More Awesome Than You!

JM - what about a hack that would keep your Sims away from the coffee/expresso machine unless you told them to have a drink?  When it's 11:00 at night and your Sim is dead tired, it frustrates me that they choose the expresso instead of sleeping.  I don't want to get rid of the expresso machine, however, just have them use it when I tell them to.

Look, man, it's getting really old to track down every single form of stupid sim behavior. You really just need to exert some more control. If it's not a problem which causes visitors to do stupid stuff, it's not worth trying to resolve anymore. The autonomy system is simply irreversibly flawed and broken. Also, why are you sims running out of fuel that early anyway?

As you can probably tell, JM is an adherent to the "free will off" school of thought. I don't like to play with it off all the time, so I have gotten used to switching between off and on. I also hide things from the sims I play, or make them inaccessible, like the computer and the expresso machine. The dormers come in handy for that purpose :P

G.

Using Authorized Personnel Only's "Deny Autonomous" option is also rather handy if you care that much.

As for free will on or off, while I don't like having to babysit, it sure as hell beats constantly going, "NO! NO! NO!". Then we have Macrotastic Power Idle, which gives you better effectiveness than Free Will *AND* less annoying stupidity.

That's true, the "authorized personnel only" device is very handy. As for the "power idle", I couldn't use it in my game, because I could not turn it off once it was turned on. I see now that you corrected that, so I have to try it again, thank you for reminding me.

As far as turning stupidity off along with free will, sometimes I like to watch them do incredibly stupid things. Sometimes (although not all too often, or not often enough I'm told by friends) I do have the urge to be mean too, especially after a trying day at work :P

G.

So you operate under a guise of free will?  Letting you Sims live their lives, but locking them out of, say, a bathroom when you do not want them to take a shower? 

I use free will only when there are 3+ Sims on a lot.  Less than that, and it becomes more of a hassle to play, as Sims seem to think that dancing to the radio is much more fulfilling than, I don't know, eating.

I always use free will - especially when I have a large family - then I would have Sims peeing themselves or starving to death one of the two.

Oh, most definitely, especially since not eating is one sure way for them to die, and I don't want them to die unless I give permission to do so :P.

Free will is always turned off when there is only one sim on the lot. Where would be the fun in that, seeing that they only do really pointless, unfunny, and stupid things. I turn it on (sparingly) when there are more than one because their autonomous interactions are often funny to watch. I even get the very JM-like urge to point and laugh.

G.

I don't like Power Idle, it makes Sims boring. If they'd pick up books in PI at least they'd be doing something useful (in combination with Inge's learning skills mod).

I just figured since you had just about "cured" every other stupid sim behavior, you might consider this one.  Sorry for the bother. ???

Power Idle isn't about doing something useful. Power Idle is about keeping green and out of your hair while waiting for orders. If you want them to do something USEFUL, tell them to Skillinate. :)

What's left to do after they've maxed out all their skills?  :-\

Nothing. That's when I turn on the power idle and simply ignore them until it becomes necesarry for me to direct them to something or other.

G.

Yep, Power Idle is useful in that it keeps your Sims idle.  You also then have an iconic indicator of idle status to remind you to give commands if you want them to do something useful or interesting.  Autonomy is overrated and, in the hands of Sims, downright dangerous at times.

I always have free will turned on, and I haven't lost a sim yet!  And between my different installations and pcs I must have a couple of thousand of them!  I actually find that the more you allow them to think for themselves, the better they get at it!  Quite a human trait, when you come to think of it!

All review of the code suggests that the phenomenon you observe is purely imaginary, because Sims do not actually learn from their mistakes, as they don't have attempt-memory. This is why sims always fall into the same ruts over and over: The pool table, the Myshuno, the TV, all are common sources of sim obsession, even though they do not provide the level of motive boost they claim to. If sims were really intelligent, they'd all end up doing the stuff they're told to do by Macrotastics!

You're probably right, but I like to think my sims are more than the sum of their programming!  If I didn't think they had more about them then a woodlouse, I'd go back to collecting stamps!

Sorry, but if you want the sims to rise above their piss-poor programming, you're going to have to substitute someone else's programming instead. :P

I suppose anything's possible...........

The AI in the sims annoys me. It's what caused me to eventually get bored with TS1 and go back to Sim City. It's not emergent or complex. There's no feedback.

That's the big problem with it, actually. Feedback. And I doubt we're going to get feedback, because I can't really see Maxis not doing anything other than recycling the old engine and adding a few bells and whistles to make it explode for TS3, now that the Wrightmaster has moved on to other things. As it stands, the engine would completely implode if you added feedback, because a variety of the more interesting behaviors are what I call "exceptions," in that they're tacked on rather than grow out of the simulation. Grieving, for example. If you magically caused the TS2 engine to give sims feedback on whether an object actually did what it advertised, they would learn that mourning was completely pointless. They would also never care for their children, because the game gets them to do this by tricking them into thinking it will do something for them.

AI wise, The Sims is sort of like those fake houses they make for TV sets: as simple as you can possibly make it and still have it look like its doing about ten times as much as it actually is.

Have to say this - how does that behaviour differ from humans?  Does taking flowers to Mum's grave on a Sunday and saying a couple of prayers actually do anything for a human other than make them feel they're doing their duty?  People don't have kids for the kid's sake, they have them to satisfy some personal need.  And they're genetically programmed to care for them, which is why in some cases when the programming goes wrong, they don't!

Well, obviously, not everyone is as awesome as me. My mother was cremated at sea in a rather festive occasion. We would be reminiscing occasionally about her glorious final battle, but I'm the last living member of the family within 15 generations, so that kinda puts a damper on that. We don't do the entire flowers thing in my family. That's simply sentimentally wussy and disgraceful to the memory of a fallen warrior.

Hmm, how about thistles and burning nettles then? Does that sound more appealing?

G.

We prefer the ceremony of setting the deceased on fire in some particularly impressive way, then getting roaring drunk and having some fistfights.

Oh, the old Roman Empire Method. How very classical of you :)

G.

well, when you factor in the part about


that sounds a bit more like a viking funeral than the roman pyre

Laugh...being named 'Pescado', I didn't have you pegged for a Norwegian, but it explains alot.   :D

Could also be a Swede or a Dane - and there was also a large tribe of Russian Vikings, which is where Russia actually got its name!

The difference between Sim behavior and human behavior is that humans don't think "I am tired, hungry, and I need to pee. Therefore, I shall go mourn at some dead persons grave, and this will make me feel better."

I've never seen a sim do that autonomously - of course, if you tell them to, they may do as you tell them, but if they really need to pee, they'll probably do that instead - at least , mine are very good usually at forgetting my instructions if they don't like them!

Actually, the grave/mourning behavior is not nearly as much of an issue as it was in TS1. The advertisements on graves were insane. Now the big problem (as JMPescado has ranted about) is baby bothering. Nothing attracts an almost dead from hunger sim faster than a crying baby. Many other things are now managed by the memory system, as far as I can tell. Which has it's own set of problems, since bad data has a habit of spreading virally and causing massive game implosion.

Of course, in TS1, there weren't actually any graves unless you went around axe-murdering people, since nobody ever actually DIED.

Well, sure. If you actually made your sims learn how to cook, and gave them pool ladders. But where's the fun in that?

True, I actually had one house in Unleashed where the wife got electrocuted by simFreaks winter hedge with lights, and her best friend came round to join in the grieving and fell into hubby's arms weeping!

If you have the Flamingo of contentment on your lot, the baby never needs changing or bathing, so doesn't seem to give out so many signals.  And of course, no sim is ever almost dead from hunger for more that a couple of sim minutes!


Oh yes they did!  Especially in the original game, not so much later, but electrocution was quite common when changing light bulbs - they just somehow didn't include it in later EPs, but any downloaded objects which were just for Sims1 and LL could still cause electrocution.

Also barbecue fires were quite common, and sims often got burned to death!

I never changed lightbulbs. It was too difficult to find them when they blew out, so I just let the robot deal with it on his own time. Plus, you didn't get electrocutions with full mechanical skills constantly like you do in TS2.

Never ever saw one. Fires in TS1 only occurred with low cooking skills or really bad grill placement, not like TS2 where they happen every other day and are the main source of gossip in the neighborhood.

Well, presumably in TS1 they got it right, then, because you'd assume that as your skill got better, you'd be less likely to have one of these mishaps!  But there again, TS1 was much better written than TS2, and had far fewer glitches, most of which Maxis put right themselves, and hackers then were more concerned with hacking objects than actually modifying the game!

TS1 wasn't so much better written than TS2 as it didn't have all kinds of weird crap tacked on to it that the system was never designed to support. Teddy bears and RC cars, for example. The core TS1 stuff still works pretty well, but anything that depends on the memory system is often rather screwy.

I guess that's one good reason for not buying teddy bears or cars!  I keep deleting the darned cars in Uni, my Greeks keep bringing them back from College, along with cheapo furniture which they don't need as I've already got them better!

I had the "spontaneous combustion" bug, which was fixed by the first patch. Basically what happened was that a sim would die in a cooking-related accident, but for some reason wouldn't appear as dead. So you could go on playing as normal, unknowing that actually the game thought he was dead. Then, a few sim hours or days later, the sim would "have a fit" (literally - it looked like some kind of seizure) and die, with no warning.

I was significantly traumatised by this to be unable to sleep, and my dear partner ended up staying awake until 5am downloading the patch (28.8k dialup - fast, at the time) to fix the bug, and SimEdit to fix the token that made the game think Jim was dead.

I had loads of sims1 sims die, but usually I remembered in time to quit without saving, so they didn't!  But once, I forgot and saved, and next thing she was a ghost.  Poor husband was heartbroken, so I went into the Create a Sim mode, made as near a replacement of her as I could, gave her a different name but the same last name, went through the whole courtship ritual and got them married.  She move in, and my god, the ghost of wife no. 1 was angry!

Yeah, they're strange like that. They obviously didn't read the fine print on the contract, like the entire "Until death do us part" thing.

The way I look at my sims, when they do those annoying and stupid things they do (like drink coffee at midnight instead of go to bed, or celebrate just getting married by having a big ol' pillowfight...etc!) is to think of them as a different culture. Or, a  parallel universe where they just do things a little differently.  Because they're right, you can't "program out" every little thing they do. They just wouldn't be "sims" if they weren't just a wee bit nonsensical. *laugh*

However, having said that, there are many hacks that make the game more enjoyable for me - I think I might end up with an empty hood full of "untimely accident" ghosts if I didn't have the no-cheer hack or phone-hack.  ;D *lol*

I just see it as "the AI running the sims is hopelessly crippled and you are better off without it". I don't think I've ever seen it actually make a correct decision. I mean, I've tested it before. I turn it on...and I wait and watch....and...BZZT!

I'm entering a little late in this discussion, aren't I? Oh, well.... You'd probably severely hate the challenge I came up with, Pescado. I can certainly imagine you cringing every single simday, hand twitching with the urge to set the foolish little sims right. Generally I just take in a deep breath, and find the hilarity in it. For the things I cannot get over, I remedy with your hacks. For all it's outlandish advertisement issues, and resulting unrealistic behaviour, I'm pleased to say that every once in a great while my sims still do surprise me. Or other people's sims for that matter... When my mom first began playing, she became very hooked on the Goth's (among certain others). She moved Cassandra into her own place. Mortimer came over, walked in, and Cassandra made a motion as if to say "Well, here it is.". He proceeded to come over the next two nights to check in on her. The reason it surprises me is because I had never seen nor heard of such a thing before. I suppose those odd instances are examples of how the game is ideally supposed to play out?

No, this is more a convenient example of you reading more into idle-gestures and random visitor scheduling than is actually there. You're imagining things that aren't actually there and pretending there's more to it than a stupid random behavior. I'm not susceptible to this, so I am completely unimpressed.

In my game, it was Mortimer who moved out.  Cassandra got married, played false and broke up and moved out.  One day she came to Mortimer's house - and walked straight past it.   Now that has to be an example of random sim behaviour, or she would surely have walked to the door and rung the bell!

Well, that may be so. If that's the case, that's fine by me, really.. It's nice to feel surprised by them for doing something that seems insightful.. Even if it's only coincedence, and I'm really just reading into their actions a bit too much. I like to amuse myself with a little magical thinking here and there in general, so applying that to the sims is no stretch for me. I will never envy people who see sims as nothing more than programming. Not saying that you feel that way, of course.. How would I know that for certain? But..... Considering you made a sim of yourself, I'd bet that you think of your sims as a tad bit more than coding.  :P

I think your sims are what you make them - if you like them they'll seem to do more interesting things, if you don't like them, the interesting things they do, you see as annoying sim random behaviour!

I like my sims, but I don't see their random useless behaviors as interesting. Maybe it just comes with an understanding of what makes the game tick, when you realize that there's nothing really deep, cute, or meaningful behind these behaviors, they're simply obnoxious wastes of time that block your orders because they won't cease doing that immediately, instead insisting on some long, bothersome unwinding process when you want them to GO THERE AND DO THAT IMMEDIATELY!

A bit like kids!

And I hate kids!

Wouldn't you know!

Sim kids drive me crazy - they're worse than my own.  If I ever caught my kids jumping on my bed or my couch, or worse yet, splashing in the skanky water that has just overflowed from the toilet, I'd knock 'em silly!

That only happens when you don't properly rule with an iron fist. Otherwise you'll catch them peeing their pants and then splashing in their own pee.

That's disgusting! . . . and Maxis has actually programmed the parents to lecture babies when they crap in their diapers but do nothing when the kids play in toilet water or pee, or what have you.

Well, what can you expect when Will Wright is no longer there to keep the overgrown teenagers at Maxis in line!

Well, it existed in TS1, also. The fundamental shortcoming is the failure of the game to distinguish between ordinary puddles of water and puddles of piss...which should be more yellow than blue.

But Sims 1 kids could usually be got to mop it up without making a song and dance about it!

I've never seen the "song and dance" routine. TS1 definitely allowed you to use kids more as slave labor, though.

Sorry, "making a song and dance" about something is slang here for making a fuss!

I thought Sims did "learn" from what you have them do somehow  :-\.  Usually I play with free will on although I control most of what they do anyway until they turn perma plat.  By then I am tired of them and let them go about their business in hopes they will kill themselves but they NEVER do.  Which is REALLY annoying.  Mostly the old farts just relax in bed all day, jump up with a bladder or hunger bubble if that's the lowest motive and then lay back down because it is not low enough.

I do notice however that if I have them always eat the same food their whole lives they will autonomously go to make that food when they are hungry (usually chef salad since I avoid those annoying cooking fires).  They also will jump in the shower and go to the bathroom much earlier than when I first got them so no need ever gets really low and the only reason I could think of is because they had done the same routines all their little Sim lives under my control.

I think some Sims seem to do what makes sense because we have "rigged" their wants to make sense based on what we buy them, what we have them eat and who we have them talk to.  It took me forever to figure out not to have them talk to random strangers to avoid the "be friends with random guy I waved to at the mailbox"