The Sims

[Dis]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Come on, tell us your Sims experiences, Spikey!

we all know he's a closet Sims fan. Bashing the game is just a cover.

[DaShi]

It's true. And Asher owns a Mac.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Dis


we all know he's a closet Sims fan. Bashing the game is just a cover.

You've got me.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

this is cool ... [I encountered a stupid bug caused by the simplistic model the game uses]

two unconnected paragraphs.

1. the game is cool (thinking of a variety of things in it, from playing the radio, to getting the paper, to meals and clean up, to social interactions)

2. there was a silly bug that resulted in something funny.

Sorry for leaving out the transition. It happens when someone quickly types a post to an interweb forum.


And yes its apparent there are simplifications in the model, as there have been in every game Ive ever played. POTM and I were discussing some of them. As I pointed out, this was the first game of this type (or at least the first commercially successful one) so I give it some leeway.

[lord of the mark]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Wiglaf

There's no narrative or character in the Sims. Yes, you can imagine they have all sorts of entertaining stories, but I fail to see why you don't just open up MS Word and start writing about it.

I suppose one could write a story based on emergent game play in it. Thats the way sandbox games work.

POTM who is farther along than me, tells me there are definitely personality differences. I think I see that a little myself thus far.

Does having to send your fictional people to the pooper, to the car pool, and to bed and to the TV ad nauseam really add any amount of creative freedom? Of course not, it restricts it and then kicks it in the balls.

Lots of genres start off with too much micromanagement. Civ2 had the annoying movement of units in late game, among other things. RTS games have boring and obvious parts. Im sure that I will find problems in game design here (I havent played enough for the above parts to lose their novelty) I also some potential depth, in tradeoffs between different courses of action to achieve different things, and with the most sphere for interest in the interactions among sims.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
You could probably just move the bed rather than the couch. Normally the game forces you to leave enough space around objects for the sims to at least escape from their current predicament.

Silly me, I just assume that the items that the house started with were fixed in place, but of course theres no reason for that.

BTW, POTM has suggested that the way the game has you interact with objects reminds her alot of the way JAVA works, though neither of us knows what language the game is written in.

[Jon Miller]

Everything I have read suggests that the Sims are materialistic little *****es, so I have refused to play out of principle.

JM

[Dis]

course not, remodeling is an important facet of the game. I love remodeling. Replace that carpet with nice hardwood floors and it looks so nice.

This game lets you get your gay on.

[Blake]

While this isn't applicable to original Sims, if you have The Sims 2, then an extremely useful resource is the the forums at http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/

The forums have some idiot filters to keep idiots out (very important given the context), but if you're not an idiot I'm confident you can navigate through them.

There are some extremely useful plugins such as "Bathroom Uses You!" (communist toilet paper), when put in a room with toilets, it automatically calls sims to use the toilet when they need to pee.
There are lots of bug fixes and micromanagement reducers.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Silly me, I just assume that the items that the house started with were fixed in place, but of course theres no reason for that.

BTW, POTM has suggested that the way the game has you interact with objects reminds her alot of the way JAVA works, though neither of us knows what language the game is written in.

...

While the mechanics of the game bear superficial similarity to the object-oriented features of Java, I don't think she's going to get anything useful out of the analogy.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
Everything I have read suggests that the Sims are materialistic little *****es, so I have refused to play out of principle.

JM

You buy stuff, cause it makes your life easier, for the most part you dont buy stuff purely for status, or at least you dont have to. You are of course free to play in any of a number of different ways. Since we dont have the expansions that let you go places, asking for the right to attend a protest rally really doesnt fit.

You have the Sims read, for example, either for fun, or to improve their skills, it would be interesting to be able to read to improve their souls, say, but youre correct, the game really isnt oriented like that.

I have so far gotten lots of hours of fun play out of this, so has POTM, we've spent a fair bit of time playing together (for a PC game, its pretty good for kibbitzing) and even QOTM watched for awhile. Good investment so far, more depth than I expected, but yes the AI problems (pathfinding, using the bathroom, etc) are annoying.

No, Kuci, I didnt mean to indicated playing the Sims would help with Comp Sci grades, or whatever. She likes Compsci, and is starting to look at things more from a Comp sci perspective, which I find interesting.

One problem with the online community, while theres plenty of places to find downloads, I havent found a good site with a forum about the original game (as opposed to Sims2).

[DrSpike]

That's because forums distract the userbase from their knitting.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by DrSpike
That's because forums distract the userbase from their knitting.

POTM has said she'd like to get back into knitting, its a very calming passtime, to relax after shes done with comp sci and precalc. I see nothing wrong with it, and am looking forward to getting my scarf

[Blake]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by lord of the mark

Originally posted by Wiglaf

There's no narrative or character in the Sims. Yes, you can imagine they have all sorts of entertaining stories, but I fail to see why you don't just open up MS Word and start writing about it.

I suppose one could write a story based on emergent game play in it. Thats the way sandbox games work.

POTM who is farther along than me, tells me there are definitely personality differences. I think I see that a little myself thus far.

Oh yah, they do .

I avoid this game like the ****ing plauge now but I do have funny screenshots still.

For those who reject materialism you can always make your sim live on a street corner, eat garbage and beg from passerbys...


MY MOST FAVORITE SIMS SCREENSHOT EVAH!!! HOBO LOVE IS SO PURE!


And speaking of emergent gameplay, there are things like this:


There's a joke about undercooked steak in here somewhere...

And you can always just do weird crap.


"Four zombies and a wedding"



Billy's birthday was a nightmare...


And uh...


"What's the bet that, if I turn around, they're doing something REALLY gross..."

[Skanky Burns]