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My TS3 patterns policy
I've received a couple of queries about how my patterns can be used. As there's no convenient place for me to put this right now, I'll put this in my blog and hope that people looking for this information can find it.
My patterns for TS3 all contain original artwork created by me, and are all packaged using the Sims 3 Workshop. You are welcome to use them in your game, but there are some restrictions on how you can share them.
You may:
- Use my patterns in your own game any way you please, recolouring them for your personal use.
- Use any patterns with the TSRAA icon on the pattern download page as part of a lot or Sim, and upload the resulting lot or Sim to TSR. If you want to use a pattern that doesn't have the TSRAA icon, please contact me via PM or on my guestbook.
You may not:
- Upload my patterns, whether you have recoloured them or not, to anywhere.
- Create a derivative work from one of my patterns, or any part thereof without prior permission from me
- Share Sims and lots/houses using the patterns anywhere other than TSR. This means you may not use them to create a Sim or a lot/house for the Exchange, for example.
This policy is subject to change. If I do change it I will note the date and time that the changes were made, and if you published content before the policy changed, or it would be reasonable to assume you hadn't seen any updates to the policy, you won't be affected :)
Changed on 24th June 09 at 16:51 GMT+1: removed reference to TSRAA, pending more information from TSR on this. Changed my policy on use in lots and Sims for TSR, please contact me for permission to do this now.
Changed on 4th July 09 at 18:05 GMT+1: Added new TSRAA information.
Last minute Sims 3 notes
Absolutely desperate for the game? Want to read some last minute tidbits? Here are the rest of my notes from the hands on. So sorry it took so long. I was trying to organise them into a decent article... instead, I give you.... bullet points!
* If your Sim has twins at the hospital and the father isn't present for the birth she'll take them home in a little baby basket.
* Sims can do some things whilst carrying a baby or toddler, for example, chat on the phone, and watch the TV.
* The Grim Reaper is really scary! Not in his appearance, but the music that plays when he appears. Brace yourselves, Simmers! The ghosts are freaky too!
* If your Sim has a cheap shower it can give them a bad moodlet, an expensive shower can give them a good moodlet. If you can't afford an expensive shower yourself, why not go and use your neighbours' shower? As long as you don't mind them getting annoyed with you that is.
* You can choose the "woohoo" and "try for a baby" actions from the normal interaction queue when interacting with someone not on a bed... you and your chosen partner will then embrace, kiss passionately... and head for the bedroom together.
* One-click to fulfil a moodlet. Lots of people have had concerns after reading that "when your Sim's bladder is full, you'll have something pop up, and you click to get them to empty their bladder". No magic emptying bladders, I promise. Two hours before your Sim's bladder bar hits zero they get a neutral moodlet (ie. it doesn't actually affect their mood) telling you they need to go. You can click it and if there's a toilet nearby it gets added to their action queue to go use it. I noticed sometimes Sims would automatically add the "go to the toilet" action next in their action queue, pushing everything else along, when this moodlet appears.
* This one-click fulfilling also works for the "grungy" and "smelly" (low hygiene) moodlets - adds going for a shower or bath to the queue - for the "strained" (low fun) moodlet, and for the tired/sleepy moodlets. Best thing about the tired one is that if you've been sending them to a specific bed, it's that bed which will get added to their queue. There may be some more like this but those are all the ones I saw.
* You can interact with items straight from the inventory. In live mode, you could click and drag a guitar into your Sim's inventory, then go to the park, and tell them to play the guitar from their inventory. Similarly, you could take a book to read, or some food to eat!
* Kids and teens come home from school with homework in their inventory. Again you can interact straight from the inventory, and they'll find the nearest suitable desk or table to do their homework on (or sit on the floor if there's nowhere else to do it).
* To garden, you can plant almost any vegetables you buy from the store straight into the ground. You can plant them anywhere you like - you don't need a special place to plant them like in TS2.
* Pregnant Sims can be unreasonable and demanding... well in terms of the wishes they roll up. Mine was always wanting to go to the spa! This is in addition to the weird cravings I mentioned in my previous blog.
* Fat Sims can get thin quite quickly, in about a week, if they work out constantly!
* A Sim might get a moodlet when they are around someone they love :) I think this might be to do with the hopeless romantic trait?
And that's all I've got! Enjoy The Sims 3, I hope you will all find it as engaging a game as I did at the hands on. I'm prepared for many late nights of Simming after the game's UK release next Friday :D
For people waiting on part 2 of my Sims 3 notes...
Just to let you know I haven't forgotten, I haven't thrown away my notes, and I haven't decided not to type them up. I've been a very busy bee, but I'm hoping to get them written up before Easter :)
The Sims 3 - What's new anyway?
Today I was lucky enough to be invited to London to experience The Sims 3 hands on. After a few formalities, we (I think there were 9 of us in all, including two dragged-along partners - one belonging to me) were allowed to get our mitts on the game.
Please, bear in mind, the game we played was a pre-alpha build, and certain features may not be present in, or may differ from the final release.
If you don't want to read potential spoilers about The Sims 3, don't read this!
I dove straight into Create-A-Sim. A lot of the questions that were being asked on the EA UK forums were about different age groups, so I needed to create a family with a variety of age groups.
In the new Create-A-Sim is you can spend as short or as long a time customising each Sim as you like. You can go in, put a name in (you can choose a surname separately for each Sim), and hit the randomise button a few times, or you can get right into the details of their facial features and the patterns of their clothes. The great thing about the way this has been designed is that you don't need to go into all these details unless you want to.
A couple of new things here:
- As some have said, the default skin tones are red, green, blue, and also three shades of "natural" colours (each of which you can slide from light to dark).
- You can choose almost all the clothing types by separate tops, bottoms & shoes as well as whole outfits, like you can for everyday wear in TS2 (except with shoe choices too...) and you can set accessories for each outfit separately.
Once your Sim's appearance is customised, it's time to set up their personality and lifetime goal. You can choose from the list of traits, which I won't bother repeating here as the list already exists on lots of other sites, and based on those traits (if your Sim is a Young Adult or older) the game presents you with five lifetime goals to choose from. These range from things like reaching the top of a career to maximising a skill and doing something with that skill (eg. maximising logic and becoming a chess champion). Finally you set up your Sim's favourites: their favourite music, food, and colour.
Again, I'll repeat this point: if you can't be bothered to set all this up, you don't have to. You can just randomise each Sim and then all you have to do is give them a name. That will also randomise their favourites and traits.
So, once you've created all the Sims you want, you set up their relationships. This works the same way it does in TS2. No way of setting up more "complicated" relationships here, like step-parents. The game shows you a lovely portrait of your family, and you can "ok" them to go back to the neighbourhood and move them in.
On the neighbourhood view you'll notice you have loads of space. There are plenty of empty lots with lots of different sizes, and plenty of pre-built houses lying empty. Not being able to place new lots was a concern for me, but there's so much space that this honestly won't be a problem!
The starting money for the family of 6 that I created was 24000 Simoleans. I only created one family so I have no idea if this is the standard starting money.
So I moved my family into a house and got into some gameplay. First thing I noticed? They're independent. They don't need me. Straight away they start to amuse themselves in ways that suit their traits. The "evil" uncle has gone onto the Internet to troll forums. The "athletic" father has wandered off to the gym. The "friendly" child gets on his brand new child's bike and rides to a park to meet friends. The mother with "commitment issues" is chatting up the neighbours. The "family oriented" teen is teaching her little sister to walk. And all of this without me telling them to do a thing.
Getting a job has been made much easier. You simply move out to the map view by clicking the map view button (or using the shortcut which I think was either ctrl+M or just M), and locate the building you want to work in. They're shown on the map view with the symbol for the career, so they're easy to locate. The career tracks are:
Criminal, military, political, medical, athletic, culinary, science, law enforcement, music, journalism, education
And there are also part-time jobs, which you can have from teen through to elder, even as adults or young adults (a great choice for busy parents!):
Bookstore clerk, grocery store clerk, spa receptionist, spa specialist, grave digger
Socialising has also been updated. As you talk to another Sim, some information about them and what they think of you appears in the upper left. If they have any relationship to you (husband, brother-in-law, ex-husband), it'll show this in the top left corner too. As you perform interactions with them it'll give you an idea of what they thought of that interaction. If your Sim, Sim B, flirts with someone who has no interest in them, Sim A, a message might appear like "Sim A thinks Sim B is being weird". If you tell them a joke, you might be "being amusing"... if you flirt and they are interested you might be "being flirty", or even "being irresistible", depending on their relationship level and level of attraction to you.
There are loads of great new interactions which convey more subtle ranges of emotion than the interactions in The Sims 2. For example, if your Sim has been flirting with another Sim for a while, they can "confess attraction" to tell them how they feel about them. Then if that goes well, maybe you'd want to ask if they'd like to "go steady". This is no longer an option just for teens, adults can go steady too now.
Pregnancy is much improved. As before, you can try for baby in bed, or in the science labs, depending on what you prefer. Either way, hearts fall around everywhere... and if you hear the baby chimes, well done, you're pregnant! Cue feeling ill, back pain, and cravings. My pregnant Sim had a craving for dim sum and canned soup!
If your Sim gets back pains during pregnancy, her partner can give her a massage, or she can go to the spa and pay for a massage. There are three types of massage available, some more expensive than others.
But being pregnant can also give your Sim a positive moodlet, so pregnancy is certainly not all bad!
24 hours after falling pregnant, your Sim "realises" she is pregnant, and changes to maternity wear... you peer at their belly... it doesn't seem to have grown. It will grow gradually over the next 48 hours. Better tell your husband you're pregnant before you blow up like a balloon.
That's right, I think my absolute favourite new interaction is "announce pregnancy". You can go to friends, family, and... don't forget your partner... and announce that you're pregnant to them. Just hope they react well... I didn't test this but I wonder how someone who "dislikes children" would react!
Hopefully your partner reacted well. Maybe he'll go and buy you a pregnancy book to help you through your pregnancy. You can carry on with life as normal until the baby's born (except, of course, you get time off work). When the baby's ready to be born you'll get a pop-up in the top right corner of the screen telling you so, and advising you to get your Sim home for a home birth, or to the hospital. I decided to go to the hospital, as obviously that's not something I've seen before. Again, all you do is go to map view, find the hospital, click on it, and choose to go there to give birth. You can also just click the hospital building if you're nearby anyway.
Ready for the cute bit? My Sim's husband was sat in the park reading a book, and he got up and ran to the hospital, and his interaction showed up as "be with mother". Awwwwww! He was a family-oriented Sim, maybe that had some bearing on his behaviour.
On that lovely note, I think I'll leave this blog for today... I have many more notes which I haven't written about, but these were all the main things that struck me as I played. Again, if you have any questions, comment on this blog post, in my guestbook, or PM me. I might have the answer or be able to remember :)
The Sims 3 - Hands on
I'm going to be attending a Sims 3 "hands on" preview event this Wednesday, so if you have any questions about the game this is the time to ask.
In particular, I will be focusing on the open neighbourhood feature of the game, so I will mostly be answering questions about that. If you have questions about other aspects of the game, feel free to ask me, but also ask them here because then the people attending the events who are focusing on other features will see them and try to answer those for you.
I'll try to respond to as many questions as I can, so please post them as comments to this blog, or in my guestbook, or PM me. And of course, when I get back on Wednesday evening I'll be making a full blog post with my first impressions of the game.
Free schedule and upcoming items
After the disappointment of The Sims 3 being delayed, I thought I'd set up a schedule of items which will be free between now and the release date! Here is the schedule, so make sure you grab them while they're free!
| Item | Free from |
Free until |
| Weighted Companion Cube | Feb 7th | Mar 7th |
| Work It! | Mar 7th | Apr 4th |
| Keyhole Tops and Denim Shorts | Apr 5th | May 3rd |
| "Trucy" Hair | May 3rd | May 31st |
| The Cake Is A Lie | May 6th | May 13th |
| Pool Lights - Base Game Set | Jun 1st | Jun 29th |
If you're a subscriber, of course, you can download those sets any time, but I've got plenty coming up for you too! I'm nearing completion of my range of home video consoles for your Sims. The base game version of the PlumbBOX 360 has been released, and a Free Time compatible version will follow soon after. Check out the poll on the front page of my minisite, and let me know what you want me to make after I've finished this range. I've currently got an elegant dining set planned, but this is a very large set so may take some time to complete, especially as I'm very busy with Uni work right now :)
Ramp it up!
To help your Sims comply with accessibility legislation, watch out for modular ramps, coming soon to a minisite... just about here!Thanks to CycloneSue for the tutorial :)
Vegetarian non replacement set
The lunch set of the non-replacements will be back tomorrow, all fixed up!Many apologies to those who have downloaded them, you should redownload the fixed version tomorrow so they all work nicely :)
Thanks to lisa626 for pointing this error out and estatica and sim_man123 for testing them for me.
Get Ready for Hallowe'en
Hallowe'en items for free members and subscribers!From 18th October for 4 weeks, the "Ouch! That's Gotta Hurt!" novelty axe set will be free! It contains two meshes (axe in the back, and an axe in the head) and a recolour for each mesh. And don't worry, it won't hurt even a tiny bit!
And for the subscribers out there, keep an eye out for my new Hallowe'en items, coming up over the next couple of weeks. Here's what's coming soon to this minisite:
* A set of clothing, accessories, and a hairdo to dress your Sim up like a well known character from a videogame by Nintendo. Who could it be? Well I've already made a set that lets your female Sims dress up like that silly princess he has to rescue all the time...
* Cute costumes for toddlers. Awwwww!
* And probably more ... I don't have my list with me right now ... oops!
And don't forget, last month I published a set of mummy outfits for the Egyptian theme, which will also make some pretty spooky Hallowe'en outfits!
So get set for Hallowe'en at TSR by having a little peek in the "Hallowe'en" theme :)
Limited Time Offer
For a limited time only, we’re giving away a free 
