Sunday 7 June 2009

TS3 randomness

I've been playing TS3 for a while now and I've finally pulled myself away from it long enough to put up a post with some of my thoughts (and pictures, of course)!

First of all, pictures in TS3 are BIG! Easily big enough to use as a desktop background, if you so choose and gorgeous quality. I've heard some of the screen grab programs are taking kind of crappy shots but these are from the in game camera and they're lovely. You can click all of these and see them full size (or as full size as Photobucket allows, I haven't checked. Bigger than TS2 pics anyway).

I had a whole bunch of other pictures but I deleted them all. I was having a weird problem where all three speeds were the same, so I had turned a lot of settings down in an effort to fix it (didn't work, by the way). The next day when I loaded though, it was running beautifully so I turned them all up and ended up deleting my other screenshots. I restarted Sunset Valley to use the default skins I downloaded.

Here's Mortimer Goth on his way to the art gallery. That's the school he's cycling by there.



Another shot of Sunset Valley, just to show you a bit more of the town.

The art gallery, one of the non-rabbithole community lots. His little thought bubble has the icon for the Master of the Arts lifetime wish. Children can have those too, which is kind of cool. As soon as Morty entered the art gallery, I got a little pop-up asking me if I wanted to set this as his lifetime wish.

I love the laptops. Sims can use them anywhere there's a table and chair. This is Morty and his dad Gunther using them in their garden. The Goth house is pretty awesome but most of the colours and patterns EA have used, of course, are awful. So I'm gradually going through and changing a lot of it.

Maid's outfit - still slutty. My sister thinks it's actually more slutty but I'm undecided. I don't mind the look so much, I get what they're going for but I'd rather a more realistic maid. Also note the revolting combination of those two rugs with that flooring.

Mortimer's mum Cornelia has a very haphazard sort of vegetable garden going in the back. The plants seem to grow much faster than in TS2 but the actual process of tending the garden seems to take longer. I'll have to figure out what is a manageable size garden for me. Time management is a big problem for me in this game, currently.

The Goths live not far from the cemetery so I went on over one night while they were sleeping and checked out the ghosts. Unlike the ones in TS2, the cemeteries are very active.

I've also been playing with a new family, the Sekemotos. This is Leighton, catching butterflies in Central Park.

Leighton's a single dad, living with his mother and his son, Sam.

He's Family-Oriented, so he gets lots of wishes to interact with his son. TS3 Sims are creepy when it comes to teaching toddlers to talk. The Grim Reaper? Geez. They also had a very in-depth conversation about garbage.

I was going to set Leighton up with Tamara here (who has a serious hook nose going on) and they had a little date in the park.

In the end though, it was too hard for them to find time to meet up, so he moved on to Dorothy. Leighton is a Toddler Sports Coach and apparently, toddler sports lessons end at 9pm. Dorothy is in the same career, so her hours are more compatible. If she moves in, the hat has to go.

That's Leighton's mother in the background, by the way. She is doing the "Freak Out" self interaction, which is especially for Neurotic Sims. You can direct it but they'll do it autonomously pretty often. After they do it, other Sims will think they're weird (Leighton and Dorothy are reacting to her here) but the Neurotic Sim will get a Tranquil moodlet which lasts quite a while.

I love how toddlers can play in the toybox. It's pretty adorable.

Babysitters are very hit and miss. There's a very sweet male babysitter named Dave who's actually pretty good but this girl (who I think is named Candy) is shit. Sam is starving, as you can see but she just stood there looking at him. I think I saw her covering her ears too. Luckily Leighton had just got home.

I've also been playing a little with the Bachelors. Like so many families, the Bachelors' social hub is the dining table. Bella and Michael do their homework there and journalist dad Simis writes all of his articles there.

This is how Simis does his research for articles. Poor Dorie Hart had a very nasty article written about her from what he found in the bin.

Michael and Bella both get the wish to go to community lots pretty often. On one of his trips to Central Park, Michael met Holly Alto. I'm trying to get a little romance going with them.

So that's all I have for you now. I'm going to play some more today and over the next couple of days (FOUR DAY WEEKEND!!!1!) so I'll have some more pics for you soon.

Sullivan is definitely still around and I will still update those families. I'm just taking a little break from it while I nose around TS3. :)

9 comments:

  1. Unfortunately, the TS3 replacement skins look RIDICULOUSLY blotchy on my high res monitor, so I passed. That and the male chest hair just looks... bizarrely placed. x_x

    Glad to see you're having fun with it. I think EA was full of crap and the game isn't as great once the shiny wears off, but it's a fun 'game'. Shame they veered away from The Sims actually being MORE than that, though. Rob Humble was quoted saying he didn't "get" the sims and someone had to explain it to him, heh. I can see that.

    I'm experimenting with blogging TS3 over at sims3.maonao.net/views. I did an overview of TS3, too, but I had the... acquired release for two weeks. So the shiny has worn off and I'm trying to figure out HOW to play now, lol.

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  2. I tried the default skins and they looked bad on my monitor too-- like the sims were a little dirty.

    Also, where do you get the laptops? I didn't see them in buy mode. Can the sim take them to the park?

    It is shiny. And it is more of a game. That was very interesting to hear Mao. A lot of people don't get The Sims. :\

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  3. Your game looks a lot more fun than mine! I don't know, I got bored playing it pretty fast. I do enjoy creating sims, I can easily spend hours and hours tweaking their little faces LOL

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  4. Laptops are under electronics > computers. They look like a little suitcase. :D

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  5. I only just tried creating Sims last night and it *was* really fun! I am going to put up some links and pictures in a little while.

    After playing, I can see what people mean by the Sims 2 being a toy and the Sims 3 being a game. I'm definitely bummed that they seem to have gone out of their way to make it difficult to mod. The toy/game comparison is perfect, actually.

    There's a little blotchiness with the defaults but I took that over no nipples. That was driving me insane! At least put them in for the men!

    Lunar, you can take the laptop any where there's a table, including the park. If you try to use it and there's no table nearby, the option is greyed out.

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  6. I think it's quite amusing that you too hooked Michael up with Holly :P I played Sunset Valley in the aquired version for awhile and the ghosts there were seriously lazy compared to the ghosts in Riverview (in my opinion anyway).

    Also, the time thing never seems to work for me, it's always the same or if it does change it's still horribly slow -_-

    I keep forgetting to take pictures, I had a ghost baby before the game crashed! Hm, maybe I still have the picture..

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  7. Yeah, Valneanne, the time thing is definitely a computer issue if you're getting it consistently. It plays like that on my sister's computer.

    I only just loaded up Riverview last night so I can't say anything about their ghosts yet. What a lovely hood though. I think I'll have to make another family - one to focus on in Riverview and one to use in SV.

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  8. I saw someone else's picture of teaching a toddler to talk, and they were also saying "grim reaper!"

    The pictures are beautiful (except of course the tortuous uglies Maxis installed, but I'm sure you'll make it nice in time.) The toddler in the box is adorable.

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  9. Thanks! It's fun watching them teach the toddlers to talk - the topics are definitely more varied than in TS2. I also like how when they talk to the toddlers now, they don't have the option until they've actually learnt to talk AND they actually look like they're chatting, rather than just cooing over them.

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