Absence

Hello,


A short note.
I haven't worked on these pages or played Sims for the past couple of weeks due to connection problems. Now that things are back to normal, a new update can be expected soon.

Religion.

Religion was a very important part of life in medieval times, so of course the kingdom needs a church, and a priest. Since it's such a small kingdom, there's also a small church.

The church also holds the "education" rabbithole, and the mausoleum. The school is located at the back of the church. The mausoleum is in the church's basement, where there's also room for the royal and noble urns. The commoners will be buried in the cemetery surrounding the church.

This part of the church is obviously for aesthetic purposes only. There won't be any services. I've also decided against downloading a "religious" career, since the priest is going into the education career in stead. 

Lucas Edward, the priest, will live alone with his cat. I've disallowed a committed romantic relationship for him since he should be devoted to his religion and the education career in stead. I'm sure he'll fool around when I'm not looking though. 

He has a small apartment on the second floor of the church. 

I haven't been able to record more information, or take screenshots, of the nobility yet. I've been very busy "blacklisting" the majority of CAS-parts for this world. It's a lot of work now, but it'll save me time and frustration in the long run. This way I don't have to worry about the populations' clothing choices when they age up.

I'm using Master Controller to do this in the CAS screen.

My next post will have some pictures and information about the nobility, and you'll get a peak at how the peasantry lives.

And, I'm hoping to finish within the next few days so I can start playing this world, and get some real stories going!

Lady ElDi

The sorceress, the Wizards Tower.

Mary Garret

Mary Garret would have to be a special kind of person to have become a sorceress. She doesn't mind living alone, she has her cats and that means a lot to her. Her cats don't notice if she forgets what she's doing from one moment to the next. 

Growing up, Mary always knew she was "different" in some way. 

She grew up at a local farm house but when she reached a certain age, she decided that she would not get married to the neighbour's oldest son. In stead she took up an apprenticeship with an aged wizard in the next county. After a year, she moved back home and conjured up her own wizards tower. Because she also has a fondness for medicine, she decided to dedicate her basement to healing.

Traits: Adventurous, Absent-Minded, Vegetarian, Never Nude, Animal Lover.

The Wizards Tower

This lot has the "hospital" custom rabbit hole. It's in the basement. As with all "rabbit hole residential lots" the room that has the rabbit hole is accessed through an arch rather than a door. On the first floor of the wizards tower, are Mary's living quarters. Her bed, kitchen and eating area and bookcase are there. Her tub and chamberpot are in a separate room.

The tower is surrounded by plants.

The different levels in the tower hold different magical objects. The objects have all been placed in the tower because distance to the heavens plays a big part in any part of magic, so the more magical an object is and the more it asks of the wizards' concentration, the closer to the heavens it should be. Of course practicality also plays a part, which is why the cauldron, though very magical in origin, is best placed outside a safe distance from the house. It's also a good idea to place these magical objects in small rooms with few distractions.

In the tower we have:

A chemistry station on the bottom floor of the tower. 

On the next floor, the globe and the crystal ball. 

The floor above that has the spellbook.

Finally, the platform on top holds the telescope. Again, more for practical reasons.

Lady ElDi

Next post: The church and the priest, the nobility.

Technobabble.

I've been playing all kinds of "Sims" games for a long time now. It has always been fun. 
I loved The Sims 3 back in 2009. The idea, that you wouldn't be seeing the same faces throughout every generation of Sims (The Sims 2), unless you played several families and switching between them. 


But EA's idea of story progression just made me cry. In stead of getting married and starting a family, over half the population simply adopted babies (with the most horrible traits!).
Somehow I got wind of a mod that was out there that would change that and after looking into that I came across Nraas Industries and immediately fell in love with the concept. I don't know when it was, but I think I've been using Story Progression (SP) for at least 2 years now. I would seriously put The Sims 3 in the recycle bin if I was unable to use SP.


For this particular project, I'm using some specific SP settings that allow for the right circumstances. Normally I hardly touch the settings at all, apart from a few minor things. 
Medieval times call for medieval settings though, so I'm not allowing Sims to break up once they're committed to each other. Affairs, though I don't approve of that concept personally, are permitted and should prove interesting.
The marriage name is changed to "husband" since there was no feminism in that time period. 
The default base number of children setting is changed from 3 to 4, and the sim-days between getting married and being eligible for pregnancy is changed to 1. The change of an unexpected pregnancy is going to get higher, since there was no birth control back in those days. I think I'll set it to 35.
I'm disallowing careers for the queen and any of the noble women. 
I'm disallowing marriage for the priest, though I'm sure he will fool around. 
There will probably be a few minor things that I'll change as well. As a precaution really, because I intend to meddle with everyone.


I'm using more of Twallan's mods, I've been using Overwatch for a while now and it's really only there to fix stuck sims and abandoned cars. I have no roads though, and don't intend to use parking lots, so I doubt I'll see any cars, but they'll be there. I also have Errortrap installed, and Master Controller (MC).


MC has so far been used to assign careers and professions, and I'll be using it to "pollinate" some of the pets. Every family in this world will have at least one pet. Because, which self respecting noble doesn't have a horse, and which farmer doesn't have a cat (mouser) or a guard dog. Noble women are also known for having lapdogs or cats, and noble estates will also need a mouser and/or a guard dog. In medieval times, cats and dogs would've mated whenever they wanted to (without the use of the pet-house), so I'll use MC to simulate this random mating between pets. 


I'll be using Register to alter the amount of NPC's. I don't want any immigration and let's face it, a paper boy or girl just isn't very realistic for the time period, so I'm turning that off. Same with bartenders etc.
I do want additional strays, wild horses, deer and raccoons. 


I've been using the housecleaning for everyone mod for about a year now, just because it makes sense.


Other than these mods, I have store content and a whole lot of CC that I downloaded specifically for this project. You'll see them pop up on my screenshots from time to time. For example the gorgeous medieval bassinette that can be seen in the screenshot of the Royal bedroom in my previous post, and the crowns King Henry and Queen Eloise are wearing. My "Introduction" post has the links to the websites I got these CC's from.


It has been challenging to find a balance between the mods I want and game performance. As I mentioned in my introduction, I'm on a low end pc. I have an AMD Sempron 3400+ 2GHz, 1 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7600 GS 512 MB. It's lucky that I'm using Windows XP or I wouldn't have been able to play The Sims 3 at all. Which is why I had to downsize my game after I installed Showtime. The intermittent lagging and freezing was incredible after that, so I decided to uninstall all of my stuffpacks rather than say goodbye to my mods. And that seemed to have done the trick. It's challenging sometimes because it takes (a lot of) time to load and I still get lag occasionally. That's why I'm hoping a small world with a maximum of 15-20 families, few community lots and no roads will improve the games' performance. 
Other than that, I don't seem to get a lot of problems with my game, I'm even using medium quality settings in-game and I think my pc is handling it amazingly. 


Well that's it for today, happy simming!


Lady ElDi


My next entry: 
Introducing the sorceress
Inside the Wizards' tower

The Royal family.

Today I'm introducing you to the royal family and show you their castle.

King Henry Atwood.

If he didn't have royal blood, he probably wouldn't have much standing in simciety. He has no idea what it means to be well-mannered and he is a total goof. The people accept him because he is the rightful heir to Simila's throne, and because he means well. But he's lacking the qualities of a good monarch. 
He's a terrible diplomat. He tends to make the wrong jokes at the wrong moment and that has gotten him in trouble before. His clumsiness often puts him in awkward situations.
He loves being in the center of attention though and he always means well.
He doesn't have much eye for the finer things in life, having grown up at the castle, he takes it for granted. But being a good person, he's willing to share with those that have less.


Traits: Star Quality, Inappropriate, Good, Clumsy, Light Sleeper.

Queen Eloise Atwood.

Eloise is as charming and elegant as she is beautiful. She often saves her husbands' face and she well makes up for what Henry lacks. 

She loves animals, and it is because of her influence that Henry had the new stables built for their horses. Eloise enjoys spending time with her horses and dogs just as much as she does spending time with her family.

She is a very secure person. She's never been afraid to be in the position that she's in. And she fits in naturally, even though she isn't originally part of the nobility, but a mere merchants' daughter. King Henry insisted on marrying her after meeting her at her fathers' book store. After a while, Henry's family got used to the idea and they were allowed to get married.

Traits: Good, Animal lover, Artistic, Charismatic, Diva.

Castle at dusk.

Inside the royal bedroom.

 

Another view of the bedroom.

The kitchen.

Another view of the kitchen.

Royal diningroom.

The throne room.

Kings' workroom.

The tower on the right holds the Politics and Military career rabbit holes.

The castle has 5 spacey bedrooms, 3 fireplaces, 3 towers, family lounge room, throne room, royal dining room, workroom, upstairs lounge area.

The castle grounds consist of the entrance with privacy gate, stables on the right, outdoor sitting in the back, treehouse, trees, fountain, flowers and the rabbithole area.

There's room for more bedrooms, a library, whatever the king wishes. I'm also contemplating a prison basement for the rabbithole tower.

Lady ElDi

Introduction.

Introduction.

Hello!

With this blog I'd like to tell you about the lives of my Sims in their medieval setting. The idea was derived from the Kingdom challenge found at modthesims.info.

But being the perfectionist that I am, I had to make it perfect. So I went on a quest to find everything I needed to make exactly what I wanted. And I had to be picky too, I'm on a seriously low end pc so I can't use a whole lot of CC's in package format. 

The first thing on my mind was, that I absolutely did not want cars or bikes in my medieval world. To that end, I searched for a road-less world and found exactly what I was looking for, a gorgeous little island.

A modern looking work building or school is also not-done. So to that end I downloaded the custom rabbit hole rugs here.

Of course I want things to be as realistic as possible, so some careers will not be available in my medieval setting. And I'd prefer not to use modern looking objects and clothing, so I downloaded a range of CAS parts and objects that originally came from The Sims Medieval, and were adapted for The Sims 3 here. And with a little creativity and some imagination (because Sims need a sink, a fridge and a stove), I think I'm doing well so far.

I really only just got started, but the idea has formed in my mind. 

The political and military careers will be available from a rabbithole rug in a separate building on the same lot as the Royal castle. 

The Cathedral will be home to the mausoleum and the school, the Wizards tower will hold the hospital.

One of the farms will be home to the grocery store (farmers market) and one of my merchant sims will have the bookstore rabbithole at his house.

I'm contemplating a custom consignmentstore, for my artists to sell their paintings and make a living.

From time to time I intend to update this blog, introduce you to my Sims and let you know how they're doing. I also intend to show a lot of screenshots! 


Next post: Introducing the King and Queen, more screenshots of the castle and more about my Simming style.

Happy simming!


Lady ElDi