@lanlyn I'm glad you got to enjoy the videos.
I think the reason my sims are always so happy is I always try to give them maximum environment points in most of the rooms in their houses, and I give them expensive appliances. Not always the most expensive, but good enough with high values for the needs they use them to satisfy.
Spoiling the sims is just a fun way of turning the game into something enjoyable rather than a constant struggle for survival. I remember the early days of playing when things were not so calm and under control.
Birthdays are a bit of a problem at the moment. They are happening now because, in the earlier episodes of Perfect Genetics I ignored the need to keep sims aging up and moving out, so I ended up with a massively overstuffed house and a lot of very young sims that have to grow up fast to make the challenge move along. I could just evict them all to the clipboard or something, but I would prefer to keep them in the game and available to visit.
I became determined to age that little toddler up no matter what, but I was beginning to despair of it happening at all. That's why I made a record of all of the numbers of his facial features. I thought, if I had to reset him again and turn him into a generic sim, then I could take him into CAS and fix his face and hair to make him look as he should. Fortunately, that wasn't necessary, but I did discover that the pair of them have identical facial features. It is just their gender and hair colours that differ.
I pre-ordered Sims 4 and still got it even though they had left toddlers out because I believed toddlers would be added. eventually I just didn't expect it'd take them so long to do it. And then, when I played the game, it got so bad that when I was loading a save, I found I couldn't wait for it to finish loading so I could shut it down as I just couldn't stand the thought of playing it. But now I'm thinking, maybe one day I might be tempted to buy some more of it (very cheaply) if I get my laptop working. I haven't tried to turn it on since 2017. It has Origin on it and I don't want to put Origin on my PC. Probably nothing will happen regarding Sim 4 and me though.
The reason I have such huge rooms for my sims in my videos is the need to video what they are up to. I try to have Walls Up so it's obvious who and what is in the room, plus I want to see the decor on the walls. I found with walls up, I need a big room to be able to show anything in the videos unless I stick to looking down on them all the time. But I like to have a Sims eye view of the world most of the time for the videos.
I like to include that train when I have sims visiting France. I think the next few episodes will see various sims visiting the World Adventure worlds because that allows me to get them ready to move out and I can save without having to worry about Error 12. I just hope Error 12 goes away when I get the main household down to around 8 sims. If not, I'll have to move them to a different world.
It is very hot here now, and I can't do much else so I think I'll start work on the next episode of this series today. Tomorrow I will be going out all day and I was out most of the day yesterday too.