Yeah I know railing and ranting about the Sims 3 store is old news at this point but I had to chuckle when I found this old Mst3K host segment and how it relates to TS3 store.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk0i0yTPJBY

"Ask how they slept" Or some form of that is available talking to a sim that has recently woken up. Seems to be favored by light sleeper sims.

I'm not sure how much effect foods cooked WITH apples/watermellons have. I've found very reliable results from having the sims eat raw apples or raw watermelons straight from their inventory. So far, that has always produced the desired gender of the child.

Sim of the Month of July is up and ready:

Sim of the Month Challenge

Welcome to the second entry of the Sim of the Month Challenge!
What is the Sim of the Month Challenge?

Once per month, I will be uploading a new sim to my simpage. You will be given a very specific goal and a very specific set of restrictions unique to that month's sim. You goal is to achieve the goal while obeying the restrictions in as few sim-days as possible.

Universal Rules
There are a set of rules and restrictions universal to all Sims posted for this challenge, but don't worry, they are much fewer than the Legacy Challenge.

You may not purchase the "Mid-life crisis" perk to change the sim's traits.
You may not merge households on the neighborhood level.
You may not move in/marry player made or downloaded sims. All other sims are fair game (unless specifically restricted by that month's sim)
No cheating (Money cheats, mood cheats, hacks that give you an advantage over those who do not have the hack)
You must obey the sim-specific restriction. Failing to do so means the challenge is failed.
You may use any aging speed you like. In fact you are encouraged to use epic speed if you want to keep a single neighborhood with all your past Sims of the Month. Story progression can be on or off at your discretion.


Customization
Awesomemod is allowed with this challenge, just be sure to turn off any aspects that affect jobs.
If you can't/don't want to download this month's sim from my simpage, you're more than welcome to re-make him or her in CAS. Even change their name and appearance if you wish. The important parts to replicate are the sim's age, gender, lifetime wish and traits.

Scoring
The only score for this and all Sims of the month will be speed. You will be racing against time. The fewer days you can accomplish your goal, the better.


Starting off
Download the sim of the month (or re-make them yourself) and import them into any neighborhood. You may want to create a neighborhood used for all of your Sims of the month, but you don't have to. The sim must be alone when he or she is moved in. You may move the sim into ANY lot they can afford, as long as it is unoccupied. This can be a pre-built or empty lot. Once you do that, your challenge begins!

Presenting July's sim

Name: Theresa Dolphina
Age: Young Adult
Gender: Female
Traits: Family Oriented, Genius, Hates the Outdoors, Angler, Technophobe
Goals: Reach the top of the Journalism Career, Purchase a teleporter from the aspiration perks menu.
Restrictions: Can only eat seafood dishes. Theresa must submerge herself in water at least once per day. Theresa may not join the science career, or interact with the science lab in any way.
Difficulty: Medium

Prelude:
   The Dockwood Dolphins, after losing their final game in a huge upset to their biggest rivals the Red Rabbits, who were lead to victory by the underdog star player Gordon Loadsworth, came up with a plan. They would bolster team spirit and frighten their rivals by creating a living mascot. So they commissioned the local science center to create the mascot. It was this ‘living mascot' experiment that transformed then-test subject, Theresa Dole, into the half-human half dolphin hybrid that she is today.

Bio:
       As a result of her transformation, Theresa can speak both human and dolphin languages. After escaping the lab and talking with her fellow dolphins (real dolphins, not the sports team), Theresa learns that the earth is in grave danger and feels the need to warn the inhabitants of the planet. Nobody will listen to her warning at the moment, but Theresa knows that if she can become established in the world of broadcasting, she can not only get her message to every corner of the globe, but also have it taken seriously. She also needs to finish building the teleporter the dolphins instructed her to build so she can escape with the rest of them before the planet does get destroyed.
   While fearful of the science lab and the technology it used to transform her, Theresa is mostly able operate in ‘normal society' Theresa must still attend to her dolphin aspects, needing the occasional dip in the water and a steady stream of fish to keep herself healthy.

Pinstar Says:
This month's challenge is a bit harder than Gordon's. Theresa has not one but two major goals to meet, the need to reach the journalism career top and the need to buy a teleporter. You'll have to balance her career advancement with wish fulfillment, all while taking care of her dolphin needs. You may want to start off getting Thersa's fish supply and cooking skills up right away so she can keep herself fed. In addition to seafood, Theresa is allowed to eat at the diner, the bistro and work without breaking the diet restriction. The 'submerge in water' requirement is fulfilled by having Theresa go swimming or take a bath. Theresa's teleporter must be purchased using Theresa's own aspiration points. Oh, and yes, this month's sim was heavily inspired by the book "The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy".

Theresa can be downloaded from my simpage here:
http://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=442951

Past Sim of the Month Challenges
June:http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/48437.page

I can see a family sim wanting to have babies even into elder hood. Do you know if adoptions count to fulfilling that wish?

Aside from the occasional +5/-5 moodlet that crops up, what exactly is impacted by these traits? Conception chances? Opportunity frequency?

I'm just curious.

I think this is a play on the old wives tale that if a woman's pregnant stomach looks like a watermelon, she's going to have a girl. The other half of that tale is that if the tummy looks like a basketball it'll be a ball. An apple would be an edible approximation for a basket ball being that it is more rounded than oblong.

In the sims 2, a sim would empty their bladder and fill their hunger bar at work when either got low.

In the Sims 3, the bladder empty seems to be present in its original form.

However the sims don't always om nom when hungry, leading them to suffer the bad mood of the 2nd tier hunger moodlet for most of work before they finally eat and fill up. (if they happen to be sent to work hungry)


Anyone know the mechanics of how long a sim will wait to take lunch, and at what hunger levels they will take lunch at vs skipping it?

Difficulty levels it is. Gordon would be "Easy"

I think I'll do "Easy" "Medium" and "Hard" on the main boards and occasionally introduce "Pescado" level sims to this board only. (I don't think the offical boars could handle it )
Of course I wouldn't call a sim Pescado difficulty until I have the stamp of approval from Pescado himself. *nod*

Its not meant to be too difficult (Though later months I'll be ramping up the difficulty and complexity of the goals/restrictions) and first and foremost, its meant to be short.

O.O

Holly Carp!

Well then, there you have it!

What do you (and everyone else) think about the challenge in theory and design?


Future sims will have more complex goals and/or restrictions.

Sim of the Month Challenge

Welcome to the very first entry for the Sim of the Month challenge!
What is the Sim of the Month Challenge?

Once per month, I will be uploading a new sim to my simpage. You will be given a very specific goal and a very specific set of restrictions unique to that month's sim. You goal is to achieve the goal while obeying the restrictions in as few sim-days as possible.

Universal Rules
There are a set of rules and restrictions universal to all Sims posted for this challenge, but don't worry, they are much fewer than the Legacy Challenge.

You may not purchase the "Mid-life crisis" perk to change the sim's traits.
You may not merge households on the neighborhood level.
No cheating (as per Legacy Rules)
You must obey the sim-specific restriction. Failing to do so means the challenge is failed.


Customization
Awesomemod is allowed with this challenge.
If you can't/don't want to download this month's sim from my simpage, you're more than welcome to re-make him or her in CAS. Even change their name and appearance if you wish. The important parts to replicate are the sim's age, gender and traits.

Scoring
The only score for this and all Sims of the month will be speed. You will be racing against time. The fewer days you can accomplish your goal, the better.


Starting off
Download the sim of the month (or re-make them yourself) and import them into any neighborhood. You may want to create a neighborhood used for all of your Sims of the month, but you don't have to. The sim must be alone when he or she is moved in. You may move the sim into ANY lot they can afford, as long as it is unoccupied. This can be a pre-built or empty lot. Once you do that, your challenge begins!

June's Sim of the Month

Name: Gordon Loadsworth
Gender: Male
Age: Adult
Traits: Couch Potato, Slob, Loser, Natural Cook, Clumsy.
Goal: Reach the top of the sports career.
Restrictions: Gordon may not select the "Workout at gym" option while at work.

Bio: Eternal fan of at least 7 major sports, Gordon has more sports jerseys than he does regular clothing. This is partially because he likes sports so much, and partially because ‘normal clothing' doesn't come in his size. A lifetime of eating and watching sports on TV has taken a major toll on his body. Tired of being mocked for his lifestyle and look, Gordon has decided to turn over a new leaf and do the impossible. Rather than watch sports, he wants to be out on the field playing along side them. Can Gordon do it?

Pinstar says:
This month's challenge is a simple one. Simple goal, simple restriction. The tricky part will be working around Gordon's traits that want to keep him out of the gym and on his comfy couch. Don't ignore his natural cook trait. Those food moodlets (Foodlets) can help give him a boost at work, especially if his athletic skill is lagging behind.

Gordon can be downloaded from my SimPage. Here is a direct link
http://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=406011

I think I'll go as far as the "must grow sim up from infant to YA" rule to prevent people from pumping out babies, painting them and moving them out.
Combined with the "no birthday cake until 1 day to go" rule to prevent rapid-aging. If you put in the effort to raise that many kids, you deserve the extra portrait points. My Legacy family's 2nd gen has 5 kids, partially for the portrait points, and partially because the founder's wife had the "surrounded by family" LTW.

I'm looking into a change to the rich sim rules, since that seems to be widely unpopular and annoying.

Here is my proposal, I would like everyone's opinions on it. It is not offical yet, I'm just looking for feedback.


"Your founder, and only your founder, cannot marry a rich sim. All future generations may marry any sim, rich or otherwise.

Money Legacy points capped at 20 total (2 million in net worth)


That opens up the rest of the neighborhood up for marriage, once all the townies have all made themselves rich in later generations. It also keeps Legacy point scores in line by capping the only score that technically was unlimited.


Please let me know what you all think about these two proposed changes.

You know... I never realized that. Thank you for showing me the light!
Now I need to restrict bell peppers, money trees and garlic...(J/K) I'll probably take out the klepto bit pretty soon, especially in light of the value penalty that I didn't realize existed.


And yes Zazazu, I agree the portraits are not the snapshots of the TS2 days. Could someone mod in a 'not suck' option for the 'stylized still life'?
I've found more success with sims in a lot of artifical light. The best one I got to come out was of one of my test family's wife. She was in the cheap shower at the time and I took the picture through the distorted glass at her head and hair. The distortion of the shower glass combined with the natural distortion now ingrained in the portraits actually produced a decent portrait...unlike my founder's portrait which looks like it was painted using a bag of moldy Cheetos.

That's absolutely not true!
Some of them changed when I was pwnt on other boards too

In all seriousness, your points are well made. I've already revised the money legacy points to include house values AND cash on hand, and I'm currently playtesting a kelpto sim with the intent on abusing the trait just to see if it is as broken as it seems. There is a good chance that at least the klepto rule won't make it, especially as people discover more and more ways to churn money quickly.

I've learned my lesson when it comes to EPs bogging down my challenge. I can promise you that as the EPs come out, the Legacy Challenge will not evolve into some rules-laden monstrosity. Depending on the nature of the EPs, there will most likely be very few changes, if any, to the base challenge as we see it now. That being said, the Legacy Challenge is still evolving and any changes will be made with the maintenance of simplicity and flow in mind.

The Apocalypse Challenge, on the other hand, I make no apologies for. While the Legacy Challenge, at its heart, is supposed to be simple, easy to follow and score, the Apocalypse Challenge is supposed to be monstrously complex. The layers upon layers of specific, nit pickey rules in that challenge are needed to maintain its higher difficulty level (compared to the Legacy Challenge).

I have unlucky as the family trait for my Legacy Family. It already saved my founder once when he electrofried himself trying to fix a broken dish washer and got rezzed by the reaper.


If you mouse over the treasure chest icon that says "current aspiration points" the tooltip that pops up will tell you how many points you've earned for this sim over their lifetime. It is that number that you use for aspiration point portion of the Legacy scoring.


There would be nothing against the rules to use 'deleteallhumans' to purge EAxis sims.

Mooching, in all forms, is in. In testing I didn't find it generated enough money to be broken.

Life fruit is out.


I have updated the rules to balance portraits. Portraits now only count if they are done of a YA or older sim that is living on the Legacy Family lot at the time of painting. this means you have to raise the child from infant to YA at the very least to get a portrait point out of them.

As said before, if you don't like how your rolls turned out, you can purchase the "Mid Life Crisis" perk to get a shot at re-rolling your traits.


Having a shell of a house, especially in the early game, is not only allowed but is good strategy.

If you can somehow edit just the appearance of sims without taking control of their traits, jobs or ages then yes, I suppose a tool like that would be allowed.


As to who is eligable for points: Any sim that is 1: Living on the Legacy Lot AND 2: connected to the bloodline. If you open up a sim's family tree and can trace a solid line up to the founder, they are part of the bloodline. Note that spouses of heirs do not count as part of the bloodline until they actually reproduce with the heir to bring in the next generation.

Once your Legacy family is wealthy enough to be called "rich" you can marry in a townie with the gold digger LTW. Once the townie and your heir have a few children, you can have the townie whack your heir and earn their gold digger LTW. Since the townie bred with the bloodline, they are counted as part of family and thus earning you the gold digger legacy point without breaking the 'rich sim' rule.

You can purchase the "Mid life crisis" perk to reset your traits, but if you do that you must roll randomly again. If you don't like THAT random roll, you can always buy that perk again...


Regarding aging up sims early, you must wait for the "Birthday Message" the game gives you before you use the cake. While yes, you can spawn lots of children to farm portrait points, you need to raise all of them. I may put in rule that says "Portraits must be of them as Young Adults or older" meaning you have to raise them from infant to YA in order to qualify for a portrait point before you can move them out.

For anyone who may be interested.

Legacy Challenge

The Legacy Challenge is a long, 10-generation challenge where you start out with a single founder and very humble beginnings and try to lead the family to fame, fortune and success over the course of 10 generations.

Starting out
Create a brand new game file. You will be using this file exclusively to play your Legacy Challenge. You may use an existing game file, but your Legacy family must immediately become the "Active Household" and not cease to be active for the duration of the challenge. You may select any neighborhood.

The challenge begins with a single founder. Make this founder in Create A Sim. They may be male or female. They may be any age that can have children (YA, Adult and Elder for males, YA and Adult for females). You have full choice over their look, color and clothing. Custom content may be used if you like, including create-a-style custom patterns and colors.  You may choose all 5 traits as well as their three favorite likes (food, music and color) and a lifetime want. No other sims may be created in the founder's family. Be creative with the family name, you'll be seeing it for quite some time.

Now to place the founder. While you are free to choose either standard town, there is a very specific lot that must be used. If you move into Riverview, you must move into "345 Riverblossom Hills Drive". If you move into Sunset Valley, you will be moving into "15 Summer Hill Court". The common thread between these lots is that they are large, empty and cost $14,700. Yes I know that leaves you with only $1,300 in cash to build a house, that's the point. All legacies start out with very humble beginnings and expect your founder to live like a hobo for awhile. If additional neighborhoods are made available with mods or EPs, or we gain the ability to plop our own lots down, they may be used, as long as the lot in question is completely empty and costs at least $14,700.


Rules:
No cheating. Plain and simple, no money or mood cheats. You may use custom objects, as long as their price and mood effects are in line with similar ‘official' objects. Objects purchased from the Sim Store are considered 'offical' as well as the ones included with the game.
Aging and story progression must be on and lifespans set to the normal level.
You are allowed to play with any Mod that does not give you a signifigant advantage over a player without the mod. The only specific mod I know of at the moment, Awesome Mod, is allowed.
The Legacy family must be the "Active Household" during the entire challenge. You may never switch the active household to another family. If you want to take a break from Legacy play, it is recommended  you play in another saved game slot. 
No Ambrosia! Your sims may learn the recipe for Ambrosia, but may not cook or consume the dish. Nor may ambrosia be used to ressurect ghosts.
You may not ressurect dead sims via the Science lab.

Black Market Restriction:
The used goods market is being monitored by the local police. As a result, it is next to impossible to pawn stolen goods for cash.
Items obtained "Illegally" may not be sold for cash. They may be placed on the family lot and used by the family or kept in inventory, just not sold.
An "Illegally obtained" item is the following:
Any item stolen by a Kleptomaniac
Any item salvaged from another sim's trash can
Any item obtained automatically while a sim is in the criminal career track.




Moving Sims in:
Any sim may be moved into the Legacy Family via marriage or move-in except for the following:
Sims created by the player
Sims/households downloaded and imported from the exchange
Sims that had previously lived in the Legacy household but had since moved out
Sims that are identified by your sim as "Rich'

All other sims are fair game. You are allowed to create/download/import sims and families into your Legacy neighborhood, they just cannot join the family.
No sims/families may ever be merged into the Legacy family. If you wish to add members, they must be done in game.



Challenge concepts
Generation: Order of birth in relation to the family at large. Your founder is generation 1, your founder's son/daughter would be generation 2, the grandchildren of the founder would be generation 3 and so on. The challenge ends the moment generation 10 is born.
Founder: The sim you create in CAS who starts the family.
Heir: The sim belonging to the family bloodline who is slated to bring in the next generation once he/she is old enough and finds a mate.
Spare: A sibling of an heir, who can become an heir should anything happen to the current heir. Spares may be fed to the time stream or kept on the lot if you wish. They are eligible to earn legacy points for the family.
Fed to the time stream: Moving a controllable sim out of the legacy house. A sim fed to the time stream no longer can generate legacy points for the family, but still may be interacted with. Legacy points that have already been earned by this sim still count towards your total, even after you move the sim out.
Legacy Points: Your score for the challenge, earned in a variety of ways described below. The goal of the challenge is to get as many legacy points before the 10th generation.
Legacy House: The lot initially moved into by your founder. You may not move the family to another lot during the entire challenge. All heirs must be born in this house (or rather, born from sims living at this house, even if they use the hospital to give birth)
Bloodline: Any sim who can trace his or her family tree directly to the founder. Adopted sims are NOT part of the bloodline. Sims that are moved in are only considered part of the bloodline when they contribute to the birth of the next generation.
Mate: A sim brought in from outside the family to reproduce with the current generation's heir to produce the next generation. When the next generation is born, the mate becomes part of the family bloodline and eligible to earn points.

Points:
You earn points for your family in the following ways.
Generation: You get 1 legacy point for your founder, and 1 point for every generation born until the 10th. You earn each point at the birth of the first child in each generation. Further births in that generation do not generate more points. Thus you can only earn a maximum of 10 total Generation points by completing the challenge and birthing the 10th generation.
Lifetime wants: You gain 1 point for every  unique lifetime want fulfilled by a family member. The sim in question must be living in the legacy house and be part of the family tree to earn this point. Once a specific liftime wish has been fulfilled by a sim, further sims fulifilling that wish will not earn you a legacy point for doing so. There are 32 unique liftime wishes in the game, meaning you could earn a maximum of 32 points in this category.
Portraits: 1 point for creating a portrait of a family member and keeping it on display after their death. Like above, the sim must be part of the family tree and living in the legacy house to qualify for this point. You earn this point after the portrait is created, you do not have to wait for the sim in the portrait to actually die. Portraits are still worth their points even if the family member pictured is moved out of the house later on. The skill of the artist doing the portrait does not matter, as long as it features the sim in question it counts. Portraits may be of any size or style. Keep in mind that a sim must have a painting skill of at least 5 to get the option of painting a still life (needed to capture a sim's picture).
Legacy House: Earn 1 legacy point for every $100,000 in net worth the house is worth. Use the "Furnished Value" of the house to get this figure. Do not include the net-worths of legacy family members that have been moved out of the house. Round up. Your family's weath in cash does NOT count tword this number.
Aspiration Rewards: If a sim is able to earn 100,000  points worth of aspiration rewards, they earn your family 1 legacy point. You are free to spend aspiration points as you gain them, it is your lifetime total, not your current total, that matters for this point. Like the other sim-based points, this may only be earned by family members. You may earn an additional point in this category from a sim if they somehow earn 200,000 points in their lifetime. .
 
Birth and growing up
Whenever a sim is born or ages up, they will often obtain new traits. Sometimes these traits are randomly assigned by the game. Other times the game lets you pick them. In the Legacy Challenge, all traits are random. If you are given the option to pick traits for any sim, you must hit the random button and accept the trait that is randomly assigned. The only exception is if you are playing with the "Family Trait" optional rule. If you are, and the family trait is one of the options, you may select that trait rather than hitting the random button.
Death
Sims that die on the family lot may be kept around as ghosts, or may be moved to a cemetery. It is up to you. If a sim dies and you forgot to get their portrait, making a portrait of their ghost does not count. If the bloodline is cut short by death, the challenge ends immediately. It is always a good idea to have at least one spare in case the heir perishes. Even if ghosts become playable, they may not earn any further points for the family. Ghost babies are not considered part of any bloodline.

Bringing in the next generation.
In order to bring in the next generation, a new sim must be born. Adoptions do not carry the family bloodline and thus don't count. (You are still allowed to adopt sims if you really want to, but they won't help point wise) If the heir is male, you must move their mate into the legacy family house before having a baby. If the heir is female, she may move her mate in, or simply get pregnant while off the lot. In either case, the heir and their mate don't have to be married. Sims may be born at home or in a hospital, whichever you prefer. The moment the next generation is born, the heir's mate officially becomes part of the family bloodline (and thus can earn lifetime want, aspiration perk and portrait points for you, provided they are living in the Legacy House).

Optional Rules
These are optional rules you may play with if you wish. They don't affect your score in any way, and are merely tools to help establish a theme for your family.

Family Trait
When creating your founder in CAS, choose one of the founder's 5 traits to become the ‘family trait' for your legacy family. There after, every sim born to the legacy family must possess this trait by the time they reach young adulthood. If they do not inherit it at birth, you must choose that trait the moment you are given the option to. The remaining traits still must be rolled for.

Matriarchy/Patriarchy

Whatever gender your founder was, this must be the gender of every heir. Meaning if you started with a female founder, only female children may become the heir to bring in the next generation. Children of the other gender are still counted as part of the family bloodline and may still earn the family points, they simply may not bring in the next generation.
A male dominant family is called a Patriarchy, a female dominant family is a Matriarchy.

Story Teller

A popular practice is to write a story for your Legacy family and upload it in chapters. If you feel the creative energy, why not try uploading your own story? There is no in-game bonus for doing this, but the addition to the community is always welcome!




FAQ

Why do I have to buy such a big lot. I barely have money in the beginning.
   Early poverty is a hallmark of the challenge. A large plot of land not only drains the available cash from your starting funds, it gives you the ability to build some epic sized legacy homes as you play through the generations and get more wealth.

If I'm playing with the family trait option, does my sim's mate have to have that trait too?
   No.

Can I move in/marry sims into the legacy home that aren't going to help bring in the next generation?
   Yes, keep in mind that they don't earn any points for the family. Even sims that are destined to help bring in the next generation won't count as part of the family until the next generation is actually born.

Does the first born have to be the heir?

   No, as long as they are part of the bloodline and born on the legacy house they are eligible to be an heir, regardless of order of birth. They must be the proper gender if playing with the matriarchy/patriarchy option.

Are collection items, such as rocks, insects and seeds subject to the black market restriction?

   No, you are allowed to sell any collection items you find...as long as they weren't stolen out of someone's house or garbage.

I'm confused about a few things. I know you need to get an oppertunity to write a Biography, but does that unlock the Biography genre? Or do you need to get three seperate oppertunites before you can write your autobiography?

Also, I see in that file "Life Story" yet there is no mention of how one gains the ability to write that genre? Is that also oppertunity driven or is there somthing else that is needed to write it?

There is apparently some risk when applying spcific upgrades too. I had a sim with a very low handiness skill try to apply the self-cleaning upgrade to the toilet at the end of the progress bar, instread of getting the upgrade the toilet instantly went to a dirty state and the progress was reset to 0%

Interesting, it seems the one or two notch drain in your mood metric that comes from working hard too long is not enough to counter the benefit of actually working too hard, especially if you pre-pad your fun bar before going to work.