Monday, February 5, 2007

Trying something new

After seeing the movie "Stomp The Yard", I decided to do something new to my sims game. I created an African American neighbourhood and because I lack imagination at the worst of times, I decided to call the neighbourhood "Truth"...yes, just like the name of the college in the movie.

After deciding this, I realized a major problem...if I wanted a quintessential "black" neighbourhood, how in the world would I get the townies and NPC to be...well....black? After searching and then complaining that it would be too hard, I found a tutorial for SimPe with a quick and dirty way of getting the default skins of the sims to be more suited for my purpose. Okay, so one problem taken care of.

I didn't want to force the rest of my existing sims to be changed so that they would have to be Black so I created a new login on my computer so that they would never interfere with each other. After cleaning my downloads folder somewhat, I decided to keep only part of my major hair collection (I do adore the hairs for sims), that would work with the image that I wanted. I found many shades of browns, hazels, a couple greens and grey eyes and genticized them so that they could be randomly given out to the townies in my neighbourhood, and I could get a bit more variety. I also genticized the skintones that I had left in my game which range from the common medium to dark skintones. I will be adding lighter skintones for a bit more flavor later on, once the neighbourhood is more established.

As for the town itself, it's starting to look pretty nice. I got my residential and community lots (only 2x2, 3x2, 1x3, 3x1... yada yada yada...the operative word is tiny) lined up and ready to go. Most of the ones there are starter house. I have one 5x5 lot which will be for a psuedo Legacy family when I have them ready to move in. I got my lighthouse, waterfalls and all the rest for effect. I even made a custom university called...yes you guessed it, Truth University. Not many students there as of yet but I do think that's where I'll try to get many of my CAS sims to start off. I decided against putting in a Downtownie, mostly because I don't want to deal with the Vampires and Mrs. Crumbleton ruinning my outing. If I could get rid of the strays and warewolves from the Pets expansion, everything would be just about perfect but no one has come up with anything for that as far as I know.

I don't have many pictures as of yet but I'll show the few I do have:


My main couple, Hayden and Lisa. Hayden is actually the bartender from local Truth University Bar. Lisa is a sim I created who decided, as a knowledge sim, she wants to be a doctor. It was quite interesting how they met. I sent her there to catch up with her roomate, Kendra (who was slightly ahead for her Freshman Year). I decided that I was going to have Lisa earn some extra money and tend bar...I nearly grinned when I saw Hayden standing behind the bar. All I was thinking was possiblities, maybe they could hit it off...there was only one snag...the person who built this lot, made it impossible for the bartender to leave his position and it was the same problem the DJ stand. Lisa looked at him, and was definetly interested despite his bad hair at the time. Hayden gave her a couple looks too and seemed happy with what he saw...and then he flayed his arms wildly complaining that he couldn't get out and then she started to complain that she couldn't get in and then they couldn't talk because the bar was in the way....I quickly took note of his last name and went back to the dorm (Parks Dorm - named after Rosa Parks...they are a conscentious black college) and bought a teleporting shrub and teleported him over...they hit it off and he's a family sim (I was so hoping that he wasn't a romance sim because then he would be demoted to a 'baby daddy').


I don't have all that clear of a shot of Lisa's roomate, Kendra...she has only one ambition...and that's to have as much WooHoo as possible with as many people as possible. And she does her best not to actually have to do any work. She's currently in her Junior Year and hasn't once written a term paper, she either bribed her current "boyfriend", got a bit friendly with the male professor or more recently, made new pledgers of Kenisa Sorority do it as a part of their initiation. Kendra is not completly lax in morals...she won't go after Lisa's boyfriend, Hayden...but it also helps that she finds him very unattractive.

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