~Troll teh forums
I finished uploading the ancient Sims vids! So the Vampire entry and the Snake and Otacon one should be complete now. I was always so excited to show off these features to people back then, haha. Youtube was still brand new for most of my video entries! Well not Snake and Otacon but still.
Bleh! I really love the Sims 2 Bleh, it's so cute, haha. I missed that in later generations.
Just a bunch of Sims drama. I had so many of my old Pokemon OCs in that neighborhood, haha. Michelle and Gabriella were the girls with the green and blue hair respectively, they were demons and had big bat wings because sure, that fits in the Pokemon universe. Kame, the pale girl with white hair, was an terrible brainwashed science experiment because of course my old Pokemon stories were filled with evil labs and mad science and people doing terrible experiments on people. The guy with the ripped jeans and white hair is Cyrus, another experiment from the same evil lab (the PGRI) that was meant as a weird human/Mew clone. Also Nny and Scriabin and Edgar are there. And a zombie.
Snake and Otacon adventures! Inspired Things Can Only Get Gayer back in 2006. Actually my Vargas Sims antics also inspired the Two Fifteen AM fic a long time ago where Nny drew a picture of Edgar.
Anyway I sat down and played a bit of Sims 4 last night! It took a little bit to get back into the groove of how the games worked... it's been a very long time, haha. I just have the base game really, but I may acquire (cough... cough) the pets expansion as well since I love the pets to see what it's like. So!
The Create-A-Sim has SOME freedom and some things you can customize nicely, like individual body part sizes, but the click and drag to adjust facial features feels very slow and like it has a lot of resistance, and I felt like I couldn't move things around very well. I wasn't really that happy with any of the faces I made and I couldn't place why. I like the general style for Sims in Sims 4, I think they're cute especially compared to 3, but there was just something off that I can't pin down.
I definitely miss the color wheel from 3, it was VERY hard to outfit match for the ladies or Denka and Dowasure (you'll see in a second) with such limited colors. The lack of options also didn't help really, but I guess it's base game, what do you expect. Still, it definitely feels very restricted in comparison to 3. That was such a great feature!
I like that there are some new aspirations you can choose, like nature or food, but I didn't like how it restricts you to three traits. In 3 you could at least choose five traits to sort of give your Sim more options, but only 3 feels limiting. You can set likes and all that but it doesn't feel as... important? Or that it influences things as much.
I DO appreciate that it lets you customize their pronouns, clothes preference, body preference, and pregnancy/sexuality things so granularly, that's very cool. Can even make Sims that aren't into romance! Aromantic Sims, haha. Although there were Unflirty traits in 3 I think...
I forgot how long it takes to make a Sim and how engrossing it is, haha. It's fun! Well, most of the time.
House building seems... neat? I know this is the part of 4 that people seem to say is the best, but I know I can't fully appreciate it because I'm terrible at building houses in the Sims, haha. It's interesting to have the objects split into rooms, although it takes a bit of getting used to, and having prefab rooms you can buy and stretch is also really convenient! And a search bar is nice too. There were locked items but it does tell you what things you need to unlock to get it, so there's that. I didn't fiddle with this too much.
Actual gameplay so far has been... quiet, I guess you could say. Not too much has happened to my Sims calamity-wise. I have run into a recurring bug where some Sims won't clear the last thing in their queue so it just sits there mocking me (for Denka, it's resume eggs and toast and for Smoker it's clean up) and I can't get rid of it. I also got Denka and Dowasure a tea machine and they obsessively drank from it to the point of interrupting other tasks to do it, some of which could have set fires, which I don't think was intentional. I also had a stereo on in the bedroom while they were sleeping and they didn't seem to notice. And when a Sim shooed another out of the bathroom they'd leave the house entirely.
I wasn't shoving them together like dolls just yet, I wanted to see how things would progress naturally, and honestly the amount of social options between Sims is kind of overwhelming. I had to go like four menus deep for some of them and it's easy to lose track of where the one you want is. I haven't seen too many of the romantic ones yet since they're mostly just friends right now, although I'm intrigued by them. The Sentiment mechanic is sweet, since they'll talk about how they enjoy spending time with their friends and such. For all the options though, it feels like most of the animations are just recycled with different talk balloons.
The loading screens don't take as long as I thought they would. I was used to the ones from 2 which were LONG but these ones are okay. The smartphone thing is convenient but also kind of confusing... I guess that's one way to sum it up, all of it right now is kind of confusing and overwhelming. MAYBE I'M JUST OLD but it feels like I got bombarded with menus and messages and notifications constantly at the beginning. It took me like five minutes to figure out how to order a pizza. All the things you can do have been broken up into so many categories, it's kind of hard to know where they put what thing, at least at first.
They split up a bunch of things to track into tiny icons on the right, so you can flip between needs and social and work and things like that. I feel like I'm not watching their needs as often as I usually do, but also that the Sims are mostly taking care of themselves for the most part. I don't have to direct them too much aside from telling them to knock something off to go do something more important. Which is convenient! Since I don't feel like I have to watch them so constantly. At the same time it does make me feel a little less involved...
For some reason my Sims keep thinking about peeing pants, I don't know why. :/
I do like watching the little things they do. I like the detail to some of them, like if you zoom in while they're "Trolling teh forum" you can see them scrolling through a thread and typing a comment. The forum looks a lot like LJ lol. You can see them go to Google on the computer and search for things and go through sites. When they look for memes you can see the memes they're looking at! It's cute! I like details like that. I like watching them cook too. I enjoyed going through the available book titles, haha.
Other things feel a bit lazy. There aren't really a lot of fish tanks, and when I caught a fish and put it in a bowl, I thought I'd have to feed it or at least could make a Sim admire it, but there really weren't any options apart from naming it. Having a Sim teleport off a lot to go to Work instead of get in a car just feels weird.
A lot of the gameplay seems really focused on leveling up various things. I looked into some of the menus and there were like tons of things to collect, tons of traits to level up, tasks to do daily, aspiration requirements... it just feels very oriented towards leveling up a thing or collecting a thing. I know you could collect things in 3 as well but I don't know. It just feels like there's a tons of menus tracking a ton of things. It felt like my Sims were constantly learning new skills from each other randomly, like I'd get a notification every couple minutes or so about it. Why does Jockey know where Trout are found??
Their mood things often seem to fill up with trivial things, like ate a good meal or enjoying their hobby, that crowd out more interesting ones like getting buzzed off of tea or exercising, or saying something awkward, or things like that. Sims 3 also could get crowded with boring moodlets like that, but it feels like I don't get interesting ones too often. Their wishes or whims or whatever they're called feel very mundane... almost all my Sims just wanted to listen to music. I don't really feel a sense of accomplishment from getting them to do a thing they want. Some things I thought would be a big deal played out very quietly... at one point Hunter felt like her life was out of control, so she had a Fear for it, and to confront that Fear she needed to talk to someone about it. Great! Adorable! I had her talk to Jockey about it and it just looked like a normal conversation. She got "very confident" after it but there really wasn't anything to mark it as unusual or special.
I know a lot of complaints about Sims 4 is that it's boring, all the Sims are same-y and react the same way (very muted) so they don't feel different, and I can definitely see that. So far, the ones I've made don't particularly differentiate from each other, aside from how many friends they have. They're all getting promoted and doing well at their jobs, they all seem to chat well with each other. They don't really seem to have strong opinions about things or any kind of strong desires to set them apart. Sims 2 knowledge sims for example would have very unique wants for their aspiration all the time, like Seeing Aliens or Playing Chess, and in 3 Jockey would want to ramble madness to herself, or Smoker would want to be alone. In 4 it really seems to be listening to music or sleeping or eating most of the time. Maybe it's because I don't have more for them to do? Sometimes they want to play on the computer, and Denka and Dowasure LOVED trolling forums for some reason, I don't know why. Oh, and Dowasure liked playing with a kids toy, since he was childish. I don't know, they don't feel super connected to their aspiration or traits for me just yet. They all react to bubble baths playfully, they all react to watching TV comfortably. The one thing I saw was Charger getting tense at one point since she didn't like jokes.
The emotions were supposed to be the big selling point but I barely even noticed them most of the time. Denka and Dowasure were constantly focused and the ladies were happy being around each other. Although one time I guess someone made an annoying comment and Charger was furious, which seemed like an overreaction. It didn't really affect much aside from her stomping around though it seemed and I got rid of it fairly quickly. I feel like I actually get less information about how my Sims are feeling with the emotions than just the green Mood bar in 1 and 2 and the moodlets in 3.
In my old Sims post, in Sims 2 it felt like I was constantly running into disasters, like sudden fires or terrible parties, and my Sims would crash and burn into mental breakdowns. In 3 I don't think I ever got close to them freaking out, but they had some brushes with death. In 4 so far I did have some of them get too tired, but nothing more intensive than that. To be fair, I really haven't played that much... maybe it picks up over time? I'm not that optimistic though from what other people have told me. I don't know. The emptiness of the game feels rather pointed, everything fundamental that's missing just FEELS like EA is holding it out of reach with one hand out for your money.
Anyway, I took some caps with the in-game camera, which does not appear to also take caps of their little speech balloons? Which kind of defeats the point... I want to see the balloons! I want to know what they're thinking or talking about at that moment! Maybe I need to turn on a setting for it. I do appreciate 4 just giving me a setting to turn aging off for everything lol. Don't have to cheat for it. But anyway! Here's a few of who I've got right now.
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I started all the other games with these two, I might as well stay with tradition. I'm not really happy with either of them... Denka's hair really looks more like Socrates from a distance with his beard, and he should look a lot fluffier. Dowasure has a braid rather than a ponytail, but I don't know... well, poofy bangs for a ponytail are a rarity anyway, haha.
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Here he is trolling the forums, he gets so much glee out of it, haha
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He really likes playing with this cat toy, although he constantly bonks himself in the face with it. He's clumsy, childish, and a genius I think. It's interesting to have little fantasies appear around him when he's playing.
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Woops!
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They just WOULD NOT STOP with this tea machine. Look how many mugs are out!
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Dowasure dropping things in the sink.
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They told me to mess with the phone camera, so here's a REAL close look at a book.
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Denka kept very odd hours, he kept waking up much earlier than Dowasure did and he'd just putter around the house.
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Here he is programming! I like how you can see the code, hehe.
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Excuse me that's MY chair
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Sleeping with the beats on
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Lady house! Charger and Hunter chatting.
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Jockey has wide really blue eyes but I dunno... I dunno! There's just something off.
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Smoker cooking of course. There are so many options for things to cook... it's overwhelming a little.
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can I have some
They had a discoloration by the eye but it really looks more like she's blushing than anything else... no bandanas for her either. Charger just looks odd.
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Everyone getting along. Hunter almost IMMEDIATELY popped a want to flirt with Jockey. Guys! You barely know each other!
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That shirt was closer than I thought it'd be but I'm really missing her explorer look from 3.
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Hunter is appropriately caked up though lol
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They literally spent HOURS just sitting here talking to each other. Like I'm glad you guys are friends! But they wouldn't really do ANYthing else. I liked picturing zombies outside, what else are they going to do?
Also yes I built this house, it's too big. I ALWAYS MAKE THEM TOO BIG. Denka and Dowasure's was a preset.
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They did give Smoker a little streak of grey in her hair which I enjoyed. Couldn't make her nose as big as I wanted though.
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At one point Hunter said something embarrassing so she left the conversation because she wanted to Hide from Everyone and went under the covers. Aww honey
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These look so empty without the balloons...
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Hunter's a criminal and Smoker's a secret agent and their schedules don't coincide, so they kept missing each other! I'll have to push them together more actively during the few hours they DO see each other.
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Just doing pushups in front of you, no big deal, just flexing my guns, you know
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Jockey kept coming over to talk to Smoker while she was trying to do something else. They became pretty good friends, in spite of Smoker's loner trait.
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Sure just talk while she's napping, she won't notice, go ahead
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She's trying to cook, Jockey!
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Charger!
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Hunter looking up memes, hehe. I love that they're old-style macros! Also I don't know why but her work gives her this long black hair and glasses like she's Scriabin, which is bizarre. I checked her clothing settings and I couldn't find anywhere to adjust that. Maybe she wears a wig when she's at work?
I actually looked around and found my Sims 1 disk, it was in the Hot Date expansion cd case lol. I wonder if I can find Sims 2 lying around here in a similar fashion?
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Click to viewBleh! I really love the Sims 2 Bleh, it's so cute, haha. I missed that in later generations.
Just a bunch of Sims drama. I had so many of my old Pokemon OCs in that neighborhood, haha. Michelle and Gabriella were the girls with the green and blue hair respectively, they were demons and had big bat wings because sure, that fits in the Pokemon universe. Kame, the pale girl with white hair, was an terrible brainwashed science experiment because of course my old Pokemon stories were filled with evil labs and mad science and people doing terrible experiments on people. The guy with the ripped jeans and white hair is Cyrus, another experiment from the same evil lab (the PGRI) that was meant as a weird human/Mew clone. Also Nny and Scriabin and Edgar are there. And a zombie.
Snake and Otacon adventures! Inspired Things Can Only Get Gayer back in 2006. Actually my Vargas Sims antics also inspired the Two Fifteen AM fic a long time ago where Nny drew a picture of Edgar.
Anyway I sat down and played a bit of Sims 4 last night! It took a little bit to get back into the groove of how the games worked... it's been a very long time, haha. I just have the base game really, but I may acquire (cough... cough) the pets expansion as well since I love the pets to see what it's like. So!
The Create-A-Sim has SOME freedom and some things you can customize nicely, like individual body part sizes, but the click and drag to adjust facial features feels very slow and like it has a lot of resistance, and I felt like I couldn't move things around very well. I wasn't really that happy with any of the faces I made and I couldn't place why. I like the general style for Sims in Sims 4, I think they're cute especially compared to 3, but there was just something off that I can't pin down.
I definitely miss the color wheel from 3, it was VERY hard to outfit match for the ladies or Denka and Dowasure (you'll see in a second) with such limited colors. The lack of options also didn't help really, but I guess it's base game, what do you expect. Still, it definitely feels very restricted in comparison to 3. That was such a great feature!
I like that there are some new aspirations you can choose, like nature or food, but I didn't like how it restricts you to three traits. In 3 you could at least choose five traits to sort of give your Sim more options, but only 3 feels limiting. You can set likes and all that but it doesn't feel as... important? Or that it influences things as much.
I DO appreciate that it lets you customize their pronouns, clothes preference, body preference, and pregnancy/sexuality things so granularly, that's very cool. Can even make Sims that aren't into romance! Aromantic Sims, haha. Although there were Unflirty traits in 3 I think...
I forgot how long it takes to make a Sim and how engrossing it is, haha. It's fun! Well, most of the time.
House building seems... neat? I know this is the part of 4 that people seem to say is the best, but I know I can't fully appreciate it because I'm terrible at building houses in the Sims, haha. It's interesting to have the objects split into rooms, although it takes a bit of getting used to, and having prefab rooms you can buy and stretch is also really convenient! And a search bar is nice too. There were locked items but it does tell you what things you need to unlock to get it, so there's that. I didn't fiddle with this too much.
Actual gameplay so far has been... quiet, I guess you could say. Not too much has happened to my Sims calamity-wise. I have run into a recurring bug where some Sims won't clear the last thing in their queue so it just sits there mocking me (for Denka, it's resume eggs and toast and for Smoker it's clean up) and I can't get rid of it. I also got Denka and Dowasure a tea machine and they obsessively drank from it to the point of interrupting other tasks to do it, some of which could have set fires, which I don't think was intentional. I also had a stereo on in the bedroom while they were sleeping and they didn't seem to notice. And when a Sim shooed another out of the bathroom they'd leave the house entirely.
I wasn't shoving them together like dolls just yet, I wanted to see how things would progress naturally, and honestly the amount of social options between Sims is kind of overwhelming. I had to go like four menus deep for some of them and it's easy to lose track of where the one you want is. I haven't seen too many of the romantic ones yet since they're mostly just friends right now, although I'm intrigued by them. The Sentiment mechanic is sweet, since they'll talk about how they enjoy spending time with their friends and such. For all the options though, it feels like most of the animations are just recycled with different talk balloons.
The loading screens don't take as long as I thought they would. I was used to the ones from 2 which were LONG but these ones are okay. The smartphone thing is convenient but also kind of confusing... I guess that's one way to sum it up, all of it right now is kind of confusing and overwhelming. MAYBE I'M JUST OLD but it feels like I got bombarded with menus and messages and notifications constantly at the beginning. It took me like five minutes to figure out how to order a pizza. All the things you can do have been broken up into so many categories, it's kind of hard to know where they put what thing, at least at first.
They split up a bunch of things to track into tiny icons on the right, so you can flip between needs and social and work and things like that. I feel like I'm not watching their needs as often as I usually do, but also that the Sims are mostly taking care of themselves for the most part. I don't have to direct them too much aside from telling them to knock something off to go do something more important. Which is convenient! Since I don't feel like I have to watch them so constantly. At the same time it does make me feel a little less involved...
For some reason my Sims keep thinking about peeing pants, I don't know why. :/
I do like watching the little things they do. I like the detail to some of them, like if you zoom in while they're "Trolling teh forum" you can see them scrolling through a thread and typing a comment. The forum looks a lot like LJ lol. You can see them go to Google on the computer and search for things and go through sites. When they look for memes you can see the memes they're looking at! It's cute! I like details like that. I like watching them cook too. I enjoyed going through the available book titles, haha.
Other things feel a bit lazy. There aren't really a lot of fish tanks, and when I caught a fish and put it in a bowl, I thought I'd have to feed it or at least could make a Sim admire it, but there really weren't any options apart from naming it. Having a Sim teleport off a lot to go to Work instead of get in a car just feels weird.
A lot of the gameplay seems really focused on leveling up various things. I looked into some of the menus and there were like tons of things to collect, tons of traits to level up, tasks to do daily, aspiration requirements... it just feels very oriented towards leveling up a thing or collecting a thing. I know you could collect things in 3 as well but I don't know. It just feels like there's a tons of menus tracking a ton of things. It felt like my Sims were constantly learning new skills from each other randomly, like I'd get a notification every couple minutes or so about it. Why does Jockey know where Trout are found??
Their mood things often seem to fill up with trivial things, like ate a good meal or enjoying their hobby, that crowd out more interesting ones like getting buzzed off of tea or exercising, or saying something awkward, or things like that. Sims 3 also could get crowded with boring moodlets like that, but it feels like I don't get interesting ones too often. Their wishes or whims or whatever they're called feel very mundane... almost all my Sims just wanted to listen to music. I don't really feel a sense of accomplishment from getting them to do a thing they want. Some things I thought would be a big deal played out very quietly... at one point Hunter felt like her life was out of control, so she had a Fear for it, and to confront that Fear she needed to talk to someone about it. Great! Adorable! I had her talk to Jockey about it and it just looked like a normal conversation. She got "very confident" after it but there really wasn't anything to mark it as unusual or special.
I know a lot of complaints about Sims 4 is that it's boring, all the Sims are same-y and react the same way (very muted) so they don't feel different, and I can definitely see that. So far, the ones I've made don't particularly differentiate from each other, aside from how many friends they have. They're all getting promoted and doing well at their jobs, they all seem to chat well with each other. They don't really seem to have strong opinions about things or any kind of strong desires to set them apart. Sims 2 knowledge sims for example would have very unique wants for their aspiration all the time, like Seeing Aliens or Playing Chess, and in 3 Jockey would want to ramble madness to herself, or Smoker would want to be alone. In 4 it really seems to be listening to music or sleeping or eating most of the time. Maybe it's because I don't have more for them to do? Sometimes they want to play on the computer, and Denka and Dowasure LOVED trolling forums for some reason, I don't know why. Oh, and Dowasure liked playing with a kids toy, since he was childish. I don't know, they don't feel super connected to their aspiration or traits for me just yet. They all react to bubble baths playfully, they all react to watching TV comfortably. The one thing I saw was Charger getting tense at one point since she didn't like jokes.
The emotions were supposed to be the big selling point but I barely even noticed them most of the time. Denka and Dowasure were constantly focused and the ladies were happy being around each other. Although one time I guess someone made an annoying comment and Charger was furious, which seemed like an overreaction. It didn't really affect much aside from her stomping around though it seemed and I got rid of it fairly quickly. I feel like I actually get less information about how my Sims are feeling with the emotions than just the green Mood bar in 1 and 2 and the moodlets in 3.
In my old Sims post, in Sims 2 it felt like I was constantly running into disasters, like sudden fires or terrible parties, and my Sims would crash and burn into mental breakdowns. In 3 I don't think I ever got close to them freaking out, but they had some brushes with death. In 4 so far I did have some of them get too tired, but nothing more intensive than that. To be fair, I really haven't played that much... maybe it picks up over time? I'm not that optimistic though from what other people have told me. I don't know. The emptiness of the game feels rather pointed, everything fundamental that's missing just FEELS like EA is holding it out of reach with one hand out for your money.
Anyway, I took some caps with the in-game camera, which does not appear to also take caps of their little speech balloons? Which kind of defeats the point... I want to see the balloons! I want to know what they're thinking or talking about at that moment! Maybe I need to turn on a setting for it. I do appreciate 4 just giving me a setting to turn aging off for everything lol. Don't have to cheat for it. But anyway! Here's a few of who I've got right now.
I started all the other games with these two, I might as well stay with tradition. I'm not really happy with either of them... Denka's hair really looks more like Socrates from a distance with his beard, and he should look a lot fluffier. Dowasure has a braid rather than a ponytail, but I don't know... well, poofy bangs for a ponytail are a rarity anyway, haha.
Here he is trolling the forums, he gets so much glee out of it, haha
He really likes playing with this cat toy, although he constantly bonks himself in the face with it. He's clumsy, childish, and a genius I think. It's interesting to have little fantasies appear around him when he's playing.
Woops!
They just WOULD NOT STOP with this tea machine. Look how many mugs are out!
Dowasure dropping things in the sink.
They told me to mess with the phone camera, so here's a REAL close look at a book.
Denka kept very odd hours, he kept waking up much earlier than Dowasure did and he'd just putter around the house.
Here he is programming! I like how you can see the code, hehe.
Excuse me that's MY chair
Sleeping with the beats on
Lady house! Charger and Hunter chatting.
Jockey has wide really blue eyes but I dunno... I dunno! There's just something off.
Smoker cooking of course. There are so many options for things to cook... it's overwhelming a little.
can I have some
They had a discoloration by the eye but it really looks more like she's blushing than anything else... no bandanas for her either. Charger just looks odd.
Everyone getting along. Hunter almost IMMEDIATELY popped a want to flirt with Jockey. Guys! You barely know each other!
That shirt was closer than I thought it'd be but I'm really missing her explorer look from 3.
Hunter is appropriately caked up though lol
They literally spent HOURS just sitting here talking to each other. Like I'm glad you guys are friends! But they wouldn't really do ANYthing else. I liked picturing zombies outside, what else are they going to do?
Also yes I built this house, it's too big. I ALWAYS MAKE THEM TOO BIG. Denka and Dowasure's was a preset.
They did give Smoker a little streak of grey in her hair which I enjoyed. Couldn't make her nose as big as I wanted though.
At one point Hunter said something embarrassing so she left the conversation because she wanted to Hide from Everyone and went under the covers. Aww honey
These look so empty without the balloons...
Hunter's a criminal and Smoker's a secret agent and their schedules don't coincide, so they kept missing each other! I'll have to push them together more actively during the few hours they DO see each other.
Just doing pushups in front of you, no big deal, just flexing my guns, you know
Jockey kept coming over to talk to Smoker while she was trying to do something else. They became pretty good friends, in spite of Smoker's loner trait.
Sure just talk while she's napping, she won't notice, go ahead
She's trying to cook, Jockey!
Charger!
Hunter looking up memes, hehe. I love that they're old-style macros! Also I don't know why but her work gives her this long black hair and glasses like she's Scriabin, which is bizarre. I checked her clothing settings and I couldn't find anywhere to adjust that. Maybe she wears a wig when she's at work?
I actually looked around and found my Sims 1 disk, it was in the Hot Date expansion cd case lol. I wonder if I can find Sims 2 lying around here in a similar fashion?
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