Spring4Sims – The Best Finds, Downloads & Hints for Your Sims

My favorite sites, Greetings from Mt. Geneva and Fuzzy Logic Dishwasher bring on reviews on the latest stuff pack and the newest world, Barnacle Bay (buy via TS3 Store). I haven’t bought the stuff pack yet, I plan to buy it with Late Night, but Barnacle Bay doesn’t seem to be my thing. A pirate bay with Caliente sisters sounds okayish, except the Caliente sisters look… old?! That’s the craziest thing they could do to them.

• Read TS3 Fast Lane Stuff review
• Read Barnacle Bay review

This might’ve been up for a few days, I’m not really sure now because I haven’t checked the official site for a while, but I think I may give the new tool a try. It seems very easy, but I think superior designers will like to stick Delphy’s Pattern Packager. (If you’re looking for tutorials for Delphy’s tool, take a look here.)

Click here to take a look at Create a Pattern tool!

I found this tutorial at Club Crimsyn and I think I’ll give it a try after my exams. I only have up to 1 GB of downloads and my game lags so much. The loading time is quite long, too.

The tutorial will teach you this:

If you primarily use package files for your custom content and have noticed increased load times and/or lag in your game, follow this tutorial to combine your CC into fewer, larger packages to fix the problem.

Read the tutorial now!

• 1.12 – The Sims 3,
• 2.7 – World Adventures,
• 3.3 – High-End Loft Stuff.

Installed them and everything looks fine so far. I noticed some differences in windows and how they reflect lights, the reflextions now look much stronger now. And I’m not sure if this bug is really fixed, but my Sims had a tendecy to ‘Wait outside’ when they had nothing in their to-do queue (it was listed just like any other activity). It seems to be gone now. *crosses her fingers*

Some new changes I appreciate:

• Sims may now walk and stand on bridges. Yay! I really missed that.
• Sims can unlock outfit choices and share them with household members when using the “Plan Outfit” interaction on the Dresser.
• Players may now use Create a Style on Ceilings or add and delete them when in Build Mode. I’m sure many of you’ll love this, although I think it’s just okay.
• Players may now manipulate the roof pitch for individual roof sections when in Build Mode. FINALLY!
• Sculptures can be found in a new Sculpture sorting category when in Buy Mode.
• Players may now use the Tattoo feature to customize Sims when in Create a Sim.
• Players may now select the Fiancé, Girlfriend, and Boyfriend relationship settings when in Create a Sim.
• Certain Adventures and Opportunities will properly display in the Opportunities Panel when traveling between worlds. This is helpful. For example, I always forget when my Sims should learn the martial arts to get a raise, now I see this all the time, so it works as a reminder.
• The Opportunity interface has been improved to clearly outline the fiction, gameplay objectives, rewards, and Opportunity location for all Opportunities and Adventures. This is really helpful, I’ve already seen the change.

And the not so nice change?

• This game update enables dynamic ad serving capabilities in The Sims 3. However, there are no immediate plans to activate any content of this kind. The Sims 3 EULA has further details. See http://www.ea.com/1/product-eulas.

If there will be ads in the game, I hope they will be decent. I don’t mind ads as long as they’re in form of new objects — like Renault Twizy or clothes from H&M or furniture from IKEA. I mean, these were objects people actually paid for and what they paid for was in fact advertisment. Yes, it’s super crazy when you think about it. We play the game and pay money for objects that is actually advertisement. But like I said, I don’t mind as long as it’s decent. H&M and IKEA objects were. Let’s hope it won’t be too different.

The list of all changes can be found here.

It’s a paradox that I don’t like the Sims parody for a movie that happens to be my favorite. I mean, I liked the SATC series a lot, the first movie was okay and I haven’t seen the new one, but you get the point. This parody is a little lame. Nothing beats the Twilight, Star Trek or Iron Man parodies, right? They were really funny! My opinion? People doing these parodies are geeks and they should stay true to sci-fi movies etc. Too much romance doesn’t do them good.

I was just playing The Sims 3 yesterday and started thinking about where has the good ol’ Collection Folders gone. Well, they didn’t excatly go anywhere since they’ve never been introduced in TS3, right? But there we go, Mackat has made her own way and created an online petition that everyone can sign. Easy like that. Now I’m crossing my fingers for EA Games to see this and take this seriously.

If you want Collection Folders in TS3, sign the petition now!

I found this set at the official Czech Store (just switch the language at the bottom of the official store site or follow this link) and I had to instantly download and install it! The set includes the new Renault Z.E. car which looks totally fun and a set of new eco-objects. Everything is for free.

I wasn’t able to find this set at the official US site, I wonder if it’s just a local product placement advertisement. Perhaps it is. You can download the set if you’re logged in via this page. Just click the STÁHNĚTE NYNÍ! button (right next to the car) and the download manager will open. That’s all, I’m sure you’ll enjoy!

I know I’m lame because I haven’t seen Iron Man but it seems like I’ll have to do some catching up because this parody is really awesome. Oh and once again, I love the new Servos!

One of my dear readers, SpacyCheese, has sent me an email regarding an issue with the official The Sims 3 Store. (You can read about the problem at the forums.) Apparently, she wanted to buy a few SimPoints but so far, she hasn’t receive any–only her money was taken from the credit card. No reply from EA Games untill now, though.

As much as I don’t want to spread panic between Simmers, I thought this information might be useful for others. You may want to consider the SimPoint cards (you can buy them at BestBuy, Amazon.co.uk or Play.com–it also never hurts to check out eBay), since you don’t need to share your credit card information with EA Games this way.

So, have you updated your game with the new patch? The last patch didn’t harm my game, but I’m being really curious and suspicious about this one. Please, let me know if you updated in the comments and whether there were any consequences… Thanks!