Sims Mods
So I've been playing the Sims for a few days now, and have gotten the hang of things. My sims have paired off (Me and Michelle, with no real effort involved, and James and Sanam, with only a little effort), the money is flowing pretty easily, and I'm able to more or less let them do as they please (except that friendships are still quite elusive and hard to maintain).
So now I want to make some changes. I figured there'd be a pretty robust and well-organized mod community, given the popularity of mods in the first Sims game, and the fact that this one has been out for several months (maybe a year by now?). I also figured that there would be an easy, straight-forward way to add new content.
I was kind of right on both regards.
The biggest and most robust site that I've found so far for mods and add-ons is Mod The Sims 2 (appropriate name, eh?). The site is pretty well organized, and there seems to be a LOT of content. But there's no easy way to sort content other than the pre-defined subcategories. At least not that I have found. The actual act of adding the mods/content is basic, and doesn't really afford much in the way of organization. Everything goes in the Downloads folder, which oddly enough is actually in the My Documents folder rather than the Sims game folder. I understand the reason for this, as each Sims game ends up installing to its own separate folder (Why? I'm pretty sure they're not stand-alone games, are they?), so having a separate folder for all downloads makes sense. But user beware, 'cause it's easy to just dump everything into one folder and forget about it. Of course with names like "MTS2_Dave_Luv_734052_Simsky_Mod_BetterTV", it makes finding individual mods to remove/edit a bitch.
There are also a bunch of limitations which I find to be pretty unfortunate. Tattoos and body hair and such seem to be tied in to the "skins". So if you want a tattoo, you have to use a certain skin set. You can't just change the skin color on a skin set, you have to create/use an entirely different texture. Oh, and the skin sets probably won't work if you've decided that "tall and skinny" doesn't quite fit what you imagined for your Sim, and downloaded a new body mesh. Not to mention that it seems like if you have a non-default body mesh, most of the clothing won't work.
Of course, a lot of this is speculation, as I only started downloading stuff last night, and all I've gotten so far are some new eyes and a few necklaces. But I wish that EA had spent a little more time to make the content creation/implementation system easier and more robust, especially because of how popular the original Sims content community was. But then I remembered that this game was made by Electronic Arts, and immediately recalled the "stuff packs" that I saw in the store for $30 a pop. Why make it easier for other people to make stuff when we can SELL OUR stuff? Ah well.
At least Sims 3 looks like it'll offer more in the way of body options. Seeing a 5'11", stick-thin Michelle is kind of odd. Same thing with a skinny, hairless version of me running around. At least I got the clothes right.
Speaking which, I should figure out the screenshot feature and post some pictures of my Sims.
But right now I'm at work, avoiding actually DOING anything :)
So now I want to make some changes. I figured there'd be a pretty robust and well-organized mod community, given the popularity of mods in the first Sims game, and the fact that this one has been out for several months (maybe a year by now?). I also figured that there would be an easy, straight-forward way to add new content.
I was kind of right on both regards.
The biggest and most robust site that I've found so far for mods and add-ons is Mod The Sims 2 (appropriate name, eh?). The site is pretty well organized, and there seems to be a LOT of content. But there's no easy way to sort content other than the pre-defined subcategories. At least not that I have found. The actual act of adding the mods/content is basic, and doesn't really afford much in the way of organization. Everything goes in the Downloads folder, which oddly enough is actually in the My Documents folder rather than the Sims game folder. I understand the reason for this, as each Sims game ends up installing to its own separate folder (Why? I'm pretty sure they're not stand-alone games, are they?), so having a separate folder for all downloads makes sense. But user beware, 'cause it's easy to just dump everything into one folder and forget about it. Of course with names like "MTS2_Dave_Luv_734052_Simsky_Mod_BetterTV", it makes finding individual mods to remove/edit a bitch.
There are also a bunch of limitations which I find to be pretty unfortunate. Tattoos and body hair and such seem to be tied in to the "skins". So if you want a tattoo, you have to use a certain skin set. You can't just change the skin color on a skin set, you have to create/use an entirely different texture. Oh, and the skin sets probably won't work if you've decided that "tall and skinny" doesn't quite fit what you imagined for your Sim, and downloaded a new body mesh. Not to mention that it seems like if you have a non-default body mesh, most of the clothing won't work.
Of course, a lot of this is speculation, as I only started downloading stuff last night, and all I've gotten so far are some new eyes and a few necklaces. But I wish that EA had spent a little more time to make the content creation/implementation system easier and more robust, especially because of how popular the original Sims content community was. But then I remembered that this game was made by Electronic Arts, and immediately recalled the "stuff packs" that I saw in the store for $30 a pop. Why make it easier for other people to make stuff when we can SELL OUR stuff? Ah well.
At least Sims 3 looks like it'll offer more in the way of body options. Seeing a 5'11", stick-thin Michelle is kind of odd. Same thing with a skinny, hairless version of me running around. At least I got the clothes right.
Speaking which, I should figure out the screenshot feature and post some pictures of my Sims.
But right now I'm at work, avoiding actually DOING anything :)