the brain. it is is full of the dead.

Seriously, I seem to have come down with a serious case of the "easily distracted brain fog", or something. I haven't fired up the game in nearly two weeks, which seems so odd because I actually do want to play.

I'm going to blame it on it being nearly April, even though most of it occurred in March. April's historically been a bad month for me*. Maybe my brain is cringing in the expectation of the month being bad and shut down.

I think today is a wash but I'm going to load the game up tomorrow even if it means sitting there staring at Aaron's nose on pause for 5 hours before I actually play. At this point, though, I'm guessing the earliest I'll have anything out is mid-next-week.

[*Near death of a friend in a motorcycle accident. Unplanned pregnancy discovered just after really bad breakup. Really bad breakup in question. Suicide of someone I knew, albeit someone I wasn't close to. Death of a friend in a car accident. Figuring out my ex-junkie roommate of the time was not, in fact, an EX-junkie. Death of my cat, last year, and I've been thinking about him a lot lately. Birthday of very close friend who died 18 months ago. There's probably other things I could dredge up but I'm already in a poor mood, so why go there?]

In Which Aaron Gives Me Many Choices

I actually, after all that dithering, never got around to doing much play for Saints and Sinners the last few days... my body decided to go on one of its excessive-fatigue jags (the counterpart to the insomnia, whee) so I spent a lot of time sleeping instead. I'm playing now, and trying to find some suitable candidates for Heir's Wife.

Yeah, I think I'll play me some University

Since it's the end of the week anyhow I think I'll stick to Saints and Sinners for today and get some quality Generation A college time in. I can put together the next Twilight Dreams next week.

I have plenty of free time[1] since I'm not working and all[2] so it's not like a day or two is really going to matter, and this early into a legacy everything goes by really quickly. Once I have multiple families going it'll slow down anyhow and I won't have the "but I've already gotten so far!" feeling as often, too.

So there will likely be another Saints and Sinners update next week, and hopefully Episode 3 of Twilight Dreams as well, probably late in the week.

[1] But not Free Time. Since I'm not getting it. Yes, the hobby thing could be interesting and yeah, I'll probably look at other folks' use of it and think of ways I could use it, but, well, I think I'm going to avoid adding the complexity to my legacy and avoid giving EA any money right now.[3]

[2] Yeah, I have nothing better to do than to sit around and play Sims all day. Well, that's not true, there are other things I should or can do (and I do them), but until I can get my health problems under control, working isn't going to be one of them.

[3] I suspect at some point I'm going to have to give in about putting Securom on my computer and/or rewarding EA for releasing bug-filled games, but now is not when that will happen; so far I remain resolute.

Saints and Sinners update

Generation 0's second and final chapter.

Saints and Sinners vs Twilight Dreams: Round One! FIGHT!

I'm taking a break from working on the S&S update... I've chosen and organized the pictures with some thoughts about captions, but haven't edited or written them yet. So maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, depending on how long that takes. I'm still feeling my way with characters—not that this is heavily character-driven yet but I'd like it to work towards it—so it's gonna be narration-heavy again, which means it's mostly the time of the editing, as the writing should mostly come easily.

But now I have a dilemma. See, I've already played some of the college years, have about 100 pictures taken (not all of which will show up in the update, of course), and am enjoying just playing. Whereas with Twilight Dreams, I don't "play"... I run people around and arrange them in poses or have them do things so I can take pictures. Now, obviously I don't mind doing that, or I wouldn't be doing the project, but because of the rather long gap between when I last played and now, playing-for-reals is sorta more attractive at the moment.

On the other hand, the next release of Twilight Dreams will answer a lot of questions that people should have at this point, while hopefully raising some new ones, and I'd like my readers to stay engaged.

So now I have to decide: play some more S&S and work towards a second release of that covering college, or go pull ACR out and work on my remaining Episode 3 shots and get some of Ep 4 done for preview purposes. I was originally planning on alternating, moving between the two at update time, but I hadn't taken into account how much I missed playing. Meep.

Well, I won't be done with the actual update for a while so maybe by then I'll have figured it out.

An Heir is Clear (and other news)

So, since Saints and Sinners is (at this point) an uglacy, obviously the heir is going to be the person I judge with the worst combination of genes (or, if you like, the ugliest, though at this stage I hesitate to use that word).

I know who the winner is now. I was pretty sure it was going to be the middle kid, Aaron, when I saw him transition to teen, but I wanted to let little brother Adrian get to teen before I decided. At this point, even if Adrian's face changes when he gets to adulthood, I don't think he got the worst of the features, though he definitely has some odd ones. But Aaron's nose trumps all. He's actually not really that bad-looking... he vaguely reminds me of an actor from the 80s who I thought was kinda cute, though granted I was a teenager so my taste was suspect (no offense to teens, but let's face it, your judgement when your hormones are all aflutter ain't always the greatest). But he's definitely... um. Yeah, you'll see soon, I'm aiming for an update soon... maybe even tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Akio had his elder birthday alongside Adrian's teenifying, and that's with two doses of elixir... Nimue's due to transition shortly as well (one more simDay). Akio's gonna need a makeover. Yup.

I have an idea about who I might have Aaron marry but we'll see if he's attracted to her now that he's going to college. If not her, well, there's about 20 students right now and I'll probably do up one more batch if the game doesn't generate any new dormies when the boys go to college (Aaron tonight, Adrian probably tomorrow), plus I'm thinking I'm going to put the downtown in soon and make some folks for there, though I may hold off until the kids are back from school.

Abigail's had a year of college already but I probably won't put that in the update, consolidating her college stuff with the boys' instead, officially making it the first chapter of Generation A.

Heh

So, I've decided from now on when I send legacy kids to college I'm going to determine their major based on one of three things: 1) If they roll a Want for a specific major, I'll go with that (if they roll multiple ones at the same time, the leftmost wins), 2) If they don't and there's a clear choice based on personality, I'll pick that (like June declaring Psych in the Greenes... it just seemed to fit her really well), or 3) I'll pick randomly. It's way too easy to go "Oh, I'm going to make them do Job A, so I'll go with the major that goes with it"... and I miss all the earlier job levels if I do it, so I'm going to tend to want to not do it, though sometimes it'll work out that way.

Anyhow, I was giving Abigail a semester to roll up the Want before I chose something randomly (since I didn't have a clear idea of what she'd go for). A day into the semester she did... and she also rolled up a Fear which I swear I've never seen before:


I'm not sure what's so scary about Political Science, but apparently she really, really doesn't want to major in it. :)

(Incidentally, if you're wondering about the homogenous seasons, I'm advancing them manually so all households stay the same... I figure I'll do it once a week (measuring by the legacy house). The main 'hood just started winter so she's getting a bit of autumn time before I go back there.)

Twilight Dreams opening credits

Although I do think it came out interestingly and actually scans more or less like an opening sequence, there's a few bits that I'm not happy with, and I'm already planning a revised version.

I'd like to clean up the video if possible (I still am not sure where that weird artifacting came in and so I'm not sure that it is possible), clean up and add to the visual thoughts Miho has on the couch, regularize the size and timing of the flashing imagery that happens a bit after that and possibly change it a bit, and add a quick non-Miho sequence of either video or images to show some of the minor characters in lieu of some of the reading. I'll also probably throw the lyrics on as subtitles... I couldn't decide if I wanted to or not since this song's in English and all but now I think it'll work.

However I probably won't do it until I've gotten into the second volume, although we'll see. I have another video project between now and then that will be harder to do and I'd like to concentrate on that one first, because if I can make that one come out well, revising this one will be a breeze.

All in all I actually am fairly happy with how it came out, despite that long list above... it's all tweaks, not major changes. I'll probably leave the original up for comparison even after I do a new version, too, because really it's pretty close to what I wanted. :)