Crown of Antlers

It turned out that we were there a little too soon. There were still a lot of people visiting the area, making it nearly impossible on some days to get near the park. I'm not exaggerating that one morning we left our campground intending to enter the park by the west game and cars were backed up for miles all the way through the town of West Yellowstone. Then another day we were there in the evening and we had to stop and wait in an area near the river because traffic was backed up with people trying to get out of the park. Yellowstone is indeed a circus if you go there during the regular vacation season rather than early spring or mid-autumn.

It was also too early for the elk rut, so there were no bulls roaming around bugling at each other. In fact the only wildlife we saw this year were four elk cows and some scattered herds of bison. Oh well. Next year we'll likely go closer to the last week of September.

On another note, being around towns that are designed to look like the old west game me some needed inspiration for Flowers on the Plains. In fact the next installment wrote itself in my mind. Now I just need to type it out in a text file and go into my Summerwood save to get the needed screenshots. Hopefully in the next day or two things will settle down enough to get back to my normal routine.

And...yet another note, I've taken another look at the Monte Vista world and am now asking myself why I didn't see that it has the potential to be turned into a medieval themed world. Since I don't have time to work on either of my story saves at the moment, I might jump into Monte Vista later today and create a save with all the households and modern looking buildings removed and start adding the village and other buildings that came with the Moon Valley world.

I can easily see a version of the Flowers on the Plains story happening here, but with a medieval setting rather than Old West.

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The dorm, which I downloaded Mod the Sims, came with a lot of modern items which I considered removing so the place would blend in with the rest of the fairy tale themed world, but the students need ways to raise their fun level since it goes down drastically while attending classes and studying. So please forgive the arcade games and the candy and soda dispensers.

Incidentally, the inactive students are indeed attending their classes, going to lectures at the student union, and studying. I wish I would have thought to do this when I had Aeronwen and Neldor earning their Fine Arts degrees in Dragon Valley. It would have been fun to have Thorinor, Sarasvati, Acacia, and Darkfell attending classes with them.

But anyway, here are some screenies featuring the new vampire character Andrew Van Barrow. ( Read more... )

I tried to post this last night, but for some reason only part of the post appeared in the entry. And it was also posted twice even though I didn't hit the submit button more than once. Oh well. Here is Take Two.

Since I'm used to playing with aging turned off in my MorrowSims themed saves I sometimes find the passage of time a little jarring in Moon Valley. While it's fun to have Gloria get older and become more independent, I get a little squeamish when I see that the dog Dakota and the cat Jasper are a little less than two sim-weeks away from becoming elders. And we all know what happens at the end of the elder stage.

I'm not saying I'm going to get as worked up as some simmers do when their sims die. It's just that it's not exactly the most pleasant part of the game. I recall a simmer on Twitter/X who was acting like she was devastated over her sim cat dying. She kept showing screenshots and posting "I can't stop crying". One person who felt she was going overboard (and I'm sorry, but she was), commented, "If you think this is bad, trying loosing a real cat."

Her response, "I have, and this is just as bad!"

Err...I've been through pet loss and have had to say goodbye to four cats over the years. A sim-pet dying is NOT the same thing as the passing of a real life pet. Not only is it not in the same ballpark, it's not even anywhere close to the ballpark. I understand getting attached to your sims, but at the end of the day they're just pixels.

All right, I didn't mean to go off in that direction. Where was I?

Oh right. Guess who has reached her teen years: ( Read more... )

The Winters, who like to keep the large birds that they find as pets, had been lucky enough to find a Spotted Sixam, which looks like a dark blue and white owl and is the rarest of the large bird pets. The family spent a good deal of time teaching him to talk. He learned how to sing as well as how to say a variety of greetings. Overall he was fun to have around.

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While working on the text portion for the next Flowers on the Plains installment I went into my New Pelagiad/Dragon Valley save which is technically a new game since I imported all of my Elder Scrolls households into a fresh copy of the world. There were a few more things I wanted to do before allowing time to start passing, such as adding Nerelle's cat and kitten along with Saje's kitten to their respective households. I also added Eclipse to Aengoth's household so that Helseth can be tortured in the medieval/fantasy version of the world as well as the western one.

When adding cat items to Saje's house I realized for the first time how crowded the place is. I gave him and Chaaya a house that was made by the creator of Moon Valley and was put up for a separate download. It's a beautiful house, but after trying to fit pet dishes, a litter box, and scratching posts in there I found myself apologizing to the characters for putting them in a house that is so filled with clutter that they can barely move. I cleaned out the house and made it more livable, but before long I'm going to gift their household with a large sum of money and use it to enlarge the place. They'll be needing more room since it likely won't be long before they're expecting a little bundle of joy.

Back at the Gold Willow house, after the farming chores were done Neldor and Calonir took Casper for a walk to the dog park.
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In preparation for the next part of the Wild West Vvardenfell story, I've created Summerwood's Ashlander tribe.
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Now with the No-Stretch Child Horse Riding mod fixed I decided to try to create a pony. I used this Fell Pony as a base after installing the listed custom sliders. Those sliders are indeed quite necessary since making a pony involves more than just using the Horse Size slider to make a standard sized horse small. Most ponies have a stocky build with a thick neck and their legs seem a little short compared to the size of their body.

I used the sliders to thicken the neck, shortened the legs a bit, and made the pony even smaller than the Fell Pony I started with. As for which breed this is, conformation-wise the resulting pony looks like a Shetland. By making the barrel and neck a little thinner I think the pony could be changed to look like a Welsh.

Here are some screenies. I had to use Krystal to show the pony with a rider and for size comparison. I doubt she was thrilled about it, but neither of her horse-loving siblings are big enough to ride yet.
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There have been times when I've wondered if I'm ever going to get the next installment of Flowers on the Plains done. I was working on the screenshots today and it's been a nightmare. The game crashed five times while setting up the preview screens I'm including in this entry. I have never ever had this much trouble setting up poses. The reason must be because there are quite a few sims involved in the scene.

Anyway, here are the screens I took of Clever Prank using performance poses and using musical instrument accessories. ( Read more... )

With a little more tinkering with NRaas Story Progression and Retuner settings the Ulokea set up for Flowers on the Plains is now actually playable instead of just being a stage for fan fiction screenshots. In fact it's one of my smoothest running saves at the moment. Occasionally an inactive horse still bypasses the Returner settings and uses a water taxi to cross water, but it doesn't happen near as often anymore, and when it does I just use MC to rest the horse, sending it back to its home lot.

While preparing the next installment for the story I've replaced some more exterior screenshots. For the Admirers entry I had planned to just replace the screenshot of Darkfell on his Ashlandi galloping down the road toward the Rose Manor, but while I was at it I ended up changing all of the exterior shots for that chapter.

I really like this scene with Darkfell. It makes such a difference to have a lot of empty wilderness around and dirt footpaths rather than wide, manicured roads.
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Having just posted a new entry for Gloria's story, it's now back to Summerwood, a wild west story that takes place in the east of Tamriel on the island of Vvardenfell. Although there is still occasional lag, performance has improved quite a bit since I adjusted settings in Returner to stop inactive pets from using the water taxis. Amusing at it sounds, 98% of the time the lag was caused by horses using water taxis and then getting stuck along the shore.

This was stopped by going through this path:

City Hall > NRaas > Retuner > Settings > General > By Object > Boat > Get in Passenger Seat > Allow Species Age and set to False the 3 Horses ages.

I also set it to False for cats and dogs. I realize that the world would probably run even better if none of inactive households had pets, but for a story like this it just doesn't work. Horses and westerns...they go together. Plus there are particular pets that are a part of their owner's characters. Imagine Darkfell without his Ashlandi, Araynys without his dapple gray Emperator, Aryon without his Malinoor, Saje without his Rothvanner. It doesn't work. At least most certainly not in a wild west take on Vvardenfell, so the inactive pets remain even if their removal would help remove almost all of the lag.

Now, the upcoming installment takes place at the Clever Cow, a very wholesome, family friendly tavern. While opening night is going on...other things are happening elsewhere. For example, there are things happening at the manor that is occupied by Helseth and his mother. Even more specific, there are things going on in Barenziah's room

Don't click the cut. You can't unsee it. ( Read more... )