More Awesome Than You!

I am testing and developing my own "Death By Freewill Challenge".  It is a variation of typical Freewill Challenges.  The object is to design a lot that will cause 8 Sims to autonomously die in 8 different ways.  Maximum points are awarded if every Sim dies in a different way (no repeat ghosts).

Now that death-by-lightning has been added with Seasons, I think there is finally enough different ways for Sims running purely on Freewill to autonomously kill themselves.  So my challenge is almost ready for release.

I just want to confirm some stuff with the Sims-savvy awesome crew here...

Correct me if I'm wrong... Are these are the only ways for Sims to autonomously die?
1) Old age
2) Elevator (OFB)
3) Lightning strike (Seasons)
4) Starvation
5) Flu/disease
6) Drowning
7) Scared to death
8) Fire
9) Cow plant (Uni)

The following deaths can never occur autonomously... correct?
1) Satellite (I've never seen a Sim autonomously Stargaze/Watch Clouds)
2) Flies (removed from the game circa Uni, right? ... haven't seen one since)
3) Electrocution while Repairing (Sims never autonomously repair)

What am I missing?  I never downloaded the Scissors.  Can Sims use them autonomously?  I also don't have any Vampires... but I assume they can autonomously die from exposure to sunlight?

Also, does anyone have any suggestions for dealing with the way the game makes in-game snapshots unavailable when everybody on a lot dies?  The .jpg files still exist, but the game won't access them because the lot code portion of the filename is no longer valid.  So far, my solution is renaming the files in a DOS window, en masse, to a valid lot code.  But something simpler would be nice.

Thanks for any help.  My testing suggests that this will be a fun challenge.  ;D

Nothing modtastic, just a suggestion to import or marry in a new Sim before the very last one in the contest bites it. Or a pet, if a pet being on a lot is enough to keep it viable. Or a Servo.

They are not autonomous as downloaded. However, I went into SimPe and made mine autonomous with extra attraction to playful Sims. I would have liked to have given the extra attraction to stupid Sims, but I couldn't figure out how to do that.

Anyway, I've tried out the autonomous version of the scissors and they are working fine in my game.

Death by "Hail Bludgeoning" is another one.

Wow, I never heard of that one.  I assume it's a (small) random chance, if a Sim is outdoors in a hail storm?

Between lightning, spontaneous combustion, and hail, Seasons is the deadliest expansion pack yet!

Hail bludgeoning is nearly always fatal under free will. The "Hail!" action runs at max priority and will continue to inflict damage until you manually X it out or your sim dies, so a neglected sim will always die from it.

Wow.  That's stupid.  I would understand if they coded it to send Sims indoors at max priority (even though that would be annoying)... but to make them stand there and get pummelled... that's just dumb.

Does the hail actually inflict "damage" (to motives, I assume)?  Or is it a form of stun-lock, with motives decaying naturally till death?

Is there a way to make it more attractive to sims with no logic points?

Wanna know something else stupid? If a plantsim triggers the ceiling sprinkler, even though they get water from it, they run away from the water.

Both.

Okay, last question about hail:

Does death-by-hailstorm have its own color of ghost?

Can that be fixed?

Ha ha - you clicked 'Quote' instead of 'Modify' didn't you? How do I know that?  :-X ::)

Nah, just edited messily.  Thanks for calling my attention to it.  *Fixes*

I actually have had sims try to autonomously repair things once or twice before. One of the few times I ever came close to an accidental death was when I was busy with one sim upstairs, then heard this ZAP noise coming from the lower level, switched levels and came just in time to see the guy die. Luckily, his wife was able to succesfully plead with the Reaper. I haven't had a sim autonomously try to repair something since NL, however.

Very good!  I'm also hearing from some people that Death By Flies is still possible.  Overall, it looks like there are plenty of ways for Sims to autonomously kill themselves, especially if you deliberately design the lot as a deathtrap.  This is great for the challenge.

As you all know, it's trivially easy to design a lot to kill Sims fast.  The hard part is to design a lot to quickly kill 8 Sims in 8 different ways.  So the more ways there are for Freewill Sims to die (no matter how unlikely), the better!

Right now, the tentative unoffcial scoring system is as follows:

+10 Points for each unique death
0 Points for subsequent non-unique deaths
+10 Points for each dead visitor (Maid, Gardener, etc), regardless of how he dies (+10 more, if the death is unique, per the above rule) (you will be allowed to Hire NPCs, if you wish, at the beginning of the challenge)
+5 more Points if the dead visitor is the Repo Man
+5 Points if a Sim is Scared to Death by a Sim that was Scared to Death
+1 Point for each Sim that dies in a "mass death event" (2 or more Sims dying simultaneously from the same event, i.e., fire)
-1 Point per day, until all 8 starting Sims are dead

I'd like to add more bonuses like the scared-to-death-by-scared-to-death one.  We'll see what comes up in testing...

I think there should be points for subsequent non-unique deaths, they're still freewill deaths after all.

What if a Social Worker was to die? I'm assuming no extra points for that. I have actually had that happen before, but I suppose death by flies is amusing like that. I doubt you'd want to have kids in this challenge as it is.

That would make mass deaths even more worth it.

The challenge ends when all 8 Sims are dead, which (given enough time) is inevitable regardless of Freewill.  So I don't see much point in rewarding something that will inevitably happen anyway.  Also, it's easy to make a single deathtrap snare and kill all 8 Sims within one day on Freewill.

The hard part (the essence of the challenge) is the balancing act of designing as many different Freewill deathtraps as possible without any single deathtrap being so attractive that it catches all 8 Sims.  But I recognize that things might not go according to plan and there may be a mass death "incident".  I'm wrestling with how to handle that, via the token +1 point for each Sim killed in a mass death, since players won't be getting +10 for extra Sims in the "incident".  I appreciate suggestions.

Considering how hard (lucky?) it would be to pull off a Social Worker kill, I think players should get extra points for this one.  More than just +10 for killing a visitor.  There's something morbidly peotic about scoring a Freewill kill on the Repo Man, hence the extra +5.  I think the Social Worker deserves an extra +15 (for +25 total).  Great idea.  ;D

Couldn't someone who has met the social worker invite her over as a visitor, thus allowing her free access to all the death traps? In fact, any of the NPCs can be invited over as a visitor.

+1000 if you kill a Social Bunny.  ;)

Yeah, but not on Freewill alone.  There's only a few ways, that I know of, to have visitors (including NPCs) when running on Freewill alone.

Trying to snare & kill service NPCs is fun, though, so I would allow an exception to the rules to Hire a Maid, Gardener, and Nanny at the beginning of the challenge.  Only at the very beginning, though.  After that, it's hands-off.

(the Nanny is another issue... because you could only Hire her "Just For Now", and she'd leave within the first day... unless the rules also allowed you to get jobs for your Sims, in which case you could Hire her to "Track Schedule"... hmmm...)

mass death "incident":

Too bad you can't make poisoned drinks or juice, Jim Jones style. I am now imagining sims standing around drinking, and dropping dead around each other.

Will there be points if multiple sims die in one day?

I think you need a rule clarification about manipulating the environment. Can I not remove a death trap after it gets someone, thus increasing my unique bonus chances?

And also whether actually playing the game at all is allowed, and merely the DEATH has to occur under free will, or whether this is a screensaver and not really playable at all.

How about a points system for avoiding Buy and/or Build mode? For example: Buy mode costs you 1 point each time you buy or sell an item and Build costs you 2 points.

I'd rank rare deaths higher, and easy deaths lower. You could murderate Sims by fire, drowning and starvation quite quickly simply by having some Sim idiot attempt to cook something, removing the fridge after successful SimBBQ, and sending idiot #2 out to swim in a ladderfree pool while idiot #3 does something equally lethal while waiting to not eat unto ded-ness. The true challenge would be preventing other lot resident idiots from dying the same way.

Yeah, my earlier post obviously isn't the final, official rules... it's just my thoughts on a scoring system.  To answer your questions:

As JMP put it, this is a screensaver.  You can't interfere at all, and you can't use Buy/Build Mode.  You build the lot, move in the family, hire NPCs (if you want), enable Freewill, hit triple-speed, let 'em loose, and take bets on who dies first.  It's a spectator sport!

To put it in perspective... This is fundamentally different from other challenges.  For one thing, this is a lot design challenge - not a gameplay challenge.  Second, you're deliberately designing a house of various deaths.  It's not about keeping your Sims alive and comfortable... it's about setting them up to die.  Depending on how "successful" you are, the challenge may end quickly.

For example... one of my favorite (and most "successful") testing lots, so far, has no chairs, couches, or beds on it.  But it has a couple telescopes.  In combination, this worked as an effective Death-by-Disease Trap.  In fact, too effective.

As Lorelei put it, the true challenge is preventing other lot resident idiots from dying the same way.  So, yes, you want to design a Death-by-Fire Trap, but you want to design it in such a way that it hopefully only snares & kills one Sim and then becomes "spent", so it can't kill anyone else.  Same goes for your Death-by-Drowning Trap.  It's a strange way to think about lot design.

The only easy one is the Cow Plant.  You can place a buyable Cow Plant during lot design.  That's basically a freebie, because it's guaranteed to kill 1 and only 1 Sim.  Every other death requires some thought (and luck) to limit the carnage to only 1 Sim.

(and no, you are not allowed to Lock doors... that makes it way too easy)

I think it was mentioned in another thread, that the cowplant will be a garaunteed zero deaths. Residents won't grab the cake by themselves; only visitors will grab it.

ETA: Found it. (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=7798.0)

Ahhh, thanks for that.  I don't have the buyable rewards, so all my Cow Plant experience is from lots that I play normally.  I assumed since my other Cows ate a few Nannies that they'd eat Freewill residents, too.  Good to know, thanks!

There's a hack here that will let playables grab the cake: http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=30397

Or use it for an NPC death

From what I have experienced in my various asylum challenge attempts, I'd give only 1 point for that - I've had one "scared to death" ghost finish off three other sims in one single night once.

Do you or anyone else have an autonomous vesion of the scissors you are willing to share?  I have checked most of the usual places for such a thing and was unable to find one.  (Of course I could be looking in the wrong places.)  I would really like to add this to my game.  I have already downloaded the Cowplant mod and am having great fun with it.  Any help or directions on where to find such a thing would be greatly appreciated and I will share cookies.

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=8102

I am usually pretty good at finding stuff on my own (The search button is my friend  ;)   )  No matter what combo of words I used on any of the sites I checked came up empty.

Thanks so much for posting these, I cannot wait to try them out.  I will certainly let you know if there are ant side effects of *child* deaths.

****grins evilly****

ETA the cookies I promised

(http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/609/cookiesuh3.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)


ETA again



I have tried repeatedly do dl from the links you provided and I keep gettig errors when extracting them



I am using WINRAR, should I try extracting with some other utility>

I just put the link up yesterday, after you asked.

I don't want to hijack this thread. Rather use this link to ask questions about the scissors:

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=8102