Saturday 30 August 2008

Pic of the day: Blurry screenshot, as the game is still only installed on the touchscreen laptop. To the left, the High Witch of Infallible Goodness, to the right a newly graduated Nice Witch, in her apartment. Don't try this at home, kids! Well, except for the game. Please try the game at home.

Maxis loves me

Maxis, now a division of Electronic Arts (I'm sorry to say) are the creators of the various Sim games, including my favorite The Sims 2. They just launched their final expansion pack for that game, Apartment Life.

In Norwegian the title is "Byliv", which means "City Life". This was the title I proposed when I first started writing about the need for this expansion pack on the Net. Unfortunately a competing company has already taken this name for their advanced Sim City clone. Apart from that, this expansion has pretty much the things that I claimed would make a great expansion: Apartment complexes, urban shops and urban stereotypes similar to those from "Bustin' Out". It's all here, and it all fits seamlessly with the original game and the earlier expansions. And there is more than I dreamt of.

For one thing, there are now playgrounds for the kids, with various playground equipment. Another is the butler, an all-in-one NPC similar to those from Christianlov, which I refer to as butlers in my stories. And there is a reputation system, in which your fame or infamy precedes you: All your actions in public places contribute to your reputation, one way or another. In addition, there are more rewards for being friends with certain people: Befriending the landlord can lower your rent, as can befriending your neighbors. Friends can also help you get a discount on furniture (possibly other things too, I am still testing this) and even offer you jobs that are above entry level.

And then there is magic. And witches.

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"Makin' Magic" was the final expansion pack for the original Sims game (often called "Sims 1" these days). In it, there was a new neighborhood your sims could travel to, where there were various "theme park" things with a vaguely magic profile, although there were also roller-coasters and such. It was implied that most sims did not believe in magic, so would believe it was slight-of-hand. Performing actual magic when not on the scene was forbidden if there were non-mages around to witness it. (Harry Potter anyone?)

In Apartment Life, magic has become socially accepted. Casting spells in public no longer means trouble, at least not automatically. Some sims may dislike magic, especially evil spells.

Yes, the magic system is expanded to cover a range from "atrociously evil" to "infallibly good". In addition there is still a magic skill that has to be trained up by actual practice. The easiest way is to start making magic reagents. (These are needed for most spells anyway, so stock up. Good and evil magic use different reagents, naturally.) In addition you have to actually cast spells for your skill to "level up", at which point you unlock new spells, potions and craftable items. If the spells you cast are beneficial (healing and beauty) then you will gradually move toward good, and your attire will reflect this. The good high witch is surrounded by an aura vaguely similar to the one I use for my Lightwielder stories, except it is pure white without a hint of blue. I won't say they have been reading my journal, but if they did it would be like this.

The change in appearance replaces the "magic ambience" in the sims 1 expansion pack, where magical objects would start growing on your lot. This is convenient since in Apartment Life, many sims will no longer be in control of the outdoors: They live in apartments, and the outdoors areas of the apartment building is normally a common area. So having stuff grow there would be kind of less meaningful. Also there is no need to harvest reagents or crystals: All reagents can be made in the cauldron and the only investment is time. All spells are cast using only the wand and (usually) a number of reagents.

The basic good spells are moderate in their effects: Improve the mood bars of yourself or another sim a bit, or summon butterflies / fireflies, or cause pretty sunshine outdoors. But as you level up, you grow more powerful, until at the end you can banish Death as he comes to claim a fellow sim. Conversely, evil witches can raise zombies. Actually, good witches can also cast evil spells (and probably the other way around), the level of the spells depend on your magic skill rather than your alignment. I mildly disagree with this, but I suppose there are times when even a good sim feels the need to turn an adversary into a chicken for a while...

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The actual apartments are similar to what I have made with the tools from Inge Jones at Simlogical.com, up to and including the limitation of four families per lot. But the official version is better integrated, and most important: There are townies living in the other apartments, doing their townie things. Actually you can have far more than four apartments, but once you have moved in four families, the townies take up the rest of the block. (If you have only one family, the townies will take all the rest, but they move out if you move in more families. A houshold can consist of only one sim, or up to the normal limit of 8. That would require fairly big apartments, since you can't build add-on rooms and floors like you can with a house.

In addition to neighbors, you can also have one roomie. The roomie will pay a part of the rent (but less than half even if you are the only two renting, or so it looks to me). Depending on their personality, they may also keep the place tidy (or not) and be good company (or not). If you treat them well and have stuff that let them fill their needs, they are said to pay more than otherwise. If not, they may move out. I found a roomie to be a bit of a hassle, but then again I go nuts from the sound sims make when they juggle coffee cups. Seriously, does it not sound like a very mentally challenged person doing something indecent? It really grates on my nerves. Kind of like the infamous nail on the blackboard. Ewww!

You cannot control the roomie but you can see what they are thinking and check on their stats, their career etc, as well as how they feel toward their host. They are very similar to pets, only more advanced. You can't teach them tricks though...

I use a lot of hacks, mostly to save my wrist (by using macros) and to make the games more realistic. I don't use hacks for cheating (unless the game cheats first) since it is very easy anyway. But even so I have a large number of hacks, and I need these to be checked against Apartment Life and updated if need be. When that is done, I look forward to building the first "skyscraper" (well, more like 3 floors) in Micropolis, with apartments for young sims to rent. The hardest part will be to resist the temptation to make them all Lightwielders. But for now I am testing the game on the touchscreen laptop. This has the side effect of making me prone to putting fingerprints on my other screens as well, but I guess I can't blame Maxis for that!

All in all, only a healthy dose of humility keeps me from suspecting that Maxis has been studying my sims journal as well as my writing in the Sims 2 community and based their latest expansion pack on my wishes. If I ever disappear into a fantasy world and never come back, this is the prime suspect...