More realistic/difficult relationships?
Arina:
I think it's because they're not interacting. Like, with best friends, you can go down to about 20/20 or something, but still be 'best friends'. However, when you interact, it's like it's updated so you lose the best-friendship.
I imagine love works in mostly the same way, but I know people can have a bad relationship (like in a marriage after an affair) and still be in love. But it could be that their LTR was still high enough to support being in love.
jsalemi:
Yea, I've seen sims still in love with college lovers get the 'boing' and the broken heart symbol if they call the old lover after the relationship has decayed low enough.
Magicmoon:
Quote from: magicmoon on 2007 July 11, 09:09:40
The readme for enemies accumulate is a little confusing...
Quote from: Merope on 2007 July 13, 14:34:50
Um, where might one find this readme? After poking around a bit, I see that there are quite a few hacks that are only available in the director's cut, which doesn't contain a rtfm file.
You know, you are right. There is no readme. The name itself should have tipped me off to the fact that I wrote it myself. The "readme" from MATY is always called RTFM.
Whenever a mod from here doesn't have an RTFM, I make myself a readme file by copying and pasting relevant text from thread questions. Much of my info came from a thread called "hack descriptions" or something similar. When I first started making my own readme files, I wasn't as good at it as I am now. First, I was unfamiliar with the hacks and hadn't experienced them in my game for very long, so I couldn't write anything from experience. Secondly, I neglected to copy the url from which I was quoting, which I now include so I can find my way back.
The readme for enemies accumulate is from 8/2006 and probably contains a mish-mash of info from both the enemies accumulate mod and the fight club. If anyone is interested, this is what I had for the enemies accumulate readme. You can see how I managed to confuse myself.
It alters relationship decay slightly, making it so enemies will accumulate rather than disappear if you don't see each other for a bit, and moves relationship decay to a more sane hour instead of "we all hate you now". Also adds a slight offset to relationship loss so it's not an immediate mass scramble at the decay hour to get things patched before they all hate you now, and generally makes it less hectic and messy (although it doesn't really make things easier!).
Fights aren't infinite, but instead of the results of a fight being ignored, so you could see a sim winning the entire fight and then suddenly lose for no obvious reason, the fight rules are changed so that a certain number of randomly determined victories must be achieved in rounds. How it works is that every round, you will see the fight loop play, and whichever sim appears to be winning will gain an increasing advantage in the next round. The advantage will accumulate until the requisite number of victories is achieved, or the losing sim manages to make a comeback, which resets the advantage back to 0. The victor in a fight is the sim which achieves a certain preset number of victories over and above that of his opponent. So if the randomly determined count is 5, then the winning sim must win 5 rounds more than the loser.
If the sims are evenly matched, it will be bloody and long, but the advantage shift will tend to bring things to a closer sooner than pure randomwalk. Grouchy sims will enjoy fighting, though. Fighting is fun for them.
Farsight:
Quote from: elle.jae on 2007 July 12, 22:00:50
I don't know if I'd like the "relationship cap" idea. I'd like the potential for good relationships to be there, but I'd like it to be more challenging to keep it that way.
Good relationships would still be possible - just not a 'perfect' relationship with every single person in the Sims world.
STR would be unaffected, so you could still have somewhat incompatible Sims have short-term happy interactions.
The cap on LTR would take some tweaking to get working well, but I would think that ideally most Sims would still have plenty of other Sims who match in the "true love" or higher LTR range. Some would be barely over that point, meaning it would take constant attention (and a bit of luck) to keep them in love. Others would be in a safer range, but still not 100, so would be more volatile than current relationships, but still not generally hard to keep on good terms. Finally, a rare few would be a 'perfect match', able to hit 100 LTR, and those 'true loves' would be an exciting and important find while playing the game.
IF such a system were added, I'd think a simple interaction like "Check Sim Out" would be needed, to give players a bit of a clue as to what range a Sim falls into. Not an exact number, but something like "This Sim really rubs me the wrong way.", or "I don't think I could ever get tired of spending time with this Sim", etc.
Quote
I think it could be better accomplished by having more autonomous negative behavior from mean sims, if such a thing is even possible (is it?)
Sorry, don't mean to take over your thread with my own ideas. ;) Just throwing it out there since we're kind of looking for the same effect here.
Well, not exactly. :)
I'm not that concerned with Sims' autonomous behavior (although I agree a bit more negative behavior would be more realistic / interesting). I'm more concerned with making the Sims an interesting and fun game to -play-. The current game makes me feel like I'm exploiting it any time I do pretty much anything, because the results are so easy and predictable. Anything I want my Sim to do or be, will happen. I frequently install the Sims, because I absolutely love the concept. I frequently uninstall the Sims because I grow bored with my Sims always turning out perfect and I have no interest in playing completely 'hands-off' and watching a fish tank of pixellated people. I NEED to control SOMEBODY! :)
If I decide to make a Don-Juan Sim, I don't want his romatic aspirations to -always- be an easy success. I'd love it if (based on his skills and personality), he occasionally got slapped / yelled at / attacked. If I make a Sim that's looking for true love, I'd love for that 'special someone' to actually feel special, not just be any random Sim I pick. If I make -any- Sim, I'd love for them to have an assortment of varying levels friends -and- enemies, without me having to force the issue by randomly poking people. The social aspects of the Sims are the most interesting concept to me, but the implementation strips away 90% of the potential.
But you may be right that capping the LTR may not be the ideal method to improve things. It just seemed to me (as a game programmer, albeit with limited knowledge of Sims-modding) to be the easiest method.
Ideally, I'd change the +/- for every social interaction. :)
1) Make non-chat interactions capable of a negative result, even if STR/LTR is high enough to succeed. This would eliminate the current ease of maintaining relationships by sticking to the 100% safe interactions. If your Sim is incompatible with another Sim, attempting to kiss them could result in a relationship -loss- (you banged noses and drooled on them, you schmuck!).
2) Make all interactions have varying +/- STR/LTR effects, based on compatibility. Kiss a Sim that your Sim is very compatible with, and the gain might be double the current amount (sparks fly!). Kiss one that is incompatible, and the gain would be less substantial (fizzle). Similarly, the +/- for chats would be based on how -much- the Sim likes that topic. Talk sports to a sports nut, get +5. Talk sports to someone with only a casual interest, get +2. Talk sports to a sports hater, get -5.
I think that would accomplish the goal as well, and be significantly easier for the player to figure out what is happening and why. It would make autonomous interactions more interesting as a side-effect. But are (1) and (2) possible to mod?
If so, I might take it on as a side-project, although I'm not sure if programming games as a job, AND as a hobby would be a healthy prospect. :)
Ennarys:
Quote from: Farsight on 2007 July 14, 01:48:05
If so, I might take it on as a side-project, although I'm not sure if programming games as a job, AND as a hobby would be a healthy prospect. :)
I would definately try it if you came up with something.
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