Well looking at that move optimistically I hope it means Second Life has realised it has become a ghetto of flying purple dildos and decaying millenial newspaper hype and they want it to instead be something that people log onto to have fun. Or Linden Labs wants to be more than a one game company and someone is finally going to make something that gets into that Sims space :)
Good luck with the new job Rod! It sounds like a big challenge.
Impulse is currently selling The Sims 3 and its expansions for 50% off as part of its holiday sale. Curiously, The Sims 3 is not available on Steam.
I think I’d like Second Life better if it was the sort of service where you could refer to using it as “Playing Second Life” rather than “being a resident”
Any clues yet who is gonna take over Rod’s position in the sims team?
It appears the next Sims 3 expanson is going to be annouced soon with a May release day. No idea what it will be.
How do we even know there is definitely going to be one?
I just got the Sims 3 steam bundle, sold my old copies for $40 and got 3 more expansion with the Steam bundle for only $40 more.
However I’ve run into a show stopper, every 2 minutes or so the game seems to lag, or stutter. I’m not sure what to call it, but the Sims stop moving but particle effects, tree animations and a few other things keep going. It can do this anywhere from 5 seconds to up to a minute and it does it all the time. The fps counter says I’m still getting great FPS, 80+. I can change my graphical settings down to the lowest level, I can disable custom content, I’ve even run a process monitor to detect if I have any files that are corrupt or not working. They’re all working fine. I’ve even done all of this on a completely new save and within a half hour I get hitching again.
I just don’t know what to do and the advice from the various sims sites doesn’t seem to help, though I did find a mega thread on the sims site itself that perfectly describes the situation - with no solutions.
To get store content to work I had to do this. I also had to delete everything I had already downloaded, all my sims files (except saves) and then download them through the launcher again. Downloading in the game did not work.
I was complete non-plussed that I had to setup the sims store to look for my steam copy instead the cd copy, and then delete all the packages I already had as well as the installed files. Seems like if you want me to use your store it should set it up to work. With that and it’s inexplicable ability to load at random times I think I’m going to avoid buying any more content through there. It’s just too much of a hassle to get it to work.
red_guy
1709
I know one possible explanation for this one. The stutters every few seconds may mean that somewhere in your town a NPC Sim got stuck in a loop (collision with a door, a staircase or a table - and it can’t get out of it).
Somebody who really knows this game can probably point you to a good fix, but for me opening the command console (command+shift+C) and typing “resetsim *” (no quotes) made it go away (although maybe it merely reduced the stutter to < 0.2 seconds).
I think it means that all sims will be reset to their homes, so don’t try this during work / school hours. And you may lose some moodlets. So save before you try.
Edit: your stutter frequency (2 minutes) is lower than what I experienced (every 10 seconds). So maybe it’s something entirely different. The game doesn’t like computers with 4GB of memory or more, for instance.
Indeed, doesn’t work. Sorry that I didn’t list it, thanks for the help though.
My next step would be try it without nightlife or before the december patch? but I can’t do that with the steam version.
Edit: Just entering the cheat doesn’t ever seem to do anything, but I can enter first name last name and it resets a specific sim. If that’s what I have to do, well I’m not going to look around a huge town for 1 unknown sim or type in every sims name. I do however have 4Gb of ram.
I have however had tons of fun, and problem free gaming, designing modernist houses. The house I’m actually using is more brutalist though, with one caveat of having wall to wall floor to ceiling windows for the deck area. I had been planing to put wings on one foundation level lower than I currently have but because of the cheats and layering I had to do to get this I’m unable to build a functional wing, however I can place one just for appearances - but what fun is that?
There is a rumour that EA are dropping The Sims 3.
forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/343017.page - add the http
I hope they bring out weather first!
Is that a rumor, or just fans sharing stories about how they don’t like Sims 3? I didn’t see anything of real rumor value on page 1.
Mordrak
1713
Nice home Morberis! Any interior shots?
As for Sims 3, it was the first and only Sims I ever played and I enjoyed my time in it quite a bit.
DeepT
1714
I saw this on sale on steam recently, but I passed cause after playing Sims 1 and some of Sims 2, I got sick of the brain-dead AI that governed your sims.
For example: One sim gets up for work 2 hours early (why does it take 2 hours to get ready to go to work?) and for some reason creates a feat for like 4 or 5 people for breakfast. Ok, whatever… The next sim comes in a little while later and does he grab a plate? Nope, pulls some food out and nukes it.
One sim’s bladder is getting full. He heads to the downstairs bathroom which is full, while the upstairs one is empty. On the way to the bathroom he passes the piano and decides to play it. Suddenly he gets up after a minute or two and runs to the bathroom and pisses himself.
I had a medium sized house with a long hall. In game time, I noticed it takes 15 minutes to walk from the back door to the front door. No wonder it takes 2 hours to get to work.
No weekends.
Have these issues been addressed in Sims 3? Basically it would be nice if you could leave them on auto and not come back in an hour to have the place totally trashed ( or more likely burned to the ground), while they have lost their jobs. As a player I do not want to be constantly making the most basic decisions for them, like NO, go to the bathroom now, don’t play the piano. I just want to make bigger decisions for them, the more important ones.
I just want to make bigger decisions for them, the more important ones.
I think the dawning realization here is that the Sims games as a whole are just completely not for you. I agree with you about wanting sims to maybe just make a little more sensible decisions than they do now, but hands-on micro is the name of the game.
wisefool
1716
Sims have monday through sunday job schedules now.
Autonomous behaviour is better, you really can learn to let go and not micromanage every little thing. Socializing still requires manual interaction, the sims are too incompetent at it.
MATY has fairly ‘min/max’ autoscripts if you are a control-freak.
The last expansion (Late Night) introduces vampires, which is good, but I really hate the implementation of apartments. Running to the base floor then having to queue up to run up the elevator is so blah.
After all these patches it seems to run reasonably stable now. I’ll see if I can get to a third-fourth generation without the game blowing up.
The stupid meteorite bug is still there thought (after the disaster a lot of objects are rendered inoperable) I have a home with a broken mailbox and can’t figure out how to respawn a working one.
I agree with this. While many of the issues DeepT talks about have been addressed to one degree or another with The Sims 3, it’s really a game that wants you to make lots of decisions for them - the automatic behavior is mostly to keep 'em alive when you have a lot of Sims and are looking elsewhere.
Mass meals are time-efficient compared to single servings, even in The Sims 2. In any case, you can save leftovers in the refrigerator, and Sims will go for those first before cooking new food.
Sims do still tend to pee themselves. Many players see this as a feature.
Specific work-days have been in the game since the base Sims 2. It’s only The Sims 1 that didn’t have the concept of days off. Note that your work week is frequently not Monday-Friday 9-5. It depends on the job.
The Sims 3 does make it more practical to work at home, i.e. as a writer. Ambitions ads a little more functionality to at-home careers along with the extra hands-on jobs.
I wouldn’t count on that. But I’ve always been very hands-on when playing.
Pogo
1718
The Sims is a time management RTS game, where time is the resource. If it were a life simulator, there would be algorithms that could identify how you played your Sim’s routine and do it for you. Unfortunately (for some), that’s not the game that Maxis has been making all these years.
jpinard
1719
I wish they’d get rid of all the MMORGY’s bits and go back to it being a crazy life simulator. If you setup a family and let it go, the game gets very boring and predictable… which is far different than the Sims 2.
So much potential with geneticy aspects, but in the end the traits you choose are almost inert. Setting up an “evil, crazy, scientist” guy with a “pure saintly police woman” does not result in the wild spectacles you’d expect (or that we had in Sims 1/2). It’s just boring humdrum life as usual. This is by far my greatest disappointment in the series.
Evil isn’t all that evil in The Sims 3. Mostly it means you get a few extra interactions (swipe candy from baby) and you get a mood boost from seeing people unhappy. Oh, and the completely meaningless ability to donate to evil causes at the mailbox.
On the other hand, I don’t recall seeing anything wild as a result of personality traits in The Sims 2, and certainly not in The Sims 1. Evil wasn’t an option, at most you had Grouchy or Messy, and Messy / Neat was the only real personality conflict I recall.
I think ultimately The Sims ends up being a role-playing game. Not a RPG, an actual role-playing game. To get much out of it, you really have to make your Sims assume personality roles that aren’t really modeled directly by the game. The game gives you the tools to act out what you feel they should do, but the motivation you have to supply yourself.
In other words, it’s a glorified dollhouse. Or “action figure” house if you want to hang on to your masculinity.
