Luminor

Main blog: @simagrees Sims 2 shenanigans, but medieval.

[medieval-simagrees]

Welcome to Luminor

Luminor is my Sims 2 Build a City Challenge, but I decided to make it medieval to spice things up. I'm also incorporating some elements from the MCC and @tedsies Medieval Challenge.

We start with 12 founders, who will have to build the whole kingdom from the ground up.

My goal here is to mix gameplay and storytelling. The world of Luminor is inspired from my love for adventure games, mainly the Legend of Zelda and Dragon Quest. So even though I call it medieval, it's actually fantasy, so do not expect any historical accuracy.

But both licenses have disappointed me in terms of storytelling lately, so I am channeling my frustration into fuel for inspiration!

I also wanted it to look bright and colorful, to capture that Dragon Quest experience where everything looks cute and cosy and suddenly lots of people start dying...

Navigation

Read from the start - Latest Post

Year 1 : Spring - Summer - Autumn

Rules

Characters

CC finds

[yoursingrey]

Class-based Want Disablers

Something a little different this time: want disabling mods. I made these for my own game after getting unreasonable wants (for instance peasants wanting to hire their liege lords as their employees) that I found immersion breaking and figured some of you might be interested. Pictured above are my gentry family's servants for illustration purposes. The following traits ( peasant, yeoman, servant and outcast) will not be rolling the following wants: hire butler, hire maid, hire business employee, hire nanny, do homework, learn to study. Special thanks to @heathensimmer for showing me how to disable wants. I did test these briefly, but if any issues arise do let me know, as I am fairly new to the modding scene.

[medieval-simagrees]

Ginny is so cute, it's time for a little pics spam!

I know her dress is not right for the time period, but her mom is a seamstress so she gets to have nice clothes. And she gets to wear the Cotura purple

I also installed the light palm overlay in my game, it looks so much better 😍

Ginny is totally going to be a daddy's girl lol.

She looks a lot like her dad too, I think she inherited her mom's face shape, but her features are all Tristan.

Her personality however is very similar to Cecil's, except for her 8 active points that she definitely got from her dad.

[yoursingrey]

Tip Jar

Next up is the tip jar, another object that hasn't had many medieval default replacement options over the years. This default uses a mesh from KCD2. It is 403 polygons and uses a single 512×512 texture.

[medieval-simagrees]

Surviving through many hardships had taught Cecil that the small moments deserved to be celebrated, even more so in times of sadness. Life had to continue. This house needed a little bit a joy, and some comforting food. Thus, trying her best to remember Lori's teaching, Cecil got to work to bake the sweetest cake she knew how to make.

Today was little Ginny birthday. Cecil brought her proudly to the cake, although a bit emotional a the thought of her growing up so fast. Soon, she would no longer fit in her arms like this.

Ginny van Orfen was now a toddler. And in the backyard, her birth tree also got bigger.

Just for info, I will not be rolling for death at each birthday. So once a baby survives childbirth, they're allowed to grow up.

Unless, you know, someone trades their soul to save someone else.

[yoursingrey]

Water balloon rotten apple default

Another medieval default no one asked for. I've long dreaded the default water balloons, as there have been very few period-friendly alternatives. So I decided to replace them with rotten apples instead.

My first thought was to use a mesh from KCD2, but since this accessory requires morphs, I instead modified misaki0218's tomato default by removing the sepal to make it resemble an apple. I then retextured it using free textures from Sketchfab and TextureCan, resized the mesh, and adjusted the CRES so it sits naturally in the Sim's palm. Poly-count lowered from the original 721 to 381. Texture size is 512x512.

Unfortunately—and I have no idea how to fix this—the original colorful balloons will sometimes still appear when the water balloons burst. As far as I can tell, this seems to be an issue shared by all existing water balloon defaults.

Credits to misaki0218 for the original mesh, and to the creators of the textures used.

[medieval-simagrees]

Carlisle felt quite distressed about raising her boy all alone. What if she couldn't provide for him? What if they ended up poor, and starving?

The fear was mostly irrational, she knew it deep down. Maes did leave them with a sizable amount of savings. Plus she could always count on Cecil and her husband for help. But in her bones, she felt like her life had been destroyed once again, and she had to start all over from scratch.

[freezerbunny-sims2]

Download: Castaway Stories UI maps on Butterfly Crawler (recolors)

Includes marked and blank versions from Story Mode and Freeplay Mode.

Download (Google Drive)

[medieval-simagrees]

Before leaving in exile, Maes had one last mission to fulfill: planting a tree in honor of his son's birth. The custom came from Carlisle's birth-town, but he was happy to participate. At least, he could leave his son with something, a tangible proof of the love he'd never be able to express. He hoped that Cedric would grow into a tall and strong man, even if he wasn't there to guide him.

And then, he was gone.

Since Maes is now persona non grata in town, him and Carlisle are officially divorced.

[medieval-simagrees]

As tired as she was, Lori was happy to get back into business. Life was carrying on, and she was starting to feel it. People needed her after all, like the masonry workers in search of a warm meal after a long day of physical labor.

And soon, she was pleasantly surprised to get her doubts confirmed when her belly suddenly expanded.

She immediately called out for Nuz, and they embraced each other with relief.

Of course, a new baby would not erase the loss of Mari, nothing ever would. But for the first time in a while, they could allow themselves to feel hopeful again.

[medieval-simagrees]

Even though she shared a kiss with Gladius, Shea the peasant did not shy from flirting with other men, especially when she knew Gladius was looking. Perhaps, in another time,he would have been bothered, but all Gladius could think about was how this girl had nothing on Isobel.

[alderlock]

Homecrafting Time!

This time is a terrain paint! I want to have flowery one and found it on Pinterest, also found the rocky steps to go with it ^^

Swatch:

Flowery Moss and Rocky Grass

Credits to: Pinterest, Adobe Photoshop, Homecrafting

[medieval-simagrees]

The next addition to the village will be Gladius' cottage.

Eventually he will also own a community lot forge, but for now the priority is building residential lots.

I have changed the rules for how I add lots to the hood. Instead of waiting a certain number of days to pretend that a building is under construction, I will have the Free Mason gather/craft specific materials. Once he has all of them, the lot is finished (and he can get paid by deleting those materials).

That way playing with the Mason will be more interesting with an actual goal, rather than just having them randomly chop trees to stay occupied lol. And the more employees he recruits, the faster they will be able to build the town!

I won't bore you will all the details, but the way I determine this is by building the lot first. Then I created a little chart on Excel to determine which items are needed based on the materials used for the roof, the walls, etc. The quantity is also determined by the number of levels and the total price of the lot.

And I get to create cute teasers like this for you!

Okay this is mostly for myself, I am having so much fun 😂

[medieval-simagrees]

Elias kept his promise to look after the Mason business. The town still needed to be built after all.

He made a point to introduce himself to Maes' former employees, Gale and Johun and guaranteed them that they would keep their jobs and their wages.

The workers were relieved to learn that they would keep their positions and immediately went back to cutting stones for the next house to build.

Meanwhile, Elias sold some of the surplus wood to those making their preparations for winter.

[medieval-simagrees]

Calendar & Aging

I have decided to change how I handle aging and keeping track of time in Luminor.

7 days seasons

I've been experimenting with different number of days for each season/rotation. And for now I feel like playing 7 days seasons, because I like the idea of having a set weekday for stuff like market days, festivals, taxes, etc.

Now, playing 7 days in a row with the same household might be too long, so I think I will split it up in 2 rounds of 3 days. And if the seventh day is a festival, I can play it through the POV of a single household if everyone is supposed to be at the same place that day.

Shorter lifespan

I am ready to let go of my long lifespan because I want to progress through the generations! From now on, one day will count as one year. Since each year will now be 28 days long, one year will also coincide with one generation. Each life stage will now roughly last one week:

infant (2 days) + toddler (5 days) : 0 to 7 years old

child (7 days) : 7 to 14 years old

teen (14 days) : 14 to 28 years old (teens are considered YA in this world)

adult (28 days) : 28 to 56 years old

elder (10 to 28 days) : 56 to 84 years old max

I realize that this is basically the vanilla lifespan lol, but I like it because Sims will always age up on the same weekday, and they become an adult on the actual day that they were born

Of course, since I was playing the Founders on a much longer lifespan, their lives are just getting started (half of them are not even married yet!), so I will give them back the full 28 days. We can pretend that they were young adults when they first arrived.

And also, I give up on keeping track of the "realistic" years that I used to put on the headers. It doesn't impact the story anyway.

[hazelpuff]

More requested 4t2 hair conversions are here!

‘Beverly V1’ by Simstrouble (cf-ef, ~13k poly) >DL<

’Max braids’ by Dogsill (cf-ef, ~4k poly) >DL<

’Sinclair’ by tricoufamily (pm-em, ~7k poly) >DL<

'Viking' by RavenSim (tf-ef, 12k poly) >DL<

credits: Simstrouble, Dogsill, tricoufamily, RavenSim

It's actually 3 requested hairs + 1 that I wanted to convert to acompany the other braid hairstyle that I was about to convert :D. The 3rd hair doesn't have hairline texture on the mesh so in the previews I used >these< masks. I also only did only this one recolor with the differently-coloured strand.

Sorry if the previews are a little too busy with different backgrounds and such :'D.

[medieval-simagrees]

Welcome to Luminor 2.0

Surprise!

I have decided the change the map for Luminor, with one of my favorite custom maps from MTS. I think it gives off mystical fantasy land vibes.

I had picked the original map thinking that I would build the entire kingdom in the same hood. But then I got tired of staring at empty roads.

Thus, this part of the map will now be known as Founders Village. I want it to remain a place mostly for farmers, and it will keep a coherent aesthetic with timber houses and thatched roofs. Once we run out of space, I will add a sub-hood or downtown to build a proper city with a grand castle and all.

I also made a little map with all the lots we have so far.

I blatantly stole this idea from @tedsies, the maps he makes for his hoods are so cute

As you can see will still have a lot of space to grow!

It might look a little weird to have my swimable pond right next to the hood lake, but I didn't want to fiddle with the terrain to allow space for a beach. Maybe I'll do it eventually, but for now it's good enough.

The mines are also a new addition, you haven't seen them yet. But it's literally just an empty lot with a bunch of rocks.

I'm also thinking of turning Elias' retreat into a community lot. It would be fun to build an altar to the goddess on it, for future generations to go on pilgrimage of sorts.