jenmaxon

After the ME3 debacle, I have been thinking about this project again and thinking of trying to make some progress with it only to find, damn and blast it, that the AnyGame Starter seems to have stopped working properly on my machine.  Some reinstalling and testing later, and I still can't get it to work.  In fact, it keeps showing me a BSOD which is a bit frightening.  Anyway, I'm going to try and get it to work and, if I can't, then if I go ahead and continue with the build, it will have to be in my standard game which is all EPs and all SPs.  I had been using AGS to build it with fewer EP requirements with the idea that this would make the whole thing that bit more accessible to other players.  Dammit.

More anon.

Very quick post to say this project is not in abeyance: I just haven't taken any pictures recently.  Work is continuing, if slowly, and I have nearly completed the first phase of building.  I'm thinking about characters and the finer points of the story at the moment.  Though the release of Mass Effect 3 draws ever closer (demo out in 2 weeks - YAY!), I have found, as I've thought about it and worked on it, that I have become increasingly interested in this project and would like to finish it.   So the deadline I set at the beginning (6th March 2012) may be a bit more elastic than  previously stated.  Still, it's going to be a busy year - I just got appointed to a permanent post too (only at 0.5 but still: work, work, work!).

Tonight is a repeat of a favourite recipe: Onion and Gruyere Tart with green salad.  Delicious!

Oh, final note: with the demise of Megaupload, the terrain I posted is no longer available and I'm going to have to find somewhere else to post the files once the time comes. 

I have found some more enthusiasm for this project in the last week or so and have been working on various lots.  I even made some progress on Christmas day despite the enforced socialising and excellent Christmas dinner that was had: Vichyssoise (though hot); cod with lemon and rosemary, roast potatoes, asparagus and lemon mayonnaise; pear tart with creme fraiche - the mother-in-law was impressed.   mmmm - yum.  I was pleased.  It makes me happy when a planned meal comes off.

Anyway, not too much has changed since the last post.  I've fiddled some more with the church and it's more to my liking and there are some graves now in the graveyard (no pics today though).  I've had to resort to custom content for this.  You just can't get an old churchyard atmosphere without CC.  I've yet to knock down the manor house and start again but I have an idea about what I want to do so I'll probably try that lot again soon.  I thought I might call the sims that live there Sinclair.  Funny name that: I've always liked that it was short for Saint Clair.

Most progress has been with the high street.  I'm still not sure this is a good idea but I've been fiddling with Mootilda's lot adjuster and added over-the-road space - that is 10 building squares on the other side of the road.  This lot is intended to be the main community lot in the village.   It's a big lot and contains a street of shops and a pub.  It's early days yet but here are some shots of work so far.  Again, it's really hard without CC to make a convincing locale.  Apart from the British street furniture (see the post box outside the post office), all that's there so far is Eaxis.  The pictures are looking down the left and right hand sides of the street and a shot from the back of the right-hand side so you can get an idea of layout.

Well, after not doing anything for a bit and letting myself get distracted with other stuff (doing a local charitable fair, work, seeing friends, playing through Mass Effect AGAIN - and I cooked some kickass Stollen yesterday for a friend who was coming round.  ooo boy, was that good.  Much better than the stuff you buy.  Terrific recipe to be found here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/dec/02/christmas-party-recipes-dan-lepard), I found some time today to do some work on this project.  Some progress has been made.  I worked on the church some more, the manor house and the ****** lot (not sayin', don't ask).

I'm trying here to keep download sizes to a minimum.   Which means building without CC - or at least a minumum of CC.  Gah!  I can barely remember the time before we had CC and building without it is HARD.  You can improvise just so much and accept just so many Maxis wallpapers as passable for the specific type of house you're building for but after a while, it all gets too much.  And there are just some jobs Eaxis stuff just can't do.  

I started with the church (well, actually, I started with the ****** lot but don't ask).  I decided that the Eaxis stone walls just won't do and I substituted a set of my own called the Horton Set.  I like the stone texture with these and I think St Genny's has improved as a result. 

Once I'd got the walls up (I've shrunk the dimensions of the church too), I did a bit inside and a bit in the churchyard but I think it's going to need some CC gravestones to get a proper graveyard feel and I think I'll use a nice little window I DL from Caravan Sims (I think it was) which is more church-towery than those EAxis ones.  I'll have to check out links for CC - another little job - but you can see the window in question in the last post.  This build your own complete neighbourhood for others to download is much more complicated and involved than you might think.


Another thing I realised was that if you are using AnyGameStarter and not using all the expansions, you lose some of the features.  I went inside the church and "OMG!  Where's the ceiling??"  I forget which EP that feature came with but it must have been after BV.  It made such a difference.  <sigh>  Anyway, I must tell myself that I'm doing this so people without some of the later EPs can download the neighbourhood - those people with the later EPs will get ceilings - and I mustn't worry about it ruining my pictures.  <mutter, mutter>



Once I'd done a bit on the church, I thought I'd try out some ideas for the manor house.  This is what resulted. 

It's too big I think.  Not exactly what I had in mind.  Hey ho - try again.

Second ever post about Polgannon - I'm being very slow.  I always find thinking of the ideas more entertaining and fun than the execution.  Such is life.  Incidentally, today was goulash - worked out much nicer than I anticipated.  I'm afraid the food thing is going to be a feature, especially if I'm posting on a Sunday.

I've been meaning to make another post for a week but I always forget that Sims projects take so much time to set up and then, of course, I get bored.   Some progress has been made though.

I have now got the terrain in the shape I want it and it will accept the lots I want to have.  That process is tedious in itself: load up Sim City 4; make needed alteration; save & exit; move sc4 files around; try out new version of terrain in TS2 (by creating a new test neighbourhood); test and make notes for alterations and problems; exit; load up Sim City 4; make needed alterations ... and so on and on.  Anyway, it's done.  I'm fairly happy with it.

So then I have moved on to working on some of the lots.  I'm using a pretty scatterbrained approach: putting together ideas, what I want on the lots and more or less where, what they should look like overall, what CC I'm going to need (I'm trying to keep that to a minimum).  I've worked on about five of the community lots and a residential lot though none are anywhere near finished.  A couple of pictures though. 

One is of a row of three residential lots (very similar builds to each other, not least because they started out as the same lot placed down three times).  These are cottages down by the harbour - at one time owned or rented by poor fisherfolk and increasingly becoming bijou holiday residences for the well-heeled.  The lot size is very small (10x10) though I might use Mootilda's Lot Expander to give them a back garden. 



The other is the beginning of the church and churchyard.  That's the war memorial in the foreground.  You get those all over England.



The church is going to be called St Genny's after a real church I visited while in Cornwall.  It's not a build that attempts to mimic that church but I am going to aim for the slightly wild atmosphere.  Here:

http://www.absolutelycornish.com/luxury-self-catering-holiday-accomodation-cornwall-devon/local-area/st-gennys-church/

Sadly, I am no longer able to get lots to build on slopes without flattening the terrain - I'd really like to have built the church on a slope like that.  The church will also be partly based on one I have already built: St Millicent's which is to be found in Little Carping, well actually on the Redbrick Campus - Little Carping is my main playing neighbourhood.  Here's a picture of St Milicent's so you can get some idea.   That's the kind of feel: old English, square-towered, sandstone-built church.  



Anyway, that's about as far as I got and then boredom set in, I'm afraid, and I was off doing something else.  And then I've also found a lot of work to do for the charity I'm involved with and work at college is picking up.  I have some nice students this time but they have a lot of ground to cover.  It's obviously going to be slow work on Polgannon.  Still, I shall have another go at finding some inspiration this week and see where we get to.

Autumn is definitely coming on here in England - it's a cold and wet day and I've just made a lovely vegetable soup (with lentils) for our lunch (yum).  What this means (ignoring the soup for the moment) is that I'm spending less time in the garden (though not less time playing Mass Effect) which means I finally have some time to devote to getting the Polgannon Project off the ground (although, on the other hand, term has started now and there are students (and marking) to consider).  Oh bugger - there's always something to do.

So what is it?

This is all Mootilda's fault.   Let's just get that out of the way to start with.   All this started with a conversation at mod the sims between me, Mootilda and a number of other people about making neighbourhoods for players to download.  Mootilda is a terrific modder/creator for the game and, as most will know, has created some excellent game tools.  She is also, apparently, quite keen to see people use them.  Anyway, the gist of the conversation was:

     Everyone: "It's a cool idea to create neighbourhoods for other players to download and play."
     Me and some others: "huh, interesting. I wonder if it would be possible to tell a proper story using the game as an engine."
     Everyone: "That's even cooler..." <nods all round>
     Me: "You know, that might be an interesting project to do ... I have some vague ideas that might work in a set up like that."
     Mootilda: "I can tell you how to do it."

See.  

So, we got that far and I said I'd think about it.  I went off on holiday to Cornwall.  The holiday was pretty naff (not Cornwall's fault) but Cornwall itself is an interesting place and, in this case, particularly it's geography and domestic architecture.  So I got to thinking about it and finally decided to have a go.

The first thing I'm going to say is that I'm not promising anything.  This is interesting to me and I'd like to give it a try.  I don't promise it will be great, I don't promise it will be wildly original, I don't promise it will work and I don't even promise I'll finish everything I set out to do.  I'm just going to give it a try because it's interesting to me.  Furthermore, there's going to be a time limit: if it's not finished by 6th March 2012, it won't ever be finished.  Why?  Because that's the release date of Mass Effect 3 and once that's out I will be permanently engaged killing Reapers.

My idea is pretty simple.  I'm going to try and write a murder mystery in a Cornish village (ahah, that's why Cornwall's geography and architecture were important) and I am going to try and use the game as the medium through which to tell the story.   

Simple?  

Yeah, well, maybe not.  To be fair, I've done quite a bit of thinking about Polgannon and what I'd like to do with it though the actual concrete, on the ground, in RL sim files in downloadedable form are yet to appear.  Having said that, I have worked out some things: I have a vague plot and ideas about how to enact it in the game environment, I have some clear notions about characters and, clearest of all, a location.   My idea is to proceed as follows:

Phase 1. Build a location.  The holiday in Cornwall has given me a vivid sense of locale (real Cornwellians are going to have to forgive my artistic licence here) and some nice ideas for lots.  So the first stage of the project will follow the natural course of building anything in TS2 and start with the setting.  

Polgannon is a small village located on the north coast of Cornwall.  I have now progressed far enough with the map to be able to show something for it.  And so here it is.  It's just the neighbourhood view with the intended lots in place.  As you can see Polgannon is located in a steep valley and, while the centre of the village is on top of the cliffs, you can travel down to the shore and onto the beach.



Phase 2. Create characters.  Once the location is underway, I will start to make some of the characters who live in Polgannon.  Some of them are already in my mind.  This will also include writing up backstories for each family and character.  More on this later.

Phase 3. Go over all lots and sims in Polgannon and weave in the neighbourhood story - my intention is to lay clues to the mystery in every sim's life, in their family arrangements, relationships, in all the occupied and community lots.  There will be a proper solution (if I can make it work) to the mystery of Polgannon though it will not necessarily be easy to find and you would need to visit all the sims in the village to find all the clues.

That's it for now - a brief overview only to get started.  There are no files yet to download except, if you really want it, you can have the terrain I've created for Polgannon.  You will NOT need this file if you want to eventually download the neighbourhood (should it ever materialise) but I attach a link here in case you'd like to have a look at it (or, god-forbid, actually use it).
Polgannon Terrain