes, that’s all very boring to you, I’m sure. But despite all the working, I still manage to find time to play The Sims 2 (except for this weekend, I didn’t open it once, *cries*). My Flounder family is on generation 5, and I also decided to play along with, but not enter officially, The Hangout’s Grow Up Well 2. I loved the first one so much, but since my Sim, April, won, I figured it would be lame of me to actually enter again. But I’m still going to participate and just post the pictures on Flickr.

My Sim’s name is Lucy Cooke, and she comes from a family of cooks. Yes, I know, I’m such a nerd, but any of you who have seen my work before know that I always have to have a theme. While playing my Flounder family, I managed to get obsessed with baking in the Sims and selling all sorts of goodies from one of the family’s businesses. So that’s kind of where that idea came from.

Other news and updates? I’m pretty excited about Sims 3. I also could not be more sick of the general negative reaction of the Sims 2 community though. Gawd, shut the shit up. I know “people have a right to their opinions,” but some people’s opinions are just dumbtarded.

1. No, Sims 3 is not going to “override” Sims 2. Who came up with this? Seriously, is this your first time on a computer? Let’s use some common sense here.
2. No, they’re not going to get rid of aging. There’s an elder on the Sims 3 site. I can’t imagine them getting rid of children and teens, and I want to say one of the magazine articles mentioned something about them, but I’m too lazy to look now. But really, I don’t see why people have to jump to such ridiculous conclusions that just because we haven’t seen pictures of kids yet, that they won’t be in the game (which is still so far from being released, by the way).
3. STFU about the look of the Sims. No, really. Do it. Now. I think people have forgotten about how we can make the Sims look however the hell we want. Are the Sims 2 sims shown in previews all pretty? No. Do they look the same? YES. Most of the Sims 2 sims shown in preview pictures all have close to the same face. Now do any of our created sims look like that face? NO. So. Shut. Up. Also, it’s not fair to compare your CC Sims 2 skins to EA’s Sims 3 skins; you need to be comparing Sims 2 without the CC. One more word about the look of the Sims 3 being “ugly” compared to Sims 2: GOOPY.
4. Furthermore, I do not believe the graphics we’re seeing now are quite so optimized. Lots of the lines are jaggy. Therefore, I’m not putting much stock into textures at this point (hair, skin, clothing), because I don’t think we have all the info.
5. No, it’s not too early for a Sims 3. Hello and welcome to 2008. The game isn’t going to be released until 2009, and Sims 2 was release in 2004. What planet do you live on?

Maybe I just think it’s way too early to throw out all this extreme “OMG, I WILL NEVER BUY THIS” criticism of the next release of a franchise all the commenters are supposedly fans of.  And I don’t expect everyone to just LOVELOVELOVE Sims 3 at this point, or ever.  It’s just all so…extreme and final the way some are talking, when we’ve only just been given a tiny sneak peek.  I think it’s fantastic they’re even giving us this sneak peek; if I were the developers I might think twice about that in the future given all the whining going on though.

Eh, I just had to let that out once. I’m trying to just ignore the ridiculousness from now on. I just wish I could read about Sims 3 without comments like this dominating.

I really haven’t updated in forever, because there’s not a whole lot to update. I will say I have been playing The Sims 2 quite a bit. And I haven’t taken a single picture (inconceivable)! Actually, I was planning on taking a visit to my family’s (The Flounders) bakery and show you some pictures, but that was not in the cards, as my game crashed and then I told it to fuck off.

My game has been crashing a lot. I rarely quit playing by exiting the game on my own. I’ve learned to save amazingly often. This time it crashed right after my sim (Elle Flounder) had a baby and she just got accepted into the Garden Club and got a wishing well. I saved right before these events occurred. I’m actually hoping the baby will turn out a bit different this time. It had blond hair and brown eyes just like his brother, and I’d prefer something different. Elle’s children are generation 4 of the Flounder family. I’ve not made it much past generation 4 before, but I hope to this time.

To keep me going and to keep me from getting too side-tracked, I’m having them marry Townies and other Maxis neighborhood sims. Elle’s mother was Roxie Sharpe. Then Elle married a very attractive townie named Aaron Johnson. He’s very good looking, which is completely and utterly inconceivable for Maxis-made males. Seriously, before he came along, I was about ready to give up and have her marry—oh what’s his name? The pale base-game townie wearing the blue long-sleeve shirt and ridiculous plaid pants, blond hair and very pointy features. She had three lightning-bolts with him. But luckily she had two with Aaron, and he wouldn’t completely ugly-up the family genetics ( the rottenness and evil in me). And major lucky break with him as well because he was a knowledge sim–score!

Well, that’s about all there is with me. I need to go do some work now. I don’t know if I will, but I sure as shit need to. Go listen to Harvey Danger so you can get it stuck in your head too. Hear the voices in my head, I swear to God it sounds like they’re snoring; but if you’re bored then you’re boring. The agony and the irony, they’re killing me, whoa!

Anyway, Thanksgiving was fun; I went to Dallas/Fort Worth to visit my parents, and spent most of the time there reading Harry Potter. Obsessed much? Oh yes. I’m now almost halfway through the last book, and I’m still pissed about what happened to Sirius in the fifth book. The only other thing I really did over the break was go to a Tori Amos concert! The weather was cold and rainy and we had to pay $15 to park and then walk in the miserable weather, but Tori was nothing short of completely awesome. And she performed Cornflake Girl. Which completely made my night right there.

This was my second time seeing her in concert, and I think I liked this time a bit better because one, our seats were a bit closer, and two, she played with her band, which I think makes it more interesting for some songs. She still did a solo section with just her and the piano, but it was nice hearing her with the band as well this time.

Moving on, I just want to say THANK YOU again to those of you who read the new chapters of I Woke Up LA. I’m happy that it was well-received and your comments make me excited to start the next part. Though, however excited I may be, I do think it will be quite some time before the next chapters are released. I do not know if I will have much time to even start working on it before Christmas. Of course, you never know, maybe me saying that will make the opposite happen.

I will say this about what to expect in the future chapters:

• There is a lot more to tell of Charlotte and Geoffrey; in fact, we haven’t quite reached the point in that story where Jill finds it so interesting he wants to make a movie out of it yet. Expect a strange twist. I hope I can pull it off without making it seem ridiculous.
• The story isn’t going to end with Jill and Charlotte alone in that motel. And they’re not romantically involved. Luckily, there were fewer people to jump to this conclusion than I anticipated, because I know how much everyone thought the mystery woman would be involved with Jill. But, I just want to nix any Jill and Charlotte love thoughts right now. Haha, that just doesn’t sound appealing.
• There is a certain parallel between Charlotte and Geoffrey’s tale and what’s going on in LA. A difficult part for me to figure out in the upcoming chapters is tying those together with the right timing.
• I think there’s a good deal left to the story. Meaning, it’s not going to end in the next chapter. This one summed up a few big plots that had been carrying on for many chapters now; but I think the ending of 8 is more of a calm before the end. And the end could take a while to come out. I never anticipated this story being more than 7 or 8 chapters, but then I managed to take a lot longer to tell the story. I don’t know how many chapters it will end up being, but I would guess at least 10. With the way I’ve been lately, it could be 12 or even 14 (good lord, I’ll be 30 by that time). More than likely, 9 and 10 will be released simultaneously because I find it difficult to find a stopping point at only 120 slides, which is (approximately, at the moment) the limit on Sims2.com.

Ugh. Sigh. Grumble. Fart.

But it’s up. So I can relax now. I hope you all enjoy the chapters and that they were worth the wait! I appreciate your comments very much, and remember to visit the forum for questions and chatter.

I’m currently on a roll with I Woke Up LA progress. I’m up to 47 pictures now, 13 of which I did last night. That’s huge for a weeknight. Especially considering most of the shots are pretty hack-intensive. I realized last night that nearly 50% of the pictures I’ve done so far have been on Sim beds. Ridiculous much? Oh yes. I’m not sure why exactly I wrote so many conversations on beds this time, but I wouldn’t have been able to do any of the pictures without that wonderful “posing on objects” hack at Mod. How did I live without that thing before now?

Writing is nearly complete, with the exception of Charlotte and Geoffrey flashbacks and another flashback I have planned for some other characters. I’m so ready to get this chapter out there. So much of it has been sitting in my Google Docs for far too long! Currently, it’s almost 19,000 words. Massive! I hope I didn’t drag some parts on for too long. I’ve also decided to break from my current chapter structure a little bit with chapters 7 and 8. So, neither will follow the exact formula of the past: present day, New York, Charlotte’s flashback, New York, present day, LA. Woohoo for change! I’m actually ending chapter 8 with the present day scene and that will be the only present day scene in chapter 7 or 8. Can you guess why? XD

(By the way, in case you haven’t been keeping up, chapters 7 and 8 will be released at the same time, so when I say I have 130+ slides, that’s for both chapters!)

Maybe this will help inspire me to be productive for real tonight. My inspiration falters considerably when everyone manages to disappear from the internet. But maybe my playing around with the characters more will get me in the mood.

I’m home from work early today because I had a doctor appointment that didn’t last so long. Really, it was one of the best appointments ever because one, they didn’t even make me get on the scale; two, I didn’t have to wait in the secondary waiting room of death; and three, for some reason I didn’t have to pay a co-pay! Weird, but I’m not going to argue!

Obligatory Fight Club post title to go along with the image, which made me think of Mischief and Mayhem, and now I’m just going to have to go watch the movie again!

Just plain barf, really.  I have at least 800 Jills running around in that neighborhood, and as hot as that may sound to some of you, I just want to get a shotgun and start killing some of them off.  Of course, I do that, and something will screw up the neighborhood, so I’m just dealing with the mess to avoid complications at the moment.

Anyway, on a plus side, I think I’m done with ridiculous blanket editing.  I gave up and took an easy way out on one picture, but I don’t care anymore, and hopefully most of the pictures from the scene turned out alright.

Okay, new topic: it’s Monday afternoon and I’m taking a break at work right now because I just found the solution to something that was looming over my head for a while then causing me massive amounts of grief this morning with its lack of an ability to work at all.  But now it’s working and I’m super excited and rewarding myself with the treat of coming on here and blabbing away about nothing.

Today’s nothing topic will be a follow-up to my gushing on about Tool in the last post.  Today I will mention the coolest cover-mix I have ever heard.  A cover so awesome, I’m willing to listen to it at major McPoo quality because no higher quality is available that I know of.  It’s entirely possible I’ve blabbed about this song before.  It’s A Perfect Circle’s live cover combination of The Cure’s Love Song and Ozzy’s Diary of a Madman.

It amazes me how APC put these two songs together.  Completely seamless as if they were meant to be that way.  Mentions of diarrhea and all.  Listen to it; it’s all kinds of coolness.  And if you’ve been living under a rock covered in a hundred other rocks, here are the originals: Love Song and Diary of a Madman.

Remember that post from July where I griped about how difficult pictures were going to be for this chapter? Well, mostly difficult because I am the suck at drawing things like blankets. I think the one here kind of looks like a swirly slug shake. Oh well.

On the upside, those magic display tray objects or whatever they’re called that let you pose sims on objects are fantastic! Definitely making things easier on that front.

I got ten slides done tonight; let’s see if this keeps up. The entire time I was taking pictures, I was listening to the new Radiohead album. Obsessed much? Oh yes. It’s good to be obsessed with something new because I was entirely bored of my music before this came out. And I love the “pay what you want for it” thing Radiohead is trying out with this album. Only they would do something like this. So if they’re only going to release it online (not counting crazy ass box set), then I’m glad it’s like this. I don’t particularly care for paying a great deal for digitally downloaded music. If I pay for it, I typically want something tangible (a CD). 99 cents for one song on iTunes is positively ridiculous to me, and would be a last resort for me to obtain a song.

So yeah. I highly recommend buying the album. My favorites at the moment are 15 Step, Reckoner and Jigsaw Falling into Place.