SimRa Mansion - Growing Pains

[mimi_sardinia]

Okay, so I'm finally done fooling around in Shinra Mansion in my sims game. If I'm going to be going to this sort of length with everything I'm just going to go ahead and install the expansions and do all the fixer-upper stuff afterwards!


Anyway, amongst all the stuff I did I aged up two of the residents, gave out four makeovers, and got pissed at the game interupting my painting bee.


I actually started the first half of all of this yesterday but I made the same closedown mistake I did when renovating Supernova House when I got the clean version - instead of hitting Cancel I hit No - therefore not saving. So anyway, I had to repeat a fair bit of this today.


So the rundown of all the stuff I've done:

I'd previously aged Kestra up to toddlerhood - having the testing cheats on is definitely needed for this, so as to get access to an infant's POV. Problem was, when I aged her up, she came out with some attrocious panda cap that is amongst the standard in-game hairstyles.

At the time I did it I forgot how one changes a toddler's appearance but I remembered yesterday and went in to alter it (after doing likewise to Axel - I don't know what hair I changed him to though, probably one of my numerous extra long male hairstyles) to this:


This is after I got Aeris to teach her how to walk and how to talk (getting those out of the way fast).

In yesterday's take on this process I did toilet training because I had the testing cheats on and could narf with her bladder stats but I forgot to put them on before I opened the lot and I didn't feel like driving Ellone or one of the adults to a community lot just to get them going so I slapped in the SimSlice electro-boards, which keep all moods maxed out. Good for doing the walking and talking bit with toddlers but not toilet.

Somewhere in the middle of that I also enlarged the dungeon a bit (took out a couple of walls that merely cut off a bit of space at the ends) so now it can acomidate a genuine coffin in it - the one for vampires to sleep in. Probably means I'll vamp someone out at some point - the irony of doing so to Vin is not lost on me!

Anyway, I gave Vincent a bit of a makeover - my Vin is MimeWhite's version of him, but in the last week I downloaded NessyOriginal's version. Still haven't gotten the cape to work right but I still traded most of the bits - hair, bandana, clothes - onto my Vin. Also did a bit of makeup and a slight bit of cosmetic surgery tweeking.


Not the best pic, but here's how he's turned out.

Anyway, it was around this point I first was planning on getting into Lu's whole aging and makeover part, but I remembered the issue I had with the family paintings and delayed it so I could rebuild the collection a bit. See, what happened was that when I was working on resettling everyone back in the lot I found that the original paintings I'd had my sims paint had been wiped - all they had on them was code - so I while I wouldn't be able to restore some of the pictures of Ellone and Lu when they were younger I could at least capture them now - before I send Ell off to college (again) and before I aged Lu to teenagehood.

So I set Vin to painting, but would you believe it, Aeris goes and gets herself abducted! Why is this significant? Because Vince runs off to panic at the abduction which means that all he wants to do when I got him back was scrap the painting! So anyway, I started him off again, and got the smart idea of getting Ellone to paint too and do a still life of Kestra dancing to the stereo, only I got distracted by a chance closeup and Ellone ended up painting a still life of herself.

Only again, they got interupted - by Aeris being returned!

So after that, I got another easel for Aeris but she got interupted part way through painting by an expanding waistline (she's preggers yet again) so I had to restart her and got another easel for Lu so everyone was painting (with Kes dancing away) only I ended up with two versions of Lu jumping on one of the couches - ended up selling one and keeping the other, and it's kinda lucky because the second time I set up that shot I tried to get it at an angle so Vincent's picture in the hallway could be seen through the door (modded item that - the original game art of Vincent. I have that and another of Aeris facing each other in the main hall) but couldn't get it right but the third time the angle worked.

It was just lucky that the game seems to allow school students to get to school late if their parents drive them because otherwise both Ell and Lu would have been docked grades because they were so busy painting they missed the bus.

But going on, the next day I got the girls through their homework fast by getting them to ask for help for once - Ell asked Vincent, while Lu asked Ell, who had finished hers by the time Lu came home. Once that was out of the way I could finally get to work on Lu.

First step - because I always have Trees Of Life on my properties (SimSlice Tree that keeps sims from aging) I can't rely on birthdays rolling around, so I have to age sims manually. To do this I usually rely on either the Tombstone Of Life And Death (a testing item in the game - it can be spawned by Shift-clicking on a sim while the testing cheats are on) or by using one of the numerous SimSlice items I have. Since I didn't have the testing cheats on, I had to go the SimSlice direction (which frankly, is easier anyway).

So here's the before and after shots:


Lucrecia, still as a child - in school uniform.


Afterwards, as a teen - obviously having plundered Ellone's wardrobe (since purple was the signiture colour I picked for Ell).


Closeup, so you can see what she looked like before her makeover.

Frankly, I hated her face. The angular jaw and the thin mouth just look awful. So I did some surgery on her - probably went a bit too far but the result is easier on the eyes.


And yes, I went over all the other factors in a makeover - new clothes, new makeup, new hair. She still has the purple lipstick and the beauty spot - something I picked up with Lulu - I like the contrast it has against the green - same reason her signature colour is pink - it stands out against her skin.



Actually, I'm of a mind to eventually marry her off to one of the Org sims - when I get them to adulthood. I'll see how it goes though.


Anyhow, next I'll have to move Ell out, I really aught to go age Talos Icequeen up to childhood, and go get Squall and Laguna back in their house and assess whether I need to extend the lot a bit so I have room to extend the house, because Laguna's pregnant too - not an alien pregnancy though, I have a mod somewhere that makes mpreg possible so it's Squall's third kid (and all of them by different mothers too...).


Some time I'll collect up pictures to make up a family tree of the extended Strife-Gainsborough-Valentine-Leonhart-Loire-Icequeen (and extras) family.



Maybe now I can leave this house until the expansions are loaded...

Comments

[mariagoner.livejournal.com]

New!Lucrecia is much lovelier than Old!Lucrecia-- good job on redesigning her! And the Vincent pic might have killed me dead. In a good way however! XD

[mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, she's turned out well, even though I could have stood to retain a little more of the alien angularity to her face.

[mariagoner.livejournal.com]

That's true-- outside of the coloring, there isn't much that looks alien about her!

(Love the beauty mark, though. I've got one right above my eye so. XD)

[ff7aeris.livejournal.com]

I'm still working on getting those TS2 downloads.... (MTS2 is being a bitch right now but...) Anywho, I'm planning on burning the DVDs this weekend and stuffs ^^;

[mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com]

Let me know how the space quota is - I wouldn't mind having another go at MST's archives.

[ff7aeris.livejournal.com]

I think its 4 Gigs, but I highly doubt that its going to cost a fortune to package multiple DVDs in the same parcel ^^;