Author Topic: The Ghosts of Twinbrook (Life States Dynasty)  (Read 125066 times)

Offline Trip

  • Challenge Board Assistant
  • Global Moderator
  • Watcher
  • ******
  • Posts: 4530
  • Three Chihuahuas in a Trenchcoat
Re: The Ghosts of Twinbrook (updated 20 March)
« Reply #210 on: March 20, 2013, 06:41:54 PM »
Someone needs to look out for the little ghosts of Simnation. What a touching tribute to Ana. :)
No respect, no chance, cease and desist when I chant-

Forum Rules / Outrun / Defunded

Offline Tilia

  • Watcher
  • ******
  • Posts: 1212
Re: The Ghosts of Twinbrook (updated 20 March)
« Reply #211 on: March 20, 2013, 07:57:51 PM »
Oh Goodness, I loved this chapter SO much.  I always have such an impulse to buy Hidden Springs when I see screenies of it, but I hear it's a crash nightmare.  I love all these resolution chapters so much.



Registered members do not see ads on this Forum. Register here.

Offline ladyaya

  • The Epic Panda-Cat Lover
  • Watcher
  • ******
  • Posts: 1105
Re: The Ghosts of Twinbrook (updated 20 March)
« Reply #212 on: March 20, 2013, 08:19:56 PM »
Oh Goodness, I loved this chapter SO much.  I always have such an impulse to buy Hidden Springs when I see screenies of it, but I hear it's a crash nightmare.  I love all these resolution chapters so much.

You'll see more Hidden Springs shots once I finally finish figuring out the background/setting for my Life States Dynasty if you end up reading it^^

Offline RainBeau

  • Global Moderator
  • Watcher
  • ******
  • Posts: 3514
  • Formerly known as ombradellarosa <3
Re: The Ghosts of Twinbrook (updated 20 March)
« Reply #213 on: March 21, 2013, 04:34:13 AM »
When you revealed Ana's legacy, I teared up. What a beautiful thing. Such a great idea! I just love it. The concept is very close to my heart. I loved reading Little Men when I was growing up, and it was my dream to open a home and school for neglected children. This is such a lovely and appropriate way of doing that. I like the resolve of everyone else in this chapter. Ben's wedding outfit was amazing! Wow! Lou's compromise was nice too. I'm so glad little Sam could find a place to be where his green skin would not make him an outcast. And the genie/Imaginary Friend family is beautiful! This story makes me so happy inside   :D
Please read and follow the Forum Rules.

   
By samoht04

Offline hazelnut

  • Watcher
  • ******
  • Posts: 1777
Re: The Ghosts of Twinbrook (updated 20 March)
« Reply #214 on: March 21, 2013, 12:20:02 PM »
Awwe, that seems like a perfect legacy for a former immortal that wouldn't die turned to a matriach of a ghost family now that she has her eternal rest. ^^

Someone needs to look out for the little ghosts of Simnation. What a touching tribute to Ana. :)

When you revealed Ana's legacy, I teared up. What a beautiful thing. Such a great idea! I just love it. The concept is very close to my heart. I loved reading Little Men when I was growing up, and it was my dream to open a home and school for neglected children. This is such a lovely and appropriate way of doing that.

Thank you.  I'm glad you all liked it.  It wasn't part of the original plan but I have been working towards it since about halfway through, when I noticed how often Wilhelmina managed to make her way into the story.   Kid, the former teenage ghost,  is helping out, of course.  His resurrection got cut from this update because of limited screenshot space but he and Emily are happily reunited (and his back did appear in one of the wedding pics :) ).

Oh Goodness, I loved this chapter SO much.  I always have such an impulse to buy Hidden Springs when I see screenies of it, but I hear it's a crash nightmare.  I love all these resolution chapters so much.

I love Hidden Springs.  I've not played there much but the first two generations of my second attempt at the Household Skills Project lived there with no problems at all.  The Dynasty lot is miles out of town, though, and the central mountain gets in the way a bit, just like the lagoon in Sunlit Tides (which is also beautiful).

Ben's wedding outfit was amazing! Wow! Lou's compromise was nice too. I'm so glad little Sam could find a place to be where his green skin would not make him an outcast. And the genie/Imaginary Friend family is beautiful! This story makes me so happy inside   :D

Thanks :D.  Ben likes red, so a red waistcoat and tie seemed like a good idea.  Not sure where the pinstriped trousers came from but they seemed right.

I will probably carry on playing Brian and Deirdra - the family has been exported.  I'm intrigued by a couple who are both family-oriented with commitment issues (I mean, what?!)  Add to that her goodness and his rebelliousness and I want to see how their relationship develops.  Their other traits are photographer's eye (Brian), green thumb (Deirdra) and clumsy (both).  I also want to see their kids.  So far we have Siobhan, who's an imaginary friend, Patrick (the twin with the ginger hair and conventional skin colour) who is a genie - or maybe only five-sixths genie, since his fun bar is green - and Michael, the purple-haired blueboo, who is either an IF or a normal Sim.  (I'm not sure about the genetics of genie-IF crosses.)

Offline RainBeau

  • Global Moderator
  • Watcher
  • ******
  • Posts: 3514
  • Formerly known as ombradellarosa <3
Re: The Ghosts of Twinbrook (updated 20 March)
« Reply #215 on: March 21, 2013, 03:08:49 PM »
Five-sixths genie? Ha! I've never heard of such a thing, how intriguing! You're right, that combination of traits seems particularly odd. I would be interested to see what they get up to!
Please read and follow the Forum Rules.

   
By samoht04

Offline hazelnut

  • Watcher
  • ******
  • Posts: 1777
Re: The Ghosts of Twinbrook (updated 20 March)
« Reply #216 on: March 21, 2013, 03:48:02 PM »
Five-sixths genie? Ha! I've never heard of such a thing, how intriguing!

I'd guess it's a glitch but still fascinating.



Registered members do not see ads on this Forum. Register here.

Offline Dextra2

  • Ruler-of-All-She-Sees-And Has A Really Big Ego.
  • Immortal
  • *****
  • Posts: 860
  • You can call me Dex!
Re: The Ghosts of Twinbrook (updated 20 March)
« Reply #217 on: March 24, 2013, 11:01:54 AM »
Will you be turning the Anastasia Goole Memorial Home into it's own story?
I would love to read a story that that! ;)
If a cluttered desk is an indication of a clutter mind, what is indicated by an empty desk?
~~~
That one moment when you realize you've been stalking the same thread for ten minutes... And there no reason why because you're up to date on everything.
~~~
Crossing the Rubicon

The Dark Fae's Quest

Offline hazelnut

  • Watcher
  • ******
  • Posts: 1777
Re: The Ghosts of Twinbrook (updated 20 March)
« Reply #218 on: March 24, 2013, 02:06:03 PM »
Will you be turning the Anastasia Goole Memorial Home into it's own story?
I would love to read a story that that! ;)

It's possible but I have quite a few other things I want to do first.  Sam or one of the Google kids might well feature in one of them.

Offline hazelnut

  • Watcher
  • ******
  • Posts: 1777
The Ghosts of Twinbrook: Afterthoughts and Out-takes
« Reply #219 on: March 27, 2013, 04:02:08 PM »
Of course, the trouble with having a particular story in mind when you’re playing a challenge is that you inevitably end up with some screenshots that don’t fit the storyline.  So here is a random-ish selection of oddities, bloopers and things that just didn't work at the time.

A Serious Ghost Problem

Well, actually, there are quite a lot of problems with playing a family of ghosts.  All that “Ew!” business makes medical clinics and autograph sessions almost impossible and just meeting a new Sim takes twice as long as normal.  Also, they keep creeping up behind people and scaring them.  I'm not sure Macy did but she was my only good Sim ghost.  Evil, rebellious and hot-headed ones do it a lot.

There’s the whole transparency thing, especially when they're small.  Take a ghost toddler out in bright sunlight and there’s a risk of losing them.



And then there’s the drifting between levels.  To start with, this was only happening with the NPC ghosts but later on the spiral staircases all kept glitching and everyone started taking shortcuts – with the result that Joe’s top and bottom halves celebrated their adult birthday on different floors of the house.





Ana was clearly used to this sort of thing…



Even after they became human, they sometimes reverted.





Assorted oddities


                                                                         Vicky mourning her wok

Seriously, what is that?  It certainly looks nothing like Steward, who had just died – and I hadn’t noticed any cooking mishaps.

Because I knew she’d eventually be leaving the family to make room for the last generation or two, Vicky didn’t get age-frozen but took regular doses of Young Again potion instead.  Clearly, it tasted awful.



Incidentally, Chris ended up doing the same.  She did have Age Freeze but it stopped working after two or three weeks.  The game knew she’d taken it, so she couldn’t use spare LTHPs to buy any more.  I initially thought it must be another ghost problem but all of the others were OK.  So Chris took Young Again again whenever she approached elderhood (and she had a midlife crisis every single time she aged up to adult :( ).

On the subject of face-pulling (which I was until I got distracted), the prize for Best Labour Face goes to Deirdra Ogle:



Somewhere around generation 6 or 7, the game started producing townies with rhyming names.



On the left, we have Dane Spain (father of Tavares) and on the right, Mason Cason.



Apparently, this is Will’s main squeeze (and the camera never lies).



Imaginary Friends Turned Not-Quite-Real



While Lou was skilling at the library, these two turned up.  I noticed their names were Cosmo and Rags Goole but it took me a couple of days to remember whose imaginary friends they were.   In fact, they belonged to Lee and Kate, Emily’s triplet sisters who had disappeared three generations earlier.  I was going to work them into the story but found that none of the active Sims could interact with them.  They also appeared (in doll form) among Emily’s friends, although I don’t think she'd ever met them.  Ana clearly knew something was going on and wasn’t at all happy about it:





Bloopers


                                                                      Pillow fights can be dangerous

Joe and Macy dancing together after their wedding wasn’t quite as romantic as it appeared in the story.  Macy wasn’t clumsy but appeared to be a terrible dancer anyway.  Poor Joe had his toes trampled repeatedly.  His friend Chet Gilliam was not impressed.



When Tavares temporarily joined the household to take potions and produce Sam, I moved Will next door.  Since he was the hot-headed one, it seemed sensible (the first time he met Vicky’s boyfriend Alonzo, he leapt on him and beat him up).  Unfortunately, I’d forgotten that it was Will who had the Fireproof Homestead reward and the inevitable happened...



Fortunately, brave Emily was around to put it out but by the time the excitement was over, Tavares’ ghost potion had worn off.  It was just as well that Ana had a few spares.  Still, it gave them all a new topic of conversation for the next few days.



And, of course, Vernon’s real first reaction to meeting his beloved wife in ghost form was this:



(The ghost orphans were worse – Wilhelmina Leaf and Davey Moans are both cowards.  It was hours before they stopped passing out and I could get some screenshots of them looking happy to be there :).)



Grimness

Any multi-generation game is going to feature Grim quite a lot.  He hung around chatting for a long time after several of the deaths - he seemed particularly excited by all the new conversational opportunities provided by Seasons - and once spent most of a day reading in the town library.  These are my favourite Grim pictures, though:

Answering the phone (it was a notification that a family friend was about to die of old age, which you’d really think he would have known already)...



...and cooking burgers at the Performance Park after taking three of Ana’s friends (which led to her finally getting the Oh My Ghost! opportunity after several weeks of waiting).  Apparently, he’s not a natural cook:







Ana Madness

It’s only right to finish where all of this all began, with Ana.  It probably didn't show in the story but she was the maddest Sim I’ve played in a long time.









And that really is...

THE END

Edit: or not, as it turns out.  Sam went on to live out his life as co-founder of a 4x4 dynasty.

Offline Snufflesxx

  • Sherlockian
  • Watcher
  • ******
  • Posts: 1892
  • Every puzzle has an answer
Re: The Ghosts of Twinbrook - the bloopers reel
« Reply #220 on: March 27, 2013, 04:42:28 PM »
Hurray for the Gooles! That last picture was absolutely hysterical! It's my favourite insane pose :P 

(just noticed, when writing Goole, I automatically put a 'G' before the 'L' to make Google. LOL!)
** My Stories **

"I'm not a psychopath, I'm a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research." - Sherlock

Offline hazelnut

  • Watcher
  • ******
  • Posts: 1777
Re: The Ghosts of Twinbrook - the bloopers reel
« Reply #221 on: March 27, 2013, 04:54:16 PM »
Brian and Deirdra's kids are called Google.  Well, what else do you do with Goole + Ogle?  ;)

Offline RainBeau

  • Global Moderator
  • Watcher
  • ******
  • Posts: 3514
  • Formerly known as ombradellarosa <3
Re: The Ghosts of Twinbrook - the bloopers reel
« Reply #222 on: March 27, 2013, 08:36:09 PM »
Did Ana have the Insane trait? I can't recall now...
Please read and follow the Forum Rules.

   
By samoht04

Offline hazelnut

  • Watcher
  • ******
  • Posts: 1777
Re: The Ghosts of Twinbrook - the bloopers reel
« Reply #223 on: March 28, 2013, 10:32:15 AM »
Yep.  Insane and absentminded.  She kept forgetting to tutor the kids.  She was also family-oriented but it really didn't show.  She started off as best friends with all of the heirs from the enforced tutoring but soon went down to mere acquaintances from creeping them out repeatedly. Emily, who stayed best friends with the whole family throughout the game, was the only exception.

Offline samoht04

  • Building Contest Coordinator
  • Global Moderator
  • Watcher
  • ******
  • Posts: 9202
Re: The Ghosts of Twinbrook - the bloopers reel
« Reply #224 on: March 30, 2013, 07:48:39 AM »
Just read the entire thing through and it was amazing! I have to say the backstory was just outstanding and is probably the best backstory I have read! Congratulations on finishing!  :)
Please read the Forum Rules![/center]