Premades and Precepts

Yay, no oppressive DRM! Rod Humble tells all. Of course, the copy protection remains, because EA aren’t THAT progressive.

What nefarious schemes will EA implement instead? Here are some ideas for them…

1) Intentionally program the game ‘broken’, and release a day-one patch while restricting its downloading as much as possible to genuine owners. Games for Windows Live, etc. Issue a statement on your official forums; don’t acknowledge what you did but apologise for the issues and then accuse people with broken games of piracy. Hilarity ensues.

2) Create an awesome bonus feature for your game that increases its replayability 500% OR makes the game so much more functional that it’s practically a necessity for all serious players. Restrict the Awesome Bonus with a one-time code packaged with new copies of the game. Gamers will complain: “It’s too Awesome! Why isn’t it in the game itself? I don’t want to download it!” Accuse the complainers of being pirates. Six months later, release the update for $10. Leave it out of the ‘game of the year’ edition just to piss off a few more people. Extra points if Awesome Bonus isn’t ready for three months.

3) Package the game with a proprietary content delivery system which is a mandatory install with the game. Make it impossible, or at least heavily frustrating, to play the game without the PCDS running in memory, chewing up system resources. Accuse anyone who complains of being pirates.

I hope EA completely re-invents the idea of sub-neighborhoods (found in Uni, NL, OFB even though it was pretty superfluous, and AL) in The Sims 3. With the seamless neighborhood, sub-hoods would be a reversion to TS2′s ‘every home is an island’ timekeeping. That would suck. It would be a step backward.

With the additional possibility that players have custom hoods, they’re going to need a creative way of ‘expanding’ the play area and allowing access to those features. I believe they will do this with ‘ploppable’ community lots, and creating a new town in each EP (not so much to ask for, is it?)

Anyway, here’s my wish-list of additional buildings:

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The  appearance of TS3 Sims seems to be a mildly controversial topic. I actually think they look kind of weird now. Especially the children. But I can see why they changed their aesthetic – it makes it easier to make Sims resembling real-life people. Particularly, the fact that you can make Sims with wider heads makes up for their “Sims of the Corn” appearance.

I think it’s partially because we haven’t seen them moving very much. TS2 Sims always had an undercurrent of activity and excitement which was only really obvious when you saw them flailing about. I know I always look awkward when frozen in pictures.

A while ago, I received a family tree from a relative who asked us to help update it. Only problem was it was in an XLS spreadsheet – rather difficult to navigate, to put it finely. So I went looking for good, free family tree software. I learned about GEDCOM, tried out about half a dozen freeware solutions, and found out that 90% of genealogy software costs money and looks like it was written in 1998.

Nevertheless, I ended up with two excellent pieces of free software: GenealogyJ and GRAMPS.If you like keeping Sims family records, both are good free choices.I know that there are popular services like TribalPages but I specifically wanted software that could keep a local database, and perhaps export to a website or better yet, a graphical family tree.

Here’s a little comparison of GenealogyJ and GRAMPS.

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Calendars are iffy things. They’re pretty much critical for running ‘governed’ hoods and they add a nice sense of immersion – readers can sense the time passing. However, the real world doesn’t translate well into the Sims’ when it comes to the calendar.

I like to world-build from a Sim perspective. Sims only perceive life in days and weeks (due to weekdays/weekends). So, the easiest calendar is one that counts what are known as ‘Sim Days’ from day 1 onwards. I don’t find this terribly immersive, although it works.

In TS2 I decided that 20 days would equal a ‘year’ (a tropical year I guess) due to the 5 day seasons. Complicated. It obviously messed up the days of the week with respect to seasons, especially because I played 3 day periods Prosperity-style). I ended up having to chart out the seven year cycle with a spreadsheet. (more…)

I’ve always been enamoured with the integrated economy, but never had the commitment to put it into action. With TS2 I did draw out an elaborate city government, replete with judicial system (+ courthouse), integrated economy with businesses, farm system, tax system, the works. Then I realised it was all too much for me. The rules were too restrictive.

So I thought, the next time I do the whole hood-building thing, I’m going to cut back and chose to focus on the community. Small town dynamics and relationships, which is what The Sims is best at showing.

But what if the town had a say in its rules? I could start with a blank slate and let the ‘citizens’ choose what is best. Think about it – the sorts of rules that people play their hoods by are actually real-life political issues: immigration restrictions, taxes, criminal laws, corruption. What kinds of political opinion would exist in a Sim world?

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The rule of law is the principle that everyone, and every institution, everywhere, is subject to the law. (Copying out of my dictionary here.) Law is my area of specialty, so naturally I think about the implications of law in sandbox-like games in between the avoidance of study.

In my abortive TS2 integrated hood, I devised a city Court to adjudicate local disputes. My idea was that Sims should have common law. Whatever the judged ruled in cases would become part of the local law. For example, a Sim dies when he is electrocuted by a television. His next of kin sues the television company in the Court. Maybe the judge would decide that yes, the company is liable and has to pay damages. Then that would become a precedent and any manufacturer could be liable.

This ‘Case Law’ would contrast with what I call Sim Law, the inherent rules of the game. Examples – Sims can’t commit murder. Bills must be paid otherwise you get Repo Man’d. Same-sex marriage is legal.

I thought having a legal system like this would be a nifty way to introduce rules into the game and create drama and tension. Breaches of the law such as trespassing or theft (both obvious ones in Sims games) could have a bit more colour than simply deducting a fine from the family funds. Hypothetical scenario – a pesky neighbour is hauled before the judge for repeatedly stealing lawn ornaments. However, the accused has hardly any money to pay a fine, and it’s his first offence. The judge orders him to do community service! For a week, he has to clean his neighbour’s house.

I’m looking forward to seeing if any of this will work in game.

Back in my TS2 days I experimented with elections, using a program called OpenSTV to collect ballots and tally the votes. OpenSTV is based on the STV or preferential voting system, but can count votes in many other ways too. (You have to click “Show All Methods” in the Methods menu to access some of the others. Also, get Java.)

Here’s how my system worked: each household would have one candidate, typically the one with the most political interest. All single-Sim households get one candidate between them. I would look at each Adult/Elder Sims’ relationship and record their vote – ranking each candidate on relationship score with a few guidelines:

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I just wanted to put in a shout-out for Hook’s RandomStuff. I’ve been using randomstuff for ages for choosing names and even randomizing appearances in TS2. Basically I configured the text file to give a number for each preset – face 4, brow 6, eyes 10, nose 12, etc. Unlike townie generation, which just chooses from a pool of 27 faces (I think) you can create unique-looking Sims in CAS very quickly by randomizing the presets.

It will be interesting to see how face generation works in TS3. Hopefully the engine is a little more chaotic and each facial feature will be randomized, rather than getting the same couple of dozen faces. I’m not big on obsessing with genetics (that’s a topic for another whole post) but I like seeing variations.

As for TS3, from what we’ve seen of the screenshots, Sim faces are overall smoother. Although they’re all premades… I wonder if we’ll be seeing the return of the ‘uglyface townie’ phenomenon. Personally I prefer plasticky soulless-eyed wax dolls over the angular faces, ridiculous noses, and red mohawks/mismatched outfits of TS2′s townie generating. Well, the last may still return.

Expansion packs are structured around introducing the player to new gameplay elements. In TS2 they did this by subtly forcing those new elements on you in a ham-handed fashion, usually through Wants. Prime example – the first EP, University, caused Teens to almost always roll the ‘Go to College’ want (apparently hard-coded too). If they went, they got a 10,000 asp point boost and a ‘green’ memory. If they didn’t the memory would be BAD – they went ‘Uneducated’. Being Uneducated was even a Fear most of the time!

So presuming you don’t like college, but like the instruments (for sake of example), you keep Uni installed and put up with the annoyances.

EVERY TS2 EP did this, mainly through those persistent wants to go on a date/buy a pet/hire so-and-so/go on vacation etc.

I’ve been thinking about how this relates to telling a neighbourhood storyline.

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