Playing AL without apartments: witches enough?

[pentabet]

I agree, there needs to be less Pleasantville in my Pleasantview.

[Liz]

Apart from the ability to tweak picture placement (whoot on that one!), I think I might be most intrigued by the possibilities for random enmity. Shame that the second one seems to be all or nothing, though. Like, either you get higher pay just 'cause you're popular, or the whole town wants to poke you (and not in a good way). Am I reading that right, or is there more to it than this?

Having witches is clearly more involved than it was in Makin' Magic. Sounds like it's difficult to have 'casual' witches, though I suppose that's a good thing if you don't want the whole neighbourhood coming over all sparkly. A bit disappointing, though, that you have to put in so much more effort to get spells that may or may not really add much to gameplay. Still, being able to summon fireflies might come in handy for my nature sims who can't stop Wanting to catch those buggers when there aren't any.

As to the inevitable new EP want-clog, what sorts of silliness does it inflict upon us this time? I'd welcome a little less hobby obsession, but I'm not really in a hurry to trade in for a fancy new obsession with breakdancing.

[Gastfyr]

As to the inevitable new EP want-clog, what sorts of silliness does it inflict upon us this time? I'd welcome a little less hobby obsession, but I'm not really in a hurry to trade in for a fancy new obsession with breakdancing.

I've never actually had a sim learn breakdancing yet.  I assume sims that are already into music and dance will be egar to jump on that bandwaggon, though.  EP specific wants I've noticed: Become a Witch, Cast a Spell (only for witches), Sim I know becomes a Witch, Sim I know is Cured of Witchyness, Have a Good Reputation, Be Swung Around (kids get this want), Play Peek-A-Boo with Toddler, Jump Rope, Visit Neighbour (for sims living in Apts).  Apparently parents can get a want to read the Bedtime Story to thier kids, but I've never seen the want (good thing to, sicne I can't get parents to do it anyway; I think it's very specific to time of day).

Other than that, I guess I need to play more, since I havn't actaully noticed any ohters, though I think kids can get one to do with the playgrond equipment.

Of course, they also get fears to go along with the wants.  Like fear of becoming a Witch, fear of their friends being cured of being Witchy.  Probably fear of a bad rep but I havn't seen it.

I know the one sister from Belladonna Cove often rolls on a want to be cured of being a Witch (even though she is a Knowledge sim), as well as a fear of being cured, and a fear that her freinds being cured, and wants for them to be cured, and wants that the ones who aren't Witches yet to become Witches.  Since she only has 4 want slots, it can get annoying because she has little room for any other wants.

[kemowery]

Having witches is clearly more involved than it was in Makin' Magic. Sounds like it's difficult to have 'casual' witches, though I suppose that's a good thing if you don't want the whole neighbourhood coming over all sparkly. A bit disappointing, though, that you have to put in so much more effort to get spells that may or may not really add much to gameplay. Still, being able to summon fireflies might come in handy for my nature sims who can't stop Wanting to catch those buggers when there aren't any.

My witch sims pretty much summon magical servants to clean house, get rid of puddles and leaves, and, when children age up into teenagers, the resident witches give them a birthday present of a buff physique.  I made the teenage member of the Newson family (the all-underage bin family) a witch and she would produce food magically for free.  Then I got bored with having witches since the throne means witches don't have to do anything once they have one.

Casual witching isn't that hard.  After I got my first witch made (which is kind of an ordeal, though not as hard as getting a werewolf), then you just send them to the magic lot of whichever choice, buy up a ton of reagents, study magic, and use the available throne to recharge all motives when necessary until you've maxed out magic skill.  It takes a while where you're not doing anything but monitoring needs, but you can mostly do it on fast-forward and watch TV or read a book, just looking up every once in a while to check those motives.

[Faizah]

I found making a witch quite simple.

Go to community lot.
Wait for NPC witch to show - shouldn't take long.
Macro > Socialise (or otherwise befriend) NPC witch.
Ask to be taught the ways of darkness/path of light.

If you don't want to wait for the 'right' alignment witch, you don't have to, you can study to your preferred alignment, be it good, evil, or neutral. You can even change your mind and study from maxed evil to maxed good or vice versa, if you feel like it.

[J. M. Pescado]

My witch sims pretty much summon magical servants to clean house, get rid of puddles and leaves, and, when children age up into teenagers, the resident witches give them a birthday present of a buff physique.  I made the teenage member of the Newson family (the all-underage bin family) a witch and she would produce food magically for free.  Then I got bored with having witches since the throne means witches don't have to do anything once they have one.

You don't have to issue them a throne. In fact, you normally can't even get one unless you have over 900 alignment, which is not easy because all the best spells are the neutral ones, and if you cast them, your alignment moves back towards the center.

Casual witching isn't that hard.  After I got my first witch made (which is kind of an ordeal, though not as hard as getting a werewolf), then you just send them to the magic lot of whichever choice, buy up a ton of reagents, study magic, and use the available throne to recharge all motives when necessary until you've maxed out magic skill.  It takes a while where you're not doing anything but monitoring needs, but you can mostly do it on fast-forward and watch TV or read a book, just looking up every once in a while to check those motives.

Actually, you're not even really monitoring needs, as Macrotastics can do this for you.

[coralleane]

Salary thing?  I've had a few Sims get the "Wow, I'm in the same career as you, I think you should get better wages!" benefit.  I agree that it doesn't seem to actually require social group townies at all - a couple of the benefits have come from standard townies IIRC, and the reputation increase is with anyone on a community lot.. so my business owner had max reputation incredibly quickly, as does anyone who goes out on a date or two to a comm lot. 

I know what you are talking about, but this isn't the same thing. None of my sims in Onoway have regular careers...they are all currently OFB business owners. No employees. The business owners are the ones who are getting the dialog. It looks like the one you get to set prices on items, but the lowest you can go is $5. Then, your sim receives $5/hour (or whatever you've chosen). You cannot cancel out of it. There isn't any additional dialog, so I can't tell who is giving the "benefit".

Alright, I'm *almost* with you now - the only times I've ever had what I think you're talking about pop up is immediately before (or after, maybe?) my Sim was notified he'd received a Good Review/Best of the Best.  I haven't really played businesses much in the past and, now this Sim has acheived his LTW to get 5 top levels, I probably shan't again in the future, so I just assumed it was some weird coding bug I'd not noticed in the past and just clicked to get rid of it.  I didn't *notice* him receiving additional money but I wasn't keeping a particularly tight eye on it anyway - with the sales, restocking and item creation going on almost constantly it was fluctuating widely and I doubt I'd have really realised since I wasn't expecting it.

[kemowery]

You don't have to issue them a throne. In fact, you normally can't even get one unless you have over 900 alignment, which is not easy because all the best spells are the neutral ones, and if you cast them, your alignment moves back towards the center.

True.  However, the first thing I did with my witches was max them out and make everything they could possibly make.  The thrones seemed like a good idea . . . at first.  Then they made things really boring.  However, they're a good source of revenue for the stay-at-home witch.  When I finally use AL for apartments (by making a retirement home), I'll have the witches make thrones and then sell them to pay the rent.

Or I'll just keep moving more and more old sims in and just forgetting about them, like a real retirement home.

[Emma]

w00t. MOAR FIGHT!

I haven't ever seen so much fighting in my game I love it! I have one sim, Nick Calme, who got a bad rep for cheating on the diva and now everyone hates him. He lives in the trailer park where I have 3 other families living and when I am playing with one of the other families all you can see is a cloud of dust where he is attacking/being attacked by passers-by. It is so much fun!

I still haven't had a witch, but my Infallibly Good witch NPC is an elder! That surprised me. Here she is flying off on her broom:



One thing I have noticed though is, community weddings make the bride change into an actual wedding dress, rather than just using the formal wear. I'm not sure if it is to do with the Celebrations SP though as all I use is the celebrations wedding arch and they change into a celebrations wedding dress.



This sim's normal formal is the orangey maxi dress from the H&M pack but she wore this dress to get married. Can anyone confirm this? Has anyone used the normal BG wedding arch? What about home weddings? I might test it out, but if anyone else has noticed it it will save me a lot of testing

[maxon]

Short list of non-apartment likes (since I only have one apartment in play anyway):

• Ceilings without having to place tiles manually - Yay!
• Spiral staircases ...better traffic control than Marvine's
• Some of the interactions are cute. My sim kids love jumping rope as part of their fitness learning times. Peek-a-boo is win.
• So many new floors, walls, and fences. I like almost all of them, and I'm pretty anti-EAxis.

Boo:

• Ceilings don't work well with lots you've done some level-lowering with using the constrainfloorelevationcheat. It's pretty bad. Not only does it screw the ceilings on the lower area, but it screws what you see of the roof from the inside.
• Hood deco screw-ups (pond miscategorized, alleys not layerable over lots, building replacement total fail)
• The normal list of bugs. See the borkination thread in Oops.
• Some stupid perk (either reputation or benefit of a great review) giving my sims unavoidable money. It needs to die.

Social groups are pointless. I haven't done the witch stuff much. My only witch is Princess Plum the Infallibly Good Witch. She's more eye-candy right now as her time hasn't come yet.

I really do like the ceilings and have been a inveterate ceiling inserter up until now (I am currently going round removing all the ceiling plants).  I had not noticed that issue about the level-lowering and will have to check that out.  I'm also a bit of a ceiling bender when I build.  One (slightly) annoying thing about the ceilings - and it's not that big a deal - is that you need a floor in on the level above for the ceiling to show.  As well as removing ceiling plants, I have also been putting in attics all over the place and there are times, of course, when a floor on the level above is not possible.

Social groups I have not had a problem with as I used the empty templates and the no spawn mods before I went back to Little Carping.  As a consequence, there are no social groups in LC and it's going to stay that way.

I've not really tried the witches.  I would have liked to see some more ... direct and powerful spells.  Curse would be good for the evil witch for instance.

One thing I have noticed though is, community weddings make the bride change into an actual wedding dress, rather than just using the formal wear. I'm not sure if it is to do with the Celebrations SP though as all I use is the celebrations wedding arch and they change into a celebrations wedding dress.

This sim's normal formal is the orangey maxi dress from the H&M pack but she wore this dress to get married. Can anyone confirm this? Has anyone used the normal BG wedding arch? What about home weddings? I might test it out, but if anyone else has noticed it it will save me a lot of testing

I can tell you with that for me with both arches (original and Celebrations) that they use their formal wear - which is a relief to me because with FT they were changing into the Maxis outfits.  I was sure it wasn't supposed to be like that but that's what they did and it was annoying when I'd been out to buy them a nice wedding dress. 

[J. M. Pescado]

One (slightly) annoying thing about the ceilings - and it's not that big a deal - is that you need a floor in on the level above for the ceiling to show.

How is that different from real life?

[Emma]

@ Maxon; Was that happening with the dresses on a community or residential lot?

[Zazazu]

Salary thing?  I've had a few Sims get the "Wow, I'm in the same career as you, I think you should get better wages!" benefit.  I agree that it doesn't seem to actually require social group townies at all - a couple of the benefits have come from standard townies IIRC, and the reputation increase is with anyone on a community lot.. so my business owner had max reputation incredibly quickly, as does anyone who goes out on a date or two to a comm lot. 

I know what you are talking about, but this isn't the same thing. None of my sims in Onoway have regular careers...they are all currently OFB business owners. No employees. The business owners are the ones who are getting the dialog. It looks like the one you get to set prices on items, but the lowest you can go is $5. Then, your sim receives $5/hour (or whatever you've chosen). You cannot cancel out of it. There isn't any additional dialog, so I can't tell who is giving the "benefit".

Alright, I'm *almost* with you now - the only times I've ever had what I think you're talking about pop up is immediately before (or after, maybe?) my Sim was notified he'd received a Good Review/Best of the Best.  I haven't really played businesses much in the past and, now this Sim has acheived his LTW to get 5 top levels, I probably shan't again in the future, so I just assumed it was some weird coding bug I'd not noticed in the past and just clicked to get rid of it.  I didn't *notice* him receiving additional money but I wasn't keeping a particularly tight eye on it anyway - with the sales, restocking and item creation going on almost constantly it was fluctuating widely and I doubt I'd have really realised since I wasn't expecting it.

That was my suspicion, that it has to do with getting Best of the Best. Kristy Pittman got it twice and she had two Best of the Bests. Beth Pittman got it once and has one Best of the Best. So that's where I need to look in the code, apparently. Unless Pescado wants to stomp it (please) because I suck.

The first time, I kind of glazed over the dialog. I remembered something about $35, but I thought perhaps I'd misclicked something and was accidentally setting a price...I'm not sure. It was awhile ago. But then I noticed funds going up on non-business days. Kristy's biz only ran on harvest days, and no other jobs were had, so how was I making $300 or so simoleans that day? Then I saw the dialog again two harvest days afterward.

[coralleane]

That was my suspicion, that it has to do with getting Best of the Best. Kristy Pittman got it twice and she had two Best of the Bests. Beth Pittman got it once and has one Best of the Best. So that's where I need to look in the code, apparently. Unless Pescado wants to stomp it (please) because I suck.

The first time, I kind of glazed over the dialog. I remembered something about $35, but I thought perhaps I'd misclicked something and was accidentally setting a price...I'm not sure. It was awhile ago. But then I noticed funds going up on non-business days. Kristy's biz only ran on harvest days, and no other jobs were had, so how was I making $300 or so simoleans that day? Then I saw the dialog again two harvest days afterward.

I'm fairly positive I haven't seen it separate from the reviewer.  Unfortunately I have no idea if it was making a difference or not - the Sim ended up with an army of six robots working round the clock at crafting stations so I never paid much attention to the amount of money going in or out with that lot constantly paying for materials..!  Is there a way to force a visit from the reviewer? 

[Zazazu]

With testingcheats enabled, shift-click on the sim and Spawn...badge juicer. It's one of the options there.

[vecki]

One (slightly) annoying thing about the ceilings - and it's not that big a deal - is that you need a floor in on the level above for the ceiling to show.

How is that different from real life?

Just an annoyance on the pre-AL homes, especially the single story ones, they didn't have floors inserted on the level above because, well, there WAS no level above to concern yourself with!

As I go through the houses with this issue I just insert a ceiling/floor above, even if I have to cheat a little to afford it on the houses that are dirt poor.

[J. M. Pescado]

I have the $0 "crapboard" floor that happens when you drag doors over the area enabled as buyable. The environment value sucks, but it's perfect for frame-rate covers and ceilinging like you mentioned. I try to always cover the lower floors to preserve frame rate.

[edalbformat]

I had no problems with AL up now, taking into consideration that the first thing I did was to download a mod "NoWitches".
My first difficulty was to build normal lots. I started to build a very common big lot and suddenly I found out that I could not place stairs on a balcony behind the house. The stairs tool simply denied to place the thing. I had to fullfill the whole extension of the terrain left behind the house with a basement (the house was on a basement), then I could place an access door. Very annoying once it is not possible to place basement in the last two rows of the lot. I read that you cannot make a second entrance to an appartment - but it was NOT an appartment!
There are many things that disturb me and in AL it disturbs that only appartment resident can place an add for a roommate. But the extrem dumbness is that the landlord HAS to be an NPC. I really didn't need that one! All I wished was the possibility that MY Sims could buy many houses and rent them out. AL in this point is a trash. To create NPCs is foolish.
You cannot control other appartment residents. In fact they are just visitors confined to full furnished flat. I think that I can build an appartment system self that I can control all the residents. My computer allows me to have as many Sims I wish. I hope Inge Jones comes with an alternative for the dull apartment door.
Other dumbness is that the game creates 80% of elders for the new residents. The game always chose the CASface that is used by Mary-Sue Pleasant (an asian type) so I get a lot of asian look Sims with names like Centowski or alike.
BellaDona Cove has a lot of appartments and all of them belongs to two landlords. So rich and are dressed as low class accountants!
All the original characters supplied are still kids work. They are thinned in the face like bullemists and the facial is uppered or lowered, what causes incompatibility by face blanding. One inhabitant couple at FT have ridiculous faces and caused a son that has the mouth close to the edge of the cheek and the nose hang just under the eyes (Contrary or whatever)
I'm happy that I got rid of all the NPCs and Townies (thanks Pescado), otherwise I would vomit before starting face lifts.
I made a slight modification in one of the appartments that I liked (mobile homes or something alike) and the modification was accepted when saving.
When I moved in my first Sim, all the furniture disappeared, except for the kitchen essential. Got upset but it was good. I could place my own furniture instead. The original furniture is a bore. They filled up the flats with objects that are extremely addictive (training equipments, etc). Have you ever heard of a super poor flat that is already rented out with fitness equipment that cost a lot? What about a piano??? (Which land is this? - ah yah, EAxisland!)
Animations are good.
The new objects as always are super adictive once Sims do not experiment discomfort. Oh yeah, it is very normal that you spin in a carroussel forever - the teen girl that live in a very rich appartment used it up to death (another female that was helping her to spin around, fell asleep in front of the carroussel and she was imprisoned). Exit without saving - aaargh!
The very rich appartment is as always a mix of everything that is very expensive in build and buy. Lots of peacocks in rooms without access, tons of pictures on the wall and the very expensive beds. Deleted all the appartments and the only one I'm probably going to use is the Mobile Homes - Good for a One Sims start.
Will I ever build my own AL appartments? - Doubt so!

[Tigerlilley]

There's a no witches mod? Where?! Where?!

[spaceface]

I too would like to hear more about this "No Witches" hack.

@edalbformat: The "rooms with out access" in the expensive apartments in Belladonna Cove have sekkrit doors. Not too hard to find if you actually try.

[Mootilda]

There are many things that disturb me and in AL it disturbs that only appartment resident can place an add for a roommate. But the extrem dumbness is that the landlord HAS to be an NPC. I really didn't need that one! All I wished was the possibility that MY Sims could buy many houses and rent them out. AL in this point is a trash. To create NPCs is foolish.

Inge's working on a landlord mod... you should check it out.

[gypsylady]

I too would like to hear more about this "No Witches" hack.

@edalbformat: The "rooms with out access" in the expensive apartments in Belladonna Cove have sekkrit doors. Not too hard to find if you actually try.

The no more witch hack is by squinge.
http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=94504

[Zazazu]

I have the $0 "crapboard" floor that happens when you drag doors over the area enabled as buyable. The environment value sucks, but it's perfect for frame-rate covers and ceilinging like you mentioned. I try to always cover the lower floors to preserve frame rate.

I've long used this plain gray tile I created at a $0 cost to cap off all tops of rooms just because certain roofs have never properly set the room below as sealed. Just a good habit to get into.

[Bugger]

BellaDona Cove has a lot of appartments and all of them belongs to two landlords. So rich and are dressed as low class accountants!

I makeover my landlords depending on what lot classification I give the apartment complex.  I don't necessarily hate the outfits they come in (who wants to clean an apt complex in a suit?) but the hair... the HAIR!  I can't stand the bald landlord.  He gets a new set of hair plugs in every apt, regardless of the classification.

[J. M. Pescado]

The appearance of the landlord is not fixed: Hairstyle is random, only the uniform is fixed. Awesomeland has the Gray Fatness as the landlord.