strangetomato | Sims Talk: Free Time

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Sims Talk: Free Time

So, I've finally joined the Free Time party, and I'm liking it just as much as I thought I would.

The first thing I did was adjust the One True Hobby of my characters to something that made sense. I followed the tutorial that

simgaroop posted, and it's very easy to make this change using the Lot Debugger.

Johnny discovers his interest in sports (he's only just realizing that now? *snicker*). Though he's tossing a football, he's actually more into the other type of football, aka soccer. The cool, international sport of choice. Seriously, doesn't Johnny seem like a soccer player to you? Works for me.

I used Gadwin Printscreen to take this screencap, and, let me tell you, I'm not likely to switch over to screencapping my images anytime soon. Sure, it looks clearer, but do I want to exit the program every time I take a photo? No. Do I want to have to open up every image and centre it in GIMP on the correct format that I want the photo to be in? No. Are the shots that I take with the in-game camera clear enough? Yes. So why go through so much trouble? *scratches head*

The reason this is all squashed and distorted is because I set Gadwin to take the caps at the same format as the in-game camera, but because I have a wide-format screen (yeah, I'm spoiled), it just squished the full screen image (instead of adding extra information to the top and bottom like the in-game camera does... which also took some adjusting to). Not acceptable. And the pause lines are annoying too - though there's a hack to remove them, right? To get what I want, I'd have to figure out the right format for my screen, and then go into GIMP with every image to crop it to what I want. Maybe I'm just lazy, but I don't think I'd have the same motivation to do sim stories if I had to go through that for every image if it's not necessary.

Anyway, back to Free Time.

I gave Ripp Music and Dance, which makes more sense than Arts and Crafts. He is in a band, and known for busting moves on people almost every day.

Unfortunately, he's going to have to lose his signature guitar, since the custom instruments hack causes all guitars to stop increasing enthusiasm levels, and not just the custom ones (I thought I might get away with just switching them in for photos, which I suppose I could still do, though it's a lot more annoying to have to remove and add them from the game every time I need them). So, I may have to just suck it up and give every musician the very same guitar. *sigh* Why is there only one texture for the guitar? They are options for all the other instruments!

Ophelia got Nature as her hobby (although the florist bench is considered an Arts and Crafts thing, so she'll have two hobbies). I didn't get a screen cap of that. Johnny and Ophelia both had Music and Dance when I started the game. They do like to dance, but I didn't want that to be their main hobby, since they already had hobbies suggested by the game for me (Johnny has the sports career LTW, and Ophelia rolled to want to buy a florist bench out of nowhere).

Then there were the secondary aspirations. Ophelia got knowledge, and Johnny and Ripp both got family. There was an immediate change in the chemistry level in the house.

As I suspected, there was a boost from the secondary aspiration. Oddly, though, it was only to Ripp. Hmm, I wonder why. I think the most obvious reason could be the fact that Ripp and Ophelia have better chemistry with each other if aspirations are not taken into consideration (having 2 bolts with each other, despite completely opposing aspirations), so with this leveling of the playing field, Ripp gets a little edge on Johnny. I'll play around with turn ons to see how close it is... oh wait, I don't have InSIM anymore. I knew this would come up.

Wait... that's not it. I just remembered. It's the romance aspiration reward thing. Ripp gets a boost in chemistry with everyone! Very sneaky, Ripp. I haven't checked to see how he reacts to other girls in his little black book, but right now, Phi is the only one that's showing as triple bolt (my first in all of Strangetown, by the way).

The effects of this chemistry increase are already very evident.

Ripp: Oh, I hate to see you go, but I LOVE to watch you leave.

Phi: You're actually following me, you know, so I'm not really leaving.

Ripp: Yeah... I can't really help that.

Phi: Why don't we, umm, sit over here... on the couch?

Ripp: *is happy*

So, now I'm thinking that ACR is probably a very bad idea.

Another odd change in my game is with dancing. It became a lot more... homophobic? No, it's more like it's based strictly on sexual preference now. Guys who like girls don't dance with guys, and so on.

Johnny and Ripp, for example, no longer like to dance with each other. Oh, they still initiate dancing all of the time, but then they decide that they don't like it. It makes them seem very... conflicted.

(As a side note, Johnny is the exact same colour as the siding on the house!)

Nervous and Ophelia do not like to dance with each other either.

Pascal and Nervous, however, do enjoy dancing with each other. A lot. Hmm... how interesting. (Keep in mind that I have not done anything to influence their sexuality in the game yet. Nervous doesn't even register chemistry for anyone. Pascal is pre-set to like females... supposedly.)

I think this dancing thing might be caused by the MATY romance hack, which I decided to add with the updated hacks. It doesn't say anything specific about it on the hack description thread, but it does say this:

"Sexual orientation of a sim now actually matters! A very straight sim will decline homosexual interactions and vice-versa."

That makes me think that dancing is grouped as a flirtatious activity, even though it has no effect on romance in-game. I'm not impressed. I like having everyone dance with each other, regardless of gender and sexuality (even if they do sometimes grind up on each other suggestively *snicker*). I'm not sure if the romance hack is really what's causing this. Can anyone confirm this for me?

Then we have Buck, who is enjoying his new sewing machine very much. Actually, it's not new. It's a hand-me-down from the Smith family (it used to be Kitty's and Jenny gave it to Jill in a moment of wishful thinking). Now it's Buck's.

This makes all of the trouble with updating hacks and figuring out the no-cd crack totally worth it. I love Buck and I love to see him rocking the sewing machine like nobody's business. Free Time is great.

I was a little hesitant about secondary aspirations for these two. I'm leaning towards popularity for Jill and fortune for Buck, since he's so reasonable about money, and hard-working. The wants to buy things would match up with him wanting to decorate the house too, so I think it works. I'm still working my way around to the other characters. Tank's hobby is fitness, and his secondary aspiration is fortune. Frances got music and dance (because of the piano playing), and his secondary aspiration is knowledge.

I'll leave you with one of my favourite new social interactions, the sweet talk.

It's just too cute.

ETA: I removed the MATY romance hack, and my sims are dancing normally again. I think it really did have something to do with the increased strictness about sexuality in romantic interactions with that hack. I like the idea of the different aspirations behaving differently about jealousy (though I have some issues with that too), but I really dislike that it makes the sexuality of sims even more rigid than it is now. Things aren't always black or white when it comes to sexuality, so MATY can keep its romance hack.

They aren't about to let a silly hack ruin all their fun!

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Ripp is always a good parent when I play him as one. The house becomes a total mess, but the kids get a lot of attention, so they're happy at least. He does fear those diapers, though, doesn't he?

He is a great parent. Always interacting with the kids. I love that about Ripp.

I always made Jenny Smith change the diapers. *snerk* That's probably why she ran off and joined the cult. :D

Not much to say that wasn't already said, except I'm glad you're not keeping the ACR hack. It doesn't seem right for your story, and I would hate to think of Ripp and Johnny feeling inhibited about dancing together. :)

Also, Buck and his sewing machine are cute as a button! Love that old fashioned treadle machine. The sweet talk interaction looks adorable, too. This EP seems like so much fun.

Just a little whining -- I wish LJ would not pack up all the comments like this... or at least have a way to expand all of them at once.

You could put ACR in and then try it in a test hood with "body doubles". Then nothing would get messed up and if you hated it just uninstall and forget it ever happened. (that's what I'm going to do for the keuo-thingy).

Hee, you have yellow pee. It is so gross but that's why I like it. As for what I use from the director's cut it's mostly fixes and annoyance stuff. I can't live without the "don't do dishes in the bathroom sink" and the fix for the damn espresso/punch cups (so they don't fling them about or wander to the end of the earth to sit the cup on a bedroom end table). I also recommend the "no puddle rage". It keeps the neatniks from getting furious over puddles (Pascal was having some good flaming thoughts about Percy before I got that one). I also recommend the "fire extinguisher" and "lot skilling" ones.

In case you thought I wasn't dorky enough, I'm making ANOTHER checklist of things I need to do/have before installing. This new list includes names of sims I want to clone out before taking the plunge.

Sorry to but in, but I've gotta say something about that ballerina animation. So since I have Lazlo be a DJ at that night club constantly, he has pretty much maxed out his enthusiasm in music and dance, he and does it constantly! It's just way too funny.

I wasn't sure if you would be able to read the friends only posts that way. I know they're not showing up on my reg. LJ page so I don't know.

If Ophelia was a romance sim why wouldn't she have bolts with the Curious brothers? How could she not!? LOL!
I always seem to have a sim or two that have bolts with just about everybody!

Well, Ripp is a luv machine. He's not afraid to boast about it either. ;) the dirty little boy.

Okay. I see. You're right. I will only be able to read friends-only things if you friend me, so that makes sense. I never think about that, since I don't post a lot of friends-only stuff - just the occasional personal non-sim thing. All of the sim stuff is public. I figured you didn't need to bother, since you follow with your main account, but that makes more sense.

I doubt that she would, since family/knowledge LOVES each other, and family/romance HATES each other. I'm sure that the large knowledge population is the only reason that Ophelia is compatible with so many Strangetowners. Unlike Ripp and Ophelia, who have the hots for each other despite the family/romance thing... proving them to be two of the most highly compatible sims in the whole game. (Yeah, that's right. I said it. :P Go ahead and try to prove me wrong.)

That's so true. Ripp autonomously brags about his conquests all of the time. Such a naughty, naughty boy...

Actually, it was the MATY romance mod that was causing the dance issues. I never did install ACR. You're right, though. ACR is probably also a questionable option. The romance mod is getting no love at all from me, with its rigid sexuality structure. Bah. And for dancing too... oh, please. If Johnny and Ripp want to dance, they are going to dance. (And they clearly do want to dance. They do it all of the time. It was just weird when they were each asking each other to dance and then rejecting it in turn. It made them seem like they had split personalities.)

I really dislike the presumption of that romance mod. It's very either/or about sexuality. The game handles bisexuality in a very limited way anyway, so why take it to an even more ridiculous extreme? Just because someone is more involved with one sex, it doesn't mean that would negate their attraction to the other. I understand why they made the game mechanics work that way for the sake of simplicity, though. I wonder if they'll improve it with Sims 3? I'd love to see some kind of sexuality meter (but they're removing the meter system, anyway, aren't they?)

I love that the sewing machine is an old fashioned one. There are a lot of nice old looking things in the EP, like an old TV, an a record player (which they turn on with a remote control - LOL).

I like the "packing up" of the comments for neatness, but I agree that there should be some way to expand them all at once. It makes it very hard to navigate, and I "lose" comments by forgetting where they were located.

Yeah, me too. Ripp is just a sweetheart like that. I think it's a major hidden strength that he has to offer. He's just a sponge for any type of social contact, so he loves to play with children. He's very serious about tucking everyone in at night too. It was easy for me to get him to do that for my scene with him and Ophelia. Nobody is ever left untucked when Ripp is around.

Poor Jenny. Johnny moves his husband back home with Mom (as if having her grown son living at home wasn't enough), and she gets stuck with the dirty diapers. I would have joined a cult too.

The ballerina thing seems like an odd choice for an animation for all people in that hobby. It's so specific. How many people just randomly start doing ballerina moves? :P Very, very amusing.

(And yet another fine example of a gay overtone in the game. Guys listen to a little music, and the next thing you know... they're all ballerinas.)

If I put ACR in, and only played a neighbourhood with body doubles, the tokens wouldn't get set up anywhere else, and I could just remove ACR with no trouble, right? Is that how it works? I need to go read the manual again. I'd be willing to try some adventures in ACR with some clones.

Though... it's the funniest thing. I can almost never get the chemistry to match the Maxis chemistry when I make clones of J/R/O (I may have gotten it right once). Even when I give them matching interests, like they have in Strangetown, and the right zodiac signs (which don't match the personalities). It's very odd. Do they have some kind of special built-on chemistry? It's very odd. Have you ever noticed anything like that?

We seem to like the same MATY hacks. I really like the fitnessforall hack too. It allows townies to get fit or fat. (I don't think I have fire extinguisher... what does that one do?)

*snicker* I love making lists too. What a bunch of dorks.

I've tried to grab a couple of those special camera things too, but I don't like using them in stories because of the special effect they put on them. I wish the sims would do the woohoo animation with one sims cuddling into the other one in-game. That would be so useful.

Your servo sounds like a real "sex machine"... *waits for groans from the audience*

Yes, it does a lot of random things. It's as temperamental as a pregnant man, even (since we're talking about sims here *snicker*).

I think you set up tokens by neighborhood and then by sim. BUT, ACR affects the whole GAME, so if it's in, it's in for every hood. So you'd have to pull it out if you wanted to flop around between hoods (and not have to deal with it--that's a damn lot of work).

You could always make a new Strangetown and use it for your testhood. Then you should get the "maxis weirdness" that may or may not be present. The only weirdness I've ever noticed with maxis sims (like Strangetown) is how Pascal seems set to love Nervous (though I've since learned he's set to love whoever happens to reach that level first).

Ooh, townies can get fit or fat. I might have to add that one. I like size variety. The fire extinguisher (not it's real name) one makes it so sims will autonimously try to extinguish fires. It was helpful when I was still playing my apocalypse challenge. I've never had a sim die from trying to fight the fire, either, though I think it depends on their personality whether they'll whip out the extinguisher.

The Curious family is filled with gay overtones! :D
Even Lazlo and his fat, hairy self.

Oh, I thought the MATY mod and ACR were the same thing. That shows how seriously I've ever explored romance hacks, huh. I've only used hacks to remove jealousy, like InSim.

From what you're describing, though, I wouldn't like the way either MATY or ACR deal with bisexuality. Though I have no way of knowing, I imagine the rigidity reflects the views of the creators. A lot of people don't "get" bisexuality. It's much more fluid than many assume.

Removing the meter system? I don't know anything about that, but I have been so out of the loop...

Yes, ideally LJ would pack up comments by default, but allow expanding them all at once. Just a button at the top of the comments would do it: "Expand all comment threads" or something like that.

Many people seem to view sexuality as a three-point system and not a continuum (and its even more complex than that, when you factor in transgendered people). By that theory, you're either straight, gay, or bi (which is usually assumed to be perfectly 50/50), and unfortunately, that's the way the game seems to read sim chemistry too. Have you ever noticed how hard it is to keep a sim reading as bisexual for chemistry? You have to balance their male and female interactions almost perfectly.

Yeah, they plan to do away with the personality meter (which I feel a little upset about, since it's only of my favourite sim things to interpret for stories). They're going to replace it with a list of 80 character traits that you can select from for each sim (they get 5 each). It sounds interesting, and includes things like having a green thumb and being a vegan. :D

I don't like overly sharpened images either (and to be completely honest, I think that a lot of people posting sim photos tend to over-sharpen them in the post process). I like soft edges too, since it's more like the way the human eye sees things. It's like the difference between film and digital. Sharp images are harsher, and I don't know why most people seem to view them as better.

My SO considers excessive sharpening to be a sign of noobishness when it comes to Photoshop, just like filter abuse. He has a lot of strong opinions. :P (I do too, really, but I try not to toss them around unless people are actually interested in hearing them.)

I've been told that Nervous has a slight dislike for females at the beginning of the game, but I've never checked that out for myself. Pascal is slightly positive for females, but obviously not enough for this romance hack to see a dance request from Nervous to be out of the question for him. They both must read as somewhat bisexual by that mod's standards.

In other words, if Pascal starts out as technically "straight" in the game, it's not by much. Don Lothario, he is not.

Yeah, I did test it. You seem to have answered your own question. I didn't experiment with it much, though. I just drew conclusions from those examples, with Ripp's extremely high preference for females (again, based solely on amount of interaction - he's in the high 8 out of 10 range) being what tipped me off.

Ripp sleeping with a bunch of girls should have no relevance on whether he will dance with Johnny. It's just DANCING, people! :P The restrictiveness just makes my brain hurt.

Poor Jenny *snicker* Now this I've gotta read!

Oh, and it's not too difficult to guess who this girl's daddy is, is it? http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o73/muslemura/snapshot_1525ce7d_95287971.jpg

The other two look more like their mother:
http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o73/muslemura/snapshot_1525ce7d_b5288cfa.jpg
http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o73/muslemura/snapshot_1525ce7d_952b6ceb.jpg

And the tub is always occupied by one of the four playful ones living there :)

Oh, they're so cute! :D

My cloned Ripp's daughter with Ophelia is a tub pirate too. And she's almost failing out of school because homework is NOT FUN! *snicker*

Here's another Ripp/Ophelia daughter, from yet another cloned family (I have to take out my desire to breed all of these sims somewhere):

*melts*

I was using the correct recessive genetics, so she's blond. She looks a lot like the Lyla I created.

You should read Pixel's stories about Johnny and Ripp's family. Things get really interesting when Jenny does join the Saturn's Nine cult. It's a good read. You can find it all here:

http://pixel-and-bean.livejournal.com/52706.html

Oh no! I have no idea what to think about that new personality system. :(

It would be cool to actually make your sim have a green thumb and be a vegan, but if they're such little things like that, then don't you think you should get more than five?

I think that this would be nice to layer on top of a point system like they have now, but I'll give them a chance to prove whether this might be a better option. Five traits isn't a lot, and these are all sort of window dressing types of things, instead of the the large concepts that we have now.

Hey, I like the Smiths. Or at least their one song Asleep.

Exactly what I was thinking! It would be cool if they had the regular personality system AND that.

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Sims Talk: Free Time

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