The Sims 2 Nightlife Update - #5 - By Tim LeTourneau

Pssh, more Maxian lies and propaganda.

 

Cemetaries! Coolie!!!! (squeal) I wanna make a little country church, complete with cemetary and wedding arch! Those "Midevil" benches would make good church seats, and I could use the teleprompter as the pulpit. What do you think? cute or what?? It will look good in my historic district.

 

You know what's REALLY frickin' cool about the upcoming expansion? THIS!

A FLOOR MOUNTED FLAMETHROWER. How cool is that? I'm sure it doesn't do anything really impressive out of the box, but I'm not going to let a puny obstacle like THAT stop me. Nuh-uh. When I'm finished, it'll be just like the ones I have mounted in my floor. You, too, can experience the hilarious joy of *THOOOOOOM* "AIIEEEEEE! IT BURNS! IT BURNS!". Trogdor strikes again!

Just you wait. Coming soon, the Fishman Weapons Systems Floor Mounted "Burninator" Flamethrower.

 

I don't believe it!!! Maxis has finally put something in an EP to make JMP get all excited over it!! ROTF!!! I think I almost wet myself I was laughing so hard, JMP!!!!!

 

Floor Mounted Flamethrowers: Guaranteed not to make your game explode in a large fiery ball visible from space, but the same cannot be said about your sims...

 

someone seriously needs to archive all these "pescado-isms" for future generations. "guaranteed to give a laugh or your money back"

 

There's a lot BAD to say about it, too. I spotted no less than 3 examples of obsessive-compulsive behavior which will surely prove ungodly annoying, as well as several sources of Big Fiery Ball Visible From Space death for your game and several apparent bugs they're passing off as promotional features instead. Here's a copy of them from my site.

Observe the following:


Some nice, OCD dancing. Notice that no less than *6* of the normally allowed 8 visiting sims is dancing here. This is NOT a healthy pattern of behavior. All are plumbobless, so they're likely functioning autonomously.


Notice the obsessive-compulsive bowling. Notice also that you can see the bottoms of the skill meters, one of which appears as a sim bowls. This suggests that they're popping skillmeters and gaining skills. Meaning that either skill-gaining is allowed downtown, or this unhealthy behavior is actually occuring at RESIDENTIAL lot! The fact that it seems to be skill-building is good, but it's still not healthy that so many sims are doing it at once, particularly on a residential lot, as is likely the case!


Notice the obsessive-compulsion of the karaoke machine. This is not healthy either. Anyone up for a game of Myshuno?


Here you will notice several sims that seem to be doing nothing except cheering at a dance sphere! Does this mean that anytime somebody uses the **** thing, everyone's queue gets wiped so they can cheer at it? Fun, eh?


Look how ungodly many sims are visible in this shot! The lag must be absolutely AWFUL! And the number of NPCs involved! Good gravy, that's 9 extra sims right there! (3 of each type!)


This car is not stopping. Neither are any of the other cars shown. What does this mean, you think? A bug, perhaps, that cars do not stop to release their occupants and simply run off the end of the lot, leaving you to curse and swear at the lack of brakes?

And this is what lies ahead of you read between the lines of their new demo clip. Be afraid, people. Be very afraid.

 

I had also noticed the huge amount of Sims at the community lots downtown, and wondered if they had upped the levels. Also wonder if they had upped the processing time so, like you mentioned JMP, it wouldn't lag too much when you're playing all those nifty, blinky, dance clubs. :(

 

That's simple enough to do as-is.

Impossible. The only way to "up the processing time" would be if they reoptimized the code a *LOT*, which I seriously doubt as this would require a complete redesign, or to get better hardware, which obviously they cannot do for you. It will lag a lot. Hell, I wanna know what they used to render that without lagging.

 

i dont know. it really shouldnt take that much power to rnder. i once invited about 15 pople over to my house which already has 6 occupants. add the fact that the place is loaded with objects which are packed tightly together in the house (without making the house "intraversable"). other than it jerking when moving it around, it ran fine. of course, its not running at the highest graphics settings. probably around medium sets globally. and advanced lighting a shown by the spotlights really arent all that difficult to render. really what you wanna watch for is particle effects such as fire and whatnot. that tends to slow things down quite a bit at least ime.

 

I invited 15 people to a wedding and it ran OK but slow. I agree that those clubs look crowded, which makes me wonder, if I have a starter neighborhood with not that many sims in it, will yet more NPCs be coming with the game? More food for my cowplant, in other words? I heard a rumor that Edna Crumplebottom was going to be an NPC. That old busybody had better be careful in my neighborhood ...

Cemeteries, as they are, are dumb. I think a community cemetery would make so much more sense. You could go there whenever you wanted to see a ghost instead of having to go through the convoluted process of making friends with someone just because she has a ghost on her property. Also, legacy properties would no longer have the game speed of molasses. I had three ghosts and my house became buggy. I can't imagine what several generations would do to a lot.

Also, when sims move houses the ghosts would no longer get lost to the ether.

And while we're at it, I'd like to have funerals. There's a black buffet table, why no funeral to go with it? Or is there and I'm just missing something? I think a good old fashioned funeral where at least three people cry should then result in a friendlier, more helpful ghost. Ghosts could help raise social points for night-owls whose friends are all asleep, help kids with homework, entertain wakeful toddlers, guard the house by scaring the burglar ... on the other hand, no funeral = vengeful ghost.

 

Good points SBW. I thought it would be cool to have cemeteries too. maybe when a sim dies the urn disappears after a few sim hours and is then found in the sim bin where it can be 'moved in' to a cemetery lot. Sims could then have wants (or fears) of visiting granpa's grave. Also the tomb stone would depend on rich the sim was ...

 

I figure that we will be able to pick up the tombstones/urns and put them into a sim's inventory, then take him to the cemetary lot and let him drop off the tombstone like some sort of do-it-yourself undertaker.

As for more townies being generated for the community lots, oh, I can just about guarantee there will be, since there has ALWAYS been new townies generated for every area of TS1. Remember having strange children come over and pester your Sims when you took them on vacation? Or the "Superstars" you were supposed to befriend in SS to gain more fame points? And all the odd Townies dressed as barwenches (supposed to be witches) in MM? Yep, there will be new Townies dressed in the new odd fashions we have seen in the screenshots. Our in-born Sims are supposed to romance them and then breed with them.

I just had a thought. I wonder if some of these townies started out life as the programmers "practice" sims that they used to help develop the game. They became favorites, just like each of us have our favorites that we have created, nurtured, and carried along. So, they leave them in the game, hoping that we will love their sims almost as much as they do. LMAO.

 

Cemeteries will be very cool, but what I wonder is, will sims be able to put flowers or something like that on the grave when they visit? And what about choosing your own headstone? It would be good if a richer sim could have a statue as their headstone if they want or even a crypt, but most likely they will be all the same.

I'm really looking forward to this EP, sounds like there is going to be a lot more interactions and fun things to do to keep me entertained for longer than 5 minutes, University didn't really do it for me....

 

Testing 123. Lalala. (I'm not crazy )

 

I'm with you, Sylla. I've got to stretch to make Uni interesting. I use it as a place for my sims to get loaded up on points, and I've started assigning them goals, like join the secret society, join a sorority, woohoo with four professors, you get the idea. I like that they get more want slots and more career choices, though the new careers are very much lacking compared to the old ones. Was someone being lazy?

I'm really looking forward to Nightlife. I'm going to try everything, from vampirism to bowling.

 

I think the biggest draw about any EP is that it ads something different and keeps us from getting bored. I liked University, but I am ready for Nightlife. Don't know how many Vampires I'll have running around, I know of maybe 1 or two that might be one, but no more.