Oh wow! You know, I have been reading about this mod for some time, but your description after downloading it makes me wonder if this is something worth looking into. I had the same reservations about MCCC way back and of course, I can't play without it now.
The most telling thing about a modder with a great mod is how quickly they update after a patch. Deaderpool and LittleMsSam have me totally spoiled by record updating their mods. Weerbusu, I think, UI Extension and more columns in CAS are other mods that he updates pretty fast.
I will have to check it out CK, thanks for the tip!
I am starting to play now and I feel these mods are helping to bring out my sim's personalities.
Game play feels a little awkward as I get used to the new systems, but I do feel more involved with what my sims are feeling.
It's been a while since I have seen a vampire attack.
These girls started off as teens and I do feel like this mods really makes teen play more interesting,
but I had to age them up because I couldn't deal with school, part time jobs, mood swings, and prepping them for their future careers.
I got Slice of Life and now I have another mod that I really like. I've been playing with it for a day or so and the only thing I find that is a downer is the sims' energy and hunger bars seem to drop too fast, faster than normal. I have found that giving the sims the traits seldom sleepy and hardly hungry seems to even out to slow those bars from dropping.
I sit and watch my sims and they seem to like the new interactions as they are using some of them autonamously.
In my house, dog hair sticks to everything but the dog.
My prep-school dorm has been a bottleneck in my TS4 simming.
I was excited about playing it, but I did not feel like figuring out where everything goes in the interior.
I had to figure out the skill rooms, study hall, dinning hall, and administration offices:
And the sleeping areas.
It just felt like work instead of fun, so I put TS4 aside for five months.
I took a look at it again this week and everything just fell together.
I still have the showers and administrator bedrooms to do, but I can do that after I move those two in.
The students will come later after my Headmaster and Head teacher(?) have settled into their careers a bit.
I look forward to getting my teens in here.
I hope EA creates that highschool pack. I am sure I will find some use for the game play.
That pack may even make Smuggsworth obsolete.
As for these two, they still have to work through Uni.
Janay had to drop out of Britechester because I want her to have a Distinguished degree.
She now has to go ahead to apply to Foxbury.
Welcome back! Awesome update! I am counting, there are 4 girls in your household...SOL has given us simmers the luxury of dealing with "cycles." I can't imagine what it would be like with 4 girls when I had a devil of a time with 2. This mod definitely has "reality" written all over it, lol.
Other than that, I took the module out that was the drunk mod. I wouldn't mind my sims getting a little tipsy after a couple of drinks but one drink and the sim is drunk is not something I want in my game. Lord, all my sims would be falling down drunk all the time and wouldn't get anything done. I've got one who wants to drink the Monte Vista Reserve first thing in the morning.
I am having a blast with this mod! My sim went to Narwhal Arms and after a few minutes, Marcus Flex and Katrina (insert married name here) woohooed in the closet. Sure enough, 3 days later Katrina gave birth.
In my house, dog hair sticks to everything but the dog.
Welcome back! Awesome update! I am counting, there are 4 girls in your household...SOL has given us simmers the luxury of dealing with "cycles." I can't imagine what it would be like with 4 girls when I had a devil of a time with 2. This mod definitely has "reality" written all over it, lol.
Other than that, I took the module out that was the drunk mod. I wouldn't mind my sims getting a little tipsy after a couple of drinks but one drink and the sim is drunk is not something I want in my game. Lord, all my sims would be falling down drunk all the time and wouldn't get anything done. I've got one who wants to drink the Monte Vista Reserve first thing in the morning.
I am having a blast with this mod! My sim went to Narwhal Arms and after a few minutes, Marcus Flex and Katrina (insert married name here) woohooed in the closet. Sure enough, 3 days later Katrina gave birth.
It's amazing what some of these mod makers are doing.
I've read that there is mod to make whims less annoying and more useful and there is a guy working on an open world mod.
It looked a bit clunky, but he is still in development.
Seems like this is the wrong platform for open world. Loading screens don't bother me any more,lol.
I would love, love to get a mod that makes whims actually part of the sim and not some lame reason that why they want to play the piano is because they are by a piano.
In my house, dog hair sticks to everything but the dog.
Getting Ambro' and Janay through University has been a tedious chore.
I had to send them off to Sulani over the weekend because I couldn't take the repetitive routine anymore.
This is why I prefer Sulani as a place my sims visit.
It's so relaxing, especially because I am not there all the time:
And finally...
We are done.
This took up my whole weekend.
They can finally take up residence at Smuggsworth Preparatory School.
It's starting to feel worth the effort now.
By the end of it all I was playing on triple speed and cheating their needs.
During play, I had disbanded the Renegades social club and evicted the neighbors in the apartment across they hall because they annoyed me.
Seeing them walk though here to their offices feels really good.
Ambrosius is the school administrator.
Janay is a professor by degree and career, but I just consider her in charge of faculty and students at the school.
I still have a little work to do on the school before the teens arrive.
These two will continue to level up their careers while I work on it. I also need to rotate between my other sims to prepare their kids.
This series stopped back on page 10, when we got Get Famous instead of University.
I was so sure Uni was next. I couldn't take my sims any further without University.
So I put Miss Peregrine and all my other households on hold while I played new packs with a new save.
We received Get Famous, Strangerville, Island Living, Moschino Stuff, and Realm of Magic before Discover University finally arrived.
And upon getting Discover University, I had to build and edit a host of lots I needed to support my game play, as well as sampling the game play for more ideas of how I wanted to play my sims. The creation of Smuggsworth Prep and the staff to run it was the final step before I could begin this series again.
It has been a while since Roger Died.
Olivia and Ann have moved on. I work on Olivia's character values and skills as I progressed them to where they needed to be before I rotated over to my next household.
Olivia and Melonie Bloom have become best friends.
Roger and Ann were working hard to buy a modern mansion in Brindleton Bay.
Roger wanted to earn the money buy treasure hunting in Silvadorada. Ann wanted to raise the money by starting a business.
She is now moving forward with that plan by opening this Fashion Boutique, using the treasure money they earned from their Silvadorada trips.
I've played this business before and really enjoyed it.
You are looking quite colorful there, Vlad.
Ann has her work cut of for her.
The big money is actually made from Ann's paintings.
This time around, I am combining the business with the Style Influencer career.
This allows Ann to have a career and work from the business at the same time. It really enriches owning this store.
In the old days before the reboot of my sims, Olivia owned this business and ran it alone.
The new story is she inherited it from her mom.
That dress on the mannequin is Olivia's iconic young adult outfit she will wear in the future.
I thought it fun to make it one of her mom's designs.
I've spent so much time advancing Ann's career so she can get past all these lower level tasks of interviewing sims and writing articles.
She is finally in the Stylist branch now.
I bought Tiny Living yesterday and found it perfect for the office and living space above the boutique.
This office is so much richer with all the new content since I last played it. Waiting until the Sims 4 has more content before playing all these sims is starting to pay off.
Just upgrading the bed, so it doesn't kill her mom.
They have a house, but sometimes sleep here when her mom is working late.
They needed a break from all that work though.
The weather wasn't cooperating however.
They weathered the weather.
They are so good at skating now.
This is the first time they have been ice skating since her dad died.
I really enjoyed my time with these two. Olivia's character value levels were where they needed to be and Ann reached her goal in her career.
It was time to move on.
I played Cairo Firenze's house to age him along and give his parents career advances and update their house.
His mom is a teacher and his dad is an athlete. The cheerleader and the jock is their imagined backstory.
They happened to overlap with Christmas, so I enjoyed that.
It didn't take long and I moved along.
And boy, did I have a surprise when I moved on to Miss Peregrine's house to check on all the kids.
NO!
OH NO!
I had been very careful to keep aging off for the other households while I played my other sims.
Somehow this household aged up anyway. And I know I had seen Hecate walking the neighborhood as a child a few days ago. It happened recently.
So much for my rotation plans.
I will continue with aging off and work with their character values, but it looks like Meadow will be heading to prep school sooner than I thought.
Rotation has its ups and downs, that is for sure. I just hate that when it happens. I use active household only aging on but I swear it doesn't work on some households. I've come back to find sims I put in Uni have ended session with a lower grade than when I left.
But you do rotations like I do, finish an event or something and move on to the next family in rotation, thinking everything is copacetic, lol.
I liked the update. My sister loves the retail too. She has a couple of families who have shops, restaurants, etc.
Love the pictures!
In my house, dog hair sticks to everything but the dog.
I have been playing my sims and have tons of pics, but I also took out some time to build a few houses.
I've recently bought Tiny Living Stuff since ladders are coming soon. I enjoyed building these homes, but they are still waiting for content from Eco Lifestyle. They are all based on shipping container module sizes.
Building Micro homes was a little tough, but I really like this small one.
Any extra activities involving big objects will have to be done outside.
This one qualifies as a small home.
There should be plenty of natural light inside.
There is an extra room for skill building activities, or that first child.
It may be a while before I can actually enjoy playing them.
They are for all my young sims after they graduate from Uni.
Wow, it may not look like much is going on, but I have been building and playing now that I have Eco Lifestyle.
I am spending time with the Goth Family and I have a ton of pictures.
Problem is, I don't have time for story telling and I want to get moving on playing my other sims.
Making it all worse is a guy on my job is most likely fired. ( I knew he was unstable and this would probably happen.)
So I will be back to working 12 hours a day with little time for "living" while making a living.
The worlds is nutso now, and it looks like we will be working 4 days a week instead of 5.
So perhaps I will get a few 3-day weekends.
That said, I will probably do an overview of what's been happening in my game.
It's been mostly the Goths. I moved them out of their old home to this one that I made a little more gothy.
I was following through on Cassandra Goths story line of getting Zane to turn her into a vampire because Bella would probably put a stake through the hearts of Lilith or Caleb if they were to turn her into a vampire.
No hideous vampire form for Cassandra, but she does want to be unrecognizable.
She is creature of the night now and her bat form power makes it easy for her to get in and out of the house.
I absolutely believed this when I saw the initial leak and speculations.
I think it's a bad idea, but it's a bad idea that my sims can use, so I will be buying it.
Once again EA is providing content for my cosplaying teen sims.
I will be playing Batuu as the ultimate geek vacation destination where they can live out a Westworld like immersive experience in the Star Wars Universe.
Hi CK! I made a post on some thread about doubting if I would buy it as I did not want Star Wars in Glimmerbrooke. Weeell, then I started thinking about how to incorporate this pack into some of my families. It would work great in the astronauts career, as a destination and hideout while my Interplantary Raider lounges until opportunity knocks. Also, great for the scientist career...now they can go to Sixam and Batuu.
Initially I hated it, lol. It was only until I watched the trailer that I became intrigued. Star Wars and Star Trek, huge fan here so I figured it wouldn't be a total loss. Plus I love the way they made the bar, reminds me of the movies.
Keep us updated please, with pictures.
In my house, dog hair sticks to everything but the dog.
Hi CK! I made a post on some thread about doubting if I would buy it as I did not want Star Wars in Glimmerbrooke. Weeell, then I started thinking about how to incorporate this pack into some of my families. It would work great in the astronauts career, as a destination and hideout while my Interplantary Raider lounges until opportunity knocks. Also, great for the scientist career...now they can go to Sixam and Batuu.
Initially I hated it, lol. It was only until I watched the trailer that I became intrigued. Star Wars and Star Trek, huge fan here so I figured it wouldn't be a total loss. Plus I love the way they made the bar, reminds me of the movies.
Keep us updated please, with pictures.
I am still not clear on how EA is treating this.
Is it a theme park, or is it supposed to be a real place to our sims?
I will be treating it as a theme park, so it fits more with everyday life of my sims.
I just finished reverting my game to an old save before Eco Lifestyle made my game unplayable.
I went in and disabled NPC NAP voting and set all my neighborhoods to NAPs that I can live with.
I probably won't play until the game is patched for Journey to Batuu
I believe it is a destination world, like ROM and Sixaam. There is supposed to be facilities that sims can use while there, but there are no rentals or anything like that.
I have started clearing out Strangerville as that is going to be my main site for my smugglers homebase. Small house, large and expensive spaceship with all the bells and whistles.
In my house, dog hair sticks to everything but the dog.
I am spending today getting my sims ready for a journey to Batuu.
My game has been in the planning and progressing stages for years. I was mainly waiting for University before I allowed my many sims in rotation to age up.
This is my version of Meadow Thayer.
She is currently living in an orphanage and is about to join a group of other teens from various household in my new prep school.
She is joined by Zane, another teen from the orphanage.
The others are already here:
My prep school allows me to have a group of unrelated teens under one household.
They will prepare for University here and it's a convenient way for them to be shipped off to Uni as a group. I will be experimenting with rotating between schools with this building too. Plus it should be a fun way to have them interact and form friendships.
It's time for a meet and greet.
Some of them have never met each other.
I am adding Yuki Behr and Cassandra Goth because I have been intending to play them for quite a while.
And this inappropriately dressed woman is the school's counselor, Janay Hopson.
That party outfit is from her Uni party days. She's a recent grad'. I'll change that outfit.
This is the school administrator, Ambrosius Wood.
The counselor and the administrator attended Uni and have degrees for their professions.
They both have the ability to work from this building, which I think is really cool.
I swear keeping sims together with someone not walking off is like herding cats.
And we seem to have a party school here!
They're whipping out drinks.
It took me a moment to realize that it's new years eve.
What a way to start.
Fine by me. Party on!
Everyone was hungry by this time.
Only three of this group will go to Batuu.
I have no idea what to expect as far as how this will work, and I don't want to know in advance.
They came up to the Foxbury themed student lounge for the New Year's countdown.
You missed it, Yuki.
I will start them working on Uni degree related skills the next day.
I hope they get to cosplay and attend a Geekcon before Journey to Batuu arrives.
I have been playing Star Wars: Journey to Batuu since it launched and I am finally posting my sims Journey.
This must be the most hated pack in all of The Sims 4.
It also happens to be perfect for my sims.
Some of my past sims 4 pack explorations was with test sims, but this time I am playing my main sims.
I have been holding off playing my main sims for a while, waiting for certain packs and features to arrive.
I have everything I need now to finally get everything fully underway.
My sims got a GeekCon notice about an hour before JTB was available for download.
It was nice that I got to try out their hobby with old content before the new Star Wars content arrived.
I believe I will have them take off every Tuesday from school and have them ready to go in case a GeekCon event drops.
Melonie as Boba Fett.
Olivia as Princess Leia.
Not my sims.
It was a nice little outing.
Yuki Behr won this computer...
...AND A TRIP TO GALAXY'S EDGE!
Hey, that's the Falcon back there.
While I was getting my sims new outfits, Olivia ran off on her own.
I found her here eating some space popcorn.
She's a teen now. The game aged her up while I was playing other sims.
So..., where are all the locals?
It does look good.
If the phones work, they are in an amusement park.
If the phone don't work, they are at an outpost in a galaxy far, far away.
After some early game play, I decided that I really did not like how the world was arranged.
You get one interactive lot and several rabbit holes. I particularly did not like that your base camp was a rabbit hole.
So I set about fixing that. I took time out to edit the Cantina.
I thought a speeder should be outside.
I placed a restroom rabbit-hole back here, out of sight because it doesn't really fit the look of Batuu. I put it here in case I did not feel like sending my sim beneath the Cantina.
It does not work.
And what is beneath the Cantina, you ask?
Lodgings.
I was really getting tired of running all the way to the rabbit hole accommodations and the food rabbit holes.
Plus it was killing immersion.
I can add these cameras to their inventory. They haven't been tested, so I don't know if everything will be okay when they return home.
They do not work.
I love this.
The door lock was a bit funky. It's best to lock it for everyone and then select your sims one at a time for entry permission.
Like University.
Batuu Living.
I chose these beds because they seemed travel oriented with storage lockers.
They're more military though.
Once you learn the food recipes from Ronto Roasters and Docking Bay 7, you can cook it for yourself here.
The refrigerator will not let you store left overs unfortunately.
Ronto Wraps.
I have just finished it, but have yet to play it.
I do feel it will make a huge quality of life improvement for Batuu.
My main disappointments is the spy device in the corner, from Strangerville.
I was hoping I could plant spy bugs on imperial officers and blackmail them for credits.
Also, the cameras I placed on the lot cannot be used. It looks like JTB will be fussy about content from other packs.
I tried to fix up a lodging downstairs but for some reason this action introduced some problems, like massive lagging.
I really don't mind as I'm sending mostly spellcasters and vamps over, like my twins spellcaster and vampire. (It's a long story, lol.) The only downside I see so far is having no transportation to get around the different districts. I can't imagine trying to send a normal sim who have no powers over transport. I mean, just getting to the Resistance camp would take a few minutes. I love it that my spellcaster can vammoose before stormtroopers can id her.
I was so immersed in the game last night I forgot to eat. This is honestly the first pack since WA that I have totally gotten into playing it. What can I say, I love my RPGs.
In my house, dog hair sticks to everything but the dog.
Before getting into the more detail missions, I had my sims scavenging and hacking storage crates.
Melonie found a light saber. Only one saber though, so no duels yet.
Here was a fun bit or roleplaying that I did not report while my sims were in Batuu.
Melonie was on a mission that require some splicing.
There were storm-troopers patrolling about and First Order offices roaming about.
I set up Olivia as a lookout.
You need to turn off freewill to do this.
There was an officer coming in from the opposite direction.
I sent Olivia to intercept.
Yuki was out scavenging anything she could find that might be useful.
"So tell me, have you ever seen Kylo Ren without his helmet?"
While they were talking, the storm trooper was on his way back.
Yuki!
Get in there!
"Oh come on! Is he hot or not? I need to know!"
I think I like this more than having a droid.
Well, I don't have one yet, so I can't be sure.
"Who are you calling scum?"
"And this goes in here..."
Heh. Strategic game play.
Score!
Uh... problem.
That was the wrong control panel.
So, again... from the top...
Olivia lost a lot of credits to Hondo while playing Sabaac.
"I know he's cheating."
I thought I'd give her an edge by boosting her confidence.
She started out losing credits and I was getting worried that she would lose most of it.
But then...
Sabaac!
Oh yeah!
She got her money back plus extra.
Noooo.
Their vacation time is up. I was enjoying it here so much, I forgot about vacation time running out.
They have to go back, or their grades will plummet.
Oh well, I can start working on prep-school game play now.
Smuggsworth Preparatory School.
Missing Batuu, but this is probably a good thing.
Doing homework and building skills is raising my need for adventure.
But it is also keeping me from burning through JTB game play and breaking up the repetition
I will have them focus on joining the First Order for my next round. My six sims will be divided into two groups: Team Light and Team Dark.
I can have Team Dark be a little more prepared this time.
It's currently Monday for them, so I have the whole week of prepping sims for Uni and Batuu.
I will send Team Light back to Batuu for the weekend and then Team Dark will go starting Monday. And then Team Light will go back again Saturday and Sunday.
The school counselor and the school administrator have been really selling this inventive game play.
They are actually educators and administrators. They went to Uni for it. They have their degrees. They have their careers. They can work from the building, or work off-screen. They minored in parenting skills, so they can counsel the students. This is so nice.
Cassandra Goth, Meadow Thayer, and Zane Delacroix: Team Dark.
I'll see what difference being a little more prepared does for progression.
The school does not encourage gambling, but since this is more like play money than Simoleons, they look the other way.
I see you are having your immersive moments as well. I have only sent 2 of my spellcasters over so far...Cicely, second generation rebel is part of the Resistance and dabbles in Scoundrel. (Let's just say she was a handful as a child. ) And then there's Alec, villainous Scoundrel who loves zapping First Order officers. Unfortunately spells fizzle out when magic hits that storm troopers uniform, dang.
Can't wait for more updates. I must say, you really like taking a lot on your plate, so to speak. Wow. I had Alec quit his job just to travel back and forth to Batuu. I don't have many who will go, depending on their personality. I have a lovely lady in Sulani who will never travel to Batuu as she's into crafting and gardening only.
In the mean time, happy simming!
In my house, dog hair sticks to everything but the dog.
This should be shocking.
I just uninstalled The Sims 4.
I was playing Uni, in my wonderful dorm, with my wonderful sims, and I was feeling so fed up with the game.
I put it out of its, and mine, misery.
Wow, that's drastic (not that you can't install it again whenever) - you seemed to be having fun with JtB? Uni can be a bit of a grind though so I understand the fed-up-ness totally. Hope you manage to find a game that you can enjoy, or maybe go back to TS3?
Comments
I am starting to play now and I feel these mods are helping to bring out my sim's personalities.
Game play feels a little awkward as I get used to the new systems, but I do feel more involved with what my sims are feeling.
It's been a while since I have seen a vampire attack.
These girls started off as teens and I do feel like this mods really makes teen play more interesting,
but I had to age them up because I couldn't deal with school, part time jobs, mood swings, and prepping them for their future careers.
I sit and watch my sims and they seem to like the new interactions as they are using some of them autonamously.
My prep-school dorm has been a bottleneck in my TS4 simming.
I was excited about playing it, but I did not feel like figuring out where everything goes in the interior.
I had to figure out the skill rooms, study hall, dinning hall, and administration offices:
And the sleeping areas.
It just felt like work instead of fun, so I put TS4 aside for five months.
I took a look at it again this week and everything just fell together.
I still have the showers and administrator bedrooms to do, but I can do that after I move those two in.
The students will come later after my Headmaster and Head teacher(?) have settled into their careers a bit.
I look forward to getting my teens in here.
I hope EA creates that highschool pack. I am sure I will find some use for the game play.
That pack may even make Smuggsworth obsolete.
As for these two, they still have to work through Uni.
Janay had to drop out of Britechester because I want her to have a Distinguished degree.
She now has to go ahead to apply to Foxbury.
Other than that, I took the module out that was the drunk mod. I wouldn't mind my sims getting a little tipsy after a couple of drinks but one drink and the sim is drunk is not something I want in my game. Lord, all my sims would be falling down drunk all the time and wouldn't get anything done. I've got one who wants to drink the Monte Vista Reserve first thing in the morning.
I am having a blast with this mod! My sim went to Narwhal Arms and after a few minutes, Marcus Flex and Katrina (insert married name here) woohooed in the closet.
It's amazing what some of these mod makers are doing.
I've read that there is mod to make whims less annoying and more useful and there is a guy working on an open world mod.
It looked a bit clunky, but he is still in development.
I would love, love to get a mod that makes whims actually part of the sim and not some lame reason that why they want to play the piano is because they are by a piano.
Getting Ambro' and Janay through University has been a tedious chore.
I had to send them off to Sulani over the weekend because I couldn't take the repetitive routine anymore.
This is why I prefer Sulani as a place my sims visit.
It's so relaxing, especially because I am not there all the time:
And finally...
We are done.
This took up my whole weekend.
They can finally take up residence at Smuggsworth Preparatory School.
It's starting to feel worth the effort now.
By the end of it all I was playing on triple speed and cheating their needs.
During play, I had disbanded the Renegades social club and evicted the neighbors in the apartment across they hall because they annoyed me.
Seeing them walk though here to their offices feels really good.
Ambrosius is the school administrator.
Janay is a professor by degree and career, but I just consider her in charge of faculty and students at the school.
I still have a little work to do on the school before the teens arrive.
These two will continue to level up their careers while I work on it. I also need to rotate between my other sims to prepare their kids.
Love the update and pics! Your preparatory academy looks great!
This series stopped back on page 10, when we got Get Famous instead of University.
I was so sure Uni was next. I couldn't take my sims any further without University.
So I put Miss Peregrine and all my other households on hold while I played new packs with a new save.
We received Get Famous, Strangerville, Island Living, Moschino Stuff, and Realm of Magic before Discover University finally arrived.
And upon getting Discover University, I had to build and edit a host of lots I needed to support my game play, as well as sampling the game play for more ideas of how I wanted to play my sims. The creation of Smuggsworth Prep and the staff to run it was the final step before I could begin this series again.
So to get back where we left out, the last episode was A New Year.
It ended sadly with the death of Olivia Bank's father, Roger Banks.
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/16744258/#Comment_16744258
It has been a while since Roger Died.
Olivia and Ann have moved on. I work on Olivia's character values and skills as I progressed them to where they needed to be before I rotated over to my next household.
Olivia and Melonie Bloom have become best friends.
Roger and Ann were working hard to buy a modern mansion in Brindleton Bay.
Roger wanted to earn the money buy treasure hunting in Silvadorada. Ann wanted to raise the money by starting a business.
She is now moving forward with that plan by opening this Fashion Boutique, using the treasure money they earned from their Silvadorada trips.
I've played this business before and really enjoyed it.
You are looking quite colorful there, Vlad.
Ann has her work cut of for her.
The big money is actually made from Ann's paintings.
This time around, I am combining the business with the Style Influencer career.
This allows Ann to have a career and work from the business at the same time. It really enriches owning this store.
In the old days before the reboot of my sims, Olivia owned this business and ran it alone.
The new story is she inherited it from her mom.
That dress on the mannequin is Olivia's iconic young adult outfit she will wear in the future.
I thought it fun to make it one of her mom's designs.
I've spent so much time advancing Ann's career so she can get past all these lower level tasks of interviewing sims and writing articles.
She is finally in the Stylist branch now.
I bought Tiny Living yesterday and found it perfect for the office and living space above the boutique.
This office is so much richer with all the new content since I last played it. Waiting until the Sims 4 has more content before playing all these sims is starting to pay off.
Just upgrading the bed, so it doesn't kill her mom.
They have a house, but sometimes sleep here when her mom is working late.
They needed a break from all that work though.
The weather wasn't cooperating however.
They weathered the weather.
They are so good at skating now.
This is the first time they have been ice skating since her dad died.
I really enjoyed my time with these two. Olivia's character value levels were where they needed to be and Ann reached her goal in her career.
It was time to move on.
I played Cairo Firenze's house to age him along and give his parents career advances and update their house.
His mom is a teacher and his dad is an athlete. The cheerleader and the jock is their imagined backstory.
They happened to overlap with Christmas, so I enjoyed that.
It didn't take long and I moved along.
And boy, did I have a surprise when I moved on to Miss Peregrine's house to check on all the kids.
NO!
OH NO!
I had been very careful to keep aging off for the other households while I played my other sims.
Somehow this household aged up anyway. And I know I had seen Hecate walking the neighborhood as a child a few days ago. It happened recently.
So much for my rotation plans.
I will continue with aging off and work with their character values, but it looks like Meadow will be heading to prep school sooner than I thought.
But you do rotations like I do, finish an event or something and move on to the next family in rotation, thinking everything is copacetic, lol.
I liked the update. My sister loves the retail too. She has a couple of families who have shops, restaurants, etc.
Love the pictures!
I have been playing my sims and have tons of pics, but I also took out some time to build a few houses.
I've recently bought Tiny Living Stuff since ladders are coming soon. I enjoyed building these homes, but they are still waiting for content from Eco Lifestyle. They are all based on shipping container module sizes.
Building Micro homes was a little tough, but I really like this small one.
Any extra activities involving big objects will have to be done outside.
This one qualifies as a small home.
There should be plenty of natural light inside.
There is an extra room for skill building activities, or that first child.
It may be a while before I can actually enjoy playing them.
They are for all my young sims after they graduate from Uni.
Wow, it may not look like much is going on, but I have been building and playing now that I have Eco Lifestyle.
I am spending time with the Goth Family and I have a ton of pictures.
Problem is, I don't have time for story telling and I want to get moving on playing my other sims.
Making it all worse is a guy on my job is most likely fired. ( I knew he was unstable and this would probably happen.)
So I will be back to working 12 hours a day with little time for "living" while making a living.
The worlds is nutso now, and it looks like we will be working 4 days a week instead of 5.
So perhaps I will get a few 3-day weekends.
That said, I will probably do an overview of what's been happening in my game.
It's been mostly the Goths. I moved them out of their old home to this one that I made a little more gothy.
I was following through on Cassandra Goths story line of getting Zane to turn her into a vampire because Bella would probably put a stake through the hearts of Lilith or Caleb if they were to turn her into a vampire.
No hideous vampire form for Cassandra, but she does want to be unrecognizable.
She is creature of the night now and her bat form power makes it easy for her to get in and out of the house.
Lots of natural light for this one.
Nice detail on the wind turbine.
Now for the upgraded version.
Pile on more shipping containers.
The exterior is... meh.
But the interior is kind of homey.
It's set up for Fizzy juice making.
I absolutely believed this when I saw the initial leak and speculations.
I think it's a bad idea, but it's a bad idea that my sims can use, so I will be buying it.
Once again EA is providing content for my cosplaying teen sims.
I will be playing Batuu as the ultimate geek vacation destination where they can live out a Westworld like immersive experience in the Star Wars Universe.
Initially I hated it, lol. It was only until I watched the trailer that I became intrigued. Star Wars and Star Trek, huge fan here so I figured it wouldn't be a total loss. Plus I love the way they made the bar, reminds me of the movies.
Keep us updated please, with pictures.
I am still not clear on how EA is treating this.
Is it a theme park, or is it supposed to be a real place to our sims?
I will be treating it as a theme park, so it fits more with everyday life of my sims.
I just finished reverting my game to an old save before Eco Lifestyle made my game unplayable.
I went in and disabled NPC NAP voting and set all my neighborhoods to NAPs that I can live with.
I probably won't play until the game is patched for Journey to Batuu
I have started clearing out Strangerville as that is going to be my main site for my smugglers homebase. Small house, large and expensive spaceship with all the bells and whistles.
I am spending today getting my sims ready for a journey to Batuu.
My game has been in the planning and progressing stages for years. I was mainly waiting for University before I allowed my many sims in rotation to age up.
This is my version of Meadow Thayer.
She is currently living in an orphanage and is about to join a group of other teens from various household in my new prep school.
She is joined by Zane, another teen from the orphanage.
The others are already here:
My prep school allows me to have a group of unrelated teens under one household.
They will prepare for University here and it's a convenient way for them to be shipped off to Uni as a group. I will be experimenting with rotating between schools with this building too. Plus it should be a fun way to have them interact and form friendships.
It's time for a meet and greet.
Some of them have never met each other.
I am adding Yuki Behr and Cassandra Goth because I have been intending to play them for quite a while.
And this inappropriately dressed woman is the school's counselor, Janay Hopson.
This is the school administrator, Ambrosius Wood.
The counselor and the administrator attended Uni and have degrees for their professions.
They both have the ability to work from this building, which I think is really cool.
I swear keeping sims together with someone not walking off is like herding cats.
And we seem to have a party school here!
They're whipping out drinks.
It took me a moment to realize that it's new years eve.
What a way to start.
Fine by me. Party on!
Everyone was hungry by this time.
Only three of this group will go to Batuu.
I have no idea what to expect as far as how this will work, and I don't want to know in advance.
They came up to the Foxbury themed student lounge for the New Year's countdown.
You missed it, Yuki.
I will start them working on Uni degree related skills the next day.
I hope they get to cosplay and attend a Geekcon before Journey to Batuu arrives.
I have been playing Star Wars: Journey to Batuu since it launched and I am finally posting my sims Journey.
This must be the most hated pack in all of The Sims 4.
It also happens to be perfect for my sims.
Some of my past sims 4 pack explorations was with test sims, but this time I am playing my main sims.
I have been holding off playing my main sims for a while, waiting for certain packs and features to arrive.
I have everything I need now to finally get everything fully underway.
My sims got a GeekCon notice about an hour before JTB was available for download.
It was nice that I got to try out their hobby with old content before the new Star Wars content arrived.
I believe I will have them take off every Tuesday from school and have them ready to go in case a GeekCon event drops.
Melonie as Boba Fett.
Olivia as Princess Leia.
Not my sims.
It was a nice little outing.
Yuki Behr won this computer...
...AND A TRIP TO GALAXY'S EDGE!
Hey, that's the Falcon back there.
While I was getting my sims new outfits, Olivia ran off on her own.
I found her here eating some space popcorn.
She's a teen now. The game aged her up while I was playing other sims.
So..., where are all the locals?
It does look good.
If the phones work, they are in an amusement park.
If the phone don't work, they are at an outpost in a galaxy far, far away.
After some early game play, I decided that I really did not like how the world was arranged.
You get one interactive lot and several rabbit holes. I particularly did not like that your base camp was a rabbit hole.
So I set about fixing that. I took time out to edit the Cantina.
I thought a speeder should be outside.
I placed a restroom rabbit-hole back here, out of sight because it doesn't really fit the look of Batuu.
I put it here in case I did not feel like sending my sim beneath the Cantina.
It does not work.
And what is beneath the Cantina, you ask?
Lodgings.
I was really getting tired of running all the way to the rabbit hole accommodations and the food rabbit holes.
Plus it was killing immersion.
I can add these cameras to their inventory.
They haven't been tested, so I don't know if everything will be okay when they return home.
They do not work.
I love this.
The door lock was a bit funky. It's best to lock it for everyone and then select your sims one at a time for entry permission.
Like University.
Batuu Living.
I chose these beds because they seemed travel oriented with storage lockers.
They're more military though.
Once you learn the food recipes from Ronto Roasters and Docking Bay 7, you can cook it for yourself here.
The refrigerator will not let you store left overs unfortunately.
Ronto Wraps.
I have just finished it, but have yet to play it.
I do feel it will make a huge quality of life improvement for Batuu.
My main disappointments is the spy device in the corner, from Strangerville.
I was hoping I could plant spy bugs on imperial officers and blackmail them for credits.
Also, the cameras I placed on the lot cannot be used. It looks like JTB will be fussy about content from other packs.
I tried to fix up a lodging downstairs but for some reason this action introduced some problems, like massive lagging.
I really don't mind as I'm sending mostly spellcasters and vamps over, like my twins spellcaster and vampire. (It's a long story, lol.) The only downside I see so far is having no transportation to get around the different districts. I can't imagine trying to send a normal sim who have no powers over transport. I mean, just getting to the Resistance camp would take a few minutes. I love it that my spellcaster can vammoose before stormtroopers can id her.
I was so immersed in the game last night I forgot to eat.
Before getting into the more detail missions, I had my sims scavenging and hacking storage crates.
Melonie found a light saber. Only one saber though, so no duels yet.
Here was a fun bit or roleplaying that I did not report while my sims were in Batuu.
Melonie was on a mission that require some splicing.
There were storm-troopers patrolling about and First Order offices roaming about.
I set up Olivia as a lookout.
You need to turn off freewill to do this.
There was an officer coming in from the opposite direction.
I sent Olivia to intercept.
Yuki was out scavenging anything she could find that might be useful.
"So tell me, have you ever seen Kylo Ren without his helmet?"
While they were talking, the storm trooper was on his way back.
Yuki!
Get in there!
"Oh come on! Is he hot or not? I need to know!"
I think I like this more than having a droid.
Well, I don't have one yet, so I can't be sure.
"Who are you calling scum?"
"And this goes in here..."
Heh. Strategic game play.
Score!
Uh... problem.
That was the wrong control panel.
So, again... from the top...
Olivia lost a lot of credits to Hondo while playing Sabaac.
"I know he's cheating."
I thought I'd give her an edge by boosting her confidence.
She started out losing credits and I was getting worried that she would lose most of it.
But then...
Sabaac!
Oh yeah!
She got her money back plus extra.
Noooo.
Their vacation time is up. I was enjoying it here so much, I forgot about vacation time running out.
They have to go back, or their grades will plummet.
Oh well, I can start working on prep-school game play now.
Smuggsworth Preparatory School.
Missing Batuu, but this is probably a good thing.
Doing homework and building skills is raising my need for adventure.
But it is also keeping me from burning through JTB game play and breaking up the repetition
I will have them focus on joining the First Order for my next round. My six sims will be divided into two groups: Team Light and Team Dark.
I can have Team Dark be a little more prepared this time.
It's currently Monday for them, so I have the whole week of prepping sims for Uni and Batuu.
I will send Team Light back to Batuu for the weekend and then Team Dark will go starting Monday. And then Team Light will go back again Saturday and Sunday.
The school counselor and the school administrator have been really selling this inventive game play.
They are actually educators and administrators. They went to Uni for it. They have their degrees. They have their careers. They can work from the building, or work off-screen. They minored in parenting skills, so they can counsel the students. This is so nice.
Cassandra Goth, Meadow Thayer, and Zane Delacroix: Team Dark.
I'll see what difference being a little more prepared does for progression.
The school does not encourage gambling, but since this is more like play money than Simoleons, they look the other way.
I see you are having your immersive moments as well.
Can't wait for more updates. I must say, you really like taking a lot on your plate, so to speak. Wow. I had Alec quit his job just to travel back and forth to Batuu. I don't have many who will go, depending on their personality. I have a lovely lady in Sulani who will never travel to Batuu as she's into crafting and gardening only.
In the mean time, happy simming!
Well....
This should be shocking.
I just uninstalled The Sims 4.
(A note from the future, this didn't last long, explained on the next page)
I was playing Uni, in my wonderful dorm, with my wonderful sims, and I was feeling so fed up with the game.
I put it out of its, and mine, misery.
Wow, that's drastic (not that you can't install it again whenever) - you seemed to be having fun with JtB? Uni can be a bit of a grind though so I understand the fed-up-ness totally. Hope you manage to find a game that you can enjoy, or maybe go back to TS3?