Personally, am suspecting that someone (*cough* *cough*) got a few "ideas" from this forum, with its generally Burninating awesomeness. Seems like someone we know would do.

And wasn't I right when I said that the decorating possibilites of those flame things would be truly Awesome?

It's not an improvement, as far as I'm concerned. I already had that problem fixed with the Multiple PT hack, so each alien spawn was siblings with maybe one out of eight of the other alien spawn. Now they aren't related to any of them, which is annoying, and I can't tell which PT they're the spawn of, and I suspect it may be connected to the hack not working at all anymore.

Anyone seen this?

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I've gotten this bug, and had it I'm pretty sure since pre-Uni. Sim gets automatically booted up to level 10, and then can't go to work. Only got it once, and it only happened in one house. I think I either reinstalled it or just nuked the house.

Seconded (thirded?) on the Harvest Moon thoughts. The most bizarrely addictive game ever. Only problem with it is that you have to buy a whole other game if you want to play another gender, and only for the newer versions, and you have to play it straight. Obviously, no one at Nintendo has ever heard of TwoJeff's "pregnancy for all" mod. ;-D

Ugh. Townies. Say, that'd make a good pokemon spinoff. GOTTA NUKE 'EM ALL! Maybe I should put that on my list of "bad anime parodies to do with the sims."

This deletion feature has finally convinced me to join the QA. The e-mail was in German, but I can read "click here" in just about any language. Heh.

Oooh. Must . . . resist . . . lure . . . of . . . tycoon game!

Argh. I have a weakness for tycoon type simulations. Building stuff and making obscene amounts of virtual cash. I actually don't really like that kind of game, but I can never resist them. I sure hope though that they play up the crafting angle. Allow user input into the craftifying. Whee! Customized robots! With FLAMETHROWERS!

Indeed. That comes to 11,171.35, and even with the expected effects of the one for two for one deal, it still comes to an impressive 11,171.35! Not bad for someone who's probably selling nuclear weapons technology on the side.

Seems to be a bit of a habit. Fixing things that already have satisfactory community workarounds that don't cause any of the problems of the official fixes. Like the NL Pollination Technicians thing. Grr. No, I'm not bitter.

Maybe this is the reason for our troubles with Maxis. Their brains have all been liquified by the BBS! Quick, MaxoidTom, save your coworkers! Direct them here, where they're safe!

I was always under the impression that the "X out face" bubble that appeared when a sim was in the bathroom was a result of the nudity emitter. Of course, it was at least originally only something that people actually able to see the sim in question got. Perhaps said emitter has gone screwy? Perhaps related to the clothing state emitter changes made for Nightlife, with Turn Ons and Turn Offs? After all, it would be kind of silly if chemistry flucuated based on whether you could see the person (clothing based attraction is silly enough, it doesn't need any more help) and perhaps this has led to unintended consequences for nudity?

Well, it is rather handy for the aspiring multi-lingualists among us. I'm still toying with the idea of reinstalling everything in French, but that would require work . . .

I find it humourous, in a sick and twisted way, that EA is currently under the impression that all their customers are domestic. Hello? 21st century here? Any company that believes that must have recently had their brains removed with a blunt melon spoon. (Or perhaps a runcible spoon? What is a runcible spoon anyway? But I digress . . .) For a company that considers itself tech oriented, it's pretty outrageous. Every forum type site I've ever been on has had lots of people from all over. Generally Portugal, Brazil, England, France, New Zealand, Australia, and Italy, to my current knowledge. I know a site that has about half its membership from Portugal, judging from the forums.

Conclusion: EA is run by idiots! But we knew that already. ;-D

Game theory. Basic game theory. Basically, the value of option A is the average value you'll get when you select it. If it's a 50% option, then it's a standard average between the failure value and the success value. If it's 85% option, it's whichever is 85% likely times .85 plus whichever is 15% times .15. I'm pretty sure I had a document somewhere with everything calculated out . . . hmm. I'll see if I can put one togethor again, combining JMP's data with the payout of the cards, and post the results here.

Yes! Genie lamps! And the chemistry set, too. Only maybe expanded. Ooh, I'd buy OB if it came with a chemistry set. I'd even play Mortimer Goth then. I got him one in Sims1. Seemed appropriate.

Ye flippin gods. Sex ed in school . . . ugh. Learned nothing useful, and I learned it again, and again, and again, with progressively stupider 20 year old movies. Everything useful about sexuality, including about the various different kinds and how they're all basically spectrums, how to use contraceptives, and the basics of navigating relationships, I learned in church. OWL. I love my church . . .

I play the Sims 2 almost exclusively, although I do play the occasional PS2 game and I downloaded Nero (awesome game, by the way) yesterday. For the most part, though, there aren't any games that I don't find excessively restricting. Even The Sims annoys me sometimes, because I'm stuck in suburbia and can't mess with different social structures. I don't know if this is typical of most women, or is a peculiarity of mine, but I can't stand games that aren't open ended, and games that pretend to be open ended are even worse.

This is why CRPGs annoy me. I have two really good friends who are always talking about all these great CRPGs they play. Every so often, I pick one up and mess with it for a few weeks. Then I get bored, because I keep thinking of things that it would be nifty to do, or ways to solve problems, that I'm not allowed to implement. Morrowind, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, even Myst, and the only reason I got through Return to Monkey Island is that it was hilarious. Plus, the plots are usually lame, in CRPGs and computer games in general.

Example: The Jak and Daxter series of games. (Jak and Daxter, Jak II, Jak III) Fun little PS2 platformer/shooters, good animation on the first two, decent and well executed, if cliched, story for the second one. (First didn't really have a story, but was funny enough that it made up for it.) Now, the second one had some twitchyness issues for difficulty level. It tended to spike on random levels, so one gets stuck for hours doing the same thing over and over again. Third game had much, much better gameplay. Very smooth, very fun. But I didn't like it nearly as much as the other two. Why? The story sucked. And in a very specific way. There was this character who had been in the game since the beginning, and a sort of love interest for the main character just as long. (They game starts when they're both like 12 or 13.) First two games end with the annoying sidekick keeping them from kissing. Third game ends with the main character kissing . . . some other chick. Introduced in the second game, dating someone entirely different (a plot point). However, until that particular scene, there was no buildup whatsoever to the relationship, no reason why the two of them aren't still with the other people they were with in the other games.

This ticked me off. Majorly. Sure, character #2 probably appealed more to the guys playing the game (Wooh! Hot chick with a gun!) since she was some sort of special ops commando rather than a mechanic, but the first character had been developed since the beginning of the game, was smart, capable, had gotten the main characters out of major trouble several times, and had a relationship that had been built on since basically the first scene in the series. But no. The developers (Naughty Dog) had to turn it into "how alienate off your female players," especially when you think about the fact that the kind of women who play video games tend to be on the techie side themselves, and thus identifie with that character. (Not that all female gamers are techies, but most of the women who play games that I know are into science or tech, whereas there's not as strong of a correlation with men.)

Grr.

On the upside, both Spore and Oblivion look like they may be flexible enough to be worth playing. So I'm happy. But still annoyed.

Yes. Sleep is unnecessary. You will be assimilated.





(Sorry! Sorry! Couldn't resist.)

My sims don't sleep, so I don't get burglaries.

Filled it out . . . either right when or before this post showed up. I mainly marked "more weirdness!" and "less bugfests!" wherever I could. Gave them what, in my mind, are very good suggestions. Robots, more aliens, mutants, useful computers, roleplaying games. (Although I would rather fear a "roleplaying table," now that I see the compulsiveness that Maxis tends to give those sorts of objects.) I was so happy when I heard that OB may include robots. Whee! Craftable robots! And maybe androids? Now that would be cool.

I found the question about "do you want your clothes to be more cooler or less cooler" [sic] amusing.

Je parle un peu du français. Je puis livre meilleur que je écrire, et je écrire meilleur que je parle. Je suis pas mal en général, mais je ne pratique pas autant que je voudrais. (Je regrette si le grammaire est mal. Je ne sais pas comment le dire exactement.)

That would actually be really cool. If they push the whole "user modified, sim made" angle in this EP, I may just buy it. If it turns it into a Tycoon game . . . maybe not.

Anyhow. I really, really wish there were more layers to the skins, and that they could be mixed and matched genetically, so you could get a little more of a "blending" simulation, but still with discrete points. (like in real genetics. lots of discrete bits looks like blending, but has more interesting properties)

He's still there, but even for previously existing alien spawn he's gone from the tree. Bothersome. Needs fixing! Maxoid Tom, what did you do, why, and is it possible for us to change it back?

Betting what? That they won't kill him, or that he'll outlive them?

Social bunny is supposed to look transparent, but only if there are two or more on the lot and you're looking at the one that doesn't belong to the sim you have selected.

This doesn't happen to me, generally speaking. Power Idle works in my game. Although, if a sim is in dire straights, I usually have to do something about it myself and then turn power idle on. Best for maitenance. But if it's not working at all . . . that's rather weird.

Ah, yes. Seems obvious now. Silly adults only policy, working on honor system. Or rather, the "not a total idiot!" system.