IllusoryThrall's Blog
:
March 2012
Hooray for Origin... NOT!
POSTED ON
03/07/12
So, I finally locate tracking information for my "preorder" from Origin - and it states that "estimated delivery date" is the 9th! ... How is that fair.... at this point, I'm starting to think I'll not be pre-ordering from Origin anymore without huge incentive offered if they can't even get the item here within a day of release. Here's hoping it'll actually show up today, but.. *sigh* It's not like I only ordered it in the last day or two, either... they had plenty of time to process the order, in my opinion. There are plenty of other places I could have pre-ordered a physical copy of the game and gotten a release-date delivery.. the least the actual publishing company could do is offer like services.
So.. enough ranting, I suppose. I came up with a project to occupy myself for the day(S) until it shows up.. I started up a new save file in Sunset Valley 2 (exchange download) - a blank town with lots of flat area for building - and am using it to test out the houses/lots/families I have downloaded that I've been procrastinating on testing. Will also allow me to weed out any icky CC that shows up and won't let me uninstall. Additionally, I'm going to do a build on all the commercial lots for a small rural-style town, and post to the exchange on the off chance anyone else can use them. They'll be mostly on the smallest lot possible for ease of placement in smaller town settings, and themed for a rural/farming community. So far I've done a military/city hall/police building and a Criminal building. The criminal building was great fun to put together, and I have to say it looks great. The load photo simply doesn't do justice to the chaos of the junky-looking abandoned-farm building "backyard". :) In a small rural community, I figure, the Criminal building would have to be VERY well disguised to have any long-lasting use. ;)
Anyway. I'm off to build and test. And try NOT to be annoyed. .. hehe.
24 hours in a day.. and somehow I don't even get one to play Sims!
POSTED ON
03/05/12
How is it that there are 24 hours in a day.. and somehow I don't even get one to play Sims! It doesn't quite seem fair. Between me and my hair-brained ideas I have to explore, family time, and insomnia/sleep catch-up.. I just never have time.
What little time I HAVE gotten to play, I haven't even gotten to play the game I really wanted to work on (my Nothing for Free challenge).. because this silly update posted, and I haven't wanted to install the mods to allow for the more than eight sims that are on that lot. I'm giving time for the patch testing to go into effect, and will probably be better off waiting until after it's ready for Showtime too.. because with any luck, I'll have that on March 6th.. *crossing fingers* .. I did pre-order it through Origin, but since this is the first time I've ordered anything thru them.. I wasn't even remotely sure how their shipping times work... So.. I have been busy working on achieves. The last town I got (and haven't gotten to play) was Barnacle Bay.. I was too busy checking out Lunar Lakes... so I picked a large family in Barnacle Bay and started working on achieves... of course.. then I ended up building and editing lots... *roll eyes* sometimes I wonder if I don't play the game more to build than play.. (I know for sure it was that way with Sims 1 and 2... For sims 1 most of the actual playtime I accrued was after the star pack, unleashed pack, and magic town pack. The Sims 1 Magic Town is still the thing I miss the MOST from Sims 1... as for Sims 2.. I spent a lot of time in the College Towns.. and building.. building.. building.)
On the hair-brained topics bit... I've had two Sim-related thoughts lately... sorta related. The first was building themed lots for the exchange based largely off of time periods from real life history and / or sets from the Sims Store. The second was to build some lots for the EA towns to match the town for the expansion pack's commercial lots they're missing... i.e. .. most towns are missing Ambitions lots, Pets lots (obviously) and Late Night lots. ... Which, of course brought me to the conclusion I need to study the commercial architecture in each town and try to match it... or at least make lists of what each town HAS and DOESNT have.... *chuckles* .. which evolved into a lengthy all-day project in Open Office / spreadsheets programs figuring out how to make a table to handle the date.. which.. somehow segued into building a "web" page with a full table of commercial lot types versus EA towns. I pulled as much data / pictures of venues and rabbit holes as I could off of the Sims Wiki page.. I'm almost done with the stuff I can find on the wiki.. probably another hour or two work (conservative estimate I'm sure).. then I'll have to go into the game and start taking my own pictures to fill in the gaps. Through this process... it occurred to me that this might be a piece of knowledge other people could use.... and sine it'll already be in web page format.. I'm hoping I could find a place to just quick upload it to.... I'm planning on setting up a page on wordpress' free blog site.. and I think they allow you to create pages as well.. so I'll see if it works.. post if you'd be interested in it. .. just for curiosity's sake.
Beyond that... It's March.. and my hometown yet again showed it's colors.. it's snowing... quite hard... and we've got at least a couple inches on the ground... *chuckles* My husky is happy!.. who knows how long it'll last once the sun comes back out. I swear, this happens every spring.. you'd think I'd be used to it by now! :) hehe... Happy simming all!
P.S. .. random rant.. I like the flexibility of the new social features from the patch.. but I HATE the lack of searching and filtering available for the wall. at the very least you should be able to search for posts people made directly to you or your posts.. and replies to things you posted or commented on. .. They need to re-check their facebook account and see how it works on there.. at this point, most people have WAY too many posts to be able to check them well... I don't have many friends (yet) ... and I still have trouble sorting through stuff.. eeks.. come on EA, fix it.. soon!!!!!! *BEG*
