I failed to find any kind of search option for this forum, and after checking at least the first 10 pages I decided this issue has probably not been raised before, or was raised such a long time ago it deserves to be raised again.

The topic says it all. I am looking for a mod that affects Free Will, and more specifically, a mod that allows sims in who live in the household you currently are in control of to actually do things during their days more than trying to satisfying their specific needs. (Obviously, if I want to reduce the amount of actions the sims do on their own I would simply turn off Free Will.)

What I'm looking for is probably something like a roleplaying mod but deals with the household you currently are in control of instead of the town.

I also checked through the current mods that I could find on this site at and been trying to Google, but got no hits on Free Will at least, so I am not sure whether such a mod would exist.

I am very much a passive gamer when it comes to The Sims. I am not much for making up storylines everytime I play, as most of my enjoyment out of the game comes from improving the lives of my sims passively, by for example buying items that they are themselves unable to buy. House-building among other features are things that interest me more than creating epic storylines.

However, in order to actually be able to constantly tinker on that house, I need a legacy. But having a legacy is simply impossible in Sims 3 as long as you are in control of the household and you do not prompt your sims to find a partner.

However, what I miss in Sims 3 is currently an option to be able to tell whether a sim finds another sim attractive. Some traits obviously matter; a computer whiz will have a hard time being with a technophobe, but these are just extremes and do not cover the small nuisances between why a sim would prefer a sim with who is a daredevil, got a green thumb, is absent-minded, a hydrophobe and good over someone who is charismatic, a bookworm, evil, a loner and a great cook.

Therefore, I find romantic interaction in particular quite boring to force onto my sims, but this is something that is not possible as long you are in control of the household. What I speak of here are of course actions that allows the sims you currently control to be able to WooHoo, make kids, marry, go steady and so on on their own without me having to prompt them to. While I've seen sims that I control to randomly become romantic interests, anything beyond that point seems impossible for them to do on their own, making romantic relationships rather boring to play because if you let them do it randomly it never develops, but if you control it, well, you control it and there's no real determiner why your sim prefers a guy or a gal or both, and what traits they find more attractive over others because you can make a sim like anyone and anything.

I haven't even seen any wishes in relation to going steady, marry etc, so a sim can theoretically have romantic interest with the whole town but never want to actually be together with anyone. And the whole idea of the line between romantic interest and going steady is quite odd, since, considering to in real life standards, people who go steady are simply people who dated for a long time. The option itself therefore makes no sense more than to signify whether a sim has a partner or not; but in this case I do prefer The Sims 2 option where every romantic interest was a partner, because it is!

And of course, EA's sims suck because they either a) already got partners and b) look awful in design. And there are MANY of them and trying to single one out is nigh impossible at some point, if your sim has to date every guy/gal in town just to see if your sim just might want to kiss that guy/gal, which would in that case turn the friendship into a romantic interest.

So, anyway, is there any mod that allow these kind of things? Having the sim wanting to actually go outside to say, visit a store would be even better, but as long there are wishes to do that I'm fine, really.

(And of course, this kind of mod would work well with other roleplaying mods that affect the local neighborhood only.)

The Master Controller and NRass Story progression help me a great deal with these. With these one can allow for greater autonomy and you have a lot of control over how much. I hope that I understood your meaning though. The other is the auto-romantic social mods, there are 3 I can think of off hand. NRass allows for it I believe and Awesome mod and a third whose creator I cant think of just now oh! and INteen. Make sure you check that the version you down load is compatible with your EPs, there will be different versions.

this link will take you to NRASS: http://ts3.tscexchange.com/index.ph...g22673#msg22673
This will take you to More Awesome than You: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/

Thanks for the suggestions. I looked up MasterController, and as the name implies, it controls everything else but your sim. I do not want other sims to be controlled in their neighborhood, I want my sim to have more free will, more wants and wishes and do more on its own than it currently will. I do not consider sitting a whole day in front of the TV and occasionally eat, pee and sleep as a lot of free will. In Sims 2, a sim would for example be able to have crushes on others without that sim being attracted back, and there might be options where that sim wants to engage in a romantic relationship etc. These don't seem to exist in Sims 3, and it makes relationship development rather boring because I have yet to see my sims go "I want to become a partner with sim X!". I don't mind to do it for them, but the sim must be scripted to select themselves. They currently can't.

So basically, instead of forcing other sims to visit my house, I want my sim to visit THEIR house. Or at least want to visit someone else's house. If the sim got a wish to do so, at least I can myself prompt it to fulfill that wish. I don't mind to fulfill wishes of that kind given that they appear, but there are none of as I am aware of, which is odd considering that sims that you do not currently control happily seem to visit each other all the time (and don't get me started on how shoddy the interface to visit friends' houses is...).

As for NRASS, it seems unclear whether the mod affects sims I do not currently control or both; if it allows those options enlisted for my sim I currently control as well, it might be something like that I am looking for, if not, no.

While AwesomeMod got some nice features, it is not something I am specifically looking for as other similar mods will provide the same features I am looking for.

You see, the illusion of free will in the Sims is so great, you actually believe that the sims are alive and have a free will!

Everything the sims do is the result of their programming. If the sims do anything, it is because someone programmed it.

Both Awesome mod and Twallan's Story Progression program actions for the sims. They represent two very different approaches.

At some point there has to be a random factor. A random number is generated (and generating truly random numbers is impossible with a computer -- but pseudo random numbers can be generated), and the result is cross indexed with a table. Or something along those lines. The random number can be modified by other factors like skills, occupations or traits. Or different tables can be used. The people who program these things can tell you how they do it.

But a true artificial intelligence is very difficult, if not impossible, to do. Programming strategy is one of the hardest programming feats. (Although I am not a programmer, my dad used to be a programmer at Bell Labs where he wrote programs for military and telephone applications.)

Actually, the best option for most sims would be to have them watch TV. In fact, watching TV should be the default action of any sim. Unless a sim is given an instruction otherwise, they should be sitting in front of a TV, or maybe playing computer games -- something non-productive. After all, it's what real life people do!

Well, your post is kinda of... counterproductive, because ultimately, humans too, are in a sense just very advanced programs. We are defined both due to our genetics and the social environment we live in, and if you are hardcore determinist, free will does not exist as everything you do is a part of a huge cause and effect chain. And lastly, ultimately, random can never truly be random. Even chaos theory and other events that we consider random in real life are just caused by probability. There is an X amount of chance a certain event will happen, and it will happen given long enough time spent in game.

I am very well aware that such things would be programmed however; but when I play Sims, I am no control freak as I know others can be. I like the sims to do things on their own - being completely fully aware this is a programmed feature. However, I take delight in improving their lives, but a sim who only spends watching TV is no fun to play because there is nothing to improve in its life! To me, it is completely pointless to engage in a romantic relationship with a sim if there is no reason that the sim would do so more than you telling it to; specifically if there is nothing that would sort out that sim among other potential partners. As I read someone else saying, I like romantic relationships to be spontaneous just like they appear to be in real life, because The Sims is ultimately a simulator of human behavior, and some like their sims to behave more human than others. I belong to the former category, obviously.

Lastly, while programming can be a very complex profession, the programming I am asking for is actually quite simple because it doesn't add new behavior or content to the game - it existed in Sims 2 for christ's sake (and possibly vanilla Sims, but I can't remember because it was such a long time ago I played it). The layout is already there in the existence of wishes. I don't mind if the potential partner is randomly regenerated based on a) sexual preference and b) potential sims matching that preference in the friends pool. If people are capable of adding new traits and make the sims behave accordingly, then, adding new wishes and opening up more autonomy should not be that hard because all that content already exists; it is just not implented when you control the household.

Actually, it is a return to reality. In the Sims, free will is a clever illusion. In real life, maybe.



Get real here, in Sims 2, the sims wouldn't even take a leak without being told to do so!

Have you looked at Twallan's Woohooer mod? It has attraction scores based on traits, and sims can 'gauge attraction'.

What I miss is the Sims 2 'scope room' interaction. It would be great if that was trait based and autonomous in the sims 3.

And in real life, free will is an even more clever illusion. Just ask around how many people perceive themselves as having free wills. Some religions like Christianity even support the idea of humans having a free will. Hence, stop making strawmen. My issue is not whether free will actually exists or not, my issue is that I want my sims to be able to act out more than they are currently able to. That the programmers of Sims 3 call this "free will" got absolutely nothing to do with actual free will.


Then please read what I write instead of thinking you understand my issue. I already said that I don't mind controlling my sims, if they would at least have an additional scope of wishes that would for instance enhance the development of romantic interests but they really don't. You can try to engage two sims forever and they still insist on remaining just friends, and they will never pop their own wishes of what sim they would prefer as a partner instead.

Furthermore, you are derailing the topic. I am asking for the possible existence of a mod that either does a) allows autonomy for sims to develop romantic interests on their own while the player is controlling the household (currently not possible, including options such as WooHoo and making kids) or b) at least create wishes to do any of these things I've already suggested.

This is not very complicated programming because the basic script is already there, in the actual game. You just allow the sims some more options by adding lines that would otherwise lock these options out as long as the sims are under the player's control. Judging what some mods seem to do, this kind of mod seems like children's play in comparison.

I won't respond more to your posts; again, they are counterproductive because you do not add anything to the actual topic and you create strawmen based on my opinions about what I find to be lacklusters with the game instead of properly addressing my issues.

I'll gladly discuss the possible existence of free will with you, but not here and not in this topic and not like this, when you cannot even construct proper arguments that actually address mine.

I didn't know that the WooHooer mod did this. I might check it out later. I would also like to see sims to be able to interact more freely based on their traits; it would add a very deep level of social interaction between the sims with many small nuisances that would go beyond the technophobe might have issues living with a computer whiz.

I am hoping EA might pick this up in later expansions... but considering they seem to have done nothing with Late Night that would make the interactions between sims more advanced (and again, they did it in Sims 2, so how hard should it be?), I currently don't even find the expansion itself attractive. Besides adding some new professions and the ability to play a vampire, I don't really see much of an addition with the expansion pack. At least Ambitions got some really fun professions to play, albeit rather time-consuming (but on the other hand, you aren't forced to twiddle your fingers every time your sim goes to work).

Anyway, I am actually getting so frustrated to the point where I'm considering in making my own mod. I will definitely check out the WooHoo mod though, the description was certainly unclear on the features you mentioned or I would've downloaded it right away.

The answer is simple: There *ARE* no such nuances (and you do mean nuances rather than nuisances, right?). Traits are either matching, or antitraits. Sims therefore get along best with those who have as many traits like them as possible. If this does not fit your model of attraction, tough beans, because there's nothing else intrinsic to the game that promotes this behavior. Without a specific turn-on/turn-off system, everything else in the world that isn't specifically matching is just a bland field of indifference. Anything else is just a table of arbitrary random rules made up by the developer, which probably won't match your own vision of how things should work.

I'm not quite sure I agree with you, because there are so many in-game features that completely mow over any differences there would be, for instance the Celebrity reward. I actually tried to set up two sims who would, at least in theory hate each other, it turns out they kind of go along better than I thought unless I consciously tried to make them enemies.

Trait-matching and romance are very weakly related in real life, right? Opposites attract sometimes. So simple matching doesn't really make the game more realistic or more fun.

However, what I'd really like to see is richer interactions between traits. Traits that have a synergistic effect on overall behavior. EA was thinking along these lines at one point- in the XML you can find trait aggregates called 'personas' (search MTS for threads that mention 'personas' or 'combo traits', this has been discussed before).

Here's the thing: other than 'make a move', they've actually avoided adding systems for dating, attraction, richer romantic interactions, turn-offs and turn-ons etc. in the latest expansion pack. They know fans absolutely want these things. My conclusion is that these have been allocated for some kind of romance-related expansion pack in the future. Late Night is about clubbing, maybe this future expansion pack will be about love and marriage. Just wild speculation but it kinda makes sense. And also keep in mind that Sims 3 expansion packs are really a diverse grab-bag of features, they could even make a case for putting this stuff in with Seasons...