My friends won't even let me *touch* their dice anymore. I consistently get not-quite-critical misses and generally low rolls. Except if I've accidentally made some encounter slightly too tough for the PCs to handle. Then all the NPCs start rolling crits constantly and the PCs start dropping like flies. Which would be okay, if this didn't happen only when I *wasn't* trying to kill the characters off. If I try to kill them, then my rolls start sucking again.

He's got a hack for that too. More realistic social worker.

Yep, especially if I've touched your dice recently, or if I'm rolling and I'm the DM. Never fails. Anything with random generation in this game is kinda screwy, and ALL GAMING DICE HATE ME.

Does this number include dead sims? And if so, could the problem be avoided by deleting sim-centuries old character files?

I've got a friend who sort of collects games like that. He has two eggo boxes (?) filled with game CDs. He's beaten about 95% of them, as far as I can tell. This is also the friend who tells me I should "play more computer games."

But it doesn't pee on your shoes.

Does anyone know if any documentation is available for the Simantics language? I've done some searching on google, and although I'm probably using the wrong keywords I haven't found much beyond it being mentioned by some programmer or someone on the sims team. (Got a lot of information on the stupid fun club, though, so it wasn't a totally useless excersize.)

It looks like the only way to find out what a given command/argument does is to experiment with it. I don't have any problem with this, I just would like to know if this assumption is correct.

I suspect that Prima writes their guide while the game is still in Alpha, as a lot of the random crapola in those books is stuff that is often a more complicated version of the actual system. Also, the guide for TS1 included some business about "chance cards" (not what they actually called them, I think) where you made a decision. This wasn't in the actual game, but it was in the sequel. I have a hard time believing that Prima invented this out of whole cloth and then Maxis implemented it.

Okay, that was really, really funny. It is rather ridiculous, which is part of the reason I liked it so much when I read about it in an article on robots. It does make sense when you think about the fact that Japan is basically the worst country in the world in terms of elderly:not elderly population ratios, so the idea is that something that doesn't need to be fed can keep older people company.

It's still pretty funny, though. And I just like saying "Robotic Baby Harp Seal!"

Yep, veilchen, we live in the same area. Now, the snakehead would be bad enough if multiply like heck was all it did. But no. It can BREATH AIR. It can WALK OVER LAND from one pond to another that happens to be MILES AWAY. They're actually a delicacy in certain parts of Asia, because you buy them live, take them home wrapped in paper, and kill them right before you cook them, so they're very fresh. In fact, that's another reason to give a few to JM. It also means that they can escape from fish markets and people who buy them, and then use their mad land-walking skills to get to the nearest pond.

JMP, are you that guy who got arrested for driving around in his neighborhood in his tank, and "accidentally" knocking over people's houses? It sounds suspiciously like you.

Robotic seal it is, then. (And I'll take that as a compliment.)

It's called "Paro." Made by a robotics company in Japan, and intended as a companion to the elderly. It makes happy purring noises when you cuddle it, and makes angry noises if you abuse it.

Oh, yeah. I'm totally looking forward to Oblivion. Sort of like Morrowind. Honestly, too restricting for me. Hopefully Oblivion will be less so. For the same reason, I'm looking forward to Spore. Sims, Sim City--sandbox games are really the only kind I play. Anything else is just too "wait, what do you mean, I can't do that?" Even Sims annoys me like sometimes. The only game I ever really enjoyed that had a plot was Jak 2. Which could have been way cooler. If the gameplay hadn't sucked, and the sequel had had a decent plot. (Jak 3 had awesome gameplay, but the ending was lame, and the animation was nowhere near the coolness of 2. That game was rushed.) They totally screwed that character over . . <sigh.> The "this could have been so cool!" factor strikes again.

Yes! Burnination for all! I notice that the fire looks suspiciously similiar to the Sims fire graphic. Hmm.

You should implement something like slashdot's system, except use "interesting" or "controversial" as your yardstick. That would be cool. And useful, in a fire-related sort of way.

Welcome, Pescado et all! *makes happy humming noise* Practically everyone's here already. Feels like home. Whee.

Hmm . . . avatars . . . right. Can't decide. Should I go with the Robotic Baby Harp Seal or German Beer Advertisements with Genetically Engineered Duck/Rooster/aliens?

Decisions, decisions.

Time scale screwyness is mostly the result of age lengths being based on how much crap can be done in them rather than real world analogue, as well as most sim players apparently spending most of their time waffling around and doing nothing useful. If you have macrotastics and are a ruthless taskmaster, you can complete the most important events of a given lifestage in far less time than you have to do them in. Particularly in Uni, although the teen stage also suffers from this, since most of the major stuff that can be done in it (skilling and romance) can have significant progress made on it in the preceding life stages, or can be done very quickly and is basically pointless anyway.

Actually, you'd be amazed at what a good flamethrower can do. Doesn't get stuck in the fence. Of course, some people don't seem to like the idea of everything south of the Mason Dixon line being lit on fire, which is what it would take to get rid of the kudzu. Funny, that.

The scariest thing about kudzu is that it grows like 2 feet per DAY. You can basically see it grow. Here in the D.C. area we're having problems with snakeheads, so whenever they do an article on that they have to mention the great god of invasive species that is the kudzu vine.

Speaking of which, we should stock Pescado's pond with a snakehead or two.

Oh, and get three ceiling lamps, rope them togethor into a triangle, attach thrusters to them, and hang them from the ceiling. Then JMP will have his very own "Rave Room of Doom!" And any Half Life 2 players should get Gary's mod, try that in the dark room, and turn bloom way up. It's very cool. But make sure to turn god-mode on first, or you'll discover why it's called the Rave Room of Doom.

And, of course, in grand Sims tradition, the story of an ongoing not-entirely-serious stab at the Email Challenge. I'm not posting the serious one, because I'm too lazy to take pictures of something that I don't find terribly funny.
http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=42164

Are we allowed to run two challenge households at the same time and have their kids get married?

I checked the rules, and it doesn't seem to break any of them, but all the speaking of challenges implies that only one is run at a time. Not sure.

Ooh. Pirates. That's supposed to be a pretty good game. Is it the new version or the old version? (I think there are two, the latest by Sid Meiers. Could be wrong, though.)

Does anyone here play games other than the Sims 2? And does anyone mod games other than Sims?

I play an occasional hour or two of Diablo 2 or Diablo (D1 is better.) and whatever my little brother happens to have on my desktop. I also play Sim City, but I haven't been able to do that for a while because the CD is cracked and I haven't wanted to buy a new one. Oh, and recently I've been playing City of Heroes. But mostly I'm a simmer.