Story Mode
tjstreak:
As far as story progression, EA used this as one of the selling points for the game. Remember all of that hooplah about what you do on one side of town affects what happens on the other side? All that hooplah appears to be unadulterated B.S.
In my more recent games, I simply have turned on TS2 aging (i.e. only the active lot ages) under the theory that the N.P.C. just are color for the background. After all, the town itself does not "age" -- new buildings being built, old buildings being torn down. It's a quick and dirty solution, but it does maintain the demographic balance.
It seems that another quick and dirty solution would be simply to create a few families to serve as NPC's and move them into an unoccupied house. I started to do this in TS2: creating an orphanage of children, a group home for teens, and otherwise creating households of sims who otherwise were missing from the game.
I like AM and keep it installed for other reasons. It has a lot of really neat features, like being able to turn off the sort for clothes, or preventing books from acting like magic scrolls. Some of these little things bother me a lot more than EA's failure to implement a functional story progression.
Motoki:
Ugh, I had like the megapost from hell where I kept responding and then cutting and then pasting it into the next one etc etc and somewhere along the way I lost it. I wish you guys weren't so god damned anal over the double post thing. I still never get why people care. Who gives a crap? Responding to a different topic is okay to do in another different topic as far as I am concerned. /rant.
I just wasted the better part of an hour. >:(
Oh well, I guess I will paste the god damned replies in Word or something and assemble them all together at the end to make you posting nettiquette queens happy. ::)
Quote from: J. M. Pescado on 2009 July 16, 12:31:29
The problem is that because there are only the equivalent of about 3 BHAVs, any change to the game essentially modifies these. Since a resource must be overridden in its entireity, this means that even a "minor" core mod is still a full core mod, and cannot be made compatible with another core mod.
This is an irritating design on their part. Now stupid little things like Interacting with the Grim Reaper or squelching the bathroom privacy rules have to be a "core mod". :P
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XML mods, are, of course, compatible with most things,
I like the XML mods. They are really, really easy to deal with. Any idiot who takes 5 minutes can learn them. They are basically just text. And you can thankfully edit most aspects of the game with them. In this respect, I think it's a step up from TS2 modding.
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except in cases where AwesomeMod has specifically also commandeered an XML tuning, such as Socializing/Careers/Traits.
Yeah, but you can still override it by setting different permission levels in different directories and then giving another XML mod higher permission than Awesomemod. The Teen Woohoo mod in the Pudding Factory does this and it works just fine.
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Some research has been performed into improving the compatibility of core mods, but so far the requirements of those methods require that the core mods be assembled in a non-plug-and-play format that requires the user to assemble his own custom core mod from components, and furthermore, subjects the creator of the modifications to a number of constraints which are not suitable for advanced modification methods. As these present limitations are simply not acceptable for the purposes of AwesomeMod, we have not adopted this strategy at this time.
That's disappointing but it makes sense. You need to mod in a way that makes sense for you and shouldn't be forced into methods that are not efficient or conducive to your goals.
Quote from: tjstreak on 2009 July 16, 13:03:32
As far as story progression, EA used this as one of the selling points for the game. Remember all of that hooplah about what you do on one side of town affects what happens on the other side? All that hooplah appears to be unadulterated B.S.
Oh that's usual gaming company par for the course marketing lies to brag about how great its supposed AI is. They always do that. I remember Ultima Online bragged in the late 90s about how it's npcs were so life like it fooled one of the developers into thinking it was a real person. They stand around and say a few generic things. I could be drunk and half asleep and I would still never mistake them for a real person. Ditto for Elder Scrolls Oblivion and all it's bragging about it's 'Radiant AI'. :P
Actually, to this day I still think the npc schedules of Ultima 7 way back in 1992 is some of the better town/life/people simulation stuff I've seen and that's sad. That was almost 20 years ago.
CheritaChen:
Quote from: J. M. Pescado on 2009 July 16, 12:31:29
The problem is that because there are only the equivalent of about 3 BHAVs, any change to the game essentially modifies these. Since a resource must be overridden in its entireity, this means that even a "minor" core mod is still a full core mod, and cannot be made compatible with another core mod. XML mods, are, of course, compatible with most things, except in cases where AwesomeMod has specifically also commandeered an XML tuning, such as Socializing/Careers/Traits.
I thought about that after I left for work; the modularization wouldn't be possible if all that stuff is part of the same piece of behavior. What people seem to be asking for is a way to change different aspects of behaviors that have been interwoven into the same routine by EA. It's the pieces that can't be separated that everyone is wanting to separate, and I wasn't thinking about just how few of the seemingly unrelated behaviors were really independent in the code. (Like I said, I never have looked at it and probably wouldn't know what I was seeing if I did.)
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Some research has been performed into improving the compatibility of core mods, but so far the requirements of those methods require that the core mods be assembled in a non-plug-and-play format that requires the user to assemble his own custom core mod from components, and furthermore, subjects the creator of the modifications to a number of constraints which are not suitable for advanced modification methods. As these present limitations are simply not acceptable for the purposes of AwesomeMod, we have not adopted this strategy at this time.
It sounds like a nightmare to try to support, too. When you look at what they've done, does it make sense the way they tied it together in such a big knot? I mean, does it look like there was a legitimate purpose for the design, or does it really look like an effort to thwart third party modification?
Quote from: tjstreak on 2009 July 16, 13:03:32
As far as story progression, EA used this as one of the selling points for the game. Remember all of that hooplah about what you do on one side of town affects what happens on the other side? All that hooplah appears to be unadulterated B.S.
Indeed. When I first read about the story progression, I actually thought I'd want to keep it turned off and just play in the old TS2 style. But now that I've messed with just the little taste of progression that we do get (neighbors aging, random births), I'm actually more interested in having real progression. I want the little surprises of new couples getting together and reproducing, or breaking up. I want to have my Sim talk to an acquaintance and learn he's in a new career or romantic attachment. I even want to occasionally have my Sim be surprised to discover that his potential mate has suddenly adopted a rugrat (just not every time in every game--I'm looking at you, Christopher Steel). Every other aspect of TS3 is so similar to TS2 that without story progression, I really don't see a reason to play this one over the other.
pbox:
Quote from: Motoki on 2009 July 16, 13:58:33
I like the XML mods (..) I think it's a step up from TS2 modding.
Same here; this is particularly true for Mac users. Perhaps I was a wee bit lazy, but I never got into actually modding TS2 (apart from lights and suchlike) since the workflow alone was so tedious (let alone learning how to actually do stuff, and then do it) -- I'd have to boot the other machine, connect, transfer files, start SimPE, yadda yadda .. just to LOOK AT something. Now I can simply open any package in TextEdit and see what the values are, right on this machine, while the game is running -- and it's all so obvious and self-explaining that I had already tweaked a lot of things before I even *had* the game. There seems to be a little trend towards Java now, as well -- I don't think I've ever seen any TS2 Java tools.
Re. the so-called AI, somebody on here called it "Artificial Stupidity" lately.
(And I'd be surprised if anyone would take issue if you replied to the god damned replies in separate posts .. you're not going "**bump**!! ne1? ne1?" after all. I believe I've been doing that too, and I've yet to be slapped.)
Zazazu:
Quote from: pbox on 2009 July 16, 16:05:37
(And I'd be surprised if anyone would take issue if you replied to the god damned replies in separate posts .. you're not going "**bump**!! ne1? ne1?" after all. I believe I've been doing that too, and I've yet to be slapped.)
Yes, issues would be taken. There is no reason why double-or-triple posting is warranted. Motoki obviously knows where the edit button is. An alternative is to post, then wait for a bit for someone else to say something.
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