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 ;)

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.