Thanks for all the comments everyone; I'll try to address all them below (hopefully I don't miss any). Sorry it took me so long to get back to this thread (work got busy last week...).
The bottom third of the scoring is interesting, though. I like it.
Yeah, the bottom third is the core of the challenge. The other crap is just there to give it a little more structure, and so you can't just let the little bastards spend their lives in misery. Anyone can do
that--but keeping them happy when they have nothing is a little harder. Especially if they're greedy, materialistic Fortune sims.
I don't like this scoring, it's bean-counting. The aspiration failure penalties are bearable, but just barely. But you have to note the times each sim enters and exits a mood level?
The scoring
is bean-counting, but I couldn't think of any better way to enforce the condition "you can't just let the little bastards spend their lives in misery." These rules are quantitative and objective, at least. If anyone has suggestions to make this part less beancounter-y, I'm all ears.
floors aren't penalized unless they're enclosed by walls, I would add the number of garden plots on the lot total up and count that as though it were enclosed by walls.
also, count things in the inventory as though they were on the lot, that fixes that loophole.
And, no meditating? No, a better way is to reward the act of doing things. Or penalize the lack of doing things - maybe for every day you don't earn a skill point, -1 point? ooh, then you'd have to pace yourself and shit...
I agree completely, and I've added some new rules below to reflect this. I'm very open to better ideas than just flat-out, boring penalties, but there's nothing that strikes me as relevant to the core idea of the Challenge and at the same time worthy of daily reinforcement. "Don't buy shit" is a pretty simple, straightforward maxim, and so explicitly bringing in other stuff like skilling dilutes the flavor, I think. Oh well.
I'm working on a similar challenge anyway about doing with less/poverty etc, but could use some more input as I'm kind of stuck on certain issues. Perhaps you'd rather take a look at that thread instead, and apply your thoughts there?
[BLATANT PLUG] The challenge is here:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,9325.0.htmlPLZ GIV FEEDBAK K?
Your challenge is pretty much more interesting on every level than mine. But this one's mine, damn it, and I came up with it on my own! You can pry it from my cold, dead hands, and if you're going to be prying stuff from dead people's hands, you may as well start with Charlton Heston's guns. Because, you know, they're
guns, and guns are useful. Challenges are not.
Now for some general responses and clarifications to the
Making Do With Less Challenge:
- An "object" is any non-transient thing (i.e., not a Sim, or a dinner plate, etc.) on the lot. That includes trees, and just about everything else. A quick rule of thumb: if it sells for more than $0, it's an object. If Sims can interact with it, it's an object.
- Anything in the Inventory counts exactly as if it were on the lot; this was a big loophole I just forgot to mention. Cell phones in the Inventory are almost the same as regular phones, except that you don't need someplace to put them. But having one for each Sim incurs the duplicate object penalty....
- Businesses are, as far as I'm concerned, "community lots." Jobs (and schooling) must be at a Maxis-style career where the Sim just up and vanishes for the day, and should not be at hacked careers that pay out ten times the usual rate, etc.
- Now for the big one, plantsims and their ilk. Damn plantsims. I've never played with them, and have no desire to, so I'm not at all surprised that I've totally missed the way they blow this challenge wide open. I suppose the best way to deal with this is just to ban the damn things, along with werewolves and Bigfoot (I don't even know what they do; having encountered something else I do not understand, I shall do the American thing and just ban the hell out of it). Servos aren't really Sims, and so were never allowed. Zombies may as well be allowed, since I don't think they provide any benefit; vampires are also OK, since if you can manage to become a vampire and not die, you deserve your reward. Plus they're blood-sucking monsters, which are always fun.
Anyway, it's obvious that, like most of my brilliant ideas, this one doesn't really pan out as BEST CHALLENEGE EVAR, so I don't think I'll be going through and updating the rules in response to further criticism, unless someone comes up with something terribly insightful and/or destructive to the Challenge, or if people actually play the Challenge and find it interesting, or something like that. As Ella said, the game just makes it too easy for you, throwing money and free motive boosts at you, and most of them just have to be flat-out banned. That tends to be boring and smacks of a poorly-designed challenge. A good challenge should be simple, elegant, obvious, and Pure Evil™.
The revised rules, in full:
The Making Do With Less ChallengeThe goal of the challenge is to raise a child from birth to death on a single lot... a lot with as few objects or buildings on it as possible.
Rules:Create an adult sim in CAS, any way you like. Move this sim into a 5x6 "Huge" lot, leaving the poor bastard with only $1500 to his or her name. (The lot size isn't important at all, just the starting money; if you like, you can achieve this condition using a smaller lot and your choice of cheats).
The parent Sim must, sometime prior to their death, spawn a child. The child Sim must never leave the lot he or she is born on. The child must not attend college. The challenge ends with the death of the child. If the child dies before reaching Elder, you
automatically fail. Neither the parent nor the child may leave the lot except to attend work at a standard Maxis career (i.e., not a player-owned business) or school; in particular, they must never visit a community lot and raise skills or motives.
You may move in as many additional Sims as you like, so long as you wait no less than 5 days between move-ins, and each move-in contributes at most $1000 to the family's funds. You may have as many additional children as you like. If either the parent or child Sim attains permanent platinum mood, you must use the Lot Debugger to remove such immediately after gaining it. Failure to do so will forfeit the Challenge. Neither the parent Sim nor the child Sim may ever become Plantsims, werewolves, or Bigfoot. Failure to cure them immediately will also forfeit the Challenge.
Garden plots must be built inside a greenhouse.
Scoring:- +10 points if the child attains platinum aspiration level as a toddler and never dips back into gold (except once at each age transition)
- +5 points if the child attains gold aspiration level as a toddler and never dips below gold (except once at each age transition; does not stack with +10 for platinum)
- +2 points if the child is admitted to private school
- +1 point if the parent dies a platinum death
- -1 point if the child does not die a platinum death
- -1 point for every hour the parent spends at least partly in red (i.e., below 0) mood
- -5 points for every hour the parent spends at least partly at red aspiration level
- -10 points for every time the parent enters aspiration failure
- -2 points for every hour the child spends at least partly in red (i.e., below 0) mood
- -10 points for every hour the child spends at least partly at red aspiration level
- -20 points for every time the child enters aspiration failure
- -1 point for every 4 hours either the parent or child spends meditating, totalled over their entire pathetic lifespans. Round up!
- +4 points if neither the parent nor child ever meditate (+2 if only one mediates)
- -2 points for every date either the parent or child ever goes on
- +4 points if neither the parent nor child ever date (+2 if only one dates)
- -2 points for every object on the lot* at the end of the challenge
- -10 points for every object that you acquire and later get rid of
- -5 points for every linear stretch of wall, halfwall, greenhouse wall, or floor divider on the lot (no matter what its length; a normal rectangular room, composed of 4 sides (as most rectangles are), would then be -20 points)
- -5 points for every tile fully enclosed by walls, et cetera (a 4x4 rectangular room would therefore suffer -20 + 16*-5 = -100 points total; by dividing it in half down the center, you lose another 5 points for the wall, but as you enclose the same number of tiles, it's only -105 points total)
- -20 points for every item on the lot* whose function is entirely duplicated by another item (except purely decorative/no-use items... which you shouldn't be buying anyway!) (Examples: having both a cheap and an expensive telescope is -40 because either telescope could replace the other; having a stove and a toaster oven is -20, because the stove could replace the toaster oven; having a television and a bookcase is -0, since even though both can teach cooking, they have functions the other does not)
*Note that items held in Inventory are still considered "on the lot"!
Scoring Exceptions:The Lot Debugger and other pure-hack items that provide no direct benefit to Sims' motives, finances, or relationships do not count against the number of items on the lot. Use your own discretion. If an item is delivered to your lot by a Sim not under your control (date flowers, for example), you take no penalties if you burninate the item immediately after it arrives on your lot. If the item is Rod Humble's computer, you
automatically lose the challenge for not being awesome enough. Expired aspiration rewards and similar do not count as having "duplicate functionality;" a burnt-out Energizer is good for nothing, but a charged Energizer obviously still has some use. You just take the usual penalty of -2 per object for each one you've got, or -10 each if you sell them.
The definition of "object": An "object" is any non-transient thing (i.e., not a Sim) on the lot. That includes trees, and just about everything else. Dinner plates, books, and other things spawned indefinitely by other objects in the course of normal usage do not count as objects separate from the one that spawned them. A quick rule of thumb: if it sells for more than $0, it's an object. If Sims can interact with it, it's an object. This
should be pretty clear, if not from the letter of the rules, then at least from their spirit.
Custom Content:All Awesome hacks are allowed. No custom content that provides functionality not available with regular TS2 Maxis objects is allowed (example: the porta-potty salvaged from one of the Stories games is forbidden). It should be pretty obvious if custom content provides functionality advantageous to this Challenge; if so, it's banned. Money cheats are not allowed; building cheats are (if you'd like to run your score into the ground, who am I to stop you?).[/list]
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