More Awesome Than You!

I love the stuff that Echo makes for the game and now there's a new one:  a pinata!

The kids hit it a few times and then candy comes out. The kids can eat the candy and then you dispose of the pinata. Nice addition for kids birthday parties. Why can't Maxis ever think up stuff like this?

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=164455

(http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a303/SimmieCal/snapshot_9196d75a_f196d966.jpg)

(http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a303/SimmieCal/snapshot_9196d75a_7196d971.jpg)

(http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a303/SimmieCal/snapshot_9196d75a_3196d982.jpg)

(http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a303/SimmieCal/snapshot_9196d75a_1196d994.jpg)

Ohhh that is pretty good! :D

Echo says this, but it's worth reiteration if you're going to download:  It's a fairly heavy file.  If you download it and use it, it's probably to your best interest not to put a bunch on a lot (say...to sell in a business).  Could cause stuttering and game malfunction.

:)

What the hell is that kid swinging around?! A folding chair?! ???
But yeah, it's great that the community can give us so much more variety than maxis.

I still miss the old Sims1 climbing frame for kids!  Fun filled faster than kicking any number of flamingos, almost before they actually reached it!  And some of the stuff from House Party, like the dressing up box!

It looks like the kid is swinging a board, or something. I'm assuming since she had to use the pillowfight animations, that a bat wouldnt work.

It seems that Maxis has lost some of the creative spark that made TS1 so quirky and hillarious, and instead we get more "realistic" stuff. Or maybe this is due in part to the fact that forum monkies over there keep demanding "real" things like laundry.

Why would sims need laundry?  I mean, they strip off, shower, and dress again in the same outfit, and they're just as clean with the clothes on as they were when they just stepped out of the shower!

I think the problem now is that, as you say, the creative spark is, while not completely gone, is certainly not as bright as it was!  And some of the really beautiful objects from Sims 1 just have never been recreated for Sims2, and much of the stuff is heavy-looking and dark!  And even though sims can woohoo in any double bed, I still rather miss the old love-bed with the other options!  And why sims have to always relax on top of the bedclothes these days is beyond me!

I'd like to see the Baby Grande piano from Sims 1 make a remergence, it always added a touch of class to a place.

Didn't it just!  And I'd love a guitar that kids could play too - it always seems a bit sad to me, toddler ages to child, and you satisfy whatever wants you can, and he rolls the "Buy a Guitar" want - and he's then got to wait until he's a teen before he can play it!

Apparently a lot of people agree with the need for a baby grand piano, because somehow I ended up with about three different ones in my game at one point (I've since downsized to just one).

It almost seems to me as if the people at Maxis are leaving the more interesting and fun stuff to the modders to do, and just trying to push the next EPs out as fast as possible. There are some brilliant people making some fantastic things, but I don't really think that excuses a lack of fun on Maxis' part. I for one would love to see more playground type stuff for kids, one lonely swingset isn't cutting it.

But...but...they pee through their clothes! :D

I liked that hacked playground set from C&C that let the kids play with their pets on it too-it even used to have a cute little raccon come play with them too! (That was when I used to let them have pets-I hated that aspect of unleashed. Used to love growing my own veg though!)
Ok the gameplay was crap, and the graphics were pretty awful compared to Sims 2, but I loved the objects we had with the expansion packs for Sims 1.

But when you first had Sims1, didn't you think the graphics etc. were brilliant?  I know I did way back then!  It's just that now we have Sims2, Sims1 seems a poor substitute.  The same could be said of Sim City, each new version made the previous seem dull by comparison, although I personally never could get to grips with even 3000, and I wish I could get 2000 to work now!

Yes I did. I was just as addicted to Sims 1 as I am to Sims 2 now :D I didn't build as much as I do with Sims 2, most of my houses were like boxes! Once I got Makin' Magic I used to grow the kids up too. I actually went as far as to install and play it for a while, but I am sad to say I got bored very quickly :(

I think that's true with Sims2 as well, which probably explains why I have an enormous number of abandoned games around!  I tend to like the start of a hood with new famiies all struggling to build a home, then when they get successful, it gets boring, which is probably why I don't play generation challenges!  I'd be bored silly if none of my sims ever had to worry about the repo man!

Because I am always adding new families, I don't tend to get bored too quickly. I have lots of different 'kinds' of families too, and I play them all equally-1 sim week each :)

I'm rarely so consistent timewise, but I do keep adding families too.  But quite often I theme the family names in a hood, and when I can't think of any more names, I start a new hood!

When I do get bored, I build! I haven't built anything in a while, although I do want to have a go at Pes's building challenge :)

I've several houses I've built since OFB, but I need to package them and run them through Clean Installer, and then check them out in my build game, take pics and all the rest of it!  The building part I like, it's getting them ready to upload that's a pain, which is why I don't upload many!

I look forward to seeing what sort of horrific monstrocity you come up with. As a side benefit, it'll be a nice home for Emma GilsCarbo.

Now, we all bow to you as the great hack creator, but Emma is pretty good at house-building, you know!  And her houses are neither monstrocities or monstrosities!

Yeah? Your face and my butt Pes :P Actually if you allow sim-me to spawn with the Goopster, that's what our kids will look like-a combination of your face and my butt ;D

[edit] Oh, and thanks for sticking up for me Zeph :-*

Had to take a dig at that spelling!  And don't try to tell me it was a typo!

Not according to the samples I've seen. Emma apparently builds bathroomless houses, a shortcoming which would be readily apparent, if not for the fact that Emma cheats so outrageously that it's doubtful she knows how to even play. :P

Maybe the house was for a challenge?

How do I cheat? I don't cheat.....

Well, when you think of it, the game is just one great big cheat!  Kaching....Motherlode....Aging Off.....ChangeLotZoning.......

It had way too many walls and goodies for that.

It's a logical inference from the design logic that would yield a bathroomless house.

Err...I don't use any of those things.

Never said you did - but if you did, it would be because Maxis made it possible in the first place!  Er, I don't either, well, not all the time anyway!

WTF does that mean? :D Nah, you just suck Pescado :P

I'm gonna enter the challenge, but somehow I don't think I'll win, even if I placed a bathroom next to every darned room in the place! Still won't be enough bathrooms....

Can you ever have enough bathrooms?

Hey, when you need to go-one is enough!  :D

I thought was a neighbourhood  :-\

With that spelling, you would think so, wouldn't you?

I come from the generation of text games (ugh..don't laugh!), but I thought they were great at the time until Kings Quest IV came out - Wow!  I played SimCity, SimAnts and the one that allowed you to create genetically altered animals that evolved.  I never played Sims, but my kids did and they had all the EPs.  I used to sit and watch them play and I remember being impressed too.  I know that sounds 'simple-minded', but I don't care - I thought they were fantastic.  I never realized either that there was an amazing creator-modder community 'out there'.  I just marvel at all of it - everwhere.

SM

I loved the original sim city too!  (And even when I had 2000, I'd occasionally go back and play it!)

Colossal cave.....  I never got the hang of SimAnt and SimCity was impossible when you upped the difficulty, remember that awful disaster noise when your whole city was going up in flames?  I still play Colonization - anyone ever heard of it?  By today's standard the graphics suck and the music always was glitchy and electronic sounding, but I remember just loving the beginning with the intro picks of European docks and then this little ship in the middle of the big blue ocean with no land in sight....  Still play it sometimes.

What's the point in cheating? - cheats cheat themselves.. mum was a teacher so I absorbed that whole ethic like blotting paper.  The game's too easy already.  I cheat when something has screwed up on the lot, but that's about it.

I heard of Colonization, but never played it.

Well, as an ex-teacher I agree about cheating - if you're cheating someone else, or cheating in an exam etc., (which is also in a sense cheating someone, or everyone else) but if you're only really cheating yourself, and know you're doing it, what the heck!  But I agree, really, the only real cheat as opposed to game-modifier that I use regularly is Gnomon's flamingo of contentment (almost never use one of the others) and I think I mainly keep it because it just doesn't make sense to me that anyone can under 50 can get up at 6 am and be exhausted, bladder full to bursting, stomach totally empty, and all other motives equally depleted, because they did the washing up and made a couple of beds before sitting and watching TV for an hour and then chatting on the phone!  (And it's still only just time for the kids to get home from school!

I think you just suck. I've never, ever, seen it get that bad. You must really be doing something wrong if you can't manage to keep your sims green merely from "washing up", "making a couple beds" (why, though?), and running the AutoYak.

Of course I can, when they can afford good beds - but not when they are still sleeping in the cheapo which is worse than sleeping on the floor!  And don't tell me your sims aren't almost dead on their feet come 7pm, unless they've been at work, which slows it down as they dont seem to lose energy at work!

You're joking right? 7? Even frikken kids last longer than that. What are you DOING to them? My sims run from 0600 to at least midnight before they even START to run out of power. And you actually BUY the cheapo ones? I consider that idea to be flat out offensive. Why bother buying worthless crap? Cheapo beds exist purely for woohoo. It is pointless to even try to sleep in one, I only buy those for vampires, since vampires will not actually be using them to sleep in, so the energy value is meaningless, and only their function as places of woohoo matter. They're useless for energy, and no sim, no matter how broke, should bother buying them for such. If you're really short on cash, $450 gets you the Espresso Machine, as cheap as the cheap beds, and performs better than ANY bed anyway, and besides, SLEEP IS FOR WUSSIES.

Well, when you make a hacked espresso which kids can use......!

lol, may do it, be careful what you wish for ;)

I still don't trust coffee replacing the bed thingy. I still think it takes to darn long and my sims always used to shake. Of course I'll have to try it out again since I haven't simmed for months.... still... I don't trust coffee :-\

It's not just the coffee - it's the time rushing to the bathroom that needs to be counted too!  Plus washing up all those coffee cups!  I can't understand why, when they can collect half a dozen plates at once, coffee cups have to be done individually!

I buy them the cheap beds if that's all they can afford, but usually after working a couple of days I swap it out for a better one.  That's the first thing I work on getting for them - better beds.  Especially if I have a PG sim in the house!

All my YAs turned adults start out with the cheap stuff - card table for dining table, cheap bed, ugly cheap sofa, cheap refrigerator, etc.  As they get more money, those things all get "upgraded" to better stuff.  Seems more realistic to me.  And I don't let them bring anything with them from the dorm/residence they lived in at college, either.  Let them make it on their own - life isn't that easy when you're young in real life.

Some custom cheap sofas may look just that to the simmies, but they are often among the best designs around!  I still love 4ESF2's Quadro set, even though it gives my sims a sore backside if they sit on it for too long!

See, me, I don't bother to buy cheap beds ever, because they're not worth the money you spend on them, considering that they have difficulty competing with even THE FRIKKEN FLOOR. No, I go for the good one anyway, and then make up the missing money by slashing several corners entirely. Instead of your "ugly cheap sofa", they don't get a sofa at all. Instead of the card table dining table, they don't get a dining table at all. Slashing the bed is a BIG MISTAKE because, like in real life, sleep is the most useless activity in the world, and absolutely nothing useful is accomplished while doing it, so you want to make sure that sims do so as little as possible. Cutting corners on sleep reduction means you're dragging out everything else as a result. So I cut all the nonessentials. As of OFB, fridges and food preparation items aren't even necessary, since you can buy few plates worth of MREs, likely better than they have the cooking skills to make, for a rather modest price. Or not so modest price, depending on your neighborhood....

Or you can just download the replicator!  Works with macro - eat, so it's pretty useful and I don't think you need to restock it.  Or alternatively, get one of Paladin's buffet counters and set it to charge for meals - then get the welcome wagon round and see how much you can get them to spend!

Yes, but the MRE shop already exists. Why would I have gone through all the trouble of even making a business for it if I wasn't going to MAKE USE OF IT?

MRE?  You've lost me.

Meals Ready to Eat.  Army talk for what they used to call K-rations.

Well, I was never in the army!  (And you coule easily replicate your meals and stick them into someone's inventory!)

Married twice, to army vets.  Heard a lot of the lingo over the years!

Are you aware that replicated food has lower hunger value than "real" food cooked by level 10 chefs?

But better than lunchmeat sandwiches cooked by beginners!

SimAnt just aggravated me, SimFarm even more so, but Colonization is still fun! Transport Tycoon Deluxe too. I get all my old games from "Home of the Underdogs" (can't get link to there at work).

Can you download the from there?  Would I be able to play SimCity 2 again?

http://www.the-underdogs.info

Thanks for the link, Venusy!  But I can't find the original SimCity2000 there, only the Network edition.  Maybe I'll try again at getting my copy to work!  I will go back later for the original game though.

SimAnt rocked my world when I was around 9. I was always fascinated by the people living in the house that you could infest, and wished I could play them. (Wish granted.)

SimCity2000 also had me deeply obsessed. I still crack it out once a year or so.

SimEarth just blew.

Nailati, how did you get SC2000 to install and play on an XP - I couldn't even do it with my old ME, it would install fine, but kept crashing.

Nailati has a Mac.

We had SimAnt on our middle school's GT classroom MAC.

It was fun. We had fun sending our ants out to get gobbled up. =p

Oh, well, that explains it, it's a different version anyway! I think I even tried on XP with the tool that updates programs, but no luck.

Is there an emulator for an older version of Windows that you can download? I don't know, I'm thinking of an Apple II/c emulator I downloaded so I could play my childhood favorite Below the Root (http://www.mobygames.com/game/apple2/below-the-root/screenshots) (not that fancypants color version, though).

As it happens, I still have the disks for Windows 3.1 I think it was, and the accompanying dos disks (the game was actually played in dos but loaded in windows, I think, and I had to write some kind of subroutine to get it to work because the machine I had was supposedly not powerful enough to play it. I can't remember that much about what I did now, but it was all very complicated!)

But not as good as the MREs!

Oh, well, we each play in our own way, I actually like seeing my sims sit down for a meal together.

The odds of that many sims simultaneously being hungry are really rather low, since unlike TS1, hunger decays vary greatly not only from one age category to the next, but even from sim-to-sim based on their different work schedules and personalities. In a family of 8, it is execeedingly rare for more than one or two sims to be hungry at any given time.

Besides, sitting down "together" for a meal is unnatural. Food is something that you kill and drag back to your lair to devour in peace.

I do too - it increases their social and it helps with relationships.  I find that soem sims will sit after they have finished eating to stay and chat.  Only problem is it takes 3 (sim) hours to finish a meal.

I find it usually hurts relationships more than it helps. If your relationships are already at 100, they have nowhere to go but down, and so you want to avoid regular conversations, which invariably turn out bad. Sims simply cannot resist an opportunity to demonstrate what retarded, mouthbreathing jackasses they are.

How very realistic. Many people I know fall into that category too.

It is most annoying when they talk during dates. They have barely finished half their food before the date ends  >:(

A family dinner is fun but I will probably fall asleep by the time they finish eating  ::)

MREs?  Those blow!!  yech..nothing like spaghetti  in a bag...(chef boyardee in a bag)  yech.....  How come (Nilati) your windows wouldnt play SC2000?  MIne plays it and the simcity 4  no problems.

Try dosbox. I use it to run Sherlock Holmes and the serrated scalpel. Awesome game.

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/download.php?main=1

Kewian, enlighten me - how do you get it to work without crashing or running at 10 times normal speed?