Testing time

Angie as a child! She's actually pretty cute, I think.


Norm with the new skin which can be compared to this picture. I see no difference other than the skin is pixelly, but HP warns in her post that it will be like that due to the way skin are rendered in game. I would guess that's why the normal skins are so flat.

Norm running for another comparison.


Being a kid is sort of hard in TS3! The homework takes a while, and both of Angie's parents work now, so they're too tired by the time the family gets home to help her. I haven't managed to get her to skill in anything other than fishing, and that's only because she wanted to fish and it's a great father daughter bonding time.

It does seem like there is a lot more skilling. There is also a lot more sitting around with the game on fast forward waiting for the sims to finish their tasks. You can get help in the form of the opportunities. They will give you skilling and relationship boosts.


So tonight I abandoned Norm, Angie and Maggie and picked up my new character.

Meet girl who's name I can't remember. I remember her last name is Feliz, that's it. She is a complete tester sim. She's innapropriate and insane among other things. (She also is using the original skin here, not the default replacement.)

Her mission (my test) is to see if a sim can make a living doing something other than having a job.

There is plenty to do besides skilling and moving up the job ladder.

The first thing I had her do was to start collecting. It was cool, but not necessarily viable. She has to wander from one side of town to the other (lots of waiting time for me), and she doesn't necessarily get much from collecting. She might though if I have her keep at it.

Here she is sending stones away to be cut. They can then be displayed at home.

Check out her desk:

I love that clutter can be placed now without the use of something like OSMPs.


Ms. Feliz has taken to writing. I had her start on a trashy novel, but then she was given an opportunity to write a drama for someone that will pay well and give her a relationship boost with the person who asked for it.

So she's working on it now. I've been having some fun with her. Since she doesn't have a job or any responsibilities, I've just had her wandering around town. There are plenty of ways to make money other than jobs.

You can: get a part time job at a local business, you can invest in local businesses if you have enough money, you can find a random opportunity (these will show up as special icons on the map-- Norm ran across an eating contest that offered money.)

But money still remains difficult to accumulate. I would guess that it'll get easier with more EPs just like it did in Sims 2.