The TV is much more predictable in its requirements - that is, for there to be some space available in front of the box so your Sim can lie down.  The skill gain is also faster, which may be why it's favoured by the Skillinator

The radio on the other hand is much less reliable.  Sometimes the workout interaction, even when available, will drop from the queue as soon as you pick it

Your options at the wardrobe (Plan Outfit) should include Maternity.  Of course, it's kinda difficult to buy any additional maternity outfits because pregnant Sims can't leave the house, so there may well just be the one outfit available.

Well, if there was one career which made your Sim fabulously rich, naturally every player would jump on that one and forget about the others, unless there were comparable perks.

Then again, getting to the top of any career in The Sims 2  is ridiculously easy compared to real life.

Oh, I found this page just today.  Hilarious

I'm a mostly self-study programmer, have been since the days of rubber-key Spectrums.  Since leaving school a decade ago I haven't really managed to stick at anything for long except writing stories and of course, the odd bit of code here and there.  I'm not shy of an honest day's work but my resume is hardly anything to brag about.

Anyway, I play The Sims 2 (and The Sims before it) because watching virtual people going about their lives helps fill the boring bits in mine.  It's interesting to try and steer them on a successful course, and since there is no real end of game except of course Armageddon, you can keep on playing without getting stuck on level X which is something that happens in games where the plot has already been set in stone.  With this one, if there is going to be a story to it, you've got to supply it, and that's a fun thing to do.

Exactly true.  And yet many MMORPGs recycle and re-use these scenarios to death.  In which case, you would have to be kinda stupid to fall for the same old boulder trap again.

Makes you wonder what Aspirational Failure for Pleasure Sims will look like.

See if you actually think seriously about the death/failure system you use in a game, instead of fudging a 'respawn' because hey, it worked in some FPS multiplayer shooter.... you might actually be onto a winner.  Unfortunately, you can't count on players not to metagame and say 'Oh, you don't want to go that way, a big boulder rolls down and squishes you' which they know because one of their earlier characters was wiped out, so.... you have to move the goalposts.  However, this may not be entirely fair, because a game in which the goalpsots are constantly moving further away from the player, and therefore becoming even more challenging every time the player is killed, well you could never beat it ;-)

A great example of what I'm talking about is Avatar, in which Teal'c plays a realistic foothold simulation in a virtual reality chair.  I watched it again last night.

I looked them up in Dictionary:

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=post%20meridiem
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=ante%20meridiem

The usage note also add that 12:00 AM/PM is confusing enough that one should say noon or midnight instead.

It sure is, just that sometimes it takes a while to figure out the punchline.  Assuming there is one.  Assuming sense of humour still intact.  I remember more than a few dark days when nothing would draw a smile.  Since then, I discovered webcomics, and concepts like the Idiot of the Day.  Plus, I make sure to get a regular dosage of SG-1.  So the old laughter muscles get a regular workout these days 

See, I don't understand, because if there were hacks of that nature, wouldn't they be filed under Game-Annihilating?  Or maybe Fiery Ball Visible From Space - do not use?

Seriously though, maybe it's worth looking into demonstrating hacks which, using regular game mechanics, will cause your neighbourhood to grind to a halt.  So people can actually see the effects instead of having to wait months and months to approach the limits of what the game can handle.

Then again, there are some seriously stupid people out there who might actually use such hacks on their favourite neighbourhood.  The same sort of people who fiddle around with the front of their computer going 'Ooooh, what's this button do?'

Amazing.  I had no idea there was such a difference between versions.  I suppose that the 24-hour clock is more widely used in Europe though.

Amen to that.  We need someone like Samuel Drake who just won't sign off on a project until it's perfect ;-)

You don't actually have to make the shower room separate from the toilets.  I make an enclosure but leave a one or two-tile gap in the wall depending on how many it has to serve.  This means that, if you have an equal number of toilets and showers, there won't be a jam so long as there are enough controllers, and you can leave the range set at Room only.

I hear an overdose of antidepresssants is the way to go these days.  Call it an ironic last stab at those who prescribed them in the first place.  Atually, someone I knew took this way out, after fighting depression for most of her life.  It's tragic to clock out at just twenty-eight, but hey, that's life.

Life stinks, I might add

Contemplating suicide is not the same as actually going through with it.  Whole different ball park.

Sometimes life will really wear you down and you'll think to yourself, 'I give up.'  It's not a bad thing to admit failure, because you can start to figure out where to go from there, to find coping strategies and make life liveable.  And The Sims 2 can be used as a tool to realise that it isn't all hopeless, that you can make a difference to those around you.  And since a Sim life is much shorter than ours, you can try lots of different things.

PvP is such a joke in itself.  I haven't played any online Star Wars games but I have played MMORPGs, and it's always the same.  You get a little handy-slap for dying, and very rarely do you have to worry about what'll happen to your accumulated gear.  If you make dying a big deal, what PvP that still occurs will probably be stacked battles.

You have to stick it to game developers for basically making player characters immortal, but there are those players who sign up not because they're interested in the genre, but because they want to go hunt some noobs.

You oughta treat yourself to an LCD screen.  It's lighter, chugs less power, has much less footprint on the desktop, stays nice and sharp, and it's kinder on the eyes.  What's not to like?

Darth Vader, of Star Wars   Or at least one assumes so....

The whole novel writing thing is kinda half-baked anyway.  Not only do you not have a working title for it while it's being written - that is unless you have the novel progress bar running, you have no idea whether you're working on a novel or not - you don't get to go and do signings if it draws a following, which for Popularity Sims is kindof the whole reason to write in the first place.  You can't, for example, write a series of books, because your novels don't have a name or a theme or anything so there's no chance of your publisher calling you up to do a sequel ;-)

Of course, by the time Maxis get around to revamping these parts of the game, it'll be time to book a skiing holiday in hell :-P

I think I would like to see some kind of mood effect for Sims who are writing, even if it's not always positive.  Writer's block is a frustrating thing, you know.

Given that novel-writing consumes a great deal of Sim time, and doesn't help with maintaining mood as painting or playing the piano does, and basically has a fairly low yield money-wise, I was thinking of maybe tweaking it a little.  However, I haven't found anything that looks tweakable.  Has anyone else, maybe?

My favourite method of Sim-killing has to be the death field :-)  I have this one college lot which has accumulated four tombstones so far - two mascots, a cheerleader, and a streaker.  It would be five but I zombified a cheerleader to keep the lot going ;-)

See I would make the challenge null and void by sending all the free-range Sims to repair broken computers.  Or maybe I could use the death field on the APO to get rid of them.... it's not my fault if it happens to be in the kitchen

I was all ready to use it, but the flies are gone.  I had to restart the game to install the buyable fire so maybe they really are gone.  Maybe there's a routine somewhere which specifically looks for objects that have got lodged in limbo, or maybe it was filtered out when the lot was saved.  Beats me.

Is there a procedure for getting rid of one of these from a Sim's lot?  The only tell-tale sign is the sound of (also invisible) flies buzzing around.  I've tried taking the walls out to make it phase-shift back into visibility but to no avail