Fun with the "ban hammer" and building

I've been practising my building skills lately. Building the perfect lot is harder than you think. There are so many things you need to take into consideration. First you need a theme, without some idea what you are doing you will end up with a stupid mess. You also need to consider what you need to build before you build it or you'll come unstuck, for example if you decide you want a basement after you've build your house..... well forget it. You need to add foundations to the basement so you don't have a big gaping hole between it and the ground, and then your house goes on top of the foundation. I learned that the hard way >.> I also made good use of a tool called the "sledgehammer tool" but for some reason I keep calling it the ban hammer. Don't know why. I have had plenty of reasons to dismantle whole building and start again. I'm getting there though. My first lot was meant as a tester, a learning tool maybe. Thing is, I'm so proud of what I have achieved that I might actually use it in my project. The idea was that one of the main characters lives in a basement under a book shop. All around him are various shops and interesting little places. There are big towers connected by a bridge that serve as a cultural hot spot (it will soon house all of this characters painting which are in the custom paintings folder by Minami Ozaki and there will be a ballroom, a concert room and other places of interest). Underneath the towers are some tombs with coffins that can be slept in. I'm not sure what the shops will be yet. My only worry is that my pathetic laptop won't be able to cope with the strain of running such a large lot. I will have to see how it goes, I may need to get a better computer at some point. I'll update you all with pics of my new lot a bit later when I have finished.

I have also become aware that in one of my previous posts I said that there would be one main hood and three sub hoods. OK I admit it, I was wrong. There are four. I forgot the Uni hood. I can't find a place for it in my story right now so I'll leave that one out for the moment. I'll come back to it if I find a reason to have one.

With any luck I'll have some sims to show you next time ^^

Story time ^^

Yes I have finally written the storyline. It is a bit sketchy and needs work but for now it will do.

Story
For centuries, demons and humans lived side by side in the Amethyst City. Although there are tensions between the many races living it the city and the cities that surround it, it is mostly quiet and stable. Sadly the peace will not last forever. The demons are planning to get rid of the humans that are in charge of the city and enslave the rest. The Gods decided that the humans should not be slaves to these evil creatures. They could not intervene themselves so they sent blonde haired angels to the earth to live amongst the people and stop the demons from succeeding. Sadly most of the angels lost their memories when they fell to earth, and they live their lives like other people do.

Races

English Human
English humans are the original inhabitants of the Amethyst City. They consider the demons as there allies and share their city with them. It is believed that they do this out of fear. They’d rather be on the same side as the demons than against them in battle.

Traits: Peachy colour skin tone, regular hair and eye colours.

Japanese Human
These are immigrants who settled in the city nearly a century ago. They now coincide peacefully with the English humans and the Demons. They built beautiful old Japanese style building around the city and they runs most of the tourist attractions on The Peridot Islands.

Traits: Light pinkish or light tanned skin tones, dark thin eyes.

Korean Human
These are newer immigrants who decided to follow the Japanese to the Amethyst City. They mostly live in the urban slums of the opal city these days due to racial wars between them and the Japanese community.

Traits: Light pinkish or light tanned skin tones, dark thin eyes.

Arabic Human
These are immigrants who came to the city around 50 years ago. They are usually hated amongst the other citizens because of their natural ability to sell things and they way they took over the downtown area of the Amethyst City. They are always unwelcome and are poorly treated. Those who are not forced to live in slums are slaves to the richer demons.

Traits: Dark skin tones, dark hair and all colours of eyes

Demon
The demons are extremely powerful to the point where crossing them would be deadly. They started to appear in the city centuries ago. At first the humans ignored them. Then they became suspicious of them and tried to make them leave. The demons showed there true powers to the humans and wiped out most of the Opal city in the process. The humans agreed to leave them be out of fear. Their army would never survive a fight with them. They learned to live side by side with the demons. The demons now help run the city but their intentions aren’t good. No one really knows what they have planed but it has something to do with the angels who have started to appear around the city.

Traits: Usually light skinned but can have unusual skin tones, can have cat eyes or unusual coloured eyes. All have long elfish ears.

Half Demon
Half demons are usually the result of demons having sexual relations with their servants or rape attacks. They are normally ignored by society and stay with the non demon parent. Some demons may fund their education and give the family money to live on out of good faith, but they rarely associate with them. Half demons have a hard time because they may get privileges that others don’t. It is uncommon to find an Arabic child in school, but if that child has demon blood it’s a different story. This can cause problems for them, sometimes jealousy can be an issue and sometimes racism is the problem.

Traits: They can have the traits of either of the parents. Some may not even look like demons at all.

Angel
Angels are extremely rare and nearly impossible to distinguish from other people. They were sent to earth from heaven to fight the demon race. Sadly the decent caused them memory loss. Though a few of them can remember what they were supposed to do, none of them were willing to sacrifice themselves for the humans. They decided to live like normal people. Some married and had children, some have jobs and lead normal lives.

Traits: Blond hair and unusual coloured eyes. Can look like any other race.

New EP!!!

So I have a new EP. I bought pets from Zavvi (formally known as Virgin Mega Store). It was reduced to £13, that's cheaper than Amazon. I've been testing it out and I'm impressed. The fact that you can see other houses from you lot now is quite aesthetically pleasing. The default animals aren't to bad either. They aren't the best but they don't look awful. I will download some new animals for the sims anyway. I feel like I should at least give them custom animals.
I still plan on getting some more EP's, sadly I spent a lot of money on dollfie stuff so I need to stop spending for a while. I installed a couple more hacks too. I now have brighter lights in bodyshop and now I have some lovely spiral staircases. I just wish I was a better builder. My houses always look awful. It's just as well that I'm going to download a few of the lots. I could never make lots as pretty as V1ND1CARE . Her creations are absolutely gorgeous ^^.

Ahh I've thought of another hack I need. I found a hack that allows you to place neighbourhood objects within lots. This presented a problem for me. You can only pick 4 terrain types- Desert, Temperate (grass), Dirt or Concrete. The city I'm making is an old medieval gothic type place with cobble stones. So naturally I'd concrete because it matches up. No. The problem is that I have a hill which I want to be grassy. So I need to use the grass object on there. That means that I can't have lots up there because You can't put lots on objects. Well the hack will let me do this. I'm not entirely sure if it works with grass though. I may have to ask or just try it an see. Oh this is where I found it http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=265020 . I must start writing out the story. I can't really do anything else until I plan out the story. So I'll see you in the next post *^_^*

Technical Stuff

So right now I'm going to run you by all the technical stuff that I am going to need to create my world.
These are the EP's I have:
University
Night Life

I will have more soon. I plan on buying Open for Business and either Seasons or Bon Voyage next.

First I need clean hoods. I don't want anything running around my neighbourhoods spoiling the view, such as the ugly maxis downtownies and regular townie. I just pray that this works- http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,5861.0.html

Next I'm going to need hacks, lots of 'em. I'm going to get a couple to enforce the clean neighbourhoods tutorial. I need to go find No Townie Regen and No Dormie Spawn. I need a decent camera hack too. I had one before but when I installed NL the hack was over ridden and it disappeared. I know where to find it though so there's no problem

I've also installed a pixel removal hack (via SimsPE) and Crammy boy's penis hack. Seriously, my men are men.

I'm also wading my way though tons of custom content. I have at least 9 pages of favourites on MTS2. I had to remove all the stuff that I had originally installed too because the game crashed constantly. I figure there was a bad object in there somewhere.

I need to find my terrains too. I think by the time all the EPs are installed you end up with one main hood and 3 sub hoods.
This is what I have so far....
This will be the main hood (aka The Amethyst City)
















This will be the down town hood (aka The Opal city)
















This will be the shopping district (aka The Sapphire district)













And this will be the Holiday hood (aka The Peridot Islands

















The names and terrains may change but I promise to keep you all informed should that happen.

That's all for now *^_^*

So this is where I begin

If your here, then you probably know what this is about. I'm trying to build an environment in my Sims 2 game that is almost perfect and totally hand customised by me. I have a plan.... well, an idea at least. I will be using a storyline that I wrote for a comic that I won't ever use. I'll update you all with the story in the next post. I will be drawing up character designs and showing you all pictures of how the sims turn out so look out for them. Well that's it for the starting post. I hope you enjoy my blog ^_^