A sim's personal space

So now that The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection is a free download this week (assuming you have an Origin account and can find the place to enter the I-LOVE-THE-SIMS redemption code), I decided to reload it and play it again. It's been a fun stroll through the memories of playing an older game, but as usual, it was not without its own problems.

The game downloaded and installed perfectly fine on the first try, and I was able to start and play the game as well, albeit with a very long wait as it built the folder structure and neighborhoods for a new game. The computer I am using now is much better than what I had used the last time I played The Sims 2 so I expected a better experience this time.  In general I was right to expect this.  Everything looked better except for one thing...

Everyone who entered my sim's home had this black rectangle appear under them.  The rectangle moved with the sims through the home and spun around to orient itself with the sim it was following.  I guess they had Wendy sew their shadows to their feet before they visited...

Misc tip – The fastest way to learn to drive

The Generations expansion pack adds some new interactions at various life stages.  When it’s time to teach teen sims to drive, there is one tip that I like to follow every time.  I can usually get my adult sims to fulfill their lifetime wishes before their children become teens, so I will almost always have one of them use their lifetime reward points to purchase the Motive Mobile van and then make it that sim’s default vehicle.  I direct my teen sims to ask that parent for help learning to drive and just let them go at it.

Normally when a teen sim is learning to drive, the fun bar tanks for both the teen and the adult instructor during the lesson.  Using the Motive Mobile, all the needs for both sims are constantly fulfilled so they can stay out longer.  I usually find that they will continue until the teen has reached level 2 before they stop the lesson, but then I direct them to start the lesson again and they complete level 3 and the teen learns to drive very soon, almost always within 12 sim hours of starting the first lesson.

Even better with this vehicle is that I can send them out after dinner and have them working on this skill overnight while the rest of the family sleeps, and they are also both ready for work and school in the morning with no extra effort.  And since the teen sim is out with parental supervision, she doesn’t get caught for curfew violations.

Not the footwear that I was expecting

When my sims age up, I usually let them pick what clothes they want to wear and what hairstyles they want to show with them.  It’s pretty rare for me to take time out of playing my sims’ lives to adjust their decisions, but sometimes I have to step in.  In this case, Michelle chose a pair of shoes that have invisible heels.  I like seeing my female sims in casual heels, but I couldn’t let Michelle go on tiptoes all the time with no support.

I forget where I got these shoes or even if they were an official EA release or not (I’m sure one of you will be able to tell me in the comments…).  They kind of look like shoes from Into the Future, but even with heels, they didn’t quite match the Generations top and Island Paradise skirt (at least I think that’s where the skirt comes from).

I did change the rest of her outfit too, but it was the shoes that got me to take her through CAS on her birthday.

A little more “eternal rest” for this sim

What do ghost sims do when they get tired?  They stop and take a nap, just like any other sim.

Bit I’m still wondering how ghost sims get tired in the first place.

When zombies get bored

If your sim is in the middle of an action when the zombies appear, the zombies will usually wait around for your sim to finish the action before they launch their zombie attack.  My sim kept fishing long enough for the zombies to get bored, so one pulled out her umbrella to wait a little longer and another chose to fly around with his jetpack for a while.

I’ve also seen zombies reading, eating and going potty (unlike mummies).  What have you seen zombies do?

Fishing prevents zombie attacks

My sim likes to fish and is working on his lifetime wish to have the perfect home aquarium with 13 perfect specimens of different species.  On one trip to the future, he landed just before a full moon, and you know that means that the stupid zombies will soon appear near my sim.  The thing is, if my sim is busy doing something, the zombie attack action can’t be performed because the zombie patiently waits for my sim to finish his action first.

Eventually the zombies will get bored and leave on their own or 6:00 am rolls around and they recover back to regular NPC sims and go home.

Driving the invisible monorail

Traveling to the future introduces your sims to a new form of public transport, the invisible-track monorail.  I was curious to see what it looked like inside the monorail car, so I zoomed in to try to see.  It works for other vehicles in the game, so why wouldn’t it work here too?

I guess the expansion pack developers didn’t think we would want to see the inside of the monorail car because it looks like they didn’t build it.  But I wonder what my sim thinks he’s driving here.  At least he’s sitting down.

A ghost to watch over me

Rather than moving the dead butler’s remains to the cemetery, they buried her in the backyard (okay, I wanted to get some ghost interactions in my legacy family, so I put it there).  So far my sims aren’t afraid of her, even when they know that she’s using the rocking chair right next to them.

Maybe in a future generation I’ll have one of the family members take the remains to the science lab to resurrect her…  or not…

Paparazzi shift change

When a sim starts out on the path toward becoming a five-star celebrity, the paparazzi start following the sim around.  Usually there’s just one NPC sim who watches, and takes notes and photographs, but there are times when that first paparazzi gets tired and hands off the watching duties to another NPC.  I often see their work periods overlap with two of them following my one-star celebrity like this time when my sim went fishing in Shang Simla..

No matter what worlds and traveling expansion packs you have installed, the paparazzi will find your celebrity sim whenever and wherever he travels.  The advantage here is that a celebrity sim is more likely to get the “In the limelight” positive moodlet during a shift change like this.

A pillow fight to the death

My all lifetime wishes legacy family hired a butler to keep the house clean.  Unfortunately, the butler tried to fix the dishwasher without mopping up the water first and got herself electrocuted.  My starter sim, Raven, couldn’t reason with the grim reaper to keep the butler so she started a pillow fight

Now she has a growing relationship with Grim.  I wonder how far it will go…...

Will I be able to run The Sims 4?

There has been a lot of talk over the last month about The Sims 4 since E3 and the presentations and announcements that were made there.  We learned that the toddler life stage and pools will not be included in the base game, and that each neighborhood in the world will have only five lots.  The screenshots that have been shown have been derided for a lack of detail in the hairstyles.  Features that simmers have been asking for over a long period are confirmed as not being included (still no height adjustment for sims).  But there was also talk of classic sim items (the cow plant, grand pianos, etc.) and characters (Bella Goth) returning in the base game as well as a bunch of new features (sims showing their emotions and having interactions that are available only in certain emotional states), skills (growing flowers) and careers (comedian).

One question that I have yet to see definitively answered is whether or not I will be able to run The Sims 4 on my computer.  There was a comment about a year ago when CAS was shown at Gamescom.  I don't remember who said it or where to find it anymore, but the comment was meant to reassure gamers that we would be able to play The Sims 4 on our current hardware.  With that in mind, it's pretty easy to see why some things have been left out and the style changed to be a little more cartoonish.  But that still doesn't really answer my question.

Today I went looking for a concrete answer.  The only place that I could find any mention of system requirements was a placeholder page on the Origin store website.  The page simply says "Coming soon!"  We're now less than 2 months from the launch date, so there isn't much time left to announce the minimum and recommended system specs, so I'm still cautiously optimistic that I'll be able to play it with my current computer hardware.