Moving From One Lot to Another?

[Gamblor]

I don't know if this has been talked about in the past or a hack has already been created and I haven't found it yet but wouldn't it be nice to move from one lot to another by just walking to it instead of taking the taxi every where you go. I mean its already sad enough we have to wait each time for the loading screen to finish and I know there is no way to get around that but also to wait longer for a taxi to show up just to drive you to the next lot beside yours . To me that seems to be a waste of valuable sim time.

I have a sim that runs his own business lot next to his home lot so wouldn't it be AWESOME if you could just click on the lot next to yours and have them walk there then to buy your own wheels or take a cab just to go next door. I can see a sim taking a cab or driving downtown but in the same neighborhood and its just around the corner from your place doesn't make any sense to me so I was just wondering if this could be done since this is the best place for mods.

I have been thinking about this for a wile to see how it could work. Since sims can leave a lot by taking their dog for a walk could it be done the same way for them to just walk out them self's and appear in the next lot and skip the taxi or driving part all togather?

[mildlydisguised]

I have a sim that runs his own business lot next to his home lot so wouldn't it be AWESOME if you could just click on the lot next to yours and have them walk there then to buy your own wheels or take a cab just to go next door. I can see a sim taking a cab or driving downtown but in the same neighborhood and its just around the corner from your place doesn't make any sense to me so I was just wondering if this could be done since this is the best place for mods.

I'm pretty sure you already can.  In game options there is a clickable neighbours option.  I think that might have come with one of the EPs and I'm not sure which one, maybe OFB.

[Gamblor]

I do have that on but as far as I know you still have to taxi or drive there.

[Li'l Brudder]

No walking.  Only cars.  WE MUST DESTROY THE OZONE!  IT IS PLOTTING AGAINST US!

[Tigerlilley]

I have a sim that runs his own business lot next to his home lot so wouldn't it be AWESOME if you could just click on the lot next to yours and have them walk there then to buy your own wheels or take a cab just to go next door. I can see a sim taking a cab or driving downtown but in the same neighborhood and its just around the corner from your place doesn't make any sense to me so I was just wondering if this could be done since this is the best place for mods.

I'm pretty sure you already can.  In game options there is a clickable neighbours option.  I think that might have come with one of the EPs and I'm not sure which one, maybe OFB.

Yes you can click on neighbours houses, but you just go to that house to play that family.  You can't take the first sim with you.

[Kyna]

If you click on a community lot then you get a dialog asking if you want to visit that community lot.  If you say yes then your sim calls the taxi and travels there by taxi.

[Berg]

But is it -at all- possible to make some kind of modification that made sims walk instead of going by taxi/owned car? As for their work, for example, since YA:s can "go" to class (which, in a way, is their scheduled job).

I used to think about this before, really, and now it's all brought up again.

[Gamblor]

I am just wondering about it too. If it can be easy or not to create something like this to be able to click on a lot beside your own and have your sim just walk to the next lot. Its funny how Maxis made it that when your playable sims only ways of transportation is getting around by car or taxi and the rest of the townies in the neighborhood walk to get around.

You don't see townies driving around lots but now thinking about it that would be cool to see but then there would be car accidents the way sims think. If I where to create the next game it would give players a choice to walk, cab or drive to get around and if its downtown or another place outside the neighborhood then the choices would be to cab, drive or bus that would be soooo AWESOME!!!

[Berg]

Well, I guess the taxi/carpool thing is used for a reason or someone would have attempted a walking mod long ago.

It just seems so silly that a sim has to call a taxi to go to the community lot right acress the street

I would settle with a "walk to school/work" mod, but I guess it doesn't exist for a reason.

[moniquinin]

I guess what's being asked here is when you click on clickable neighbors (and they don't have to be right next to you, they can be as far as you can see) besides getting the option, "so and so live here, would you like to play this lot" you also get "would you like to visit this lot" and bypass having to call for a cab?  The point of this being saving the time and hassle of waiting for the cab, or am I missing something that's much more aggravating than that?  In any case, this would be more convenient and I'd use it if it existed 

[J. M. Pescado]

Well, I guess the taxi/carpool thing is used for a reason or someone would have attempted a walking mod long ago.

It just seems so silly that a sim has to call a taxi to go to the community lot right acress the street

The taxi and car store transport data that is needed to get a sim from one lot to another. As far as the game is concerned, another lot is as good as being on Mars.

[Mirelly]

I've asking for this since the original game. I understand some of the reasons why it could be a VBT to attempt it, but all the same ....

[witch]

I never even used the jump to another lot thingie, even before it was borked. It just doesn't seem safe to me, when a lot is exited and saved, the data should theoretically be all in the right place. Jumping from lot to lot was just asking for trouble IMHO, data wouldn't be finished and finalised, just left hanging in some mass hodge-podge.

Walking from lot to lot would seem to be in a similar category, potentially a VBT.

[Lorelei]

Warning: Idle speculation / LIES AND PROPAGANDA may follow.

It is POSSIBLE that, by the time Sims 3 comes out, they will have figured out a way to do this, but I think that the game engine as we know it now will be completely overhauled a la Sims 1 ==> Sims 2. I suspect, based on absolutely no information whatsoever, that they will attempt to do another multi-user game for Sims 3, where you will have your neighborhood connected to a bunch of other neighborhoods and be able to 'visit' lots hosted on other computers / servers.

They porked the pooch trying to rush an online version of the game out without taking the time to see what works and what doesn't work in online multi-user environments. Further, they were so hands off that it was essentially begging for bored users to turn into griefers and other obnoxious vermin preying on the naive n00bs entering the game system. The game itself was rendered into a boring mass-skilling session, rewards weren't particularly exciting, custom content was never incorporated, and the player demographic was overall a lot younger than expected. If LeetSpeak drove you crazy, you were sure to lose your ever-lovin' mind reading the spammed-up drivel other players wanted to discuss. (Never played it or wanted to, but that's what I kept hearing.)

IF this is done, I suspect that each player's hood will be fairly small, and that they will be able to set invites off or on to all, known friends, no one, select groups, etc. Likewise, as your own personal hood Godbeing, you might be able to distribute custom content, allow PK or NPK environments, adult or non-adult content, etc.

And this will cause infinite problems, as with all MaxEAn systems, due to lazy coding, malicious users, bad custom content, loose nuts on keyboards, different OSes and bandwidth speeds, blah foo bar.

The technology exists, or is very close to existing, but the hardware required is probably next-gen or next-next-gen, and the amount of tech support required to manage millions of clueless non-tech folk will be outrageous. Not that it will be helpful tech support, if history is any indication.

Avoiding undesirables in your world / 'hood, and choosing when to allow visitations and security/privacy issues will be other problems to solve, preferably BEFORE releasing the game to customers.

Would users themselves "be" Sims, as in TSO? I don't know, and I can imagine systems with both randomly guided 'hood denizens as well as one primary 'hood guide. The latter would no doubt be easier to do.
Maybe it is a failing of my imagination, but I'm not sure what else they could do with the one person / one universe game concept beyond some cosmetic things. That's the only reason I suspect another foray into multi-user set-ups.  It could be something in-between, where friends exchange 'invites' (perhaps online) to 'hoods and link up to socialize within a specified 'hood, with a limit on how many 'hoods can be linked before the game gets too unwieldly. If User A has a 'hood set up with characters and User B has the same thing, and they set invites for each other, the two 'hoods are thus open to each other. In a set-up like this, it would probably be done via separate windows, as all the different things users could do to configure 'hoods could make actually stepping over an imaginary boundary line into another 'hood would be impossible. Walkabout within your own hood, probable. Walkabout into another hood, directly? I'm too technologically challenged to see how that could be made easy. You'd probably have to 'send' a particular Sim or Family to your friend somehow, set them to static, not allowing changes, or flexible, which would allow your friend to skillinate them in certain areas or redress them or mutilate them with cosmetics, but I doubt that relationships gained in one 'hood could feasibly be made to 'stick' and transfer back without major buggeration of the game. You'd have to limit what could be tweaked on a character or family file to Mostly Harmless / cosmetic tweaks.

Again, this is all total speculation, and not to be taken as gospel or fact.

There will probably be a Kitten Holocaust of untold proportions somewhere along the line, too.

NOW ENDING LIES AND PROPAGANDA BROADCAST. As you were.

[maxon]

Quite a bit of that sounded like Second Life.  God, Other People in MY neighbourhood.  Not A Chance.  I'd be looking for a barricade hack and a nuclear warhead mod.

[Berg]

Lorelei; you're either very crazy or very wise. I'll kiss your toes in any case.

[Lorelei]

Quite a bit of that sounded like Second Life.  God, Other People in MY neighbourhood.  Not A Chance.  I'd be looking for a barricade hack and a nuclear warhead mod.

Trust, it all sounds perfectly horrid to me, too. I took a looooong hiatus between Sims 1 and Sims 2 because I didn't want to deal with all the usual Maxis kafarktness that comes with custom content, but didn't want to play without CC either.

It's all speculation, mostly based on TSO, and yes, it probably does have a bit of Linden Lab taint whiffing around. Thing is, TSO tried hard to steal the thunder from 2L and other online games, but failed utterly by not understanding the difference in game style and personality style that exist between solo gamers using consoles or PCs and social gamers who enjoy the chatty aspect of online game worlds. As already noted above. A major mis-step.

If I got hit on the head and decided it would be keen to have strangers poking about in my shinies and harassing my characters and raiding my fridges, I'd probably want a "no touchie the important stuff" protection system whereby strangers would not be allowed to leave their trash in my hood, not be allowed to remove anything from my hood, move anything in my hood, or alter my Sims. There'd still be some novelty in touring someone else's world, even as a tourist, but the potential for mischief and lack of privacy would pretty much require that entry be by invite only. Some Sims 2 players put a lot of thought and care into crafting beautiful hoods with interesting denizens, and being able to go walkabout and patronize businesses on community lots and to leave "letters" to hood owners could be interesting. Beyond that, it's really not my bag, and I don't like mixing game play with social interaction. One thing at a time. Go away, I'm building / skilling / redesigning something / mood managing / aspiration tweaking.

We already 'visit' houses we download and 'interact' with Sims we download, in a very fast and loose translation of those terms, by populating the lots our way and playing the Sims our way, but there's no other-directed brain making decisions about what those lots should look like or how those Sims should or should not react. It'd be like replacing the dumb AI / autonomy with human intelligence, which could range from 'dumber and more frustrating than MaxEAn AI" to intriguing. Guess which would be more common?

I think the issues 2L has (not that I play it) are typical of online games. The potentially interesting aspects of building a world in-game is overshadowed by the multiple horrors of hordes of diaper-wearing furries, horse-doinkers, and entirely unerotic pixelated pr0n. One can only hope that other groups get in and plant their flags, so to speak, so far in advance that peer pressure alone tones down the more obnoxious / seedy aspects that one can normally avoid with ease in real life. It's a sad commentary when you just KNOW you could find dozens of scat fetishists or zoophiles within a matter of minutes within a game system, while never running into any in real life (or, if you do, you are spared having to discuss it at length (or have someone else's discussion about it bleed over into your convo panel just because they happen to be within a certain proximity) or to view lurid images while passing by their homes). Begone! Get the hell out of my yard, you rotten kids! Bah and humbug!

It's all LIES AND PROPAGANDA: the TOTALLY MADE-UP SPECULATION EDITION.

P.S. My toes thank you.