![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
This post is a story about Video Game Cruelty Potential.
In my Sims 3 game, my Sim family had been on a vacation trip to China for a few days (21 in-game, and about 2 or 3 real time). It all went well and I brought them home tonight.
Between the time that the Sims appeared on the edge of the hometown map and the time that they actually made it back to their house, the game informed me that there was a burglar in their house. This isn't the first time they've had a burglar, and their house is wired at every outside door with a burglar alarm, so I wasn't worried about the burglar stealing anything (and even if she had, my Sims have over 4,000,000 simoleons at this point, so it would have been easily replaceable). My Sims arrived home and started freaking out about the burglar who was right there in their living room. The police showed up and they started to brawl, but I noticed that the burglar had gotten the jump on the cop, meaning that the burglar was going to win the fight and get away.
It was at this point that I remembered that I had five Sims standing there, all of whom had Moodlet Managers.
A bit of a tangent while I explain what a Moodlet Manager is, for anyone who doesn't play Sims 3. As you play the game and achieve "wishes" for the Sims, you earn points which can be used to buy "Lifetime Rewards", one of the most expensive of which is the Moodlet Manager. The actual Moodlet Manager is a small remote-control looking device that the Sims carry around in their inventory. It has two settings, "Cure" and "Zap". Cure will remove a negative moodlet from a Sim. If one of these moodlets is directly tied to a motive, then when that moodlet is removed the motive it is tied to will max out (which will, in turn, usually apply one of the positive moodlets associated with it). The other setting is Zap, which does exactly the opposite. It adds a random negative moodlet, and similarly, if the moodlet is tied to a motive, then that motive will be dropped to the minimum.
I'd never had much use for the Zap setting on the Moodlet Manager. Until now, that is.
I spent the next several Sim hours having the five adult/teenager Sims that had these things just constantly bombard the hapless burglar with the Zap setting over and over. One of the effects was apparently to strip her completely naked (with the mosaic, of course), and then she changed back into her regular clothes rather than the burglar outfit. Also, interestingly, her normal, everyday outfit involves wearing a jester hat, apparently. (This is because I had installed the jester hats from the Store, since it was free, and new Sims can wear any clothing that is available to them.) Often, the zap would backfire and turn the beam back on the user, causing their Rest motive to drop to minimum (which can also often happen when using Cure as well, annoyingly), but a quick Cure later and they be back to Zapping action. Every once in a while, one of my Sims would get a "Be Yelled At" interaction with the burglar, but I'd just clear that out of the queue before it occurred and let them get on with the Zapping.
After a little while, I got bored of this and started to let the thief go. It was then that I remembered that I had also recently installed a mod. The sole purpose, at the time, for installing this mod was to get access to the "Reset Walk" option, which fixed all of the Sims that had been affected by the running glitch (i.e. if your Sims ever play tag after having one of the more recent patches installed, they will run everywhere forever after that point, at least until EA finally bothers to fix it anyway). However, among a bunch of other options that this mod also enables, one of the options is "Die by..." If you select this option on a Sim, it opens up another menu with things like "Starvation", "Electrocution", "Meteor", "Mummy Curse", and so on.
I tried "Die by... Starvation" on the fleeing robber, but it didn't work at first. I figured that this was because she was leaving the lot, and usually, most interactions simply don't work with them, even modded ones apparently (though Zap worked fine, and caused her to stop running away so that she could try to "Yell At" my Sims). So I followed the Sim as she fled in her car back to the Outstanding Citizen Warehouse Corp. (which my Sim family owns, by the way, along with most other properties in the town). I guess she was still "on the clock" for her job.
Well, when 6:00am rolled around, I had my main Sim call her and invite her back to the house. Like a fool, she accepted. After a Rude Greeting, and a few insults and such, I tried the mod's "Die by... Starvation" selection again. This time, she immediately clutched her stomach and dropped dead. My Sim family was actually saddened by this and mourned her death. I guess they're much nicer than I am. Then again, they all have maxed out Charisma skill, so apparently either using Zap on the burglar or the simple act of witnessing the burglary in the first place bumped their relationship with her into Friend status right off the bat (strangely). The Grim Reaper showed up and did his thing, and she turned into a tombstone, which got teleported to the mausoleum in the graveyard. I immediately had my Sim go to the graveyard and retrieve this tombstone, which is now sitting in the front yard of the house.
Remember how a while back I was telling a different story about a Sim that died at a birthday party* and how I was able to bring him back to life with some Ambrosia? A brief follow up to that is that Sims don't have to actually die on my lot. If they die anywhere in the town, I can just have a Sim go to the mausoleum and retrieve their tombstones and bring them home. Then, when the ghosts appear, I place some Ambrosia out on the counter, and just wait for the ghost Sims to go over and eat it, restoring them to life.** Sadly (and a bit annoyingly) though, a lot of the resurrected Sims tend to later end up leaving town altogether, which is basically the equivalent of them being deleted from the game forever (until you start a new game with a new family, at least for the preset Sims anyway).
So yeah, this story will end up being a similar story. Except that I think I'll use the newly reincarnated burglar Sim to test out the other "Die by..." settings of the mod. And then, when she dies again, simply repeat the process yet again. I'm particularly interested in seeing the "Die by... Meteor" setting. *nods sagely*
* - Note, the family in those pictures are my original Sims 3 family, which was lost when I moved to the newer computer. I'm using a "Kane Magus" Sim this time rather than one based directly on me personally. For what it's worth, though, the three daughter Sims in my current family (triplets again, of course) are named the same as the three from my original family, and are mostly the same, at least personality wise if not in appearance. I should take some screen-shots of my new Sim family and upload them sometime.
** - Kane's current job is GhostBuster Hunter, so I don't know if that could be considered a conflict of interest or not. ¬_¬
In my Sims 3 game, my Sim family had been on a vacation trip to China for a few days (21 in-game, and about 2 or 3 real time). It all went well and I brought them home tonight.
Between the time that the Sims appeared on the edge of the hometown map and the time that they actually made it back to their house, the game informed me that there was a burglar in their house. This isn't the first time they've had a burglar, and their house is wired at every outside door with a burglar alarm, so I wasn't worried about the burglar stealing anything (and even if she had, my Sims have over 4,000,000 simoleons at this point, so it would have been easily replaceable). My Sims arrived home and started freaking out about the burglar who was right there in their living room. The police showed up and they started to brawl, but I noticed that the burglar had gotten the jump on the cop, meaning that the burglar was going to win the fight and get away.
It was at this point that I remembered that I had five Sims standing there, all of whom had Moodlet Managers.
A bit of a tangent while I explain what a Moodlet Manager is, for anyone who doesn't play Sims 3. As you play the game and achieve "wishes" for the Sims, you earn points which can be used to buy "Lifetime Rewards", one of the most expensive of which is the Moodlet Manager. The actual Moodlet Manager is a small remote-control looking device that the Sims carry around in their inventory. It has two settings, "Cure" and "Zap". Cure will remove a negative moodlet from a Sim. If one of these moodlets is directly tied to a motive, then when that moodlet is removed the motive it is tied to will max out (which will, in turn, usually apply one of the positive moodlets associated with it). The other setting is Zap, which does exactly the opposite. It adds a random negative moodlet, and similarly, if the moodlet is tied to a motive, then that motive will be dropped to the minimum.
I'd never had much use for the Zap setting on the Moodlet Manager. Until now, that is.
I spent the next several Sim hours having the five adult/teenager Sims that had these things just constantly bombard the hapless burglar with the Zap setting over and over. One of the effects was apparently to strip her completely naked (with the mosaic, of course), and then she changed back into her regular clothes rather than the burglar outfit. Also, interestingly, her normal, everyday outfit involves wearing a jester hat, apparently. (This is because I had installed the jester hats from the Store, since it was free, and new Sims can wear any clothing that is available to them.) Often, the zap would backfire and turn the beam back on the user, causing their Rest motive to drop to minimum (which can also often happen when using Cure as well, annoyingly), but a quick Cure later and they be back to Zapping action. Every once in a while, one of my Sims would get a "Be Yelled At" interaction with the burglar, but I'd just clear that out of the queue before it occurred and let them get on with the Zapping.
After a little while, I got bored of this and started to let the thief go. It was then that I remembered that I had also recently installed a mod. The sole purpose, at the time, for installing this mod was to get access to the "Reset Walk" option, which fixed all of the Sims that had been affected by the running glitch (i.e. if your Sims ever play tag after having one of the more recent patches installed, they will run everywhere forever after that point, at least until EA finally bothers to fix it anyway). However, among a bunch of other options that this mod also enables, one of the options is "Die by..." If you select this option on a Sim, it opens up another menu with things like "Starvation", "Electrocution", "Meteor", "Mummy Curse", and so on.
I tried "Die by... Starvation" on the fleeing robber, but it didn't work at first. I figured that this was because she was leaving the lot, and usually, most interactions simply don't work with them, even modded ones apparently (though Zap worked fine, and caused her to stop running away so that she could try to "Yell At" my Sims). So I followed the Sim as she fled in her car back to the Outstanding Citizen Warehouse Corp. (which my Sim family owns, by the way, along with most other properties in the town). I guess she was still "on the clock" for her job.
Well, when 6:00am rolled around, I had my main Sim call her and invite her back to the house. Like a fool, she accepted. After a Rude Greeting, and a few insults and such, I tried the mod's "Die by... Starvation" selection again. This time, she immediately clutched her stomach and dropped dead. My Sim family was actually saddened by this and mourned her death. I guess they're much nicer than I am. Then again, they all have maxed out Charisma skill, so apparently either using Zap on the burglar or the simple act of witnessing the burglary in the first place bumped their relationship with her into Friend status right off the bat (strangely). The Grim Reaper showed up and did his thing, and she turned into a tombstone, which got teleported to the mausoleum in the graveyard. I immediately had my Sim go to the graveyard and retrieve this tombstone, which is now sitting in the front yard of the house.
Remember how a while back I was telling a different story about a Sim that died at a birthday party* and how I was able to bring him back to life with some Ambrosia? A brief follow up to that is that Sims don't have to actually die on my lot. If they die anywhere in the town, I can just have a Sim go to the mausoleum and retrieve their tombstones and bring them home. Then, when the ghosts appear, I place some Ambrosia out on the counter, and just wait for the ghost Sims to go over and eat it, restoring them to life.** Sadly (and a bit annoyingly) though, a lot of the resurrected Sims tend to later end up leaving town altogether, which is basically the equivalent of them being deleted from the game forever (until you start a new game with a new family, at least for the preset Sims anyway).
So yeah, this story will end up being a similar story. Except that I think I'll use the newly reincarnated burglar Sim to test out the other "Die by..." settings of the mod. And then, when she dies again, simply repeat the process yet again. I'm particularly interested in seeing the "Die by... Meteor" setting. *nods sagely*
* - Note, the family in those pictures are my original Sims 3 family, which was lost when I moved to the newer computer. I'm using a "Kane Magus" Sim this time rather than one based directly on me personally. For what it's worth, though, the three daughter Sims in my current family (triplets again, of course) are named the same as the three from my original family, and are mostly the same, at least personality wise if not in appearance. I should take some screen-shots of my new Sim family and upload them sometime.
** - Kane's current job is Ghost
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-09-04 02:15 pm (UTC)From: