Quick Note

Hi all!

Just wanted to tell you that I'm back! Been on vacation, but started to prepare the next SimBasic chapter last night. It includes a scene with ALL teenagers on the island (hm, all except one), it was quite amazing to see them all gathered. The 3rd generation teens look diverse and interesting, it's time to look for the better ties. The future of Maccaroni Island looks bright!

Like most of you will know, this blog will soon come to an end. Week 13 will be completed, meaning there are only 4 more chapters to go! After a full year and about 100 chapters including the intro stories, I'm pretty satisfied with the result. Major changes are coming shortly, and I have not yet decided what household I will choose as my legacy family.

Right, when Week 13 ends, I will pick one of the 4 largest lots as my future focus. Either Redward Ranch, Yea-Low main property, Greench Farm (main farm) or the shed that belongs to the Blumingtons. You can actually influence on my decision by posting your fave! I have no clue at the moment and could pick either of them.

The story from Maccaroni Island will continue in a new blog, focusing more on one household, but still including community events and tidbits from other families, but seen trough the eyes of the main family. I can't wait to concentrate more on fewer individuals, It will allow me to go much deeper into their lives, and because I'm a sucker for details I'm sure it will be a positive twist - at least for me :-) .

Next SimBasic chapter will be up shortly!

A quick stop & a question

Hi there, SimBasic reader! :-)

Thank you for reading about the Maccaroni population building up a small town from those 4 couples who stranded long ago. We're currently on Week 11 Day 2, meaning a total of 79 regular chapters! Some pretty big drama is coming up next!

I know there are many readers most of the time, although not so many of you leave a comment - and that's all fine. But I also know that long stories get a tad boring in the long run, and that's where I'm right now. I'm still very eager to complete the SimBasic project until it closes this Summer, but how about you?

I'd appreciate very much to know a little about what you find interesting, what you would like to se more of. Do you prefer to read about situations with a stronger focus on a few individuals? Or do you prefer the community aspects? Should there be more focus on "careers", everyday living in the homes, personalities? More about kids or teens? Do you want more plots, drama and mysteries?

I feel knowing a bit more about these things would help me moving the story in a good direction, and also to make its follow-up blog (legacy based on SimBasic) more interesting.

You can post either on the blog or on the TheSims3 forum. Thank you! :-)

Family Trees (updated on Week 11 - March 27th)

The Maccaroni population is growing and the 2nd generation took new surnames to avoid too many households carrying the same name. This all gets a bit confusing, especially when the skin tones mix. So, even if the family trees don't cover many generations yet, they are much needed to keep track on family ties.

For the settler sims' parents and grandparents back in the other world there are names but no portraits. Although most of those sims have actually been played and do exist, their pictures will not be posted. Why? Because when the settlers stranded on Week 1 Day 1, they brought no family photos, and the next generation just don't know exactly how their ancestors looked, although names and stories were passed on.

The family trees are also useful when picking spouses. Kids of a Redward/Yea-Low couple can only mate with kids of a Greench/Blumington couple. Most other kids are cousins, and the poor 3 kids of Bella and Christopher are cousins to ALL other kids on the island! No spouses for them yet... This was the reason why Roger and Yvonne wanted "forced marriages", in order to make it easier for the next generation to find spouses. But the blog readers protested, lol, and here we are - with a huge challenge :-).

The trees below will be updated periodically. On major updates the new family trees will be posted here, and a comment posted below!

Your opinion counts!

Click for a better view.

The story is on its 6th week, and they have built a few small community buildings. Shortly, teens will grow up and move out, to found their own families. There will be more community facilities, and there will be a total of 14 households during the second generation.

So, I've been wondering - do you readers miss a map? Some background info on each household, and maybe each community lot, too? I could add it, but unless it's wanted, I won't get it started. The story will hopefully go somewhere even without that kind of background information, but I know some might like the site to be a little more interactive - with more sections to go to...

Your thoughts on this would be very much appreciated. If minimum 5 readers want the extra info, I will get to it. Because I'd love to get more than just a yes or no, I'll ask you to comment on this post instead of running a new poll on the case.

Thank you! :-)

(And soon there will be real animals, not just pasted pixles like you might have seen on some of the previous pictures!)

Week 2 Day 3 - A new easel for Bianca

Some posts ago I promised to show a map of the little island. Well, it's more like a photo, but will do. Top-left corner is North, so is should actually have been turned a little clock wise. You see how tiny this island is, but even so they have not been to all spots yet. Maybe Gabriel Greench should look for seeds outside their everyday track?

They still made no contact with the civilization, no ship was observed. But in the previous chapter you learned about Roger and Yespar having a top secret master plan. Will they ever find a way to move over to the Holy Moly Maccaroni land?

Today Bianca is eager to get her ordered easel. She's got her camera, but she wants to save the power for later. She might only get the chance to take a handful pictures. I think she will rather start painting, and if she paints still life, those works might become very interesting and valuable in a couple generations.

Yes Bolan, you must be born to be the greatest dad. Don't give up! But how about rather talking to Bridgette who left Bianca's body days ago, and is soooo eager to talk?

But there's more than kids on Bolan's mind this morning.

But at the beach store Bianca got a surprise...

So, Roger and Yespar are busy? Together? Bianca was confused, she doesn't like to know everything about everyone, but she strongly dislikes it when feeling outside. She was too hungry for more questions, and roasted some tuna while Bridgette played in the sand..

Back home she found that Bolan had left for fishing without tending their little garden. She would rather like to start painting, but the garden is important, and she decided to try tending it while she read in the photography book she bought in the beach store earlier.

When she was done, Bolan returned and he brought a visitor. Gabriel Greench had crafted another crib. Now Bianca had to be social instead of painting.

Finally! When Gabriel and LaShawn left, it got dark but in the moon light Bianca felt the creative spirit flow, and got to it. I think she has 4 painting skills from earlier, back in SimCity she had signed up for a Painter career. In a few days she can do portraits and still life!

I bet you can't wait to see how this work turns out. Looks like tomorrow will be a busy day in many ways...

To be continued in 2 days.

Rules and no rules

You will get a closer look at the boat shortly.

While the 4 couples are on their way, I think I will say something about the rules for the SimBasic project. Besides the obvious restrictions for sims living in a back-to-basic environment, there won't be many preset rules for how the project will envolve. Only the intro story and a few essential events leading to new community stages will not be based on regular game play. Relations and much of the progress will develop due to free will, while I will of course need to help them getting married and establishing their new households.

Back to basic limitations
The 4 couples will need to survive from what they can grow and catch in nature. They will build smaller huts, but not owning lots of stuff. Some furniture is required to keep them going and to try for babies, such as beds. Some of them will keep stuff they brought for their vacation. They will not buy stuff from the catalog, because they have no electricity and well, most furniture in the catalog are too nice looking for this project's generation 1. What they do need, will mostly be "hand crafted" with primitive textures. The place has no streets nor sidewalks, meaning they will need to move about by feet.

They do bring their mobiles, and although they weren't supposed to be used, I realise I can't stop them from calling each other on free will, especially sims from non-played households. So, mobile signals will just about work limited radius "only on certain days thanks to calm weather".

To find food they need to grow whatever they can grow. It's a problem that plants take several simdays to give crops, and sims with no fishing skills won't always catch lots of fish on first try, so it will be a challenge to find enough food during the first 2-3 simdays. There are a few wild plants on the location, but they won't carry enough produce to feed 8 sims. Besides, I just learned that a very hungry sim is too hungry to harvest any food!

Services will of course not be available, and it will not be allowed to sell anything directly from their inventory until generation 3. At the first stages money won't have a big impact because they can't be spent. A sim who can produce extra food, will obviously become more popular than a sim with money.

Finally - looks and clothing of generation 2 must match the primitive setting, and will be adjusted accordingly. Hairstyles can be adjusted, while hair colour can not be adjusted. Weird hair colour combinations might occure as part of the community's DNA history.

Community organisation
During generation 1 the community will count only 8 adults and hopefully 16 kids (generation 2). Such a small community will not have the community structure of a smalltown, but there will still need to be certain responsibilities. They will all need to participate for common survival, based on their skills and interests, but somehow there must be a local economy allowing some households to build a future.

When generation 2 grows up, jobs will become more structured and specific, and this will be based on what turns up during the project. All I know for now is that they will have a consignment store. I don't know yet what it will be like, and there is no point in planning in detail in case only 4 of them will survive. So, more about the community organisation later on.

There are only two community lots to start out with, in order to meet the need for meeting places. Their private huts will be way too small for throwing a party :-)

Population & DNA

While the main goal for the project is to develop a new smalltown, the biggest challenge might be to populate it.

In such a  limited community, based on only 4 couples, 3rd generation will count many cousins, and finding everyone a spouse will be tough. And because cousins can't breed, there will be trouble unless the number of males match the number of females. A "wrong" gender or a "wrong" marriage might make it even more complicated. In a quick test nearly all the generation 2 babies were boys - I'm glad it was just a test :-)

This chart is per settler couple - so should be multiplied by 4.

I plan to organize the couples into traditional households. If a small group of people were to populate a new community for real, I think they might have formed a different community structure, because securing their race would be more important than avoiding jealousy. But I don't want  to deal with too much jealousy, so there won't be much breeding accross households.

Separate households also make it possible to build up tribes in a different way. Not that it would make much of a difference in such a small group where all will be distantly related, no matter what, but the background stories will be more diverse and perhaps give a tribe-like feel.

The population plan goes like this:

Gen 1: 8 sims (4 settler households)
Gen 2: 4 kids per couple = 16 new sims (gives 8 households)
Gen 3: 3 kids per couple = 24 new sims (gives 12 households)

If success, and if the first 8 settlers are still alive, on generation 3 the population will count 48 sims and 12 households, not counting gen 3's kids. There will of course be a few sims not reproducing, some might even die by accidents before reproducing, but there might also be some twins on 4th try, and breeding accross generations as long as the two sims are not closely related.

From generation 4 I think 2-3 kids per family will be enough to keep it going, and eventually secure a slight growth to fill the new smalltown.

So - do you think this could work well DNA-wise?

New Sims project

I know I shouldn't start this project because it will be quite time consuming, but all simmers out there will know that when sim related ideas start spinning, there is no escape. And when I start something, I always complete it.

SimBasic is a project where I intend to build a new smalltown community from scratch. A place with a history where I will find my future legacy family. I want to go all the way from the first settlers making a living from nada, to a smalltown including most of the job opportunities, services and - yep, even electricity!

I do want to reach a populated smalltown within a year or so, meaning technical development must speed up. My rough plan is 1st generation living very primitively, 2nd generation being allowed to buy anything not requiring energy/electicity/fuel, and when the 3rd generation reaches adulthood I hope the smalltown will be forming as a rather modern community. Until then staying alive will not be the only challenge, but reproduction when most candidates are related will also be a huge challenge. One single child being the wrong gender might ruin it all. If SimBasic reaches 3rd generation, this should become a lot easier, but might still need detailed planning. More about the population plan later.

Starting this Fall, the first 4 sim couples will arrive the untouched land to found the new community. But first there will be a short introduction of the participants, and HOW they got tricked into this place... ;-)

I'll post random updates to a SimBasic thread on the general discussion forum over at thesims3.com. Some might also remember my Simmerville hood from TS1 and TS2, as well as the SIMbepi3 tales. I hope you will enjoy my new project!

Simmerville
(happy simmer)