time in a bottle, revisited

* Sorry, this is going to be unbelievably long and rambly! *

not really a prosperity blog, or anything like it, anymore...

It's been a long time since I wrote that post on time and aging, and a lot of things have changed in the almost-three years I've been writing this story. So if this opens a new era in the keeping of LH time, then it's something that actually happened quite a while ago. If you compare my rounds 2076/78 to rounds 2080 and especially 2082, I'm sure you'll see the huge difference ;)

I don't play/write my families in anything resembling equal turns. In fact, I rarely get the chance to really and truly "play" my families at all anymore. I'm fine with that, by the way. I have just as much fun using the game to tell my story as I do playing it for fun. And in the midst of posing, I do try to steal a couple minutes to just "play" them like the little pixel dollies they are. If I do manage to take any cues from gameplay anymore, it'll be found in these little 5-minute play sessions.

This story (and all of its story parts) has plenty of momentum, for the next two rounds, and into the spin-off even after the Lakeside Heights portion of the story is finished. So I thought we could talk about the way things started here, and what things have become. And I'll go ahead and finally say out loud that we're leaving that "prosperity blog" structure, which in honesty, we left quite a while ago.

elections 2083, results!

And the votes are in! We had an amazing turnout this election with 134 votes! Nice job everyone, and thank you for voting! :)

elections 2083!

December 6, 2083 - Election Day. Presented by Clarice Miller of the Lake County Courier.

Clarice Miller: We bring you this broadcast live from County Hall, in Lake City. Welcome, and I'm happy to bring you coverage of the 2083 Elections Press Conference.

trains coming out of my ears!

Welcome to the great train station and bus stop extravaganza! (Now with parking lots too!)

Okay, is that dramatic enough? Because I kind of went a little overboard here. Seriously, if I see another train in the next six months, I might go insane!

I'll go ahead and share these links at the start - Criquette's neighborhood deco building sets, and Sunni's deco cars - both of which were used extensively in this project.

And it all started with this, the LCMTA Rail Map.

build week #3: fun with the lot adjuster

Did anyone ever try this before?

This is my campus pub, a 3x1 lot, overlapping my new campus parking lot, which is a 5x4 lot. Both lots are fully functional where they stand, and don't conflict with the other.

build week #2: it's almost a medical center!

Just a little, tiny, sneak peak ;)

I'm super-excited about my medical center! In fact, even though I downloaded a big hornking hospital for my city, I might not even use it much in the end. Most of the scenes I tend to use for this story are more outpatient kind of situations - like a therapy session, or pregnancy checkup. Those wouldn't likely happen at a hospital at all, but would probably happen in a smaller suburban medical plaza like this! :)

build week #1: moving mountains

First, welcome to build week! Or weeks, I guess, since it ends up taking about a month, lol!

You can expect fluffy building posts, some storytelling discussion, and lots of picspam! If you're not interested in the building and remodeling stuff, and would like to skip ahead to the start of the next story season, go here: winter 2083/84: still hear you.

I have a list of the projects I intend to work on in the "coming soon..." box, though I don't expect I'll have enough time to finish all of them. I hope to at least make some progress on each of them. And I'll share pics as I go along.

My first project was learning to use the neighborhood terrain editing cheat. It's kind of an essential cheat to laying down rail track, so I dug into it. And I practiced by moving a mountain, lol!

Before...

And after! :)

family trees and photoshoots

*the family photoshoots are a work in progress*

The Brant/Harris Family:
(gen 0, 1, 2, 3, 4: includes Fortney, Bradshaw)

The Bradshaw/Riley Family:
(gen 1, 2, 3, 4: includes Gibson, Buchanan, and Kim)

The Nova/Phoenix Family:
(gen 1, 2, 3, 4: includes Collins, Hathe, and Day)

The Ramirez/Shaw Family:
(gen 1, 2, 3, 4:)

Lakeside Heights, street view

(a bus stop and depot in the Lakeside Heights city center.)

In honor of this week's craziness, not only Thanksgiving, but my hubby's birthday too, I'll offer you something quick and relatively painless (for me).

I took a couple of these shots when I was putting together my new marina, but then I found I couldn't stop, lol! The camera mods I'm using allow for some very interesting angles and viewpoints. Some of these shots you wouldn't get to see from any of the houses or community lots my Sims frequent. It's been a really fun project, all the in-between places you might see if you were a Sim, walking in Lakeside Heights, from one place to another :)

This also shows you the neighborhood in long-range shots that I can't normally show you because my computer is so old and fickle. I've got it so packed full I can barely take shots on Medium view without my graphics card crashing.

So...

Lakeside Heights:

The marina again. You might have seen this before, but I wanted to have it again in one of my sidebar posts. I took these pictures before I found the new boat recolors! Because yay boats! I might have to add a few more docks to the marina for more boats!!! :)

This is Lakeshore Road, with the Lakeshore Beach boardwalk along the left. On the right are the Deppiesse (Orion) and Riley-Kim families. Cabe Deppiesse's family is a little further down on the left.

These are the arches that mark the entryway to the city center. In the middle of the city is a really cool shopping mall that I built, that you guys never get to see because it's too big for my computer to handle, lol! Ah, well, rest assured, my Sims have a mall.

An overview of the city center. Lakeside Heights, even though it is quite suburban, does actually qualify for city-status because of its population.

Another bus stop, just outside the market square. I still need to add bus stops to Lake City and Bluewater Township. This is a bit of a work in progress. And after seeing Carla's hella cool airport, I think I might need one of those too! :)

These are the apartments where Jodie is currently living. The smallish office building on the right is Berjes's cosmetic surgery office. Next to that, you can see part of the open market square. Most of the buildings in Lakeside Heights I made myself, but the glassy building behind those apartments is the library, which I downloaded ages ago, by phazetex.

This is Brant Street, and the foundation of my most popular neighborhood in Lakeside Heights. On the left are the Thompson and Lind families, and on the right are the Jackson and Roseland families. Just out of sight of this picture are the Phoenix (Hayden), Nova-Day, Buchanan, and Centowski families.

Bluewater Township:

This is Main Street in Bluewater Township - I modeled this town after a lot of the charming little country towns in Michigan, where I grew up, with the one single Main Street strip, a bank, a market, and that's about it, lol!

Summer's Place is there on the left, and Charlotte and Leila's new pie shop at the far end. Chad's Gamer's Den is on the right.

This is the flip side view of Main Street, where you can see Charlotte and Leila's shop better.

I wish you could see the cars driving by from lot view. That's one of the things I look forward to in Sims 3, the feeling that the whole neighborhood is inhabited at once. I'd love to be able to look down Main Street and see people walking up and down, from shop to shop.

Custom neighborhood creation is quite obviously one of the "dealbreaker" things I'm waiting for with Sims 3 ;)

There is a big sprawling residential area in Bluewater Township, rather than any defined neighborhoods like my other towns have. Charlotte and Paul are here on the left, and across the street are the Leila and Matt, and their Watts Family Farm.

A long shot of the road where the McCullough family live, with the Hathe family at the far end. There are only four playable families living in Bluewater Township.

This is "the field" where the kids hang out sometimes. It looks much better from lot view. The church is across the street, and out of view to the right is the Watts Family Farm Market.

And here is the two-building complex that makes up Fort Bluewater. On the hill is an on-base residence, where Alon Hutchins will be living after they return. And below are the recruiting offices and other military resources.

Lake City:

Lake City is really hard to get pictures of, but I managed a couple before my graphics card crashed.

This cross-city shot of Lake City is a complete fluke, and might be the only one you'll ever see, lol! I can't usually point the camera across the city like this without my graphics card freezing up and crashing to hell (as you'll see below), so revel in it, enjoy it while you can. The area towards the bottom of the picture is mostly commercial, while the popular residential areas are toward the top - you can see all the plumbbobs ;)

Long view of Washington Avenue, from the west. (Named Washington Avenue, by the way, because all cities in the Great Lakes area, or maybe even everywhere in the US, have a Washington Avenue in their downtown, lol!)

This is the West Washington neighborhood, and the most popular residential area in Lake City. On the left is where Bella and Cameron live - on the right are the Phoenix (Jack), Nova (Patrick), and Miller families. That row extends around the corner as well, where Amelia lives. The tallest building on the right is the Loft Apartments, where Drew and Corbin are currently living, and the second tallest next to it is the Riley Estates Company building.

Also Washington Avenue, but from the east, on the LCU campus. On the left is the sports facility, the library, and Frosh Hall. On the right is the pub, and the Offices for Study Abroad.

This is a shot from my south end. I love my south end, even though I don't have many Sims bad off enough to live there. Maybe more after the next round of taxes, lol!

I don't know why I love it so much, with its smokestacks and cooling towers, and trashy alleys with busted cars on cinder blocks, it kind of reminds me of Detroit, lol!

Ah, home sweet home :)

*******

So anyway, I may edit this post in the future with any new developments on the "street view" level. I'm looking forward to adding bus stops and depots to Lake City, and an airport is looking likely in the future as well.

Oh, and by the way, Madison wants credit for all these Community Enrichment Projects when you all vote in the coming elections ;)

And photographic evidence that Lake City crashes my graphic card all to hell! Whenever I play Lake City, I can't linger on the neighborhood screen for very long before things start to freeze up. This degree of nonsense only happens when I try to point the camera across the city and move it around though (which I try not to do except for projects like this one), so it's not usually this bad. The grass will all just turn flat green and the buildings get all fuzzy.

(But the Harris and Shaw families can rest assured that their cars still look okay? lol!)

first, part 1

June 2083 - Charlie Roseland and Natalia Deppiesse are 13, Gabby Roseland is 4.

It's summer, finally. Charlie is just hanging out in front of his house, with his sister, doing what kids do on these long, sweaty days, which is waiting for something to happen. Nothing is happening here. He can't even score some free lemonade from his baby sister!

"That'll be a dollar ninety-five," Gabby says. "Just like everybody else."

spring/summer 2083: come undone

To shamelessly steal a fantastic idea from Lunar Fox, I'd like to start grouping and naming mini-segments of these rounds more prominently, like chapters of a book, or seasons of a TV show. I blame it on being a Virgo, that I'm so obsessed with naming and sorting and categorizing everything, lol! But really, it gives us structure and direction. And besides all that, it's just plain creative and fun :)

one day, when the world is rapt to attention...

August 2082 (mini-update)

One day, when the world is rapt to attention, Madison Riley delivers a public address. "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I want to thank you all for joining me today. Earlier this morning, world leaders made public the presence of a possible threat to our planet. We've known about this situation for some time now, and we've been monitoring it closely. I'd like to talk to you about how this will affect us on a local level."

Well, Madison has almost everyone's attention this morning. Clarice is supposed to be blogging the live news coverage, but instead she sees Blake in the back row and flashes him a flirty smile. She doesn't normally get to see her husband while they're working, so right now, she feels a little bit like a giddy teenager, passing by her high school sweetheart in the hallways.

Pay attention, Clarice, this is going to be important.

round 2082!

Welcome to round 2082! This round will last from August 2082 to July 2084.

happy mother's day!

I know there are a lot of mommies who read this blog, so in honor of Mother's Day...

how do you keep track of all those Sims??? (census 2082)

I'd like to do a regular census every round, maybe? This is census 2082, even though it's technically 2081 still in this blog, just barely ;)

Lake County Business Directory

*** This is currently a big fat work-in-progress! Just another database for the sidebar, and I thought you all might be interested to see what businesses my Sims own.

Rather than posting pictures of each business (because that would be a crazy job!), I'll just be linking to whatever picture I happen to already have from an update, even if that's only an interior shot of somebody working. I don't want this to become too massive. Business profiles and pictures will be updated as I make my way through the rounds ;) ***

2081, we don't need no education!

Hazel says, "Look, Mom, I grew boobs!"

Let's see who all grew up for this school year...

last year

This week, one year ago, it was October of 2074 in Lakeside Heights. Also around this time, three years ago, it was the year 2006, and Lakeside Heights was born. Now let that boggle your mind! ;)

One year has passed since I've been blogging Lakeside Heights. When we started, the Jackson twins had just turned twelve - Beau already had his eye set on taking over his father's arcade and Tyler had his eye set on Bella Bradshaw (and didn't they all...). Dallas Deppiesse went under the knife in the name of teenaged conformity (would Lucy still love him if he hadn't done it?). And Meadow Lind was jonesing for some grandbabies (now she has three!).

They've all come a long way, and so has this blog. I've learned to turn off my plumbbobs and headlines. I've learned how to screen-cap, and install lighting and camera mods, post bigger pictures and host them at photobucket. And I learned it all from reading your blogs, so thank you!

Happy Birthday to Lakeside Heights. Thank you for indulging me with my silly stories. I've had a lot of fun sharing them with you all :)

Lake City Metro Business Award

The Lake City Metro Business Award will be given every four years, and will be worth $50,000. Voters will decide the winner, and they may vote based on anything they wish, whether that be financial need, favorite Sim, or the merit of the business idea. Voting will begin in March of 2081, and last through August. The winner will be announced in September. The winner may spend the award any way they choose, as long as the money is invested in a qualifying business in Lake City or its surrounding suburbs.

Madison Riley has interviewed the four finalists...

header image gallery

This is just a little gallery of all my previous header images that I'll be adding to the sidebar. I managed to dig through my photobucket album and find even the very first ones. I think it's fun looking back through them, so I figured you guys might enjoy it too. It's almost like a history album!

I'm a dork, I know ;)