Week Five Part Three: Riedmayer Cove

Jill Smith*, 46 years old. Aspiration: Romance. LTW: Have 20 Simultaneous Lovers. Astrological sign: ?

Johnson Simpson*, 43 years old. Aspiration: Fortune. LTW: Become Chief of Staff. Astrological sign: ?

Agatha Riedmayer, 19 years old. Aspiration: Romance. LTW: Woohoo 20 Different Sims. Astrological sign: Sagittarius.

Annie Riedmayer, 18 years old. Aspiration: Popularity. LTW: Become Captain Hero. Astrological sign: Aquarius.

Gretchen Riedmayer, 16 years old. Aspiration: Fortune. LTW: Become Space Pirate. Astrological sign: Aries.

Jacqueline Riedmayer, 16 years old. Aspiration: Fortune. LTW: Become the Law. Astrological sign: Aquarius.

*Jill and Johnson both have the last name Riedmayer in-game because of having married/joined the Riedmayer brothers.

A very partial family tree. It took me a week just to make this much; the photos did not want to cooperate. The six people with actual portraits are the people pictured above, just older in some cases. (The most noticeable difference being Jill's white hair.)

The brothers' death dates were generated according to my birthday rules. Jacqueline's birth year (and therefore all the other girls' birth years) was moved up by 1 year for the sake of realism. (Nobody is actually born 2 years after her father's death. At least not without serious assisted reproduction technology.) Her birth month was the first randomly generated month that worked with the storyline. The day of the month was purely random.

Thanks to Johnson keeping track of her, Agatha managed to earn lots of scholarship money. She was very happy to leave for college; it was high time to have some fun instead of work work work all the time. It'd be really nice to finally snag a boy or twenty.

Annie left for college too. She hadn't chafed under her father's guidance nearly as much, but it would be nice to meet new friends.

Jill figured that Johnson had done a really good job with the first two girls and would do fine with the other two. So she spent a lot of time on outings. Johnson didn't seem to mind her not being around, and the stuff her various dates brought over as gifts sold for a pretty penny.

Jill had another reason for not wanting to be home at night--the ghosts were really active. At first she had thought that the ghosts were just something Jacqueline made up--Jacqueline did seem to have kind of a nervous temperament. But then everybody else had a ghost jump out at them at least once. Jill for one was a believer and no longer got mad when Jacqueline crawled in bed with her at night. It was nice to have company.

The younger girls were working hard at after-school jobs and didn't have much time for friends, much less boyfriends. Gretchen did meet a nice boy at work, though. His name was Jaden Kules and he said he lived just on the other side of town. Gretchen made sure to say goodbye not long after dark; she didn't want Jaden getting scared off by the ghosts.

Since she couldn't sleep very well, Gretchen started honing her robot-making skills at night, figuring it would come in handy later to be able to craft items to sell.

Portrait spam: Jill as an elder.

The first floor. Jill's old bedroom got turned into an office; otherwise not much has changed.

The second floor. Jill sleeps in the pink room now, along with Jacqueline and Gretchen.

The attic. Used to store the old green bed so Ghost Elwood doesn't get madder than he already is.

The roof, used for the telescope.

A panoramic view. The stairs from the house to the street are now finished and catching the schoolbus is a much easier thing. Meanwhile we've started on a greenhouse. (I used to not like starting building projects unless I could finish them, but then a bad chance card or two convinced me to keep the cash account low. A bad chance card will never reduce your account past 0, so if you lose $20,000 when you only have $5,000 in the bank it's a lot better than when you have $15,000 in the bank.)

Week Five Part Two: Dejackome Place

Melanie Tse, 43 years old. Aspiration: Knowledge. LTW: Become Game Designer. Astrological sign: Virgo.

Gavin Dejackome, 21 years old. Aspiration: Knowledge. LTW: Become Criminal Mastermind. Astrological sign: Cancer.

Theresa Dejackome, 21 years old. Aspiration: Romance. LTW: Become Celebrity Chef. Astrological sign: Libra.

Random side note: I have a sister named Teresa (no h), so I have a really hard time spelling Theresa's name right. I deal by pronouncing it "Thur-ee-sa" in my head.

Just the Sim tree this time; it was easier to add text to this than to add pictures to MyHeritage. 

Melanie is not actually related to the Dejackomes in any way; she's just a houseguest who's stayed for 15 years. 

 

After graduating Sim State, Gretchen had moved in with her boyfriend, Donte Whitfill, and Jeannie had moved in with her fiance, Timothy Seifert. So Melanie faced the prospect of an empty house when Gavin and Theresa left for Sim State themselves.

I listed all their scholarships in the last update for this house.

Melanie had a lot of free time once the twins were gone. She managed to achieve her lifetime dream of becoming a game designer. After that, she thought it would be nice to settle down and just study away her golden years. She did get a job as a substitute teacher just to have something to do that was not as demanding as game design. Plus, she found that she missed teaching stuff to kids.

TOC #1 and LTW for Melanie. New LTW: Max All Skills. Since she was only a few days from turning elder, I had her get a new job right away so she could get a second TOC.

In general, Melanie found that she missed the Dejackome kids more than she ever would have thought possible. Gretchen and Jeannie were married with families now, so it was highly unlikely they'd ever come back to their childhood home. Gavin and Theresa might, though. Melanie left their rooms exactly the way they'd left them just in case.

Meanwhile, the garden went unweeded and old magazines piled up on the lawn. Melanie remembered how she had moved here when she was a young woman and Rivka Dejackome an old woman, because Rivka couldn't manage by herself. Now Melanie was almost as old as Rivka had been and was starting to realize that she couldn't manage by herself either.

This was an exceptionally uneventful week; I think I played through it in about an hour and a half of real time. Rivka's ghost floats around from time to time, but she hasn't scared anybody, which is actually kind of sad in a house full of Knowledge Sims. (Melanie rolls the want to see Rivka's ghost once every few days.) Not to mention a few scarings would spice things up a bit.

Week Five Part One: Kules Korner

Or: I'm Not Sure If I Should Be Proud Of Myself Or Ashamed

Brittanie Kules, 58 years old. Aspiration: Romance. LTW: Have 20 Simultaneous Lovers. Astrological sign: Aries.

Ryan Cho, 46 years old. Aspiration: Knowledge. LTW: Become Prestidigitator. Astrological sign: Virgo.

Darius Kules, 40 years old. Aspiration: Fortune. LTW: Earn $100,000. Astrological sign: Aquarius.

Elise (Kalson) Kules, 40 years old. Aspiration: Popularity. LTW: Become Hall of Famer. Astrological sign: Leo.

Jaden Kules, 15 years old. Aspiration: Knowledge. LTW: Become Space Pirate. Astrological sign: Scorpio.

Alexis Kules, 8 years old. Astrological sign: Scorpio.

Silas Kules, 1 year old. 

And now for another new feature: Family trees!

Much credit goes to ciyrose for her awesome-looking family trees. I'd downloaded MyHeritage about a year ago for unrelated reasons but never knew it could make family trees look so cool.

I chose to do this instead of just screenshotting (is that a word?) the one in the game because the Sims family tree feature doesn't display half-sibling relationships very clearly.

The Kules family is fairly small and straightforward. So far they all fit into one big, chaotic household. Which leads nicely into my story...

Ryan succeeded in getting Jaden and Alexis into private school.

After that, he focused on building his skills so he could do well in his career.

Jaden and Alexis were good kids; they would come home, do their homework, and then play video games for a while. Rumor had it that Alexis usually won.

Brittanie took advantage of Ryan's preoccupation with the kids and his career to get to know that Corbin Todd fellow a little better. Corbin had Ryan's good looks (Brittanie is turned on by brown hair) but was much more fun. And younger.

Brittanie did not completely neglect her own career. She somehow managed to finagle herself a position as a professional party guest--a few times a week she'd show up, flirt a little, and come home with a tidy little bundle of cash. It was a pretty sweet deal.

TOC #1 and only for Brittanie. She didn't go to work for a couple of weeks after this promotion, since she still had lots of leftover maternity leave.

Meanwhile, the family upstairs was growing in more ways than one. Silas had become an active little boy and kept his parents constantly on the move.

 His antics didn't stop his parents from trying for another child; Elise became pregnant when Silas was three years old. Brittanie made sure to let them know that she was not going to be babysitting just because she had lots of free time.

She had other ways of using that up.

LTW #1 for Brittanie: 20 Simultaneous Loves. This was actually near the end of the week, after many many dream dates and many slap-fests.

Her new LTW: Woohoo 20 different Sims.

Elise gave birth to a little girl, Priscilla, on September 7 at 11:59 p.m. Everyone agreed that so far Priscilla looked just like her mother.

Eager to provide for his growing family, Darius worked hard on his show business career--which required staying fit, of course. Being a middle-aged man in show business was bad enough; being a middle-aged man with a spare tire was unthinkable. 

 Meanwhile, the kids were growing up. Alexis joined her brother Jaden in high school. Brittanie remembered that she had a daughter long enough to notice that Alexis was extremely pretty--no doubt Brittanie's genes at work. Then Brittanie promptly forgot again that Alexis existed.

Alexis Kules, daughter of Brittanie Kules and Ryan Cho

S3 skin, brown hair, gray eyes

Aspiration: Family

Lifetime want: Reach Golden Anniversary

(Notice a bit of a contrast between mother and daughter? I swear that was totally random; I couldn't have picked anything that awesome.)

Portrait spam: I made Alexis and Jaden pose together in their school uniforms just because I think they're both quite good-looking. It's actually Ryan's genes, though.

Silas started elementary school the same year. 

Those are Brittanie's genes. Not bad, but Silas doesn't win the Prettiest Kules Contest.

He and Alexis were good friends despite being 7 years apart in age. They enjoyed playing catch out in the yard--at least they seemed to enjoy it. It looked a little violent to everyone else.

It's kind of hilarious when two kids with 1 nice point apiece play catch. 

Elise bounced back quickly after Priscilla's birth and soon became a world-class ballet dancer. She still dreamed of being in the Hall of Fame, though.

TOC #1 for Elise; no LTW yet.

Priscilla soon grew into an active toddler, still bearing a striking resemblance to her mother. Her parents decided that two children were enough; Elise was getting older and wanted to use her remaining years of robust health to work on her career.

Life was good at Kules Korner in general. Darius introduced Silas to the wonders of video games...

Ryan introduced Alexis to the wonders of studying...

According to my notes he's maxing cooking here.

 Silas played nicely with his little sister...

 Alexis also played nicely with her little niece...

And Brittanie ignored the lot of them and kept right on accumulating lovers.

A townie named Ocean Livingston leaves a statue, one of the many many gifts Brittanie got this week.

Downstairs end of Week Four: Not much has changed.

Upstairs: Silas has a bed and an easel (which he loves). The hot tub was a gift from another of Brittanie's lovers.

(Could you imagine that IRL? "Hey, son, you want this hot tub? We've already got one downstairs." "Sure, Mom, but where did you get it?" "Um...free sample.")

The outside. Not much has changed here either.

Going through the pictures and my notes, I found it really hard to form any kind of cohesive narrative for this post. I spent most of my energy working towards Brittanie's Lifetime Want (she got 14 new lovers in 7 Sim days; that's the "I'm not sure if I should be proud of myself or ashamed" part. It was the first time I completed that LTW) and sort of left the others to their own devices. They managed to accomplish quite a bit for being neglected.

Prosperity Challenge Rules: Selling a business back to the community?

I was just reading over the Prosperity Challenge rules again and found this section:

"Businesses may not be sold to household members.  Businesses can be sold to family members that do not reside within the same household as the current business owner, to townies or to other playable sims."

 Here's what I did by accident that worries me:

In my last college round, I had two Romance Sims, Theresa and Agatha. Theresa bought Little 'n' Local and invited over her friends to make them lovers. (She hit the 30 Simultaneous Lovers impossible want in her third semester, so I rerolled her aspiration; now she's Fortune.) When she was done, the business was Level 8 (doing woohoo with customers tends to give them loyalty stars) so she was able to sell it "back to the community" for $45,000 (putting her well on the way to her second IW). That put the Greek House funds at about $60,000; I bought a couple of big statues and stuffed them in Theresa's inventory so she'd have her money to use after graduation. I then had Agatha buy Little 'n' Local from the community for $5600, using Greek House money. She never visited it because I got bored of playing Romance by then.

I'm not going to worry about penalty for selling it to a household member. They live in different households now that they have graduated, so I could have achieved basically the same effect by having Theresa sell the business to Agatha post-graduation. (Agatha might make an alumni donation to the Greek House to offset the money she spent buying the business.) I am also not going to worry about having Theresa's Fortune IW achieved that much sooner. She's probably going to make like half a million in the course of her lifetime; the fact that she makes it a little sooner is pretty irrelevant. (Her new LTW is "Become City Planner," so it's not even that she'll get permaplat sooner.) My question is what to do with the $39,000 of profit. Is this a legitimate loophole, or do I have to burn that money off buying clothes or something?

Also, is selling a business back to the community ever okay?

(Searching the Prosperity Yahoo group was fruitless in this regard, so I'm hoping my 3 readers can help me here.)

End of Week Four Stats

I have not been super diligent about tracking points, but I still thought it would be interesting to do a breakdown of how many points I have earned thus far. (Some are end-of-challenge percentage bonuses and thus are tentative.) This is based on the file called "Prosperity Tracking Sheet Expansions through Freetime" in the "Files" section of the Prosperity Yahoo group.

Kules Korner looks so lonely. And that won't be fixed until the end of Week Six, when Jaden and whoever he marries move into a new lot. (If a playable marries a townie, they move near to the playable's family. If two playables marry, they move near to the male playable's family.)

Number of residential lots: 11 (excluding Greek House; up from 4 originally)

Original houses inhabited by heir with same last name: 100% (3 are male; 1 is female and will likely have illegitimate children to carry on the name)

Marriages taking man's last name: 100% (including one between two men)

***

Number of controllable Sims: 48, 44 living (including 1 Greek House placeholder who will eventually marry into the game; up from 10 originally)

Kuleses by birth/adoption: 5 (2 female, 3 male), up from 2 founders
+ by name: 5

Dejackomes by birth/adoption: 4 living (3 female, 1 male) 1 deceased (female), up from 1 founder
+ by name: 4 living, 1 deceased

Riedmayers by birth/adoption: 20 living (14 female, 6 male), 2 deceased (both male), up from 6 founders
+ by name: 8 living (6 female, 2 male), 2 deceased

Whitfills by birth/adoption: 6 living (3 female, 3 male), 1 deceased (female), up from 1 founder
+ by name: 6 living, 1 deceased

Former NPCs/Townies/Maxis-made controllables: 10

Notice that this adds up to 49, not 48. That's because the youngest Whitfill, Lauren, is a Riedmayer on her mother's side and thus counts twice.

In terms of sheer numbers, the Riedmayers are definitely winning; of course, they were the largest family to begin with. (However, they are disproportionately female, putting their family name in danger.) The Whitfills win the multiplication award, having sextupled their currently-living population.

Impossible wants fulfilled: 1 (arguably; Malcolm Landgraab IV hit 100k shortly after I took control of him)

Sims with top influence at death: 0

Top of career: 2 (Malcolm Landgraab IV, Criminal Mastermind; Donte Whitfill, Business Tycoon.)

Lifetime Aspirations fulfilled: 1 (Malcolm Landgraab IV, Criminal Mastermind)


Liftetime Aspiration meter filled: 1 (Ironically, not Malcolm, but his stepdaughter, Francine Riedmayer)

***

Homes with 3 generations or more: 0 (I do have a house with a CAS adult who is now an elder; her son, a CAS teen who is now an adult; and his baby son, but that doesn't count since the older two are technically both Generation 1.)

Neighborhood net worth: $710,427 (excluding value of Greek House), up from about 85k. (I have whatever expansion pack gives slightly more money to larger CAS families.)

Number of platinum graves: 3 (of 4)

Ghosts free to roam: 100% 

***

Summa cum laude graduates: 15 (of 16)

Big Sims on Campus: 16 (100% of graduates)

Secret Society members: 17 (100%, including current Greek House placeholder and one Sim who was in the SS before he was asked to pledge to the Greek House)

Greek House members: 17 (100%; the Greek House was founded by the first controllable Sim to attend college)

***

Gold badge points: 0

Number of businesses passed through a household for 3 generations: 0

Number of households owning at least 15 businesses for 3 generations: 0

Number of Plant Sim generations: 0

Number of Sims collecting all vacation mementos: 0

Individual Sim hobby plaque points: I really was not keeping track of this; I think at the end of Week 4 there were a few Arts and Crafts plaques earned by accident by Sims who painted regularly.

Number of houses with all 10 hobby plaques: 0

Households in Gardening Club: 0% (so far)

I started using more of the Open for Business and Bon Voyage features in Week 5; stay tuned.

***

Sim shrink visits: 1 (Johnson Riedmayer, a Fortune Sim whose kids didn't get into private school on the first try)

Social bunny visits: 0

College drop outs: 0

Fired for poor work performance: 2 (Rivka Dejackome and Joan Riedmayer, both during Week 1)

Chance cards ignored: 0

Children taken by social worker: 0

ReNuYu Orb uses: 0

Reset Lifetime Aspiration benefits: 0

Employees laid off, employees who quit, open venue businesses: 0, 0, 0

***
Bonus for 10 or 20 Impossible Wants fulfilled: N/A (for now)

Bonus for CAS Elder acheiving LTW: N/A

Bonus for CAS Elder achieving IW: N/A

Bonus for 0 Sims (excluding CAS elders) dying without achieving LTW: 30

***

Total Score End of Week Four: 174, including ending bonuses but excluding hobby plaques, since I don't know how many of those there were.

Sims 2 Bon Voyage stuck in bed while on vacation

Another installment in the "posts with titles that are things I Google in desperation."

I've had Sims get stuck in beds in my base neighborhood before...a married couple wouldn't stop sleeping and get out of bed to take care of their crying twin babies. So I used moveobjects to delete the bed. They "jumped" and were fine. The babies got new diapers and the parents got a new bed (sadly, of lower quality than the one that glitched, since they were low on funds).

Anyone who doesn't already know this: Hold down ctrl and shift and hit c while playing Sims. This will open up a white strip on the top of your screen. You can type things into this strip. If you type "moveobjects on" (without quotation marks) and hit enter, you will be able to go into Buy or Build mode and move any object you want...objects being used by Sims, Sims themselves... When you're done, type ctrl + shift + c and "moveobjects off."

Anyway. You can't do that while your Sims are on vacation because the Buy and Build tabs are grayed out. So I was very unhappy when it happened to a different Sim couple staying at a hotel. Since I didn't want this particular Sim couple to die just yet, I did some frantic Googling. I found this thread as a result.

To recap, just in case that thread later gets lost into the sands of time: ctrl + shift + c to bring up the cheat window. Type "boolprop testingcheatsenabled true." (No quotes, spacing just like that.) Hold down shift and click on the Sim who is stuck. There will be lots of options, so you may have to hit "More" once or twice. When you find the "Force error" option, click it. You will get a dialog box that I didn't bother to read. Click the button at the bottom of the dialog box that says "Reset." Your Sim should "jump" out of bed and be fine and normal. I have no idea if the bed will ever be normal again. I don't plan on trying it, and as soon as this family goes home that hotel is getting some new furniture.

(To turn off boolprop, ctrl + shift + c and then "boolprop testingcheatsenabled false." There are rumors that leaving boolprop on too long can cause problems with your game.)