👋 Not really back from hiatus yet

The Chatters
1

I haven’t been around these parts in a long while. How has everyone been?

I’ve been on a writing hiatus for several months, greater part of this year. Long story short, health issues sucked the creative juices out of me.

I haven’t recovered the desire to write yet.

But there’s a spark of creativity that found a new outlet (like I needed more hobbies). I started modding Sims 4.

Of course, cue in guilt for not working on my books, but I’m not not going to stop modding. It makes me happy. I’m actually excited about something again. I badly need this dopamine.

What’s the longest hiatus you’ve ever been on?

5 Likes
2

For me, a long hiatus is a week.

Take as much time as you need, your health is most important.

5 Likes
3

Dopamine’s always good. I wish it came in a pill! (>‿◠):v:

No need to feel guilty. Your writing will always be there waiting for you when you’re ready for it, and very often a break is good for getting ideas and refilling the creativity well. Hope your health issues improve soon! Great to see you again and know you’re doing okay. ( -.-)\(^◡^ )

2 Likes
4

Heeey, good to see you around again! :hugs: Like Akje said, your writing will be there waiting. That’s what a hobby is for, sometimes you do it, sometimes you don’t. Glad to heae you’ve found something that makes you happy through tough times! Hang in there 🩷 And welcome back! I’m sure we’ve got some Sims fans around here…cc @DollyTH ? :eyes:

3 Likes
5

That’s what I keep telling myself. It’s a valid want to do what makes me happy.

And naturally, I can’t stop creating stories apparently since one thing led to another and I started creating a comic with the shenanigans my sims get up to.

3 Likes
6

SIMS?! YOU SUMMONED ME?!

3 Likes
7

:wave: hi, there, fellow simmer

3 Likes
8

Something that has been inspiring me lately is Persona 5 Royal(e?). Beautiful game, inspiring story, and cute cats. Everything I could ever want.

3 Likes
9

You had me at cats. :joy:

3 Likes
10

3 Likes
11

HELLO!!! What are you modding? Tell me, tell me!

3 Likes
12

I’m working on multiple mods at the same time because… well, I’m an overachiever, I guess. :sweat_smile:

I’ve got a few vampire mods.

One is to make it possible to create plasma packs from plasma fruit. This part is working perfectly. I posted it on Curseforge already.

I’m also working on selling and buying interactions to go with it so my vampires can live off their plasma fruit orchard and be basically plasma dealers to other vampires. It’s starting to come together but needs lots of testing.
Caleb Vatore is my test subject and he’s practically a vegetarian vampire at this point since he lives off these packs.

Also, vampire children can drink these plasma packs. The drinking animation is meant for adults so it’s a bit wonky, but oh well.

I created a custom hidden trait Natural Vampire, which I treat as a vampire bloodline. Vamps with this trait can drink from other vampires and have other perks. I’m testing the trait on Lilith Vatore, and between draining Caleb any time she’s even a little bit thirsty and turning every human she meets into a vampire, she’s becoming a menace.

The trait is working but I’m continuously adding to it and I’m always testing something so it’s not published yet.

I started some mods relating to vampire butler after Lilith turned the butler and I noticed that he couldn’t eat, sleep and was generally miserable because the game had limited his interactions. I made it possible to designate a coffin to assign to butler and worked on getting a way to equip him with a way to cook plasma fruit salad or something. But in the end it was all for nothing because the game replaces the butler once he becomes a vampire. It didn’t stop Lilith from turning another one and the same thing happened so I think I’m going to scrap this mod.

I published on curseforge also my little mod Vampire puns for all, which makes vampire puns available to other sims (game normally has them restricted). This mod came as a byproduct of testing my Science Puns mod, which does a similar thing of showing you the cheesy pun.

I haven’t published Science Puns yet because there’s a glitch. I have tests set up in the interaction that will give you a different response to the joke depending on the listening party, and for some of those tests, the animation plays without sound. A small glitch which is driving me crazy. I don’t know if I should just give up and leave it as is or if I should keep trying to make it work right.

Science Puns mod is part of another project, a set of mods I created for my book character.

The main part of that mod set is Eccentric Inventor trait. The trait works fine but I wanted to create some custom interactions for my Inventor and those are unfinished.

I created a functional project journal object, wanting to have it play a role in the interactions, inventor career, and aspiration, all of which aren’t done. It took me forever to get the journal to work. It drove me crazy why it wasn’t working but finally it is. It can also be used for the regular game journaling and for high school homework because why not.

Another trait I created is Cinnamon Roll, also after one of my characters (honestly, most of my books have cinnamon rolls). I’m still working on it, tweaking this and that. For example, in the beginning my Cinnamon Rolls were too happy all the time, so I made changes and now they’re too gloomy. :joy: It’s tricky to get the right balance.

But I think that’s the bottom line - need to play with these mods to see where they need to be improved.

3 Likes
13

Oh wow, you’ve been a busy bee! I don’t mess with too many mods because my game seems to hate them, but I always find them super cool. And I think you have a thing for vamps lol. And aww, cinnamon roll! Too cute!!! <3

2 Likes
14

You know, I’ve had this game since it came out (and other sims games before that) and for the longest time I never used mods. I downloaded an unhealthy amount of CC, but I stayed away from mods because I feared that my game would break.

Then few months ago, I got curious about this adult mod and thought, what the hell. I’ve had this game for 11 years, time to put it to the test. It was like getting a brand new game. So many possibilities!

This naturally turned into an addiction again and I downloaded mods like they were CC, then July patch came and broke them all along with my game :sob:

It honestly scarred me how long it took me to clean up my game, but I learned a valuable hard lesson that mods are not CC and you need to be careful and very selective.

This also led me to start creating my own mods - because I can’t rely on other creators to keep their mods updated. And with my own mods I can do exactly what I want with this game.
It was a rough start but I’m finally getting the hang of how it works.

I went from not having played this game in like a year to actively modding it in a flash. It’s funny how that works out sometimes.

2 Likes
15

OMG, yes! That’s another reason why I am iffy about mods - I hate when things update! I love the Wicked Whims mod XD.

2 Likes
16

You know it. :smirk:

And it’s a very stable mod. Aside from a little glitch or a lag when… uh, things are happening, I have no issues.

I only had a conflict when I downloaded the Regency mod. I finally figured out that it was the Peeping Sim. I turned that off and had no other issues.
Regency mod is pretty cool, btw.

I tried a couple of those other mods that work with ww, but honestly, I don’t think I’m into that. I’ll just keep ww.

2 Likes
17

I don’t think I know this one, but it sounds familiar. I’ll have to go on a google search. I haven’t been able to play in weeks with wok being nuts, but I want to get on this week for the free content drops!

1 Like
18

By Jane Simsten.

She’s trying to recreate a social dynamic from the Bridgerton series.
There are social classes, custom interactions, you can own land and earn money from it.
There are dance animations, a curtsy, and an etiquette skill.

It’s a great mod to use when you’re doing a themed game.

2 Likes
19

Aww, that sounds so cute and I can def see why it got so popular! Do you ever do stuff with CC? Like, making it?

1 Like
20

I’ve done a few random pieces.

For example, there is this amazing feline skin by eachuisge, combined with an animated tail mod, I was able to create cat sims. But I couldn’t find any whiskers cc. What are cat sims without whiskers?!?! So I converted cat whiskers into human whiskers, which honestly, was no easy task. Blender is not easy to use. :joy:

But for things like furniture, clothes or hair, I get it from other creators. There are so many amazing cc out there. I only dabble with them when I want to recolor them for my specific need.

What about you?

2 Likes