This 'hood, as the thread's title implies, is a recreation of one I made 10 years ago! Back in 2011 when I was gifted a laptop for my 13th birthday, I took it upon myself to install my copy of TS2 and the EPs and SPs I owned one by one so that I could get a chance to play with them a bit more in-depth than I did on the family desktop at the time (where I had installed everything I got immediately from about 2008 until then). This 'hood quickly became my go-to place to play, outpacing the then record holder of Pleasantview by a landslide. It also helped that in the summer of 2011 when I made the 'hood, my cousin was staying with us from Georgia, so I had someone to bounce ideas off of and relay this story to a bit. (She, however, was playing on her laptop in Belladonna Cove with some sims she made.)
After that summer, this became the go to neighborhood for me. Wanted to play more of this convoluted story? Wanted to test mods? I booted up TS2 and went on down to Crystal Valley! Sadly it went by the wayside around 2013/2014 as I didn't take backing up seriously then. I used the name only to make a new neighborhood in 2015, but it wasn't a true recreation. Realizing that in 2021 it had been 10 years since I had created it, I figured now was as good a time as any to make this 'hood again! (Giving it some cosmetic updates that my 13 year old self wouldn't have done, like using defaults, and not including the premade bin sims because I have since learned how to stop them from being created.)
Now, it would be a shame if I let my recreation efforts end with just an overview shot, right? Right! So over the next several weeks (I'd say days, but I'll be busy and I don't want to spam ), I'll be posting more about this 'hood! Talking about the different little districts, whose lots I used in this 'hood, what "styles" I was going for in my own builds, and of course, details about the sims that live there!
I should make a little content warning ahead of the posts about the families. There's nothing uber spicy (this is a recreation of a neighborhood I made at 13 after all), but it's really just about same-sex pregnancies? Fitting for this forum's name, this is where I tested out the boolprop testingcheatsenabled true and used the Tombstone of Life and Death to simulate genetic mergers, and two of the households storylines revolve around that. I also dabbled with InTeen in the 'hood back then, which was active in the recreation process, but not actively used outside of spawning sim's biological clocks. Hell, the household I used for that I didn't recreate 100% faithfully, and made it make a bit more sense storywise. (Even then it's not a major part of the Crystal Valley narrative, but rather a creative way to callback to that original household of tester sims.) Again, nothing too terribly offensive, but could be some rather crunchy bits for others that I wanted to give a quick heads up for.
The first street we'll be heading to is Crystal Lane! It's where the first families I made were located, so it's only natural to start there. Not every family will be on that post, seeing as there's four households (Baker, Waters, Lopez, and Rizzo) on the street. The Baker's will be first!
With that said, this ends my introductory post! I hope you all are excited to hear my ramblings, or at the very least let me pretend I'm not talking to myself about this.