Story Mode
tallinn:
Actually I registered here to make the suggestion that Pescado and Indie should join their efforts. After reading this thread I am rather disappointed. There seems to be a ideological debate about how to deal with certain things.
I have a practical view on the issue: I played with the awesome-mod for some time now, liked most of his features, was happy that those clone babies were gone, was very happy to be able to switch households on the fly whenever I felt to do so. However, as the game progress with the clone babies gone the town runs into a demographic catastrophe sooner or later. And that is BAD. Similar problem with careers: vanilla Sims presents you singles without a job, but with a clone of themselves on their arm every now and then. Awesomemod presents you singles without a job and no babies.
IndieMod fixes the demographic issue very well and make sims going for jobs as soon as it makes sense. Why don't use it? If Pescado is going to demonstrate that he is able to write a story progression module that generates a living town over many generations just by micromanaging the sims in it, good luck. And make a science paper out of it once finished. The idea is very ambitious.
For the time being players like me are faced by the decision whether to have a stable, colorful neighborhood or a one-generation-and-then-start-the-next-game-neighborhood, as you can't have both mods in the game, just one. I really love the way the awesome-mod allows me to play more then one household, but frankly speaking: its storymode "improvements" are not improvements, they are just removing the rather unsophisticated solutions to certain problems EA has built into the game. The Indiemod is a better solution here, awesomemod is not. If I put a couple in love into a house - why on earth won't they have children? None of those couples I tried managed to get a baby so far this way, and I tried several times, each time waiting until pregnancy was no longer an option.
CheritaChen:
Quote from: tallinn on 2009 July 15, 14:38:21
IndieMod fixes the demographic issue very well and make sims going for jobs as soon as it makes sense. Why don't use it? If Pescado is going to demonstrate that he is able to write a story progression module that generates a living town over many generations just by micromanaging the sims in it, good luck. And make a science paper out of it once finished. The idea is very ambitious.
For the time being players like me are faced by the decision whether to have a stable, colorful neighborhood or a one-generation-and-then-start-the-next-game-neighborhood, as you can't have both mods in the game, just one.
What you are saying boils down to "Pescado should dump his own goals for what a story mode should do, so that the peasantry may have its AM caek and eat ISSPE, too." There are a couple of issues with this, though. Pescado has already stated in a few places that the suggested collaboration had stalled in Indie's camp, not with him. He was waiting on them to get back to him with some adjustments that would make the two mods compatible. So if your irritation is that you'd like a solution sooner rather than later, you need to take that up with Lemmy and Binky.
Also, when Pescado fixes something, he does it so that the fix works the way he believes the game should have done in the first place. Based on discussion I've read, while everyone agrees that the Indie Stone mod is a quantum improvement over the so-called "story mode" shipped in the game, it doesn't work the way it ought to do. Now, if he's going to devote his time and effort to a project to make the game better, why on earth should he do it by supporting a method that doesn't do what he wants? It's not like he's getting paid for any of this.
I've enjoyed the discussion so far, and agree that the story should be Sim-driven as much as possible, but that there are going to be limits imposed by the game itself, and by the resources available to it (what's under the computer's hood), which will vary wildly from user to user. I think experimentation is going to be the only way to really find out how much can be done by an individual background Sim, versus what will need to be arbitrarily done to it by the story engine.
My suspicion is that, while EAxis are unarguably incompetent boobs who can't debug their ways out of paper bags, there are probably EP-minded reasons behind some of the current failures. Thus I'm concerned that the first or second EP that they spit out is going to completely break all of the hard work involved in this project. But that doesn't mean I think it should be abandoned. It's worth the effort.
Motoki:
Quote from: tallinn on 2009 July 15, 14:38:21
For the time being players like me are faced by the decision whether to have a stable, colorful neighborhood or a one-generation-and-then-start-the-next-game-neighborhood, as you can't have both mods in the game, just one.
You can switch back and forth between using the two. I mostly use Awesomemod because I like the features, but when I start feeling like my neighborhood is stagnating then I play with Indie for a while and it always gets new people moving to town, marriages and babies being born. Then I go back to AM again after a bit of that. After a while I find Indie almost starting making too many new people and babies and what not, the opposite of AM, but I hear there's an option to slow that down so I may need to look into it the next time I play.
Note that you supposedly cannot take AM out once enabling Supreme Commander, however perhaps it's that I have both the brave and insane traits, but I have been running with SC and then swapping AM in and out for quite some time now without issue.
Anyway, for me swapping between the two is the best solution I can come up with for the time being. :-\
Quote from: CheritaChen on 2009 July 15, 15:10:52
What you are saying boils down to "Pescado should dump his own goals for what a story mode should do, so that the peasantry may have its AM caek and eat ISSPE, too." There are a couple of issues with this, though. Pescado has already stated in a few places that the suggested collaboration had stalled in Indie's camp, not with him. He was waiting on them to get back to him with some adjustments that would make the two mods compatible. So if your irritation is that you'd like a solution sooner rather than later, you need to take that up with Lemmy and Binky.
I know this wasn't addressed to me but I would never tell someone how to make their mod. They do it in their own free time and first and foremost they should design it for themselves and the way they want to play (assuming they do play; you'd be surprised how many modders don't). Believe me, I've been there, done that with a large modding project for another game and had people telling me how my own work should be and it's rather >:( inducing. I feel like everyone should mod, even if it's just something small or minor, just to get a feel for what it's like on the other side of that fence.
Anyway back to the issue at hand. I don't think Pescado should design his mod around Indie Stone, no. I think it wouldn't hurt to look at what they're doing and maybe borrow some aspects he likes or thinks works well, but sounds like he may have already been doing that. I also think a way to modularize the two mods so they could be used together would not be a bad idea, but from everything I've read he's been extremely receptive to that idea and is waiting on their end to get back to him with what he would need to do that.
I think he should definitely do it his own way. I just don't have a lot of confidence that he is going to be able to do everything the way he wants to the level of detail he wants and have it all work and play nice because of this:
Quote from: CheritaChen on 2009 July 15, 15:10:52
My suspicion is that, while EAxis are unarguably incompetent boobs who can't debug their ways out of paper bags, there are probably EP-minded reasons behind some of the current failures.
Amen.
And yeah, I do think there was a little bit of the car coming out of the shop with a couple of booby trapped things here and there that will have to be 'fixed' at a later date by paying the shop more money. :P
J. M. Pescado:
Quote from: tallinn on 2009 July 15, 14:38:21
Actually I registered here to make the suggestion that Pescado and Indie should join their efforts. After reading this thread I am rather disappointed. There seems to be a ideological debate about how to deal with certain things.
There's plenty of room for that. I'm still pursuing a compatibility program with the Indie developers, but to mainline them into the AwesomeMod development process would be like towing a barge with a speedboat. Plus, while I'm perfectly willing to create interoperability, I intrinsically distrust third-party solutions. For those of you for whom everything involved is a third-party solution, you'll be fine with the interoperable linkup so you can have the best of both. When they get around to it. For ME, I want a system that *I* built, that works according to MY vision. Ultimately, I think you'll be satisfied with my answer to things, but if not, that's why we offer you the choice by creating this interoperable link. Or would, anyway, if they'd finish their end of things. :P
Quote from: tallinn on 2009 July 15, 14:38:21
However, as the game progress with the clone babies gone the town runs into a demographic catastrophe sooner or later. And that is BAD.
Yeah, we're looking to avert a demographic crash through alternate means other than parthenogenetic clones, only rather than being a top-down driven system, I'm just going to increase the aggressiveness level of the romance events, while stripping the superfluous fat from the rest of the event system. Sims seem to befriend and antagonize each other just fine without needing behind-the-scenes help, judging from the fact that all of my sims seem to accumulate random friends despite never attempting to speak to anyone.
Quote from: tallinn on 2009 July 15, 14:38:21
Similar problem with careers: vanilla Sims presents you singles without a job, but with a clone of themselves on their arm every now and then. Awesomemod presents you singles without a job and no babies.
Well, nothing stops them from getting a job once they're in the game, other than their total lack of motivation, really.
Quote from: tallinn on 2009 July 15, 14:38:21
For the time being players like me are faced by the decision whether to have a stable, colorful neighborhood or a one-generation-and-then-start-the-next-game-neighborhood, as you can't have both mods in the game, just one.
Look, the foot-dragging is NOT my fault. I am still waiting for them to implement their end of the deal, after which I reckon it will take only a few hours to implement the switching systems and it will be ready for the first intrepid testers to take a swing at it.
Quote from: tallinn on 2009 July 15, 14:38:21
I really love the way the awesome-mod allows me to play more then one household, but frankly speaking: its storymode "improvements" are not improvements, they are just removing the rather unsophisticated solutions to certain problems EA has built into the game. The Indiemod is a better solution here, awesomemod is not.
Why? Because Story Mode is stupid and prefers to spam random "antagonize" and "befriend" fluff instead of DOING THE BUSINESS, because it seems to perceive your contributions to the neighborhood population as sufficient to satisfy its demographic needs
Quote from: Motoki on 2009 July 15, 15:12:14
Note that you supposedly cannot take AM out once enabling Supreme Commander, however perhaps it's that I have both the brave and insane traits, but I have been running with SC and then swapping AM in and out for quite some time now without issue.
Well, that was speculative based on some extreme tests. I prefer to side with caution, so the discretionary warning is that uninstalling is dangerous if you have anyone running in SupCom. It is presently believed that if you cancel ALL interactions, the system should be able to cleanly unplug, but again, this is unsupported.
Motoki:
Quote from: J. M. Pescado on 2009 July 15, 15:24:41
Quote from: Motoki on 2009 July 15, 15:12:14
Note that you supposedly cannot take AM out once enabling Supreme Commander, however perhaps it's that I have both the brave and insane traits, but I have been running with SC and then swapping AM in and out for quite some time now without issue.
Well, that was speculative based on some extreme tests. I prefer to side with caution, so the discretionary warning is that uninstalling is dangerous if you have anyone running in SupCom. It is presently believed that if you cancel ALL interactions, the system should be able to cleanly unplug, but again, this is unsupported.
Yeah, I do always at least make sure no one is macroing anything or has SC actually running when I save before I swap out AM. I'm insane but even I'm not that insane. That would just be asking for trouble.
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