Since Pets, ghosts have gone all weird. Or at least the Daye ghosts have. Puddle and Lola can frequently be found floating in between floors. It’s really peculiar. They’re still functioning though, so I’ll put up with it.

Lola has caught 12/20 mini pets. We don’t seem to be able to catch birds, though I suspect I’m doing something wrong here. Do I need to buy a net? She was letting them go – but now we’ve discovered she can sell them, we’re doing that instead. I will make myself entertain a household of mini-pets eventually. But not yet (poor Greenpeace).

Oh dear, we suck so hard.

Sending a vampire out to do collecting is always a sensible move. Every time Lola passes out or does anything wrong, she gets a disgraced pop-up. Every time Alley does – nothing.

Blackberry aged up. With an F in school thanks to Generations making it IMPOSSIBLE for them to ever get to school. I can’t believe there isn’t a mod out there that sorts this nonsense out yet. Or if there is, can someone tell me where I can find it? It drives me up the wall.

While the family were at graduation, I got Lola and Alley to make out and woohoo. Guess which one got the shameful story in the press? Yep, not Alley.

Alley also NEVER gets any celebrity opportunities, unlike Mona or Puddle.

So I decided to cheat – I’m using Master Controller to trigger celebrity opportunities for her. She’s 88 and still not level 5. I swear she’s a bit borked. Mona got to Level 5 without any effort at all – although this was mostly through being a designer and her clients becoming friends along the way. Alley does have her share of celeb friends though. We’re really running to the wire with this one. If she dies, I’ll just change Lola’s LTW as she’ll probably complete the Lifestyles… one automatically. This 20 pets in the wild thing seems pretty easy so someone else can do that if necessary.

Graduation was hilarious. Blackberry failed. But didn’t fail. Wonderful.

I think she’s just glad to have stopped with that incessant scolding.

Her mother, meanwhile, is just deluded.

I have no sympathy with this ‘babies are whining’ nonsense. She was supposed to be out riding Ecover, not changing nappies.

Out of order update is out of order. Leon Jackson is a creepy floating vampire boy.

(Floating may be due to texture fail but sssh).

Mona finally earned enough LTH to buy an age freeze potion but the camera clicked off her to age the dog up so I missed her drinking it. 77 top scoring makeovers down, 23 to go…

I finally got these two out for a ride, instructed them to jump

…and this happened. You both want this. Sort yourselves out.

Now pet scolding, I can deal with, because you get to choose how your sim handles their pets. Why on earth you can’t choose how they handle their children I do not know.

Too much riding about and Ecover moans she’s had a saddle on too long, whilst Blackberry gets saddle-sore. Give it a rest, ladies, you barely do anything.

It made me laugh that Blackberry got this moodlet from riding a horse to a location though.

I sent them to the equestrian centre thinking they might be able to enter a competition, but Blackberry isn’t good enough. Then I saw the option to ‘breed mare’ and I couldn’t resist.

I went for ‘Troy’. Potentially interesting genetics. Ish.

I’m so going to regret this.

I also don’t like how townies think they can get friendly with my horse. Go away townies! Or go and play with my dog whom no-one cares about.

Speaking of the dog, it can’t come inside because of the lot fail issues and outdoor pets get stupid fleas. Gah. Maybe it won’t get them if we buy a kennel?

By the way, has anyone else noticed that wild horses spawn in packs? Dogs and cats seem to spawn one at a time, but in both this and OP, I’ve had horses spawn in groups of about four. So weird. Or so broken. One or the other.

The kids have both got imaginary friends, and when I went to the mail to get them, I saw this. An option to pay bills. BUT WE HAVE THE NO BILLS EVER LTR.

Gah, gah and double gah. Other than that, Puddle is almost finished with the sculpture skill challenges and Bramble is making slow, steady progress on the mixology ones. So nothing new, there. Puddle wants to marry again, but the strippers won’t come over and see him. We don’t have room for them anyway, I suppose.

While we’re on the topic of glitches, retired Alley wants to quit her job. Er? Oh, and her social suggests maybe she should play with the dog. The dog’s not a celebrity but it’s probably still more likely to make the papers than she is.

Join us next time to see if Alley will ever reach her LTW and what happens when a horse has a baby!

Finally.

Lola’s caught four pets so far. Two of them escaped from her inventory because she kept them in there too long, we released one and we kept one to kill – a lizard called Tre Azam, continuing the Apprentice theme.

My basements and floors in general have gone skew-wiff since Pets came out. Puddle’s always standing in a void tending to the baby. No-one else cares about the youngster. This family: notsomuch with the kinship, nurturing and love.

Alley got in the papers for fainting and sued for slander (even though it was true). She won over 4K and her celebrity stock still didn’t go up.

Ecover had a birthday and Blackberry rolled the want to be a super Equestrian thingy – to reach level 10 in riding and earn 40K in prize money.

I also – finally – twigged that I needed to build some horse jumps on a spare community lot.

Ecover wasn’t having this though.

Blackberry had a nonsense route fail tantrum when I told her to mount the horse. So much for her wanting to be an equestrian champion.

Come on girl, you can do it…

Finally!

However, whilst things are turning around with Ecover, Nadine just wasn’t working out. She would happily move about the house but she would do absolutely nothing in her queue. I always knew human simbots would be a bit glitchy but she was much more of a hassle than Vikram Populous ever was.

I loved her, but I can’t have a non-useful Daye. I tried to use Master Controller to remove her simbot-ness but that didn’t work, and only resulted in her becoming a Leia-clone full simbot. In the end, I force killed her so the only point she’ll get me is the portrait Puddle is working on.

Still, I brought Nadine into the house for one main purpose, and I wasn’t letting her leave without fulfilling it.

Meet vampire-simbot (but sadly not ghost) hybrid and potential game-killer, Bunnicula Daye…

Join us next time to see what happens to Bunnicula, discover whether Alley or Mona will die before their LTWs fulfil (it’s not looking good) and find out how the whole pets thing goes for us…

Last time we saw the Dayes, they moved to Legacy Island, Lola died and they were at Puddle’s stag party, which is where we rejoin them… in the midst of post-EP install CC chaos.

Alley: ‘There’s something about this Lola Lauder I can’t put my finger on, but she reminds me of someone…’

I did consider moving them to Appaloosa Plains or whatever it’s called but it looked like it might be easier to install Pets venues in Legacy Island than attempt to put Late Night lots into AP, so that’s what we did.  I’m sure one generation of this family will move to AP eventually but we need to get a lot of those Late Night LTWs out of the way first (sooo behind!  I just realised Puddle became heir at the very start of 2011, and he will still be heir when the year changes.  That’s one slow generation, right there).

Anyway, Bramble looks like a batty old lady without CC hair, and what do batty old ladies need?

Budgies.  Or whatever type of bird this is.  Bramble’s child naming trait would have been eco-friendly, so her pet can have a name along the theme.  This is Greenpeace.  I’m not sure of birds have a gender.  Actually I’m not sure if it’s even still alive, I haven’t checked on it lately.

Here is where I need to point out that in TS1, I let Cassandra Goth’s hamster die.  More than once.  My fish tanks were always full of floating corpses, and when I installed the proper pets EP, most of my households had anti-pet signs to stop the critters invading, and the only family that had pets, the Goths, somehow mysteriously stopped being played with as often.  I really, really sucked at that EP.  Let’s get that out there up front.

I really don’t think Bramble will ever do her skill challenges.  She still hasn’t made 500 drinks according to her skill journal, although I swear she must have, is two off the unique mixes (that one we will manage), hasn’t made enough cash serving sims and hasn’t learned enough recipes – because to learn them you have to drink them, and if you’re drinking, you can’t be mixoliging.  If we can scrape together enough LTH points we’d get her a young again potion as well as Mona, but I’m not sure that’ll happen.  Also, I want more members of Gen 9, so maybe I’ll just let a future sim try for the mixology skill challenges.  When I’m really bored one day.

I don’t remember any of the family drinking a Purple Gnome before.  She drank one and got a -30 downtrodden moodlet…

…and then wandered around looking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.  So funny.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I love this bar in Legacy Island.

Don’t give me a look because the textures are being slow, Blackberry.

‘That’s not why I’m giving you the look.  It’s what you’re about to make me do’.

Well, if your mum and your Aunt Alley can have special creatures, so should you.

I’ll confess to some light cheating here.  We lost Lola’s grave.  So I just Master Controllered her into the household.

I finally-FINALLY-got them married off…

…and then they woohooed in the time machine, and then they also made good use of this sarcophagus…

Bramble adopted a stray from the paper.  I’d intended a dog or cat for our first pets but they were all elderly and so we ended up with a foal.  I cannot remember if this pony is male or female, but as Blackberry is a Bramble clone, we used the same naming trait, so this is Ecover, whose traits are untrained and clueless.  Result.  What else is a result is our stupid lot, because the pony can’t climb stairs, and there’s only a small space where it can live, and it just traps the broken maids and the paperboys with it.  Oh dear.

This poor, poor creature.

Yeah, we’re going to need to figure something out with the space eventually.

I’m not sure what we’re going to give Blackberry in terms of her LTW – something pet-related, though, as we’ll probably do for Alley and Lola’s incoming baby.  I’m also not sure what I will do with Lola.  Her current LTW is Rock Star, but I am still planning on Puddle’s kids doing all the music-based stuff, so maybe she will have something else pet-related.  Or maybe she can just deposit the baby and leave.  We’ll see.  Anyway, Blackberry rolled up the Noah’s Ark LTW but that seems a little hefty – do I want a house full of pets whilst I’m trying to give Puddle a brood of kids?  I’ll leave my options open until she turns YA.

This is my solution to the space issue – at least people interact with the horse now, as they were getting too many route fails before.

That said, interaction with Ecover is going “well”.  The pony refused to sniff Blackberry’s hand here.  And note the red plumbob.  This is pretty permanent – the creature is always hungry or lonely or tired or wanting exercise.  We have no room for jumps.  And I keep forgetting about the creature.  It and Blackberry are both about to age up.  Neither will age well – stupid stupid Generations and the way kids get punished for missing the school bus, and therefore take ages to wait for their punishment so they can never get to school and the parents can never get to work.  I HATE IT.  So that keeps happening to the Dayes.  And the Knights.  Has anyone invented a mod that stops automatic punishment yet?  I will love that person forever if so.

When you have a bird you’ve forgotten about and a horse whose needs are so in the red that you’ve had the social worker pop-up (let’s just pretend that was deliberate, eh?), what’s the thing you need to do as a simmer?  Slow down?  Care for your pets better?

Or adopt a puppy from one of your neighbours?

This one is technically Lola’s, and I picked Ambitious as the naming trait, so meet Ruth Badger.  For those who are not initiated, she was one of the best ever Apprentice contestants.  All of Lola’s pets will probably be named after Apprenti.  Unless I change my mind.  I can’t remember the puppy’s traits (see how I care about these pets already?).

Lola then went home and left the puppy at her old home, so she had to run all the way home.  I can’t help but think of the theme tune to the Littlest Hobo.  Or that film with the dogs they always used to make us watch on school cinema trips in the 80s (The Incredible Journey?).

Also, am I the only one who always feels a bit teary whenever they hear the Littlest Hobo theme tune?  I’m a softie really.  Just a softie who can’t look after animals.  Or plants, for that matter.  I’ve just discovered someone on MTS has created a mod for a gardener NPC – that is so worth looking into.  All my TS1 sims had gardeners if they were rich enough.  Or dead plants to go with their dead fish if they were not.

Blackberry took a riding class so she can now finally sit on the horse.  Not that either of them seem that keen on each other yet.

Ecover and Ruth Badger get next to no human interaction, so they mainly play together.  It’s not doing that much to alleviate the threat of the social worker though.  I know I want to have my pets taken away at some point, but it would be a bit embarrassing for the social worker to take my first pets, wouldn’t it?

*Quickly does the shifty eye motion to pretend that was the plan all along*.

With Lola pregnant and Puddle and Nadine technically engaged, it was time to free up some house space, so Quentin moved out.  Gawd bless you, sir.

Nadine would never come over when we asked, always claiming to be at work.  So we threw a wedding party.

When everyone kept doing the ghost and simbot reactions to each other, I remembered I had taken the no reaction mods out and forgotten to reinstall.  Nobody married anybody.  I kept queueing and requeuing the actions…

…and then I discovered that Quentin must have been the member of the household with the no fires LTR.

Join us next time to see how much more of a hash we can make of things…

We don’t even have Pets or the new patch yet and this entry should already come with a huge fail warning. I wonder whether we’ll ever cope with the Pets install – which will hopefully be after pay day later this month.

If that wasn’t enough, my laptop’s sick again, and this comes shortly after I was sick with a nasty bout of food poisoning.

So yeah, this is going to be a short chapter…

I had enough of Bridgeport glitching, my game crashing and the epic amount of time it took to get anywhere in Bridgeport, so I took my ball and went home. Or rather, moved the Dayes to Legacy Island for a bit. I suspect we’ll move to the new hood when we get Pets, but for now, we’re settling in OK to the smaller new hood. Well, except that all the town moves have borked our lot so much that the family now need to climb stairs to get home. There are worse things that could happen.

I took out the stuff from Hidden Springs for now and the spellbook started working again. Not that Mona has time to play with that, really, but we’ll get round to it.

Bramble finally completed one of her skill challenges. A whole one!

Lola moved over with us, and people seem to stop mourning for her every five seconds now, so it must have stopped her being bugged from that time she died but didn’t really.

She wanted a job and I let her take the first thing that came up – firefighter. When the bell we installed in GaGa’s day rang, I immediately regretted this.

Anyway, for those who don’t have Late Night, she’s a loner, technophobe, artistic, ambitious, virtuoso rock star wannabe who likes white.

Puddle, really, really hates her for some reason.

I LOVE this gay bar, by the way.

I don’t love mixology skill challenges.

Please don’t die before you complete them.

No-one has enough LTH for the young again potion yet, and at the rate we’re going, we’ll need a few of them.

A red plumbob? Blackberry passed out? Why – this can only be a sim wedding.

Fresh with the bouyant success of our home based wedding, I thought I’d try letting Alley and Lola have a venue wedding. People who’ve been following me since the days of the Kyotis will recall how utterly hopeless I am at venue weddings. You will be right to question my sanity.

These two kept ignoring ‘get married’. And when they finally decided to go for it, their needs were very, very red. I could have called it off and met their needs, but it was the first action in the queue. Once they had their celebrity wedding, I would cure them and we’d all be happy.

I could have fed Lola but she had just enough bar left to get married, and to be honest, I was going to let her die eventually anyway, so as long as they were wed, I didn’t mind if she popped her clogs then.

Nonononono.

Phew. They started to go through the motions of marrying.

*Insert expletive here*

I only have myself to blame, I suppose.

Puddle’s lesser-spotted evil trait showed up for the unhappy un-nuptials. He never did like her.

Oh well, I suppose it’s a point.

*Anxiously waits for ‘Oh my Ghost’ opportunity*

Oh great, the vampire that can’t die from being thirst is the one with a plasma fruit.

Really, Quentin? Did you ever even speak to her?

It’s times like this that make me realise I’d be the worst ISBI player ever.

It’s not all been bad, though. Puddle topped the sculpting career and Nadine aged up to YA.

She broke down mid-way through a wooing session – which is kind of cute!

Nadine, stop mucking about, we’ve got important sort-of-incest-but-not-really to be getting on with.

Oh yeah, baby.

(Let’s not think about the inevitable disaster actually trying to get them wed will be right now).

The plan is to marry in Nadine, get Puddle pregnant with her baby (because female simbots giving birth blows your game up, or so I’ve heard) and see if we can get a ghost/vamp/simbot hybrid that will then go on to try for adding imaginary friend and mummy to that list. But as I don’t want a whole family of hybrids from now until forever, I don’t want the heir contenders to be of that stock, and so Puddle’s going to divorce Nadine and remarry. Or at least that’s the current plan. My Facebook fans voted for him to get with a stripper, so bachelor party time it is, and let’s hope it’s not the big bag of fail Alley’s hen do turned out to be.

Well, not one soul bothered entering the bar we’d hired, but at least we got some not-that-sexy dancing.

Second stripper! Double the options!

Puddle managed to make both of their acquaintance, but will he ever make either his partner? Probably not, but join us next time to see us try.

You might ask whether we’ve been sleeping for the past two months. If only. But after a lot of work, I’ve got my PhD done bar proof-reading errors, which I’ll finish next week, then I can hand it in and forget about it until my viva (oral exam) in November. However, I’ve also taken on a new role at work which means a lot more work for me, and there are a bunch of weddings and things on the horizon, so life doesn’t ever slow down that much. That said, I hope to update more regularly now, not least because Pets is coming out soon and Puddle hasn’t even had one of his five kids yet, who are all going to fill up this house. Of course, if the Dayes carry on at their slow, slow pace, we’ll not be getting any pets this side of 2020 but I live in hope.

After GaGa died, we got to keep the fire engine. I keep forgetting to check if we can recolour it, though I assume not.

Oh, EA routing fails, you never get old.

So we bought Town Life stuff. Excuse the texture loading issues. This save file is slower than slow. The double joys of a massive house with tons of objects and Bridgeport, I’m afraid. This is the new grocery store. Just a rabbit hole, I’m afraid.

The new gym’s quite cute and I like the new light boxes, posters etc.

I really like the building – although it’s nothing talented builders in the community couldn’t do.

I was so pleased that the four bubble windows were back as they’re going to be useful for a Taken set, however, I am gutted that the recolour doesn’t change each bubble but rather the different bits of the frame, which is really annoying. I liked those windows back in Sims 1. Stupid EA.

The park’s kind of cute, though nothing special.

The new Bistro place is really cute but another rabbithole.

Here’s Mona in the motive mobile. Love that thing, it really does keep their motives static, great in a huge hood like Bridgeport. She’s on her way to check out another venue.

None of the buildings fit that well. Stupid hilly terrain. Anyway, this is the launderette.

We never use a launderette, but it’s a nice little venue.

I like that they have things to do while they wait for their washing. It’s a neat touch.

More nice windows. The windows and lights are my favourite thing about this stuff pack, which I’m overall not that enamoured by. It’s OK but I kind of hoped there’d be more venues or at least more interesting items (there aren’t that many items all in all).

The library doesn’t fit well either and we couldn’t even fit the school into our hood. EA need to make hoods with more space in them.

Now Mona’s no longer a vampire, she’s become old. I’m still planning on her having the young again potion, but we thought we’d see what the fountain of youth could do. For a quarter of a million, it better be good.

She wished for youth. It was not forthcoming.

Bramble drank from the fountain. It gave her an extra day as an adult, much like life fruit.

She does nothing but mix drinks. And she still hasn’t fulfilled ANY of the skill challenges. This is mad. Or a glitch.

Speaking of glitches, I heard that the spellbook and fountain of youth conflict with each other so we thought we’d play with the spellbook and see. You could click on it and everything but Mona seemed to spend hours ‘learning’ a spell but in fact doing nothing. Hmm.

Lola: ‘Sigh. I want to progress in life’.

Alley: ‘Well, I’d like to progress up the star ladder’.

‘Maybe we can help each other out’.

Finally, my cunning plans look like they might bear fruit. The aim is to marry Lola in, see how that affects Alley’s star rating, maybe kill her off properly seeing as she never truly died back when GaGa saved her from a fire and she crumbled into dust – she’s just been glitching people ever since with them mourning her all the time. And there’s another cunning plan, too.

I asked my Facebook fans what kind of service sim we should try and marry Puddle off to (as well as him trying to have a mega-hybrid baby with Nadine) and they all said stripper… I mean ‘party dancer’, so Alley threw a hen do. She made the invites ‘dress to impress’ although I have no idea where she picked that outfit from. After hours of her standing there doing nothing, she finally joined the party.

She wanted to ask a sim to make a toast, so she asked Blaze who refused. The want didn’t fulfil, even though she did ask. Silly game.

She also wanted to spray a sim. Brady didn’t short when she achieved this.

Her last want was to flirt with a party dancer. Now I have no idea if these were party dancers or maids. They didn’t come in, we got a pop up saying we’d had ‘enough’ party dancing and the maids each charged us 125 simoleans for the privilege of standing outside. So that was all a big fat fail.

When I clicked on Alley, she had the option to sleep on the floor. So she did.

The day of the wedding came, and Lola didn’t show. So I used Master Controller to force her over, but however much I clicked ‘get married’, they wouldn’t. Then she tried to leave so I changed household to get her to stay. Eventually they married but I never got the moving in screen.

While all this was going on, Mona wished for youth again. This time the pop-up said she’d got her wish and would go back to young adulthood – except it just reset her to the start of elderhood. And all the family’s wants got wiped, as did Mona’s LTW tally.

I wondered if it might be the fountain, so I quit without saving and when I reloaded it, sold it – for over 400K which was a nifty bit of profit!

We tried the whole wedding thing again (LOVE the vegas arch, by the way, with the rolling fruit machine thing on top). It failed again. And again. So I cheated and moved Lola in.

Selling the fountain didn’t solve our problems, by the way, as Mona’s tally still keeps resetting and they keep losing their wants. These could be mod issues rather than game object ones, we’ll just have to keep testing for now.

Blackberry’s been playing with some of the Generations stuff. She’s had a go at the new toy oven (the same as the old one but a bit glitchier), the treehouses and has just started on the chemistry table. She was also meant to do dressing up and holding court and so on… but I forgot to change the age span after playing with the Knights…

…and this happened. Oops. Oh well, at some point Puddle’s going to have a brood who can do the Generations stuff Blackberry missed. No, he is. Honestly. Really.

Join us next time to see whether Lola’s presence in our family makes the game explode or not…

Oh, Generations. You give in many ways – new interactions, objects and experiences.

Yet in so, so many ways you take away. Memories. Reputations. Compulsory punishments for kids. And the BBFVFS you sem to have turned the Daye and Populous saves into. So this chapter represents three attempts at gameplay. The Dayes should count themselves lucky, though. They can get through two or three sim days at a time. The Populouses are lucky to get through a few hours.

I’m very glad that the first attempt crashed though. Many, many bad things happened.

Bramble wanted to enrol Blackberry in the School of Peace and Love. I didn’t realise at the time this would mean she was sent away until she turned teen – and whilst I’m going to be sending kids to all the private schools, I didn’t want to start that just yet, with all the Generations stuff to play with.

Bramble got old. Without completing ANY of the mixology skill challenges.

Everyone glitched all over the place.

And then this happened. Bugger.

The thing is, I am always telling Mona to cure herself but the architect career is such a pain for vampires with all that hanging around waiting for clients. It was inevitable that one day this would happen – I’m surprised it took so long.

Thing is, I would have just let this happen. I would have waited until Oh My Ghost! came up and resurrected her – in many ways, a ghost Mona would be easier to manage, although it’d be a shame that my thirst ghost was the spouse of an heir who’d already given kids to the legacy rather than an actual descendant.

Look though, snazzy gravestone, even without achieving her LTW.

Of course though, all of this never happened. So onto the second attempt.

Pregnant-looking elderly townies isn’t a *great* sign.

Alley had to eat at the restaurant for a celebrity opportunity. I sent her with Lola Belle to see a) if that’d help her celeb score and b) to start a plan I have in motion. They just stood around. The game crashed again.

Still, third time’s a charm right? The maid looked like she was cleaning… but there were still a load of dirty surfaces, plates, rubbish and laundry around, so I think she believes putting away ONE thing of food is worth my 125 simoleans.

I like the idea of Blackberry being a bit naughty, so she put a whoopee cushion under the sofa.

Why grandma, what a comfortable seat…

It’s a bit disappointing that her reaction was just to get up and pull a face. Boo, EA, where’s the funny noise? Mona got a -10 1h ‘Pranked’ moodlet, whilst Blackberry got a 12h +15 ‘successful prank’ one. The gains outweigh the losses (well, they did in this case because Blackberry wasn’t caught).

Alley finally ate at the restaurant. She had the wrong food, ate it, was given some excellent vegetables and puked her guts up. Oh.

These two are still being romantic. For my cunning plan. Which I hope will come into fruition next chapter.

I still don’t understand what you lot are up to. I thought it might be a gnome baby, but none as yet.

And finally… Mona and I made a big decision.

I couldn’t stand the sunlight reactions any longer, so we bought her the un-vampire potion from the science lab (although she wouldn’t drink it in front of me, so I didn’t see the animation). This now puts her at 0 days to elderhood and she doesn’t have enough LTH yet to buy the age freeze potion or the resetting back to young adulthood – but hopefully she’ll manage to earn more before she dies so we can turn back the tide and get her LTW to complete. If she doesn’t, I think we’ll just call time on it and declare it impossible.

Sorry it’s so short – limited time to play, and limited success when playing – but join us next time to see how my plans for Alley and Puddle develop, to discover if Bramble can get anywhere at all with mixology and to hopefully see Blackberry playing with Generations some more.

So the Dayes and I have been getting a bit fed up with our perpetual lack of progress. GaGa was granted sweet release last chapter but the rest of us have had to SUFFER. So this new EP has come just in time. We installed the playground lot and Alley wasted no time in getting there. Hopscotch is cool – it builds athletic skill as well. I wonder if kids can now develop this skill?

She couldn’t ride on the new rides or play in the sandpit, but had fun making silly faces in the mirror.

See-saws aren’t much fun for one.

Your sims can now give stuff from their inventory as gifts. Quentin gave Mona some cherries.

She was all ‘are you kidding?’ and returned the gift. We are so going to have to spend time experimenting with this. The downside is that presumably if you give gifts to outsiders you lose them, and losing our stuff isn’t something I’m that keen on.

Party time!

Now anyone who has Generations will probably have done an involuntary shudder at this image. No, not the slightly creepy incest vibes of Puddle talking to Nadine (they’re not biological relatives unlike those naughty Knights – and on that subject, prepare for picspam of indigo gen toddlers and their “toys” in their next chapter. Can’t wait for Daye babies to try the Generations stuff out), but the ‘memory’ snap above their head.

‘Puddle has cleaned his teeth’ ‘Puddle has smiled’ ‘Puddle has noticed a puddle’ etc. I bet there isn’t one simmer who didn’t turn the notifications off within their first play session. Try everything, you say? We tried it. It was annoying.

I sent Puddle on the hunt, because he was a bit thirsty. I keep forgetting he’s a vampire.

Nom nom nom.

For some reason though, once the game had identified his prey, he couldn’t drink from her.

I invited all the celebs in town for Alley to try and befriend them (she’s *just* at level 4 now) – and I noticed that we have only one five-star celeb other than Mona, and one four star celeb – and she’s just inconveniently kicked the bucket. If Alley needs to know high-star celebs to progress (just a theory) it’s not going to be easy.

My simself got old. And incontinent. Classy.

All my adult sims have ‘graduation’ certificates from various schools – not sure how this works, but Puddle and Mona have them from ‘Community High School’, Quentin from somewhere I can’t remember (but he was invented! This is silly!) and one of the girls allegedly went to an art school. I can assure the game that she didn’t. My simself apparently graduated from the ‘School of Peace and Love’. I’ll resume this entry when I’ve stopped rolling around the floor laughing.

Old people can now have walking sticks. I’ve seen a few of them twirling them about. They look dangerous.

You know what hasn’t been fixed in the new EP? Our stupid glitchy maids. I have no idea why we are still employing these losers.

‘It’s not my fault, THING IN THE WAY’.

That thing is called A DOOR.

Puddle wanted to teach Nadine to drive, so I let him. I don’t know how much she’s learned, other than the power of manoeuvring invisible vehicles. I couldn’t see cars or the flowers sims can now give each other (yay!) so I think I had a mod conflict despite updating my decensoring mods – have reinstalled various graphics-related mods since and things seem to have reappeared though.

Aww Nadine. You will be mine.

Speaking of Nadine, Puddle’s going to see if he can become a mummy. But we don’t know yet, that’s for the next chapter.

I heard female simbots break your game if they get pregnant so I think we’ll make Puddle carry their future baby – although if he’s a mummy that might not work either… hmmm… it might be an ‘instant baby’.

Also – I don’t want a whole family of simbotghostvampiremummy babies, just one will do, so Nadine might get replaced with a non-kind-of-incest babymomma (or poppa, if Puddle decides to swing that way or I decide to swing him that way) after we’ve seen if a mega-hybrid is possible.

Ugh, texture load fail. But Alley had fun on our new water slides. This is – I want to say bad landing, but I think it’s called something else – anyway, it’s the dismount that gives you a bad moodlet.

This is the good “landing”.

Simbots can have splashy fun too!

Obviously short-lived fun, though.

Alley is friends with the town’s only (other than Mona) five-star celebrity, the ageless immortal that is Lola Belle. They pillow fought (um, while I was still having graphics issues)…

…watched the stars…

…and pondered just who it was in the astronaut suit in Doctor Who.

They’re romantic interests, and I directed Alley to risky woohoo with Lola (a feature of Twallan’s Woohooer) – she chose the time machine as the location! No past/future kids yet, which would be kind of funny, seeing as Alley is a time machine kid herself…

For some reason, every waif and Daye in the hood was on our lot when another local decided to die…

The problem with the Dayes at the moment is that they take a very long time to do anything. It can take several sim hours for them to stop doing a cancelled action, for example. Here, Alley is meant to be eating out for an opportunity. she just stood there all night and did nothing. I don’t know if it’s my save file, Bridgeport, their huge house or what but I just can’t bear the thought of moving them until Alley, Bramble and Mona have completed their LTWs. After that, we’ll see.

See what I mean? Bramble just stood there for ages instead of going to bed. Oh, and she was completely clean so no idea why she had the stink lines. At least I can play the Dayes, though, unlike the Populouses, who keep crashing. The Knights are thriving, though.

In the Populous save file, I noticed that the new EP has added ‘reputations’, which seems to be something to do with romance, and Bebe has a ‘cheater’ one, which automatically made the game trigger negative moodlets on Asa. I am NOT having that, seeing as I went to great lengths to stop them catching each other at it with townies. Anyway, on googling for a solution, I discovered there were new LTRs that would prevent the reactions – and when I went to look, there were LOADS of new LTRs. So Mona has been bought the car that doesn’t depreciate needs, and we’ll see how that goes.

There was another intriguing LTR on the list, but it didn’t appear in Quentin, Mona or Puddle’s panels, and Alley didn’t have enough LTH so Bramble was gifted with it. For this reward, she had to go to the Bridgeport science lab – which has a dolphin skeleton and a swimming pool – I’d never noticed this before.

See?

Anyway, the reward is to get a junior clone of yourself!

Not sure how blonde hair = a Bramble clone, but this is Blackberry (see what I did there?!) and she has the same favourites as Bramble and three of her traits (Brave and, er, two others). She’s listed as Bramble’s daughter on the family tree, so I guess that means Gen 9 is finally here!

That’s better. Bramble wants her to go to the peace and love school, and she’s enrolled her in the scouts. I am so happy to have a child in the household again, now it looks as though children will actually have something to do.

(Ignore the texture fail please). In the new EP, if you click on a kid’s tired moodlet, they won’t go straight to bed, but will find an adult to read to them. I sense much experimentation. For some reason, Blackberry chose some random stranger to read to her. I have no idea who this is or why they were on our lot.

Meanwhile, Puddle and Nadine were watching the stars (more cool moodlets)…

…and something sinister was occurring in the basement…

Join us next time for more Generations fun, and to see if we can wring any excitement out of Alley, Puddle, Mona and Bramble’s slow progress to LTW maxing / skill challenge mastering.

I love the sculptures Puddle makes. When he tops his career (level 9 at the moment) I want to fill the basement with a whole collection of them.

Interesting tidbit – he doesn’t have the savvy sculptor trait because I heard you don’t get rocks if sims have it. So when he sculpts stone, every third or so sculpture he finds a rock – and we’ve still not got any woohooium. I mean, Ambitions has been out, what, a year? We suck.

The poor fella is desperate to marry and have kids but we need to dispatch his sisters first, and that may take some time. Oh well, at least he and his spouse will get to have fun with the new Generations wedding type activities.

I gave Bramble some make-up, which I think suits her. She’s still making S-L-O-W progress on those mixology challenges.

Here’s the latest on our alcoholic exploits:

Pomelo nectar (not squished pre-blending) – 8h +25 Breathtaking balance moodlet, 4h +15 Sugar Rush moodlet – I must remember to do the squished one next update to compare.

Sorrow annihilator – 10h +50 Wash away the Worries moodlet – very nice!

Mona has 31 top scores now, and even though she’s a vamp, is approaching elder status. *Double thumbs-up EA*. She also got a medal for 50 successful renovations which I don’t understand. (I’m sure she’s had a medal before but can’t remember what for). It can’t be 50 completed renovations, as she’s done many more than that. It can’t be 50 perfect ones as she’s on 31. It could be 100 I suppose, and thus a second medal. I hate this LTW, and if I wasn’t doing this legacy for educative purposes I’d have downloaded a mod to cheat the number of completions many months ago. Don’t ever, ever attempt it without a mod. Let me suffer so you don’t have to.

You may have noticed in the last shot that there was a plasma juice on the table. After her being all thirsty at a client’s house, I clicked on her thirst button, she went to the fridge and I attended to another sim. When I went back to her, she’d just put it on the table without drinking. SIMS ARE STUPID.

Maybe she just wants to commit suicide to get out of her LTW – like I wouldn’t just activate Oh My Ghost if she accidentally died!

Also on the plasma juice front, I got Jody Knight (a ‘normal’ sim) in Rainbow Knights to drink some and it just filled up his hunger, rather than give him any kind of unusual moodlet. Boring.

Alley’s celebrity stock just isn’t rising very fast despite all the passings out, pap shots and autographs she gets. So she’s been doing everything she can to make celebrity friends, from guitaring…

…to tiggy round the nightclubs. (I traded out lucky or workaholic, I forget which, for childish). She’s made some friends but they’re nearly all 1 or 2 star celebs and I suspect she needs a few five star buddies. Our celeb map spotter thingy is useful in locating where celebs are hanging out though, which is nice.

Yes, we are one in thought Alley, but it doesn’t seem to be happening for us.

Now this is a weird one. Lola Belle died a vampire thirst death many moons ago, but the game just regenerated her and she doesn’t seem to age much. Anyway, Alley tried to befriend her but Lola peed herself and then the club closed. Fail.

I wondered if more scandal would do us some good, so I had her beat up a bouncer.

She won, and there was all this debris scattered around her. She also got a 2h +31 ‘Won the brawl’ moodlet. Feisty! This didn’t make the news though, which makes me wonder what kind of a rubbish gossip rag the Bridgeport newspaper actually is.

Now I’ll be honest with you all. The Dayes get played about once a week at the moment, and then for a couple of hours or so. because their save file is so laggy it takes an age to get things done, and they’re a bit irritating to play right now, given their intense neediness and how long their chosen missions take to accomplish. I mean GaGa was born in August 2010. That’s nearly a a year ago. Ridiculous! We’re all looking forward to Generations. Even though the new LTWs etc will be something for Gen 10/11 to tackle as Gen 9 are slated to be a band, it’ll be fun to have new objects and interactions.

And just in time for the new EP, GaGa finally decided to clear some space in the house. She was 110, which I think might make her the oldest living non-creature Daye in the house so far. Join us next time to see whether I get any further with my desire to get Alley and Bramble out of the house, and to see the inevitable chaos of us installing Generations!

I finally got my computer back (at least for now) and the first thing I did when I had time to play the game was to revisit the Dayes. It’s felt like a long time… and five minutes into the game play it felt the same as always.

It’s not that sculpting, mixology and suchlike are boring (well, architecture is boring by now but we all know that) – they just seem to be endless.

More drinks to report: ectoplasmic residue: no effect; deathflower drops: +37 (for Alley) 5h Going Wild moodlet, Stomach churner: no effect.

Basically, it seems that the skill gain, love, energy and crazy mixes give moodlets and the rest don’t. I think.

Trying to get her to be a five-star celebrity, however, is a right hassle. Given how easy it was for Mona, I’m assuming it’s all down to the number of celebrifriends she has, so she’s been going to every party and trying her hardest to turn acquaintances into mates, but it’s been hard going and we’re not getting far.

Still, we discovered that there are nifty animations when the ‘Woo’ interaction is reciprocated, so that’s something.

She then bribed a bouncer at one of the bars (Plasma Lounge?) a large amount to be told she could have gotten in anyway. D’oh.

Her film career has started to work like one of the Ambitions professions – she had to hand out flyers in the park for it. The postlady is too old and too face one for my liking but I wouldn’t mind if Puddle snagged a postie for his partner.

Adrian Mole, by the way? 265 days old…

To be honest that doesn’t feel that old now GaGa is 106. Fun facts: GaGa and Pollo have been with us since August 2010. Bramble was born in November 2010. No wonder it feels as though these present Dayes have been in the house forever.

I set Alley and Mona on the arcade machines to see if Mona’s bar hustler thingy LTR would give her the advantage in her hidden skills.

In fact, Alley’s hidden skill ended up higher than Mona’s.

Bramble’s been moonlighting a lot, but when she was in the Plasma Lounge, the other bartender took over from her twice because she wasn’t doing the drinks right for their customers! I need to play about with her stocking the bar with plasma fruit I think to see if that makes a difference (not that there were any customers at all that night, let alone vamps, but hey).

The mixology challenges seem to be very difficult. She’s not mastered any of them yet, and is probably not even close.

We’re naming each unique drink she makes after a Daye. Amaryllis gives no mood boost, but we might start testing the family out soon. Reminds me – must get them drinking more of their nectar spoils.

Pollo died, aged 92. I’m not sad. I liked him but he was contributing nothing, he never got his Private Eye parade and if more of Gen 7 die off it means Gen 9 might be a fraction closer. I honestly thought by this stage the girls would have completed their LTWs/skill challenges and GaGa and Pollo would be long dead.

The maids are still broken

I don’t understand how Bramble got this moodlet from using a dishwasher – hardly an eco-friendly pursuit. Maybe different dishwashers are different in their levels of economy. We must check.

No idea where this puddle next to, er, Puddle came from, either. He’s kind of stalled in his skill maxing quest. Cookery, handiness, fishing and gardening genuinely seem to build more slowly than the others, and for charisma he needs more friends. We also need to check his hidden skills. I think he’s maxed everything else out now though.

Like mixology, the sculpting challenges seem hard. I think it’s because each sculpture takes forever. He’s also at level 8 in the career, due to hit level 9 soon.

Quentin’s still our live-in gardener and cleaner. I wonder if he will actually die one day. So far, Glenn remains the only Daye simbot to shuffle off this mortal coil.

Did I ever mention hating the architecture LTW? Mona has 23/100 positive reviews now, and bear in mind she’s a vampire so has lived extra-long, and even then she’s approaching elderhood fast. Stupid EA.

I also hate the firefighter profession at the moment. GaGa point blank refuses to put out any fires unless I micromanage her and there’s no way I’m doing that given she’s done all she needs to, and I have Mona, Alley, Puddle and Bramble needing watching like hawks. Oh well. Hopefully she’ll die soon. I’d move her out but there seems little point given her age.

Join us next time to see whether my wish comes true and whether any of these long haul skills/LTWs get closer to fulfilment.