'Sul Sul' - A Maxis podcast

"Gordy;c-17047787" wrote:
I really like how it was only 17 minutes long, instead an hour+. Between IRL responsibilities and video games, I don't have a lot of time to just sit and listen. Grant and Lyndsay have great speaking voices, too.

I wrote down points I thought were interesting. Please excuse me if I misunderstood some of the details, whoops.

Spoiler

• Lyndsay used to be an art major.
  
• Each of the three base neighborhoods in Sims 2 (Strangetown, Veronaville, Pleasantview) were designed to be different from each other, and show off different aspects of the game. Pleasantview was an introduction to the game, with a relatively normal setting. Strangetown was there to show off the weirder aspects of the game, like ghosts and aliens. Veronaville highlights the complex dramas and relationships sims could have.
  
• Lyndsay really likes Strangetown and its goofiness. She grew up in Reno, so a desert location with Area 51 vibes reminded her of home.
  
• She seems to really like Nervous Subject.
  
• Grant asked Lyndsay what story resonated the most with fans. She answered with the Goth family because they've been around so long, but especially the mystery around Bella. The mystery ended up being way more fascinating to people than they planned it to be.
  
• Grant has been asked about the mystery, but he never has an answer for it, since the absence of an answer is a bit more interesting.
  
• Lyndsay's the opposite, "I've answered it numerous times." She explains how Bella was abducted by aliens and was supposed to show up in Strangetown, but a bug prevented her from showing up anywhere. (I don't know, she appeared in Strangetown for me.)
  
• Lyndsay managed these neighborhoods along with some people helping with directing and designing. She had a giant spreadsheet for every sim's individual relationships, careers, etc. (I did that back for my Sims 2 neighborhood and it was a pain in the butt. I can't imagine how she did it, but on a much larger scale.)
  
• Grant was in charge of the credits file. It got so big, every time he saved it, it would re-toggle the Czech characters from the Czech language, so he would have to save twice to fix it.
  
• Setting up the Goth household scenario (when you first load the lot and get to play) was almost impossible, because all the sims kept choosing to do something else. She had to keep turning sim autonomy on and off.
  
• Lyndsay mentioned how they fudged up the Broke family timeline. (Brandi getting pregnant with Skip's baby after he already died.)
  
• She was updating some roofs in the catalog. In her first check-in, crashed the entire game for everybody in the studio. "I changed the text file and everything exploded!"
  
• One night, she was asked to redesign CAS. "Did not work, I broke everything."
  
• She made the Zodiac icons.
  
• When asked which Sims 2 Story she could remake in the future, she would remake the Specters. She loves them and would like to delve more into Olive's backstory with her husbands.
  
• Lyndsay misses the family albums function. Me, too.
  
• Question of the week: "How do we decide which packs to make, and when do we make them?"
  
• Answer: They get feedback from multiple sources: the community's requests; they do a lot of research; they look at how past packs sold; they evaluate current marketplace trends, culture, and what's currently popular; finally they ask the team what they want to make
  
• As for when: bigger projects take a lot of resources, especially if they involve changes to the engine. (Pets and Create-a-Pet, flora being updated to work with Seasons' weather and seasonal changes.)
  
• "We also try to examine the overall ecosystem; for example, if we are making, you know, a lot of serious experiences like Get to Work and Get Together, we try to then incorporate something a little bit different, like Vampires. And if we're focused too much on careers, well, we try to include some family gameplay."
  

It's not mentioned in the podcast, but I believe the Bella Goth in Strangetown is the real one. I'm sure most people suspected this by now, but there was some debate back in the day. The official Sims 2 site "interviewed" ST Bella and talked about how she was slowly regaining her old memories.

At any rate, count me as a listener going forward. This was pretty cool.

I solved the mystery during Sims 2 and ST Bella wasn't the real one in the actual game. The real one basically fell out of the sky in my game when Mortimer would get blind dates from the Gypsy fortune teller. You have to look in the memeories of the Sims Bella's and you see the real one had memories of having Cassandra and Alexander (ST Bella doesn't have them) as well as look in their files using Simpe and you see the real one has 2 death tokens - which in order to get her back into the game - you have to get rid of both those death tokens and then remove every Sims memories of Bella actually dying - as there are sims that get memories of Bella and a grave stone (Cassandra and Alexander both get them - and several other Sims do too (like Don and the two sisters) after you get rid of Bellas two death tokens those memories show up. ) I do not know how to remove or see all that in the character without Simpe though - but if you learn how to use it - you can get the real Bella back in your household. Oh and also give Mortimer a youth potion other wise he will die from old age before any of that can happen. I had no luck bringing Bella back with out Mortimer - so you need to keep him alive.