The Sims 2
Webpages concerning "The Sims 2"
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Wikipedia-Article "The Sims 2"
 The Sims 2 |
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| Developer(s) | Maxis |
| Publisher(s) | EA Games |
| Designer(s) | Will Wright |
| Engine | Custom |
| Latest version | 1.0.0.999 / 1.0 Rev C |
| Release date(s) | Windows: September 17, 2004 Mac OS X: June 13, 2005 |
| Genre | Simulation |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Teen (T), PEGI: 7+ |
| Platform(s) | Windows, Mac OS X
Forthcoming: GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance, Sony PSP, Mobile phones |
| Media | CD, DVD, mini-DVD, UMD, cartridge, download |
| System requirements | |
| Input | Keyboard and Mouse |
The Sims 2 is a strategy/simulation computer game from Maxis and is the sequel to the popular game The Sims. It is a vast departure from the previous version and various updates. It is fully 3D, and, unlike in the first installment, characters age and have genetic traits that can be passed on to their children. The game was officially released on September 17, 2004 in both CD-ROM and DVD-ROM formats. The DVD-ROM version, called The Sims 2 Special DVD Edition, contains a Bonus Disc that carries extra content such as interviews and commercials of past Sim products. Customers who pre-ordered The Sims 2 received their copy on September 14, 2004. A port to Mac OS X was done by Aspyr and was released on June 12, 2005.
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Description
Sims age through 6 unique stages: baby, toddler, child, teen, adult and elder (although another stage, 'young adult', was added with the University expansion pack). Unlike in the previous game, when children stayed children and there was little game progress, the stages of life encourage players to move the game along and create relationships between Sims. Family relationships are much more integral to this version of the Sims than the previous version. As Sims age, get married and have children, these relationships are recorded in an extensive family tree.
In this installment of the series, Sims can have more realistic marriages with engagements and parties. Sims are pregnant before having children (unlike in the previous version, where children just appeared). Other unique events such as deaths, birthdays and a first kiss also take place in a Sim's lifetime. Good and bad experiences are kept as memories and can affect the Sim's behaviour.
The graphics and house design engines have improved with more choices for houses, neighborhood design, food and clothes. The Sims Body Shop, a tool which allows a user to design a Sim's body, clothing, genetic features, etc., was available before the game's release.
The Sims 2 introduces a new aspect into the game: Aspiration. Aspiration manifests itself in two ways: the aspiration which each Sim has, and the Aspiration Meter.
Sims will each have an aspiration which is set either when they are created by the player, generated by the game (if they are an NPC), or chosen by the player when they become a teenager. The five aspirations are: Romance, Family, Knowledge, Popularity and Fortune. A sixth aspiration, that of growing up, is possessed by all sims when they are toddlers and children, and a seventh and an eighth aspiration, the Pleasure and Grilled Cheese aspirations, were included with the Nightlife expansion pack.
There are six levels to the aspiration meter: The highest is platinum, beneath that is gold, followed by two levels of green and two of red (red being negative aspiration and therefore an undesirable state). The level is raised when a Sim fulfills a "Want", and is lowered when a "Fear" is realized. Wants and Fears are different for each sim depending on several factors including aspiration type, age and aspiration meter level. They may change on a daily basis, and are displayed graphically in slot-machine fashion on the toolbar. When the Aspiration Meter is high, aspiration rewards may be properly used. For example, the Elixir of Life aspiration reward allows a Sim to live longer. If this aspiration reward is used before the Aspiration Meter reaches the gold level, however, it sometimes backfires and the Sim loses life days. The Aspiration Meter also affects how long an elder will live for once they enter this phase of their life.
This also means that while the game still has no set goals, there is a new strategic level to balancing a Sim's life as players now have a limited time in which to fufill Aspirations, meet needs, progress in a career, socialize and possibly have a family.
System requirements
The system requirements for The Sims 2 (from the official The Sims 2 website) are as follows:
Windows
- 800 MHz processor for systems with a T&L-capable video card with at least 32 MB of video RAM. 2 GHz processor for systems without a T&L-capable video card with at least 32 MB of video RAM.
- 256 MB RAM
- Windows® XP, Windows ME, Windows 98 or Windows 2000 Operating System or better
- At least 3.5 GB of hard drive space
Mac
- 1.2 GHz processor
- PowerPC G4/G5
- (ATI) Radeon 9000 or better.
- 256 RAM
- Mac OS X 10.3.8 or better
- At least 3 GB of hard drive space
At the time of release, many criticized The Sims 2 for needing extremely high system requirements. In fact, just the required (and not optimum) system specs meant that many PC's purchased as late as 2001 would not even be able to run it at all. A similar complaint was levied against another Maxis game, SimCity 4, released more than a year and a half ago.
Bugs
The Sims 2 contains a number of bugs. Many of the bugs listed below have been corrected in a downloadable patch (Note: The installation of The Sims 2: University should correct the problems below).
- "Liney" Sims: Graphical glitch with ATI Radeon 9000 GPUs. This problem has been fixed in the new version of ATI's drivers.
- "Jump Out" Bug: Time-out/scripting bug, causing characters to abort ( "jump out of" ) certain animations and interactions. Solved by the Maxis patch.
- Memory Leak: Memory leak, sometimes caused by hiring non-player characters, causing abnormal use of system resources.
- Invisible Colleagues: Graphics glitch involving colleagues visiting by helicopter, causing colleagues to be invisible. Solved by the Maxis patch.
- "Vanishing Family Members": Hardly anything is known about this glitch except that it occurs when a family member goes to work or school for the first time, they don't come back and vanish off the portraits of the family members on the left of the screen, there is no memory of the disappearance in any of the other family members.
- Unused objects designated as in use: Engine bug which makes unused objects appear as in-use, like doors that don't close. Caused by proximity to other usable objects.
- Floating Teddy: After a few uses, the object of the bear will float in the air and there will no longer be proper animation of use of the bear. Can be fixed by buying a new teddy bear.
- Carpool bug: All sims living on a lot refuse to enter cars, taxis, buses, etc, causing them to fail at their job or at school. Can be fixed by moving the family to another lot.
- Door-Clone Glitch: If you enter build mode with the moveobjects cheat enabled, go to the door creation tool. Act like you're about to place a door on the lot, but then, hit the delete key. Move your sim to some other tile than where they currently are. Next, change the pitch of your camera. When you let go of the camera, it will start making more sims, rather than more doors. Your lot can then be filled with mindless clones of your sim, since the game doesn't know whether to make more sims or more doors. Another way of exploiting this clone technique for users without the Nightlife Expansion is to click on and move the sim, and hold down the shift key when placing.
- Boddler Glitch: A dangerous bug that occurs when you don't save sims after they've switched from one age band to another, and then deleted them using the "moveobjects on" cheat.
- If you have moveobjects activated and delete a sim that has age-transitioned since your last save, exit to the neighborhood without saving. Otherwise, if you try to restore them by using the hidden Reset Age Duration option on the trash can, they will return to the lot in the age band they switched to...but accessing the behaviors and animations of the age group they left behind!
- In the case of most age group transitions, this makes the bug harmless. Children will act like toddlers, teens like children, adults like teens, and elders like adults. But if your sim was an infant that had transitioned to toddler and was deleted without being saved first, then the game has a skeleton conflict.
- It will use the skeleton for toddlers but the animations and behaviors for a baby. The toddler animations which the game tries to run on the baby skeleton will fail, causing the action that was being performed with the toddler to fail also. This makes it impossible for your sims to pick them up and tend to their needs. If the social worker shows up, she won't be able to take the toddler. However, the save and exit options, which are locked when the social worker arrives, are not re-enabled, because the social worker's routine failed without cleaning up after itself. This renders the lot unplayable, as the game goes into an Infinite loop. The only way to escape the game is through the Windows Task Manager.
- The glitch is named the "Boddler" Glitch rather than "Toddler" Glitch because the toddler acts like a baby, or "Boddler." Other age groups that act like babies produce variations called the Bild, Been, Bault, and Belder. But it's the same skeleton conflict in all of them. One of the first uses of the word "Boddler" to describe this is by a user on the official Sims 2 website, posted to the BBS section on October 27 of 2005. Similar bugs produce groups known as the Tild, Teedler, Tault, Toolder, Cheen, Chault, Chelder, Tendault, Telder, and Aulder. With University, it's also possible to have Byaults, Tyaults, Chyaults, Tenyaults, and Yaulders, but these are rare. The occurrence of beens and byaults increases with the presence of third-party no-townie-respawn hacks. Boddlers are easy to spot, as they are toddlers acting like a baby. Byaults and Beens are also easy to spot, since they are Young Adults and Teens that act like babies.
Bugs also surfaced relating to both expansion packs. These have been tackled with patches released in October 2005.
Expansions
The Sims 2: University
- Main article: The Sims 2: University
Maxis released the first expansion pack, called The Sims 2: University, on March 2, 2005 for PC and December 12, 2005 for Mac. In it, sims can be sent to college in a new neighborhood type called University. A "Teen" sim sent to the university will become a "Young Adult," a new age group introduced with this expansion, and that sim will become an "Adult" when it graduates or flunks out. Sims that don't attend the university will skip Young Adult and become Adults, as in the original version of the game. A more minor introduction in University is the addition of "influence points" that can be used to influence others to do a certain thing.
The Sims 2: Nightlife
- Main article: The Sims 2: Nightlife
The second expansion, The Sims 2: Nightlife, was released on September 13, 2005. Based loosely on the original Sims expansion Hot Date, it includes entertainment options like nightclubs, restaurants for romantic dinners, and bowling alleys, in a new neighborhood type called Downtown (much like the University Town in the first expansion pack). A new attraction system introduces turn-ons and turn-offs that cause Sims to be attracted to or disgusted by other Sims. Maxis has also added vampires that will bite sims, making them vampires as well. Players will now be able to see other lots in the neighborhood from inside a lot. In addition, players can now own cars instead of taking the carpool. Vampires can be entirely avoided if the player does not want to play with them. Nightlife also added two new aspriations:
- Pleasure: Pleasure sims' wants are extremely variable as they seek only to enjoy life.
- Grilled Cheese: Accessed only by unsuccessfully using the ReNu Senso Orb.
The Sims 2: Holiday Party Pack
- Main article: The Sims 2: Holiday Edition
The Sims 2: Holiday Party Pack (The Sims 2: Christmas Party Pack in Europe) is a semi-expansion available only through the EA Online Store and Costco. This adds over 40 new objects to the game, allowing for better depiction of holiday celebrations (mostly Christmas) by sims in decorative ways not possible with the standard game. This comes alongside the limited-edition The Sims 2 Holiday Edition core game, which contains the Holiday Party Pack already in the core game with most bugs removed, in a way similar to the way that The Sims Deluxe Edition included both The Sims and The Sims: Livin' Large in a single package. However, the pack on its own is available through European retailers in a CD-ROM.
The Sims 2: Open for Business
- Main article: The Sims 2: Open for Business
The Sims 2: Open for Business, the upcoming expansion pack for The Sims 2, will allow your sims to operate their own businesses. They will be able to manage their staff and develop their talents. Create prized items to bring in top dollar or watch as things go haywire while they are making the next big thing. Players can choose to set up businesses like an electronics store, a day care center, a baby shop and much more. It will be released at late-February or early-March 2006 in the United States and 31 March, 2006 in Europe.
Humour and in-jokes
Veronaville
The neighborhood Veronaville is supposed to be a spoof of Verona (the Italian city in which Romeo and Juliet, a play by William Shakespeare, takes place). In this neighborhood, there are two families who are supposedly conflicting with each other: the Capp family and the Monty family (obviously reflecting the Montague and Capulet families in the play). Supposedly (according to the story of the neighborhood) the conflict started when the leader of the Capp household broke a promise to the leader of the Monty household. The memories of Consort Capp and Patrizio Monty suggest that the broken promise may have been to help Patrizio out in time of need. Instead, Consort apparently conned Patrizio and the result was that Consort became a CEO and Patrizio got fired. Just like in the play, there are two lovers from each family: Romeo and Juliette. The other teens from either household are named after actual characters in Romeo and Juliet, except for Hermia. Her character (as well as a third family, the Summerdream family) was pulled from A Midsummer Night's Dream, another Shakespearean play. Characters from other Shakespearean plays can be found in the family trees in Veronaville. Although these spoofs are supposed to parallel the plays they parody, the Romeo and Juliet parody is significantly less tragic than the actual play. (E.g., Tybalt cannot kill Mercutio to initiate the conspiracy and suicide of Shakespeare's play, but can still laugh if he sees Mercutio die from a satellite falling on his head, etc...) Other names based on plays include King Lear, The Tempest, The "Hal plays", Othello, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Love's Labour's Lost, Measure for Measure, Macbeth, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Taming of the Shrew.
- See also: List of pre-made Sims in Veronaville
Llamas
Llamas appear in The Sims (as it has in many Maxis titles). Speculation suggests that this is an in-joke due to one of the producer's love of Monty Python movies (specifically, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where its opening credits credited llamas for the movie's production). An alternative explanation is that this is paying homage to the work of Jeff Minter, a legendary games programmer who began programming games, featuring all sorts of fluffy animals, for the Vic-20 and Commodore 64 for his company Llamasoft. Cows are also seen in University.
Michael Bachelor
Should one take a look at the Goth family tree, they can find out more about Bella's branch of the tree. As it turns out, a "Michael Bachelor" is her brother (now deceased). The Bachelor family was one of the pre-packaged families that came with the original The Sims. Only one person was in that family... a man named Michael. It is also disturbing to see this if you happened to have Bella marry Michael in the original game.
Mary-Sue Pleasant
One of the characters living in Pleasantview is named "Mary-Sue Pleasant". This is probably a reference to the term "Mary Sue," which is used to describe an idealized character in a work of fan fiction.
Console/handheld ports
The Sims 2 has been/will be released on the following consoles and handhelds:
- GameCube Release Date: Oct 24, 2005
- PlayStation 2 Release Date: Oct 24, 2005
- Xbox Release Date: Oct 24, 2005
- Nintendo DS Release Date: Oct 24, 2005
- Game Boy Advance Release Date: Oct 24, 2005
- Sony PSP Release Date: Dec 13, 2005
- Mobile/cell phones Release Date: Unknown
It made its debut to the console/handheld market during Q4, 2005 (source). Gamespot gave all the console versions a 6.5, and said "The Sims 2 loses something in translation from PC to consoles. Namely, its addictive, entertaining gameplay."
At the moment it is still unknown whether The Sims 2 will be ported to Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and/or Nintendo Revolution.
As with the port of the original The Sims to consoles, the game will most likely feature greatly different mechanics and goals as compared to the original computer version. The Nintendo DS version has a few mini games including painting a picture. Also the console games have 2 modes of control, direct control, the default mode which allows you to walk your sim directly, and classic, were you have a light tower where you select objects to use like the PC game.
User-Modifications
Modders from various sites have been designing programs, most notably SimPE, to edit things from the game, such as recoloring objects which originally could not be recolored, extracting meshes of both clothing and objects, as well as changing different aspects of the game, like Teen Woohoo (Woohoo is the sims' version of sexual intercourse), and the InSiminator, which allows players to edit various attributes about sims, such as their mood, their relationships, or even make them pregnant with any sim on the lot, including the sim that will be pregnant. It can also force resurrections without the University Expansion, can change the time of day, and can change which sims are related to which other sims. Altering their memories and last names to match a user's re-writing of history requires the use of SimPE to edit game files. The InSiminator's alterations of teen relationships are further fleshed out with the InTeenimator, which can be a bother to some because it adds abortion to the game.
Other mods, such as Oberkorn's Krepuscular Skyes Holoprojector and GunMod's Radiance Light System help flesh out the lighting and sky effects for the game, giving users more environment types to choose from. DumbBlonde's Trashed Set made with Homecrafter Plus adds the ability to create slums for low-income families. Ilsimsamante, KalicoKat and many others have created new walls and floors etc. also made with Homecrafter Plus. JWoods' Animated Weather Windows and Doors allow some (crude) animations on doors and windows to help simulate rain, thunderstorms, and snow, all weather effects that Maxis had a difficult time including in the game due to program shortcomings. Revoye, Helaene, and others are renowned for creating more realistic skintones. Targa has, among other things, added ladders, which have never been common in Sims games up until this point. Modders such as NikkiBailey have even tried to add laundry to the game. (An aspect of life that Sims have never had to worry about.) Several skilled modders like SirIgnitusBlowtorch have even been involved in researching ways to create fires that will not cause sims to panic, a feature that has existed since the original release of The Sims and has caused a lot of players to lose entire sim families more quickly than they intended to.
There are also mods that exist to manipulate sims' gender preferences. The gender preference system exists based on which genders sims trust most to converse with, namely, those they believe will give them the best likelihood of positive conversation. Some in message boards have claimed that the gender preference system is a blanket endorsement of homosexual behavior by Maxis, but this has yet to be proven. Many hold this opinion strongly though. Many modders have found ways to manipulate the weak gender difference distinctions that come standard with the game for the specific purpose of using the gender preference system this way.(E.g., men and women can both get pregnant (though men can only get pregnant through alien abduction). There are no gender-defined differences in exact reactions they have to stimuli and social settings, etc.) With SimPE, the game can even be told to treat sims like the opposite of their native sex, making it possible to create many such situations.
Less intrusive mods from the above add common fiction characters into game format, such as the X-Men, several Anime characters, and even horror movie characters like Jason Vorhees.
Accusation of sexual contents
On July 22, 2005, Florida attorney Jack Thompson attacked Electronic Arts and The Sims 2, after Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' Hot Coffee scandal was settled. Jack Thompson claimed that The Sims 2 was "worse than Hot Coffee", because it featured nude Sims which were blurred out, yet the blur could be removed by a mod. Thompson claimed that "pubic hair", "labia", and other genital details were visible if the blur was removed. The patch for the University Expansion Pack, coincidentally, removes the "intProp censorgridsize 0" cheat from the valid cheats recognized in the cheat console window, making it impossible for users to turn off the blur without third-party software, such as SeeThem 2.0.
Electronic Arts issued a statement correcting Thompson and pointing out that without the blur, there are no private parts, but that Sims are lacking in anatomical definition, like a child's dolls. In truth, several third-party mods, including custom meshes, are required to make nude sims have the features Thompson accused the game of having. Most makers of these mods have taken measures to prevent under-18 players from accessing them. This includes mods that were made in the past for Sims 1 games, adding graphic sexual animations. (Woohoo/Play in Bed animations are not very realistic.)
In an Internet radio show interview that aired at ChatterBox Game Show, Thompson retracted his previous misstatements about "pubic hair" and other details about which he was misinformed. However, he defended his position on The Sims 2 and expressed his opinion that because EA does not protect its copyright by stopping the mod community from making adult-oriented changes to the game, that they "lose their right to defend their copyright" in any way.
- See also: Jack Thompson on the Sims 2
See also
External links
Official sites
- The official Sims 2 website
- Electronic Arts' The Sims 2 update page containing the latest patches
Producer journals
- Sims 2: Nightlife Producer Journal, Tim LeTourneau
- An update on the journal
- Sims 2: Open For Business Producer Journal, Tim LeTourneau
Resources
| The Sims series |
|---|
| The Sims |
| Expansion packs Livin' Large | House Party | Hot Date | Vacation | Unleashed | Superstar | Makin' Magic |
| The Sims 2 |
| Expansion packs University | Nightlife | Open for Business |
| Console ports and Spinoffs |
| The Sims (console port) | The Sims Bustin' Out | The Urbz: Sims in the City | The Sims Online |
| The Sim Universe and Maxis |
|---|
| Classic city games |
| SimCity | SimCity 2000 | SimCity 3000 | SimCity 4 |
| The Sims |
| The Sims | The Sims 2 | The Sims Online |
| Other Sim games |
| SimEarth | SimAnt | SimLife | SimFarm | SimTower | SimHealth | SimIsle | SimCopter | SimGolf | Streets of SimCity |
| Youth Sim games |
| SimTown | SimPark | SimSafari | SimTunes |
| Sim related |
| A-Train | El-Fish | Sid Meier's SimGolf | SimCity 64 | Spore | Widget Workshop |
| Cancelled Sim games |
| SimMars | Simsville |