Ambitions: What's Fixed

[Claeric]

Speaking of "not-necessarily-fixed-but-cool" I am loving pretty much every hairstyle.

The female one with the hairband, in particular. Hell, I love that hair for GUYS, it makes for a nice evil guy with angry eyebrows hair, I think.



And did anyone notice Twinbrook has a new distant terrain? There's a city in the distance. It's pretty cute.

[Sanati]

I actually just deleted all my custom hair styles. I've stopped using them, might as well speed up load times.

[Jonni]

Claeric, I noticed the city on the horizon, too. It looks pretty cool at night with the aura of city lights glowing over the hills. I, too, love most of the hair, especially the short cuts for men. STYLISH STRAIGHT MEN!

I'm not sure if anybody noticed this, and I'm unsure whether it is just happening in Twinbrook or all towns but THE CLIMATE CHANGES THROUGHOUT THE DAY! The pattern seems to vary every day. For example, the morning was clear and sunny, then the rest of the day was cloudy and dull, the sunset was beautiful and clear, then the night sky switched to foggy and cloudy. The next day the night sky was clear and starry. Before Ambitions, the sky was always the same at night and day, with the exception of locations abroad.
Speaking of abroad, the game loads the locations about 4 times faster for me.

Hate to say it; EAxis has actually impressed me this time.

[Faizah]

Get to Know was always in the Friendly menu - when it appeared, that is. Sometimes, and this wasn't fixed, it's still true, it just doesn't show up. If there's some semi-logical reason for that, I haven't figured it out. Same with Goodbye. Why doesn't that show up all the time? For awhile I thought it might be trait-dependant but it doesn't appear to be the case.

'Get to Know' goes away after the sims reach a certain relationship point. Friends, perhaps? I don't recall specifically when, but it goes away after they have socialised to a certain point, for fairly logical reasons. Presumably after a certain point a sim would know another, and therefore would no longer be able to get to know that sim. You can fool the game into allowing 'get to know' again by dragging down the relationship bar.

[uknortherner]

I'm not sure if anybody noticed this, and I'm unsure whether it is just happening in Twinbrook or all towns but THE CLIMATE CHANGES THROUGHOUT THE DAY! The pattern seems to vary every day. For example, the morning was clear and sunny, then the rest of the day was cloudy and dull, the sunset was beautiful and clear, then the night sky switched to foggy and cloudy. The next day the night sky was clear and starry. Before Ambitions, the sky was always the same at night and day, with the exception of locations abroad.

The sky always changed in the base-only game too - sunny/cloudy/stormy etc throughout the day. One thing that is different here though is the ground fog. I thought this was because my lot was near one of those fog emitters, but from time to time, it appears that the entire town of Twinbrook seems to get foggy from time to time.

[Northstar]

I REALLY like this expansion! Because of tragic consequences following WA installation, I've been playing a game-provided couple rather than my own Sims, so maybe the were just created with a really good combination of traits, but they seem 'smarter' than in previous games. They actually clean, skill, etc. without any mods tweaking them. Even the laundry thing is one fairly well. The graphics are cool. I think I'll probably tackle a new career this evening.

[uknortherner]

Heh, just try planting a detonator in the laundromat. Chained explosions and screaming, panicking sims FTW!

[Claeric]

Weather did change in Sunset valley, but Sunset Valley has a very...sunny climate. So there will be light clouds and that's pretty much it.

Twinbrook has an awesome weather system, because half the time it's 10am and I dont realize it because it's still dark out from the clouds. The water ranges from grey to green to blue to orange depending on the weather and time of day, and the foggy days are really impressive. It feels a lot more alive.

[uknortherner]

Now that I've played for longer, I would agree. A lot of it is down to the lighting being far more dynamic than before, and you do notice subtle changes in white balance even in the space of an hour (a long hour admittedly, as I'm using Twallan's Relativity mod). Less impressive, however is the way the fog cuts through walls and into houses - good for derelict properties, bad for homes that actually has residents.

On the subject of lighting though, there's room for improvement. One of the new lamp-posts has a borked diffuser texture rendering it black (it should be white - see the ones outside the school), and most lights still do not radiate up multiple floors (though some do?).

Also, although blowing up the laundromat was fun for shits and giggles, the game does NOT respawn anything that has been completely destroyed, so now I have a machine-less laundromat as a result.

[Claeric]

Just did my first ghost hunting mission. The spirits are cute, and the music, while repetitive, is charming. I like how the lights all turn red and the people are freaking out. It's fun.

[Jonni]

I see.. I never noticed the weather changing in Sunset Valley before, the sky looked exactly the same every day and night to me. Since playing in Twinbrook though the effects seem to have become more obvious, which is awesome. All I need now is rain and snow :]

[uknortherner]

Yep, it's definitely more noticeable in Twinbrook. Haven't tried Riverview and Sunset Valley post-Ambitions yet.

I don't know if this is a new thing, but back at the laundromat (or what was left of it after my 'experiment', a random sim came in to do their laundry, switched on the stereo and whilst sitting down and reading a book, started tapping their foot to the music.

[Tangie]

Get to Know was always in the Friendly menu - when it appeared, that is. Sometimes, and this wasn't fixed, it's still true, it just doesn't show up. If there's some semi-logical reason for that, I haven't figured it out. Same with Goodbye. Why doesn't that show up all the time? For awhile I thought it might be trait-dependant but it doesn't appear to be the case.

'Get to Know' goes away after the sims reach a certain relationship point. Friends, perhaps? I don't recall specifically when, but it goes away after they have socialised to a certain point, for fairly logical reasons. Presumably after a certain point a sim would know another, and therefore would no longer be able to get to know that sim. You can fool the game into allowing 'get to know' again by dragging down the relationship bar.

Yes, I believe it goes away once they are friends. I apologize for not making this clearer, but I meant when my sims meet someone brand new, 'get to know' does not always seem to appear on the menu. I usually just choose 'chat' and sometimes it will show up in a moment or two, sometimes not. Of course it's always possible that it's there and I just didn't SEE it, but this has happened more than once so I don't think that's it. Conversely, 'Goodbye' seems to mostly show up when conversing when friends, but I also see it with just-met sims, too. It's probably just glitched.

[blackcat]

Yes, I believe it goes away once they are friends. I apologize for not making this clearer, but I meant when my sims meet someone brand new, 'get to know' does not always seem to appear on the menu. I usually just choose 'chat' and sometimes it will show up in a moment or two, sometimes not. Of course it's always possible that it's there and I just didn't SEE it, but this has happened more than once so I don't think that's it. Conversely, 'Goodbye' seems to mostly show up when conversing when friends, but I also see it with just-met sims, too. It's probably just glitched.

I had this too since BG. I think that I read somewhere in XML files that sims can have a finite number of subjects to talk about. So when you meet someone new and you just watched a movie/read a book/got a promotion all available slots will be taken. Thus there will be no place for "Get to Know". Don't know if that is indeed so, but at least "Get to Know' option always disappeared for me when "Talk" menu was over encumbered.

[LVRugger]

If your sim has the attractive reward and has met over 25 sims then everyone he meets will instantly be a friend. If this is the case you won't get the "get to know" interaction when you first meet someone.

[Rubyelf]

I have an Inventor Sim who I managed to get high enough to build a Time Machine. So I sent her to the past because she had a moodlet for it, now my plan was to keep this simple little sim single and carefree. What happens? I see she apparently saves some kid from a stampede, and all of a sudden the little thing is eating in my kitchen and sleeping on her bed. Now she has a son. Goodness knows how this immaculate conception arose, I want to know who the father is, more so what I do with him!

That's the thing I enjoy most about Ambitions so far, all the little Easter Eggs, like the tunnels while you mine, detonating an entire community lot etc

[Tangie]

Blackcat, this hadn't occured to me and sounds like a logical explanation for it. Mystery solved! @ LVRugger, this info didn't apply to my sim but this was good info to know too; thanks to you both.

ETA: Forgot to mention that EA has apparently replaced the 'maxmotives' command. Now you need to click on the mailbox and type 'make all happy'. I got this off of the official EA board; one of the drone-gurus posted it.

[Rubyelf]

Blackcat, this hadn't occured to me and sounds like a logical explanation for it. Mystery solved! @ LVRugger, this info didn't apply to my sim but this was good info to know too; thanks to you both.

ETA: Forgot to mention that EA has apparently replaced the 'maxmotives' command. Now you need to click on the mailbox and type 'make all happy'. I got this off of the official EA board; one of the drone-gurus posted it.

Um maxmotives was originally from Sims 2, it did not work in Sims 3 when it came out, Pes added that to his AwesomeMod to make it easier, with AwesomeMod you can use maxmotives

[Claeric]

I dont know for sure if this is from ambitions, but I've never seen it before...



I have never seen a sim sit like that. It looks a lot nicer than every single sim's hands-on-thighs pose.

And going back to the "not a fix, but badass" theme...





Foundations + pond tool = broken pool which has spilled into the yard? That's some clever (and fitting for the town) building, EA.

[Rubyelf]

More fun with the Time Machine produced this unique outfit for my sim:

[Dienvae]

I have never seen a sim sit like that. It looks a lot nicer than every single sim's hands-on-thighs pose.

Don Lothario in Riverview sat like that frequently when I played him.

[Tangie]

I have also seen my sims cross their legs like that while sitting prior to AMB.

@Rubyelf, yeah, I forgot about that! Thanks for the reminder.

[Claeric]

The glass cieling of moneymaking seems to have been fixed. I noticed the progress bar keeps going up after you reach level 10 of a profession. After a quick test, I learned that each time it goes up, your income per job goes up. My ghost hunter is now making 6k each night from his two jobs each day. Real Estate gives a reason to spend this money, too.

[xenoware]

I don't know, like most exp packs from EA it appears to be witholding a lot they could have included. I guess they're keeping things back for the next exp. Dirty rotten scoundrels.

[alaira]

I don't think anyone has mentioned this one, but didn't EA move the "ask if single" interaction from the Romantic menu to the Friendly menu? I'm pretty sure I've seen it there.

I romanced some sims last night and I found "ask if single" under the romantic menu, and I deleted all my mods except for awesomemod when I patched my game, so it's not a mod conflict.