Saturday 7 May 2005

Pic of the day: Another slightly unusual family... (Screenshot from Sims 2.) The picture is pretty representative too. Mazrim (the red-haired prettyboy) is the family type who is hovering over the baby, while the cow girl is mostly thinking about him and sometimes money.

Mazrim & the cow

It is said that sometimes reality is stranger than fantasy. This is not one of those times. Because this all takes place not in the real world, but in the game The Sims 2 with the University expansion. Here, features are sometimes stranger than bugs, or perhaps I just don't know which is which.

It all started when I, inspired by reading Sims blogs about the Legacy Challenge, decided to once again try to populate an entire neighborhood with descendants of one Sim. (This is not what the Legacy Challenge is about, but it is more to my liking.) So started the story of Mazrim Spanner, whose plan was to first seek knowledge, then create a dynasty to stand the test of time. OK, that was my plan actually, but it was my plan for him, not for me. Alas, it turns out that we both are a lot better at acquiring knowledge than at founding dynasties.

At the university, Mazrim did not have an easy time getting friends with the others at his dorm. Actually they did not have an easy time getting friends either, as everyone was either giving offense or taking it. Mazrim for the most part withdrew into his studies and art, and his social contact was mainly with his female history professor. And that was how it might have continued if not for the cow.

***

Actually it was not a genuine cow but a girl in a cow costume. Evidently she was some kind of mascot, but probably not for the home team. She set matches to the sprinkler sensors, played pranks and insulted everyone she met, and generally made a nuisance of herself. Strangely though, when Mazrim talked to her, she seemed to respond quite well, and they could talk at length.

Alas, the mind of Audrey the Cow Girl was none too stable, unless you mean the farm building of that name. Not content to show up without notice, she would now also stay the night, showering in the boys' shower room and sleep in Mazrim's bed (although not when he was there, as the beds were rather small). After waking up, she would run around in her underwear for hours. It was a rather cute underwear too, which may be why Mazrim took a liking to her. Although more likely it was because she was unusual and interesting, and because when she was not there, she would call him every day and talk for a long time.

So against my better judgment, Mazrim fell in love with Audrey the mascot and even got engaged to her. (He should have gone for the old hag, the history teacher. She liked him too, and probably had lots of money and would not live all that long after they married. Oh well.) Anyway, things were sweet and sunny until he graduated and went to live in Newhome, the empty neighborhood. He would invite Audrey every day, but there was never an option to propose marriage or move-in. Other friends had such options, but being engaged you don't just click on random people and propose to them. So in the end we resorted to extreme measures: Arranging a wedding party (a long-time wish of his) and buying a wedding arch which is used in Sim wedding rituals. Alas, the wedding arch also refused to give any comment, and the party was heading toward disaster. Time for some supersimual invention.

I pressed Shift-Ctrl-C to bring up the cheat box, and gave the command "boolprop TestingCheatsEnabled true". Now when I held down Shift and clicked on Mazrim, I got a number of useless options and one named Spawn, which is not about the movie but about bringing certain testing tools into the game. In this case, the Tombstone of L&D (life and death). From here, I made Audrey a part of the family. Now SHE could propose marriage to HIM. This worked, and the party was a success (although he lost his precious family name, but it still says Spanner on the neighborhood screen). Alas, the troubles had barely begun.

***

You can always expect problems when you do things with non-player characters that they were not designed for. Like the time I moved in a teenager, he would not age until I used the Set to Birthday cheat (also from testing cheats). I tried this again, because Audrey was still a Young Adult, which is their name for university students. Actually her work screen showed her to be a freshman at the university. But when she aged, she leveled up to Elder, bypassing the entire adult life, so I had to put her back to Young Adult. As such, they could have Woohoo, but not Try for Baby. Which was kind of the idea. Founding a dynasty, remember? So ... back to testing cheat mode. Eventually I found an option for her to get pregnant by any person she knew, so I made her pregnant by Mazrim.

At first there was no reaction except for the small musical note which indicates conception in Sims2. No morning sickness, no pacifier thought bubbles. She went to work as usual. But the next evening, she started to age naturally, her remaining days as an adult going from 30 to 29. Evidently pregnancy had jump-started her biological clock! It has ticked ever since.

There were other small problems, of course. For instance, her portrait in the family roster is still that of a cow. When wearing everyday clothes, she still has the cow head. Pretty eccentric! But at least she doesn't wear it when she is in her undies, PJ's or gym clothes, so she now wears those most of the time. Well, until the pregnancy forced her to shift to maternity clothes. Which evidently don't exist for cows, so she walks around in her "birthday suit", that is, without a thread. And without a blur, which the program thoughtfully supplies in other situations when too much skin is exposed. (Starting from University, babies get the blur when you change their diapers. Can't risk the senators seeing OMG teh child pr0n!!)

Another small problem is that she is 100% grouchy, lazy and sloppy. Mazrim is quite balanced himself, mostly fours and sixes, including a six in nice. That may not be enough. When you have high values in a personality trait, you can Encourage your children in that direction, and after a couple such actions their personality slides that way. So even if their children were born evil, he might still have raised them to be good (and saved me a lot of micromanagement for the next generations to keep them from offending all the neighbors). But with a six, that option probably won't even show up.

Luckily, their first child Cairn turned out to be 100% nice. No, I can't really explain that. The whole idea with a generational game such as Sims2 is that the children are supposed to take after their parents, both in body and soul. But Cairn is not only much nicer than his father, he is also far more active and painfully shy, all of these completely opposite from his mother. Is it just random variation? Is it because of the way he was treated as a baby? Is it an after-effect of his mother's alien abduction? (It didn't change her personality, though.) Or could it even stem from the experimental way of his conception? We will never know, unless Mazrim and the Cowgirl have more babies...