Sims Talk: Free Time

[strangetomato]

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!

Comments

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

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.

[pixelcurious.livejournal.com]

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.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

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

[xel-squirgle-ox.livejournal.com]

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?

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

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.

[xel-squirgle-ox.livejournal.com]

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