The Evil Twin Challenge
talysman:
I've got a couple ideas for challenges, and I've been testing this one lately. Comments would be appreciated! Did I leave any gaping loopholes that lets people rack up high scores without effort?
The Evil Twin Challenge
It's a standard sitcom trope. It's a standard scenario in the Sims 1. So why not try it in the Sims 2?
The Concept: A single parent is raising twins, but has no idea that one twin is destined to be good, the other evil.
The Challenge: Raise the twins such that both are as successful as possible, but one is good, the other evil. In other words, the good twin must "grow up well" at each life stage, while the evil twin must "grow up badly", without either twin suffering total aspiration failure. The challenge ends when both twins go to college, both become adults, or one twin dies or othwerwise leaves the house for good.
The Setup: Create a family of three sims in CAS. One is the adult, which can be of either gender and can have any mix of personality or turn-ons, but must have Family Aspiration. The other two are twin toddlers, although they do not need to look identical. (TIP: start building each twin in the adult stage to set how you want the child to look, then change the age in CAS to "toddler" for finishing up and setting the family relationships. Also, try using middle names to mark which twin is good and which is evil.)
The good twin must have 10 Nice and 10 Neat. The evil twin must have the opposite (0 Neat, 0 Nice -- maximum sloppiness and grumpiness.) The remaining points may be distributed as you see fit. Aspiration doesn't matter at the CAS stage, because they're toddlers; when they become teens, however, you can choose any Aspiration or select randomly, but both twins must be the same Aspiration.
The House: You get the standard $20,000 and can select any lot. None of the sims can leave the household (move out,) nor can any other sim move in. You cannot use any money cheats or receive money from another family; all money must be earned through normal gameplay.
The Restrictions:
1. No hacks that change gameplay. Bug fixes and macros are allowed, as long as they do not change gameplay. Clones or recolored objects are allowed if they do not make things easier than objects already in the game, but hacked objects that are significantly better than normal objects are banned. THIS INCULDES OBJECTS HACKED TO MAKE THEM CHEAPER THAN NORMAL, or to prevent/enable use by visitors, children, NPCs, and so on.
2. Cheats, including debug mode and MoveObjects, and items such as the lot debugger are only allowed to fix something that's broken (reset a stuck object, clear a corrupt memory, and so on.) No aging cheats, except via the elixer of life (but see the next rule.)
3. NO SAVING AND RELOADING UNLESS A BUG OCCURS.
4. Rewards, if earned, are allowed. However, there is a penalty every time they are used. See the scoring section. Items that affect other actions while under their influence, like the noodle soother, skill helmet, hot tub, or cool shades, count every action under their influence as "one use".
5. No off-lot skilling or improvement is allowed. Sims are allowed to visit community lots for other purposes.
The Scoring:
PENALTIES:
[*]-20 For each visit from the social worker, assessed upon arrival.
[*]-10 For each death (or undeath) in the family. Resurrecting a zombie counts twice. Becoming a vampire counts once.
[*]-10 For each Aspiration Failure/bottomed-out Aspiration Bar
[*] -5 Every time the good twin grows up badly or the evil twin grows up well, assessed at beginning of child, teen, and adult/young adult stages.
[*] -5 For each zero-level skill, each twin that doesn't Learn to Study, or each twin that fails to learn any toddler skills (walk/talk/potty.)
[*] -5 For failing to enter private school, and for each time the headmaster rejects the family.
[*] -5 For each demotion, firing, or failing grade in school, applied when returning home.
[*] -5 For each time a teen runs away.
[*] -1 For each use of an Aspiration or Career Reward object.
[/list]
BONUSES:
[*]+1 For each maxed-out skill, or for each twin's first A+ grade.
[*]+1 For each scholarship earned.
[*]+1 For reaching the top of a teen career.
[*]+2 For reaching the top of the adult career (only applies to parent.)
[*]+2 For each twin that learns all three toddler skills.
[*]+5 For never having anyone pass out on the lot.
[*]+5 For never having anyone wet themselves on the lot.
[*]+5 If the parent grows up well.
[*]+5 For each LTW fulfilled.
[/list]
GOOD TWIN BONUSES:
[*] +1 For each best friend outside the family.
[/list]
EVIL TWIN BONUSES:
[*] +1 For each enemy outside the family.
[/list]
AUTOMATIC LOSS CONDITIONS:
Automatically lose if everyone dies or is removed from play before twins reach adulthood/go to college.
Automatically lose if you violate one of the restrictions, or fail to follow the setup procedure.
CHAMPION:
You are a champion if you finish the challenge without taking any penalties (currently seems impossible.)
kuronue:
Quote from: talysman on 2008 April 05, 04:02:22
PENALTIES:
[*]-20 For each visit from the social worker, assessed upon arrival.
[*]-10 For each death (or undeath) in the family. Resurrecting a zombie counts twice. Becoming a vampire counts once.
[*]-10 For each Aspiration Failure/bottomed-out Aspiration Bar
[*] -5 Every time the good twin grows up badly or the evil twin grows up well, assessed at beginning of child, teen, and adult/young adult stages.
[*] -5 For each zero-level skill, each twin that doesn't Learn to Study, or each twin that fails to learn any toddler skills (walk/talk/potty.)
[*] -5 For failing to enter private school, and for each time the headmaster rejects the family.
[*] -5 For each demotion, firing, or failing grade in school, applied when returning home.
[*] -5 For each time a teen runs away.
[*] -1 For each use of an Aspiration or Career Reward object.
[/list]
. . .
CHAMPION:
You are a champion if you finish the challenge without taking any penalties (currently seems impossible.)
impossible? Hardly. Difficult, perhaps, because with the evil twin you have to walk a thin line where you grow up badly without actually bottoming out, and of course you have to teach them their skills so you then have to target one's fears without affecting the other, but after you get that worked out it's a cakewalk. there's no reason the social worker should come, careful managing avoids the next few penalties, and normal gameplay easily avoids firings, demotions, rejections, and the like.
I suspect this challenge is too easy, upon first reading it.
talysman:
Quote from: me
CHAMPION:
You are a champion if you finish the challenge without taking any penalties (currently seems impossible.)
Quote from: kuronue on 2008 April 05, 04:45:35
impossible? Hardly. Difficult, perhaps, because with the evil twin you have to walk a thin line where you grow up badly without actually bottoming out, and of course you have to teach them their skills so you then have to target one's fears without affecting the other, but after you get that worked out it's a cakewalk. there's no reason the social worker should come, careful managing avoids the next few penalties, and normal gameplay easily avoids firings, demotions, rejections, and the like.
I suspect this challenge is too easy, upon first reading it.
Maybe too easy to get positive points, but I think you're underestimating the Champion requirements. To be a Champion, you can't just get a positive score; you have to have NO PENALTIES. The difficulty lies in the toddler stage: it doesn't seem to be possible for a toddler to grow up badly without taking some other kind of penalty.
EDIT: fixed broken quote.
J. M. Pescado:
Too easy. You don't even need to hit any fears, just don't hit any wants, which is easy enough to do. However, there's an huge point exploit where you can milk some 30000 points out of the "friends" thing if you really wanted to. You need to cap all your stackable point awards to prevent this.
talysman:
Quote from: J. M. Pescado on 2008 April 05, 07:52:19
Too easy. You don't even need to hit any fears, just don't hit any wants, which is easy enough to do. However, there's an huge point exploit where you can milk some 30000 points out of the "friends" thing if you really wanted to. You need to cap all your stackable point awards to prevent this.
I dunno. Those toddlers seem to always have lingering "Learn to Talk/Walk/Use Potty" wants that are hard to avoid. That's what keeps biting me in the ass: it's easy to get the good toddler to platinum and learn all three toddler skills, but in my latest attempt, Evil Twin held on to all three wants for a couple days. And the fears were always unfulfillable stuff, like "Parent Dies". I eventually had to fulfill one of the toddler skill wants, to avoid the penalty for not getting any toddler skills at all.
Twins are in childhood now and it should be smooth sailing from there, but I'm currently at a -4 penalty. The +2 for Good Twin learning all three toddler skills was balanced out by using the skill helmet twice. Also, I only let the Good Twin get the A+, because so far Evil Twin keeps having "Get an A+" show up, as well as "Do Homework" (I sidestepped that by having Good Twin do Evil Twin's homework once, but I had to let her ask for homework help once in order to get "Learned to Study".)
I can up the penalty for not getting any toddler skills at all, and make the deaths/transformations/permanent removals automatic failures instead of penalties. I can also change the best friend/enemy bonuses to +1 per 10 best friends/10 enemies, max +5 total. Other possibilities would be to turn some of the bonuses into penalties: instead of +1 for reaching the top of the teen career, make it -1 for NOT reaching the top. Probably good to do that with A+ grades and maxed-out skills, too.
Any other suggestions?
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