SIMply Aspiring Blog – Page 3 – My experiences, joys, tips, advice, and concerns about the games I play

Mermaidic Kelp Not Working, Bad Quality

I’ve been trying to become a mermaid with one of the pre-made Sim families in Isla Paradiso, Rajan Patel. I want him to fall in love with a mermaid, become one, and have a mermaid baby to complete the Sims Badge! He became friends with a male mermaid and got several pieces of mermaidic kelp. But when Rajan ate it, he would get nauseous for 2 hours, throw up, and that was it. No transformation. I even waited a day or so to see if it happened later. But nothing. Then I decided to pull it out of the inventory and compare it to the normal kelp you can buy at the store.

Here’s a screenshot – the “Mermaidic Kelp” received by the mermaid is blackish and has some bad quality indications, and some normal kelp is nice green.

So my theory is the mermaid Townie I found has some bad kelp that he gave us! I even created a brand new Sim and merged her into the family to try it, but it didn’t work for her either. Then I put some in her inventory and moved her to another lot via Edit Town. When she ate one on the other lot, it worked! She transforms almost right away. Also when she pulled it out to eat it, it was glowing! That must mean it’s a good one. Then I moved her back into the original family. The kelp is now glowing!

EDIT: I found on a Sims forum that the evil mermaids may give you bad kelp. The one I became friends with did seem kind of strange looking. His name was Salty.

Building your First Island Paradise Resort

The first uncharted island I discovered is quite nice, Beryl Shoals. I decided to try building my first resort there. First, I went to live mode, clicked on the icon in map view, and converted to a resort. To build the resort, I used the stilted foundation plus the regular foundation to build a good sized building around the little pond. Created several rooms with just a bed, and a common bathroom. I took quite a bit of time creating an upper level deck with a hot tub overlooking the pond. (I had to use the terrain tools to get the level of the deck just right so steps would join it to the main building). I spent quite a bit of time just getting the basic walls, wallpaper, flooring, etc. Then when I went to Live mode it said it was closed because it didn’t have a Resort Tower!

Remember to Include a Resort Tower!

So I had to level out some of the mountain on the island and pick one of the basic resort towers (you can view the resort-specific items in buy mode- >sort by function). I read that the resort tower is where multiple guests can stay in a rabbit-hole style, where you don’t get to see what’s going on inside. You can click on it to set certain options like enable room service. One of the first complaints I got was that there was no room service!

Here’s a screenshot of my initial working resort!

Houseboat with Jetski or SpeedBoat

I couldn’t figure out how to add a Jetski or Speedboat to the Houseboat that my Sim family owns. It says you need a mooring post or cleat, or boat trailer. But I think the mooring post and cleat need to be placed on some open ocean water. So I just bought a house lot and tried out the stilted foundation to build a house out over the water, and added a mooring post and cleat there. Here’s my new house on the mainland, in case they want a break from their houseboat.

Now that I think about it, you should be able to place a boat trailer on the roof or any large area of your houseboat, and place the speedboat there. So I tried it out and it works great!

Then when he went boating, he actually went on to land, turned around, and the boat transported next to him so he could hop on.

The speedboat is so much faster than the Houseboat that he’ll be using it to go scuba diving and snorkeling!

Sims 3 Island Paradise – How to get to another island

I installed the Island Paradise expansion pack today! I can’t wait to try all the different features in this one, like scuba diving, traveling to different islands, finding map fragments to get to those uncharted islands I see hidden in the mist, and owning a successful resort!!

One thing I wondered about was how a typical Sim would be able to get from one island to another to get to the shopping over there. Would they need to swim over? Would they need to buy a boat? No! There’s a taxi boat that automatically picks them up!

SimCity Power Grid Bug

Even if you have enough power capacity (e.g. buying enough from a neighbor and your gauge says no excess and no deficit) not all buildings may get power. I wait and wait to hope that the power eventually reaches them, but it seems to be taking a long time! Are there some buildings who use up all the power before it reaches these outlying buildings? Or is it because my road system has a lot of dead ends that are not being reached?

SimCity 5 No Highways, One Ways

In SimCity 4 I enjoyed organizing and upgrading the road system to make sure there was no ‘red’ traffic lines. We now have dirt roads, low and medium density streets, and medium and high density avenues, and a high density avenue including street car tracks which is cool. But there are no highways!? I guess it makes sense since we don’t have a large city size. But how are we going to deal with large amounts of traffic coming in and getting stuck at traffic lights? As soon as it hits a cross road there’s going to be a street light.

Here’s the region highway view. Quite a bit of traffic trying to get into my city!

Here’s my solution, more high density avenues. But it’s not working! I even added an extra road on the right to try to get some cars to get off the road early! But for some reason they all want to turn left. I added more bus stops, and maybe I’ll start to use the street cars to see if that helps. But they would need a park and ride depot of some sort.

Here’s a view of inner city traffic that may be resolved by high density avenues.

One-Way Streets

But wait, there’s no one-way streets? I used these a lot in my downtown areas in SimCity 4! They seem much more efficient than large avenues everywhere. They would need to have high density one-ways though.

I don’t think I like the algorithm for traffic to find the right path. It seems they turn around in the strangest places, I guess just to get to the other side of the road for businesses on the other side.

Well, I guess I’ll keep playing and see how it goes.

SimCity 5 Initial Review

I signed up for the 2nd SimCity Beta and was able to play the 1-hour long beta a few times on Feb 16th. There were some problems claiming cities and even connecting to EA’s servers, but I was hopeful they would fix it by the time the game was released, and could continue making patches after that. So I pre-ordered and started playing SimCity 2013 when it was released March 5. I know there have been some problems, but I’m hopeful they’ll get them fixed eventually. Here are some notes and some initial screenshots I’ve taken. I’ll make new posts as I find new things about the game.

Server Connectivity Issues

Lots of people have complained about server connectivity issues and being unable to claim new cities. Luckily I haven’t noticed too much of a problem but I have only started a few cities. I have noticed strange things like clicking the Claim button and then finding out it was already claimed? I also haven’t tried starting my own region yet.

I think it was Wednesday the 6th EA shut down their servers for an update, and we weren’t able to log on at all. That was annoying, but I’m not sure how long it lasted. Maybe half an hour to an hour? Why couldn’t they update a single server at a time?

Emergency Response and Public Service Algorithms

Fire Engines

So I was very hopeful that the emergency response system would be great with this new game engine. Maybe it’s something weird about the road system. But I see firetrucks go down a bunch of roads somewhat close to a burning building, but never the right road. They keep turning around and going down a different but still wrong road, taking a long time to go to the actual house burning down! I’m pretty sure they weren’t meant to do that, they keep going down the same wrong street over and over. Also, ALL of your fire trucks may be at the same burning house, while you have other houses burning down. At least some of them should leave if another fire is worse!

Ambulances

I haven’t followed ambulances around to see how well they drive to injured or sick sims, but I have noticed them take a long time at the clinic or hospital. They should quickly unload the sick or injured sim and immediately go out to get more! I always have a sick person complaining about the sniffles but they don’t go to the clinic?

MaxisMan can be sent out to heal injured, but I tried following him the first time he was sent on patrol, and he didn’t immediately go to someone injured. It’s more like a patrol I guess. How is he supposed to find anyone?

Germs, Air Pollution, Ground Pollution

The health system is one area I somewhat struggle with in my cities. I check the Germ data map and see air pollution, ground pollution, and other factors. I know we can add the Wellness Center and Disease Research center on the Hospital to start combating sickness in the city. But how do you reduce the air pollution and water pollution? In SimCity 4 I think all you could do was plant more parks and trees. There was also a third-party plugin that was a huge air filter. I loved that!

What do you love and hate about this new SimCity?

Bugs and Problems with Sims 3 Patch 1.5

This latest patch, 1.5 is causing a lot of problems for people. I had trouble getting through the installer since it was such a large patch this time, over 1 GB! I waited a day or so and was able to install it. Luckily I don’t have major problems like others have reported. I didn’t worry about any saved games because I recently had to re-install all of the Sims on a new hard drive. But I have found a few minor issues:

Missing Badges/Achievements in Game Profile Menu

Several of my badges/achievements are listed in the Game profile menu as Not completed when I know they are completed, and the website also reports them as completed. This is the most annoying because I am working towards achieving all badges, and don’t want to keep checking the website for ones I’m truly missing.

Rendering Issue Makes Sims look like Little People

A rendering issue causes some neighborhood adult sims to appear like little people – about half the size of normal sims.

Little Guy

Normal Guy

FIX: According to this post on EA forums, just replace the elder’s cane with a new cane. It appears to have worked for me.

Others have reported things like:

Missing Travel Option

No Travel option from the phone or computer — the menu options in the phone have been reorganized. I found Travel under Real Estate and Travel Services… option. I haven’t tried it out to see if it still works.

Invisible Sims

I’ve seen this before before this patch, but rarely. Try resetting the Sim.

Hopefully there will be another patch coming soon to fix these!

Seasons – Can Sims Even Get Sunburns?

How do you get a Sim sunburned in the Sims 3 Seasons?? I’m thinking it’s a bug in the game because my Sims take a nap outside in their bathing suit in 90 degree weather and only get a sun tan. I’m trying to complete the ‘Fair Skinned’ badge of getting a sunburn and haven’t been able to. Just wondering if anyone has been able to yet.

Thumbnail of Ghost Friends are Missing or Disappear

I noticed this in the Supernatural expansion pack. Your Sim meets some ghosts, but when they are not in the same lot as your Sim anymore, their thumbnail picture disappears from your Sim’s acquaintances panel. You can still call them by doing the ‘Call Sim’ option on your phone. But I click on the thumbnail image as a shortcut to calling them or inviting them over. And this bug is very annoying!