How active is the sims 3 community? My sims 2 keeps pink flashing and crashing all year after working perfectly for a while, probably windows being a cunt and I probably have to move to linux like all the sims 2 players are doing now, but for now i figured I'd give 3 a go, if there's still lots of good cc and mods for it. I only played it for a little while when it came out because I prefer rotational play and having control over every aspect of my town and functioning businesses rather than rabbitholes (OFB is the best dlc), but I could maybe go for a legacy challenge if I de-uglyfy the monstrosities. I hate the ugly shine and plasticky look clothes and hair have in 3 and their blob faces, but I need my sims fix. Any fav creators or mods? I know there's an amazing sims 1 old town recreation but doing rotational play in sims 3 looks like a hassle...
Get the new 25th anniversary Sims 2 release. They supposedly fixed a lot of things on modern computers, but I’m not sure about the pink flashing.
3 is… not great. Not just the fugly graphics. It’s a 32-bit program, which means that it can only use up to 4 Gb of RAM, regardless of how much your computer actually has. This typically isn’t a problem for older games, but it’s been a terrible problem since day 1 with TS3, because of the huge open world with everything active at once. The more sims you have: the harder the computer has to work to simulate the whole thing. It doesn’t take very long at all to hit that hard 4 Gb limit, especially when using the create a style tool. Even without a lot of CC the game largely grinds to a halt, then eventually gets responsive again. Or it crashes.
I was very active on MATY when TS3 came out, and Pescado’s general reaction was fuck the sims 3 from before it was released. He spent ages hammering away at his AwesomeMod, which was an attempt to fix how bad it was behind the scenes, but he was only slightly successful. One of the things he complained about the most was visiting community lots and how very few people would be there, because the game kept them from stopping what they were doing behind the scenes and swarm the lot you were on, he tried so many things to make more sims actually come to a lot you were on, but was never really successful.
EA finally updated the Mac version to 64-bit years ago, but it won’t run on Windows. They have yet to do the same for Windows, and just completely ignored it during the 25th anniversary stuff last year. Makes me wonder if it’s just that badly designed that converting it to 64-bit would be a lot of work they’re not interested in doing.
Despite the fugly graphics, it really is a shame that the game is only partially playable. It’s the last Sims game that had the Maxis sense of whimsy. Like, if you dig holes near the jail, you might help criminals escape.
The collection game loop was better too, because you could use a mod to add those spawners to your plot. In 4 you’re forced to run all around different worlds for a handful of spawns AND the spawns might not even be there when you are AND there’s no way to automatically make a round. The one mod I found to automate it would crash my game every time.
There
are mods and CC out there,
Pleasant Sims is a great resource for finding the ones still available. Pescado still has his mods at
More Awesome Than You and probably will until he dies. You don’t need to register either, unless you want to read the old slap fights we had on the all topics boards. The forum is pretty dead these days.
TS3 is a lot of fun, but it’s also short bus special for technical reasons.
