Saints & Sinners, Generation A, Chapter 1

Go read it! It's done! Yay!

This Week's Revised To Do List

Things I Intend on Doing for Sure

• Sort existing Twilight Dreams pictures for Episode 3 and make a new shot list once I'm sure what I have and what I don't.


• Shoot the rest of episode 3


• Decide if TD needs the quality drop S&S is getting


• Edit and caption photos and release episode


• Make revised shot and video shot list for Episode 4 and the video I'm going to be releasing with it


• Build downtown for S&S neighborhood

Once that's all done, I'll be putting more play time into Saints & Sinners. I might still put their vacation destinations in but since I want to explore and tweak those, it'll take more time than just saying "Yes please add this please". No one can afford a vacation yet anyhow so no rush, I guess.

I may or may not work on additional TD stuff this week, but more likely 'not'. I have toddlers waiting for me in S&S, after all.

Uploading S&S Now, Plus Changes in Future

I'm uploading S&S now... going a little slow because I still need to use the five-at-a-time loader because of compression issues with the batch one. I'll post again when it's done.

Starting with the next chapter, either picture size, graphics format, or both, is going to have to change. The current chapter is 63M, about average for the S&S chapters, because I settled on an 800 pixel wide picture in PNG format, meaning each picture is 400-600k. Unfortunately at that rate, I'm going to run out space really quickly (I've already used up over 20% of my free gig), and while I was always planning on shelling out the $20 (yearly) to get extra space, I'd rather not only do it later, but not have to worry about filling it up, too, as the next higher level is $75/year and that's more than I want to pay for this.

I'm still debating between dropping size, changing to JPG, or both. If I do both, the pictures will be about a third their current file size and end up approximately the image size and quality available on the Sims' site... not horrible, but definitely a big change from the current quality. If I only do one of those, I'll still drop the size to about half, which might be enough. So I need to decide on that before I start working on the next chapter. I'm really not sure which trade-off is best. The quality loss in JPG is noticeable to me although it's not bad when I'm not looking at them side-by-side, so I might stick with the larger pictures, which I like, and just do that. On the other hand, the high-quality-but-smaller images look nice, but lose a little detail, though I could probably also crop closer in some cases. Doing both would definitely make it sure I can fit this and future projects in my paid space, but the result is obviously the least attractive... so, I don't know yet.

I may leave TD in the high-quality larger size because it's a limited run with a lot fewer pictures per upload, but S&S is going to be a lot of chapters... and I've another project in the works for after TD is done.

So... um. Enjoy the high quality while you can. I'll leave the current chapters as is, but next time it'll be different.

Still Working on Saints & Sinners Update

I got started a little late on the writing, and it's going slow... actually, that's not true. The writing is going fine. The cropping and resizing and re-canvas-sizing for text and re-cropping is going slow. I'm basically doing it in chunks of maybe 10, and I'm at about 80/140. So it probably won't be up tonight, unless I stay up later than I think I'm going to, but I should be able to finish it up tomorrow.

Normally I don't mind this as much, but today it's feeling really tedious. It is a little repetitive, so I always do it in chunks, but usually larger ones, more like 20-30 at a time, with smaller breaks between.

Hopefully I won't feel this way when it comes time to edit Twilight Dreams... though to be honest, the shooting of pictures is probably what's going to make me slow there. But in between shooting I can build. :)

It only LOOKS like morning

I've been up since about 2 AM, mainly because I went to take a short nap yesterday and it turned into 9 hours of sleep. o_O

Anyhow, so... all three S&S households have had some playtime. There's been marriages (and one wedding). There are two babies and a toddler. The two lots I had on my list for the main 'hood are built:

Gradumatation and Other Things

All the kids are graduated.

Abby and her sweetie are moved in and have a fairly big house considering I went with what they had on hand, and it's all baby-ready. I think they're just going to marry in the livingroom and go straight to the baby-getting. (Probably adoption, though I'm thinking of boolPropping them one.)

Aaron's home. He grew up in a ridiculous but somehow fitting outfit. Since I have a pic, I'm going to make him over. I remodeled the main house after his sweetie moved in. Originally I was going to dump a portion of their incoming money but she didn't bring that much. I tried to keep remodeling to necessity levels and will go blow most of the rest on clothes to help waste it. I think with 4 in the house I'm going to skip the wedding party and let them wed informally, too, unless one of them suddenly rolls a Want for a party. I also fixed his sweetie (not enough Want slots for a graduate and, ahem, not doing her original LTW, so I cycled it... much more reasonable now).

Adrian and his sweetie are moved in. He wants a wedding. They have a nice house but it's not baby-ready. Bets on him being abducted or her getting pregnant right away? I've got space to throw in a nursery easily but not the cash. They both grew up in crappy clothes so I'm going to spend part of what I saved out on that, part on the wedding.

I also remodeled the outside of the night club because for some reason the environment score was tanked there... hoping what I did helped. And I named all the basic lots. Haven't tackled downtown yet.

Gonna take a break to go play over at Neopets. (PS, if anyone wants a Neopets account, use this link. ^_^ And if you want a premium invite, I'll be able to give those out in a week. Yes, I pay to use Neopets. No ads = much better, and it's cheaper than WoW.) Then more playing of the Sims. Yay!

Progress and April+Early May Plans

There will be a Saints & Sinners update this week. I'm almost done with college (Abby's graduated and moved into her new house, Aaron's most of the way through his last semester, Adrian's got a year to go). I may want to play ahead a bit before tackling the actual update, so I have a head start on the next one. I think I'll be playing regularly again now... the anniversaries of suck are past, and my distractions, while still distracting, are less so lately. So, you might even get two in short order.

I've got Twilight Dreams exactly half scripted, and of the remaining half, half are planned out. (The whole storyline is technically planned out, but the third quarter of the plotline is detailed and separated episodically more-or-less, but the final quarter is not.)

To do list for the rest of the month and into the end of next week:

* Get the college chapter out for S&S.
* Play ahead a bit, so I can try to have another update out soonish.
* Build at least half of the planned downtown lots and the two remaining planned main 'hood lots.
* Come up with names for the lots. Right now they're all "General Store", "Club", etc. Boring.
* Populate downtown with a small batch of townies.
* Figure out what's left to do for E3 of Twilight Dreams. I actually have a shots list, I'm just not sure what shots I already have.
* Put together E3.
* Start shooting E4 and maybe video for the Next Video.
* Try to get another script or two done for Twilight Dreams. This isn't vital, but I'd like to do it.

I've actually got a small list of stuff post that, but it's stuff that I don't think I will get to by then. I think if I play at least some every (week)day I can get this all done, but we'll see if I actually do play every day.

The Brain, It Is Still Full of the Dead

Just... having a bleah month. I played a little. Still working on college. But mostly I've been distracted by other things.