So you might be wondering why Mercer was so bad, what happened to Cecilia and how did the Sororah sisters end up with one dad apiece. It all started in October 2004. I managed to get a whole lot of play in in Little Carping, before the release of University in March 2005 when, finally, I brought in some new characters so the following stories are about the early residents of Little Carping. The Goths, Vaughans and Phoebe Sororah all moved on quite considerably during that very brief time just after the game released and the arrival of the University expansion. It’s kind of strange writing up these stories more fully after so much time. The original events were much more fragmented of course, and I kind of melded the sims responses into a story for each family based on my interpretation of what they did. When I talk about Randolph’s response to Cecelia’s boredom and frustration below, for instance, he did actually have the gall to lecture her one evening. If I had been Cecelia I would have punched him but she just apologised at the time. Still, Cecelia’s frustration stuck at home looking after Gunther, as a knowledge sim, was very apparent at the time.
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The senior Goths quickly settled into a large square house (based on their house in TS1) on the most exclusive road (Buckingham Road) in Little Carping. They had almost no money left after the purchase of the house and grounds and much of the interior was not even furnished but they still just managed to buy it. Randolph though thought that it was important for them to live in a property commensurate with his social standing and Cecelia’s for that matter – Randolph had married in Cecelia, a scion of the Crumplebottom family of course.
The house has an impressive entry with two story windows and a double stairway to the upper level. To the right is a large dining room at the front and a kitchen behind. The kitchen had some furnishing (in blue!) but the dining room was unfurnished at first. To the left of the hallway is the lounge (or drawing room probably for the Goths), furnished in red and cream. This was also unfurnished at first. Behind that is Randolph’s study and then across the back of the ground floor is a music room (nothing in there at first, LOL) and the downstairs bathroom. Just in front of that is a set of stairs which lead to the cellars. Going upstairs, there is also a large landing space with five bedrooms to the sides. The master bedroom is at the front of the house to the right with an en-suite bathroom. There is another large bedroom on the left frontage. Three smaller bedrooms are at the back of the house. Only two rooms had beds at first – there was nothing else up there apart from bare wooden floors and one small wall light on the landing – they couldn’t even afford to decorate the walls. Randolph and Cecelia got depressed just going to bed.
I’ve always liked having sims earn absolutely everything they have – I don’t use money cheats all that often. In buying the plot of land and building the shell of the house, the Goths were practically broke. They had one toilet and a fridge, counter and sink downstairs and a bed and crib upstairs. There were several rooms where the windows had not been put in and the upstairs landing had no bannisters (so watch your step in the one light dark up there – sadly sims don’t fall off edges). So although Randolph had a place to live that was sufficiently impressive and reflective of his status as a representative of the Goth family, they were flat broke and he had to get to work pretty quickly.
Randolph naturally went to see his father
“I need a job, father”, he said, “or Cecelia and I won’t be able to manage.”
“You will need to learn the ropes my boy, if you’re to be any use to the firm” said his father
and so Randolph started at the very bottom in the mailroom at the family firm and started bringing home a small salary with which to keep the family afloat. For the first few years, they were living hand to mouth buying food and paying bills and occasionally buying some décor or furniture to open up a bit more of the house to use. Most evenings were spent studying for the skills and knowledge Randolph needed for work leaving little time for his wife and son. After that, he also had to spend quite a bit of time socialising and pressing flesh to develop the necessary friendship network in order to advance. And advance he did, as time passed, Randolph was a success at work, earning several promotions in rapid succession.
In the meantime, Cecelia stayed at home. She spent most of her time reading cookery books with the aim of not incinerating her entire family at dinner time. She did wonder why she had spent all that time at school studying hard and doing well when what she ended up with was caring for a small child all day, doing the housework and not a lot else. Little Carping offered her little in the way of distraction and entertainment. The only community spaces at that time were a grocery, a clothes shop and a – albeit nice – little park. “There only so much shopping and strolling I can do,” she complained to Randolph one evening, “and you can’t have an intelligent conversation with a small child.”
“I really think, as my wife, you need to remember what I am trying to do for our family,” Randolph responded pompously, “I need to come home to a quiet well-ordered house and to be able to get on with preparing for work.”
Cecelia then became pregnant again and barfed all over the place – apparently Randolph didn’t need to spend absolutely all his time pursuing knowledge and skills. The physical toll of the pregnancy, her constant hunger and tiredness, plus looking after Gunther’s needs, meant she hadn’t time to get round to everything and much of the housework got left undone. Randolph was often doing his studying surrounded by dirty pots from breakfast which meant the socialising he had to do was done outside the house since it was not a pleasant place to invite people over. Cecelia was miserable and found herself thinking back to when she was at school. “I was such a good student,” she thought, “I enjoyed it so much.”
Poor Gunther was stuck between a bored and increasingly fractious mother and a father who had no time to spend with him.
On the other hand, Randolph’s success meant more money coming into the house in wages and a series of bonus payments. This meant that completing the build by inserting windows and the occasional door and decorating and furnishing more spaces was possible. They furnished the lounge (in the aforementioned red and cream) and bought a TV so Cecelia had at least something to watch and pass the time. They bought an easel to stick in the study though that appealed more to Randolph than Cecelia. He needed the creativity points. They were even able to afford a new bed for Gunther when he aged up which was fortunate as Marianne arrived shortly after. She was a brown haired, grey-eyed baby like her mother.
Then, while partially furnished (they may have had the piano by then), they invited the Headmaster of the local public school (one Vince Walter*) over and Cecelia gave him Mac n Cheese for dinner (not burnt). Both Randolph and Cecelia schmoozed for all they were worth and Gunther showed Mr Walter the piano. Gunther got into the local public** school – probably more on the Goth name than how impressive the Goth residence was at the time I should imagine. The Mac n Cheese was probably good though – Cecelia is pretty clever and practical after all and she had several points in cooking by this point.
So Cecelia was bored and being lectured to by her ambitious distant husband with a small baby to look after, Randolph was out most of the time with work concerns and Gunther went off every morning in his natty school uniform. Randolph tried not to show disappointment in Gunther’s slow academic progress. Because he was a bit slow. Poor Gunther.
* This is the early days of the game remember, so I still had all the regular Pleasantview townies in the game. I got rid of them all later
** yeah, I know private school in America but I’m British so I’ll call it public school. Actual schools for the public are called state schools here.
This is my entry for Sim Pearls Wallpaper Makes the Room for June 2022. The prompt was to create two walls for a Vets Clinic - I made some nice blue tiles as a full wall and a half tiled wall with a pets hospital-themed paper at the top. Plain skirting and crown for easy cleaning because vets need to be hygienic. There's also an extra wall in there not entered in the contest with a plain plaster top to complete the set (not pictured). As is usual with my walls, the crown is set to a height to show properly under a ceiling - this makes the crown appear a bit high when viewed from above.
So my prompt was My Way or the Highway – a tricky one and I finally gave up on trying an imaginative metaphorical interpretation and went for a literal one instead. I decided to add something to my attempt to ‘British-ise my game’, in this case: British Road Signs. I have only made six here but made a new CC mesh for the sign itself. It’s alpha-channel controlled head means you can make different shaped signs for it. So we have British road signs for: Give Way (Yield, I think, for American drivers. This is probably the most common sign on British roads), Stop, Crossing, School, Traffic Lights and No Entry. There are more to come. They can be found in Misc>Misc and cost $70. 286 polys. They are visible from space (or the neighbourhood and other lots).
The new mesh was the ‘My Way’ part of the project as it's available on lots, the ‘Highway’ bit was that I also made a version of the mesh for a neighbourhood version of the signs but have not mapped this mesh yet. There was also supposed to be a new set of road tiles too but, as I said, this is going to have to be a work in progress. If you are interested in the set, keep an eye on the thread at tflc (my site) as I will update once I get stuff done.
The other file here is a recolour of Pixelhate's 1-tile full wall poster (mesh here) - I used the image below. I made this because of the prompt I was given. Kinda like it.
Posted by: maxon - 02-03-22, 07:51 PM - Forum: CC Fixins
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I was talking to Gummilutt over in the Sim Crafters Discord about these Sims 2 Studio Laundry Racks. There was a problem with one of the meshes calling the recolours properly which I think I have fixed. Working now.
I've uploaded all three racks here since Sims 2 Studio is long gone.
Posted by: maxon - 15-02-22, 04:26 PM - Forum: CC Fixins
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I really like Maylin's decorative street furniture but, in the original form, you couldn't see it from other lots or neighbourhood view - this version makes both the phone box and post box visible from space, or at least those two aforementioned locations.
02/022022 Update - Additionally, watching TeaAddict doing her Let's Play of Polgannon on Twitch, I decided to Simlish both the items. With the telephone box, it's obvious where the Simlish is though with the post box is more subtle and didn't really need doing but I did it anyway.
You can have only one set of the files since I have not changed the GUIDs - pick one. if you have the original files, you will need to delete them manually as I have added _Simlish to the filenames of the redone Similish textures.
Original Files Visible from Space, no texture changes
Phone Box on a lot (Polgannon's Golf Club)
Phone Box in neighbourhood view
Post Box - did you know it's actually a mailbox cover?
Can you see the Simlish bit?
This thread is for download of my neighbourhood Polgannon - Polgannon was originally made in 2015 as a complete murder mystery neighbourhood. There have been three new versions of the neighbourhood since then. The details are given below of the changes made in each edition. Please also find links to the files - the most up-to-date version of the neighbourhood is found now on Sims File Share (not on this site as the files are too large). Thanks to SFS for hosting.
PLEASE READ INSTRUCTIONS BELOW FOR DOWNLOAD AND INSTALLATION CAREFULLY - you don't have to read everything. There's a lot of information here but the 2nd and 4th posts are important
LINKs to Files
Polgannon - the neighbourhood file LINK
Polgannon Downloads - all the downloads needed to run the neighbourhood LINK
Polgannon - the neighbourhood file with the extra families in residence. I made some extra families for the empty lots (see other posts for description and how to download them separately). They were not included in the original upload. You can download this version of the neighbourhood folder with them in residence if you would like. They have NO effect on the story. LINK
Before We Start Please read the installation instructions carefully for this download. It is not simply a case of dumping everything in Downloads. See post 4.
Also please take note of the issues and warnings section so that you are aware of potential problems which can be easily avoided.
There's a lot more information about the sims and lots in later posts. Also, there's a list elsewhere in this forum of successful solvers.
Update 13 September 2015 - 2nd edition. Only the neighbourhood file is affected, custom content remains the same. Changes include: SimDNA files for some brown eyed sims corrected; LTW for Tamara corrected; Golf Club lot description added; James Penhaligan's name is now spelt correctly; some corrections to parts of the story including one story picture replaced; other minor adjustments.
Update 11th December 2015 - 3rd edition. Only the neighbourhood folder is affected, downloads remain the same. Fixes include: two statement pictures in Ruan's story updated to show correct information and appearance; reset the marriage status of all married couples to try and combat a problem reported by some players that couples had the 'propose marriage' option even when otherwise showing as married; some minor tinkering with physical evidence and a couple of furniture placement issues corrected.
Update 7th February 2022 - 4th edition. I have had another go at the brown eye issue. I am not sure what is causing this and the fix may not stick this time either. It affects some of the brown eyed sims. An extra gossip panel has been included for one of the family stories to help make the connection between Blaise's murder, the motive and the murderer clearer. Several small corrections to spelling and some small additional details added here and there. Removed extra stove in Ruan's kitchen. I have also updated two of the files in the Downloads folder - the post box and telephone kiosk to make them visible in neighbourhood view. Details over at the CC Fixin's section of this site HERE.
My policy for Polgannon My normal policy is to allow people to share what I make freely (though no pay sites). However, Polgannon is an exception to this rule. It is a large and complex piece of work and it took me a long time to write it. As such, I would prefer not to see Polgannnon shared on any other website than this one and also I will not give permission to convert Polgannon to other uses such as making it into sub-hood or gender-swapped versions. I just don't feel that would be appropriate for what it is. Please respect my preferences here.
Polgannon Documents and Further Information Attached here are some documents about Polgannon you might find useful and/or informative. They are 1. a word file called CrosscheckEvidence&Motives. This is a version of the word file I used to, well, cross-check everything. An empty version. I'm giving you basically the model of how I worked out the mystery - where the evidence is and what it tells you about the characters. There are some brief notes in the file as guidance on how to use it and I left in one example (Tamara Cardew) to show how it works. Tamara didn't kill Blaise (I give you that information for free) 2. the original Publisher version of the Lanscumbe Courier just in case you want to see it plus the jpg version. I had a pile of fun doing that 3. a hand-drawn map of Polgannon that you might find useful for guidance 4. zips of the pictures for Ruan's statements, Margaret's letters, Breoc's statement and the gossip pictures. These are the original pictures and are, therefore, a bigger size than the ones you can see in game (which are rather small and difficult to see clearly). I decided to post these as an optional download so that if you are really determined to solve the mystery you can have a good (and clearer) look at them 5. Picture of the Hoodchecker report for Polgannon just before it shipped
This is my entry for SimPearls Wallpaper Makes the Room January 2022. The prompt was to design two new walls for a bakery called Sweetie Pies. Well, what do you think of when you think of bakeries and sweets - I think of macarons.
I didn't quite like the first version I made of these walls so I reworked them. You can see the original swatch at the bottom of this post.
This is my entry for SimPearls' Wallpaper Makes The Room October 2021 - the theme was tropical. So I made these bright and cheerful walls featuring a red parrot (or two). The image came from one of dozens of advertisements that have been fired my way after I did my 'research' for something else earlier this year. It's like Google went, 'oh you're interested in that are you? Well, here's a pile of that sort of thing.' I know it does that but I have collected an enormous number of bright floral images. Maybe I'll use them...
The walls are based on the tile pattern in the first instance - I downloaded the original graphic file but fiddled with the image quite a bit. Then I did an inset painted pattern as the top half. As on other occasions, I created more walls than I was allowed to enter for the contest because I like to fiddle about and try things out. I include those here. The first two were entered into the contest and are called: Full (i.e. the full tiled wall) and Turquoise; the other two are labelled Beach Shells and Turtles. They can be found in Tiling and cost $8. This is the full swatch:
