Premades and Precepts

I added a couple of useful links to the sidebar under ‘Need Names?’ I’m typically uncreative when it comes to naming stuff, and when prompted to give something a name I will run off and try to find a random name generator.

I’ve recently come across two:

For artwork names

http://noemata.net/pa/titlegen/ – For naming Sim paintings. Who can resist ‘Pathological Echo’, ‘Sketch of Drunk Figure’, or ‘Nude Deciphering the Orange Field’?

For star names

http://direpress.bin.sh/tools/sf_name.html – choose ‘Space’ in the Type dropdown box and ‘Star Name’ in the one below it to get random star names. Examples – ‘2426 Jing Xiu’, ‘Scatha’, ‘1372 Galli’.

Trawling through the TS3 scripts, one finds a lot of interesting code, no doubt implemented in anticipation of cashy expansion packs.

For instance, pets are all but confirmed.

The fact that ages are defined for the same animals as in TS2 seems to reduce the chances of a Farm EP. I mean, farm animals age too.

Also, Piano?

Did they cut pianos from the game? You know, I’m 99% sure one of the Store hairs was shown in a preview video somewhere as part of CAS. As if you needed more evidence that EA is out for the money.

UPDATED 13/7/09: Now includes AwesomeMod’s MaxOfficeHolders tags (career caps). If you don’t have that mod, ignore them.

These data are extracted straight from the XML in the game’s files, though I’ve stripped out some of the extraneous information and adjusted it a little where the ingame job title is different from the XML name. Feel free to copy this data and rewrite it into readable/meaningful form.

Note that:

• I can’t explain what the skill and mood Mappings mean.
• DayLength = the number of hours to work
• In DaysToWork, R means Thursday and U means Sunday

TS3 Careers (html)

TS3 Careers (xls)

I’ve been attempting the Prosperity Challenge with a cleaned-out Sunset Valley and have run into a weird snag. Apparently, whenever you apply for a job, the game either generates new (unhoused) Sims to be your co-workers and boss. However, it also appoints Sims living in the ‘hood to fill those roles. Meaning that sometimes a Sim from a “Prosperity family” gets a job I did not want for them to have.

What’s more, Story Progression is OFF and I’m using Awesomemod. Now, I did modify the “Demographics” XML in the game’s GameplayData.package to encourage households to get jobs…maybe this is how the game reacts. But it’s a frustrating mechanic.

I think in my last post I complained about Story Progression townies always being unemployed? If I didn’t, I’m complaining now. Well, now that I’m attempting a Prosperity playstyle the problem’s reversed. My Prosperity Sims keep getting high-level jobs at random places (and which don’t match up with their career LTW). *Sigh* EASS, what will you do next…

By the way, with this little Challenge I was trying the aging idea posted here by Rebeka. Thanks, Rebeka! Anyway the idea is to turn SP off (obviously) and leave aging off for all but one round (which I haven’t gotten to yet).

Yay me. I ninja’d a copy at 8:30 in the morning because I didn’t preorder (or rather, they delayed the preorder by a FULL DAY and it would have cost more). I wasn’t the only one buying it at that time, oddly enough, though I was the only single guy there.

I’ve been pretty busy over the past few days, while most of my free time has been taken up with playing TS3 (of course) as well as mucking around with the .packages using S3PI. Already I’ve made a few basic hacks for personal use: an aging hack to reduce the duration of Toddler- and Elder-hood, a hack to reduce the chance of genetic mutations, and a hack to stop families moving out. I don’t know what effect the last one has on long-term Story Progression though, so I’m currently testing it out.

Anyway, I won’t post my full thoughts on the game here because it would just repeat what others have said over the past two weeks. At first the game didn’t “hook” me like TS2 did, but I’m warming to it. I will make a few comments though:

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