I wonder if anybody has taken the time to experiment with any of these (yeah, I know, it’s a game… but I’m interested in what goes on under the hood).
Sim needs when they come over to visit a house you are playing. If, for example, Fred invites Donna over, does it make any difference in her behavior if Donna was last saved when she was hungry, tired, or otherwise grouchy?
-Does Donna try to address the needs she had when she was last saved at Fred’s house? Or is it more that she will definitely eat, then she will definitely want to use the bathroom no matter what?
-Is the change in her mood permanent? Or does she always arrive at everyone’s house in the same mood until Donna is played again (that would be kinda freaky… “But yesterday I fed you a huge meal, today you’re gonna die in half an hour again???”)
-I’ve noticed needs drop more slowly at work (one of the results is that sims with shorter work days tend to be pining for their beds earlier and earlier…). Do different jobs have different effects on moods?
-Unrelated question… that gawk effect is incredibly annoying. You know what I’m talking about; when two sims run into eachother in a doorway, one or both of them stands there gawking for at least 30 seconds. (Can you imagine what Sim New York City would be like… people would spend their lives standing dazed and confused on the subway platform.) Is that related to processor speed, or is there any way to make sims get on with their lives after these doorway encounters?
Sadly, I don’t know the answer to any of these questions. However, I would like to add my own, if you don’t mind:
Why is it that when I download stuff from the web (say, at www.simresource.com) all the objects, walls, and floors I download work like a charm, but I’ll be damned if I can get the skins or the roofs to work in the game. A few of the skins have worked, but the majority are just sitting in the Program Files, wasting space. I have never successfully gotten a roof to work.
If anyone knows why this is, I would appreciate an answer, it’s driving me insane.
[blockquote]- Sim needs when they come over to visit a house you are playing. If, for example, Fred invites Donna over, does it make any difference in her behavior if Donna was last saved when she was hungry, tired, or otherwise grouchy?
-Does Donna try to address the needs she had when she was last saved at Fred’s house? Or is it more that she will definitely eat, then she will definitely want to use the bathroom no matter what?
-Is the change in her mood permanent? Or does she always arrive at everyone’s house in the same mood until Donna is played again (that would be kinda freaky… “But yesterday I fed you a huge meal, today you’re gonna die in half an hour again???”)
[/blockquote]
Yes to all of the above. I had one of my early sims, bob townie, all depressed. When he went to other sims houses he’d only cry. People would talk to him and he’d sob, people woud try to interact and he’d sob.
One other weird thing i had a female sim get stuck on my wife’s game… she was playing and this girl came over… got stuck in the road due to a bug and wouldn;t leave… she couln’t eat or sleep, kept wetting herself. My wife tried to invite her in but her sims couldn;t go out that far into the road. Eventually she died. hence she was dead in my game too… it sucked.
Visitor Sims arrive hungry and in need of fun and socialization. This is regardless of when the character was last saved or last visited the active house. They always arrive as guests in the same sort of mood.
meyer, your skins and roofs should not be in Program Files, they should be in C:\Program Files\Maxis\The Sims\GameData\Skins and C:\Program Files\Maxis\The Sims\GameData\Roofs. If they are unzipped 256-color mode bitmaps I can think of no reason why they should not work.
Hmmm, as far as I know that is where the files are, Lamia. I really don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t work either, but I am notoriously computer illiterate, so there you go.
meyer, have you tried to run File Cop? That should at least cull the bad ones out into another directory, so if you don’t want to deal with fixing them, you can delete them. I had a bit of trouble with a downloaded head crashing the game, and this fixed it right up.
Unless you kill a Sim, the only think that you can affect permanantly for a Sim is your relationship with them. All needs and moods are reset every time.
The gawk effect is due to a bug in the path finding algorithm. Im not sure if there is a patch or not but it is one of those things that should have been culled out during the beta phase. Its extremely annoying.
According to Prima’s Strategy Guide to the Sims, visitors always arrive with their moods set at the following levels:
Hunger: -30 to -20
Comfort: 30 to 70
Hygiene: 90
Bladder: 0 to 30
Energy: 35
Fun: -20 to 20
Social: -50 to -40
(The scale is from -100 to 100, so a score of 0 would be equal to halfway on the bar.)
Their current mood at home has NO effect on their mood while visiting houses or Downtown. I’ve had sims trapped in tiny rooms with only a fridge (so they don’t starve) and they would still visit other houses like nothing was wrong!!!
Regarding the “gawk” effect – try building two doors for every entrance/exit, especially in high-traffic areas.
Regarding skins not working – each skin requires a body shape, or “mesh”, in order to work. Many of the low-numbered meshes (B001mafat, b003fafit, etc.) already come with the game, but many skins use customized meshes that you MUST have for them to work. Skins with missing meshes are very, very, very common on TSR. You’ll need to contact the maker directly to get it, or find it from a different source.