Month: March 2008

Model Train Set Catches On Fire!

Warning! Put a smoke alarm or sprinkler system near your Round and Round Model Train set! When it catches on fire, a sim is usually right next to it operating it, and so the Sim will also catch on fire! The amount of flames that it produces is so large, any Sims that come by to investigate may also catch on fire. I didn’t notice it when the fire first started, so I was a little late in calling the Fire department. Several sims had very low energy, hygiene and bladder, but luckily no one died.

Plants will not grow or appear

I built a greenhouse with several fertilized garden plots, and installed some sprinklers and tiny borders/divides to put lights in. The plants would do find in some plots, but in several the plants were not growing at all! The weeds would pop up, and hovering over would indicate they were healthy, but no leaves would show. After several days of waiting with nothing, I composted and tried again, but with no luck, until I removed the sprinklers, divides, and lights that were nearby and on the same square of land. I only found one forum topic on the subject, which just advised to check any hacks or custom content you may have installed. But since they started appearing after I removed the objects nearby, I don’t think custom content is the problem. And I don’t have any hacks (or cheats activated).

FreeTime – Grilled Cheese Aspiration and benefits

There’s a new Grilled Cheese Aspiration in the latest Sims expansion pack, FreeTime. It’s pretty funny. Wants include making grilled cheese, eating grilled cheese, talking about it to another sim, serving it, and influencing another sim to make grilled cheese. Fears include eating bad grilled cheese and burning it. I first found this aspiration when choosing a Secondary Aspiration. In the new neighborhood, there’s a sim named Natasha Una with this aspiration. She had 6 aspiration points to spend, so her Grilled-cheese related benefits are: Bottomless stomach (doesn’t get overweight easily), slower bladder decay, able to paint grilled cheese on an easel, and Conjure Grilled Cheese. That one is pretty neat; she shouldn’t need to spend money on food, and can eat on the go!

EA Land – The Sims Online: review of free service

I always thought that playing the Sims online with other people would be fun, but didn’t want to pay a monthly fee for something I could play offline for free (after paying for the PC game). Now that EA has launched a free version of The Sims Online, I wanted to give it a try. My first impression is that it’s just a chat room with a bunch of actions and gestures your Sim can perform. It seems that you can’t enter certain types of lots with the free service, but you can go to a job and make simoleans. I think only paid subscriptions can own land/lots, and therefore sell items and provide free services (such as exercise machines and food). By going to lots you can build your skills up (although it takes a MUCH longer time to build up a skill online than in the PC game). And you can build up relationships with other Sims online, but this seems to take a long time too. You can get promoted at your job the same as the PC game – building skills and making friends. I guess it’s possible to buy items, but I don’t think they’d be useful unless you had your own land. It’s nice to chat to other Sims, but I don’t see a purpose to the other things available to the free players. I guess they need to entice the free members to upgrade to the pay service. If the monthly fee isn’t too high, I might think about it. But I don’t think I’ll become addicted with the free service.

Here’s an article I read that introduces it: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/25/ea-turns-the-sims-online-into-free-ea-land-second-life-competitor/