The good news: it means that my new idea-generating system of listening to instrumental music that reminds me of what I'm trying to come up with stuff for actually works really well.
The bad news: KS needs another rebuild. However, I can probably save my lots this time, since I won't be making too many changes to what CC I'm taking in, and I can promise my still-unnamed Santee that it's not going to distract me from finishing my gift on time. :) The bulk of the rebuild will probably be a project for the new year.
The really bad news: this post is my 15th this year, which officially breaks the blog's pattern of matching the number of posts per year to the number of the year itself. Yes, I am OCD like that. But hey, I'm trying to be more regular with posting updates.
Anyway, I thought you might like to hear a couple of the things I have in store for Kulo Seeri...
Subhoods: The new new KS will have one of each type of vacation subhood. Each one will be used in a different way.
The "Tropical" vacation hood is going to be a small island off the coast of Kulo Seeri proper, with just one campground lot where I'll be sending groups of teens for the coming of age ritual. There won't be any locals here, just the teens who are going through the ritual. I'm planning to play the campground completely hands-off, hoping for some wacky shenanigans of the sort that would never happen with the elders watching.
The "Mountain" subhood will be a valley somewhere north of Kulo Seeri, where every four years in spring there will be a gathering of all the tribes in the region. Representatives of every village will come to trade, discuss problems and alliances and things, and maybe find love. Locals will be members of other tribes in the area. This will have the closest thing to "touristy" lots of all three destinations - games to show off at, markets, various exotic foods etc. Every time it gets to spring in KS, I'll select a few Sims from various households to travel there.
The "Far East" destination will represent the spirit world (which is how I'm explaining teleporting ninjas.. they're ghosts). Shamans will travel there whenever the situation in the world of the living demands it. There is a lot on the sacred mountain where they can go to commune with the ancestors, but, y'know, sometimes you just can't wait for the ancestors to come to you. Locals will be various types of spirits, demons and ancestors - for example, I might resurrect the occasional dead Sim and send him/her there as a local.
When the tribe gets big enough to split, a shopping district might come into play for the second Nuidya village, but that's a while off yet. University and downtown hoods just don't seem to fit, really.
Houses (and Apartments!): This upload at PBK inspired me to recolour those tower windows in the stacked stone wall textures I use (they're by iCad, but I can't find the link for them anywhere) and build some round huts. Here's a picture of a test one I made:
Yes, it's Pleasantview. Premades are excellent lab rats. :P
Some lots will be apartments with several small families, others will be residential with one multigenerational family, but most of them will have more than one of these little huts on. The entire family will share one room, with just a bundle of furs on the floor basically, which is something I've always wanted to do - just like this is the style of lot I've always wanted for Kulo Seeri. There will probably also be roommate households for those Sims who have no one else to bunk with (Hestrie and Daniel, I'm looking at you).
A new ROS system: Lists of specific events have never really worked for KS. Trying to roll "Event X" for "Sim Y" really only works if the events could apply to most of the hood, and in KS that's rarely the case, so everyone's left with only a handful they can actually do.
Enter: dice. But not just any old dice. (This isn't a Sims link. It is an online dice shop link. This is not an advertisement and I am not getting paid for it.) The little images on these dice are the key to more flexible ROS for me.
Each rotation, I'll roll 1d8-1 (that's gamer speak for "roll an eight-sided die and subtract one from the number rolled") for the number of ROS. Yes, that means that there will be some rotations with no ROS at all, and some rotations with seven. Because that's how things are in life. Sometimes nothing's really happening and other times you're buried under an avalanche of activity.
Anyway. 0-7 ROS. If the outcome is a number above zero, I'll randomly select that number of Sims aged child to elder. For each of those Sims I roll 1d4 story dice and link the images together in a way that fits whoever I'm rolling for. No more headaches when an elder female Sim rolls "unexpected pregnancy" or a single Sim gets a "break up" ROS, and I can go in a zillion different directions interpreting each one.
I know it sounds complicated, but trust me, it works for this Simmer. And has more dice. More dice are always good.
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And that's what I'm planning. That and sharing pics of the rebuild and the completed lots as I go along. Now it's time for VT to stop rambling on and go Do Stuff. See you again soon!
Oh, this sounds so cool. Hood building, creating a world is just so much fun, and yours is so specific and particular with lots of scope for fun things to develop. Simplicity is really fun, too which Kulo Seeri has in spades.
ReplyDeleteThe teen coming of age ritual vacation sounds great, as well as the diplomacy meetings. It was funny seeing the prehistoric type hut in Pleasantview.