Indy Stone Mod development stops - News at 9
Buzzler:
Quote from: Motoki on 2009 August 06, 04:19:30
Well I think it depends on what you are talking about. Some things need rules to operate on to make sense. Like sim families generally shouldn't be moving to a cheaper home unless there is some good reason. That is a very blatant and noticeable thing.
I assume there's just no way the story mode engine could tell what you'll notice. I know it would annoy me if the story mode for example randomly promoted a neighbour in the sports career if I've just seen him doing nothing but scratching his butt all the time... Cheating in gaming engines is okay but it has to be done in a way the player doesn't notice it. And EA being EA did crap to cover up his cheating. I agree with Pescado that there's got be sense in it, amazingly enough "early" messages from the devs show that they probably actually had a bottom-up approach in mind very similar to Pescado's. I've got no problem in cheating from time to time by adding randomness to "microscopic" actions, there's randomness in real humans' actions too, but I find the idea of giving control to a top-down random event generator repulsive, no matter if somebody tries to beat some sense into the events afterwards or not.
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But other things like romance to me is fine being random. I don't think it matters if they are compatible or not. In fact, it's kind of realistic if some couples weren't so compatible.
I agree partially. I think there should be no check if Sims are compatible but instead only a check if they're non-compatible, like a good Sim wouldn't get off with a bad Sim for example. But I wouldn't have a problem if one Sim of a couple loves the outdoors and the other hates it, I've met enough couples consisting of a party boy/girl (mostly girls actually...) and a couch potato. Some of them split up, some of them didn't.
On second thought I'd actually prefer if there were no checks at all and incompatible couples would just break up; I never liked how most playable Sims in Sims2 were pretty much untouched before marriage (who's got the endurance to do it otherwise?). Would add a little spice if Sims needed to go through a couple of relationships bevore finding the right breeding mate. They could even grow more desperate accepting formerly unthinkable partners... ;)
Chocolate Milk:
Quote from: moondance on 2009 August 06, 04:24:20
Two "dislikes children" sims who marry one another should have an extremely small chance of ever having a child at all.
ISM did have something like this, I believe. Family-oriented Sims have more children, too. And people are more likely to get jobs which fit with their traits.
As for considering traits in people getting together -- I don't think that's necessary. I know a lot of 'non-trait-compatible' couples IRL who work together just fine. Obviously 'commitment issues' should greatly reduce the chance of people getting married. But apart from that, why shouldn't a good Sim and an evil Sim get together? It's combinations like that which make the game fun. What I really dislike is the incompatibility of ages. The way my game's working out, almost the entire neighbourhood is related in some way, and I find it intensely creepy when a young adult fresh out of teenager-hood marries his elderly second cousin. :-\
J. M. Pescado:
Quote from: Cedia on 2009 August 06, 04:12:00
Maybe my life has been unusually picturesque, but honestly, it does feel like whatever supreme being is placing those pieces is indeed a toddler. I would have never guessed that the love of my life would be nineteen years younger than myself, just as an example. :)
Well, there's no rule preventing that, so I don't see what's so intrinsically wrong with it. On the other hand, I'd watch your back. He probably has the Gold Digger LTW and intends to see you buried in the back yard.
Quote from: Motoki on 2009 August 06, 04:19:30
Well I think it depends on what you are talking about. Some things need rules to operate on to make sense. Like sim families generally shouldn't be moving to a cheaper home unless there is some good reason. That is a very blatant and noticeable thing.
Yeah, see, "unless there is some good reason". Pretty soon there is a pile of reasons and exceptions that makes the code to FAKE the reason longer and slower than ACTUALLY HAVING THE REASON. Witness the original EAxis moving-around code. This is the original code, with no sanity brakes. Then witness the resulting 0100 lag that occurred when sanity checks were then imposed on a top-down system. This is top-down driven logic at work: The game has decided it WILL DO THIS ACTION, and does not want to take NO for an answer. The bottom up action is that it decides WHO will do the action, and then decides WHAT to do afterwards.
Quote from: Motoki on 2009 August 06, 04:19:30
But other things like romance to me is fine being random. I don't think it matters if they are compatible or not. In fact, it's kind of realistic if some couples weren't so compatible.
It is random. Just not totally random. I did think of that. What it does is that it basically assigns a weighted compatibility list, then picks a result at random with the weights assigned. They won't always end up with the perfect choice, but higher-compatibility results are weighted over totally incompatible results, and some of the compatibility boosters are "circumstantial" rather than intrinsic. For instance, "sharing a workplace" boosts the weighting, even though these this factor is not intrinsic to either sim. It just functions as compatibility boost because it is an abstraction of their increased odds of coming into contact at all. I could have just made it "pick a random person", but that wasn't as much fun, really. Plus, undirected shotgun romance like that doesn't result in any "lock on". This is what EAxis does: Undirected shotgun romance events. The problem is, this doesn't really work to form actual couples because it is like putting a mob of skittish, shotgun-wielding blind folk in a stadium and then telling them that you've released a hungry tiger into their midst.
Quote from: Motoki on 2009 August 06, 04:19:30
And how do I know that some townie sim who just got a promotion wasn't sucking up to the boss and then asked for a promotion while at work away in a rabbit hole? I don't. It doesn't matter as long as the amount of promotions in town is tweaked to not seem excessive.
That happens already in the game.
Quote from: Motoki on 2009 August 06, 04:19:30
I don't know, maybe I just don't have a very logic and mathmetical oriented mind and maybe I just feel like the end justifies the means as long as the town seems alive and runs itself okay.
See, here's the catch: Tuning the rules to create a "fake facade" of the real thing can quickly become a larger, more difficult, and more computationally intensive effort than simply CREATING THE REAL THING. THIS is the issue you're missing: When you try to create an entirely FAKE facade of the REAL THING, you end up having to invent wholesale so many additional rules to make sure the facade LOOKS real...that it would have cost less for it to simply *BE* real. It's like trying to create the appearance of a factory of immigrant workers by renting a building, installing some fake machinery, and then hiring a roster of minority actors to play the roles...which would have cost more than simply using an actual factory with actual immigrant workers.
Quote from: Cedia on 2009 August 06, 04:12:00
Haha I was totally thinking that too, that sometimes life does seem like some toddler is just moving pieces around randomly.
Maybe to YOU. Me, I always have plan for everything.
Doc Doofus:
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See, here's the catch: Tuning the rules to create a "fake facade" of the real thing can quickly become a larger, more difficult, and more computationally intensive effort than simply CREATING THE REAL THING.
I guess I need to be convinced of that, still. But you're doing the coding for AM, and I haven't looked at the actual code (probably may never do so) so I can't actually argue with you too much on the point. But the "more computationally intensive" part of your statement doesn't make any sense to me. I have an admittedly preconceived notion that there has to be some terribly gross inefficiency somewhere that is being overlooked to create that kind of computational expense. Chess is computationally expensive. Millions of board positions may be analyzed by a good chess program in the seconds before it makes its move. You can hear your CPU fan trying to cope with it. There aren't millions of things in Sims 3 story mode to evaluate, so the problem would seem to not be the large number of evaluations that are made but rather some terrible inefficiency in the way any evaluation is made.
Motoki:
Quote from: J. M. Pescado on 2009 August 06, 07:00:01
Yeah, see, "unless there is some good reason". Pretty soon there is a pile of reasons and exceptions that makes the code to FAKE the reason longer and slower than ACTUALLY HAVING THE REASON. Witness the original EAxis moving-around code. This is the original code, with no sanity brakes. Then witness the resulting 0100 lag that occurred when sanity checks were then imposed on a top-down system. This is top-down driven logic at work: The game has decided it WILL DO THIS ACTION, and does not want to take NO for an answer. The bottom up action is that it decides WHO will do the action, and then decides WHAT to do afterwards.
You know, what you say makes a lot of sense in theory, but in practice here is my experience with top down vs bottom up:
Top down:
Pros: Stuff gets done. Neighborhood will run on its own mostly.
Cons: Things sometimes appear to not make sense or have a good reason. Sometimes too much gets done.
Bottom up:
Pros: Everything that happens makes sense and has a reason. You can watch some of the events happen.
Cons: Because of all the rules not much happens. Progression is slow. Neighborhood may require some maintenance and editing.
At the end of the day, if nothing else at least with top down stuff gets done.
I need to try and figure out a way to do a wolfrun on the fastest speed with ASM and see what happens long term.
Hmm, got to think about this. I know there's a no bill mod. And there's ways to keep an individual sim/selected household with again off and static motives while the rest of the town functions as normal, right?
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