Cher Shares

This is the start of the sixth rotation in Sugah's Pleasantview. Jonah and Alyssa:

Alyssa was promoted to College Dean of Students, then reached the top of her career as Education Minister.

Nick went to college. Alyssa's thrifty ways enabled him to add to his scholarships, so he shouldn't have any financial troubles.


Julia became a teen. ACR says she's gay.


Looks like she's interested in having a job.


While at the shopping center, I saw Andrew and Avett go into the photobooth and woohoo, though Avett has firmly refused Andrew's advances when I'm in their lot. Not cool, guys, not cool at all. You're not being very discreet.


Bonus shot, to show that Jonah and Alyssa do find time to spend together, despite their work/party schedules making it difficult.


Patrick and Kelly:

Patrick and Kelly both want to have baby, and they both fear having a baby.

Nothing really happened this rotation. Patrick's organic garden is a huge success, and all the family worked on skills. Since he has a greenhouse, there is no garden “season” for Patrick; he works at it all year round.

They did gussy up the kitchen a bit.

Lenny and Lilura:

The Sim Goddess wasn't paying attention and didn't realize how close Zara was to death. It was an unhappy shock, so it's a good thing Lilura could do something about it. She called the Grim Reaper and said she'd pay whatever he wanted in order to get Zara back. It worked, and Zara was perfectly resurrected.




Tanit grew into a teen. She clearly has Lenny's skin. More tattoos show up each time she ages up. She also gets more piercings, but that doesn't come with the skin.   ACR says Tanit is also gay. I wonder if, when ACR rolls a gay Sim, it immediately makes the next one gay as well so there will be a partner? I wonder about this because the same thing happens later, where two same-sex Sims in a row are gay.


When Julia Sanders walked by, Tanit went out and greeted her, then gave her a noogie. Way to show her you like her.    



They did end up hitting it off quite well after that, and Tanit has two attraction bolts with Julia. They quickly became friends, though Tanit, at least, hopes for more.

Astraea went to college. She didn't have much in the way of scholarships, but her parents sent her with a good amount of money. Gail stopped by and made a mess with the soup.


Lenny and Lilura hang out doing this a lot:

Nice update! I think I have asked you before, but what do you mean by "This is the start of the sixth rotation in Sugah's Pleasantview"?

Tim, I'm sorry I missed your question before. I've always played my families in rotation. Each rotation in this game is a Sim week, Monday morning to Monday morning. So I play each family in the same order, for one Sim week at a time. Since I have kids at Uni and there aren't days of the week there, the rotation for them is two semesters. In my mind, it keeps everyone around the same age in relation to each other because they're all aging one Sim week at a time. I'm actually on the twelfth rotation, or week, in my play, so I'm very behind on updating this thread. I did "cheat" on aging a bit by not playing any of the main households if there were no kids at home. I didn't like the idea that the parents could become elders or even die while the kids were still at Uni, and I do use the green elixir regularly.

I play my sims one season (5 days) at a time. I only play semester 8 of univ, and count that as a season for a sim at univ. They move to univ in one season, then are at univ the next season, then back in the home 'hood for the next and subsequent.

I use a lot of green stuff. Nobody ever becomes an elder or dies. When the kids (if any) are gone and all the adult sims in a household are at level 10, I move the household to a retirement 'hood. They maintain their friendships, can be emailed or telephoned and invited over, accompany active sims coming home from work, and occasionally walk by active houses. I just don't play them any more. I replenish my 'hood with contributed sims ( Toni and Ari and Ulli and Elle and Sugah and Beckylynn and Lowisa and Birdgurl, and many others - mainly on MTS2) and with offspring. I try to select zodiac and aspirations, etc so I can pair 'em up, too.

Cher64 wrote:

Tim, I'm sorry I missed your question before. I've always played my families in rotation. Each rotation in this game is a Sim week, Monday morning to Monday morning. So I play each family in the same order, for one Sim week at a time. Since I have kids at Uni and there aren't days of the week there, the rotation for them is two semesters. In my mind, it keeps everyone around the same age in relation to each other because they're all aging one Sim week at a time. I'm actually on the twelfth rotation, or week, in my play, so I'm very behind on updating this thread. I did "cheat" on aging a bit by not playing any of the main households if there were no kids at home. I didn't like the idea that the parents could become elders or even die while the kids were still at Uni, and I do use the green elixir regularly.

Oh I am sure if I asked you told me, I'm just not sure if I remembered and so had to ask again.

Thank you both, I think I like playing for a week better then 5 days, but either would be better then what I do when I play...play one family until I get sick of them and go to another family! lol

Tim, I'm too OCD to play without a set rotation. My Sims' life spans would be all out of whack!

Avett and Malika:

Avett was very attentive to Malika after his photo booth woohoo with Andrew. They both still have the want to have a baby, and they woohoo plenty, but she is not pregnant.


Malika was promoted to CEO, then to the top of her career as a Business Tycoon.

Gail has two bolts of attraction with Chris Donovan, and he often comes home from school with her. After a little shy flirting by the pool, they developed a crush on each other and finally had their first kiss.




Gail went to college at the end of this rotation. A few days before, she must have realized she was going to miss Nanny Lettie a lot, because she invited her to hang around after work.


Bethany is happy enough to have the room all to herself, but she often has thoughts of Gail and misses her. She grew into a teen.


Lincoln is such a neat freak, he autonomously cleans the play table when he's done playing. I failed to get a picture of Lincoln this rotation.

Andrew has reached the top (his top, anyway, since I won't allow two Mayors) of his career ladder, but he is a very good investor. He satisfied his LTW to earn $100,000 during this rotation. Again, no pictures.

For reasons unknown to the Sim Goddess, the gardener didn't go home one day. She spent some time on Andrew & Avett's work computer, then took a nap in Avett and Malika's bed. Why she had her pajamas with her, no one knows. She was really getting too familiar with her employers. Malika fired her, and hired a new (male) gardener to take her place. Maybe he will be able to keep his mind on business.

Cher64 wrote:

Tim, I'm too OCD to play without a set rotation. My Sims' life spans would be all out of whack!

That is so true...I had never considered it that way before!

Very nice update, Bethany is really beautiful!

The Price family is one of my favorites to play. Jake and Esther are also favorites of mine; I've always really liked both of them.

Colin and Autumn:

Autumn and Colin took turns using vacation days to take care of the kids, so Autumn finally went back to work (even if only part time). She was promoted to SWAT Team Leader, then to Police Chief.  Her new income allowed them to make some much-needed improvements to the back yard, including the addition of a pool and expansion of the back deck.


Colin may be a horndog, and he certainly neglects Chris (his child with Ember, though he does promptly pay his child support), but he often autonomously plays with his kids at home. He's no good at computer repair, though, and ended up calling a professional.



I guess the bathrooms need to be updated soon; everything is starting to break down!



Spring is doing well in school. She tried out for the dance team, but failed. Maybe she needs to lay off the cookies for a while.


Winter is a neat freak. He will often stop what he's doing to go make a bed or clean a toilet. Weird kid, but handy to have around.

Summer grew into a child. She has a serious-looking face that I really like. However, before I had her look in a mirror and change her appearance (I didn't actually change anything), she looked like this:

Afterwards, she looked like this (much better!):

Summer's nursery was converted into a child's room for her.


Pictures of average days at the Jamison house. The kids often come home with friends, and spontaneously interact with each other.

Poor little Summer, huh?! Also, she doesn't actually have a mustache, though the after picture sure makes it look like she does.

Kurt & Ilyse:

Ilyse finally got another promotion and is now a Leading Lady.  It takes a lot of work to keep in good shape, but it's worth it.



She used the bonus money and increased earnings to create an entertainment lounge over the pool room, and to make the basement into more of a place for Kurt.




Griffin and Glenna grew into teens. Griffin's teen years have been uneventful so far. He spends his time staying in shape and studying. He was apparently so boring I didn't take any pictures of him.


Glenna found Colin as irresistible as most women do, and convinced him to take her out. They had a Great Date, and she's hoping it will lead to more. Since it's Colin, it probably will. Colin stupidly allowed pictures to be taken, but Glenna promised to keep them hidden.




Bad lightning storm!

It's a really cool feeling to visit and see so many of my sims in your game.  I'm honored that you have so many of my sims in your 'hood.  

I keep thinking that I'll have some gay sims in my game, but the thing I like to do best in this game is have babies - and lots of them!

It's great to see you back here!

The last two posts in my Offspring Project thread have Jonah and Alyssa's children shown at all stages through adulthood. I'm obviously way behind posting in this thread because almost all of the offspring are now adults.

I let ACR determine the sexual orientation of my sims in this game. In previous games, I didn't have it installed. When I had gay sims , I used a cheat or mod or something that allows gay couples to combine their genes into an offspring. I'm not doing it in Offspring Challenge because the second generation doesn't matter.

Thank you, Cher.

Remind me again how to let ACR choose orientation.

I'm actually still learning about ACR because I skimmed through the manual and didn't pay enough attention. I just found out that if I spawn an adjuster and leave it on the lot, my sims will do more things, such as make booty calls.

I think ACR automatically does it, unless you make changes to the settings. You spawn the adjuster by clicking on a sim and selecting "adjust." The first time you use it in your game, you would select "tokens" then "setup hood." If it's a game already in progress, you may have to also give tokens to individual Sims. The default chance to spawn a gay or bi Sim is 10%, but you can change those through Gender Preference. Spawn the adjuster, then I think it's under Misc, Gender Preference, Hood if you want to randomize your entire hood, or Gender Preference, Sim Name if you want to directly change a specific Sim's orientation. According to what I've read, when you change the percentage for the entire hood, you will get a choice to rerandomize all or just those with no current preference, or only townies/NPCs. It will also not change an existing preference if a Sim already has a crush or higher relationship with another Sim.

Both times I got a gay Sim, the next Sim of that same gender to age up or be spawned was also gay. I don't know if that's coincidence or if ACR makes sure gay Sims will have a partner available.

I started using ACR to wean myself away from micromanaging every detail, but it was hard to let go. I have been enjoying how my Sims surprise me, though, and I like that not every same has the same level of jealousy.

Thank you for telling me about that. I've been playing with it a little and am enjoying the change of pace. I get myself in a rut and get bored easily because it's always - have babies, grow up - have babies, etc. I'm having fun with this so far - especially that I don't have to 'turn on' anyone's preferences. I've had sims start their own relationships based on their preferences (which I set to randomize) and it was so cool not to have to say 'Ok go flirt with that guy because you're going to marry him.' I even had two townie sims ignore my family completely and flirt with each other by the playground. The family that I'm playing had four teenage girls and one boy. A townie boy was over visiting, but none of the girls liked him - turns out he liked their brother, instead, and has proceeded to friend/flirt with him. The brother was bi, so he was all for it.

Later on, I realized one of my girls liked the pizza boy, so I invited him over to hang out. Her dad, who is very gay, also liked the pizza boy and kept following him around to talk to him and interact with him. It was pretty awesome.

I think I'd like to see a picture of Hot Pizza Boy!

I was the same way with my Sims until I stumbled upon ACR. I've been finding it fun to be surprised.

Warning: Long boring post about how I set up the neighborhood. Feel free to skip to pictures!

I spent a huge amount of time setting up what I hope will be a hood I'll play for years. This post will just be background, I think. I followed some nice tutorials I'd found and set up my game without preinstalled characters. I knew I wanted some subhoods, but not an official Downtown as the game understands it. I do plan to eventually have a subhood I use as a city environment, though. I also knew I wanted multiple Uni hoods and spent some time figuring out the kind of schooling available at each of those.

I installed an amazing amount of stuff before I ever began playing. I default-replaced just about everything possible! Because I replaced the face templates, I didn't immediately add all the anti-redundancy mods because I was looking forward to seeing the randomly-generated characters and using them in my game. All the non-default eyes and skins are geneticized and townified. Most of the clothes are also townified. Some things I already knew how to do, but I also learned a lot of things while doing this. All cc clothing, hair, facial hair, and makeup have had tool tips added so I will be able to easily locate them in my downloads folder if I want. I used the Bodyshop Organization Kit to group certain types of clothing and accessories such as Maternity, Gypsy, Halloween, etc. Hair has been binned if it didn't come that way. Custom food has been grouped into menus and some had to have meal availability times changed. I made my own names file. It's been fun to see the names generated by the game, though I seem to have an overabundance of Aces and Adams for some reason.

I have a ton of mods and hacks installed and don't plan to use cheats except for with the initial families. I altered the amount of money they started with based on family size and the situation I wanted to set up for them. I also didn't plan to use aspiration rewards, though I've already made a notable exception with the Linley family dog, Ginger.

I have ACR and Wild Child installed and let my sims determine their own romantic interests. I did decide that teens must be halfway through teenhood (8-9 days from adulthood) before becoming sexually active. Several of my teens have tested that and I have to keep a careful eye on them. I think I'm going to have to change their individual settings to disallow woohooo until they're old enough, and then remember to remove the restriction when they are.

I'm using Boiling Oil's Slow Aging Controller to set child and adult aging to three times a week, and then I had to learn how to alter ACR fertility percentages so they'd line up with the longer adult span. I wanted adults to be able to have a nice long time to create larger families if they wanted them, and I wanted a longer childhood so they could spend more time building some skills but also just being kids and making friends. I used some programs to randomly determine the starting families and their various statistics. I messed with aging a bit so all the adults in a given household wouldn't be the same age.

I try to allow sims to determine their own free time activities at least half the time (more during summer vacation), though studious kids get more direction on homework and skills.

I always use a lot of custom categories so I can more easily find the huge amount of CC I always end up adding to my game. I have a sickness.

Sims go to the store when they need food. Wealthier sims may have their food delivered.

Kids get allowances (or not) depending on the financial situation of the family; the amount also depends on this. They keep it in their inventories as a way of saving for university or adulthood.

Only a truly brilliant kid from a poorer family will go to private school because they will be dependent on a scholarship and those aren't handed out often.

I'm using the Arcadia decorated hood from MTS, though I've messed with the hood deco a bit. This is how it looks now, with the lots I currently have set up for use, along with a closer look at the townsite.



Some local characters:

Adam Wiggins, Pizza Delivery


Exterminator Julie Kent


Gardener Abigail MacGregor


Pamela Small, Gypsy


Landlady Abigail Barker

I love your use of custom NPCs. I really like the pizza guy!    What about the repair-people?

Oh they're fabulous, Cher! Whose default faces, eyes, and skins are you using?

That's exciting, starting a new neighborhood from scratch with everything set up just the way you want it. I look forward to hearing more about it.

Mac, I didn't write down names apparently, but here are the repairman (and nanny in the background), mail lady, and paper delivery guy.



And here's sales clerk Rebecca Masters.


Wait until you see some of the townies!

Ari, I did a mix and match on face templates. It seems like most sets have faces that are all very similar with only minor differences, so I chose the ones I liked best for each template. The names refer to sets by Simcat at Garden of Shadows, Lady Banes Sandbox, Mod the Sims, and XFiveXFiveX, and the list looks like this:
1: Helaene heartshape     
2, 7, 9, 12, 21, 27, Alien:  Terrakosmos  
3, 10, 11, 23, 25: LadyBanesSandbox  
4, 16, 18, 19: Simcat  
5, 6, 17, 20, 22, 24, 26 Selzi CAS Faces Sep07
8, 15: Selzi New Faces
13, 14: XFiveXFiveX Butterflies and Hurricanes

I used CuriousB's In Your Eyes defaults, and Eve Skintones from InSIMadult for skin defaults. I also have all the rest of CuriousB's In Your Eyes eyes installed, and iCad's Fixed Wearing Diamonds skins and JessiDot's what nature gave me skins. All of those are geneticized so Townies can be spawned with them.

I forgot I was going to ask you about the Bodyshop Organization Kit because that sounds like something that could be useful. I tried to look it up, but maybe the site it came from is down. There's a mod too that randomly gives NPCs and townies facial hair and accessories, isn't there? I just thought of that when I noticed your paperboy in his cool shades.

I also like your idea of making your teens wait until they have been teens for awhile before they can woohoo. I usually age mine up after 8 days, but I hate when they try to woohoo when they have just reached their teen years. Randomizing the ages of your starting sims is also a good idea.

You have a nice bunch of NPCs so far. It looks like you are going to have a very attractive population in your neighborhood.

Em, the BSOK (which is Body Shape Organization Kit, I had it wrong earlier) came from a link at Wooden Simolean, which appears to be down. I think it's originally from Back Alley Sims, which is also gone. It's a system for using SimPE to  assign a custom icon to clothing (I've also used it with accessories, though that makes the tool tip not show). It's a color and two letters designating the category. It was designed for custom body shape clothing, but I'm not playing with any, so I picked some to use for other things. It makes all the clothing in that category appear together at the end of the custom clothing in each category. For example, I chose the icon for the Satyr body shape for winter holiday clothing because it's a red SR.

The note I have in the description says "If anyone wants to host this off site, miros1 for example since his site already has all kinds of sims tutorials and what not, please post here and let me know. While there are ADULT shapes, the project itself is not adult in nature, and is too useful to be hidden away. The more creators adopt this the more useful it will become.:"

So, I will package it up and send it to you in a message. If anyone else wants it, please let me know and I'll send it to you.

In case you haven't guessed, I'm a major organizing nerd.

Edited to add that I've sent it to you, but it doesn't show in my sent items, just in the outbox. Please let me know if you didn't get it and I'll try again.

When I searched for it, I ended up at a link to the wooden simoleon, but the page wouldn't load. I got your PM and I appreciate the description of what the mod does. I was wondering if it might be helpful for sorting articles of clothing for different classes in my kingdom neighborhood. I'll try it out and see. Thanks!