I'm not ready for the puppies! I installed Pets tonight. My computer crunched numbers forever and ever but FINALLY, I was in the game. I decided to experiment with Mr. Gieke (or Geike .) I'd read about the terrible dog pair who came with the game so I moved them in with Mr. Gieke. (He came with the game and I feel absolutely nothing for his woes.) Danny and Sarah weren't so bad to start with, but by day two they were sleeping on his bed, puddling on the floor (and rolling in it and licking it up,) barking at the visitors, and digging holes in the yard. Mr. Gieke wasn't sleeping much, wasn't eating much, and never had a chance to get a job. He was also extremely unhappy. And guess what? I can't find Merola's Multipainting ANYWHERE!! And lots of other stuff that's less important. He fed the dogs treats all day long to keep them from starving. Then, in the middle of the second night, Sarah had three puppies! That's it! I'm done! I exited to the neighborhood, and moved Gieke and dogs out of his house into the bin. The dogs had trashed his house anyway. :(
I started with one pet, and even that was a challenge playing with a Sim dog for the first time. Fortunately the first pet owners were retired professional party guests and rich.
I'll find another sucker family and try again with one pet. Mr. Gieke will wait safely in the sim bin until I have a little more experience.
I couldn't find Merola's Multipainting at first either...The other missing hacked objects were a nuisance, but I've become ADDICTED to Merola's Painitng! However, after playing the game, and then quitting, when I loaded the game up to play again, all the hacked objects were back in their usual places, and behaving normally. What a relief!
Well, I did notice that I had forgotten to enable custom content, and that gave me a few more of the downloads when I enabled them again. However, Merola's painting hasn't shown up yet. I'm not upset about anything that's disappeared because I'll just go get it again. No worries about clothes and makeup, and all the wall and floor recolors. They're OK. But Harcourt's castle! Tsk, tsk. The parapets disappeared. (Picture attached.) However, the lot was getting buggy so it's probably a good thing I had to delete all those unusual meshes. And the children are OK. I've also attached a picture of Errol's little girl. I want to grow all these kids up. I'm really glad that I held off on installing Pets until I'd finished my story, because some extremely useful hacks for storytelling aren't working now.
Update: The hacks are back Seems that even though I had enabled the custom content the second time I loaded the game, it was too late for it, at that point in the process, to load a lot of that stuff. I assume it needs to load it when you open the game, before you even get to the 'enable custom content screen.' Anyway, everything seems to be there, and working. By the way, here's a picture of the lander lift-off. It uses a whole lot of fuel to just get off the ground. But Cory and Andy are in orbit now. Trying for a baby. And I think they succeeded.
Awwww ... keep us posted. I gave Danny and Sarah to Morgan and Mallory, and Puck Summedream ... so I guess I get to play them twice. Though I haven't played PDL in a while. Too overwhelming. I'm enjoying my new town, Veronica, with my one family that I'm not going to let branch out ... But I digress. Here's how I handle dogs: First, start with one until you get the hang. A puppy is by far the easiest. I keep a close eye on its needs, and when bladder is at half I take the puppy outside. If you have foundation they can't go back into the house. Have your sim stand around (if you have Macrotastics just have them procrastinate) until the puppy goes potty and then praise it. Pick it up, cuddle it, and take it back inside. Repeat as needed. This also builds the relationship with the puppy, making him easier to train once he's an adult. Once it becomes a dog shoo it away from the furniture when it tries to destroy it, but don't scold. Make sure there are plenty of chew toys (bones) lying around, and as soon as poochie uses one, praise him. He'll get the idea. Porthos, who came with Cyd Roseland, my patriarch, was pretty easy to start with, if you'd like a practice dog. He's now an elder with grandpuppies. Having more than one dog automatically fulfills their social needs. But I give away all but one of the puppies, which also makes things easier. Gotta go, but hope this helps.
It helps very much. The difference between shoo and scold had not occurred to me. I made two pets (although I swore I wouldn't,) 1 cat and 1 dog and moved them in with canned sims named Larson (I'm pretty sure.) I made the pets nice and I made them both males in order to avoid any surprises. They're doing OK with them. Having more than one person helps. In the meantime, I am making the rounds with Errol's little girl and King Joe's two kids. I'd forgotten how much time it takes to raise children. I've decided to avoid age-related cheats for the kids, too, so we plod through the days. I'm still debating about the adults. I dread Errol and Kate getting old. I added some days to their lives. Picture of a Larson walking her cat and dog. Second picture is Simone Harcourt and Roana Waring. You can tell they're related. But brown eyes on the left (Joe's daughter,) blue on the right and a rounder face on the right. I can't wait to see them as teenagers. Sims genetics are so much fun.
I like dysfunctional families, so I usually make really independent, hyper-active, genius pets. My simself's cat (named Butterball) is an extremely grumpy white Persian. I added an orange splotch to his back because Frumpy is a Grilled Cheese sim and usually has the stuff all over her hands...and you know how she loves animals and will take any opportunity to stroke them. Anyway, he's the laziest, fattest cat I've ever seen. I had a lot of fun making him. Frumpy lets him run wild around the mansion. He's already ripped the couch to pieces, and I'm sure he'd be sleeping in Frumpy's bed if I didn't lock the door to keep out the zombie slave force I'm building out. He threw a hissy fit when he couldn't get through the door, so now he refuses to sleep in the gigantic, luxurious red pet bed I bought for him, preferring instead the cold tiled floor of the bathroom.
Your household sounds like a lot of fun, 123. I'm still new with the pet EP because I just installed it a couple of days ago (when I finished Andromeda Rose.) I plan to expand my horizons and make more interesting pets when I figure how not to kill them by accident. (I haven't killed any but I've come close. ) That's why I'm only getting pets for the people that came packaged by Maxis, like the Larsons and Mr. Geike. Wish I could figure out a story involving pets, but my mind is totally blank for pet plots. Robots were so easy. Sheesh.
I killed a bird. RIP Casey. You have to constantly feed them, didja know? And Olivia's bird Leonardo flew away. Oops. My vote for most disconcerting pet? The peregrine falcon. It acts just like a parrot! Seeing a falcon bounce up and down on its perch and squawk ... very disturbing. 123, your house sounds like a hoot and a half. I considered letting some of my pets run wild. It really depends on the owner. But what I like about having pets is my sims' houses and yards are finally starting to look like mine! Y'all know I'm not the world's best housekeeper, well, now, neither are the Roselands ...
LOL, that's so funny. (But messy or not, I'm betting your RL house is very cozy and friendly.) The Roseland's house reminds me of mine before my cat passed away. He had a bladder problem in his old age. I was amused while playing with Errol and Kate, growing up their daughter (I'm so impatient.) Anyhow, they have no pets. Then Errol suddenly wanted to go fill a hole in the yard. What's this? I thought. Then I saw the big hole in the corner of their yard. Strays! I've decided to see if Errol can befriend one. He seems to be worried about some stray named Max getting sprayed by a skunk. Errol needs a dog, a mixed-up mutt. I haven't even tried the birds, yet. Do the maids clean fish tanks? I haven't tried those yet, either.
I'm not sure about the maids, but the fish look really freaky on low-def. I thought, man are they blocky and then realized I hadn't reset my graphics preferences. I made Jack a mixed-up mutt named Rags. I think he and Errol were definitely separated at birth. With puppies that arrived before the baby, my household was rather busy, and so I wasn't able to keep as sharp an eye on little Henry. He ate dog food and splashed in pee puddles throughout his toddlerhood. I'm sure his mother blames herself for how he turned out, LOL. His sister and brother got more attention. Henry's now a lothario who's going through the boys (and girls) like tissue paper. He's a junior in college and already BMOC and halfway to his LTW of 20 woohoo. (Tip: public and private with the same sim counts as two.) He's also king of the makeovers ... now if I could only get the dormies to change their clothes. They look really good from the neck up, though. My sims: Henry in college. Major babe with a heart of ice. Lucy, his sister and polar opposite. "Baby" Sam on a date with his girlfriend. He's, unfortunately, a clone of his brother, but he's a knowledge sim. (How does that work? There was a girl in between who is completely different. Sigh.) Cyd is in crime. His wife is a cop. Yeah, that'll end well. Mom Willow, my "original sim," shows off her diaspora. (Get your mind out of the gutter. That's a gap between your front teeth.)
And, just to get back on track, I thought I'd share pictures of my sims' dogs. Porthos comes as a package deal with Cyd Roseland, my patriarch. (I have since remodeled the house.) Milady, Porthos's mate. Puppies! Two girls I gave away and Athos, who became my wonder dog. He reached the top of the service career and knows almost every command. He has his dad's ears and his mom's long tail. He's almost an elder dog now. Milady as an elder with her grandpuppy, Aramis. Kiki the beagle, Aramis's mommy. (As I may have mentioned, I'm going for an everything dog.) That's Henry as a teen. Dogs adore him.
You mean, pet genetics? Mixing the breeds? Keep us posted. I'd like to see how the generations change. Errol's daughter, Roana, wants a kitten or puppy. I'm thinking, I'm thinking. :boggled: And I wonder how a kitty mess around the house would affect the headmaster's visit. Kate has decided to change her look. She got tired of the red hair (which has been inherited by all her daughters) and dyed it black. Kate is really a very beautiful sim. Hard to believe she was a townie. Easy to believe that Errol is crazy about her (3 sparks.) She's talking to Errol in these two pictures, and made a face at him.
She is pretty. Was she a downtownie? I haven't dealt too much with them before, but now my sims are going to marry them, so I'm on the lookout for good additions to my gene pool, LOL. Here are a couple of dormies I gave makeovers to. Too bad I can't change their clothes, too!
Yes, Kate was a Downtownie named Katelyn Cox. She was a policewoman, which I thought was very funny. Errol, the ex-con, scoped the room and was attracted to her. He didn't date anyone else. She has a very sweet face. Here's a link to an early picture of her that I posted when I started I,Sim: http://forums.worldsims.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=1939&d=1135183529 The picture is from before I downloaded Helaene's default eyes, and Enayla's default dark skintone. (Which I didn't like at first, but it looks good on Kate.) And I just realized I have no idea about her zodiac sign, or LTW, or any of that personality stuff, because I only think of her and Errol in terms of the stories I wrote about them. Besides, some of that stuff can be changed with Merola's painting and the Orb thingy, anyway. LOL about Henry doing all those makeovers. He does an outstanding job. I wonder what fine, fine woman (or man) is going to settle him down.
So can I hijack my thread a little bit more? I'm having fun with the Waring and Harcourt families. Kate and Errol, you may recall, ended up living on an island with a nutty lady named Ola. Ola got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and Yikes! The grim reaper showed up. She was pretty annoyed, especially when he put that sharp thing through her head. Kate went to work before dawn so it was up to Errol and Roana to save the day. Ola's back, and all in one piece. Meanwhile, King Joe looks up from his reading and sees the ghost of his sworn enemy, the man he killed in that very castle. Joe has built a couple of more robots. Ironsides II was assigned the chore of entertaining the toddler prince. With no input from me the robot suddenly decided o change the boy's diapers. :shocked: I'd never seen this action before. ROTFL, the kid looked terrified.
What do you mean, hijack? You started it. You can post anything you like. I love that picture. What a scream! Poor kid. I never change toddler diapers. I'm pretty militant about potty training. I did have one little weirdo who wanted his diaper changed all the time, though. I never grew him up, possibly just as well ... Henry? Settle down? Bite your tongue. He's going to be the most loved/hated boutique owner ever ... his goal is to meet everyone in town and beautify everyone he meets. Not for their benefit, for his. He has to look at them. His other goal is to um, get to know everyone he's even slightly attracted to. He's up to 14 on the 20 woohoo want, and he just became a senior. Meanwhile, Lucy's met the man of her dreams, they were getting along great, and then this stupid cow ... argh. For some reason Lucy's mad at the cow and her boyfriend Griff. She got in a fight with the cow and beat him. Now she has to start all over with Griff. Griff wouldn't move into the dorm when she invited him to, before the cow attack. I think she needs to rent a house, which she wasn't going to do until Henry graduated. But now she can spend Sophomore year winning Griff back, and he can finish up college with Sam. That should work OK. Stupid cow. Here's a picture of Lucy and Griff. He's not as cute as the redheaded dude, but they have two sparks for each other and none of their turn-ons match. She likes muscular blondes and he likes stinky swimsuit girls. So I figure they're the real deal. And I like his face.
