I’ve been meaning to blog about this ever since I got back from the Sims 3 Creator’s Camp.  I met a Simmer there named Babylonia–she’s Korean but recently moved to the U.S.  She actually has Korean comic books published using the Sims 2.  I couldn’t believe it and thought it was the coolest thing ever.  She has several editions out and it’s just like an actual comic book (or closer to manga style- I’m not sure if my analogy is correct since I’ve never looked at a manga comic) except with Sims.

These aren’t just fan created items, they’re actually professionally published books for sale in Korea sanctioned by EA Korea.  I’m not sure if there are any other published Sims Korean authors- I got the feeling that she may be the only one though I could be wrong.  She wasn’t hired by EA or anything when she started writing Sims stories- she is simply a fan, just like the rest of us, who is passionate about using Sims as a creative outlet.  Seeing these books did make me wonder why there wasn’t something equivalent to this in the U.S.  I guess there isn’t as large a market for this sort of stuff here and maybe U.S. teens aren’t into comic books.  I’m not sure.  It did make me think about all the things we do in the U.S. with Sims- create movies, stories, meshes, etc. and wonder why there isn’t anything ‘official’ out there.  I certainly know the talent’s there but probably not the market.  Anyway, Babylonia is a really nice woman and I spent a lot of time with her at EA and we became friends.  I’m glad that someone who spends and dedicates a ridiculous amount of time on the game is getting something out of it beyond personal satisfaction.  The funny thing is though that she uses her Sims handle to publish- her real name is no where to be found on the books.  She, like myself and other adults, usually don’t go around telling family and friends about our hobby.  There’s just something about being an adult, let alone one approaching middle age, playing with virtual dolls that’s just a bit embarrasing to admit.  But, if I were to be published like that, I think I’d paste my name all over it and tell everyone.  It’s certainly an admirable accomplishment and I, for one, am completely impressed.

EDIT: Just to be clarify, the comics are EA sanctioned meaning EA Korea is the one publishing or has a big hand in publishing these books.  Babylonia wasn’t the one who sought out publishing her stories, EA Korea was.  You can’t really violate your own copyright laws, right? ;)

Gasp!  Another post so soon?  As if you guys like hearing from me that much. :P   Anywho, I’m writing because I did an interview with the Sims team a few weeks ago and it looks like it was finally published on the Sims 2 site.  They launched a new (or redesigned) page called “The Sims 2 Machinima Page” and I was lucky enough to be the first director chosen for an interview.  I love how they set up the page with all my movie posters, which I didn’t know they would do.   Doing this interview gives me a lot of kudos so I really appreciate the Sims team thinking of me for this.  The interview is pretty long though so hopefully I don’t put you all to sleep and you can find something interesting in it.

It’s been four long years since we all started on this crazy, all-consuming hobby called Sims machinima.  During that time, I started SimsPremiere to help newer directors with hosting and also to help them gain some recognition.  A lot has happened since then with SimsPremiere hosting over a dozen different directors- some have moved on and gotten their own websites, while others have moved onto other machinima platforms and still others have moved on from machinima and Sims all together.  We’ve seen many directors come and go through the years and it’s just natural that as time goes by, people’s interest in their hobbies wane.  Such seems to be the case with many of the current SimsPremiere directors.  Several are no longer actively making movies and with my hosting up and Sims 2 coming to a close, I just couldn’t justify the expense for the second site (in addition to mine) for another year.  Times have changed quite a bit.  When I started SimsPremiere, there were really no places for people to host their movies.  Now we have quite a few sites from youtube to Vimeo that provide hosting that make a site like SP less necessary.

Some of the directors who no longer actively make movies will continue their blogs so you can still find them there.  Two of SP’s youngest directors, Lodelday and Jpro, are still actively working on their series so I’ve offered hosting for them under my site.  You may find them at:

• Jpro:  http://decorgal.com/jpro
• Lodelday: http://decorgal.com/lodelday

Their sites are the same, just moved to the new location.  I want to take this time to thank all the SP directors past and present for the inspiration, since they were some of my favorites and made me want to be a better director, but more importantly for their frienship.  They have truly become good friends and will always continue to be.  I also want to thank those of you who supported the site by visiting and watching and participating in our challenges.  They were really fun for us.

*Just as a side note, SP closing has nothing to do with my site decorgal.com.

The Sims 3 Creator’s Camp was such an amazing experience. We met quite a few people from the Sims development team and staff and they were all so amazing. We also got to meet the woman behind the Sim child’s voice and experience a sample voice recording session for the game. She’s very giggly in real life and her laugh was so infectious that we’d all laugh every time she did. I think the best part of the week though was meeting fellow Sims players. I have to say that everyone was incredibly nice and it was so much fun getting to know all the people behind the usernames. I do feel like I made a few good friends there and I hope that there will be an opportunity to meet them in person again in the future.

I’m sure that you guys have been reading the news sites about the Sims 3 and all the information that’s been released about the game. In fact, if you haven’t seen this already, SnootySims has aggregated most of the information and created a compact list. So, I don’t think it’s really necessary for me to repeat all those details, particularly since I didn’t have that much time to play the game I was so busy learning the features and then trying to make a movie. Anyway, you know that my perspective of the game comes from that of a machinima director so hopefully I can offer you some interesting information about the game. Before I continue, let me just preface everything by saying that the game version we had was not the final version that you guys will get when it ships. Our version still was a bit buggy and didn’t have all the features that will be included in the shipped version. It was really nice to be able to give a lot of feedback to the Sims team about those bugs and also some things that we really wanted in the game. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that we’ll be granted some of those things.

Pre-Production
Again, a lot of the pre-production items you can find out about from that SnootySims list. Some things that I want to mention (and maybe repeat) because they were especially cool were:

• When building, you can move whole walls around and everything attached to the wall (furniture, paint color, windows, roofs, etc.) move with it.
• Surfaces have tons of slots on them so that you can place multiple items.
• You can move items off grid as well as rotate them in any degree/angle by simply holding down a key.
• You can easily change textures and colors on walls, floors, furniture or on Sims’ genetics and clothing in-game.
• Ceilings automatically appear when you place flooring over a floor. I didn’t try to change them so aren’t sure if they are colorable or can have a texture applied to them. Usually the plain off-white works for me.
• Your married Sims don’t automatically wear rings.  You can just add a ring to their finger via CAS and it’s on the correct finger!  The wedding ring was always a pain for me because, for example, I’d have Ellen on a set and forget to have her married and then have to go through the trouble of having her marry someone so she’d have her ring on (silly detail I know but I’m anal that way).

Game Aesthetics
The game does look a lot nicer than Sims 2.  Although it still looks like a cartoon, there is more depth to both the Sims and the sets.  Here are some specific things I really thought were cool:

• The greenery in the game look a lot more organic than in Sims 2. Shrubs automatically vary randomly in size as you place them for a more natural look. The coolest part of all though is that the tree leaves and plants are animated so that they look like they are subtly swaying in the breeze.
• The lighting in the game is much different. Outdoors, the lighting changes throughout the day so that you’ll get the bright sunny lighting in the middle of the day but duller daylight earlier or later. There is also a subtle tint to the lighting during dawn and dusk. The interior lighting is much darker and the light floods through the windows. You can adjust the color and brightness of any lighting fixture to create any kind of mood.
• The shadows in the game are much more realistic and I love that they move with the sun just like in real life.
• The game face presets are much nicer and not as exaggerated as the Sims 2. Even your ugly Sims will at least look human.
• The in-game clothing are very nice and realistic. There aren’t any really wacky outfits and the silhouettes are more modern and realistic.
• The Sims have tongues when they open their mouths to talk. I always hated the way the tongues looked in MovieStorm but fear not, they look pretty good in Sims.
• The Sims’ animations seem less exaggerated and cartoony than in the Sims 2. Their facial expressions in particular aren’t as bad but they still seem to suffer from windmill arms.
• Their idle stand is a bit different than in Sims 2 and breathing less animated. I did notice that some other animations like reading a book are a lot less dumb looking. Their running animation looks a lot better too. I didn’t get a chance to play enough to see more animations in the game.
• The social interactions and many of the animations in the game are pretty much the same as Sims 2, making gameplay very similar. But, there are new idle and social animations in the game associated with personality traits (over 50 of them).
• Cars occasionally drive by your lot so the roads aren’t completely baron.
• Townies wandering around your neighborhood don’t look as ridiculous as in Sims 2 because the face presets and clothing are more realistic. They don’t look bad in the background although they sometimes walk into your shots!

Filming
The best improvement in Sims 3 over the Sims 2 is the in-game camera. Many of its features are really geared towards machinima directors. The capture file is a lot less daunting and for the most part easier to interpret. This means that we have a lot more control of the camera and doing those fancy panning shots will be much less frustrating. Once the game is released I’ll share with you the specific items that need to be changed to access these controls.

• The keys to move the camera around are still the same (phew). The saved camera position keys have changed to 5-9. I kept hitting 4 by accident and that just super speeds the game so remember that when filming!
• The camera speed can be easily adjusted both vertically and horizontally. You can adjust it to the point of moving it by only one step- i.e. just that teeny tiny bit you need to frame properly which is a lot more precisely than the Sims 2 (which you couldn’t do even with translationsteps at 1).
• When going from one saved camera position to another in Sims 2, the camera is super fast at the beginning and has a drawn out, delayed lag at the end. This is no longer the case in Sims 3.
• You can rotate the camera now both clock- and counter-clockwise.
• Perhaps the coolest feature is that you there is a number you can change to specify how many seconds you want it to take to go from one saved camera position to another.

Cheats
The biggest issue for machinima directors is the availability of cheats and, of course, hacks that make filming so much easier and more efficient. I have to say making a movie without those things was very frustrating as those of you who listened to the WorldSims podcast of me trying to capture just a single idle animation witnessed (it took me three hours total). I have to say my movie that I made at the camp looked more like the stuff I made when I first started (not to mention all the bugs and no access to the camera file until almost the last day)! You’ll see my lame movie when they release that portion of the Sims 3 website. Anyway, the following are some of the cheats already built into the game that machinima directors will find useful:

• Sims fade when you get close to them (like the trees do). There’s a cheat to turn that off which allows you to get some good close-ups of your Sim.
• You can easily turn off plumbbobs and thought bubbles. This cheat also seems to turn off the progress bar but I’m not totally sure since someone else told me this was the case for the guitar- I didn’t have time to test it for other animations. The sleeping zzz’s and musical notes still show up.
• You can shift click and change relationships, motives, etc. like in Sims 2. You can also easily max motives and make them static.
• You can easily and quickly change your Sim’s appearance/genetics and clothing in CAS just by shift clicking on them while you’re playing. You can also easily change their outfit to swimwear, workout, everyday, etc.
• You can shift click on Sims to change their personality traits which gives you access to personality specific idles and socials (as mentioned earlier).
• You can change your townie’s hair, clothing and makeup just by shift clicking on them. This is great for when you want to create a season specific look (e.g. everyone in short sleeves).
• Nothing similar to Paul’s Reaction Tester was available in our game version but I believe that something like it will probably be shipped with the game (not 100% sure).

Issues
Aside from the time it will take for the community to crack the game so that we can have custom content and hacks, I did notice some issues with the game that will make making movies more difficult. Again, the version we had wasn’t the release version and the machinima directors had a feedback session with a Sims team member asking for things in the game. Some of feedback may be addressed, other will not. Anyway, here’s what I noticed:

• Overall, the animations are not as fluid. I also don’t like the way they walk which looks rather stiff. They seem to have a default pose (the idle stand one) they revert to before each new animation, even when walking and they need to climb stairs or change direction. I always loved the way the animations were so fluid in Sims 2 and that was one of the reasons I preferred Sims 2 for machinima over something else like MovieStorm. Also, when you queue several actions in a row, they will stop for too long before starting the next one in the queue. In Sims 2, they go from one to next without much delay.
• You can’t control the clock. This is especially difficult when the lighting changes so much throughout the day, giving you a very small window of time to get your shot. We all know a 4-second shot can sometimes take an hour in real time to shoot and having to continually fast forward makes filming very time consuming. We’re hoping they give us the ability to set the time and/or freeze it.
• You can’t grab Sims while you’re in the neighborhood. Every time you try to do that, the game will take you back to your lot. This can especially be frustrating when a townie stands in your shot or if you need to place your Sim in a specific location.
• As mentioned before, the townies are decent looking and can work as extras but you can’t control them. So, if you have a beach scene in summer, you might have a townie dressed for fall walk into your shot. As mentioned, you can easily change their clothes and hair but it’s still a pain every time a new one walks into your scene. Even when you are on your own lot, townies walk by all the time.
• Even with relationships maxed via cheat, it’s a lot more difficult to have Sims do romantic socials than in Sims 2. You do have to spend some time having them interact a lot before they’ll accept those socials. I played for half a day trying to get my Sim to woohoo and had no luck.
• This really isn’t a huge issue but your Sim no longer gets into and out of the car. The car just appears when you tell them to drive it and the car disappears when they arrive at their destination. This not only means that you can’t show them getting in and out but you can’t have in-car scenes either (without a custom pose)! They do have bicycles that they can ride in lieu of the car (which looks cool) but they appear and disappear just the same. As just a side note, you can tell Sims to walk or run to their destination which I thought was a nice feature (which means no more setting up chairs off camera so that your Sims don’t run to a distant location—yes, that is how I do it).

General Impressions
So I’m sure you’re wondering what I think about the Sims 3 as a machinima platform. Of course my assessment will change as the community cracks the game and custom content and hacks are able to be made. There’s also the issue of not being able to make custom poses—it took three years for the right tools to come out for that to be easily possible in Sims 2. I’m guessing it may take even longer with Sims 3, it’s so much more complex. Aside from those issues though, I think Sims 3 might be a great tool for making music videos. The camera controls and lighting changes alone would make that easier and give directors more options for setting mood. For talkies, however, I can’t imagine using Sims 3 at this point. It’s difficult enough to make them using Sims 2 with all the hacks we have at our disposal but without them, I don’t think it’s something I’d even attempt with Sims 3. I suppose you can use 3^rd party programs for animating lips but I prefer to use the in-game talking. The other thing that’s different about Sims 3 is that it’s more about living outside just the lot, which is great for gameplay, but gives directors less control over what’s happening in the background and what the extras are doing. I suppose we’re all spoiled at this point with the cc’s and hacks which make almost any type of movie possible to make but I’m sure directors will be able to come up with work-arounds for Sims 3.

Regardless of what I think, I think it will be exciting to see what the Sims community comes up with to customize the game, as well as new features released by the Sims team via EPs. Customization is what’s really kept my interest in the game and keeps me coming back for more. I think that however better the Sims 3 looks with its improved graphics, I’m looking forward to it being even more jaw dropping once the community gets its hands on it.

If you have any questions about Sims 3, please feel free to ask and I’ll do my best to answer them. Please do, however, read other people’s comments and my replies before asking your questions so that we’re not redundant.  :)

EDIT:  The question and answer session is now closed.

I wasn’t going to say anything about my being at the Sims 3 Creator’s Camp until after I got back but since someone out-ed me, I’ll just confirm that yes indeed I am here.  I am planning to blog about my experience with Sims 3, particularly as a tool for machinima, when I get back home which won’t be until later in the week since I’m staying here a bit longer to visit friends.  I’ll give you guys a chance to ask me all the questions you want then but please do not ask me right now because I won’t really be on the computer until I get back.

In the meantime, if you want, you can visit the worldsims website where you can listen to live podcasts from the event.  The second podcast has me in it for almost an hour trying to capture one scene (and not being very successful).  If you want to hear me suffer and yell at my sim, then head on over.  Later!