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Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 22:25:00 -0800 (PST) Hi Mari -- That's great, let's transfer some more. I've asked Jirina to bring my miniDV camcorder, so we could transfer directly from the camcorder without making a copy. I also want to see if capturing games during play on that camcorder gives us better results than the Canon; it's higher quality, specifically on color resolution. Vicki Groeling, Tim's wife, has just turned into a Sims (offline) addict, and I played the game a bit. I woke the Sim in the middle of the night, made her go for a swim and signed her up for work. It made her extremely unhappy, stomping on the floor in anger and "thinking" of a bed. She missed her van pool in the morning and was too unhappy to do a number of things. (As a side note, I had heard that it was possible to kill off a Sim by removing the pool ladder, but this turned out not to work in the version I played. One of the most active threads on the Sims IGN discussion boards is called "Attempted murder", where the topic is entertainingly probed in depth: "I accidentally killed the maid, she was eaten by a mutant plant. She will still work but as a ghost. She walks through walls and actually ends up cleaning faster, the problem is that she just shows up at random." "SUICIDE SUGGESTION OF THE DAY: Make your Sim wash their hands, then attempt to replace a lightbulb. Joy!" "Guests to your house can be blocked in and murdered. First they will urinate a few times, sleep and think of a door. Guests die the same [way] as controlled Sims, except they complain much less."
http://boards.ign.com/The_Sims/b5219/53202383/?100
This "thinking" feature -- a bubble appearing above their head with a drawing of some object -- makes the offline Sims a lot more transparent and predictable than the online Sims.) Vicki said it's hard to keep your Sim content -- the work available is poorly paid and exhausting (you never actually see them working; they just take off in the morning and come back late afternoon), and they get unhappy for all types of (very predictable) reasons. In fact it's demanding to even keep your Sim alive for any great length of time. The solution? Cheat codes. They're apparently used on a massive scale in The Sims offline. A quick search of "sims cheat codes" in Google pulls up 258,000 sites, including sites for other types of cheats. These codes let you have infinite amounts of money and give you a relaxed lifestyle where you do exactly what you want, including build lots of fancy houses and entertain your Sims with enjoyable activities. These cheat codes allow you to regulate exactly how hard you want the game to be. I get the impression they are very widely used -- and after all, you're not exactly hurting anyone, so there is no moral sting to it. For some examples, see http://www.cheatcc.com/pc/sims.html and http://cheats.ign.com/ob2/068/498/498096.html For people used to cheating, however, the obvious question will be, Can you cheat in TSO? I don't see codes anywhere. This would mean the user has no way of controlling the level of difficulty of the game. Cheers, P.S. In response to a poll on Simmingworld: Do you have TSO? there are mostly negative replies. The game has a poor reputation and is seen as too expensive. One poster, however, says this:
Or this one:
Everyone should have The Sims Online.. I'm so addicted it's nawt even funny! I agree with her! ^^^ I'm mostly addicted to the people, not the game... most of the time!
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