Wednesday 3 January 2007

Pic of the day: Happy new year in Sim City of Heroes! Also, enjoy my laptop wallpaper sized picture for more detail. It may be just me, but Kaptajn Vinnie looks so happy in that picture, where she is flying for the first time outdoors, her hair blown by the wind. Wish I could join her! ^^

More portable Sims

The dual-core laptop (Dell Inspiron 6400) is impressing me with its ability to run The Sims 2. The video card is not up to the same high standard as the cards in desktop machines, but Sims2 is mostly using the main processor, since the artificial intelligence is the bottleneck in the system usually. It can also let the main CPU take over part of the graphic rendering if the card is struggling. And evidently we have now entered an age when laptops have awesome CPUs too.

Running up to New Years, I started a new neighborhood and ran a girl through college in a dorm with 16 students. Although they were not the most social students I have seen in the game, that's still a lot of people, and the computer did not slow down or resort to slideshow mode, as my old computers did with Sims2 if there were many people at the same time. (Such as the "Grandfather" computer that is my main machine while Monster is for repairs. "Grandfather" because there is one generation between it and Monster.) The Monster computer and the Bedroom computer (which is no longer at the bedroom) are of course able to run a large dorm or an apartment complex of some size, but it was a pleasant surprise that the laptop can do so too. I had expected it to run Sims2, but wasn't sure that it could do the largest dormitory, especially not at full speed.

The "Pinker Toon" project seemed like a good idea at the time: I had a pink-skinned girl with metallic red anime-style hair, and used her as the founder of a new neighborhood. The idea was to to populate it with as many pink Sims as possible. Unfortunately all her descendants looked exactly alike to me, which was a bit problematic. You get their name when you mouse over them, but it is still not ideal.

***

So I returned to Nydeligrup (the Danish name for Pleasantview, the first ready-made neighborhood in Sims2, vaguely based on the default neighborhood in the original Sims game). I created a new downtown (a sub-neighborhood that became possible with the expansion pack NightLife). The new neighborhood I named Frø- og Myrvold. This name makes sense in both Norwegian and Danish, although it means completely different things in the two languages. In Norwegian, Frø meens "seed" and Myr means "bog", while in Danish they mean "frog" and "ant" respectively. Danish is a funny language, and perfectly readable. Unfortunately it is pronounced with gargling sounds that are nigh impossible for foreigners to understand, even here in southern Norway, just a ferry trip away.

Yes, I installed the Danish version of the game on the laptop, because I was curious about what "Woohoo" was called in Danish. (In Norwegian it is called "Årnings".) It turned out to be called Juuhuu, which is clearly just the Danish form of the exclamation, not (as in Norwegian) a real euphemism for sexual intercourse. Perhaps Danes don't have that kind of euphemism. They probably don't have much Woohoo either. Why should they when they have cakes and pastries like that? Land of the foodgasm. "Danes live to eat, Norwegians eat to live, and Swedes eat to drink" as a saying goes around here. I am not sure about the Finns. They make excessively depressive TV theater, and speak a language which sounds like a continous evocation of the Great Old Ones. I tried to install the game in Finnish, but I could not understand the "change the disk" message.

Anyway, Nydeligrup and Frø- og Myrvold. The founder, for lack of a better word, is Morten Rabunduus, alias Dustin Broke from Pleasantview. I gave him a computer and made him study, then sent him to college, and when he graduated I sent him to the new neighborhood. It will contain no Sims made by me, only existing Sims that came with the game, and their offspring if they insist on having any.

***

You see, I have two "impossible wants" as a player. (In the game, Sims have "impossible wants" that are even harder than the lifetime wants, some players take it as a challenge to make them come true: Have 10 children, have 30 best friends at once, or 20 grandchildren. There are probably others that I haven't seen, or have forgotten.) But players can have impossible wants too. Here are mine:

1) Have a neighborhood with 9 living, thriving sub-neighborhoods, either downtowns (Nightlife) or shopping towns (Open for Business).

2) Eliminate all the pre-made Sims by natural means (not cheating) such as old age or being eaten by a cowplant (I am looking at you, Amin Sims) and see them replaced by a new generation of computer-generated Sims.

Both of these wants could take years of playing. The problem is that my fads usually last no more than three weeks, quite as often just two. So until now, these wants have been doomed. Until now, when I realized that I did not need to make a new neighborhood each time I come up with some new idea for my Sims. Instead I can make a new sub-neighborhood (or just "subhood" for the hardcore players) under Nydeligrup. That way each new fad will contribute to both of my goals.

Knowing my own nature means I can work around it. Not as good as changing it, but much faster and less energy-consuming. ^^ Not the worst lesson to learn from a computer game, I guess.