Posts Tagged ‘sims game’

The folks over at Rooster Teeth Productions, best known for their Red vs Blue comedy movies based on the Halo rendering engine, are branching out with a second series, with more of a sitcom flair, called The Strangerhood. This time, they’re using the Sims 2 game as their rendering engine.

As I “play” with The Sims 2, I’ve noticed the power of the movie making utilities they have. It really is a great little tool for would-be directors. I’m just waiting to see a shot-for-shot remake of Star Wars or Psycho using Sims 2 now ;)

Or is it Sneak peek? Sneek peak? Anyways… here’s some screenies of the new SimExplorer that I shipped off to the test team tonight. It hightlights some of the new features including:

• New Property Grid
• Detachable, floatable, pinnable, Simable windows
• Folder browser to view any directory, not just The Sims game dir
• And more stuff I can’t remember right now because of some kind of mind-control device attached to my head.

Click on an image for the full size experience. Enjoy.

Okay, I find this whole issue of cloning objects for use in the downtown section for Hot Date a little confusing so maybe this will clear things up.

1. If you clone an object, after installing Hot Date, that was part of the original Sims game (The Sims, Living Large, House Party or Hot Date) then the clone can show up in the downtown area. There are still some restrictions like beds and such, but cloned objects can be used downtown, given the right conditions. I’ve cloned the aquarium and it’s there. There have been a couple of reports of other objects that people cloned but they do not show up in the downtown area so if you come across one, please let me know via email as I’m trying to piece together what makes an object available for downtown.

2. Objects that were cloned prior to you installing Hot Date or objects cloned from objects downloaded from the web will not appear downtown. In other words, Hot Date doesn’t convert any existing objects except those shipped with the original game and/or expansion packs. It does convert/update the objects that are already installed if they’re part of the original game. That’s why Hot Date replaces and/or updates the ExpansionPakX.far files during the installation process.

At least that’s what I figure so far. So my two projects this weekend are:

1. Build a tool to allow pre-HD objects and user made objects from the web to be allowed downtown. Maxis says this can’t be done at this time but I think that’s just because you don’t have a tool to do it. There have been some rumours that they are making a tool or a means to do this, but I don’t know the specifics. The question would be, if they knew this was a problem, why didn’t they release the tool with the game (at least as a SimDay download).

2. Allow you to alter existing objects so they can be placed into the various new sub-catagories Hot Date offers. Still trying to figure out what governs the sub-catagories Hot Date offers but this will allow you to put your objects in groups instead of the “All” catagory, which isn’t very useful for object organization.

Hope that helps. Off to watch the meteor shower, away from the city.

Hi guys. A bit of a diversion today. I found a really slick program out there called BeBop. For those of you that have a Palm PDA, this is the cool app to get. You create a BeBop family, decide what they look like, move them into a house in the neighborhood, buy furniture for them and generally keep them happy. Sound familiar? It’s basically The Sims meets the PalmOS. It’s a highly addictive (like The Sims) game and I suggest you give it a try. Below are a couple of screenshots so you can see what it looks like and you can find the website here. Unfortunately it’s not free (only $15 to buy though) but you can play with the demo all you want. Enjoy and have a great weekend!