My house is haunted and I think Goopy has the "jump bug".  Apparently, there is some sort of corruption that occurs eventually that makes a sim unable to perform certain functions.  In Goopy's case, he can no longer woohoo.  Which is vital to his happiness.  He's not going to be able to die in the platinum state now since he's due to go any day and I just don't have enough time to call everyone he wants to invite.

As far as my haunted house, I let* Marisa die of flu so now I have two ghosts, Alanna who is white and Marisa who is green.  Marisa is kinda sad actually since she just floats around for a bit and then coughs and falls over on the ground like she did when she died.  Alanna has been pretty harmless, although she did scare Cambrya once.

I'm at a point where my family are all getting ready to transition in the next four or five days.  The adults are nearly elders and the teens are getting ready to become adults.  And like I mentioned, Goopy is on his way out the door.  He's already outlived Alanna by more than 10 days.  She was only 70 days old when she died.

I moved out Benji and his daughter, Claudia, after Marisa died.  There were just too many people in the house.  I moved them onto an empty lot with a phone and a computer so they'll be in touch. 

Right now I'm trying to get the girls their first kisses, but I think I'm going to skip it and let them age up faster by having them drink the elixir in a green aspiration level.  I really wish you could make kids drink it.  Kids are the most useless stage in the game.  They can't do anything and there isn't any overwhelming need to accomplish anything like with toddlers needing to learn how to walk and talk.  And I loathe the way their hairstyles look.  I don't want to mess with them though because I want to see what their teen style looks like.  I'm trying to see if there's any rhyme or reason to the styles or if it's completely random.

*When I say "let" Marisa die of flu, what I really mean is that I pretty much killed her.  I wouldn't let her sleep or sit down.  I watched her queue and any time a bed popped up, I quashed it.  She was sneaky though and she'd end up in bed while I was busy with someone else.  After that happened one too many times (and she kept giving the flu to everyone in the house multiple times), I built her a special little room out in the yard.

You can see that I gave her all the essentials.  She used to have a pinball machine, but I deleted it when she started to die so I could get a better view of what was going down.  I put food on the counter for her all the time and made sure she wouldn't die of anything, but sickness.  She was basically useless though.  I had to direct her to do everything.  She wouldn't even pee on her own.  She'd use the phone if I told her to, but even if I tried to make her play the pinball machine she'd start and then quit.  But as hard as she tried to pass out, she couldn't sleep because I was piping muzak through the speaker on the wall.

You know, just an FYI in case anyone was wanting to know how they could get a green ghost on their lot.  Be prepared to spend a lot of time on it though.  Those sims are pretty determined to live.

There seems to be a problem with the images on this site all of a sudden.  They uploaded ok and I swear they were there when I posted this entry, but when I was reading this site in my subscription window of my other blog I realized I couldn't see them.  So I came here and sure enough, they were all missing even though the old ones are still showing up.

So I'm going to offer you all my sincerest apologies if you don't manage to see them.  It sort of takes away some of the fun of the entry.  But like I said, I promise that they were there at one point.

*****

I finally decided to start playing Sims again.  I lost interest almost immediately for reasons I can't even fathom.  I guess I just got caught up in other things.  But then I came across a challenge posted on the official BBS .  I have no idea where the actual thread is that started it all, but I did write down the rules of the Legacy Challenge.

You start with a single sim (whichever gender) on a 5x5 lot.  Your family can only marry townies or service NPCs (maid, gardener, robber, etc...).  You must keep at least one child per generation on the lot to keep the family going.  You are trying to hit 10 generations that can be traced by blood all the way to the founder of your family.  I don't think adoptions count.  Aging always must be on and no cheats or hacked objects.

When your child becomes a teen you pick his aspiration by rolling a die. 
1- Fortune
2- Knowledge
3- Family
4- Romance
5- Popularity
6- You choose

Scoring:
1 pt per generation (10 max)
1 pt per $100,000 net worth
1 pt per gold grave on the lot
2 pts per platinum grave
1/3 pt per family friend

Bonuses:
2 pts if all career objects are on the lot
1 pt for each different type of service NPC you marry
1 pt for each different color of ghost
-2 pts for every visitor that dies on your lot
1 pt for each alien born on the lot
2 pts if the last generation is twins

So that is the basic premise of this family I've been playing for the last couple of days.  I'm not entirely sure how to count generations.  I suppose I could search the BBS or just ask, but really I don't care too much.  It's not like you win anything if you complete the challenge.  I just thought it was an interesting premise because I've never married any of the townies or NPCs and I've never went without using at least the aging off cheat.

I started my game with Alanna.  I gave her custom hair and eyes.  I wish now that I'd not given her the custom hair because I can see that it's going to be a bitch to try to breed that out of the line.  It's neat to see how the eye thing works though.  She had aqua eyes and she married a townie named Goopy who has blue eyes. 

They had two sons who both had her eyes and his black hair.  Her older son, Brant, fathered (?) two children; one by his wife, Lucy, (who has red hair and brown eyes) and one with an alien.  The girls were born within minutes of each other.

The oldest was the alien baby, Cricket.  She apparently ended up with Alanna's custom blond hair and aqua eyes.  The other girl, Cambrya, ended up with black hair and blue eyes like her grandfather.  Weird how it skipped a generation like that.

I moved out Brant's brother, Benji, when Brant had an affair with his wife.  But then I ended up moving them back in because I just have to see what their kids are going to look like.  I'm limiting myself to only 2 kids per family, just because I don't like raising kids that much, but I want to be able to choose which one looks best before I commit to them being the head of the next generation.

So now Benji's wife, Marisa, is pregnant and due any time.  She annoys me though so she might find herself drowning pretty soon.  I don't love Lucy, but she's got the most skill points of anyone in the house.  She has come within a point of maxing every skill.  So I'll keep her around to get to the top of a bunch of different careers.  Just because I can.

So let me see what I have for screen shots.  I know I've been taking a bunch.  Every time something interesting happens, I pause the game and take a couple of shots.

This seems to be the only shot I have of Alanna as a young woman that is fully clothed.  I took a ton of pervy shots of her in the shower without the pixels and with anatomically correct skin, but that's neither here nor there.  I believe that's Brant she's holding.

Now how well would this fly with your parents?  Brant and his girlfriend were practically on Goopy's lap and he didn't even look up.

Here's a picture of Goopy trying to fix the computer.  All that happened was that he lost a body skill point.  I was kinda hoping he'd die.  I've been trying to kill him from the beginning, but he just keeps on beating fate.  I've been having him cloud watch and stargaze in the hopes that he'll get hit by a satellite, but so far nothing.

You can see that Alanna is an elder while he's still young.  She was actually 10 days older than him, which might as well be a life time.  She got off to a rough start.  When I started out, the 5x5 lot set me back a lot of cash and then I built a foundation that was way more than I needed.  I could barely afford the absolute essentials and so she didn't have a shower.  Her hygiene score was so bad that I could never get her mood in the green.  She got fired from her job and she only had $33 when she managed to get Goopy to move in with her.  He brought in $3000 and a good job.  He literally saved her from starving to death with stink waves rising off her.

Now the family has $70,000+.  Their house not only has walls and carpet now, but a fancy swimming pool and a private mausoleum that I surrounded with a moat in the hopes that ghosts can't swim.

The sisters first birthday.  Lucy is holding Cambrya, Brant is holding Cricket, and that's Benji blowing his horn.

This is Alanna dying.  I had just finished having a portrait painted of her and Goopy sitting together so she's still in her formal gown.  She came in the nursery and taught Cambrya to talk which put them both in a platinum mood and BAM!  Here comes the reaper.

After she faded away her family was really broken up.  Except for Lucy.  That bitch was actually cheering.  But Alanna had the last laugh.  Lucy wasn't in her will.

So anyway, this is where I am in the game now.  It's kinda boring.  The fun for me is getting sims married when they first become adults and the having the kids.  After that, it's just a long boring stretch until the kids grown up and can have their own kids.

I'm guessing that not all the bugs were resolved in the game. 

Actually, this isn't even all that disturbing.  When Brian took Maddie from Amy, Amy's arms bent around fully backwards.

This is why cheating is never a good idea.  Or at least cheat with a good looking person.

This is kinda what I think that a baby would look like if Laurel and Hardy were able to reproduce with each other.  I can only hope she'll grow into her cheekbones.

***Edited to add:

Oh dear lord, it just gets worse and worse.  Well, so much for the "maybe it'll get better" dream.

Also, Alison got caught making out with Daniel Pleasant.  You've really got to micro manage those love triangles if more than one lover happens to be around at the time. 

I spent hours last night aging Mikey's parents to elders so they could move in with the family. Then I spent a few more sim days playing them in their house so that Mikey's little brother, Ryan could grow from a teen to an adult.  He's a knowledge sim and he's maxed out all his skills except body and mechanical at this point.  He's just a scary fast learner.

Mikey's parents, Michael and Kim, have always had a great marriage.  They are both family sims and I had her staying home to cook and clean and make friends while he rose through the ranks to criminal mastermind.  Then a few days before they aged into elders, I decided to see how far I could get her up the career ladder.  She had tons of friends and skill points and Ryan was gone most of the day anyway between his job and school.  So at that point I called a maid and got Kim a job in the science track.

I decided the day before they were going to age to have Michael woohoo with the maid.  I thought I was being slick, but it took longer than I thought it would and Kim came home from work as they were finishing up.  You've never seen someone fly up a flight of stairs as fast as she did.  Then she proceeded to bitchslap Michael while the maid went and grabbed a plate of spaghetti.

I was really afraid I'd never get them to a platinum level in time to age since they both wanted to interact with each other, but since her relationship with him dropped from 100 to negative something she no longer had those social options.  But she still accepted Michael's kisses and tickles and soon enough she was able to flirt and kiss him back and so I was able to boost both their aspiration levels up.  I'm just REALLY lucky that none of her fears were to be cheated on.  I didn't want them to transition to the next stage with less than platinum levels.  I want them to live long enough to teach Sabrina and Mikey's kids a lot of stuff.

Speaking of that, now that they've moved in there are almost too many people trying to take care of Genevieve.  I'm constantly having to clear out her queue because everyone wants to hold her.  So I tried to distract Michael and Sabrina while Mikey was at work by having them work on the medicine machine.  Well, I guess there is a distinct risk when a person with only 4 logic points tries to teach someone with no logic points to use it.  They ended up creating a virus that got everyone sick except the baby and Kim.  Every toilet in the house is covered in vomit (Sabrina is also pregnant as I might have mentioned in an earlier post) and when they aren't puking, they are coughing their lungs out.  I haven't saved my game in ages for fear that someone might die.  If that happens I'll just go back to before they all got sick and keep Sabrina and Michael from messing with the machine.  Right now I have Kim working to make cures.  She can actually succeed at that because her logic points are maxed out.

So that's mainly what I've been up to for the past couple days.  For variety I popped over to Strangetown and played with the Curious brothers.  I played there for about an hour on triple speed.  I only slowed it down long enough to make sure that someone was taking care of the babies.  Brother #1 was already pregnant and had his baby right away.  I actually missed it because Brother #2 (the blond one) was being abducted himself.  So I named the first baby Chelsea thanks to the random name generator that Mikey made for me.  3 days later Brother #2 had his big birth experience and had twin girls who I named Dorothy and Sylvia. 

I played the game through until they all grew up to the next stage.  For Chelsea that was childhood and the twins hit toddlerhood.  Poor Chelsea didn't learn a single skill and she remembers growing up as a bad thing.  But I wanted them all grown up even though I had another day before I had to age her.  The twins look exactly like each other and exactly like Chelsea did.  It's a little weird, but no weirder than the fact that they were born from pregnant fathers, eh?

There's a picture of Chelsea right after she was born.  She didn't get human eyes, you might notice.  I have mixed feelings about that.  I think that most of the pictures of alien/human crossbreeds look like people with green skin.  Well, none of my kids do so there is always that. (click for the bigger version)

And there she is busy playing in the toilet.  They went on like that for ages: she was making a puddle and her dad was mopping it up while she continued to make new puddles.  And I was just watching the whole thing on super high speed.

Today I'm going to see if I can't pull the Parker through the black death.  I'm hoping to age Genevieve to childhood, have the new baby, and possibly try for another.  We'll see how it goes.