Behind the Scenes: Belladonna Cove | Season 2, Episode 3.3

Sally and Etsu playing a game of soccer.

I had a sudden realisation while I was editing this episode – and it took a while to edit this one because I had over an hour and twenty minutes of footage to work through. At one point, I was watching footage where I was going over little Maxx’s interests and personality, but while I was listening to myself speak, my eyes drifted over to his lifespan.

I then realised that the puppy wasn’t aging. Maxx was going to age up in four days, but Vivian and Timothy had adopted him late Friday night in the first season. His age wasn’t correct. So, I did some digging and then some Googling, and I found out that the Individual Aging Controller by Monique was giving me the non-aging issue for the puppy. For now, it's out of my downloads folder, but I'll look into it again later.

Since there was a lot more footage to work through, especially compared to the last few episodes (they all ended up with about 40 minutes of footage), I needed more time to finalise the episode. Which meant that I had more time to analyse what I had done, and so I realised the following: I need to pause more when I’m playing with a household that has at least four members.

A sim day passes quickly. So, if I get distracted and only focus on one sim, I won’t have enough time with the other sims in the household. I feel that I spent way too much time trying to get Jessica and Vivian to bond, to become friends. I gave Jessica and Carlos too much time. I can work with what they were doing – being polite to each other, Carlos walking away from Jessica, Jessica throwing up and then avoiding everyone – but they’re not the focus. The Riley family is the focus. 

I want to try my best to keep my eye on the time. Everyone in the household has a story. I want to explore them, develop their personalities. But of course, there’s only so much time in a sim day. If there’s not enough time for certain events, then that’s that. I don’t want to get worked up about this, but I do always want to improve.