Are we still reticulating the splines?

Remember back in Sims 1 and Sims 2 when some variant of the phrase “reticulating splines” came up on the loading screen? Expansion packs for those two games played with the phrase a little and modified it for their specific content. But I have yet to see any version of the phrase appear in The Sims 3. There are a few sites that mention the phrase is still used, but I haven’t seen it. Have you?

Ice cream truck!!!1!

Way back in time when kids still played stickball in the street, the arrival of the ice cream truck was always cause for cheer. It looks like sim kids will still be able to enjoy the frozen goodness well into the sim future, as this ice cream truck is hanging out in front of Nuts n’ Bolts Bot Emporium.

I wonder when the food trucks from Late Night will also show up…

Happy goth is happy

In the utopian future, everything is cheery and bright, and even the most angst-ridden teen can find something to smile about.

Maybe he’s getting ready for a Dia de los Muertos celebration…

But you’re the one wearing the alien mask

My sim went to the future to visit her descendants. Apparently her great granddaughter didn’t approve of the Quantum Power Suit my sim was wearing.

It really does “take one to know one.”

Too spicy too late

With the addition of World Adventures, sims are now able to try some dishes from regional cuisines that use hotter spices than they might be used to. When they do have a spicy dish, there is often a reaction when the sim is still seated with smoke and flames coming out of the sims’ mouths and ears, but there seems to be a bug in when this reaction is triggered. More often than not, I see the reaction after the sim has risen from the table and cleaned the dishes.

Sims tend to stay in this seated position, in this case on an invisible chair with her legs stuck into the front of the food replicator, until their next action.

In the future, even the thieves are happy

One of the key features of the Into the Future expansion pack is that sims in the sim present can affect the world of the sim future creating one of three possible futures: dystopia, neutral or utopia. In the utopian future, all of the sims strut around in glee, even those that are usually on the fringes of sim society.

He must have burgled something exceptional at the last heist.

Not that far back

I’ve written before about how I will often add a rocking chair into my sims’ nurseries so they can have some quality bonding time with their offspring. Sometimes sims still don’t quite know where to sit even if I don’t use the moveobjects cheat.

I guess it’s just an extra soft cushion in the chair.

They’re still out there

So it looks like two generations into the future isn’t quite far enough for sims to have formed diplomatic relations with extra-terrestrial life. The aliens still come to Oasis Landing for abductions.

Maybe the sim government has allowed the aliens a maximum quota of abductions…

Gardening – you’re doing it wrong

I finally got my copy of Into the Future this week, and I was anxious to try it out. Many of my sims learn the gardening skill and spend a lot of time tending their gardens, and being able to finally place gardens indoors was one feature that I’ve been waiting for. But the first sim I sent to the future didn’t quite get how to harvest watermelons from a plant she found in Oasis Landing.

There must be a cloaking device installed that offsets the plant’s true location to non-sims.

Ghost sims on the water

My sim was building up the free Hobart’s Hideaway resort on Isla Paradiso this month. The improvements were good enough that a family of ghosts arrived to spend some vacation time there. But when it was time to leave, each of them went a different direction, like this ghost who chose a personal watercraft to depart.

Maybe now that he’s warmed up at the resort, he won’t have the teeth chattering moodlet so much from his frozen death.

Strange things happen during a full moon

Sim behaviors change for the odd on nights when there is a full moon. Not only do zombies randomly emerge from the ground (sometimes in places where they can’t find an escape path), and sims will spontaneously kiss or slap other sims, but they will also choose completely inappropriate clothing for the task at hand.

I guess she just wants to be ready for the monthly zombie sim apocalypse.

Finally get this added to the game

It took fourteen years since the first Sims game to finally get a staircase that is not either completely straight or spiral. The new Prism Art Studio venue released on February 6 includes this little gem…

The new venue is normally priced at 1900 sim points (about $20), so it may be a while before I get it, considering that I just used the 14th anniversary sale to finally buy Pets and Into The Future.  These stairs don’t appear to be available separately yet; at least they aren’t listed in the stairs category in the store yet.

I’m still waiting for the ability to curve staircases so I can have those grand sweeping stairs for my Sim mansions, but this is getting closer.  What I really need for my everyday sims is the ability to stack straight staircases so I can have my basement stairs descend under my second-story stairs as they are often built in real life.