Story Update: The End of the World Ch. 5 Barnacle Burgers

Well, took my sweet time didn't I? Here we are though finally.

The End of the World Ch. 5 Barnacle Burgers

This chapter was really hard to shoot pictures for since I wanted a diner full of people in the background, getting them all in place and forcing them to stay took a lot of time, which meant having to revert to a previous save four times just to get the daylight back, which in turn meant having to get the people back at the tables again since the game popped them out of their seats every damned reload!

But it was worth it, I think the diner really does look busy and the people like they're going about their daily lives, which is what you want from extras. The diner did take a while to build too, I'm pretty happy with it, a very stereotypical diner, just like you'd expect in a small town like Barnacle Bay.

Small Step Closer

OK, now the chapter is almost done, well the words are written, I only need to take the pictures, which I'll hopefully be able to finish this weekend. I acually usually have some or most pictures taken already when I write a chapter, but this time I ended up doing it the other way around. So we'll see if this means it'll be harder or easier to take pictures ingame.

Anyways, I'm really excited about getting a chapter written, it's been so long! Hopefully I'm not jinxing it today by posting this little positive note, you never know...

I'll leave you with a bit of a blooper from the last chapter. I had taken all pictures I needed and while going through them I started to feel that maybe Daniel, as a father, and Darcy, as a teenage girl with all of their hang ups, wouldn't be walking around in just their sleep wear.

And then there was this pic which convinced me completely that I needed to take new pictures. Doesn't it look like Darcy is completely mesmerized by Daniel's pecs?

Now, that's just wrong!

The Immunity Conspiracy

Serously, I think there's a conspiracy and my immune system is at the center of it. I'm sick. Again. I don't know what's going on with me, but I keep getting fevers, not a lot, just enough to make me tired and a little weak, this happened a couple of weeks ago and now again, I'm heading to the doctor tomorrow - I hope - but I doubt I'll get any clarity (I don't trust my local clinic since it was privatized). It is starting to really both kind of worry me and quite frankly piss me off though, it's not fair, I just want to keep doing my thing and not sit here like a worn out dish rag.

Anyways, so instead of an update I'm blogging a little; here are some pics of some Sims of mine.


These are some Sims I've been actually playing lately. The fairy is Blossom Bright, her juvenile lust for life (and, you know, other things) are what draws ancient vampire (and famous artist) Damon Darke to keep flirting with her when I'm not looking.

They live in Moonlight Falls, in a household that also consist of a witch named Miriam Morgane and a wherewolf named Vincent Volk, as well as Vincent's love interest Sierra Specter who is a human ghost hunter and her late sister Sienna.

I'm having a heck of a time trying to juggle this household without using cheats, I am not used to actually playing The Sims 3, I tend to just create houses that suit a certain set of characters and then I use mods to give said characters the traits and skills they ought to have according to where I imagine them in my stories, I never actually play the game.

Now these guys are a little more complicated to explain. They're actually characters from a story that never seem to take shape.

I just have all these characters and a half formed world for them. Anyway, they are something like bounty hunters in a futuristic, maybe post apocalypse world and they're sort of former lovers slash rivals... geesh, makes perfect sense.

Anyway I like them a lot, though I think I've tweaked their appearance since these pics were taken.

Writing

I just thought I'd let you know (all my two readers) that I am working on the next chapter of The End of the World. It's been awhile. I suppose I've suffered from writer's block. I've just not known how to get started and quite frankly been making a lot of excuses for myself to put it off.

Not to mention doing other stuff... stupid Skyrim and stupid SimCity and watching stupid Let's Play videos on YouTube - how dumb is that? How can it be so much fun watching someone else play a game instead of actually playing it?

So today I kicked myself in the posterior and said to myself "sit down and just write, it doesn't matter what comes out, just write something!" And I did and the chapter is started, so by my calculations there should be an update by next weekend. There, now I deadlined myself too... OMG the pressure!! Ah, I can't take the pressure!!

The Sims 4, huh?

The Sims 4 Announced

Yeah, like we didn't see that coming when they barfed out their whole TS3 lineup in one go?

I guess I have the same feeling I did when TS3 came out, it's a mix of "Well fuck, that's four years of building up my worlds wasted!" and "OMG! OMG!! OMG!!! Give me! Give me!! GIVE ME!!!"

Now, we'll obviously get weather and pets right away THIS time right? Ha! HA!! HAHA!!! God, I kill myself... Seriously I hate the fact that they will probably give us basically The Sims 3 vanilla game with better AI and graphics and then milk us for every penny for another four years.

I am looking forward to getting said better AI and graphics though. Awhile back EA announced that Dragon Age 3 will be using the Frostbite 3 engine (DICE, Battlefield 4) which looks just unbelievable!! Can you imagine playing a game like the Sims with those kind of graphics and lighting? I know that won't be happening exactly, but still, I'm a graphics nerd.

I do wish they'll incorporate weather though, really, I mean we waited how many years? For something so basic for realism? I will be deeply disappointed if we don't get weather for the base game in TS4... But would I still get it? What do you think? Duh!! But I will bitch about it.

Seasons

Finally, is there anything else you can say, really?

While I do think that weather and seasons should have been included from the start, I’m sure it’s better now than it might’ve been if they had added it from the start, so I’m not complaining. And it is gorgeous.

The effects are really quite realistic, the rain on ponds and the ocean as well as dripping from the roofs, the fog rolling in and the snow wrapping everything in fluffy white. The wind is pretty cool too, everything in the game feels more alive suddenly.

So, anyway, I have been playing Skyrim quite a bit, but the main reason I’m not updating The End of the World is that I’ve been obsessively remodeling Sunset Valley and giving its families makeovers and now with seasons I have to go over every single family again to fix their outer wear!

I do of course tend to do this in Barnacle Bay too, but I have actually lost my most recent copy of the town through some brain malfunction of my own and will have to go back and mess around with an older version until I’m happy.

Story Update: The End of the World Ch. 4 A Chance

Here we go, finally, after many, many months!

The End of the World: Ch 4 A Chance