Author: WebbyMom

The Cinderella Challenge Characters

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Time for the unveiling of the first four characters in this challenge. 🙂 Click to expand!

I should say that I’m really pleased with how these folks have turned out! I love that we have quite a few things just in-game now that seems to fit what I needed for this household. Yes, I’ve used a few CC things – for the most part that means makeup, but there are probably a couple of other things here and there, like Cinderella’s formal-wear headband, etc. 🙂

Lady Tremaine is an Adult, the three girls are Teens.

I’ll put a photoshoot of the Prince and his family and the Fairy Godmother together for the next post. 😀

CC Conundrum, Revisited

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Oh man, years later and I have a WHACK-TON of CC! I even downloaded some Disney-like Cinderella content, but I’ve only ended up using a headband for her formal/party wear outfits. And this because it looked good and I’d decided not to go for a “true-to-Disney” look with my characters. (Because let’s face it, I’d have to learn how to make CC and then make a boatload of it to truly do that for all characters… LOL)

So the rest of it will be trashed, and I will be happy. I do tend to purge like that when needed.

But when this generation of the game came out, part of me was all, like, “I should be a purist! No CC ever!”, the other part of me still loved CC, and I still do! Especially Maxis-match CC or things that extend build-mode sets so they are more useful, or that give me more options with building and decorating and still look fairly… “Maxis”.

Like kitchen stuff. And living room furniture.  And bedroom furniture. And let’s not forget rugs and curtains and flooring and walls and plants…

I even jumped on the CAS CC bandwagon, although again, I prefer stuff that looks like TS4 stuff, like hair and skins and eyes. I’m not trying to make my sims look like real people. I still want them to look like sims. I just want them to look nice when I play them. When I see them from far away. Or when I take close-ups for stories. 😀

Thus, I have found myself solidly on the “Oh yes, CC please!” side of life. After all, it seems to me that all my TS4 CC has not slowed down my game or made it lag horribly. Kudos to EA/Maxis for coding this generation of the game they way they have, because it has definitely been a bonus and has helped a lot of us enjoy a non-laggy game!

What do you think? I mean, I have friends who have thrown all or most of their CC away and are discovering new and amazing things they didn’t know Maxis had put out! And I have friends who make all the CC they love or go on downloading sprees from awesome creators I haven’t even discovered yet… Where are you on the CC/No CC line? Comment below!

Cinderella Challenge Part 1

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I had a ton of fun with Strangerville, Cora, and the whole story line of that town! Decided not to post it, as much of it was rather repetitive/grindy, and I was also trying to get her skills up at the same time. 😛 But the fake apartment worked out and fit in beautifully for what I needed it for and I sure enjoyed playing through that pack!

On to something new. As I do. 😉

I was meandering the web about a month ago, wondering what kind of challenge I could do with TS4 that would get my interest back up. I ran across The Cinderella Challenge, which has been around since TS2 days.

So as not to call anyone out I’m not going to leave any links here – but suffice it to say that anyone who said they’d “adapted” the challenge for TS4 had done it 1) waaay back in the early days of TS4, and/or 2) just copied and pasted and amalgamated the TS2 and TS3 versions of the challenge.

In other words, I found that much of it lacked any relevance to my TS4 game. LOL

Thus began my current odyssey…

  1. I needed some decent TS4 rules/guidelines
  2. I needed some TS4 characters/sims for this challenge
  3. I needed an appropriate house for the challenge to take place in
  4. I needed to decide where I would take my inspiration from (ie, which Cinderella story/movie would inspire me)

Well, since my introduction to Cinderella came via a movie theatre at a very young age with the Disney adaptation, and since that therefore is my favourite version, I’m definitely going to get my inspiration for characters and storyline/challenge from there. However, I’m leaving it at “inspired” – I’m not trying to perfectly imitate it all and gather CC from the four hundred corners of the internet to make it all matchy-matchy… nooooo!

I am currently adapting the rules I’ve have gathered from online for the past generations of the game into something that will better relate to TS4, esp. regarding traits and aspirations, game perks and limitations, etc. I’d definitely share them here when I’m done figuring things out!

As for a house, I have all of Peacemaker’s homes at this point, and I picked one of them (Millard Manor from his Stonehaven collection) to be the lovely “Montague House” (assuming Cinderella’s dad was a “Montague”) where the main 4 characters will live. I’m still finishing the interior of the home at this time. I’ve placed it in Windenburg – seemed a suitable town for this sort of story. 🙂

And today, I have finally completed my cast of characters! In the main house, I’ll have the usuals (named in honour of the Disney characters): Lady Tremaine, Drizella, Anastasia, and Cinderella.

Down the road from the Montague House, when the time comes, I’ll move the Fairy Godmother into in a lovely little cottage suitable for her.

And in a castle on the large lot on the island in Windenburg, I have The Prince and his father and mother – house and characters all conveniently stolen from my Princess Challenge. Haaa! (Hint: The Prince from that challenge sometimes appears at the top of this blog, looking rather bored and/or haughty… 😉 )

I may renovate the royal family to have more of a “Disney” look although, again, I’m not going for perfect here, just “inspired by”. 😉 And yes, I know there was no Queen in the Disney story… she may or may not stay. Although I think it might be nice for Cinderella to finally have a loving mother again, don’t you?

Well, now you have the introduction to this whole venture I have started on! I will do a photo gallery next of the four main characters, so stay tuned!

If you have ideas for this challenge, or have played it out in TS4, or just want to comment, go ahead and join in below. 🙂

Preparing for Strangerville, Part 2

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Cora’s new home is done! And I’ve studied the Strangerville map and have a good idea where I’m going to put it, too. 😀

Gallery:

You’ll notice the odd trio of wall art in the dining room. Almost like someone was trying to leave Cora a message about the history of the town… She sat down and made notes right away. 😉

The great thing about parallel universes is that I’m playing her for now in Oasis Springs, just while I wait for Tuesday, but I can easily transplant her home into Strangerville later. 😀 I’m just pretending she’s in a different part of Strangerville for the time being. Maybe she’ll wake up one day and her whole home will have moved location! Wow, part of the mystery, maybe? 🙂

Preparing for “Strangerville”

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Like many of us Simmers, I’m really looking forward to next Tuesday! I totally love quirk in this game, and the Strangerville Game Pack looks like it has “quirk quotient” out the ying-yang!

I’ve decided to take my self-sim (or is that sim-self???) into the new world for a new adventure. After all, she likes quirk as much as I do, if not more! She flipping got together with Johnny Zest in a parallel life, after all! Not to mention the mad, mad late nights hacking into other computers, and battling jungle pests and thorns, all the red-button pushing she did as a scientist along with the many trips to Sixam… 😉

Well, looks like Sixam is tripping back to Sim-earth, and Cora wants – NEEDS – to be involved!

Despite my own personal hatred of all things that start with “exercise”, I do believe Cora is in for some of that, being as I’ll probably be putting her into the new Military Career. (Probably? Pffft… who am I kidding? She’s destined to get to the top o’ that one, too!) She’ll have to slog it out for many an hour on some kind of human body torture machine or another. The good side is that she’ll be far FAR skinnier than her Controller. 😀 The bad side is, she’ll rub it in. 😛

In preparation for Cora’s next adventures, I’m creating a new home for her. She’s going to live on the second floor of a building that once housed a bookstore. The store has been closed for years now, of course, but the old lady who inherited the building rents out the top floor. Right next door, luckily for Cora, is a “coffee shop”! Woot! Wait – hold the celebrations. It only looks like a coffee shop, it’s totally fake. 😀 Because, this ain’t about dining out, folks. Dis ’bout ALIENS. And their plant-babies. Yup. Dat’s wat dis ’bout….

* ahem *

I’m trying to copy the look of Strangerville as far as I can see it from the trailer. I feel it basically has an “old, small, mid-western US town” sort of feel, with some pretty traditional/classic architecture from the 19th century and a bit of desert/Western thrown in. Let me just point out that the build shown above is not yet complete. I’m going to leave some room for the new “stuffs” that come with the GP. 😀

For this play session, my premise is that Cora will be working “under cover” in the mililtary. Let’s face it, the woman is framming rich by now, but for this chapter of her life, she’s hiding that fact and has rented this run-down hovel of a place so she can “blend in” and get to know the locals – so that she can THEN get more intel on the Strangerville goings-on. 😉

I have a fire escape to build on the right of this building still, and possibly some kind of horrid courtyard/BBQ area out back on the ground floor. We’ll see how far I get tonight. Poor rich Cora is going to suffer just a tad – her kitchen cupboards and appliances are pure CRAP!

I think the rest of the apartment won’t be much better. Haaa! I gave her a break with a pretty decent tub and toilet, and might give a bit of a break with the bed (who can play properly with a sim who hasn’t had a good night’s sleep???), but everything else is up for grabs. 😉

I should totally add some lot traits like Earthquake and… something else bad. 😀

Dang, this is going to be just too fun.