Mack Stone, Private Eye

This catches me up to what I have so far.

Unfortunately, this is Mack Stone, Private Eye, with my original default skin replacement which is not as detailed as the one I'm now using. I've also changed from EA's eyes to a new custom content default replacement. So far I haven't made it back to Mack's house to see how the new eyes look, but they're quite nice on Gage Ward so I have high-hopes for Mack.

And lastly, I've been working with my graphic settings. I have an older machine and I've been tweaking with the settings ever since I got the game trying to find the best of all worlds. Over the weekend I tried one last thing, turn smooth edges off and turn up everything else to high, and this finally worked. Smooth running game that looks good with nice reflections and good detail. About damn time. Despite what EA says, this is not a game that's easy to run on an older system with a low-end graphics card. But with messing around with it, I think I finally have something that will make nice looking pictures. But those pictures will be future ones, not these.

I can put Mack in any clothes I want to do his work in, except when he's looking for clues, doing a stakeout, digging through trash, or dusting for prints, then he'll change into the default PI clothing, which now that he's at level 10 in the Profession is different from this one. This is the mid-level clothing. The low-level clothing looks like something a two-bit cheap detective would wear.

Mack in the pool with his son, Walter, fishing. Yes, Walter's a bit odd, but he is a really cool kid, he's made about level five of the invention skill. Mack is married to Julienne Knack from a default family in Twinbrook. They also live in the family home; early on I kicked the parents out. Mack lucked out, he was really struggling before he met Julienne, now he's considered rich, and he is.

Mack after his swim and my first real look at his new skin that I'm now using and probably won't change. I haven't changed his eyes yet at this point, but with the sunglasses you don't know that. I was really floored when I saw this, I thought, "Oh, my God, a TS3 hunk." Now he really does look like Mack Stone, Private Dick, er, Eye.

Unfortunately, I don't seem to have any pictures of Julienne, but since she was from a default family in the Ambitions neighborhood, probably not that necessary. However, I really hated the Sim, she annoyed the hell out of me. Since the only death I'd ever seen in TS3 was the aborted death of Gage Ward, I decided to kill her off and make me happy and find Mack someone worthy of him.

So, first try, Mummy's Curse. Thought that would be cool, so I shipped her off to Egypt by herself, found a sarcophagus that according to Carl's Sims 3 Guide could contain a mummy and had her open it, twice. Then remembered I'd replaced her snob trait with lucky. I doubt she'd ever find a mummy with that. So, I tried to fry her with a fire trap. Although she stepped on it an fried, she didn't die and refused to step on it again.

O-kay. When that didn't work, I set her on the far side of island to starve. That didn't work, she was shipped back home at midnight of the third day hungry, stinky and tired, but alive.

Now it was war to kill the bitch. So, I walled her up in a small room at the back of the lot with a fireplace. I'd read this would be a sure-fire (pun intended) way of killing her by fire. First day, nothing so I stuck curtains in, when that failed I added a rug. By the second day I was slapping myself on the head because I'd forgotten I gave Mack the Lifetime Reward to fireproof the house.

Last resort, ignore her and let her starve to death. It seemed to take forever, I was just about to give up and save and close down the game and try again the next day when I got notice that the Grim Reaper was coming for a family member and did I really want to close down. Of course not, I'd been waiting all evening for this.

Julienne pleaded, but...

The Grim Reaper was of the same opinion as I was, no way in hell.

So, I followed the Reaper...

Through the kitchen (walls are down)...

Down the basement stairs...

Into Mack's office...

He was on the computer no more than a second - must have tweeted her death to the Underworld blog page.

Okay, yeah, I broke Mack's heart, but his stats never fell out of high green plumb-bob.

Do I feel bad?

A little, but not enough to bring her back in any way, shape or form, and it was cool to see how EA handles death these days. Besides, Julienne is still hanging around, I have some new pictures to add when I get back to the family.

Later...

(The Sims Wikia.com page for the Knack Family)