Sims Talk: Free Time
May. 4th, 2008 04:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
strangetomatoSo, 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 thatsimgaroop 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!
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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no subject
Date: 2008-05-05 01:25 am (UTC)Not flirting with someone who hates you is a good idea, though. :P That was a nice touch of sanity. I liked the different attitude towards jealously for the different aspirations too, but in the end, I think I'd prefer to make those calls for the characters myself, where the story is concerned.
Sounds like it could be interesting. ;) I hope I'm not responsible for breaking the peace of the Broke Legacy. If the romance mod is what was keeping Helena's family free of jealousy, I would be very careful. Remember that the whole family holds a grudge if they witness what they consider to be cheating.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-05 01:36 am (UTC)I keep the jealousy thing with ACR ^^. The mod adds a "token" to each sim and I can modify how jealous I want them to be. I modified Ripp, Helena and Calvin to have zero jealousy issues, so there won't be any trouble in that front.
On the other hand, Buck, Puck and Cody (since he was a child, WTF?!) have the hots for Marsha Bruening. Perhaps I should add an "Only interact with spouse" token for Buck. There's indeed a lot of drama coming up in his marriage, but not due to infidelity! :P.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-05 01:46 am (UTC)Do children get the hots for each other with ACR? O_o That's... umm... yeah. WTF is right.
Oooh, I like that little hint that just fell out of your pocket. You heard it here first, folks... :P
Now I'm wondering... about that "only interact with spouse". You can technically had more than one spouse assigned by InSIM (though only one shows up on the family tree, they are both tagged as such in the relationship panel), so how does ACR handle that, I wonder? Yes, leave it to me to actually try that. I was just testing out the possibilities.
Oh, the possibilities...
no subject
Date: 2008-05-05 02:04 am (UTC)I think you can customize that. If you set a sim's "autonomy" to low, I've noticed they show less sexual interactions in game.
I had Tim with a low autonomy for a while, so he wouldn't go to bed with a random teen without me noticing it. But I'm really not sure if that's how it works.
I know you can change their sexual orientation. You can choose if you want them to be straigh, bi or gay. And you can set the neighborhood to have straight, gay or bisexual people (you set the proportion of sims).
I don't think ACR is involved with Cody's odd behavior. It's just that uh... I'd never seen this in-game:
http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc154/brokelegacy/snapshot_75122fe1_5515ea4a.jpg
Hey Tim! I think your wife is HOT!
And this was their first conversation since I moved Tim into the lot :S.
I really don't know how the "Only spouse" works when you have several ones.
I know that a sim always has a "chosen sim" with ACR (it shows as "Johnny has the hots for Ophelia" for example), and it usually is the sim with the highest chemistry level, but if you set a high autonomy level (or it's a pleasure or romance sim) they do seek other people to flirt with.
Speaking of ACR, one of the things that surprised me at the beginning was the fact that sims love to get naked to woo hoo, specially the outgoing ones. If you don't have a censor blur, it is a weird the first times that happens in game. So I guess you might see Ripp's "booty" a lot if you installed ACR :P.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-05 02:37 am (UTC)Oh, that's nothing to worry about with Cody. That's just the gossip about hot people. *snicker* He probably picked it up in conversation from Tim. I wonder if Johnny and Ripp will start talking about how hot Ophelia is, now that Ripp is bringing it up in conversation more often (and congratulating her on her hotness). That would be so funny. :P
That chosen one makes me wonder how it would effect situations like the trio. Madame Ugly has a polyamorous relationship in her story, where they all live together, so I wonder how that would impact that situation too.
I'm not sure how I feel about them getting naked to woohoo. I'm so used to implying things with them still in their underwear, and it seems like a bit of a jump from the natural game mechanics, but that's not really a bad thing. (And seeing Ripp's booty wouldn't exactly be torture. :P)