Stay away from that expresso machine!

[Kitiara]

well, when you factor in the part about

My mother was cremated at sea in a rather festive occasion.

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

[Rooby]

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

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

[ZephyrZodiac]

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!

[Oddysey]

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."

[ZephyrZodiac]

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!

[Oddysey]

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.

[J. M. Pescado]

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

[Oddysey]

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

[ZephyrZodiac]

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!

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

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!

[J. M. Pescado]

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.

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.

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

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.

[ZephyrZodiac]

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!

[Oddysey]

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.

[ZephyrZodiac]

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!

[baratron]

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 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.

[ZephyrZodiac]

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!

[J. M. Pescado]

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.

[schmoopee]

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.  *lol*

[J. M. Pescado]

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*

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!

[GloamingMerle]

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?

[J. M. Pescado]

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.

[ZephyrZodiac]

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!

[GloamingMerle]

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. 

[ZephyrZodiac]

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!

[J. M. Pescado]

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!

[ZephyrZodiac]

A bit like kids!