Monday 28 August 2006

Pic of the day: Piddly Creek 2006, population 5.2

Sims of Piddly Creek

I know this is a pointless thing, but think of it as a confession of sorts. A confession of stupidity, perhaps. Because we smart people need to do stupid things too. Stupid can be fun, when it doesn't hurt anyone.

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What is Piddly Creek? It is a place not too far outside Sim City. You can get downtown with a taxi without going broke, so it can't be too far. It used to be a farming village, I think, or less than that, just a few farms. Those days are over now, and the land is laid out for sale. Right now there is just one house, one family, and a dream.

As I told you a few days ago, I have created a new "legacy" of sorts with a new founder who is not based on me. It is a woman, Megan Reading, because I thought it would be funny to call them the Reading Family and have them all be Knowledge Sims. Actually I have already relented on the last part: Her second child is a popularity Sim. Piddly Creek is the new neighborhood in which she lives with her husband (finally) and two children and one daughter-in-law and soon one grandchild. My dream is to fill the whole neighborhood with their descendants, as well as several sub-neighborhoods. I doubt I am going to do it, actually, but that's the wild and crazy idea. The neighborhood to end all neighborhoods.

With the first expansion pack we got the first type of sub-neighborhood, the University. You can have several of those, but there is not much point in that since people can only live there while going to university. Only young adults can live there.

The next expansion pack (NightLife) introduced Downtown, an urban neighborhood where the Sims go to party and meet people. But the interesting part is that you can also live there. And you can make your own Downtown, which need not actually look like a downtown at all. Theoretically you could have it be a normal neighborhood with only homes and no shops. (On the other hand, you can also have shops in the normal neighborhood. In fact, that was the only place you could have them until the expansion packs came.)

With the third expansion (Open for Business) you got a trade neighborhood, Bluewater. But you can also make your own trade neighborhood. And again, it need not actually be used for that, you could settle your Sims there and they would live happily as if in a normal neighborhood. But all the sub-neighborhoods are connected to the main neighborhood. So if you live Downtown, you could visit Bluewater and make friends there. Again, you can have several of each, although I have not tried that except I once had two universities. I don't know the upper limit, but I know there is an upper limit on how many people there can live in your neighborhoods, it used to be around 7-800 in University but is up to 2-3000 in NightLife, possibly more in OFB. The rest of my life would not be enough (even if I should grow old, which I wouldn't mind at all compared to the alternative) to play that many Sims. Admittedly the game adds a few hundred Sims on its own, and each ready- made neighborhood has its own Sims. (A good reason not to add two identical Bluewater villages, imagine the confusion. I don't even know if it is possible. Don't try it at home, kids.)

So my vague idea is to play as realistic a game as I reasonably can, and see just how many descendants I will end up with all over the place before either my body or the computer draws its last. By realistic I mean my new rules where you need a college education to get a job, where that education costs quite a bit of money, and where you pay taxes if you somehow manage to amass a fortune. Also no "instant happiness" cheats or "instant money" cheats or stuff like that. Realism. Sims living ordinary lives. And slowly, slowly spreading until there is a whole thriving village of them.

Or that's what I thought. But at this speed it would take years. And I doubt I will be playing with the Sims of Piddly Creek for years, even should I stay alive and reasonably healthy. But who knows? I will be sure to look at it in my entry on this day next year, if I am still around. In that case, we will learn how far I came.