My resistance finally wore down earlier this week and I picked up a copy of The Sims complete with about 7 expansions. I can’t remember all of them but Night Life, and some tropical island are springing to mind. It’s my first Sims game and I’m trying to figure it out.
I didn’t want to start off too hard and went with a household with a bachelor and no roommates. I’m finding that between cooking, cleaning, entertainment, showering, sleeping and his job that there’s no time for anything else. The poor guy constantly makes the car pool wait close to an hour while he finishes showering or eating breakfast. One day he missed work because the carpool Hummer pulled up right as he’d started taking a shower and then he had to relieve his bladder right afterwards.
After an hour or so of this daily routine over and over, I figured that I must be doing something wrong. Assuming that there’s time, where’s the dating? The social interaction, etc? Can you only meet people that happen to wander past your house? Is a single man living alone the best way to start?
Edit: And one other thing. Every time he gets home from work, I tell him to check the mail. This blocks in the carpool Hummer and they blast the horn at me until I move him out of the way. Any way to fix that?
Yeah. Flip the carpool the bird. They work for you. You suffer no ill effects from making them want to blow your brains out. A cool little trick I like is to have someone or something stand in the way of traffic so the cars can’t get through. You just take your sweet ol’ time getting ready then.
I suggest using a married couple. It gives you a friend pretty much automatically and they can split the house chores as well as make twice the money.
Make use of some time-honored time saving tricks. When you take out the garbage from the house, just cancel the action once the bag is out of the can. They’ll set it down. Then you tell them to clean it up and they stick it right back in the can, empty. Do that with the mail too and they won’t have to walk inside before heading right back out again.
If you’re still frustrated by the lack of time, use some cheats. My fav is to use “move_objects on”. You sit the person in a chair and delete the chair/character. When you click the person’s face, they come back w/ full happiness bars. Saves you from having to shower, sleep, and eat!
If you’ve got Nightlife, you may want to get your guy his own car. I find it a little easier than using the carpool (though you can still be too late to go to work). Assuming you didn’t keep your sim up too late at night, and provided they have a decent bed, they should be fully rested by 5 or 6am, at which point you can wake them up and start their day if they don’t do it automatically. After that, it’s breakfast, toilet, shower, and off to work. If you’re pressed on time, many jobs allow the sims to eat or relieve themselves while at work, so you don’t have an emergency on your hands when they get home.
Unless your sim is a workaholic–building skill points and such for promotions as soon as he gets home–most jobs allow you a little bit of free time each day (and especially on your days off) for social activities and the like. Occaisionally, your sim will come home with a colleague from work. You can also meet people who wander by your house. Or you can go to a community lot where there’ll be plenty of people to meet (be careful, though. Sims’ energy seems to deplete more quickly when on community lots). Failing any of that, get a computer. You can chat with random people online. Spend a few minutes chatting with someone, and you’ve officially met them and can call them up any time you want.
There are tons of tips and tricks to learn that’ll help you manage your sims. And one of the best methods is just monkey around on your own until you get the hang of it. I damn near wrecked Strangetown with all of my crazy experiments and such.
I’ll second the idea of starting out with a married couple. You can have one of them go out and earn a living while the other stays home, cleans up, and makes friends. The car is helpful, too, if your couple can afford it. The carpool will wait up to 1 hour, I believe, so just make 'em wait if your Sim isn’t ready.
Sims require 3 hours to get ready before work. Have the nonworking spouse get up, too, and make breakfast while the working Sim is taking a shower. Eat breakfast, use the bathroom, then watch television or play/talk with spouse to build up those essential fun and social points before heading off to work.
Check out some mods for the game. The best site for these IMO is Mod the Sims 2, but there are a ton of others, too. Look in their Downloads area under Game Mods for ways to make the Sims use their time more efficiently. You can also get cool user-created content for the game if you’re into that sort of thing. Their forums are great, too. It’s a free site, operated on donations only.
You will soon understand why so many of us both bless and curse the name Will Wright. Happy Simming!
Since you have NightLife, you can call a cab and go to a bunch of different places to make friends. I haven’t played in a couple of years, so I don’t remember all the places, but there are some dance clubs, and a bowling alley. If the Sim can afford it, hire a maid to pick up the slack.
I usually started out with roomates working different shifts.
A single-Sim household seems easiest, but it’s not. My policy was to always have at least one person who never held a job- that person is your permanent homebody, cooking, cleaning, and socializing, making the family friends that everyone else needs to advance. This person should also wind up as a master cook and mechanic, so as to make the most of the money you bring in and fix things quickly. And actually, one of the most profitable jobs you can have is gnome-maker; lawn gnomes can sell for a hundred bucks and be made very quickly, at least once you’re good at it.
Hmmm… Are we talking about Sims 1 or Sims 2? Maybe there’s a new omni-pack with all 7 expansions (which would mean it includes FreeTime) but I haven’t seen or heard of one yet (I’m assuming it’s an omnipack because who would start a new venture into a game by dropping a few hundred on EPs?) I’d be inclined to think the OP has the Sims 1, with all of ITS expansions (Nightlife could be “Hot Date” and the tropical island thing could be “Vacation”).
This is further borne out by the complaint about checking the mail blocking the carpool - happened to me a lot in 1 but has never happened to me in 2. It’s an important distinction because there’s some pretty major differences in gameplay.
I’m not sure if this works in 1, but if you’re playing Sims 2, as trite as it is, my advice would be for you to seduce the maid: if you hire a maid you can tip them to quickly raise your friendship, and once it’s past a certain point (I suspect around 20-30) you’ll be able to call the maid after work and invite he or she over. After much strategic romance you can invite them to move in with you, at which point the maid becomes a PC who you can control directly.
The reason you (probably) want to do this is that every maid Sim I’ve seen has an insane number of points in cooking, cleaning, mechanical, and pretty much everything else your full-time homemaker needs.
If you’re talking about The Sims 2 and not the original Sims game, hie thee toMore Awesome Than You and look for JM Pescado’s Directors Cut of hacks for whatever your highest level expansion is.
I cannot do without Bathroom Uses You and Macrotastics, as well as any number of little hacks that just make the Sims so much smarter (or at least less overtly stupid) and more efficient.
I also second the advice to look at Mod The Sims 2.
Absolutely have a gander at MATY. I think that’s where I got my “No Stinkin’ Newspaper Delivery” mod. It’s a hella funny site, too.
I suppose the OP could be referring to the first series. I was assuming Pithy Moniker (my 2nd favorite Doper pseudonym, BTW) had picked up Sims 2 and EPs secondhand. I don’t recall the mail/carpool bug, but Sims 1 was many moons ago in game-time.
I really appreciate all of the replies so far. It looks like I have The Sims 1. Sorry for the confusion, I mistook Hot Date for Night Life. The expansions that it includes are Livin’ Large, House Party, Hot Date, Vacation, Unleashed, Superstar, and Makin’ Magic.
Sims 1 is a little more frustrating in that the Sims aren’t quite as smart as they are in the second series, but once you hit a groove, it can be a lot of fun. If you have Hot Date, I suggest you take your poor lonely Sim “Downtown” for some socializing. You can do this by calling a taxi from the phone (I can’t remember what the actual menu choice is but it should be pretty obvious.) Once there, random Townies and neighbors will start filling the lot. Chat up as many as you like; once you get home, you can call up the Townies, and any neighbors that have phones, and build up relationships until they like you enough to come over when invited.
I’m trying to remember whether 1 had “days off” from work or not - I seem to remember not. That was a huge pain in the butt, but you can skip a day of work every so often (not too often, or they can get fired) if you want to give your poor guy a chance to do something fun. I’m a little light on Sims 1 advice - it’s been years since I’ve played it.
I’m also still playing Sims1 - due to an older machine. You need the maid, you need the gardener. You need expensive pretty things outside so that your Sim is happier running to the car before work and gets promoted more quickly.
Also, build a “family” with 8 people in it, give them a house and a phone - they’re your Sims new friends. They’ll start by wandering by and then they’ll call.
I usually play with the bachelor/no-roommates scenario. It is a bit harder, but once you get the part of the game that’s routine down - it isn’t bad. Make sure that your house is laid out so that he goes straight from bed to toilet to sink to shower to food to door. Don’t give them a chance to get confused or turn around or have problems navigating their path. It saves time on the way out the door and makes them less likely to miss the carpool. You can only miss one day in a row (but you can miss every other day forever).
I never got into the Sims 2 sadly. I bought it just after the third or fourth expansion came out and quit when I couldn’t justify getting all the new items and modes I wanted. But I was pretty good in Sims one and what I played of sims two.
Two things I want to point out:
Things will work out EVENTUALLY. This may mean you’ll have to have kids a couple of times and little Jimmy third generation may be the first one to take over a home business and have it self sufficient enough you’re swimming in free time, but eventually it will work out.
It’s about playing how YOU want, like I said it’ll work out. If you want a bachelor go ahead and relaize it may take a while. If you want to “win” and basically get your Sims up to amazing status as fast as possible I reccomend something such as the Subserviant Strategy to get you started.