There are not many interactions available between a standing sim and a sitting sim. One I’ve seen is the ‘Call Over’ if the sims are far away from each other. But I would think all of the interactions would be available, and the sitting sim would just stand up before performing the interaction. If you’re visiting a Sim and they sit down, you won’t be able to talk to them! You’ll have to sit down as well and see what options are available then. For example, if you both sit down in front of the TV there should be several things to talk about. But I think a standing sim should still be able to talk to a sitting sim. It seems like a bug to me.

It seems like it takes much longer to advance in any given career in the Sims 3. Many sims have a lifetime wish to reach a top-level in a career. But if you don’t start them at an early age and become very dedicated to advancing, they might not reach the top level in a lifetime. Ideally I’d want them to reach the top, retire, and have some time to enjoy retired life before kicking the bucket. I know that the mood they have when going to work is very important, so I make sure the need bars are as high as possible before they leave. You also try to learn the appropriate skills and maintain relationships, as necessary. I thought the ‘Take it Easy’ work option would help performance by improving their mood, but the ‘Work Hard’ option must be better for performance, if you can afford to be stressed out. As long as you go to work happy, the stress out moodlet won’t have much of an effect on your mood. With all the dedication to work, how would a couple find time to start a family? I prefer to start a sim working on a particular lifetime wish or goal at a young age. But with the “Story Progression” option, it can be hard to find kids or teens in the neighborhood. Are you expected to just create a new family each time you want to switch families?  The Sims is a time management game — how do you manage your time?

I just thought to myself, it would be nice if we could click on a friend’s icon and have menu options to call or invite them over. Well, in the Sims 3 we can!  Instead of going to your inventory and trying to find your friend in the phone’s list, just find the icon of the friend in your Sims’ friend panel and click to see the call menu.  Since the friends are ordered by how good a friend they are, this way you can find a relationship that needs attention. Or if you’re working on gaining new friends, see who has the highest relationship but is not a friend yet. The ‘Invite Over’ option is disabled if you aren’t home at the moment, or if the friend is at work! This is even true if you haven’t yet discovered your friend’s career!  For keeping track of your sims’ availability in The Sims 2,  I created SimAddy. But it seems you will be able to tell when your friend is available for calling now! You never would have known about this feature if you always use the phone for calling.

I saw a ‘Riverview’ neighborhood mentioned in several articles, but when I went into the New Game option of Sims 3 and looked at the neighborhoods, it only had Sunset Valley. I searched for it online and some articles said it was available when you registered for the game. But I don’t remember seeing it.  So if you never got it either, you can download it for free from The Sims 3 Store like I did. But  wait! you can’t search for Riverview in the store search feature! If you go to the Sims Help and search for Riverview there, you’ll read the information about it and find the download link.  Here’s the link to the download page (you must register your game before downloading):  Download Riverview

I found a few small annoyances today dealing with beds and sleeping.

How do you get a guest to go to bed or sleep?

There is an option to invite a friend to stay over. I assume this means stay the night. Mortimer Goth asked Bella to stay over, and at first there wasn’t a spare bed. So I bought another single bed and a double bed, since I wasn’t sure if she needed her own or had to share with Mortimer. Even though she was complaining that she was tired, she wouldn’t go to bed!  Mortimer could invite her to cuddle, but not to sleep.

How do you get a ghost off a bed?

Sometimes you can talk to ghosts, but when they’re asleep on your bed, there are no interactions! You can’t even go to buy mode and move the bed around. There was only one ghost on a double bed, and Mortimer couldn’t seem to use the bed at all!

Fishing seems like a great pastime and the lifetime wish of perfect aquarium sounds fun to complete. I had two questions: what is the order or rank of quality for the fish (which is probably the same for all food)? And where can I find an aquarium to hold 13 different types of fish? According to Mod The Sims, the quality ranking or degrees are:  Normal, Nice, Very Nice, Great, Excellent, Outstanding, and Perfect. There are less than normal rankings for food as well. According to Carl’s Fishing Guide, there is no large aquarium yet. So you’ll need to use multiple small fish bowls (several can fit on one table). They can hold any size fish (the fish magically shrink to fit). I definitely recommend these websites — I think I’ll use Carl’s guide to help complete my Sim’s lifetime want.

If you’re wondering why unchecking the ‘Story Progression’ option doesn’t seem to work in disabling the aging and progression of other families in your neighborhood, you’re not going crazy. This is a bug and unfortunately doesn’t appear to be fixed in the version 1.3 update that came out around July 27th. The work-around is to create a shortcut to the program and add a -disablestoryprogression tag to the target. I have yet to test this out. And you’ll need to use this shortcut instead of the Sims 3 launcher, which means we may not know when an update is available unless we open the launcher every now and then.  Specific instructions for the workaround can be found here: http://www.riftblog.com/sims-3-workaround-story-progression-bug I’m curious, do you prefer it disabled or enabled?

I finally decided to go ahead and buy the Sims 3. I wasn’t sure how much time I’d have to play it, or if it was really different enough from the Sims 2 to be worth it. I must say, it’s almost like a whole new game. Since the game centers around the town as a whole instead of the household, there’s always a lot more going on at once. Which makes the performance seem a little slow. Perhaps I should lower some of the graphic settings to see if that will help. But it already seems like the graphics are not as detailed as the Sims 2 unless you are zoomed in very close (and I stay a little zoomed out to see everything). An interesting concept is Story Progression. I guess it would be handy to have all your Sims friends grow up at the same time he/she does.  I tried it for a few days, but by the time I spend some time with one family, all the kids are grown up in another family, or some adults are almost elders and haven’t gotten very far in their careers. I would prefer having a chance to play each family throughout their development and guide them in what they do. So what if it means that my least favorite families are ‘left behind’ and never age. I try to make my rounds to each family. Luckily we can disable Story Progression. One disadvantage is that when you switch the ‘Active Household’, the current family loses their wishes that you’ve chosen. Not too big a deal, but when I come back to the family I’d want it to be the same as I left it. Another annoyance is how buying groceries and books work. Gone are the days where we can buy a bookshelf with all the books we’d ever need to learn skills. We have to buy each book separately based on the skill level we want to get to! And they are expensive!! And now you have to buy cooking ingredients separately based on the meals you want to make. Very annoying. Each family has a difficulty level — seems like based on the number of family members. Overall I think this game is more difficult, compared to the Sims 2. Needs may be easier to fulfill, but career progression (and therefore the lifetime wish) is so much harder. But these difficulties make the game more realistic and sophisticated (and still fun), so I won’t be switching back to the Sims 2 quite yet.

We got a Wii! And when I heard that Sims 2 Castaway was available for the Wii, I just had to check it out. I’ve heard of it before, but since it wasn’t available on the PC, I wasn’t able to buy it until now. I read the reviews, which said it can be monotonous and boring since you need to gather so many resources. But I found it for only $20 at Best Buy, so the decision wasn’t very hard for me as a Sims fan! I just ‘finished’ it last Monday (and bought it on the 11th)– I got off the island by building a seaworthy boat, and got off the island by sending an SOS. Both times I opted to go back to the island, where I searched for and found the hidden treasure from the treasure map. Later I went to the Sims 2 Castway website and watched some funny clips and got some cheat codes. I only had to look for help online a few times — to see where the clay and fine sand is on the Volcano island (I don’t think there is any), and to see how to fish a shark. I may make those into separate posts. Unlike the Sims 2 on PC, building a house is a pain! The camera angles and options to hide walls and roof did not help much in object placement and navigating through the house. That’s the only reason to keep playing now, to improve the house and create better furniture and clothing. I’m not that interested in that though; I’d rather start over from the beginning with new Sims.  Overall, pretty good fun for only $20.

In the Apartment Life expansion pack is a new NPC character, the Butler. He does many domestic chores, much like the Servo or Robot does for a family. So the question is: Which is best? Hiring a butler for a base fee of $20 and $25 per hour, or getting a Servo (Open for Business) to join the family?  First of all, it is more difficult to get a Servo. You can build up the Robotics badge and build one yourself, you can become friends with an existing one and invite him/her to move in, or you can go to another Sims’ store to buy one that they have built (and pay the specified price). The butler can just be hired over the phone. One disadvantage to the Butler is that he seems to arrive around 10 am and leave sometime in the late afternoon or early evening, while the Servo is a part of the family and is there all the time. The Servo is controllable, so you can tell him which chores to do, and he doesn’t need to sleep much. He also has fun and social needs, so he will not do chores all the time. But he may play with the kids or pets. The Butler will cook and serve food, while Servo will make food but not serve it. This means children won’t be able to eat until another family member serves it. The Butler can also order groceries or hire repairmen/exterminators when needed, which is very useful. I read that he will also greet guests that arrive. I believe both will clean and do the gardening. What are your thoughts as to which is better in which circumstances?