Sims 3 Interface Described in New Preview

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Will it explode if I click this button?

Just a note — I’m not gonna be linking all the info about every game I talk about in here, that’s what Google’s for ;) But if I see something unusually informative I’ll post it.

This new article from a Brazilian fansite has an awesome description of the Sims 3 interface, explaining every button. There’s lots of other interesting info too, some of it new, like exactly what happens when you start up the game.

And best of all:

“Q: What will we do until The Sims 3 is released? Is it possible to release an independent CAS?

A: The idea is that you enjoy the most your Sims 2, because we will eventually abandon the game when The Sims 3 releases. But something really mentioned on Creator’s Camp was the release of an independent CAS (like on Sims 2 and Spore). The Sims 3′ team is really thinking on releasing something like this to the players. Now we can only wait to see if this is really going to happen.”

Sims 3 Delay Official… new date June 2

I have to admit to feeling a certain amount of glee over EA’s new press release… since many avid sims fans on various boards kept saying “if EA says it’s Feb 20, it’s Feb 20″. What if at one time EA says it’s Feb 20, and then at another time says it’s June 2? These kids need a basic course in temporal logic :)

Update: The page I linked above has been taken down, at least for now. Here is the full text of the statement that was posted. (Some fans are arguing that this is not genuine,  but I see no reason not to believe that it’s the final statement, inadvertently posted a bit early — note the time — and taken down a couple of minutes later.)

EA announces New SHIP date for the Sims 3

February 03, 2009 21:20 PM

Highly-Anticipated PC Game from Best-selling PC Franchise Slated to Ship June 2, 2009

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., February 3, 2009 – Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced that The Sims™ 3, the highly-anticipated flagship game from the best-selling PC franchise, The Sims will launch across the PC, Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch and mobile devices summer 2009. The Sims 3 PC will ship to store shelves worldwide starting June 2, 2009.

“The Sims 3 is an incredible game that lets you play with life, create art and show off your creations,” said Ben Bell, Executive Producer, The Sims 3. “In the game, players are inspired by endless creative possibilities like the new Traits and Lifetime Wish features which allow players to create Sims with real personalities and destinies. Players can then take their Sim into town to interact with other Sims in the game and capture the action on video to show off online.”

“The June launch combined with the break-through game the team is building gives us the perfect runway to create awareness for The Sims 3,” said Russell Arons, Vice President of Marketing for EA. “The Sims 3 will be the original IP summer blockbuster of 2009 as we build off the success of the best-selling PC franchise of all time to create awareness with both loyal Sims fans and new players.”

Sims 3 meets MySims: Collect Those Essences!

Sims 3 learns from MySims

MySims was originally a Wii game, so even though when it first came out I thought it looked pretty cool, I wasn’t able to play it till this past Fall, when it finally came out for PC. It’s not a deep game, but I’m not always a deep person, and I enjoyed it for about a week. MySims has straightforward gameplay: you collect objects called “essences”, take them to the woodshop, and use them to craft furniture, which you use to lure gullible visitors into making your town their home. OK that sounds weird, and it is ;)

The weirdest part is the essences, which can be used as 3D objects (in which case they function as building blocks, and can be combined in the shop with boards of various shapes) or as paint (in which case each essence gives you a choice of two patterns and two solid colors that can be used to texture your furniture).

There are dozens of essences that have to be grown, mined or fished up at specific locations. For instance, in the Japanese forest there’s a grassy area where you can dig up, um, two kinds of cake, and bacon. (A fridge made out of bacon would surely attract that visiting glutton!) Ravens, textbooks and chess pieces grow on trees. Happy essences fly into the air after a cheerful conversation. Odd? Definitely! When I told my hardcore gamer friends about this, they told me it sounded “disturbing” (while they were killing ambulatory trees and skinning them for herbs in their “serious” game ;-) ).

MySims is a “kids” game, though, while the Sims series is played by all ages, so I was a bit surprised to read in the latest developer blog entry posted on the Sims 3 site about some very MySims-like features. [Update: apparently that blog has been taken off the public part of the Sims 3 site, but it can be read here.]

There are a number of different kinds of items you can collect or grow in the Sims 3, and several of them are just as surreal as anything you’d find in MySims.

EA evaluating Sims 3 launch window… wait, is that news?

NOOOOO!

Yes, I’ve been closely following the discussion of whether the Sims 3 is delayed, on various forums and websites. And yes, this is not entirely a wholesome activity ;) One of my friends is about to stage an intervention >< Mostly I’ve refrained from posting about it here, but now we have something that looks a little more like concrete news, in the form of an article on Eurogamer, which says in part

EA issued the following statement:

“We are evaluating the launch window. The game looks great and in the near future we’ll have more information.”

Up to now, what we’ve mostly had is lots of reports of suppliers telling their customers the game is delayed, countered by lots of reports of other suppliers sticking with the original Feb. 20 release date. So it seemed that EA was putting out mixed messages. On the face of it, this latest quote just confirms EA’s ambivalence. However, personally I find it unlikely that a company like EA… famous for sticking to its release schedule regardless of bugs… would confess to ambivalence; seems more likely that it’s just “softening up” the public for a delay.

Parsimonious Preview and the State of Modding in Sims 3

[Update: this preview has been moved or removed. If anybody is aware of its current whereabouts, please post a comment.]

Kate at Parsimonious (a Sims mod site) has provided us with the most extensive description yet of the Sims 3, focusing on in-game design tools but covering pretty much everything. She was at the EA Creators Camp, so she had a week of gameplay experience, quite a lot more than most previewers get. Her main critiques have to do with the limitations of the in-game recoloring tools (for clothes, Sims, buildings and objects).

It is clear that people who are used to a highly modded playing environment are not going to be satisfied with those tools… so it’s up to the mod community (again) to provide the variety players want. Reassuring to know that the modding community is already ramping up for the challenge, as evidenced especially by the new Sims 3 Tools site –  a discussion forum started by Inge Jones for the hackers who develop the tools that the modders use to make the mods. I’ll be following what happens there closely ;)

Sims 3 delayed?

Maybe I should just give up the pretense and make this a Sims blog. I’m afraid it’s my current obsession gameswise. Again ;) That has a lot to do with Sims 3′s imminent release.

Or is it imminent? dum duh duh dummmmmm…

There have been rumors on the EA forums about a delay off and on for months now… generally based on some vendor in some country giving out a ship date later than Feb 20. Vendors very frequently get dates wrong, though, in my looooong experience of eagerly awaiting the release of one game or another ;)

The latest version of the rumor seems more serious though. This remark from ParsimoniousKate (one of the Creator’s Camp participants) on the SimPE forum has given rise to a rash of panicky delay threads on the EA forum:

“Incidentally, the game release date is now unknown, they’re delaying it so it will not be out on Feb 20th as previously expected.”

and:

“the game is pretty borked and there’s a lot of tuning issues which are going to take in the order of months to sort out properly.”

I have faulted EA plenty of times for releasing Sims 2 expacks on schedule and loaded with bugs rather than taking the time to test and repair pre-release, so it would be hypocritical of me to complain if they delay this one ;) I will be sad, but I have to say I’m still having fun with Sims 2.

There’s more interesting info from Kate about Sims 3 modding potential in the above thread, btw :)

Great news for Sims mod junkies: MTS2 to continue as MTS

There are a million mod sites in the naked Sims city, but long ago I swore allegiance to Mod The Sims 2. It’s big, it’s 100% free, and it has a great community and excellent support for all modders, from newbs like me to the top names in the game.

Many of us were sad when, months ago, site admin Delphy announced that MTS2 would not be continuing into Sims 3. But now that policy is reversed, with this joyous announcement:

As you probably already know, the release of The Sims 3 is right around the corner! With the release date quickly approaching, we wanted to share some important info about the future of MTS2.

Fear not – we’re not shutting down or closing the site or anything like that! The same downloads, tutorials, and game help will continue to be available. We will still accept Sims 2 submissions, and discussion on TS2 will still happen over at the community site. We have no plans to discontinue any site features or functions related to The Sims 2 – now, or in the future.

We’ve long said “We’re not doing an MTS3″ and that’s still true – it’s not going to be called MTS3! Instead, MTS2 and the associated sites (Sims2Community, Sims2Wiki, and SexySims2) will all be joining the new MTS Network of sites which will cover TS2 and TS3 (and beyond?)!

You will not have to register a new name or anything like that – the existing sites are just changing to allow for Sims 3 stuff too!

ModtheSims2 is now Mod The Sims. Sims2Community is now Sims Community. Sims2Wiki is now Sims Wiki. SexySims2 is now Sims Adult. Domain name changes are planned for many of the sites – existing links will all still work, and will just redirect so you don’t need to change any links you have now.

Delphy also announced a logo contest for the new network; follow the link above for info.

For anybody still playing Sims 2 ( /raises hand ), MTS2 creators are still churning out fabulous brand-new CC.

Life Off the Grid: Sims 3 feature previewed in Stuff Pack

A 1-tile table centered on a 2x3 rug? What universe are we IN? :O

Yeah, it’s old news. OK, I’m slow. I got the Mansion and Garden Stuff Pack for Sims 2 shortly after it came out. I did not, however, spend a lot of time reading about it online, because *shrug* it’s a stuff pack. What is there to say? You like the stuff or you don’t like it.

Only last night did I happen across a reference to a stunning new feature in this stuff pack: a cheat that gives you the same high resolution object placement grid used in the Sims 3 :O A single tile from the old system is divided into sixteen tiles with this feature turned on.

You turn it on by opening the cheat console (ctrl-shift-C) and typing “setQuarterTilePlacement on”. After that, ctrl-F toggles quarter-tiles off and on. With quarter tile placement, you can center a two-tile TV on a three-tile sofa, the simmer’s holy grail :)

And yes, you’ve always been able to turn the grid off entirely, using “boolprop snapObjectsToGrid off”, but that left you with NO grid, which made it hard to align things precisely… just like in the Real World, which is sadly gridless :(

I’ve noticed some limitations with this cheat. For instance, it doesn’t apply to doors and windows, which is not surprising, but it also doesn’t work with rugs, which is odd. In some locations, you might not get quarter-tile movement; for instance, moving the TV or the sofa away from the wall to prevent it from clipping through curtains, the smallest increment I could get was a half tile, although on the other axis (along the wall) I could move in quarter tiles.

M&G offers a roof angle button!

That’s not the only major interface improvement in Mansion and Gardens — the only stuff pack since the first to actually include new game features. There’s also a button in the build mode roof area with a roof slope angle chooser that lets you assign any roof slope from 15 to 75 degrees independently to any roof in your building.

The new roof slope button overlaps in functionality with the old RoofSlopeAngle cheat, but is significantly easier to use; you click the button to get the angle slider, choose the angle, and click on the roof section you want to change.

Now you can make funky roofs like this

The new functionality offered by these two tools is both slightly better and slightly worse than the corresponding features in the upcoming Sims 3, based on what we’ve been hearing from the folks at the Creator’s Camp at EA last week.

Creators Camp: Sims 3 Info Flood

No time for a long post today (massive sighs of relief around the globe)… but a heads up here to anybody looking for new sims 3 info. This week, EA is hosting a Creators Camp, to which they’ve invited guests from selected Sims fansites to teach them about content creation in Sims 3… and give them a head start on custom content for the game, maybe? You can find links to all the coverage here. Since the participants are playing as well as building and decorating, lots of info about every aspect of the game is coming out.

Risky Business: The Sims 2 Store

Shop till you drop... some cash

Microtransactions are very hip these days among game publishers. The most popular version of this trend is to give a game away and finance development solely by selling in-game items to players for a buck or two (as with many recent MMOs such as Runes of Magic). However, games you already bought and paid for are in the act now too. A few well-known cases: in 2006 Bethsoft was widely criticized for charging $1.99 for horse armor for Oblivion; they lowered the price and increased the content and wound up with a modest success on subsequent offers. In WoW you have a chance at random in-game vanity items by buying playing cards. And in July of last year, EA opened the beta of the Sims Store (a distinct entity from the EA Store, where EA sells full games online).

Is this economic model bad for games or gamers? A lot of gamers find the whole thing distasteful, but these are usually folks who would rather get the stuff for free (or included in the game at no extra charge). We all like free stuff, but game developers don’t owe it to us. Unfortunately, in the case of the Sims 2 Store, it’s the way microtransactions are implemented that’s the problem.