Introducing the Hu's (click the images to enlarge)
Family photo (taken the round before the baby aged to toddler and Meiling aged to Teen):
The kids:
An
Meiling (left) & Xia
The parents:
Jun (left) & Jia-Li
And the grandparents:
Ping (left) & Cheng Hu (parents of Jun Hu)
Side note: This family will look a little different when I post pics of them again because I changed my default replacement skins. They won't look as sim-ified. The skins pictured here are enhanced Maxis skins.
The Hu's live on a farm on High Street. I chose the last name after reading about someone else's sim neighborhood way before I created this family. They had fun names for their sims and the community lots in their hood that I wish I could remember now. Right now I can't get Chester Tester, Hester Tester and Pester Tester out of my head... though the names had a funnier tone to them (I had a friend on a completely different game whose user name was Innah Tizzy. Fun names like that). Anyway, I wanted a family that would have a farm to grow produce that they would then sell at their grocery store. And I thought "Hu's Grocery Store" had a fun ring (Whose grocery store are you going to? Hu's... yea that's what I asked, whose store?)... ok yea. Kind of corny but that's as creative as I could get at the time LOL. But I really like this family so it's good enough for me. And that was my last attempt at creating fun names for families and community lots LOL.
Anyway.... the Hu family sells fresh vegetables, fruits and fish along with their home crafted flowers to the whole hood. If anyone needs to stock their fridge, they have to make a quick stop at Hu's to buy their groceries, since I don't allow them to get groceries delivered. Along with owning the store, Jun also acts as the hood's gardener. Whenever sims need to get a handle on their overgrown shrubbery, I send him over to take care of the problem. And Cheng is the neighborhood repairman and can fix everything from clogged toilets to smoking computers.
A little more background: When I first created this neighborhood, I was trying to make a sim-based economy where sims couldn't buy anything unless it came from/was made from another sim in the neighborhood, and then they would pay the sim directly (via Sim Wardrobe's checks). And they couldn't call NPCs (maid, gardener, repairman) if someone else in the hood had that role (assigned by me) to prevent excess NPCs from being created. There are many awesome bloggers out there who have developed some great (and complex) economic systems that I tried for myself but it became a lot harder for me to implement than I thought (at least with the small amount of sims I have now), so I've strayed from it since. I do have some things set in place that I'll explain later.
I will probably create individual pages for each sim with more information about them like their aspirations, age, love interests, etc, similar to a fellow blogger over at Sullivan Sims since there's a bunch of other ideas I've taken from her in this process (thanks again, Carla! *smile*). I think it's a great idea to have a place to keep track of the information and also have a place for others to find out more about a specific sim if they started reading later on.
Anyway.... the Hu family sells fresh vegetables, fruits and fish along with their home crafted flowers to the whole hood. If anyone needs to stock their fridge, they have to make a quick stop at Hu's to buy their groceries, since I don't allow them to get groceries delivered. Along with owning the store, Jun also acts as the hood's gardener. Whenever sims need to get a handle on their overgrown shrubbery, I send him over to take care of the problem. And Cheng is the neighborhood repairman and can fix everything from clogged toilets to smoking computers.
A little more background: When I first created this neighborhood, I was trying to make a sim-based economy where sims couldn't buy anything unless it came from/was made from another sim in the neighborhood, and then they would pay the sim directly (via Sim Wardrobe's checks). And they couldn't call NPCs (maid, gardener, repairman) if someone else in the hood had that role (assigned by me) to prevent excess NPCs from being created. There are many awesome bloggers out there who have developed some great (and complex) economic systems that I tried for myself but it became a lot harder for me to implement than I thought (at least with the small amount of sims I have now), so I've strayed from it since. I do have some things set in place that I'll explain later.
I will probably create individual pages for each sim with more information about them like their aspirations, age, love interests, etc, similar to a fellow blogger over at Sullivan Sims since there's a bunch of other ideas I've taken from her in this process (thanks again, Carla! *smile*). I think it's a great idea to have a place to keep track of the information and also have a place for others to find out more about a specific sim if they started reading later on.
I refer to the profiles all the time myself! They're really handy.
ReplyDeleteI love the name Hu's Grocery Store!
When Cheng and Jun go to other lots to repair and garden, do you pay them, or do you have them in a custom career that takes care of that?
Sorry, I'm totally spamming your blog this morning!
LOL spam away! That's no problem.
ReplyDeleteGlad you like the Grocery Store name. It's too bad they had all girls because I would have liked to keep the Hu name going. But you never know, I might have one of the girls keep their name.
I use Sim Wardrobe's checkbook to send Cheng and Jun money after they've visited a lot. I use Sim Logical's meeting controller to summon and take control of them and then have them garden/repair using Macrotastic. I also have the hack to hire family members so they each work at the grocery store, too and that's the job they go to every morning. They're busy bees!
I only recently discovered your blog, and when I have free minute I'm reading it, so I can keep up with everything you're writting right now!
ReplyDeleteLove the name Hu's Grocery Store, the best I came up with when creating my hood was "Gradonni's Marker" ....
Where can you find that hack to hire family members??
Hi Tanja! Thanks for checking out my blog :). Glad you like the Hu's store.
ReplyDeleteYou can get the hack to hire family members at Insimenator http://www.insimenator.org/index.php/topic,7778.0.html It's a pretty old hack but I haven't had any problems with it in my game.
How do you work around the fact that the familymembers you hire have to go to work, and that the carpool is there every morning to pick them up?
ReplyDeleteI actually don't mind that they leave for work. For the Hu's, I prefer it because it gets them all off the lot for a while so I can concentrate on other things. If I don't want them to go, I just cancel the action. Sometimes I wish the owners of business would leave for a while, too.
ReplyDeleteAnother hack I have that might help is from MTS here. It allows you to choose what hours your sims work in an OFB business. So for the Hu family, I set the mom and the 2 grandparents to work on Saturdays and Sundays (Level 10) so they're home the rest of the week to tend to the crops, fish and make items for the store. Whenever I hire the 2 oldest daughters, it's not shown in the pics, but I'll assign them to work MWF from 5-9pm. That way they still have some freedom during the week to socialize but will still make money (and get out of my hair for a few hours).
Hope that helps!