Monday 16 January 2006
|
Pic of the day: If you give your servants partial freedom, they will eventually toward the end of the day take some time to sit down, perhaps eat a meal, and socialize. Here the two servants at the Parodays mansion, and in the background the two stoves that are their anchors. Sims2: All in 1 NPC
Made by: Christianslov. Found at: Mod The Sims 2. The name pretty much says it all, but the sheer awesomeness of this mod must be seen to make its full impression. You download an invisible controller package and a cooking stove. (There is a separate version for college dorms. The two are not fully interchangeable.) As soon as you buy a stove, you have two Sim hours to set it up the way you want it (though you can always pause, or install it in the night.) There are a lot of settings, and I recommend you go through them at your leisure in pause mode. First and foremost, you now have a cook. Like the dormitory cooks, this one does not deplete the fridge. (I am not even sure if she needs to have a fridge on the lot... she certainly does not visit it.) Oh, and as for the "she" part, I believe this is the default, but you can explicitly set gender, skin tone, and adult or elder. (Actually I did set male elder and still got a female adult, but I think she had already been generated before I summoned my NPC.) There is also an option for casual wear, must be set before the first appearance (in my experience at least), otherwise she will show up in bartender uniform, a discreet mostly black. Anyway, the fridge part. You can now see how it will unbalance your game right there unless you have salary on. You could of course disable the cooking part and do it yourself, but it is kinda her specialty. Unlike you, she can make any meal at any time of the day. And she will keep even a quite large dining room table fully stocked, although this will of course keep her busy unless you also have a (separately available) mod to let food spoil more slowly. (I have mine set to 12 hours.) Other services enabled by default include cleaning and repairing. You may of course want to disable any of her services in order to build your skills... but you are hopefully aware that you can build all of these three skills by reading the relevant books. Not to mention that if you have Monique's computers, you can also increase skills by writing articles for a moderate amount of cash. More exotic functions include fetching and paying bills (though she will use your money at least), doing the kids' schoolwork or just helping them (your choice), take the phone, accept deliveries, and perhaps the most original and one of the most useful: Greet visitors! You can set her to either only greet visitors who ring the doorbell, or everyone who passes by except service NPCs like the Newspaper Kid or the Postal Worker. (Or Gardener, but why have a gardener when your AI-1 can do it?) I installed this in my Parodays household, and it is amazing how much people walk by the house while I am not looking. There is hardly a day without there being two or three guests at the same time, and sometimes a couple more. Most of the guests make a beeline for my musical instruments, and will stay there until they have to pee or are starving, at which point they go home. If I actually want to entertain them, though, at least they are there for my convenience. The "greet visitors" function was actually why I downloaded this mod in the first place. You can do most other things yourself, and Macrotastics from "More Awesome Than You" has macros that let your Sims clean and garden as if being influenced. That is, they will on their own seek out things that need cleaning or gardening and keep doing this until there are no more to be done on the lot. (With a popularity Sim, it may be feasible to have guests do your cleaning and gardening and serving meals, using the influence you gain from all the successful parties. I wouldn't count on it for a knowledge Sim though, where the influence arrives in big lumps spaced far apart.) But all these things are done at your convenience. Guests pass through and are gone. As your family grows and eats and messes up the ever larger house, one NPC may not be enough. At least if you still want to pick up the wandering neighbors. Some of them tend to linger outside hoping for an invitation, but many cross the lot at a brisk pace. If your servant is on the third floor doing the beds, she won't drop that and make a run for it (and probably wouldn't catch them anyway). It's time to get more servants! Actually I tested this when I got 1 teenager... you know teenagers. I sent the teen to university instead. ^_^ But it is certainly worth considering. Their salary isn't a problem unless you have an irrational fear of work and are deeply in love with your couch. Your Sim, I mean. Of course if the servants are programmed exactly the same, they may try to do the same thing at the same time, although to their credit they quickly discover that someone else has started a job and then go do something else. Still, it may be more efficient to go to the options and divide the main tasks. For instance let only one of them cook and the other clean, while both are on the outlook for visitors. There is a good chance that at least one of them will be free at any given time. ***In conclusion the All in 1 NPC is highly recommended, strongly addictive, and somewhat realistic if you set the options correctly (salary on, limited free will, holidays and reasonable working hours). Of course you can totally break the game balance, but then you can always do that with the motherlode cheat too. What's the fun in that? Now if I could only find a way to dress her in that sekushii maid uniform... ^_^* |
Yesterday <-- This month --> Tomorrow?