@Victor_tor Damn, sorry about that. Do you mean that you can see the album pictures but not the text, or can you not open the neighborhood story album at all?

I can see a lot of snapshots in Storytelling folder. I can open this folder in game using album edit button. However there are no pages and I have message that album is not created yet.

@Victor_tor Oh ok, that's weird, I'm not sure why that is. And I can't seem to find where the neighborhood album is in SimPE...
You're not losing out on too much because the bulk of the album is just the family bios that you should already be able to read when you select a household from neighborhood view, but still, it's annoying. Is your game in a language different than English? Maybe it has something to do with that.
I'm going to add screenshots of the neighborhood album to this page so at least there is access to it here.

Oh. That was on purpouse.
Yeah my game language is not English. But that does mean nothing if your empty neighborhood album was not created at all.

I decided to watch the play order from your list in this thread. From phone. It helps. One thing I can't relate is... actually... the play order itself. I mean. In Sims 2 Pleasantview it makes sense because each family has some scripts inside it. Once you enter families first time you could see necessary persons in welcome wagon. For examply Don will always has Caliente Sisters in it which will cause public drama, and Goth family will always has Don.
In your savefile... well... it has been played for a while. Troddens family starts at noon. I did not see any welcome wagon. I did not see Mr Humble. No garden club members. Even no gipsy matchmaker. So... What's the goal for play order then? Tell me please.
Regards Vic ^_^

@Victor_tor Yeah, you’re probably right about the album. My thinking was that in the same way that the game doesn’t keep the sims’ original names unless they’re set as “default language only” in simPE, maybe it also refuses to show the neighborhood album in a non-English game unless it’s set as “default language only”. But if you're not even seeing the pictures, I don't know. Do the households’ photo albums show up properly for you by the way? They’re not meant to have any text, just pictures.

There are purposefully no welcome wagons greeting the families because these households didn't just move in, even the Park household has been there for at least a day since Ye-Joon has already earned his first simoleon and met Seamus Cleary. So *technically*, all the families just moved in on clean lots, but everything is set up so it feels like they've lived for the amount of time that makes sense with the stories in their bios and photo albums.

The reasoning for the play order is this:
1) The Troddens are the oldest and most powerful family in the neighborhood, might as well get to know them first. Their tightest links are with the Landstroms and the Godiros.
2)The Landstroms are among the oldest families that have settled in Oaken Valley after the Troddens, they are quite traditional and bear a grudge against Berenice Trodden for her relationship with fun-loving Leila, and they dislike Leila herself. Agneta used to be the girlfriend of deceased Irina Godiro before she left her and got married to Mike.
3) The Godiros are also among the oldest families in OV, and have history both with the Trodden and the Landstroms. The household is doing terribly after the suspicious deaths of Irina and Mike.
4) The Harveys. Linking back to the Troddens, Paige got to be the owner of OV's gym thanks to Berenice's father and his vision for the town's development. That's really the only link. Playing them right after the "big three" (Trodden-Landstrom-Godiro) isn't that important. Their strongest link is with Claire's "mysterious" father, but I purposefully didn't put them right after or before him to keep some mystery alive.
5) The Jansens have a strong link with the Hoangs.
6) The Hoangs have a strong link with the Jansens, and should best be played right after the Jansens.
7) The Trawallys. In my mind, they have a potential link with Sylvia Jansen for political reasons: Aisha Trawally has the ambition to challenge the Trodden rule and she opposes the economic development strategy of Berenice's father. Unlike him, she is all about local businesses. You'll notice that the description of OV's clothing store says that it's a big brand that mass produces clothing and the town could use the services of a tailor. Sylvia Jansen is great at sewing, and although she's been a housewife so far, her husband Markus was just fired from his job. Now could be the time for Sylvia to open her own hand-made clothing store and make a living in that way. In my mind, she could seek Aisha Trawally's financial help: Aisha could see this as beneficial for her too as it would mean actually executing on her professed ideas for strong local businesses in a way that would make her more popular with the people of Oaken Valley.
The Trawallys' strongest links are with the Troddens (political rivalry) and with the Millers (whose land they want).
8) The Millers. Kenneth feels pressured by the Trawallys, and his bio suggests that he might want to give shelter to the homeless Runaways, or at least one of them, in exchange for their help with farm work.
9) The Runaways. They have that potential link with Kenneth Miller, who is already their friend.
10) Park. Again, in my mind, a potential politically-motivated friendship with Aisha Trawally, since Ye-Joon is a small business. He also has a requited crush on Seamus Cleary.
11) Cleary. Requited crush on Ye-Joon Park, *spoilers* a link with the Harveys and *spoilers* strong links with the Godiros.

Playing the households in the recommended order isn't super important, for the most part, since there are many links between all the families and therefore no single storyline that any single play order could follow perfectly. All the storylines are meant to play out over several rotations. I didn't even mention the potential links between Aisha Trawally and the reconstruction of Godiro Electronics (another local business), or the more prominent townies that have a role in some of the playables' lives.

Now that you mention it though, maybe I should have had specific sims pass by certain lots right after the player presses play. It would have made some of the relationships between the sims more obvious from the start. I didn’t think of doing it but I should have, thanks for the idea

Do as you wish. Guess I won't download those new version with after pause meetings because I found my way around it with invite enemies by another family members who are not enemies with them. This is kinda neat because all of your families seems to have same person as friend and enemy.
Seriously, it's hard to play all households in order. I find some of them interesting but some of them not.

Troddens are having a big might and I found they had a good relationships with Godiros back in a days. All your story pre-setted with Godiros being in slightly bad relationships was burn to hell once Emmeline met Bernice in Godiro's store and they were chirping like old friends until become friends! However Emmeline still dislike Leyla. Probably because she thinks Leyla pushed Berenice to become... Lesbian Troddens has their family wealthy. They has a really good house. So actually there was no point for me to be in there more than just explore the community and leave in two days.

I did not understood why Henry Landstorm relationships with Emmeline are so low and why they are enemies. There is no any single word for him to be so cruel to her. Dahlia has much better relationships with her and Agneta that makes sence after the accident. I guess her good relationships caused Agneta met Irina back in days. Even her daughter was into a girle she dislike Leyla for sone reason. And I was like what? She dislikes her... For what? For being lesbian? I played with them a bit and switched to next family in search of roots for drama.

Despite Godiro is looking like villains family for me I really interested with them because Emmeline in her ages will be probably dead in few days. And whole family of four children will be left just with 50 bucks. Their store is awesome, thoughit it looks more like cracked rather then burnt with their finances it is not one-day task to repair it. And I found again those mood from Emmeline against Leyla. She repaired her relationships with Berenice fast and they even end up as BF. But all mood smells like something about all old farts of oaken valley were rised against one single target and... And all the enviroment of this old village makes me think all of oldies to burn leyla like a witch. Godiros has their whole life more challenging and has more their goals to achieve. They need a better house. And first thing they need to be honest is move out. I'll spend a little bit much with them.

UPD: i had few wall hangings in houses to show up full black. What mod do you use to reduce those black?
Regards Vic

@Victor_tor There is no controversy around Berenice and Leila being in a same-sex relationship. I made clear in the bios than the problem comes from the fact that the old families dislike Leila as a partner for the mayor because she's "not serious enough" for their taste, not because she's a woman. Previous mayors had partners who were invested in the town's development and did a lot for Oaken Valley (Luca Trodden basically built the old town from scratch, Lewis Trodden supervised the construction of more homes, a supermarket, a clothing store, a swimming pool, a gym). By contrast, Leila has no interest in any of that, she just wants to live her life and be happy with her kid. The old families are scared that Berenice and Leila won't be able to live up to the high standards set by the previous generations and that the town won't ever achieve prosperity because of their incompetence.
In your game, it sounds like Emmeline remembered the old days, before she started becoming distrustful of Berenice, and they were able to start over on good terms. That's great for them, definitely a valid scenario in my mind.

Don't feel forced to play all the households, I don't expect all of them to resonate with everyone. The recommended play order is just that, a recommendation if you don't know where to start, but the whole town is your sandbox to play with as you wish of course. I'm glad you like the Godiros though, I too like the idea of the children having to fend for themselves when Emmeline dies.

I'm sorry about the black wall hangings, they all looked fine in my game without mods. Sounds like a lighting problem, try moving them up and down the wall with [ and ], there should be a point where they appear normal.

Oh thanks for make it clear. If Leyla has a low payout at her job, that does not mean she deserves baycotting. You description was made me clear. I think to make worthy input she needs to start her own business. If that would ever help to prove her point LoL. But with money from Berenice, this is the only thought came to my mind.

Please make me clear about relationships between Landstroms and Godiros. I don't understand it clear and was editting my previous post when you answered.

@Victor_tor The Landstrom and Godiro couples came to Oaken Valley around the same time, before they had their daughters. You can see them with the Troddens at that period in the neighborhood album. Emmeline Godiro and Dahlia Landstrom have always gotten along very well, they quickly became best friends. As you saw however, Emmeline and Herman Landstrom hate each other. Honestly, the reason for that is that Emmeline was super mean to Herman when I introduced them to the town (I played them at that time so I could get to know them, take screenshots and let memories generate organically). Herman was just minding his own business but Emmeline would autonomously pester him, and it escalated to the point where they would fight. I think it might just have started with them having diverging interests and having a few bad conversations, and then Emmeline being grouchy. In my mind, on top of them having incompatible personalities, Emmeline hates Herman because he cheats on Dahlia with Aayushi. She thinks Dahlia deserves much better than him.
The dynamic between Dahlia, Herman and Aayushi is something that the game doesn't allow, at least not without mods. The way I see it, Dahlia knows that Herman is seeing another woman. Herman has told her about it and confessed that as a romance sim, he feels unhappy in a strictly monogamous partnership. After that conversation, Dahlia, Herman and Aayushi made an arrangement where all parties consented that Dahlia and Herman would stay together as a couple, because they do love each other, but Herman and Aayushi would sometimes also see each other and do romance sims things together. This is all hinted at in their bios. Then of course, in an unmodded game, if you have Dahlia see Herman and Aayushi together, Dahlia is going to be furious, but that's just game behavior that I can't help. Ideally, you want ACR or some other mod to disable jealousy between these three sims.
So as I said, that three-way relationship is perfectly consensual, but Emmeline doesn't want to understand that and just sees Herman as a scumbag, hence her disdain for him. Or that's how it goes in my head at least, other interpretations are of course possible.

Also about the Landstroms and the Godiros, they had their daughters Agneta and Irina around the same time. The girls grew up together and became inseparable. I didn't really intend for a relationship between them to happen because I was already thinking of Irina marrying Mike, having four children with him and dying at the store. But when they were teens, Irina and Agneta actually had attraction toward each other! They started rolling wants and I eventually had them go steady. It broke my heart to have Irina break up with Agneta at the end of their teenage years but it had to be done for the story to unfold (and it's pretty realistic for a teenage romance not to continue into adulthood, especially if Irina was going off to college and Agneta wasn't). And also, it made it so revenge-seeking Agneta could become a suspect in the "accidental deaths" of Mike and Irina later on. I hinted at that in Agneta's bio but maybe it was a bit too light-handed, I'm not sure if it came through.

That's the rundown of the relationship between the two families. If you look into the family albums and the bios, you should find corroborating elements. It hope it makes sense

OMG. I see. That means that Emelline is protecting her BFF. I appreciate that. Game mechanics are very hmm... soapy... with their relationship system and finish this protecting by becoming worst enemies and fighting each other every single time. Is a little bit. Too much.
Anyways I passed through merely three families who has a veeery tight relationships. This even could be realistic if I ever have been such a BFF like Emelline. I mean. I could have say that this realistic. If I ever could have such protector. LoL Such behaviour is very heart warming.

@Victor_tor Yeah, Emmeline is quite the character, I like her a lot despite her flaws

This neighborhood is such a great work, so thank you for making it, im having fun to play

I've had at the beginning a few problems, but for now, everything is okay. Of course i can't tell enough, since many of us using a lot of mods in this game, this can cause unwanted problems. In my case, it was the completely storytelling album gone, but i rewrote everything and now is fine. Now, the second problem was, all the urns and tombstones was gone somehow, but i've decided, okay, i resurrect all of them and put them again to rest in the graveyard lot. Starting with the Trodden family, resurrected all of them, then let them go from old age, i've made Carmen an elder too. Then, sent them all to the cemetery.. and when i was going there to put them to rest, everyone was on his place already placed as it should be? Just wanted to tell you, if someone may have the same problem as i've had, maybe can use the same method, as i did.

Thank you again for this wonderful city.

@kaligi Hello and thank you for your kind words, I'm glad you're having fun
You're not the only one who has had the storytelling album disappear, I'm sorry about that. I'm still not sure what I can do to keep that from happening but I do want to fix it for future downloaders. The album appears as it should when I install the neighborhood in my game. Is your game in English or another language? I suspect that might have something to do with it.
It sucks that your tombstones disappeared. I've never had the issue, and I don't believe I can do anything on my end to prevent that but Victor_tor did have disappearing graves as well and they found a fix for it detailed in this post: https://forums.thesims.com/en_us/di...gravestones-fix. You can download the FFS Lot Debugger here if you don't already have it: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...topic,72.0.html. Hopefully you won't need to use that fix but if your tombstones go missing again it should be less trouble than resurrecting the sims.

You welcome. By such a great, detailed work, outworked texts, details, you deserve a BIG thank you, sorry, im just thankful, you did a perfect job ..in my opinion.

I fixed it so, that i was searching for the exact pictures in the album and all texts copied out from here, it was about a 30 minutes job, not bad at all, im happy if i have something to do. And here comes the surprise, all my other neighborhoods having the same issue too, but honestly, i don't care too much if i have to work and rewrite everything by myself. also the Maxis NH's are problematic ..as you see im taking this whole thing with humor. Im playing this game since the beginnings, im a big fan, honestly, my fav game :D

The mods and fixes you listed here, thank you, but i have them all already. If i have to resurrect all the dead sims, im gonna do it and let them go again, since they're already "gone" in the storylines. ..apropos FFS debugger, i've tried that solution too, but not helped at all (maybe others will help though, i don't know), resurrection did help in my case. Im sure this problem comes not with your neighborhood, im playing in english, but im from Europe. Mostly when im having issues in the game, im trying first to solve them myself.

Your fantasy might be very rich, yay .. your skills are imo another level and it's good to read all the stories you wrote to the sims. Such great tragic happened to some of them, i felt deeply with them. There is two families with such great tragedies and im sympathising with both of them.. but the most with the family, who lost their daughter through illness, it touched me on a very deep level. I've lost three of my siblings at a young age.. although life has to go on again from a certain level and time in real life too, you'll never forget those you've lost.

This game is very special to me, because of personal reasons.

@kaligi
I'm so glad that you find comfort in playing this game and in the storytelling it allows for.
Before posting this neighborhood, I was worried that the storyline of the Jansens losing their daughter might be too heavy, especially for people who've actually experienced the loss of a close family member, and so I'm happy beyond words that their story touched you in a good way.
This game can be very powerful ^^
We're so lucky that we can still play it after all these years, thanks to all the amazing modders and programmers of the community. May we play on for many years to come ~

Im happy you tell the way you tell these words, because on a personal level, everyone deals differently with such a situation, this is true. I've learned on my way to deal with it and accepted how it is. Many people can't accept death as it is, but it's doesn't mean at all nothing bad,( i mean dealing with it), just take their own time in the process. This is a hard process on us all and everyone cope with the same situation differently. I found my way out of darkness and live my life the fullest possibly i can. Yes, stories like this, although, they're happening in a virtual world, are very touching and im sure your imagination is also something what very important to be able to tell those stories. It's personal and let us players to catch a little moment, how do you feel. It's perfect, because this line you wrote let's me not losing reality while im playing the game. And this is also a very good thing, especially nowadays.

P.S: i've almost forget to mention, true, without modders in our community, would be this game not the same, so, im thanking also our modder community, they also deserve a big hug.

This is such a great neighborhood! I've been getting back into Sims 2, and I've been having a lot of fun playing these families rotationally! Thank you so much for sharing, I'm so glad people are still creating amazing things for this game. <3

thank you

I've been playing around on this neighborhood for a little while and I can't express how well made it is! I love the Maxis neighborhoods for the stories they contain and the premise of this one is so rich and intriguing. I haven't been able to find out what really happened in this town yet but I'm having so much fun just exploring it and getting to know its sims.

I especially like what the small details bring to the gameplay. When I played Godiros I made Emmeline and her grandson Noah go to the store to fix it up and Noah (understandably) threw a tantrum in front of the customers because of his low aspiration. Details like that have really added a lot to how things play out. Can't wait to play each household through a couple more rotations and see where they end up.

Thank you for sharing it!

I know this hood is almost a year old now, but I've recently been playing it and I love it so much. Emmeline recently passed on, and I somehow managed to get her to Platinum before she did so, so she left a small chunk of money to her grandkids which will be so helpful for them now that they are on their own. Markus & Sylvia not only successfully resurrected Mina, they also had another baby. Claudia still lives with them and they are one big happy family now. Berenice & Leyla got married and had a successful wedding party. Dahlia reached her lifetime want and Herman has almost reached his, surprisingly. Paige loves running her gym business and Claire has grown up to a happy toddler. I can't wait to see how things continue to play out and how these sims will continue to grow. Thank you for this beautiful hood. <3

I really appreciate the number of community lots!