A few weeks ago, I retired my old PowerMac G4 Mirror Door, replaced it with a 2.5GHz 21.5" iMac with the Intel i5 quadcore CPU
Quite the step up in performance, but at the expense of external expandability, the one thing it DID give me was the ability to run my older games in all their glory, Civ IV, Sims 2, and a few others, all running perfectly well
I had read about the latest incarnation of The Sims 3, but as a longtime Sims 2 player, I wasn’t sure I’d like it, especially since the genetics engine was simplified and dumbed down, the faces were too wide ("Puddin’ " faces) and the skins and textures looked too “plasticky”, also, I heard that the “Story Progression” feature would really mess up the town for people used to controlling one family at a time, with SP on, the AI takes over control of non-active families, they can meet, grow, fall in love, break up, have kids, change jobs, etc all without you even going into the household
For a while, I ran the game with SP turned off, as I wanted to control all my sim families lives, but curiosity got the better of me, I duplicated my User Data file for my game, put the original on one of my external drives for safekeeping, launched the game, and enabled SP, i figured, if SP was as bad as I was imagining, I could delete the active userfile and restore my old non-SP towns…
And you know, it’s not as bad as I thought…
First off, I was worried that SP would run all towns at the same time, I have three towns, and could see things spiraling out of control quickly…
SP only is active on the currently loaded town
I thought it would thoroughly screw up non-playable families, so I created a family of my Sim-Self and a few of the girls at college I found attractive, put them all together in one house, and left the game to it’s own devices, letting the SP engine run that family as a test bed, if things got too out of control, I could delete them
SP actually runs a tad slower than the player controlled house, in the time it took to get my playable sim*, transformed into a Vampire**, build her up a stable of willing blood donors, and get her into a developing romantic relationship with another Sim, and to start Vampirizing*** all the other attractive female Sims in the game, my Selfsim and my three housemates had all been assigned jobs, their relationships were starting, with co-workers, mainly, but my selfsim’s relationship was the only one that was just barely beyond the “first date” stage
My selfsim was a “Test Subject” in the Science career track, and in a budding relationship with “Tia”
Tia is in the Journalism career track
Danielle is in the Culinary career track, and beginning to show interest in a fellow co-worker, but it’s not beyond the “best friends” stage at the moment
Michelle is in the Law Enforcement career track, had been promoted to Beat Cop, her law enforcement partner (not romantic, business) also happens to be a female vampire as well (one who was Turned by Lisa), Michelle is the Workaholic of the group, and also the one with the hottest temper
So overall, the SP household is lagging a bit behind my other playable houses, it seems like SP hasn’t wreaked havoc… yet…
My plans for the town of “Bridgeport” is simple, turn all the attractive Young Adult and Adult female Sims into vampires, there will be plenty of normal-to-ugly looking Sims, both male and female, as well, the only other unwritten rule is that my vamps will not feed from Elders of either gender, they need to respect the Elders, besides, in Late Night, Vamps are not immortal, they just age dramatically slower (something like 6X slower) than Mortal sims, so it’s not like the town will get overpopulated with an undying glut of Immortals
Oh, and normal mortal Sim food does nothing for vampires, they can eat, but they get no nourishment, and in fact, if they eat something containing garlic, it can make them ill (or if they fed on a Sim that just ate some garlic-laden food, that can also make them ill), vampires must feed on blood or plasma, every night, they can either drink a PlasmaJuice juicebox snack, eat Plasma Fruit (like a tomato plant), or feed on mortal Sims, they get more nourishment from Hunted sims (the vamp scans the crowd, looking for the tastiest sim) or from Sims they’re romantically attracted to and in a relationship with
Sunlight weakens them, and can kill them, but not as quickly as in TS2
By far, the coolest feature of TS3 though, is the “Personality Trait” system, where TS2’s selling feature was reasonably complex genetics (and I still play it for that reason, as a virtual petri dish), TS3’s selling feature is far more accurate “personalities”
TS2 sims had a set repitoire of personality actions and it was pretty much the same for all Sims, there was a generic “personality” reaction set, but it didn’t matter if the Sim was male or female, sometimes you’d see male sims acting “feminine” or female sims acting “male”, but it was due to the generic personality framework, genetics was/is TS2’s forté
TS3 seems to have seperate Male/Female core behaviors, which are then further altered by up to six assignable “personality traits” which modify that behavior, makes their reactions to the world and each other far more realistic…
And let me tell you, playing a Sim where the “Bad” traits outnumber the “Good” ones is a lot of fun…
An Insane, Kleptomaniac, Charismatic Evil sim who’s also Flirty but Clumsy is a rather amusing combo…
I’m thinking of creating an “Idiot” sim as well, see how it reacts with the word…
Assign it all negative traits and watch the fun
The genetics engine of TS3 is a lot simpler and less effective, but the personality traits make it just as much fun
I see TS2 as my genetics experiment kit, and TS3 as my personality experiment kit
Now, to see what happens when I introduce Kim (my playable Vampire Sim) to my SelfSim ;), or see if Danielle’s cop partner has tried to turn any of my SelfSim group…
- An old friend from my summer job during high school ages ago, Kim Moriguchi
** I also installed the Late Night expansion pack
*** What can I say, she’s a giving soul, and loves to share the gift of Eternal (or really long, at least) Life
family ARE vampires!, you want to meet one, why not go and play with your infant brother Charles, you know, the one you’re sooo terrified that’s going to hunt you down and bathe in your blood, you know, the totally helpless (and yet somehow completely terrifying) BABY?!?