The Asylum Challenge?

[seventhson]

I've tried this challenge twice. The first time, my sane Sim had a career-related LTW. It took twenty-one days for the sane Sim's desired job to come up in the paper. Surprisingly, the mad Sims were doing incredibly well - only a few breakdowns, no deaths, no fires. It was boring and I gave up.

Second time, made a house full of characters from my favourite novel and tweaked the rules a little so that rather than randomizing personalities, they got the ones that suited the character. That was a lot more fun. And also extremely creepy because one Sim, Elphaba, developed an obsession with her novel boyfriend, Fiyero, and began following him around unprompted. Wouldn't eat, wouldn't sleep, wouldn't do anything except follow and stare at the poor man. Which, in the end, was making me laugh so hard I couldn't play, and that one died a horrible death too!

Tip for anyone considering it: The Yummy Channel + 'invite (Sim) to join' is your friend. They'll happily watch for some hours, and there will be skill points and less fires.

[Jelenedra]

Are you allowed to 'invite to join'? Pretty sure you're not allowed to initate anything that makes your sim interact with the patients.

[Zeljka]

I did this one twice and was kind of disappointed, guess I just got lucky with the Sims I rolled?

I rolled all the Sims and then rolled to see which I would control (seemed more interesting that way) and got the only Fortune sim.
Thought there would still be plenty of madness to go around, but by day 3 I had 4 Platinum Sims (popularity sims were thrilled with their new best friends and the knowledge sims were content to clean up the constant mess from the clogged toilet.) Apparently I was controlling the only slob as the place was immaculate. The 'loonies' busied themselves with tidying, writing in their diaries and yacking each other into best friend-hood.

I left the clogged toilet as they enjoyed cleaning up the mess...some had maxed cleaning
had my guy set out gelatin or cereal before leaving for work so the fires started after he was home to put them out, the stove was 2 tiles away from everything so it didn't destroy anything...
also had him clear the easel whenever there was a finished painting... many of them were very high in creative as well... There's nothing in the rules preventing you from inviting them to join, so they averaged 5-9 cooking points...

Second time I rolled a romance Sim. It took forever (42 Sim days) to get 20 lovers, but using the mental patients to up the count made things slightly more interesting as it caused a bit of chaos in the home and fights actually broke out.. however, this also gave the other patients far too many aspiration points and I ended up with almost 300 points, even refusing to pay bills to bring the Repo man and having one death (spontaneous combustion at the stove!?)

Wanted crazy sims... 

[numaari]

I was soooo mad at my crazies.  They would all stand around in the cafeteria and stare at the controllable woman cooking.  (oooooh, foooood...)  Then they would be hungry, but would they eat the pork chops that she had prepared?  NO.  Instead they would all bodyslam each other on the way to the fridge, line up with individual pots of mac and cheese, and take turns burning the kitchen down.  Everyone would freak out at the fire, then fall like dominoes for the resulting aspiration failure.

After a visit from Dr. Freud, they would stand around in their underwear with their clouds of stink around them and cry because they wanted to gain skill points.  The unoccupied skill objects in the dayroom remained... well, unoccupied.

Meanwhile, the controllable one was uncontrollably attracted to all the stinky underwear and walk around daydreaming about all the pathetic sobbing creatures, hearts cascading from her thought-bubbles.

(Aaaaand my spouse just reminded me that people do wierd helpless shit like this all the time in real life.  So the Sims are more realistic than I'm comfortable with...)

[seventhson]

Are you allowed to 'invite to join'? Pretty sure you're not allowed to initate anything that makes your sim interact with the patients.

No, I checked:

'On the other hand, you may ask them to join you in activities or use influence (or as I like to call it - mind control) to get them to do things. However, there is a bonus if you never use influence.'

Hurrah! Yummy Channel is go.

[Sagana]

Fairly often they'll join autonomously when you're watching tv anyway, and then you still get the bonus :)

[Li'l Brudder]

After reading just these posts, I have got to try this!

Except I am allowing all cheats/hacks.  I cannot live without books macrotastics.

[Li'l Brudder]

*withdrawl*

I can't believe how stupid this was.  With Pescado's realistic world hacks in place, ALL of the crazies hit the dirt except for two.  So, when they die, this will be a place for my sim, who will be becoming a werewolf shortly, to invite unsuspecting people over only to do terrible things.

[Sagana]

It really  isn't all that much fun (imnsho, of course) to just sit and stare at sims while they do stupid or boring or even slightly interesting things for the 3rd or 4th time. <gave up on this challenge in boredom after several days/acoupleweeks/I forget how long, I immediately put it outta my head>

[Li'l Brudder]

It was really, and I mean REALLY stupid!  THey wouldn't sleep in the beds at all!  They just passed out a lot.

[fishbiscuit]

I failed.  On the second day in, a fire took my phone and one sim.  Two more died of fright from ghosts, the rest starved to death.  The only survivor was the sim I controlled.  Now I know not to put the phone in the kitchen.

[eevilcat]

I had lots of fun with this and was successful on my second attempt (no cheats/hacks etc). I even got round to posting it on the exchange:
http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=113646

I'd also recommend playing the Black Widow Challenge which is even more fun if you like killing off random townies/NPCs.

[Alvaron]

Had a blast with the challenge. Since sims that don't know how to cook are hazardous to the community health, I had a big Yummy Channel party on Day 1. Since everyone's fun bar was low, they watched that stupid cooking show for most of the day and some uncontrollables managed two cooking points. That really cut down on the fiery balls visible from the backdoor (I put the stove out back).

No simmies died in the making of this challenge run and only one visit by the simshrink (the knowledge sim was very afraid of fire and we have two in short order because of clumpiness in the random number generator). I was fortunate in that my controllable sim was home during each fire (there were probably 7-8 fires total and my controllable caused one of them  ) and only once did she play "moth to the flame". I was able to get her to call the fire department without too much trouble and they always put out the blaze before somebody died.

I put the sink in the kitchen, had three countertops, a fridge and waste bin with the stove outside on the back deck. It worked well and I had several sims who were happy to clean up and keep the place clean. Some of them managed three cleaning skill points -- that's a lot of countertops wiped down!  The bathroom was a pair of 2x2 rooms with the toilet in one and the shower/tub in the other with a connecting door as well as an entry/exit door. There were occasional traffic jams but it mostly worked okay. I had to restart the challenge because I left out the connecting door in my initial attempt. The sleeping area was one room, 4x10 I think, with sufficient room for 5 single beds. For seating, I had a Zecutime sofa, a decent living and two chairs for the chess set. Skill gear was the bass (creativity), cheap mirror (charisma), cheap bookcase (cooking, cleaning, mechanical), TV (for cooking and body), pool (body) and chess set (logic). I had to laugh as the napping sim would snooze through entire concerts of bass symphonies but the TV and the phone would wake them easily. Go figure!

My controllable sim was a Fortune sim with LTW "Become Hall of Famer" and I was able to complete the challenge in 19 days. My final score was 310 and almost all of the uncontrollable sims managed 25 skill points (4-5 cooking, 10 logic, 6-8 creativity, 2-3 cleaning). My big winner was, of course, a Knowledge sim who racked up lots of aspiration points from skill gains. Interestingly enough, my two Fortune sims did quite well. They were able to earn a little money playing the bass for tips and they got some aspiration gains off creativity gain wants and the occasional decor purchase. The Family sim did okay but the Romance sims and the Pleasure sim struggled with serious aspiration problems as they could not satisfy any of their wants. I should've bought a bar with the seed money but I didn't and I bet they both had "Buy bar" as a want pretty much continuously. It was there at the end.

Oh, I forgot to say: I generated all eight Sims and then randomly determined which one would be the controlled sim. I got lucky with her LTW and that helped me finish the challenge quickly. My proudest moment was when one of the Romance sims managed to gain a body skill point in the swimming pool. 

[LFox]

This challenge is awesome, i ended up using townies since i got a boatload full of ugly townies that belong in an asylum (one of which is a zombie).  I did however quit all their jobs reset their skills to nothing and randomize their aspirations.  I also didn't remove my hacks simply because it's a waste of time the only ones i got that can make stuff easier i specifically don't use for the asylum (i found out bathroom uses you was more trouble than it was worth when there's only 1 terlet and 1 shower).

I think i've got this challenge more or less won already my sim is half way through her job career and i'm positive each sim has like 20 skill points from all the cleaning, cooking and chess playing they've been doing.  Not to mention the fact that at least 2 must be knowledge sims since i notice the aspiration bar floating up above someone every now and then.  I've only had 1 fire so far and probably the result of the fire hack everyone panicked except one sim who prompty ran over to put it out.  The stove was ALMOST gone since it was completely engrossed in a huge fire ball.

My question is if you can't leave the asylum how are you supposed to get the required friends for the jobs?  After all it's not THAT often that i see sims passing by.

[sloppyhousewife]

I think i've got this challenge more or less won already my sim is half way through her job career and i'm positive each sim has like 20 skill points from all the cleaning, cooking and chess playing they've been doing.

 
Hehe, I was exactly at that point (and the challenge started to get boring) when my controllable sim went to work. Half an hour later, one of the patients started a fire in the kitchen that killed four sims. One starved, and two were frightened to death the very same evening. The controllable sim survived until next morning 3 am, but the non-stop haunting (13 in a row) finished him off .

I had a funny glitch though - one sim just disappeared, no reaper, no tombstone. The asylum was considered empty after the controllable sim's death, but in the neighborhood, the lot showed up as occupied (by the vanished sim). When I let two other sims move into the house, the "invisible" didn't show up in the family panel, but was still a family member, so I could give grimmy a call and bring him back . The challenge is lost, of course, but I have plans with some of the patients 

My question is if you can't leave the asylum how are you supposed to get the required friends for the jobs?  After all it's not THAT often that i see sims passing by.

There are many ways to meet new people without leaving the asylum - it's within the rules to have blind dates at home. You can befriend all NPC's that cannot be hired, i.e. order pizza or groceries, call the police, stalk the newspaper girl etc. Adding subhoods increases the number of walk-bys, too

[LFox]

I think i've got this challenge more or less won already my sim is half way through her job career and i'm positive each sim has like 20 skill points from all the cleaning, cooking and chess playing they've been doing.

 
Hehe, I was exactly at that point (and the challenge started to get boring) when my controllable sim went to work. Half an hour later, one of the patients started a fire in the kitchen that killed four sims. One starved, and two were frightened to death the very same evening. The controllable sim survived until next morning 3 am, but the non-stop haunting (13 in a row) finished him off .

I had a funny glitch though - one sim just disappeared, no reaper, no tombstone. The asylum was considered empty after the controllable sim's death, but in the neighborhood, the lot showed up as occupied (by the vanished sim). When I let two other sims move into the house, the "invisible" didn't show up in the family panel, but was still a family member, so I could give grimmy a call and bring him back . The challenge is lost, of course, but I have plans with some of the patients 

My question is if you can't leave the asylum how are you supposed to get the required friends for the jobs?  After all it's not THAT often that i see sims passing by.

There are many ways to meet new people without leaving the asylum - it's within the rules to have blind dates at home. You can befriend all NPC's that cannot be hired, i.e. order pizza or groceries, call the police, stalk the newspaper girl etc. Adding subhoods increases the number of walk-bys, too

Wow to think things went THAT bad for you all of a sudden.  Thanks for the tips on getting friends, i'll have to do the friends part next time though because the stupid townies i moved in along with mine i ended up with like 30 friends.  The friends are slowly whittling away but i think i won't count any friends into my score i may even subtract some points because of it.

So far my asylum design has proved flawless except for 1 single problem, i put a sink in the kitchen and every single day at least 2 or 3 times some idiot wants to have a sponge bath in it and has to shoo EVERYONE from the room, and since the kitchen has no devider it's part of the lounge room and the hallway.  I'm beyond amazed that nobody has peed themselves, i've seen some of them desperate and hanging around outside the bathroom yet they always make it in on time (damn Maxis for making it harder for sims to pee themselves).  Also no one has passed out it seems there is always a free bed which is quite surprising when theres 8 people and 5 really crappy beds.

[sloppyhousewife]

Wow to think things went THAT bad for you all of a sudden.

You should have seen my face . Nevertheless, it was a nice twist (for a rather short time, though) - after all that boring skilling/making friends stuff I suddenly had to focus on things that really matter .

I had 5 single beds, too, plus 1 recliner, which was more than enough given that 8 sims will never go to sleep at the same time. Having only 1 bathtub was more of a problem, especially because it was permanently broken. On the plus side, my patients gained a lot of skill points for cleaning .

I'll have another attempt, of course. But all this ghost stuff gave me an idea for a "Haunted Hill" challenge which I want to try out first.

[LFox]

Wow to think things went THAT bad for you all of a sudden.

You should have seen my face . Nevertheless, it was a nice twist (for a rather short time, though) - after all that boring skilling/making friends stuff I suddenly had to focus on things that really matter .

I had 5 single beds, too, plus 1 recliner, which was more than enough given that 8 sims will never go to sleep at the same time. Having only 1 bathtub was more of a problem, especially because it was permanently broken. On the plus side, my patients gained a lot of skill points for cleaning .

I'll have another attempt, of course. But all this ghost stuff gave me an idea for a "Haunted Hill" challenge which I want to try out first.

I put in a shower instead, baths take extra time to use on filling with water and with 8 people it'd be a huge pain especially if someone decides to play in the bathtub.  If your smart you leave broken objects such as showers since they create puddles constantly then which the inmates cleanup to gain points lol.

Whats the haunted hill challenge?  Do you have a link?

[sloppyhousewife]

I put in a shower instead, baths take extra time to use on filling with water and with 8 people it'd be a huge pain especially if someone decides to play in the bathtub. 

I fully agree - but I prefer atmosphere to convenience, and imho, the claw foot tub has the most asylum-ish look, especially in an isolated tiled room (hydrotherapy, you know )

Whats the haunted hill challenge?  Do you have a link?

Not yet - I have to work out the objectives first .

The basic idea is to start with a haunted place instead of ending up with one, but I only have a rough draft so far. At the moment, I'm busy preparing my sanitarium. Instead of just killing four sims, I play them for a week or two (in-game time) to get a "prolog" to the challenge (because I want to make a story out of it)

[LFox]

I put in a shower instead, baths take extra time to use on filling with water and with 8 people it'd be a huge pain especially if someone decides to play in the bathtub. 

I fully agree - but I prefer atmosphere to convenience, and imho, the claw foot tub has the most asylum-ish look, especially in an isolated tiled room (hydrotherapy, you know )

Whats the haunted hill challenge?  Do you have a link?

Not yet - I have to work out the objectives first .

The basic idea is to start with a haunted place instead of ending up with one, but I only have a rough draft so far. At the moment, I'm busy preparing my sanitarium. Instead of just killing four sims, I play them for a week or two (in-game time) to get a "prolog" to the challenge (because I want to make a story out of it)

Yeah i guess the lower baths do fit well for the run down look, i made my place look pretty shoddy especially the bathroom.  All the wallpaper has grime and dirt along it.

So your still working out the objectives eh?  I recently killed off a family of mine so now i got 5 tombstones in the house hidden in the walls, i was planning to later move some sims in and using Squinge's hack to make ghost encounters almost constant see how long they live.  The story behind my ghost house is some crazed lunatic came a knocking and killed everyone in the house, one daughter was drowned in the pool, the other was thrown down the stairs.  The mother was burned to death and the father was stabbed in the bedroom.  At some point the killer got electricuted on the tv in the lounge room.

Honestly if your doing a haunted house challenge it should probably be for a target date, must stay in house for x days.  And scoring you probably want stuff like everytime a sim is scared minus a point and if they pee their pants from fear minus several more points.  Anyway i'll be on the look out for it when it's finished definitely gonna be a challenge i wanta try.

[sloppyhousewife]

I have several ideas, but there'll be a lot of playtesting first. For instance, scoring will most likely depend a lot on how much knowledge/non-knowledge aspiration influences the gameplay (so playing a knowledge sim, though definitively allowed, will probably lead to a penalty). Also, I think I'll have more than one sim move in (one dies, next comes and has to face not only the start-up ghosts, but his predecessors' ghosts as well), because seeing how fast one single ghost can kill, it might be a very short challenge otherwise.

Oh - all the vengeful ghost stuff towards the end of the asylum challenge that inspired me reminded me a bit of "House on Haunted Hill" (the remake from 1999), hence the name of my challenge .

[LFox]

I have several ideas, but there'll be a lot of playtesting first. For instance, scoring will most likely depend a lot on how much knowledge/non-knowledge aspiration influences the gameplay (so playing a knowledge sim, though definitively allowed, will probably lead to a penalty). Also, I think I'll have more than one sim move in (one dies, next comes and has to face not only the start-up ghosts, but his predecessors' ghosts as well), because seeing how fast one single ghost can kill, it might be a very short challenge otherwise.

Oh - all the vengeful ghost stuff towards the end of the asylum challenge that inspired me reminded me a bit of "House on Haunted Hill" (the remake from 1999), hence the name of my challenge .

Sounds good there should definitely be a penalty on knowledge sims like you said since i think the motive drop is half or even less for ghost scares.  Since the next sims have to face extra ghosts they should really be awared bonus points, so for instance each day you spend in the house you get 1 point but it's multiplied by the amount of ghosts.  So 5 ghosts, 5 points, 4 ghosts 4 points, 50 ghosts, 50 points.  I honestly don't think it'd be much of a challenge without Squinge's hack to increase ghost sightings though but i suppose you need to determine that through some hardcore testing.

[LFox]

Finally got around to getting a sim through this trial from start to finish and at a score of 283 i think it's wayyyyy too easy.  To make it harder i think it needs changes like these

Your sim is not allowed to repair any item, for an item to be repaired asylum members must be asked to do so by influence.
Crappy diswasher and garbage disposal allowed so people can break it and get electricuted.
Your sim MUST gamble on every chance card that appears, you cannot use the ignore button.  You also must roll a die to determine which option you choose, 1, 3, 5 is option #1 2, 4, 6, is option #2.
You cannot thraw out sims that have started to freeze to death and also cannot put out sims that are on fire.
You start with 5 seats and 4 beds instead (same rules as normal)

Start score of 0
No bonus for not using influence, let's face it that makes things fun
-15 points for every fire
-30 points for every aspiration failure which requires the visit of the therapist
-10 points for every desperate aspiration action (one guy in my asylum stood outside with his money cup DAILY several times a day)
-10 points for everytime a sim pees themselves
-10 points for everytime a sim passes out
-15 points for every electricution
-30 points for every struck by lighting
-10 points for every fight outbreak
-3 points for every day your sim remains in the asylum
-50 points for every roommate death
-100 points for every visitor death
-5 points for each tomestone/urn each day that is on the lot
-5 points everytime your sim is demoted
-15 points for everytime your sim is fired
-2 points for every skill point lost to a chance card
+1 for every skill point your inmates have
+1 for each friend of the household (this is the friends count used for jobs)
+1 for every 2000 aspiration points your inmates have (total aspiration points count must be rounded down)
+2 for every inmate your sim befriends
+5 points everytime your sim is promoted
+20 points when your sim reaches their lifetime goal

OPTIONAL: On start of the challenge make the mental Institute a nuclear war edition.  Do so by using the weather machine to make winter permenant for +100 points.

The goal is to get over minus or zero points as a final score.

[baratron]

And the topic lurches out of its grave, zombie-like, shuffling its feet and groaning...

Finally got around to getting a sim through this trial from start to finish and at a score of 283 i think it's wayyyyy too easy.

I agree. Been reading a bunch of stories today and while the multiple sim deaths were quite amusing, I think I can see loopholes in the rules for almost everything that caused them. I came up with an "interesting" modification of my own, so now I need to decide whether to go with your harder rules or leave it as it is with my evil twist . Or possibly combine your harder rules with my evil twist, but that could be messy.

Out of interest, those of you who've been doing the Challenge: what hacks have you been playing with? I know the rules say Cheats/Hacks – not allowed, but I really don't want my game exploding in a big fiery ball visible from space, so there's no way I'd remove Critical Fixes or the Lot Debugger. Also, I see no point in removing hacks which are entirely irrelevant for the challenge, e.g. the various business fixes. I intend to remove only those hacks which actually modify sims' freewill behaviour.

FFS hacks which modify freewill behaviour: antifoodnap, firemod & noeatcrap definitely need to be removed. I'm not sure about Macrotastics, dontwaveatme and lesswhiny - you wouldn't be allowed to use Macrotastics as it'd be cheating, but I don't know if it needs to be removed as long as you can withstand the urge to use it. As for dontwaveatme and lesswhiny, I think the point of the challenge is to have fun and laugh at the stupid sims, not get so frustrated you throw your computer out the window and have to buy a new one.

TwoJeffs hacks which modify freewill behaviour: Always Flush Toilets, Food Already Available Fix, NL No Indoors Kicky Bag Control Freak (*sob*!), No Autonomous Napping. I'm not sure about No Whining at Missing Objects or Visitor Snacking Fix - as you guessed, I have issues with sims whining.

Crammyboy hacks which modify freewill behaviour: No Force Watch Fight. Not sure if that needs removing.

Inge and syberspunk hacks which need removing: none. Although I have several of Inge's No Autonomy hacks, they're irrelevant for the challenge (e.g. No Autonomous Video Games, when computers aren't allowed to the inmates of the Asylum).

I suppose I should probably also remove the Insimenator, as it's such a big hack it's bound to conflict with something. Although it does have a handy "Make Unselectable" feature... hmmm.

Hehehe... oh, the plotting .

[J. M. Pescado]

Hmm, it's Dumb Baratron-type People. I wonder if I should add you to the Torture Pool. Are you going to be around to be interesting? I think your schtick should be your allergy to everything. Any other suggestions?