Just half a serving, please...

Tiffanie has a strange way of portioning her cheeseburger.  There weren't any seats at the kitchen table, so she chose the activity table instead, placing her plate on edge slicing through the table.

Sleeping in the bathtub

Loren has been working pretty hard the last few sim days.  Having three children and a fourth on the way can make a sim go to work less than clean and arrive home completely filthy.  But if there's one thing that modern sims do, it is multitask, so Loren takes a nap in the tub, satisfying both energy and hygiene needs at once.

I guess the tub has built-in features to prevent sleeping sims from slipping underwater and drowning, but I don't see how the tub's bubble jets can really get her clean if she doesn't move around much.

A two-fisted drinker?

It looks like Mariam's loner trait isn't that much of a problem, but there might be something else brewing that could be.  While entertaining guests she poured two for herself.

There seems to be something a little sinister with the mixology skill...

The magic floating rocks of Oasis Springs

The sims I am playing right now live in Oasis Springs.  I built a house for them on the vacant lot there, and when they're not busy with skill building or off at work, I have one of them run around the neighborhood on a collecting spree.  Off at one corner of their neighborhood is this unusual rock formation...

Those three rocks are floating above the ground.  I don't think this is a hint at future expansion packs; EA probably isn't going to resurrect the Harry Potter Makin' Magic pack, but you never really know...

Ariana is not impressed

Wow, it's been a while since I last posted.  It's also been a while since I've had some free time for simming.  My sims did not disappoint as we see here. 

Ariana Wilkins, a family friend of my current sim household, stopped by to hang out.  Manuel is not making a very good impression on her today...

She's just missing the crossed arm pose, but she got the smirk right.

A month later, how is The Sims 4?

So now that it's October, and most of us have had about a month to play The Sims 4, how does it hold up?  Many others have said that this version feels more like an update to The Sims 2 than it does as an update to The Sims 3 (I wonder if that was part of the reasoning for making The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection a free download last month).  For me, it's mostly good.  There are a few things I miss from earlier versions, a few new features that I like, and there are a few things that I absolutely detest.

My top picks on features that I miss from earlier games, are these:

• Open world - The Sims 3 had the open world done right.  Once a world was loaded, my sim could travel to any location and go into most buildings.  There was a lot to explore, and I didn't have to wait for the game to reset everything when my sim visited a neighbor or went to the beach.
• Vehicles - This goes right along with the open world.  Sims needed ways to get to the other end of the world, and they were able to use the most appropriate vehicles to get there.  The Sims 2 handled cars a little better in that sims actually opened the car door, got in, backed out onto the street and drove away, and The Sims 3 let us follow the cars (or bicycles or even witches' brooms) all the way to their destinations.  But in The Sims 4, all of the vehicles are just background scenery.
• Playable careers - The Ambitions expansion pack for The Sims 3 added some careers that included some extra gameplay during a sim's work day.  The ghost hunter career was my favorite and the traits that enhanced this career path are the ones that I would more often choose for my sims.  While The Sims 4 does include some "homework" in the gameplay in order to get promotions, and they are more appropriate than just building up your friend list like it was all the way back in The Sims 1, a sim at work in The Sims 4 is simply non-playable.
• Basements - I grew up in Los Angeles where basements were exceptionally rare, but I moved to the Midwest about 20 years ago, and around here, it's rare for a house to lack a basement.  The basement is often used as an extra living space, but can be converted into almost anything that the homeowner wants.  In The Sims 3, the basement tool was an invaluable tool that I used to expand the living space on every sim house I made or had my sims purchase.  I made wine cellars, theaters, gyms, art studios, servants' quarters, trophy rooms and garages, among many other room types.  The basement was an easy place for me to stash the extra skill-building items that didn't fit into the usual house decor.

Okay, so what do I like?  Well...

• It works! - More than anything else, I love that I can play The Sims 4 on my current computer.  I'm using a refurbished laptop that is a couple years old now.  The game installed and worked wonderfully out of the box for me, and got a little better when I turned on the "laptop mode" option (with this option turned off, I actually had my computer automatically shut down due to overheating, but have not had that happen yet with this option on).
• Visual style - I wasn't too keen on the more cartoonish features when the early screenshots were released in Spring and early Summer, but I've gotten used to them.  Touching on the fact that the game runs on my computer, the reduced detail on game items that is most noticeable in the characters' hair, reduces the computing complexity.  Every object in the game seems to fit its environment, and there are lots of little details to find (like the fact that the curtains will subtly wave back and forth as if blown by the house's air conditioning).
• Conversations continue - I love that I don't have to queue up 80 different interactions when my sims are in conversations.  They will usually keep going with smalltalk between the interactions that I ask them to do.
• Reusing birthday cakes - In earlier versions, getting multiple sims to age up at once was nearly impossible.  It was a little easier in The Sims 3, but I was still stuck with waiting for each birthday interaction to completely finish before aging up the next sim, then I had to buy a completely different cake for the next sim and go through the whole process again.  In The Sims 4, I can have a sim make one cake, add candles to it, and then add candles again and age up the next sim, and the birthday interactions are much faster than they were in previous versions (and there is finally a birthday song in the game too!)
• Multitasking - I am continually surprised with the tasks that sims choose to combine.  My sim will change clothes on the way to getting breakfast out of the fridge, chat with other sims while repairing or upgrading objects, move to the ambient music while sitting and performing other actions (like writing a book on the computer or eating a meal and chatting with other sims in the room), and I finally saw one of my sims make a phone call from the toilet.

• Build mode roof tool - Finally!  Now I can really put the roof pieces the way I want them without all the hassle that were roofs in the previous versions.
• Sim path selection - I love that a sim in a small bathroom will not be blocked in by another sim at the door any more.  The two sims will be able to get past each other even in very small spaces.

I mentioned that there a few things that I absolutely hate in The Sims 4, and I would be remiss if I didn't list at least a couple of them here.

• Loading screens - Every time I send a sim to a different building, no matter where it is, I have to sit through a loading screen.  Even going immediately next door forces me to wait for another loading screen.  Sure, having exactly one active building at a time can reduce the computing complexity, but this is overkill.
• Unreadable text - My vision isn't quite what it used to be, and as a professional photographer, my computer screen is correctly color balanced to help me ensure that I am getting the exact colors I need on my photos and that they will print with my correctly color balanced printer profiles that let me print out exactly the same color (or as absolutely close as possible) that I see on my screen.  That means that my monitor's brightness and contrast are adjusted away from the defaults (which are way too bright).  The Sims 4 user interface is usually a very light blue or light green text, sometimes even yellow-green, against a white background.  This is almost impossible to read.  The notification wall does it right by using high-contrast colors, but the aspirations and job homework text, where I need to read the text more closely to decide on my sims' next actions, does not.

For my style of play, where I try to follow one sim from birth through adulthood and then continue the line by following one of the sim's children, The Sims 4 lets me play.  I remember the big uproar from The Sims 2 to The Sims 3 when players found they couldn't play multiple families concurrently any more, but this was less of a change for me because I've always played in a one-sim-at-a-time manner.  I was never the player who built death trap houses, and although toddlers in earlier versions provided an almost consequence-free time span for skill building, for the most part, The Sims 4 is fun enough that I'll keep playing.

This week's update that added ghosts is a welcome addition, and I look forward to the pools that are coming in next month's update and the new careers in December's update.  It is likely that this game evolution will lead me to stop playing The Sims 3 just like that step led me to stop playing The Sims 2 before it, but I am confident that the game will continue to improve and that I'll find a way to either tolerate or mitigate the shortcomings.

May the fork be with you

Okay, it's September 2, 2014.  A large portion of the simming community is playing the new release of Sims 4 today and probably staying up pretty late to continue playing.  My copy arrived around 4:00pm today (I prefer getting a disk over just a download, and I needed to get some work done before I could play today), so I've only had a few hours of Sim 4 time.

But, it didn't take long to get my first bonk from the game.  The seated sim in this screenshot is Amy Moore, a sim I created in the Create A Sim demo (and shared to the gallery).  Here she has just told her husband Harvey about the results of their recent woohoo.  It seems he was so excited that he held onto his fork from his most recent meal - it's the white-ish looking thing stuck to his right hand...

I don't know what he intended to do with that fork, but after a few more interactions and another meal or two, he's not holding the fork any more.

That's enough play time for tonight.  I've got work to prepare for, and I'll put together a more complete post later with more detailed thoughts and analysis of the new version soon.

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...

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…...

The most efficient way to do laundry

My sim wanted to do her laundry before returning from her term at Sims University.  She gathered up all the dirty clothes from around the house and then went down to the basement to start the load.  But she decided it would be most efficient if she cleaned her own clothes as well…

I can’t wait to see the spin cycle on this one.

Sim pile!

What happens when 20 or more sims try to get through the same set of doors at the same time? They pile up and make things take way too long.

My sim is stuck in the middle of the crowd there, and she's very hungry right now (thus the red plumbbob above her). She's been stuck in this crowd for about three sim hours so far and it will probably take her another sim hour or two to get past everyone. There's not a whole lot that I can do other than reset my sim to get her out of there.

When sims bunch up like this, they try to take turns, but the algorithm they use is pretty bad and they all end up trying to step in front of each other all the time, which makes them stop and think about their position for a few minutes, which puts them in front of other sims that are trying to get by... Unfortunately, when the sim is at University, the Tuesday morning class is always at the student union building (which is seen here) and there are too many students that try to get in at once, so this pileup happens every sim week.

Braaaiiiinnnns!!!!!!

So as the legend goes, zombies eat brains. But in Oasis Landing, they’ve found a new way to satisfy that need with the food replicator. It may be a plate full of brains, but that’s no reason not to be civil about the meal, even if it is a zombie’s meal.

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…