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For everyone who likes Sims, and boys kissing, and sim boys kissing.
The reason why Richard was commenting on the sexuality of my sims was that I've been working on my first Sims 2 story.
Thanks to some advice from someone on a Sims site, I've completely redone Chapter 1 - I've added 36 more photos and a whole load more plot. There is now delicious, chewy angst! I think the entire plot is a bit teenage girly, but it is a college story, so maybe that's acceptable. Constructive criticism welcome, though you don't need to tell me that all the outside shots are a bit dark. Believe me, I know! I spent ages fiddling with the lighting, trying to adjust it for each shot to light up the sims' faces while keeping the lights themselves out of shot. As it is, I think there are a few continuity errors - but you can probably ignore them? My new rule is "Never have a party outside in the dark". But the house these sims lived in at college wasn't big enough for the party to just be inside, and I didn't want to have to reshoot the entire story in another house. (In retrospect, it would've been easier if I had. Oh well).
A sneak preview of Chapter 2 is here. See if you can guess what's going to happen. All the photos are done (I think), I just need to string them into order and write some text to go round them.
These photos are entirely done within The Sims 2 - no Photoshop or similar programs have been used. Just the Sims 2 cameraman mode :) There's a lot of flexibility in it once you hit TAB - you can move the shot forward & backwards & left & right using the cursor keys, up & down with Q and E (whose stupid idea was it to use Q? HOW many times have I accidentally quit the game now?!), and zoom in and out with + and -. Practice can get you some amazing screenshots.
However, not all these photographs are genuine gameplay shots. I've used the advice of experienced storytellers and made liberal use of the boolprop Testing Cheats (built into the game as a programmers' tool), a hacked object called Merola's Mind Control Mirror that lets you control non-family members for a short time, and Paul's Reaction Tester to set up certain facial expressions. Even then, there's a certain amount of luck to getting 3 or 4 sims to all be doing what they're supposed to be doing at the same time.
The story itself is nowhere near perfect. I've run through that party scene more than 10 times to try to get the best shots (Poor Mitch had to faint 6 times before I'd got a complete set of pictures!). Actually, the photos you see here aren't necessarily the best individual shots, but they're the most coherent set. I could've put in better photos if I didn't care about continuity, but I do :) I'm really annoyed that I missed Max & Peyton's kiss - you can tell this by my comment on photo 17. What happened was that I took a lovely shot of them kissing with Mitch running across ready to slap, then managed to delete it with the stupid trashcan thing in TS2 that doesn't delete the right photos half the time. Argh. Having done it 10 times already, my actors and I were all too frustrated to try that any more.
I also managed to delete a beautiful shot of Mitch playing the guitar behind his back that was just perfect. Nothing to do with the story, but it was a great shot - he was looking at me and pouting so prettily, and I managed to get the camera angle just right and zoom all the way in. All you spiky-haired-boy-lovers would've drooled - I know I did. But then the stupid trashcan deleted it, and I hadn't yet copied all these photos over to my backup Storytelling folder. Gah. Have to try to set that up again, except it won't be the same...
Seriously, if you notice any continuity errors or if there're any bits that could've been said better, tell me. I have Max speaking in American phrasing because his college jock clothing says that to me - so there's a "gotten" in there! (It just seemed natural for him to be to saying "gotten" rather than "got" the first time, although I managed to suppress it the second time - should I change that?). Mitch I'm unsure about - I don't think he's any nationality in particular. Payton speaks in British slang, hence his use of "snog", which is very English. My sims don't live in the real world, so they don't "come" from a particular country - and even if they did, there's no reason they have to come from the same country?
Hmm, well - bed now.
Thanks to some advice from someone on a Sims site, I've completely redone Chapter 1 - I've added 36 more photos and a whole load more plot. There is now delicious, chewy angst! I think the entire plot is a bit teenage girly, but it is a college story, so maybe that's acceptable. Constructive criticism welcome, though you don't need to tell me that all the outside shots are a bit dark. Believe me, I know! I spent ages fiddling with the lighting, trying to adjust it for each shot to light up the sims' faces while keeping the lights themselves out of shot. As it is, I think there are a few continuity errors - but you can probably ignore them? My new rule is "Never have a party outside in the dark". But the house these sims lived in at college wasn't big enough for the party to just be inside, and I didn't want to have to reshoot the entire story in another house. (In retrospect, it would've been easier if I had. Oh well).
A sneak preview of Chapter 2 is here. See if you can guess what's going to happen. All the photos are done (I think), I just need to string them into order and write some text to go round them.
These photos are entirely done within The Sims 2 - no Photoshop or similar programs have been used. Just the Sims 2 cameraman mode :) There's a lot of flexibility in it once you hit TAB - you can move the shot forward & backwards & left & right using the cursor keys, up & down with Q and E (whose stupid idea was it to use Q? HOW many times have I accidentally quit the game now?!), and zoom in and out with + and -. Practice can get you some amazing screenshots.
However, not all these photographs are genuine gameplay shots. I've used the advice of experienced storytellers and made liberal use of the boolprop Testing Cheats (built into the game as a programmers' tool), a hacked object called Merola's Mind Control Mirror that lets you control non-family members for a short time, and Paul's Reaction Tester to set up certain facial expressions. Even then, there's a certain amount of luck to getting 3 or 4 sims to all be doing what they're supposed to be doing at the same time.
The story itself is nowhere near perfect. I've run through that party scene more than 10 times to try to get the best shots (Poor Mitch had to faint 6 times before I'd got a complete set of pictures!). Actually, the photos you see here aren't necessarily the best individual shots, but they're the most coherent set. I could've put in better photos if I didn't care about continuity, but I do :) I'm really annoyed that I missed Max & Peyton's kiss - you can tell this by my comment on photo 17. What happened was that I took a lovely shot of them kissing with Mitch running across ready to slap, then managed to delete it with the stupid trashcan thing in TS2 that doesn't delete the right photos half the time. Argh. Having done it 10 times already, my actors and I were all too frustrated to try that any more.
I also managed to delete a beautiful shot of Mitch playing the guitar behind his back that was just perfect. Nothing to do with the story, but it was a great shot - he was looking at me and pouting so prettily, and I managed to get the camera angle just right and zoom all the way in. All you spiky-haired-boy-lovers would've drooled - I know I did. But then the stupid trashcan deleted it, and I hadn't yet copied all these photos over to my backup Storytelling folder. Gah. Have to try to set that up again, except it won't be the same...
Seriously, if you notice any continuity errors or if there're any bits that could've been said better, tell me. I have Max speaking in American phrasing because his college jock clothing says that to me - so there's a "gotten" in there! (It just seemed natural for him to be to saying "gotten" rather than "got" the first time, although I managed to suppress it the second time - should I change that?). Mitch I'm unsure about - I don't think he's any nationality in particular. Payton speaks in British slang, hence his use of "snog", which is very English. My sims don't live in the real world, so they don't "come" from a particular country - and even if they did, there's no reason they have to come from the same country?
Hmm, well - bed now.
no subject
The main issue is the skill system in Sims 2. The 7 skills are: Cooking, Mechanical, Charisma, Logic, Body, Creativity and Cleaning. They are all learned skills and any sim can in theory max out any of the skills. However, some sim personalities find it easier to learn some skills than others, e.g. very Outgoing sims learn Charisma more easily than very Shy sims. (The difference is like a 10% boost or decrease in rate, not something that would be too annoying in gameplay).
What they have done with the 11 majors is to make it so that your sim requires a moderate skill level in 4 out of the 7 skills for each major. But, in the real world, almost all academic subjects require Logic and/or Creativity, while practical subjects like creative arts & lab sciences also require Mechanical and/or Body. Cooking & Cleaning are virtually irrelevant, and Charisma is important only at the high levels, when you're applying for funding or speaking at conferences. To me, it would make sense just to work on the skills that are actually relevant to the career in real life - so a Physicist would need high Logic (8 or 9), high Mechanical (7 or 8), and moderate Creativity (3 or 4). An Artist would need high Creativity (8 or 9), high Mechanical (7 or 8), and moderate Body (3 or 4).
But they haven't done that. Presumably to try to make sure that the different majors "feel" different to the players, they've picked a somewhat arbitrary collection of skill points that the sims must achieve in order to maximise the academic potential bar so that their performance in class & term papers counts for something. (Does that make sense? I could show you what I mean on the screen in about 5 minutes of gameplay, but it sounds horrendously complicated in print). Thus, to graduate with a high grade in Physics, you need Mechanical 5, Logic 4, Cleaning 4 and Creativity 3 (Yeah, right!). As they've forced the Cooking and Cleaning skills in, and picked a daft number of subjects, then the actual match-up of majors to careers is, unsurprisingly, also a bit daft.
So, Drama major (which Mitch did) matches best to Show Business, and also to Politics and Athletics. A job came up in Show Business on the first day, so I put him in that obvious career. Physics major (which Max did) matches best to Science, and also to Medicine and the Paranormal. The reason why he ended up in Medicine was basically because of a combination of a) There weren't any Science jobs on the first day they moved in, b) I'm utterly sick of the Science career track because one of the other Maxis premade families, the Curious family, has 3 guys who are all Scientists (http://pics.livejournal.com/baratron/pic/00027tt1/g9), and the job titles are entirely unchanged from Sims 1, and most of my Sims 1 sims were Scientists! and c) I didn't think Max was the sort of person who'd enjoy Paranormal. He's a bit too level-headed to deal with the woo-woo, and I'm planning to put another student, who interestingly enough grew up in a household with an extensive graveyard & lots of ghosts, through the Physics major & then into the Paranormal career.
In further proof of Maxis' total misunderstanding, I present the fact that Mathematics major matches best to Natural Scientist (a Biology career if ever I saw one), and then to Science and Life Of Crime. Uh-huh. Not Politics or Business, then? No wonder governments have trouble making their numbers add up!