Minigame added with the recent update

A while ago, I posted about the recent update that was released just before Into The Future.  In addition to the bugfixes that were included in the update, we also now have a hidden object minigame that will appear when sim neighborhoods are loading.  Even though the background on the minigame is the blue beehive background that was added with Into The Future, you don’t need the expansion pack to play the minigame.



The minigame is a screenshot highlighting a bunch of items and sims from an expansion pack, a stuff pack or a set available in the store, and below the progress bar, it will ask you to “Find the …” with the official name of an item that appears in the screenshot.  And in case you don’t recognize where the content being shown comes from, there is a handy icon in the lower right corner so you know what to buy to add the content to your game.  Finding these items is usually pretty simple, as there is usually only one of any type of object in the screenshot (for example, there is usually only one kind of dining table visible).  The only issue that I’ve found with this minigame is the lag that will sometimes occur because the computer is busy loading the full game in the background, and this is noted at the bottom of the screenshot.

The footnote on the screenshot also says you can turn off the minigame in the options panel if you want.  The option is pretty easy to find on the general settings tab.



I’ve left the setting turned on for my game, at least right now, because it not only makes the loading time less boring, but playing the minigame will reward my sims with some extra lifetime happiness points based on the number of objects that I was able to correctly identify and the speed with which I clicked on them.  In my simming this week, I’ve usually gained my sims about 500-700 extra lifetime happiness points with each loading screen, and since I send my sims travelling a lot, I’ve had many opportunities to play the minigame.

The lifetime happiness points that you earn playing this minigame will be split among all your active sims once the game loads.  It’s great when you’ve only got one sim, but larger families might not see as much of a benefit right away from this minigame.

Preventing bonks; update today

On Thursday, EA published an update to our favorite game.  With every update, I always make sure to go read the changelog to see what gems were added.  This week’s update is no exception, already taking sims Into The Future.  Yup, the Into The Future expansion pack will be available on October 22, and this update was released on October 17.

There aren’t a lot of fixes listed there, but a few that stand out in the official announcement are:

• Sim heads no longer appear on the bodies of Plumbots on display.
• Pregnant Sims keep their belly when wearing clothing purchased from the clothing pedestal.
• The projection paneling in the Bot Emporium is now interactive.

Even better is that this update includes a few fixes for problems that I’ve run into with sims going to university:

• Fixed Sims not always loading correctly when travelling to University.
• Fixed Sims sometimes losing family data when travelling.

I want my sims to get to university properly, so I’ve applied the update, but I invite anyone who gets Into The Future, doesn’t apply this update and sees the bonk with sim heads on plumbots to send me a screenshot.  Please!  B-)

An update from EA – Updated

So after posting about a bug yesterday, today EA announces that update 1.58 is available.  The release notes don’t appear to address the issue I described then, but there is another issue that I ran into but hadn’t written up yet that is apparently fixed in the update.

I moved Delia Dietrich to a new 3-story houseboat (I’m still playtesting this houseboat and plan to upload it as soon as the uploader stops giving me errors that the lot couldn’t be shared for some undisclosed reason) that used two Hewnsman Spiral Staircases stacked on top of each other to transition among the three floors.  I chose this spiral staircase because I liked the way it looked in the corner of the living room better than the ladder or the other staircases.  [Hmm… what if I used an elevator…?]  I built the houseboat so that it had two main floors above the water line and a basement floor below, which meant that the main entrance was on the middle of the three floors.  Therefore, the staircases were one going up and one going down.  When I tried to direct Delia to go to the basement floor, she route-failed and couldn’t figure out how to get down there unless I either removed the upper staircase, or used a different spiral staircase.  I settled on using the Roundabout Spiral Staircase because the problem appeared to be isolated to the Hewnsman model.

In the release notes for today’s update, I see this may have been addressed:

Sims can now route properly up consecutively stacked staircases on houseboats.

I’ll have to put the Hewnsman staircases back and try again…

Also, if you haven’t ever read through the release notes for a The Sims update before, take another look at them.  There are some interesting gems to be found in them, like this one:

Fixed two occurrences where a houseboat could be created on top of another houseboat thus causing both houseboats to be stuck for eternity…which is a very long time.

I wonder how I could create a houseboat on top of another in the first place?

UPDATE – I just tried replacing the Roundabout stairs with the Hewnsman stairs and yes, this game update fixed the issue described above.  Yay!