Agreed. I have the same issue with walls and floors. With CAST, it's not about looking for recolors anymore, but rather how the floor/wall is divided into separate recolorable areas.

No dedicated tutorial family. There is a menu option called "Lessons" where you can read about all the features - but there's no interactive tutorial. Also, during gameplay, messages will pop up in the upper right hand corner pointing you to a lesson related to something your Sim just did. You can turn the feature off if you don't want it bugging you.

Wow, that was quick!

Just downloaded it. Starting up the game now...

EDIT: Works perfectly! Fantastic job!

IGN just did a preview and they had this to say about the amount of objects in the game.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/986/986159p2.html


Either this "review build" contains more objects than the final game, or what we've downloaded really is a buggy pre-release version. Then again, who knows what "a wealth of content" means by IGN's standards...

Ran across this guy in the park. This is Arlo Bunch, the grown son of a family in my town. The genetics engine wasn't very kind to him. Let's hope it's an anomaly.

Apparently, wishes aren't the only things your Sims lose when you switch households.

I had my Sim family's son move out on his own today after growing up into a young adult. I switched over to him as the active household to get him settled in his new home. When I switched back to the parents I discovered that they had lost all the cooked food leftovers in the refrigerator, all the harvested produce (300 or so items, they had a nice backyard garden going) in the fridge, and the father had lost his deeds to the four businesses he owned around town. And they didn't even get the money back for everything they lost!

Now, granted, I do have "Story Progression" turned on, but I was only gone for a half Sim day. And even though the father is retired, I don't think it would make sense for him to sell all the businesses he owns.

Well, after reading all the summaries I thought I'd stop lurking and add my own opinions to help others figure out if they want to try TS3 or not. I've been playing for about three days now.

First, the things I like:

- Open neighborhood. Quite obvious. It is nice not to hit a loading screen during gameplay. Exploring the nooks and crannies of the paths less traveled is also nice.

- Visiting neighbors. Again, you just walk/drive over to them and ring the doorbell. You can even spend the night, mooch them off of food and money. Lots of interesting lifestyle options right there. The only gripe I have is that it sometimes takes the inhabitants of the home a full sim-hour before they actually get to the front door and let you in. It would have been nice to just get a message in the upper right corner saying, "Nice to see you, come in!" and then have the house unlocked for your Sim. Would make a nice mod.

- Visuals (except for the appearance of the Sims themselves) are also much better. The day/night cycle is beautiful, and I especially love the vegetation in the game. Finally, trees are more than just 2 stories tall - they sometimes dwarf the house they are standing next to and throw it into deep shadow. The only way this could be better is with a seasons implementation. Here's an example - this is the view my Sim's neighbors have of their house:



- Built-in 360-degree rotation and free placement of objects with the ALT key. This one was way overdue in TS2 already. Haven't used it too much yet, but here's an image of my Sim family's living room:



- Stairs can now have different railings, e.g. concrete stairs can have wood railing. Only drawback is that neither can be recolored.

- Triangle floor tile tool. Also long overdue.

- Interacting with objects in the inventory. Overdue as well. It's especially nice if your Sim grows his/her own produce. You can stock up the refrigerator as usual. Then, when your Sim is on the other side of town, all you have to do is swing the camera home, grab an apple out of the fridge and drag it into your Sim's inventory - and they have something to eat. Also on a side note, Sims seem to have no trouble eating a whole lime without pulling off a sour face.

- I also found it nice that visiting Sims park their cars in your driveway or on community parking lots if there's free space. Now we don't have to fill those spaces with decorative cars anymore.

- EDIT: My Sim just had an item in his queue called "Stop Peeping Sim." The mailman was actually peeping through the kitchen window, but left before he could get yelled at.


Now for some of the things I didn't like, starting with the user interface:

- The Angel Choir. It was fine at first, but now I can't stand it anymore. Every time a wish gets fulfilled you have to sit through five seconds of an incredibly loud angel choir. It should have just been a short sound effect like the "fulfilled want" from TS2. And the trouble is, you can't really turn it off, I think - which brings me to my next point:

- User Interface and Game sound effects are linked in the options menu. If you turn down the "Sound Effects" slider in the options menu, it turns down both in-game sound effects and the user interface sound effects. What is up with that?

- Some parts of the user interface are also done poorly. Build mode is still something I have to get used to. Some tools, like the floor and wall tools, are easy to get to because they have a large area of representation on the "picture button." But with some other tools you have to make sure your mouse pointer is clicking in the right area, otherwise you may get a different tool and have to backtrack. Why is there no traditional display for Build mode like there is for Buy mode? Also, too many effects when I'm buying/building stuff. I don't need the walls to appear out of a shower of sparkles. Just plop down the walls and get on.

- Build/Buy Undo function is a bit borked. When you click the undo button, it first deselects the item you have in your hand. Then you have to hit the undo button AGAIN to actually undo what you wanted to undo. Trouble is, most of the time I undo something because I misplaced an object, so having the game force me to "let go" of it first is really annoying. I hate having to undo things now.

- Also, can't CTRL-click on windows or doors to get rid of them anymore. I never realized how much I missed this until it was taken away from me. What were they thinking?

- The CAST is good for the most part, though it takes some time to load all the textures every time you select a new category. Also, it slides in from the right side of the window, which takes up time. It's a nice effect, but when I just want to quickly change a style for an object, I don't want to have to wait for the CAST to slide into view and then bounce back and forth a bit before coming to a rest. Just appear and let me do what I want to do.


And some gameplay-related things I didn't like:

- Neighborhood. Yes, I also said it was a good thing, but the fact that you can't customize the neighborhood sucks. I always enjoyed developing a city over time, and not being able to add lots is quite disappointing, especially since there are a number of locations where the developer team could have easily placed some more around the downtown area. I really hope a neighborhood tool will be released.

- Whiny Sims. I forgot how whiny they are. But it's just ridiculous. If you have a tired Sim and you queue him up to brush his teeth and then go to bed, he'll still complain about being tired even though "Go To Bed" is in his queue! If they'd at least just shut up and stop flailing their arms and just do what they're told to. They may be able to take a bit better care of themselves now, but they still have a long way to go before behaving normally.

- Speaking of behaving normally, pathfinding is awful at times. When two Sims "bump" into each other, oftentimes BOTH will stop dead and just stand around for about 10-15 sim minutes, tapping their feet and staring at their surroundings. This really needs a mod, too.

- The carpool still arrives even if you've bought a car for your Sim and assigned it to him/her. That in and of itself is only a small annoyance. But your Sim will actually ignore the owned car and still go to work via the carpool. What's the purpose of having a car? Well, besides the "New Car Smell" moodlet? And the fact that I'd want to buy a Yomoshoto Evasion if it existed in real life?

- A grotesquely small amount of default objects. They were already reusing objects from TS2, why not add more? Oh, right... they can charge more money for them now.


All in all, I'd say the game has potential. But a fat lot of good that does us. If the all-mighty J.M. Pescado can crack the obstacles put in his way by the new game, I think we'll be fine. With a lot of custom content, some desperately needed mods, a neighborhood editor, better skin textures (if that's possible) and, of course, two dozen expansion and stuff packs to put features in the game that it should have had from the beginning, it will make it.

I guess it's too much to expect a great game.