House of Fallen Trees and Gothier Green Lawns Mystery

[DJ.]

What actually happened there?

House of Fallen Trees is a cursed house in The Sims 2. When you associate a Downtown to your neighborhood, the text says that you'll find all sorts of surprises there - even the spooky ones. Spookiness is not entirely related to vampires - it's also related to this house.

House of Fallen Trees - you'll probably say, "It's a Maxis built house. Wow, it maybe has few graves with glitched Sims - the glitches give this lot it's spookiness, not the deceased Sims!" Well, you're wrong. First off, those Sims aren't really glitched. ;) They have memories, which is really odd for pre-deceased Sims. For that note, I think Maxis was planning on making them playable - but then - it's Maxis. Nuff said. Anyway, let's get back to the point.

The house has a HUGE basement. At the bottom of it (it takes a Sim who walks half a Sim hour to get down there) there are two coffins.

Also, there's this thing that gives the house it's spookiness - the lighting. You'll notice that it's very dimmed. Even if you put infinity amount of lights in a room, it will appear very bright - but the next night, all the objects will be un-lit. :| And, that's not all - moving the house to another neighborhood does not remove the spooky lighting ambient.

There are three tombstones at the lot. BUT, there are six grave spots in total. If you move a Sim in the house, ghosts will get angry, because they do get angry if,

If a Sim's life was unhappy, if a Sim died of starvation and there is no food in the fridge, if a grave is destroyed, if his/her spouse remarries, selling his/her bed, a Sim kicking his/her grave, removing the lot they lived on if they died on another lot or have been moved to another lot, or if a non-relative moves on to the lot. Parents will be enraged to see their orphaned child with a boyfriend/girlfriend. If a dead Sim has an unfulfilled family aspiration, they will be upset if a Sim has a child on the lot. Although all ghosts interact with objects and scare Sims, angry ghosts do so more violently.

The two teenagers who rise up second night after you move in, will always think of their parents (or rather complain - since they make "I have to pee!" animation).


If you go to Gothier Green Lawns, you'll see that six members of the Tricou family are buried there. And - another spooky thing - even though it's fake and you can't do this thing in game (or just by using terrain tool) - there's a duggen grave at the top of the lot, and by it two trees which leaves fell off.

Another trivia; John Smith Tricou wears makeup.

So, what are your stories, thoughts, or should I say, the speed of your pulse? ;)

~DJ.

[Peni Griffin]

Everyone has to make their own story. If you want them, the Tricous are all resurrectable, using their surviving family, the John Smith Tricou's six teen bastards, who as downtownies go by different names but always have the same faces, aspirations (all Pleasure), and personalities in different incarnations of downtown. Looking at them, I'd be willing to bet that they were a playtest family turned into townies to ship with the game.

I shallowed the hell out of that basement, and no one's gone down there yet. I also grunged the whole house so it would look long-abandoned, and am sprucing it up one room at a time. The ghosts have spawned a couple of times, but the current inhabitants are always throwing parties indoors and haven't seen them. They keep complaining about the light and adding more lamps, for all the good it does them.

My backstory is that John Smith Tricou was a notorious rake and polygamist cult leader, but his wife kicked her co-wives and their children out shortly before the mysterious cult-related mass death. I haven't come up with a story for why some of them are buried on-site; but I think they may be the ones that died first, either accidental casualties of an ill-conceived rite or deliberate human sacrifices, and the others buried them. The ones who made it to Gothier Green Lawns were buried by the city. It's possible Gothier Green Lawns was actually a business run by the Tricou family - which would explain some of the tackier things on-site! - and taken over by the city in lieu of property taxes.

I have no intention of resurrecting any of that unpronounceable lot, but I like my Tricou bastards, who are being used as Greek fodder. The "oldest" (i.e. the one who first made friends with a playable and thereby won entrance to University), Lora Wolosenko, changed her aspiration to Fortune in junior year because Pleasure wasn't working for her. Fortune didn't work either, until I got Freetime and gave her a Pleasure secondary, and now it works great. Lora got it into her head to buy the ancestral home and restore the family good name, even though there aren't any Tricous anymore. There's a lot of soap opera to do with that family. She was saving and saving, and moving her younger siblings in with her as she graduated, but when they absolutely had to move out of the apartment they were in because her sister, "Bad News" Beverly Ku got pregnant by "I dunno, some guy" they didn't have quite enough money until Lora married Jimmy Phoenix, who suddenly manned up for her after a long and complicated off-again-on-again period that started in college. Even so they barely had enough for bare-bones furnishings when they moved in, which is all to the good, really. Don't want to fix it up too fast. Graduated Tricous move in with Lora and may or may not move out again depending on - stuff. The household currently consists of pregnant Lora, Jimmy, Lora's moved-in townie roommate Phoenix McClellan (who is a Romance sim in love with Lora and Beverly and Jimmy's old girlfriend), Jay McCullough "the Asian Tricou," and Jay's girlfriend Dulcie deLeche. Beverly married a former frat brother of Jimmy's who really should have known better and moved in with him, taking her son Tri Ku and her favorite brother Derek, "the black Tricou," who is gay and determined never to work for The Man and doesn't trust Beverly to look after his nephew while his brother-in-law's at work. The final two Tricous, "the goth" and "the skater," are still in the frat.

Jimmy's in the natural history career and entitled to a cow plant, so if Phoenix gets too troublesome they may yet find something strange and terrible in the basement. They tend the graves as and how they can, but the family's so bohemian and chaotic they had to hire a gardener to keep up. Lora is in show business and a prominent leading lady. Her unborn child was conceived in her convertible, but the father is in fact her husband. Phoenix is currently on the outs with everybody. Jay and Dulcie are Pleasure and Popularity, so one way or another there's a party almost every day. The ghosts never seem to come inside, so if I want parties disrupted by ghosts I need to either have a cowplant eat Phoenix in the basement or move the buffet outdoors in the summertime.

[julmoo]

Does anyone know how to brighten the house with the help of a cheat, maybe?
In my Megahood I have the problem that the houses in Pleasantview are extremely dimmed too.

@Peni: Your story is awesome :D
I am completely unable to make good Sims stories -.-

[maxon]

Tricou Treat was one of my more successful stories back when I was posting on newsnet all the time. I rezzed the Tricou's and decided they had been dead since the 19th century. Gave me an excuse to use some of those Victorian costumes from AAS. They all live there morbidly except for Gvaudin, who has rebelled, gone off to college and got herself engaged to Edward Crumplebottom - an irony really because it was Edward's brother Alex who was responsible for the botched resurrection and the fact that Gvaudin is alive (as opposed to being undead). I nearly finished a sequel to Tricou Treat - can't remember now what I called it.

[joandsarah77]

I moved my vampire and his wife into the place, changed the lighting back to normal, gave it a makeover, raised the basement up as it’s stupid, cursed at the garage for not being attached to the house when it's a house obviously for vampires and thought nothing more about it. Now I have only played about a week there but haven't noticed the ghosts. I didn't really give the background of it much thought.

[Mootilda]

Here's another thread about the house:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=331702

How to fix the lighting:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=471846
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=471957

[Peni Griffin]

Julmoo, if you're like most people on here who have in the past thought they sucked at making sim stories, it isn't true. Most people who think that are afflicted by invalid assumptions. One is that they have to be in control of the sims to make a story; another is that there's something rare and esoteric about "good ideas" and they can't come up with any.

There are two main ways to approach storytelling, in general. One is from the plot side; the other is from the character side. These two ways are not incompatible; the characters in a plot-driven story are the People Who Carry Out the Plot, and the plot in a character-driven story is What the Characters Do. Sims necessarily favor character-driven stories, since the medium of storytelling is the individual sim. So, if you loosen up your control a little bit, look at your character's spontaneous behavior, interpret his wants and fears and interactions with others, and ask yourself what these things imply, you'll start to get a grasp of who he is, and then you'll start hearing his voice and then it will all come together. And if you do this for all your sims - not only your active playable, but the sims in his life - you'll find yourself posting what happened and other people will hit the "love" or "funny" button and you'll find you've done it after all.

I had no idea who Lora Wolosenko or Jimmy Phoenix was when I brought them in - my Greek houses were about to empty out and I needed new students, fast. They were on track to be a Couple when junior year came, and Lora was hard to keep happy as a Pleasure sim, so I changed her to my favorite aspiration, Fortune. And her chemistry with Jimmy went down, and he started taking up with Georgette Skirt and being really ambivalent about it. By then I'd found out about the other Tricous and started sending them to school, and I decided, with Beverly, that I was going to experiment with Pleasure and really learn how it worked, so I made it a rule that her wants never locked and she always fulfilled as many of them as she could in a session, and that's how she became Bad News Beverly. And the Tricou house was just sitting there, and Lora needed a roommate, and stuff...happened...and here I am. Nothing difficult on my part there.

[julmoo]

Thanks a lot Mootilda!! <3

Julmoo, if you're like most people on here who have in the past thought they sucked at making sim stories, it isn't true. Most people who think that are afflicted by invalid assumptions. One is that they have to be in control of the sims to make a story; another is that there's something rare and esoteric about "good ideas" and they can't come up with any.

There are two main ways to approach storytelling, in general. One is from the plot side; the other is from the character side. These two ways are not incompatible; the characters in a plot-driven story are the People Who Carry Out the Plot, and the plot in a character-driven story is What the Characters Do. Sims necessarily favor character-driven stories, since the medium of storytelling is the individual sim. So, if you loosen up your control a little bit, look at your character's spontaneous behavior, interpret his wants and fears and interactions with others, and ask yourself what these things imply, you'll start to get a grasp of who he is, and then you'll start hearing his voice and then it will all come together. And if you do this for all your sims - not only your active playable, but the sims in his life - you'll find yourself posting what happened and other people will hit the "love" or "funny" button and you'll find you've done it after all.

I don't know whether it's just my game, but the wants they get are pretty much all the same. Leaving my characters on their own results in then standing around like idiots until they go to bed.
My free will is not turned off, I have checked for that.

The last few days I have been rolling a dice for different aspects of their lives, eg how their marriages will work, whether they will have their wants fulfilled or not, etc.
It hasn't improved much though.

[Yazoo]

You know honestly, I always that the old man had an affair, and his wife found out. Committed a double murder, then realized what she had done, and killed herself. Because whenever I have moved Sims there, they never had my Sims face crossed out in the thought bubble. Its always either a female, that isn't part of the family. OR its the dude. Papa. I mean, I am not sure if that goes for everyone else. And the basement is just way over done, I mean moving a Vampire Couple there once, I had to put two coffins inside, because they didn't get down there in time before the sun came up. So, I dunno. I mean it is a nice house. Just has fallen residents there. I am just not sure.

I guess it truly is a mystery there, I sort of want to know what REALLY happened. And I wouldn't mind resurrecting them, but I dunno. It would be like Frankenstein, I would say out loud:

"ITS ALIVE. ITS ALIVE"

Yeah...Don't need people looking me like I am insane >.<

[Peni Griffin]

That's why I shallowed the basement - made the house cheaper, and made it possible to use the basement.

Ah, julmoo, if you're always seeing the same wants you need to shake things up a bit - that's a sign of a player in a rut. Remember that they're trainable. The more they're told to do something, the more they'll do, and the more times you fulfill a want, the more they'll roll it. So be more selective about which wants you fill, use secondaries if you have Free Time, run a family with one more character than you feel you can comfortably handle, run a challenge that's designed to bring out ways you've never played, spend some time fulfilling fears instead of wants, take them on a walk around the neighborhood (wants reroll every time they change wants) - anything to shake things up. And then you'll see.

Okay, that's enough OT from me.

Why, in your scenario, does Nylissit kill the teens, then? And why are you playing where anyone would be looking at you, anyway? Fly your freak flag proudly!

As a game mechanic thing, my major theory is that they were vampires and burned to death in the sun on the way to do something that would help the ones who died of starvation, who were probably trapped in that damn basement or something. Also possible the burned-up ones died trying to cook for the others. This would all be during the playtest for Nightlife. John Smith Tricou was obviously heavily used in playtesting dates.

[Fivey]

Tricou Treat

You have no idea how angry that pun makes me.

[Sims2Playerfan]

I was actually just playing this house. I redid the interior in a more "evil abandoned lair" look with gray panelling on the walls, shallowed the basement to only two "story" levels below ground instead of about 5, and put a bunch of those evil witch lights all over the place. I moved the Grim Reaper (no, not the real one, a CAS look-alike) into the house and made him an evil witch and have him scare all the walkbys with Paladin's Mask of Incontinuity or something like that (they pee themselves). The Tricou siblings show up almost every night but Grim never notices. It is a creepy house, but it is even creepier with the remodeled torture chamber basement that I built. I'm thinking of making it a prison with Inge's prison mod and putting a bunch of zombie-werewolves and vampires down in the basement (because neither zombies nor werewolves are cool by themselves, but they are better combined).

[maxon]

You have no idea how angry that pun makes me.
Oh good.

[Sunbee]

I like the Tricous--the resurrected bunch, I mean. Gvaudoin's a temperamental hormonal teen, gets along excellently with Tybalt Capp in the all over each other sense, Fricorith is much calmer and really very patient. I've paired him with Miranda Capp before. The adults have varied relationships: Jennail hates her sister's husband, half the adults hate Gvaudoin.

[AlexandraSpears]

I have to ask--who came up with those names?

[Yazoo]

I have to ask--who came up with those names?

Maxis. In fact...They have come out with very lovely names take for instance:

Abhijeet <---Have no clue what the hell that even means

Or

Ratna

Rat and na. Reminds me of that Ratatouille when he says:

"Ratatouille. It's like a stew, right? Why do they call it that? If you're gonna name a food, you should give it a name that sounds delicious. Ratatouille doesn't sound delicious. It sounds like "rat" and "patootie." Rat-patootie, which does not sound delicious."

Maxis has some sucky names. And it makes you feel sorry for those townies. I mean can you imagine how they were treated in school? Those years must have sucked.

[AlexandraSpears]

I figured maybe some EAxoid's cat was napping on their keyboard.

[Yazoo]

I figured maybe some EAxoid's cat was napping on their keyboard.

LMAO xD that would explain one name, I can't remember how it was spelt, but it was like:

Ahabajad or something like that...I was like

"Uh...Yeah, nice name there bud"

[Mootilda]

IIRC, the Tricou names are Roma (gypsy) names.

[nikel23]

Maxis. In fact...They have come out with very lovely names take for instance:

Abhijeet <---Have no clue what the hell that even means

Or

Ratna

Rat and na. Reminds me of that Ratatouille when he says:

"Ratatouille. It's like a stew, right? Why do they call it that? If you're gonna name a food, you should give it a name that sounds delicious. Ratatouille doesn't sound delicious. It sounds like "rat" and "patootie." Rat-patootie, which does not sound delicious."

Maxis has some sucky names. And it makes you feel sorry for those townies. I mean can you imagine how they were treated in school? Those years must have sucked.
If you noticed, all townies first names and last names (including the premade townies) by default are drawn from all staff of EA. For example, that Ratna you mentioned was taken from Ratna Jayapalan, the lead designer of The Sims 2. If you check the credits, you might see some familiar names as well, providing you have a lot of generated townies. ;)

[fruitsymphony]

The name Abhijeet (http://www.google.se/search?q=abhijeet), 7 720 000 hits on Google.

[StrangeTownChick]

I think Ratna is a simlish word. My sister is playing sims in the same room and I've been hearing it. It's either Ratna or Gratna

[nikel23]

As well as Macarevich, Majekodunmi, and Parmeley, all the last names of the staff, and spoken by witch when crafting on cauldron.

[Dagi_is_a_punk]

Macarevich actually sounds like it could be a Slavic name...

As for the House of Fallen Trees, it's one of the rare Maxis lots that I actually like. I moved the house over to my custom hood, gave it a little makeover and moved an evil witch in it. She keeps an army of zombie minions in the basement. If you care to know, Gilbert Jacquet (that Maxis dude from Bluewater village) makes a great zombie. Also, I really like the building's dimmed lighting; it makes the plumbbobs look less sunny, which is a refreshing change in my opinion. If I remember correctly, the same dusky lighting is also to be found at the Lucky Shack community lot at Downtown, which is one of the reasons I like playing that lot. Wasn't there some cheat that could add the same effect to any lot?

[Yazoo]

If you noticed, all townies first names and last names (including the premade townies) by default are drawn from all staff of EA. For example, that Ratna you mentioned was taken from Ratna Jayapalan, the lead designer of The Sims 2. If you check the credits, you might see some familiar names as well, providing you have a lot of generated townies. ;)

I didn't know this, thank you. But some I doubt are EA peeps...Like

Upsnott

I am not too sure that is a EA peep's last name, if so. Ahem, just wow. Or maybe Vyhajaker. o.O

[Fivey]

I didn't know this, thank you. But some I doubt are EA peeps...Like

Upsnott

I am not too sure that is a EA peep's last name, if so. Ahem, just wow. Or maybe Vyhajaker. o.O

I think Upsnott is more of a name that is supposed to be meaningful.

As in 'i-have-a-stick-up-my-ass-and-I-am-cooler-than-all-of-you' sortofway.

[Peni Griffin]

(Psst...Dagi...Scroll up. Mootilda posted that link.)
Upsnott isn't a townie name; the statement had to do with townies. Upsnott is a joke name to invoke the "snotty" "uppity" attitude of the sorority girl Brittany Upsnott.

It's Vijayakar, and that's an Indian name. As is Abhijeet - if you google Vijayakar, one of the results you get is for Abhijeet Vijayakar. I don't mind most of the names, per se; I mind seeing lots of repeats, and particularly repeats of the name Goopy. It's bad enough when it's just the Gilscarbo dude. It's not a name, it's a nickname, and a derogatory one at that. But I can't pronounce those of the dead Tricous even in my head, and won't pretend to try.

Remember in Sims1, all the tourist names were science fiction authors, but with the first names scrambled? That was cool...

Does anyone have a paddle? This thread is drifting pretty far.

[zumppe]

I actually love the Tricou names, and don't find them difficult at all.

[Yazoo]

Alright, I seriously want to resurrect these people. I have to use the:

boolprop cheat

and go to L/D Tombstone, yes? Because like if I mess this up, and my game goes le boom, I may actually cry.

[sushigal007]

If you want to do it the non-cheaty way, you can send one of the Tricou teens to college and then either steal the Resurrect-O-Nomitron from the Secret Society or graduate, take a job in Paranormal and get it as a career reward. Then you can call Grimmy and get them back. It's longer and way more hard work, but should be fun. It's how I intend to get them back, anyway. ^^

[Fivey]

Alright, I seriously want to resurrect these people. I have to use the:

boolprop cheat

and go to L/D Tombstone, yes? Because like if I mess this up, and my game goes le boom, I may actually cry.

The no-boom version would be making one of the living Tricou bastards playable, having them obtain a Ressurrectothing and have them do the rezzing.

They look like this and come with Downtown. (http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Jon_Smith_Tricou's_Descendants)

They're all pleasure sims, so I doubt you'll have issues playing them.

[Peni Griffin]

Should be more fun, since you get to take the Tricou through college and they're a fun bunch if you let them be. Levera, I believe you need ways and means to liven up your college experience, right? Send the Tricou of your choice to college with Spencer, Aria, etc., make him or her part of their story, and bingo.

[Yazoo]

Well right now, Tricou would have to be down with hanging with the Forsythe kids. Seeing I usually put them all in one place, so I do NOT have to do them individually. And if I think about it. I believe when I was playing Tegan she was dating "Swan Teens", ya see if I knew this sooner...Yeah. It would have happened. I may have to do that, Peni, and see what happens. But as it stands, NONE of the Forsythe family knows of them. So yeah. I'll see if they ever meet up with them again, or hell, just bring them to college and all that jazz, surely they will be way behind, seeing they are now going to be Sophomores

And thank you, sushigal007, I'll keep that in mind. ^.^

So with everything I just said, lol. I think I'll wait for the next generation of Forsythes' and I will add one of them to go with them, and go too College with them :D

Thank you, Fivey, sushigal007, and Peni :D

@Fivey: Do you not like that family or something? o.O

[Allimae]

All my lighting problems disappeared when my old moniter died and I got a new flat screen moniter. That includes the house of fallen trees. I got rid of all the graves so I am no longer troubled by the ghosts. I just sold them. I don't bother with the basement. I just use the house for an ordinary but rich family. I also got rid of the graves at Gothier Geen Lawns to make way for for the graves of my Sims as they die.

[Mootilda]

I got rid of all the graves so I am no longer troubled by the ghosts. I just sold them.Unfortunately, that's a great way to irreversibly corrupt your entire neighborhood:
http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Avoiding_Hood_Corruption

[AlexandraSpears]

If you look at the credits, you'll see that townie names are taken from the names of people who worked on the game. They just stuck their names in the name list.

I've since made my own name template (I prefer NW European, Biblical, and "traditional" names). Once I wound up with a townie named John Wayne...another named Jessica Wakefield (anyone remember Sweet Valley High? LOL).

[fruitsymphony]

Once I wound up with a townie named John Wayne...another named Jessica Wakefield (anyone remember Sweet Valley High? LOL).
My sim just met a random townie, which is called Lisa Simpson. She walked by his house.

[M.M.A.A.]

My sim just met a random townie, which is called Lisa Simpson. She walked by his house.

Was she a child wearing a red dress, short blonde hair, etc...? :p

[sushigal007]

I had a guy called Randy turn up at my strip club. Gave me some good giggles.

[Orilon]

And if we're thinking of the same Randy, he's a Romance Sim so the name is appropriate.


I never have played the House of Fallen Trees, but I have looked at it in build mode. To me it looks like a pain in the butt to play.

The ghosts have never been out when I've sent Sims to Gothier Green lawns, so I can only go off what the Wiki says about cause of death. The elders died of old age, the adults starved to death and the teens died in a fire but it isn't clear if there was one fire or two.

[Gcgb53191]

I somehow missed the graves on that lot and deleted it when I first started my game :/ Ah oh well I love my simmies too much to let them go for now.

[maxon]

@Fivey: Do you not like that family or something? o.O
I think Fivey was just using the B word in its literal sense, i.e. that the off-spring of Jonathon Tricou (or Jon Smith, if you have the American version of the game) were born outside his marriage.

[Yazoo]

@Maxon: That would make sense. Thank you, Maxon ^.^

[Sims2Playerfan]

On the topic of odd townie names, I once had a townie named Suzanne Collin (I think she was a masseuse or however you spell that) Suzanne Collins is the author of the novel The Hunger Games. I don't care for the book much, but I thought the name was pretty funny.

[julmoo]

I think there is no flooring in the kitchen because the teens died in a fire.
So in order to give the kitchen a charred look they left the kitchen flooring out, just pretend it was burnt off

[Lerf1950]

From a quick Google Search Tricou House was also a famous haunted house and bar in New Orleans.

[Mew1210]

Y'know... if you guys don't want to go through the trouble of resurrecting the Tricous, the family is available for download here: http://maxis-taste.livejournal.com/12428.html (Basegame compatible, too~ :D)
I downloaded them, along with a different version of the house, and put them in a custom hood of mine. No resurrection, no illegitimate townies, no ghosts! :D And no Downtown... I don't like Downtown. xD

I really like the Tricous---I think they're interesting. I'm planning on turning some of them into vampires once I get my game back. >:3

[Dagi_is_a_punk]

I think Upsnott is more of a name that is supposed to be meaningful.
As in 'i-have-a-stick-up-my-ass-and-I-am-cooler-than-all-of-you' sortofway.

I personally imagine Brittany to be a spoiled, rich daddy's girl who started running amok upon arriving to college. I even gave her a makeover to match this image - heavy make-up, a big fancy hairdo and a way to openly-cut pink top.

As for the late Tricous, I think I've read somewhere that their names are French.

[nikel23]

I didn't know this, thank you. But some I doubt are EA peeps...Like

Upsnott

I am not too sure that is a EA peep's last name, if so. Ahem, just wow. Or maybe Vyhajaker. o.O
Woah, I guess I was a bit late to keep on commenting, but anyway, I don't think premade playable Sims in TS2 have their names from the staff, and that's what I believe. Because I never (or at least hardly) see any townies that share the same names or surnames with premade Sims, I believe that the premade's names are all made up.

[Ghost sdoj]

The townies I felt sorriest for were Amaya Fuchs and Ivana Fuchs. (Well, them and the Grand Vampire whom I discovered wanted to have 50 Dream Dates, and had never had even one in his whole life. I -had- to make a sim just for him to have Dream Dates with.)

[Peni Griffin]

You're pronouncing that wrong, Ghost! It's German, so the u is what we call a long u in English - it sounds like the sound we usually write "oo". Also, technically, the chs sound should come from a much deeper place in your throat than a cks sound would.

[Gcgb53191]

Do the teens show up as siblings in their family tree/relationship screen? I was thinking about playing them but not all of them.

[Peni Griffin]

That's how my attention was attracted to them in the first place. I sent one of the girls to college, and saw that she had a bunch of dead relatives and five live ones. It seems to me she actually showed a dead parent other than John Smith, but she doesn't now and nobody else ever claims to have seen such a thing, so I must've made it up. They all count as known to each other, too, so once you get one you can reel the rest in.

[DJ.]

Ivana Fuchs.

Sounds familiar... hm.

[Dagi_is_a_punk]

Pronouncing 'Fuchs' is not a problem. Pronouncing the names of the Tricou teens, on the other hand...

[Peni Griffin]

The Tricou teens have different names in every hood...oh, you mean the ghost teens? I expect it all depends on your linguistic background. Gvaudoin is the hardest for my money. I can't even remember most of the others.

[Dagi_is_a_punk]

Yep, I mean the ghost Tricou teens. I'm not familiar with any living Tricous, probably because I don't really care about the townies/premades from Maxis hoods. As for Gvadoin, Firicoth and the rest of the bunch, I think a better question would be what lingistic background their names come from. If their names are Romani, as someone stated earlier, then we'd probably have to follow the pronunciation rules of that ethnic group. However, I've read that Gvaudoin's name is pronounced VOH-DWAN, which follows french pronouncing rules (omitting the 'G' at the beginning and oi pronounced as the semi-vowel 'w').

[fruitsymphony]

Gvaudoin sounds a little like some person in a book by a welsh fantasy writer.
Nylissit sounds like yarn, some soft and light weight kind which is good for scarves. Firicoth sounds like yarn too.

[saskganesh]

That's how my attention was attracted to them in the first place. I sent one of the girls to college, and saw that she had a bunch of dead relatives and five live ones. It seems to me she actually showed a dead parent other than John Smith, but she doesn't now and nobody else ever claims to have seen such a thing, so I must've made it up. They all count as known to each other, too, so once you get one you can reel the rest in.

Pretty much. I had one of them marry in to the game, saw that she had relations, and acted on it. I have since managed to get two of the others spouses, and two more are in now in the game as "roommates" .

The "skater" is the only one still out in the townie cold. He's unfortunately happens to be a vampire at the moment, so it's harder time-wise to get him to visit/on the phone/be a part of the Tricou social group etc (he's only functional 12 hours out of 24).

Anyhow, it's fun getting them set up. One thing I have found is that, initially, they don't really like each other that much! I had to get relations up to 90 for "friend" status to kick in. So it's taken some time. And the vampire skater remains suspicious of the rest.

Interesting family, and probably not a very happy one. We'll see.

[fruitsymphony]

Tricoter means "to knit" in French, so can be associated to yarn, but the Tricou family's Christian names sound like fantasy and Gvadoin sounds a little like Gwydion (is Welsh)
Also Kiernan is a real Irish name, it says here : http://www.thinkbabynames.com/meaning/1/Kiernan

[Amairani]

That's why I shallowed the basement - made the house cheaper, and made it possible to use the basement.



I'd love to know how to do it - I resurrected the Tricous, moved them into House of Fallen Leaves and this time intend on using the basement.. but not if it's so deep!
By using boolProp constrainFloorElevation cheat, all upper floors get risen up too...

[Peni Griffin]

I just put it into Build Mode while it was empty and used the terrain tool to bring it up to a reasonable height bit by bit, then leveled it. The building experts could probably tell you a faster way. I also stripped off all the wallpaper and replaced it with stuff that looked like it had been in an abandoned building for awhile - the Test of Time and Turn Back Time walls found in the Downloads section here were good for that. As shipped, the garage door is also the front door, so that's something to go ahead and change while you're at it.

[Amairani]

I'm redoing the house right now, the garage had to go as I don't use cars anymore, but that basement.... I wish there was a way to rise up the basement with Sims living in the house and not deforming the house itself in the process.. By using the Terrain tool, I can't seem to lower the risen upper floors >_<

[Night Racer]

Constrain floor elevation cheat. Raise the basement up to where you want it, then go up to the effected level, and level it out. I think parts of the porch dont get effected as they are not above the basement, so I drag from there.

[RowenaLupin]

I love the names of the original Tricou family. I always want to play the House of Fallen Trees, but my Downtown is very buggy, and its hard for my computer to handle it. I always imagine a mass murder in the family. To me, one of them went insane, and killed everyone in the house. I've always wanted to resurrect them and use the teens, but I wasn't sure if it was a good idea or not. My game is unstable as it is. I have to back it up constantly.

[Amairani]

Constrain floor elevation cheat. Raise the basement up to where you want it, then go up to the effected level, and level it out. I think parts of the porch dont get effected as they are not above the basement, so I drag from there.

This is it, thank you!! I forgot about the level tool! I just don't build, barely use those tools, almost never, so I forgot what each of them does.

I moved up the bottom of the basement a bit, it's more playable now.

[DJ.]

What about the extremely deep pond in the backyard, with the Grey Lady of SimCity standing on the top of it, supported by the neverending columns of rotten wood?

[maxon]

Ummm - why are you using the constrain floor elevation cheat to raise the floor of the basement? You shouldn't have to do that.

[Firelira78]

I had not given the "House of Fallen Trees" more than a passing glance after installing Nightlife. But this one story got me really interested in the house and the mysterious Tricous.

http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=188142&asset_type=story&user_id=1501957

This is written by a very talented sim author, Candi, who's written a couple of hillarious and popular legacy stories in the past. I think you'd need to read her full stories as some references will be sounding confusing otherwise. Also, I hear the Tricou-Raineele Neengia saga is based on a real haunted house (?)



Abhijeet <---Have no clue what the hell that even means

Or

Ratna

Rat and na. Reminds me of that Ratatouille when he says:

"Ratatouille. It's like a stew, right? Why do they call it that? If you're gonna name a food, you should give it a name that sounds delicious. Ratatouille doesn't sound delicious. It sounds like "rat" and "patootie." Rat-patootie, which does not sound delicious."

Maxis has some sucky names. And it makes you feel sorry for those townies. I mean can you imagine how they were treated in school? Those years must have sucked.

Abhijeet and Ratna are quite common Indian first names. I have a distant aunt who's named Ratna and a cousin named Abhijeet.

Ratna is pronounced more like "rut" + "naa" (though the 't' is pronounced more like the 't' in "birth"). It means a gem or jewel.

Ratna is always a female name. I've yet to come across a male with that name. Maxis always gives this name to males.

I'm not really sure of the full meaning of Abhijeet, though "Jeet" means victory. It must mean victory over something. I have to confirm with my cousin. :p

I guess, it is natural for people unfamiliar with these names, meaning and pronounciation to find them strange or weird. :)

[saskganesh]

To fix my basement, I first saved the game and then I futzed with the raise terrain tool to raise much of the floor and then levelled it. I was only able to raise part of the basement as I was also concerned about distorting the rest of the house/lawn.

Then I picked some stone flagstones and applied it. My rig froze for several very long seconds, and then *snap!* --- the entire basement was raised to the appropriate level, and covered with the flagstone pattern. The walls were as well. It came out looking great.

It was very cool. I celebrated by placing two more coffins, bringing my total to six.

Edit: I got rid of the garage as well, but kept the long driveway.

Edit2: I finally got vampire/skater playable. The Six are all now in game. Interestingly, four of them want to be crime lords... I guess it's the family business.

[DJ.]

Firelira78, that story was breathtaking. Seriously. I've just finished moving all the Tricou graves to Gothier Greens, raising the basement and the pond. Now I feel bad for it. Oh, whatever. But this was amazing. Thanks for the link!