TSO in SL? (read before voting please)

Sorry, no pie . I like pie, pecan or cheesecake especially, but for a poll I'd rather have people give me a relevant answer. If you're good, you might get pie later (sort of related to the topic ).

I recently read a post from someone who didn't think that a sims like game in SL had any point. I understand what they were thinking but at the same time the idea didn't sound as wacky as some of the things drifting around SL.

Here's the general idea. A Hud that emulates the functionality of a TSO avatar. For those that may not know, TSO is The Sims Online. I do not mean the entire TSO game. Things like Gnoming, or Potion making that were tediously borring in TSO are not necessary in SL. We can do real projects to build real skill and make L. The main part of the game would be the hunger, hiegene, energy, bathroom, fun, comfort, and aesthetic's bars. Related to those bars would be a market for game related furniture, appliances, and doodads, scripted to work with the game. The game would be about keeping your avatar healthy and happy. Something along the lines of a virtual pet.

Now most of you are probably wondering, "why would I want to make playing sl more difficult? I like the freedom I have now!" I understand completely . This type of thing wouldn't be for everyone or even most people. For others, it may be something to do in a game they already can't see the point of. If having something to do, or playing for the sake of play isnt' good enough, then it might be possible to include some prizes based on happiest avatar, most social avatar, most visited cafe, etc and so forth.

Now, for those who are thinking they might play it, I would attempt to calibrate things such that you can continue playing SL in much the same way that you normally do. IE you can carry food with you if you need to eat, sitting will slow down the drop of your rest meter (on any furniture, not necessarly game scripted) so you can continue chatting. that sort of thing.

I don't want to detract from SL by suddenly making you collapse fast asleep at inopportune times . That happened in the sims more than it should have. In this SL version I'd like to emulate real life a little closer. In RL you can stay up for days if you really want to, you just get a little stupid. In this game, if you decide to stay up for 12 hours straight (about 2 SL days), it would be roughly equivalent to pulling an all nighter in RL. I'll have the attachment give you a nudge here and there while walking to simulate a stumble if you're really tired. Play an animation or 2 like shaking your head and rubbing your temples, rubbing your eyes, stretching and yawning. Now if you decided to stay up for 18-24 hours RL (3-4 days SL) then I might make your avatar collapse in a heap and snore . Depending on how full your status bars are your avatar might refuse to do some things. If the avatar isn't hungry and you make it eat it may refuse, it's hygiene might drop along with it's mood. If it's tired it might fall asleep and take a moment to respond to controls if you leave it idle. If you aren't social enough it might decide it doesn't want to sit down without other avatars around, or it might yell at you . The game would use the SL day, which I believe is 4 hours of light and 1 or 2 of dark. going offline would restore all of your meters slowly the longer you are offline. If you stay offline for 5 days your meters would probably be full or close to it, similar to what happened in the Sims.

For those of you who think it's an intersting idea, but probably wouldn't play, consider taking part in another way. I have seen cafe's and coffee shops, delis and bakeries in SL. Currently they are so much eye candy. If I can make it easy enough to sell your own foods, furniture, and appliances as part of the game, and if I only take a small cut from each game item you sell, would you consider making your places and items functional? it would probably involve a dispenser script or several at your shop, and giving the items to me for scripting and distribution from a central point. I realize that requires that you trust me, but if you want me to sign paperwork granting me specific rights I will do so using my RL identity. There would of course be a directory for game enabled shops, and if possible an easy in world method for finding places close by (easier when we get outbound http, which should happen this Wednesday or Thursday).

Lets see, what have I forgotten.

SLs permissions do not lend themselves to a game requiring an open API or scripting standards. food and objects would probably have to be sent to avatars from a central dispenser meaning that if someone wants to create food, they'd have to submit it for distribution.

An important aspect related to the above, would be pricing of amenities. For instance if the food protocol was opened up or even distributed by licenseing of a closed script (creator linked), there's still a pretty good chance that eventually food would be available for free, which defeats the purpose of any such game for both the player, and for the service owner. It should be pretty inexpensive 5-20L say, but it should not be free. Likewise for game enabled furniture and appliances. This means that to participate in the game in a support roll there will have to be some funky distribution channels and price controls (at least lower bounds).

Also an important aspect of this game would be that items are not copyable. Possibly resellable, but not copyable. In SL one of the things people take for granted is that things are not used up, but in tso and the sims, many items are definately perishable, and should be.

This is a game. There's some inherent paradox in SL. The freedom to do anything, including the freedom to limit yourself for the sake of "playing".

If there's seriously interest in something like this I'd be willing to start it up. This could even include house building al'a sims, which is an idea that's crossed my mind before. If you look at this idea and say, hmm... yes this is something that i would do, please take into account that from the developer side this is not a small project and I would expect to make some money off of it. if you have to eat about 3 times a sim day, buy appliances, furniture etc, then you my pay something between 15-50L per day. Of course you can stop playing at anytime by taking off the attachment, but there will be a penalty for doing that in your meters... IE if you detach your attachment you are free as long as you want, but when you reattach it you will have half of all your bars.

To sum up: A game, like the Sims, ported to SL, in such a way as to maintain the spirit of the sims, and to add to the SL experience rather than detracting from it.

I appreciate your input either as a reply or just a vote .

It couldn't hurt to give it a try. You don't have an option for being willing to try so I picked answer one.

I must admit I didn't read the price when I answered the question. I have a big balance so I could pay if I wanted, but basic account on a budget might find the price to be a problem. Maybe the drop in bar levels could be less than what you have in mind so people would be more likely to play part time, or you might be able to have different levels of participation, with different prices, or even an old fashioned free trial to see if you could get somebody hooked.

Although I don't agree or disagree with this one. But having a hunger meter and tireness meter, that just drop in time but DON'T do anything, might motivate those who want to play to go buy some food or go to rest when they want =p maybe someone can finally open a resturant in SL =p

Having meters that just show but don't do anything won't hurt those who don't want to involve as well

Aside from any satisfaction or fun people might glean from this, I'm also attempting to think up ways for it to give a possible hard return. If it's just a pretty meter on their screen with no real effect, then where's the challenge. anyway, taking off the hud is perfectly viable if you need to be unencumbered.

hehe, you're right there's no option for I'll try it, but i figured that fell under, "yep, I'll play" even if only temporarily. If what I come up with sucks so bad that you don't play even after trying it, then that's nobodies fault but my own.

Not sure about playing, but I might be interested in making some bits and bobs for you. Only thing is I've just started a new job and trying to sort out (read: running around like a loony) moving house so I'm not too avaliable at the moment.

Not sure how long you're looking at developing this so I might not be of use to you but if I can help let me know what you're thinking of building for the game via IM (I have a habit of forgetting to check forums, whereas my IMs are e-mail to me ) and I'll let you know what I can do.

That's kind of funny, I had the almost exact kind of idea, and I was even beginning work on such a thing. XD

-edit: Actually, I should note, the idea was from a good friend of mine.

Might turn out a bit too stressful for me. I have Sims2 and that will cover the need to be a control freak once in a while.

If you want to work together on it that would be cool. Warning, I'm kind of a perfectionist

There's a lot of current and ex TSO players here - such as myself - so what you're proposing is kind of how I imagine a "Sims 2 Online" to be.

Let's not forget where "Pizza" came from... Linden Labs could learn a *lot* from the success of the Sims games.

Lewis

Ok this can already be done thru careful scripting. Although it'd lag pretty bad because it would require timers and stuff but it is possible already. They have those pregnant things where you need to eat and sit down alrready!!! so it is possible to do this . Although if people want the features they could simply go to TSO. You did leave it for a reason im guessing lol. If people wanted to do it cool but it shouldnt be a feature built into SL directly. But it can be done thru huds...

No, definately not built into sl directly. That would make it a requirement, this is optional, and for fun.

It would not be laggy, I'd need one timer (not even running faster than once per 1 or 2 seconds), and one listen on an off channel.

Who on earth would want to play tso!? it may have the hud built into it, but because of that it's not optional. in TSO the bars ruled your life, not what I want with this. In TSO there was nothing else to do, not build stuff, barely play dress up, not use custom dances, etc.

My thinking is that the idea behind TSO wasn't bad, but TSO itself was badly done and essentially a grind of the worst sort with little to no creative outlet. This might be one of those few cases where something in SL can be much much better than the original. In SL, there are creative and interesting things of your choosing to be done while taking care of your avatar, and taking care of your avatar can be a small and fairly unobtrusive minigame that might just create a market for avatar-needs services and locations, may create a slightly deeper sense of immersion, could enhance communities and sense of place, and might even provide a few laughs now and then.

it would require more then one timer if you had more then 1 bar =P and the food would need to be scripted to respond to it etc =P

I would like to see what happens when you are at an event where a toilet isnt available....

*hopping around with crossed legs* "brb need to tp to the toilet before my AV explodes"

Why? I've been scripting for about 7 months now in SL and I can't think of a single reason that more than one bar on the HUD would mean more than one timer. O.o

nope, only one timer. link messages are wonderful things . all the food has to do is say, I'm attached! and the hud can do the rest on it's one timer.

hehehehehehe, yes, see that's why it would be fun.

have to script a virtual mother to ask you if you've gone to the bathroom before you get in the car .

Well, I do admit this is a great Idea. Thing is I doubt you are going to try and make a profit, for a sim is Expensive , compared to the prices. So, I am glad you will offer this game at a fair price. If/When you finish it make sure to make a post I'd love to try it out or help develop it.

I left TSO, and i really dont want it in SL.

You can use a single timer event to perform / coordinate EVERY timer based feature in every script within a single object. Method posted here:

/54/d7/110734/1.html

yep that's essentially it. The person who posted a comment also has a point but the point is null if the lower granularity timers are all multiples of the highest granularity timer. IE if you're highest granularity is 1.0 second, then you might as well use that same timer for things that need to fire ever 2.0 seconds. since 2.0 is a multiple of 1.0 you're golden. If you were to absolutely need the lower granularity timer to fire every 1.5 seconds, then the lowest common denominator is 0.5 which means for it to work you'd need an event that fires 6 times in three seconds, as opposed to 5 times in 3 seconds. So there are cases where multiple timers should be better, but you can avoid most of those cases and it's not a lot better.

Oh the reason for the ganularity is because timer events can get skipped during times of sim lag.. so having one step higher ganularity helps keep syncronization for when you do lose ticks.

don't quite follow. If the sim is lagging than quite honestly I want to let it skip timer events if it needs to. Also, how would a higher granularity maintain syncronization if random events are being skipped?

if you had an item with a granularity of 1 and an event was dropped that means the script is an entire tick behind. If you have a slightly higher granularity and one gets skipped that means you are only a tiny bit behind and would need to skip more events to get an equal ammount out of sync.

ah gotcha.

You might want to inquire as to the legality of this. It would suck to have EA Games sue you.