University Asylum by deann000 (TS2)

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Lorinsv
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University Asylum by deann000 (TS2)

Post by Lorinsv »

(Saved from a web archive. Source: https://web-beta.archive.org/web/201504 ... ic448.html)

I thought I'd post a fun challenge I made for myself some time ago and found fun to play. It is inspired by the Asylum challenge. You start with a household of 8 CAS university students and move them into a dorm. You only control one sim through the challenge, with the following exception: After you (your primary sim) talk to one of the other household members (secondary sims) , you can give that secondary sim a 'command' and tell them to do something. That is, you can control the secondary sim to make one action (such as play chess in order to learn logic skills). You must let the talk interaction complete before you issue the command to the secondary sim. Hint: as you get to know the secondary sims better, you can choose shorter-duration talk interactions. Optionally (makes the challenge easier), you can also give a 'terminate command' order to the secondary sim to cancel a command you gave (such as stop playing chess now). Alternatively, you can just interrupt the secondary sim with the primary sim in some way if you want an action you initiated to terminate. Optionally (makes the challenge harder), you can only do this a maximum of once per day for each other sim in the household. The goal is to try to graduate all 8 sims from the University. You are free to look at the secondary sims wants/fears and to lock wants fears to try to keep their aspirations up. Hacks are allowed, but of course some hacks could potentially really change the difficulty of the challenge. The challenge ends when the primary sim leaves university grounds.

This is a simple challenge in terms of rules and fairly short duration, and I found it a lot of fun. I used both optional rules, BTW, and somehow actually managed to get all 8 sims through college....though there was flirting with probation on more than one occasion.

Second Hint: a well laid out dormatory helps a lot. (I have my favorite dorm posted up on MTSI as Dorm Octavia--which is essentially the one I used for this challenge and the dorm I mostly use at University for most of my students.) A poorly laid out dormatory (in terms of this challenge) is a sentence to disasterville.

Third Hint: keep in mind that one of the interactions you will need to do for each secondary sim is tell them to choose a major--and doing this late in their college career could lead to difficulties in getting a passing grade.

Fourth hint: you can always do things like inviting the secondary sims to join you at playing Marco Polo, playing chess, etc and these actions do NOT count as your one command per day.

I don't do points myself, but I suppose you could give yourself points for each sim graduated, for semesters completed, semesters completed with honors, for joining a Greek House, Secret Society, being Big Man on Campus and so forth.


I have now run a version of this challenge in more true asylum form where the lead character was the only one controlled at all with the following exceptions: 1) each sim chose a dorm room door, 2) each sim chose a major (I think you have to do this as undecided is only valid for two years), 3) if sims stacked up at the portal and lost their go-to-final from the queue, I told them to go to finals (this happened 4-5 times--and I consider it correcting sloppy game programming), 4) one sim fell asleep in front of a bathroom door and after several hours I used moveobjects to move her so a sim trapped in a toilet could exit, 5) about 3-4 times I inadvertently clicked an action for a sim not the lead character by mistake and immediately canceled out (I dont think this made a difference). I DID look at sims stats and wants so that I could tell what skills they needed.
One key thing was to choose majors that have a possibility of graduating...meaning the major must have at least one skill demand each year that noncontrolled sims will either fill on their own (like creativity if they have musical instruments and canvases available so that they might choose to paint). Creativity, logic and physical fit the bill as you can ask sims to join you in swimming, in chess and they auto-choose artsy things a lot. If they have high neatness, cleaning can work. Sims will talk to birds and can gain charisma this way, but I had 2 of 7 sims gain any points, only a total of three points and all points were in the final semester of senior year. Psychology, drama, history and literature work here.
another key aspect for non-fall semesters was to invite sims to do research if they did not have enough credit to pass the semeseter.. Note that they will do research until some or all of their stats are exhausted, and are not interrupted by the active character's requests. So, research must be used carefully (late in the evening is good, after class and when they will have time to recover).
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