Tuesday 28 June 2005

Pic of the day: Surrounded by beautiful teen daughters. Why, it seems like only yesterday that the youngest was a toddler! Actually, it WAS yesterday. Because she is a Sim. In fact, we are all Sims here.

Sims2 macromanagement

Do you play Sims2? Do you hate micromanaging the small guys and gals, but even more hate seeing them fall into ruin and despair? While the Sims have had a powerful upgrade to their artificial intelligence from the original Sims to version 2, they could still need a helping hand. Rejoice! The helping hand of J. M. Pescado has arrived. And there were macros, and behold, they were good.

First: Macros are hacks, but not cheats. They are not related to the picture that fills all wants when you look at it, or the mirror that lets you control guests. Macros barely even save time, but they save wrists. Which explains my newfound love for the idea. Less wrist spent playing Sims2, more wrist to write tasty journal entries for you! Rejoice with me, ye my friends!

So what macros do is, they intelligently put together normal Sim actions to reach a higher goal. For instance, you tell your Sim to clean the house. The Sim now by itself locates all spots in need of cleaning. No more click toilet, select clean; click shower, select clean; click kitchen sink, select clean; click kitchen counter, select clean; click old newspaper, select recycle; select stinky baby bottle, select dispose of, etc. The Sims do the searching so you don't need to. You still control them, or let them do their own things, as your conscience or fancy dictates. But the clickfest is gone. The Sims click themselves. (Of course, in reality this leads to playing Sims2 for more hours each day, thus negating any health benefit. But in theory, it sounds good.)

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So here are some favorites. They are all from the same developer, J.M. Pescado (More Awesome Than You). The most powerful of the lot is Macrotastics, which also utilizes other macros you can download separately. Macrotastics is distributed as an object which you can buy cheap and put anywhere on the property. Everyone in that house will henceforth have the macros. You can click on the object or on the active Sim directly, in which case you get a "macros" option. Here you can choose high-level tasks like "clean", "garden" or "caffeinate". Yes, your Sims can now be told to caffeinate themselves to full wakefulness, and will take bathroom breaks as needed, without any further clicking from you. The gardening routine is improved so they don't walk all over the place to water flowers in random order, thus saving much time. (Although a gardener is still a worthwhile investment, in my opinion, since gardening doesn't build any skills.) Other useful options let Sims find bills themselves and pay them, and the same for kids and homework. Students can be set on a study rampage to improve their grades, and will take care of the most pressing needs in between studying. You may not need to see this one to believe it, but it would help.

And yet if I had to choose only one, I might be tempted to go for the AutoYakYak. It requires no purchase, and adds a "friends" option to your phone call dialog. Choosing it will make your Sim call all of his or her friends, starting with those in danger of slipping below friend level. No questions will be asked about inviting etc, and no sarcastic comments about Sims being at work, unlike SOMEONE I know. (The caller will simply not call during work hours.) Toward the end, the talks will be mercifully short as the Sim will hang up once the friendship reaches 100%. Be aware that this macro will NOT call people below friend status, so if your Sim is lonely you may want to first call someone that is below friend level, to bring them up to that level. Have your Sim call friends at various times of the day every other day or so, and soon you should see those Best Friend icons start popping up frequently. Of course, it will still take the actual time, and you should not start when there are other needs that must be taken care of. This tool is a great boon to politicians and others who need to maintain a large circle of friends, and the only way I can ever imagine reaching the goal of 30 best friends at once. (Even then, a loving spouse will probably be required... Luckily these are quite a bit easier to find in Sims2 than in Real Life.)

A corresponding macro for socializing in person is called AutoSocializer. You can use it to automate the process of making friends with one particular guest (or dorm mate), or you can use it to socialize widely at parties, making everyone feel loved and ensuring success without painful wrist cramps. Notice that the party / dorm "socialize with friends" macro will ignore people below friend status, as with the phone version. First click on the non-friend and choose macro – socialize in order to latch onto him or her and achieve friend status. The bot is very skillful at judging what interactions are appropriate for each level of friendship, and rarely ever makes a faux pas. It does however come with options to tick off people if you feel that you have too few enemies, and you can trust it do do this with the same cheerful efficiency.

For inclusion in the macro are a couple other downloads: The Skillinator does what you would expect, makes a Sim try to improve a skill by any means available, while still making sure to survive. After eating, peeing etc they will return to the skill building. Not too good for realism, but if you had given up on your Knowledge Sims, you will be thankful for this one. NB: For skill building that does not use fun objects, you need to have a flamingo or gnome on your lot for the Sims to kick. They will not accept any other form of fun automatically. This is because kicking flamingos is the ultimate kick for Sims, yielding more fun than pretty much anything else. (Possibly excepting Red Hands, but that one is harder to automate.) You'd think the ever thoughtful Pescado would have included other fun factors as a secondary objective, but he is vehemently defending the kicking habit. "They are only §12!" I personally find flamingo kicking distasteful, but nobody forces us to use these macros after all. (Unless someone comes up with a similar object for Real Life, I guess...)

You have almost certainly given up, if you ever tried, to encourage some trait in your Sim children. The Encouragifactor will automate the tedious process of teaching your kids the value of neatness before the flies come to kill them. Or any other personality trait you value in your kids. Natural Sim children (as opposed to those you create in the body shop etc) can and usually will have more than 25 personality points, so you may need to tone down some traits like "outgoing" or "playful" that make their wants go red too fast.

A less impressive but interesting object is the toilet paper roll that can be configured to control the relationship between bathrooms and people. Curiously named "Bathroom uses you", and using the old Soviet symbol, it streamlines the use of bathrooms. Needy people will be distributed to the various bathrooms or put in line. Bathroom with both a toilet and a shower will make people use both while they are there. The toilets will also make people RUN out of them, which may be the difference between disaster and relief once in a blue moon but mostly only entertaining. To be honest, I have found Sims able to handle this part of life pretty well by themselves, except for university students and showers, which sadly is probably based on real life. Anyway, one good reason for having this download is that you can then click directly on your Sim and chose "use bathroom". Bathrooms can also be given gender preference without putting in gender-selecting doors. These doors will keep Sims of the "wrong" gender from even cleaning in there, so this mod is clearly superior. It only discriminates in regard to bathroomy uses.

There is also an improved alarm clock, which is useful enough if you don't have small kids to wake you up in the night. You can set it to wake your Sim (or up to two different Sims per clock) at a preset hour, and also to call them to bed at a suitable time, depending on the type of bed. (It does not autodetect bed, though, so some reading is required to input the right bed type. Generally, higher values = more expensive beds. The values are energy regeneration.)

There is also an Baby Controller, but frankly I have found my Sims to be very competent caretakers and the nannies not too bad either. I am not convinced that this will improve upon the default. But if your experience is the opposite, you may want to trust Pescado over your Sims. I haven't even installed this one myself, and plans not to until I get less competent Sims, if ever.

I most strongly recommend the YakYak and the Macrotastic macro central. But any wrist-saving device is a good thing in my opinion. The Internet being the fluid thing it is, you may want to google for J M Pescado and "more awesome than you" if you read this much later. But for now, you can find these and many more wonders of Sim life quality at More Awesome Than You.