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 01:33 am (UTC)Using the Lot Debugger was really easy. Thanks again for the tutorial. I wasn't even all that aware of the lot debugger before I read your post. I'm going to take advantage of the sim randomizer function for sim babies too. It's annoying to have to go into CAS to do that every time.
Yeah, I'd have to estimate how close to get so I could crop the icons out to get it the right size. That's way too much hassle for me. I'm happy with the in-game camera. I like your suggestion for using screen caps for special photo shoots, though. It would be nice for doing things for painting recolours. I'm planning some more posters.
Ahh, I see. Ripp and Helena are both romance sims, so it's almost impossible for them to not have three bolts for each other if they both have that reward. By nature, romance sims will always have the hots for each other in a big way with that featured added to the game, won't they? (Well, the fact that Helena and Ripp are so much alike doesn't hurt... she's like a hyperactive female Ripp, isn't she?)
I'd love to know what mod you used to fix that fun meter thing. I like extended dance sessions and TV watching. You can always direct them away from it, but when they drop out after a couple minutes, it's hard to keep them going. That seems more annoying to me.
It does have a lot of great stuff in it. I'm seeing so much potential, and I've been planning out many parts of this story with FT in mind, so it's great to finally work those things in.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-05 01:52 am (UTC)The hack is from Dizzy (he used to be at MATY, I think):
http://www.nectere.net/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=4e5659d35589f1f2860e2144ab328a3e&topic=1140.0
Download the Spiral-ft zip. There are a bunch of mods inside. I don't really use them, just the exit-fun-one(that fixes this issue), but you might be interested in some of them (there's a readme file that explains what they do).
There's one that disables jealousy on sims that have a flamingo in their inventory, sort of what ACR does, but I've never tried it.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-05 02:05 am (UTC)Hmmm. That's another way to handle jealousy. It makes me laugh, though. I just imagine people asking each other, "Is that a flamingo in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?" :P