Wow, the tech has gotten a lot better since this thread started, hasn't it?  And your designs are amazing. 

What was in the treasure chest?

satyreyes wrote:

Wow, the tech has gotten a lot better since this thread started, hasn't it?  And your designs are amazing. 

What was in the treasure chest?

Why thank you!  I've noticed that they look much more like themselves (with the exception of Touga's Ronald McDonald outfit) once they just have hair and clothing that's the right colors, and I think that's much more a testament to SKU's visual design than my simming skills.

Although this seems to run off the Sims 3 engine, and... by the time I gave up Sims 2, I had modded it to the point where the sims were almost photo-realistic.  Sims Medieval is, in general, a bit less realistic than Sims 3 in terms of graphics, almost all the hair is big chunks rather than strands and layers, and the coloring is a lot less intricate.  I've looked into modding for Medieval, to get sufficiently fabulous mullets and whatnot, but it looks like it's even more of a pain in the ass than modding Sims 3.

The treasure chest contained a better shovel, some random bits of stuff I don't know how to use, part of another map, and a title document that will change Akio's title from "Lord" to... "Treasure Hunter," I think, and as he levels up that might be the way to get him to have the "Dread Pirate" title.  And 8 Simoleons.  Because that will definitely be enough to redecorate the new dining hall that's got Touga's panties in such a twist, since the decorations there aren't good enough for him and his Entitled trait.

Lurv wrote:

Yeahh... when I was making my Utena sims, I wanted to make them look Japanese (or Indian, for Anthy), but I also wanted to keep the pointy-ness, so they didn't turn out quite Asian.

Hrm... I don't think I'm really focusing on ethnicity with this.  More, I'm trying to interpret the stylized design into what they're "supposed" to look like, and then re-translate that into Sims-brand stylization, and yeah, preserving the pointy-ness and making everyone pretty much as skinny as possible.  With the mods I have in Sims 3 right now (which is probably part of the reason my game's not functioning perfectly, aside from the Mac version just plain having stability issues) I could get them too skinny, but Medieval's slider bars don't go that far.


And now, Anthy is a witch, and tries to save a boar!

She has the option to try and get Akio's advisor NPC to call off the boar hunt and put up a bounty for dragons, but it's a matter of trust, and well, Anthy has trust issues.  So she's got to do this on her own!

First, out to the forest, where she meets her definition of a crowd: three guys and Touga sharpening his sword.  I love how the bright colors set the SKU sims apart visually from the random NPC's and Townies.



... and she's pregnant.  With Akio's kid.



WHY?!

Shortly after, she bears a son.



I shall call him Prince Gentian, the Neglected!

Seriously, I was amazed this kid didn't die or get taken away by Medieval social workers, because Anthy never laid a finger on him, and neither did anyone else.  I guess... I guess they didn't have have social workers...  And while Sims Medieval can have crime, and murder, and alcoholism, I guess they draw the line a infants starving in their cradles, so babies are pretty much indestructible.

But, because the kid was wailing all day and night, Anthy couldn't sleep in bed and had to go meditate out in the garden.



Then the kid grew up.  He does in fact get the title "Prince," and the clothing options for children are terrible.  I settle on some sort of horrible jumpsuit in the colors of the Ohtori standard uniforms.



Hrm... I might have to make some more of these, so I can call them Mamiya and Dios...

Then, Anthy got on with the boar-saving quest, and with being a witch.



That's an awfully big pickaxe you got there, Anthy...

She also scries in her magic scrying machine:



And, for the quest and her daily duties, she curses some dudes.



Why do I get the feeling this is terribly in-character?



I'll need to get her a better staff once she advances past Level Suck, and I get a blacksmith.  I'm thinking Mikage: it's the profession with the most fire involved, and he was responsible for the first epidemic of people getting swords pulled out of them...

Her cursing duties done, Anthy hops on over to the throne room, where Akio is sitting on his throne.  This picture is just too good to pass up.



I make with the baby-making plan, and Touga looks appropriately horrified.  And he's not even assimilated into the love dodecahedron yet.



Then Anthy finishes out the quest by wandering around in a cave, and I take the chance to add to her Nightshade collection.



And then, it's time for a new Hero sim!  Who will it be this time?



It's Brother Saonji, the monk, in his bright teal leggings!    Well, if I'm handing out Legendary traits by the end of this, I know who's gonna get the "better wardrobe" trait.  I don't care if that's not in-character, that outfit looks terrible!  And I tried his kendo practice outfit too, and it wasn't any better.  Damn these monk robes of self-denial!

On a solitary serious note, it was an almost physically painful process to re-create an expression the every detail of which was molded by tension and suffering.  Anthy's probably dissociating with that blank look she's got, and Akio and Touga are almost definitely fronting, but it didn't really hit home until I was like, "... and mouth corners all the way down, because that's... that's... the thing... with like, micro-expressions or something."

But, uh, funny things!

His personality traits are Dedicated and Chivalrous, the latter mostly because it's just sort of the go-to trait for SKU characters, and none of the other traits really fit.  EAxis hasn't coded in a trait for "cripplingly low self esteem" or "helpless in the face of inevitable loss" because this game is just not that deep, and (this is its advantage over Sims 3, I think) it knows it.  It knows that any sort of human narrative is going to be provided by the player.  So while "insecure" may be a more accurate description of Saonji's Fatal Flaw, the one I choose is Bloodthirsty, because it will have him go around and smack like, everybody.

And I said I wasn't going to play favorites.  Hah.

I'm about 90% sure who's getting what professions, now, but I still need to decide who would make the best leader of a corrupt, fire-and-brimstone church:  Shiori, Kozue, Ruka, or Wakaba.  Or Nanami could be the church leader and one of the others could be the Physician.  Maybe Ruka, with his health problems...

Maybe I could get him to catch the plague...

I'd love to get some input on this, either way, though it still won't show up for a while.

Next time:  There's... there's a child missing.  And Touga's gonna go find... him?  Oh, heck.  There's no way this won't turn out wonderfully!

Last edited by Kita-Ysabell (11-21-2012 11:06:20 AM)

Kita-Ysabell wrote:

I'm about 90% sure who's getting what professions, now, but I still need to decide who would make the best leader of a corrupt, fire-and-brimstone church:  Shiori, Kozue, Ruka, or Wakaba.  Or Nanami could be the church leader and one of the others could be the Physician.  Maybe Ruka, with his health problems...

No one in SKU is a slam-dunk for the leader of a corrupt church, but if it's anyone then I'd say it's clearly Mikage.  Apart from Akio, he's the only one who runs an institution that is designed to subvert the impressionable for his own benefit.  And unlike Akio's crew, Mikage's posse ends up brainwashed and with fanatic zeal.  The Church of the Black Rose.

Of the four you name, I think Wakaba is Best Preacher, Ruka is Best Icon, Shiori is Best Acolyte, and Kozue is Best Fundraiser.

Touga is indeed just as subtle as he is in the show.  Spy Touga is the James Bond of your medieval world, except with a fishing pole.  A fishing pole of subtlety.  He can catch any fish except koi.

This game sounds like fun.  I've never actually played any of the Sims games; now I almost want to. 

satyreyes wrote:

This game sounds like fun.  I've never actually played any of the Sims games; now I almost want to. 

I've been thinking, on and off, over the Thanksgiving holiday (we had two, one with a whole herd of Chinese exchange students who are living with a family friend) whether, based on this thread, I could recommend the game in good faith.  I've tried to make it sound fun and entertaining, and have thus cut out a lot of the sections that are like, "and then Akio spent three whole days faffing about getting boar meat and not being able to get into his sister's pants."  And then again, sometimes it is fun and entertaining all on its own.  The things that are fun and entertaining here aren't staged.  I'm not interpreting them in a way they didn't happen.

If you are considering making a purchase, I would very much recommend watching this video.  I don't agree with it 100%: there can still be escapism in a game without changing the trappings to more fantastical ones.

But EAxis does seem to be under the impression that the mechanics it uses to operate the Sims themselves will, without the aid of any kind of contextualization, create a narrative and a sense of humanity and it really, really doesn't.  If you play too long, you start noticing that they fall somewhat in the uncanny valley: they go about their lives with a semblance of normality, but on some core level, they lack the capacity to care.  Events do not, ultimately, affect them.  They cannot grow restless and discontent with a job that aligns badly with their personality or aspirations, or a lack of meaningful relationships.  And, from time to time, this can be very disconcerting.

In this regard, I rather prefer Medieval.  There's a certain irony about a lot of the flavor text that makes the game seem less like a horribly flawed attempt at reality itself and more like a comment on that reality.  There's a humor to it that was largely absent in Sims 3 as it shipped (it might be more present in the expansion packs) and rather than setting the player loose to try and project a story onto crudely animated puppets, it gives you some context for the "story" and often adds writing to give some dimension to the Sims themselves rather than pretending that the AI mechanics would suffice to do this.

That said, it is possible for the player to provide the context that will lend any Sims game with the emotional core that it lacks.  And SKU is awesome for that.  I haven't tried it on Sims 3 proper (I suspect that it would take forever for me to set the town up to my satisfaction, and as I've said, my game isn't particularly stable) but it really is fun to try and make decisions based on how I think the characters would act in the strange, strange situations they end up in and watching the Sims act in ways that are (or are not) congruous with the characters they are meant to represent.

(and now for another massive update-post, with the pictures that've been sitting on my ImageShack account for like, days, now)

satyreyes wrote:

Touga is indeed just as subtle as he is in the show.  Spy Touga is the James Bond of your medieval world, except with a fishing pole.  A fishing pole of subtlety.  He can catch any fish except koi.

Wow.  Didn't even realize that.  I'm gonna make sure that Touga goes fishing more often.

And "impossible to catch koi" goes on my list of things to make mods for once I suck less at programming.  Maybe make it like one of those event-things for like, the boxes when they're fishing?  Sorry, that doesn't make any sense unless you really know the ins and outs of Sims 3.

Lurv wrote:

I did see some Medieval hair conversions for Sims 3. They looked a little awkward compared to the other stuff, but still.

Lol, Sims 2. While some people dreaded all the changes they were making in Sims 3, I was dreading the things that wouldn't change. Like the ugly hairstyles.
Well, I do enjoy not having to download hundreds of recolors in case I ever need that specific shade of blonde.  So my main problem with the Sims creator in Sims 3 is that it takes forever to make sims (though I don't really mind). And since Sims 3 still has some awkward color choices, it's nice to be easily able to change them.

Gotta love Touga's subtelty.  And slutty sims are always the most fun.

Yeah, Medieval really has a rather different art style, for all the similarities with garden-variety with Sims 3.  Converting the hairstyles properly would take ages.

I REMEMBER THE TEN THOUSAND COLORS OF BLONDE.  There was one site, Garden of Shadows, I think, that had a somewhat standardized set of hair colors, (lots of them were NEON) I forget what it was called, and there were like, three shades of blonde.  I'm so happy they found a way around that with the customizable coloring.  Now it they could just implement the same system for skin pigments.

Aren't they?  Trying to maintain love dodecahedrons is tons of fun, watching the fallout when they collapse is tons of fun.

Lurv wrote:

Basically, having an active imagination helps.

And Awesomemod.

And patience to deal with glitches.

(Well, I don't know how guilty Medieval is about this.)

As a playground for interior design, it's a bucket of laughs, and as a playhouse for moderately-simulated dolls it's quite adequate.  But no matter how active your imagination, your Sims will never love you, and if you try to love them, you will only feel their cold, dead gaze slowly stripping away any sense of joy from your soul.  And modding in better eyes doesn't help.

But Awesomemod.  YES.

In general, my impression is that Medieval is significantly less borked than garden-flavor Sims 3.  I think it's only crashed on me, like, once or twice.  Sims 3 crashes pretty much every time I play.  I haven't used the quit button in, like, ages.


But now to your irregularly-scheduled entertainment!



Oh, game.  When will you realize that King Akio (I forgot to check if he's had a title upgrade) can't just ask his scouts for information.  He has to seduce it out of them.



His Eloquent trait also gives him the capacity to "pontificate poignantly,"  read: spew pretentious bullshit while gesticulating wildly.



So in character!

Then we have our regularly scheduled rounds of screw (with) everyone...



As a side note: this (or rather, the horizontal mamba that followed) did lead to another child.  A girl.  I'm calling her Mamiya, for lack of another boy.



And this did not lead to any children, because this is the Dark Ages.  You really think they'd have come up with same-sex conception by then?

That done, Akio, still no closer to actually, you know, holding the peace conference, gets a new sword!



What do you do when you get a new sword?



You use it to beat the shit out of Touga.  Could've killed him, or anyone, really, but no one's done anything kill-worthy just yet.

The sword promptly broke, so Akio had to seduce some more people into telling him that it had something to do with the warring (or near-warring) pirates and merchants of the nearby Tredony and Aarbyville, and I don't have pictures of that, because if I took a picture every time Akio had to seduce someone, it would just get tedious.

So he decides to host a peace conference, and heads down to the town square.



Hey, Mikage, you got any swords that don't suck and won't break, like, instantly?  No?  Dang.

Then he... samples the wares of the two... greeters he could employ at the castle to... ease the international tensions.

One is clearly a whore.



The other... is also clearly a whore!



(Prince Gentian the Neglected also makes a cameo appearance.)

Akio goes with the rose-sniffing whore, because while he's fine with it either way, he likes to present a facade of classical glamour and overt symbolism.  And pink-ass up there just ain't cuttin' it with the classical glamour.

Oh, look, birds!



Another way to waste massive amounts of time in this game, which will henceforth never be mentioned again, probably.  Just assume that, like, everyone is constantly either using a hawk to hunt or a parrot to hunt for treasure.

Next, Akio goes to pick out music for the peace talks.  Dancing ensues.



Sims Medieval has, like, the best dancing.  No kidding.  It's hilariously dorky AND atmospherically accurate!  I can't find any particularly good videos of it on YouTube, unfortunately, and am not really equipped to make one of my own.

Later on, Akio heads to the monastery to pick up well water to make "Mysterical Mortar" with one of the things that I did not know what to do with from the treasure chest.  Saonji's there, doing the "wax on, wax off" prayer.



And Touga's in Saonji's room, failing at swordplay.



That practice dummy is laughing at you, Touga, laughing, and it has every right to.

Akio takes a bath in preparation for these... peace talks.



And then I don't take any pictures of them, because there's really nothing to see.  Akio reads some declarations, gets a parrot and an interrogation chair...



I don't think it's really his style, even the "persuade" option.

And then everyone ended up passed out on the floor, only unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of it.  The one really entertaining moment from this danged quest (it took, like twice as long as the others, and this is the one where Akio spent three days getting boar meat and little else) and I didn't get a picture of it.  Figures.

The end!

Time for a new sim:



Juri is a merchant so... expect not to see very much of her, because merchants are a pain in the ass to play.  Their quests and responsibilities are boring as heck.

I think the creation of Sim-Juri went quite well.  I'm really happy with her facial features, and the merchant clothes options work really nicely.  Her traits are Haggler and Adventurous, and her Fatal Flaw is Morose.  And I think there's a glitch here somewhere, because I did not give her soulless black holes for eyes.

Next time: Akio makes Touga do pointless shit, pretends it isn't pointless!

Oh, and there are things needing input!

I think the way to get non-combat classes to be able to duel is to make them either pirates or guildsmen.  I've got a quest that I think will still be available for the episode after next that would make someone a pirate, and... well, I guess I'll just take it from there.  It might be tutorial-tastic, so I'll understand the mechanic better.  But the important thing is: which SKU characters should be pirates, and which should be guildsmen?  And for Akio, Utena, Touga, and Anthy, the question is irrelevant.  Akio, Utena, and Touga have/will have combat classes already, and Anthy wouldn't use a sword anyways.

Last edited by Kita-Ysabell (11-26-2012 04:04:04 PM)

Oh my God Kita-Ysabell, your Anthy sim is so pretty! They're much better looking than mine.

Kita, you gotta do more! Your medival SKU sims are awesome!

Speaking of which, I recently got sims 3 working again on my comp and I've remade all my sku sims. They live in Bridgport now.



And Kozue turned out to be a proper party animal! When the bouncer refused to let her in the club, she flirted with him. When he rejected her amorous advances, she got in a bar brawl with him and kicked his butt.



Even as an adult, she's still stuck with her brother.



I found a really cute new hairstyle for Anthy!



And I completely redid my Juri sim. Finally happy with her now she's got the long sexy hair she deserves. And somehow she's already become a celebrity, despite the fact all she's done is gone out and chat with a few people. Guess that's Juri-sama for you.



"Don't ever read Fifty Shades of Grey, Utena-sama."

Any other Oniisama E fans out there? Cuz this isn't terribly relevant but I gotta share them. I made Oniisama E sims!!





(And yes, St Just is a vampire.)

Lurv wrote:

Honey Bear wrote:

And I completely redid my Juri sim. Finally happy with her now she's got the long sexy hair she deserves. And somehow she's already become a celebrity, despite the fact all she's done is gone out and chat with a few people. Guess that's Juri-sama for you.

Sims got a funny take on how fame works.

From what I've picked up so far, it seems like just knowing famous people is enough to become famous. The funny thing to me after is that Akio became a celebrity from chatting up celebrities, Anthy also become famous from woohooing with him publically in an elevator.

Just a few more pics I took tonight;



Akio's shiny new outfit! He should probably try bathing, though.



Wanna take a ride in the Akio car?



Oh, and this is Anthy getting her five minutes of fame from seducing Akio in the elevator. Well done Anthy.

Last edited by Honey Bear (12-18-2012 05:19:52 PM)

Honey Bear wrote:

Lurv wrote:

Honey Bear wrote:

And I completely redid my Juri sim. Finally happy with her now she's got the long sexy hair she deserves. And somehow she's already become a celebrity, despite the fact all she's done is gone out and chat with a few people. Guess that's Juri-sama for you.

Sims got a funny take on how fame works.

From what I've picked up so far, it seems like just knowing famous people is enough to become famous. The funny thing to me after is that Akio became a celebrity from chatting up celebrities, Anthy also become famous from woohooing with him publically in an elevator.

Well, I know in Late Night, you get fame points from impressing them, anyway. So if you don't want the paparazzi to follow you around, never befriend a celebrity.

I'm guessing there's more fame stuff in Showtime, but I don't own that one.

Anyway, I don't remember my SKU sims doing anything really wacky, but have an Anthy gardening.



(You can't see it on the pic, but her face turned out less pretty than I wanted. )

(The last post was massive, and I can foresee them getting longer as it goes, quests tend to do that, but this is gonna be a short one.)

GET SOME LEAVES!



And then, of course, seek help from a responsible adult.



Erm, no.  Taking a ride in the Akio Car doesn't count.

(I'm pretty much just fishing for plague here.  Don't catch it, though.)

And then he runs into an old friend.



As he, like Akio, has the "Eloquent" trait, he can also milk the giant cow while spewing pretentious bullshit.  In character? Probably not.  Silly?  Very much so.



He can also "comfort with well-chosen words."  Um... okay.

And Anthy's still around here somewhere, though I haven't had much to do with her in a while.



GET SOME... leeches?



Have I mentioned that Ruka's title is "Bloodletter"?

His next encounter with Juri doesn't go so smoothly.



And I'm glad that, whatever nastiness sims can get up to in Medieval (murder, poisoning one another, dark magic, alcoholism) the recipient of unwanted advances has the last say in the matter.



This next picture exists for pure WTF.  I had Ruka examine every SKU sim who came into the clinic to help keep them all healthy, and well, this happened:



Stay classy, I guess?

Well, Ruka's been sick for a while, but the lung-hacking-up hasn't showed up because I've been keeping him busy, and most symptoms of illness are idle animations.  But now he has a moment to himself.



So the inevitable happens.



"You're not really the one I wanted to do this for, but here's a seashell to help you get over your nasty breakup."



Yup, you look like shit.

And guess who comes calling?



It's not like we couldn't see it coming.



The Grim Reaper is awesome in Medieval, by the way.



If I was that dude, I would so totally be fangirling like, ten times as hard as that dude is.

The quest is failed, so no new hero buildings.  I could make Wakaba if I really wanted to, but I'm gonna be lazy and save her for later.

Next time: Anthy frees a genie!  But don't worry, she's not doing it for the genie's sake.

And now... Incest funtimes!



There's chimes, too.  I'm hoping it's a boy so I can call it Dios and wash my hands of all this.

There's a genie to be released from a bottle Anthy fished out of the well, but first, screwing around!  Because I swear, in Medieval, that's the key to success: get your sim in a good mood, waste time until the quest meter's in platinum, and then do the quest tasks.



Uh, Saionji, I really don't think she's impressed by your hula skills.



Or maybe not!  Well, this is Anthy we're talking about.  It's totally believable that she'd be just really into hula dancing or something.

But, we have a genie to free!  Time to go research!



... and be pregnant, apparently.

It's a boy!



Thank goodness.  Unfortunately, I don't have any of the traits written down.

Next up, time to go steal some souls!



Oh, you thought I was kidding.



Saionji looks waaaay to casual about the proceedings.



And really?  Proposing to the chick who just stole your soul?  I'm sure that NOTHING will go wrong here.



Cookin' up a brew to free the genie...



And Anthy gets what she really wanted out of the quest: a new, less sucky staff and the Chaos rune, which unlocks tons more magical abilities.  Altruism?  What altruism?

Lastly, there's a new hero sim!



Yes, that's Miki playing a lute.  He's gonna be doing a lot of that.  Also writing plays and reciting sappy poetry.  I will make sure the poetry is sappy.  Bards are fun, so he'll probably get a lot of screenshottime.

His Traits are Good and Scholarly, and his Fatal Flaw is Cowardly.  I'm not sure how he came out, I wasn't really satisfied, but this picture doesn't look so bad.  Then again, I'm really happy with Juri-sim, but none of the pictures of her look that great.  But the outfit?  That I'm happy with.

Next time, Anthy and Miki... do stuff.  I actually forget what the quest is.  Probably has something to do with animals.