Today (Friday, July 18th) marks the day of a special fan site presentation from the Maxis Studio on The Sims 3.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get to go.  I was mentioned but they decided not to invite me (probably due to my ranting on SecuROM and the fact that if I went I’d might get thrown out).  But that is to discuss for another time.

Anyways, The Sims Resource and Worldsims/UOEM are invited as well as a few other sites.  They will be trickling out information in the upcoming days so this thread contains all information from those guys.  Be sure to check back often for news, information, videos, screens and more!

Articles/Previews

30) Specific homework tasks for kids, like read a certain book or catch a certain fish.

31) Moodlets replace memories.

32) Moodlets are icons in the UI and are based on activities and events that are happening that day (moving home, being comfortable, getting married, having a kids etc.)

33) Moodlets give an insight into why a Sim is acting the way it is.

34) Brush teeth is back – Gives a “minty breath” moodlet.

35) Cell phone notification system to noify you of opportunities and can be used for contacts etc. All Sims have one.

36) Funds and worth as 2 separate values now (worth includes property and object values)

37) Difficulty levels per family (suggest how hard a family is to play based on personalities etc)

Read more points over at TSR’S look at The Sims 3

On the other hand I’ve seen a lot of stuff nobody asked about or paid attention to. There are many features added which makes things such as building, designing and playing with your sim much easier and much more fun. Also, the new graphics look fantastic. On the screens it may not look every different but when you see it in movement it looks much better. For example, think about trees and plants slowly moving in the wind. And about shadows matching your sim’s movement; if your sim raises a hand, you can now actually see the shadow of the hand on that sim.

SimParool’s take on the event translated thanks to InfiniteSims

Is Build and Buy Mode are still in use? (Is it different with the no loading times?)
Skye wrote:  It’s pretty much the same as of now, that could change.

What are the build tools like?
Skye wrote:  Here are some of the cool build things…there is a placement tool that allows you to place objects on 1/4 square so you can center things without a cheat. There is also a tool that allows you to Place objects anywhere outside of the grid. There is a diagonal placement tool.

Will we still be able to build without having sims on a lot?
Skye wrote:  Yes. Any objects you want to move you can drag and drop from one lot to another . You can also, if you start to build a lot and then decide it’s not big enough, move the house to another lot!

Will there be Round Walls?
Skye wrote:  No

More questions are asked and answered over at SterlingSims2

So, they basically talked about the game, answered (some) questions about the game (they “couldn’t talk about” yet, but oh well), and showed us some of the gameplay (by us, I mean roughly 25 people from 18 different countries). Anyhoo, some good points of interest:

  • Weather is NOT official in the base game yet. The pictures were decieving. They could not comment on whether it WAS going to be in the game or not, but they could tell us that it is definitely not official.
  • One second in real time = one minute in Sim’s life.
  • You can work on aspects of your job outside of work (through the Oppertunity System), but you can not actually watch them at work.
  • The mailbox is moveable.
  • Sims still spin around to change, and trashbags still appear from nowhere.
  • There will be six life stages, one of which is a fully fledged version of Young Adult. Young Adult is actually the default stage in CAS.
  • There are about 75 traits that are nearly official, including everything from evil to excitable to slob.
  • My FAVORITE part of the new info – adjustable skintones and eye colours. There are presets, of course, but there is are also slidebars, palettes, AND spectrums (mainly for the eyes). And you can save any colour you pick as a preset. Trust me, it’s better than it sounds.

Many more facts can be found at SimsForums.net

Everything about The Sims 3, with MM from EA Redwood, California.

4:00 PM – Internet Room: Hey buddies, I’m posting this live from EA, really a lot of things are happening here, and I have A LOT OF informations about The Sims 3. Unfortunately we could not use the images of the demos that we’ve seen today, but the game is awesome!

I’m going to show something to you:

Hairs, Eyes and Skintones: unbeliavebly customisable! Now we have an unbelieveble color palette, where we can go from the whitest hair to the redest hair, with no despair. Eyes of the most incredible colors with just a click, and skins coming from green to the weird blue.

Objects in the Build mode: Have you ever imagined to build your living room with a tool that allows your objets to turn 360º freely? And you do not have to follow the “squares” of the build mode? Yeah, we’ll can do this and a lot more in The Sims 3.

Facelift: When you wanna play with the face of your sims, the ‘Facelift’ is incredible! Mouths, ears, noses, etc. are very much easy to change and are so much detailed.

Diet?: Fatty or skinny sims, don’t matter! The scale of change of body mass is incredible as the facelift. We’ll have a tool which can change the sims, and so you’ll have fatty or one super muscular sim!

Neighborhood: Walk around your neighborhood and look out all sims heving fun is just beautiful! The water reflex are awesome, and the dusk is single. It’s awesome you see the neighborhood from the sky, take a zoom and you’re inside of your sim’s house, without loading! The sky starts blue, turns orange (REALLY!), purple and, finally, dark blue. WONDERFUL!! Ah, and the shadows have movement!

A lot more have been talked, and we still have some conventions to visit.
The complete field will come soon, in our new Simpost!

See you later,

This is an email from Marcos of www.sims3maniacos.net
Bye! 🙂

Screens

Josh has uploaded some screens from the event to his Sims 3 UOEM Gallery.  Check them out!