2012 Sims 3 Tournament General Rules (Read This First)

[Metropolis Man]

2012 Sims 3 Challenge Tournament Overview

Welcome to the 2012 Sims 3 Challenge Tournament! The 12-event Tournament runs from January 2nd to December 2nd (anyone can jump in the Tournament at any time throughout the year). Two events will kick off the season on Monday, January 2nd — one event will be a Minor (4 weeks long) and one event will be a Major (8 weeks long). Two more events will start once the Major is over and the same cycle continues through the year. Here is a link to the official 2012 Sims 3 Tournament Events Calendar. I will always post all rule sets 4 weeks in advance of starting dates.

The 2012 Tournament Champion will be the player at the top of the World Ranking at the close of the Tournament Finale in the beginning of December and will receive a complimentary future EA Expansion Pack (courtesy of Carl) as well as a 2012 Sims 3 Tournament Championship Plaque (courtesy of Metro). An Amazon.com gift card will be awarded to the first runner-up (courtesy of Pam).

General Challenge Rules

All challenge players are responsible for knowing and following the General Challenge Rules. The rules below apply to all 2012 Tournament events.  There will be exceptions and you will be clearly informed of those exceptions in individual rule sets.

Ready to Participate in the Tournament?
Awesome! There’s no need to PM me or anyone else stating you want to be in the Tournament. Just pick an event that is currently open and dive in.

Practicing for a Challenge
Practicing before you officially begin any challenge is fine, but once you create your scoring file, that’s it. You have one attempt at a challenge. You cannot create a 2nd scoring file.

Starting Dates/Closing Dates
All challenges begin on a specific date (a Monday) and close on a specific date (a Sunday). These dates are clearly noted at the bottom of a rule set. You need to be aware of these dates because playing your scoring file before the starting date or playing after the closing date is not allowed. Scores submitted after the closing date will not be accepted. The only time reference you need to remember is your local time/date. You must submit scores in the individual challenge thread before the closing date has come and gone in your local time zone.

Creating Your Scoring Game File
Before you create your challenge file, make sure you are patched up to EA’s most current patch.

All challenges begin in a fresh, virgin, completely unaltered town.
Unless the individual rule set states otherwise, you are free to create a file in any EA designed neighborhood or the forum's own Union Cove. You play the entirety of a challenge in one neighborhood and do not move to another one. You may only use the Edit Town screen before you enter Live mode and start to play your Sim(s) for the first time. You may only use the Edit Town screen for the following reasons:

• To add missing Book Corrals or Penningway Bookshelf to a town library. You cannot alter anything else in the library;
• To add missing lots such as Fire Stations, Salons, Laundromats, Consignment Stores, Bars, Subways, Studios, etc. to your neighborhood. Those added lots must be designed by EA and you can't alter them in any way. You can grab them in the Lot library or copy paste them from another unaltered EA-designed town;
• World Adventure's specific lots cannot be added to your town;
• Only one of a particular building/lot can be added (i.e. one Waylon’s Haunt can be added, not two);
• You cannot bulldoze existing structures to do so — these must be placed on empty lots, but you can bulldoze completely empty lots. This will let you free up space to create new empty lots of adequate size with the Edit World tool;
• You can also change an empty residential lot to a community lot type.

Options > Game Options: Freewill = High; Enable Story Progression and Enable Aging need to be checked. Sim Lifespan = Long (leave plumbob sliders at default far right setting).

Household Size: Individual Challenge rule sets will specify how many Sims/Pets you create and their starting life stage.

3rd Party Custom Content and Modifications
3rd party Custom Content that alters appearance such as skin tone or hairstyles, etc. can be used at the player's own risk. Modifications (mods) are patches that alter some core component of game play and are never allowed.

Cheats and Banned Content
In general, no cheats are allowed, but there will be exceptions for special events. You are always free to use the following cheats and do not need my permission to do so:

• Moveobjects on
• PlaceFriezes on
• ResetSim Firstname Lastname (Use this in the event your Sim becomes “stuck.” This cheat is case sensitive, so make sure to type your Sim’s name correctly).

For more information on how to open the cheats panel, please read the Carl’s Sims 3 Guide on Cheats. Cheats must always be turned off when you are done using them.

Exiting without saving to avoid a mistake or an unfortunate occurrence (i.e. burglar or fire) is cheating. Restarting from an earlier save is also cheating. In the event that your challenge file is plagued by a game-breaking bug, then you will need to provide me with specifics. I will then make a decision as to restarting from a previous save or simply allowing a complete restart.

Metro, Can I Do X?
Yes, you can! No content from the base game and all expansions is out of bounds. If you’re not opening up the cheats panel, and assuming you’re following the General Rules and specific challenge rules, then you can do it. I sincerely hope the amount of questions and clarifications needed will be reduced with this move towards simplicity.

Strategy Discussion
Do not discuss any strategy pertaining to a given event once that event’s rule set is posted. Casually or accidentally breaking this rule carries a warning and a possible event DQ. Discussing strategy after being warned is grounds for being tossed from the entire Tournament. We need to have as level a playing field as possible and giving others tips and hints is simply not allowed once rule sets are up and an event is live. After an event closes you are free to discuss strategy for that event.

The Honor System
The 2012 Tournament is all about friendly competition and having fun. The Tournament attracts players of all abilities and competitiveness from casual first-timers to seasoned high-caliber veterans. We all want to have a good time no matter what we’re seeking to get out of the Tournament. Allowing everyone to have a good time means we all need to play honestly — no cheating and no exploits. If you discover an exploit then you must bring this to my attention. If it's discovered that you have intentionally cheated in any way, then you will be banned from the forum on the spot. I have a zero tolerance policy for cheating.

Understanding Scoring and Submitting Scores
The Major events typically will have at least 2 different scoring components. Multipliers may also be involved to mix things up and add variety to the scoring, but we’re never talking about complicated math when computing scores—it’s very rudimentary arithmetic (usually adding some scores together, and then maybe throwing in a multiplier).

The Mini events will be very simple, short challenges where your goal is essentially a sprint: “accomplish X as quickly as possible”—so players will be ranked by the single time score.

The vast majority of challenges have the concept of time as the stopping point— “accomplish X by Y date.” So, when Y date comes, you simply pause your game and note the scoring factors. The game clock is the white box located directly underneath a Sim’s Lifetime Wish box.

Submit your final scores for an event right in the individual challenge thread and I will update the leaderboard with your information.

***********

I hope the 2012 Sims 3 Challenge Tournament adds new and exciting dimensions to your playing, and most importantly, I hope everyone has a great time.

See you on the leaderboard — Metro.

[ClayMask]

Options > Game Options: Freewill = High; Enable Story Progression and Enable Aging need to be checked. Sim Lifespan = Long (leave plumbob sliders at default far right setting).

This seems confusing.  It looks like the default setting for the age lengths is in the middle (not the far right), and the long lifespan is somewhere between the middle and the far right.

[Metropolis Man]

This seems confusing.  It looks like the default setting for the age lengths is in the middle (not the far right), and the long lifespan is somewhere between the middle and the far right.

Hmmmm...I'll check again and do another test. They were on the far right for me earlier today.

EDIT: I created another new file and got the same results -- plumbobs by default were on the far right of all stages. Not sure why it's different for you.

[VampirePlasma]

Are you updated to the lastest patch? The aging set changed alot in the latest patch.
At first I was like what is X? Am so dumb.

If it's discovered that you have intentionally cheated in any way, then you will be banned from the forum on the spot. I have a zero tolerance policy for cheating.

I'll make sure to not cheat at all if I play any of this challanges.
I  can't wait to see what we get to do, since it'll be my first time playing a tournament! 

[ClayMask]

Are you updated to the lastest patch? The aging set changed alot in the latest patch.

Oh, maybe that's the issue then.  I'm using the second to latest patch.

[Pam]

My default age sliders are all the way to the right, too.

[VampirePlasma]

What patch are you guys on? I will fire up my game but am not allowed to play during the week.

[Metropolis Man]

I'm on the latest patch. Don't know the number.

[VampirePlasma]

Me too. So yeah that's the problem ClayMask.

[BellaClo]

For the age slider, I can confirm that the last patch/Pets has changed the way we can tweak it. I was a bit confused about this myself just yesterday.

Before Pets, we could add or retrieve days from the default settings of any life stage. So the plumbob was indeed in the middle of the slider.
Now, the default setting puts the plumbob on the far right of the slider, and we can only retrieve days in a life stage, shorten it in short.

[Metropolis Man]

Okay, thanks everyone.

[Chuckles_82]

I hate to be a bother, but does this mean that things that were previously banned (eg moodlet manager, deliberately killing sims) are now allowed?

[Sportsfan]

MM is allowed. Not sure about killing sims.

[jeanamariex3]

I hope this isn't a stupid question, sorry if it is, but are we allowed to take pictures of things that happen in our game, for other threads, like "Children born to Original Townies" or "Weird Pics, funny posts or something new?" I'm talking about glitches or messages from animals, or story progression babies. If any of those glitches/bugs happen or say Nancy and Geoffrey Landgraab have another baby somewhere in the game, can we take the child's picture and say it happened in the game?

Basically I'm asking, if reporting random story progression events, or socialization, by taking pictures of them on a more relevant thread would still get us disqualified.

[Metropolis Man]

I hate to be a bother, but does this mean that things that were previously banned (eg moodlet manager, deliberately killing sims) are now allowed?

Yes...

Metro, Can I Do X?
Yes, you can! No content from the base game and all expansions is out of bounds. If you’re not opening up the cheats panel, and assuming you’re following the General Rules and specific challenge rules, then you can do it. I sincerely hope the amount of questions and clarifications needed will be reduced with this move towards simplicity.

I will always let you know in a specific rule set if something is banned.

I hope this isn't a stupid question, sorry if it is, but are we allowed to take pictures of things that happen in our game, for other threads, like "Children born to Original Townies" or "Weird Pics, funny posts or something new?" I'm talking about glitches or messages from animals, or story progression babies. If any of those glitches/bugs happen or say Nancy and Geoffrey Landgraab have another baby somewhere in the game, can we take the child's picture and say it happened in the game?

Basically I'm asking, if reporting random story progression events, or socialization, by taking pictures of them on a more relevant thread would still get us disqualified.

Use your best judgement with this. If the picture would give any player some hint of strategy and the event is still live, forget it. That would be a no-no. Once an event is over, obviously it does not matter.

[Chuckles_82]

"This will let you free up space to create new empty lots of adequate size with the Edit World tool;"

Does this mean we can place new empty lots exclusively for the purpose of adding missing lots, or can we also add say, a 10x10 lot on which to play?

Also, is it ok to place just a rabbit hole on an empty lot? The film studio in the library is 64x64 - and just about anywhere you place that it will either not sit right or overlap spawners.

[lvrugger]

Also, is it ok to place just a rabbit hole on an empty lot? The film studio in the library is 64x64 - and just about anywhere you place that it will either not sit right or overlap spawners.

I can't answer the rest, but if you look in build mode, there is a much smaller rabbit hole for the film studio. Change the lot to "visitors allowed" then go into build mode and click on the icon that looks like store front. You'll see listed as "Plumbob pictures."

[BellaClo]

"This will let you free up space to create new empty lots of adequate size with the Edit World tool;"

Does this mean we can place new empty lots exclusively for the purpose of adding missing lots, or can we also add say, a 10x10 lot on which to play?

Also, is it ok to place just a rabbit hole on an empty lot? The film studio in the library is 64x64 - and just about anywhere you place that it will either not sit right or overlap spawners.

I discussed the "Edit Town" part of the rules with Metro. From what I remember, the spirit of the rule is to let us alter only the "public" part of the town in which we'll play the challenge. Each Town made by EA has its own characteristics, pros and cons regarding the goals of a challenge. We are allowed to improve this a little bit by adding community features if and only if they are missing, and those are either EA community lots, or the bookshelves if needed.

I think we are allowed to bulldoze empty lots with the idea that we can then replace them by larger lots on which we can plop the extra large EA lots from the Library (example: the Movie Studio, 64x64). So adding a small 10x10 residential lot is probably out of bound.

At the set up of the file, you can only add ready made lots from the Library. They have to be designed by EA and unaltered. You can use the default ones from the Library OR copy paste a lot from another town (ex: the Laundromat from Twnibrook). And that's it, no plopping the movie studio rabbit hole on an empty lot. At least, not at this point. Later, when you play the challenge, you can always add a rabbit hole structure to a venue lot owned by your Sims, providing a/ it's not explicitly forbidden by the specific rules of a challenge, and b/ your Sims can afford it.


This need to be confirmed by Metro, of course.

[Metropolis Man]

I discussed the "Edit Town" part of the rules with Metro. From what I remember, the spirit of the rule is to let us alter only the "public" part of the town in which we'll play the challenge. Each Town made by EA has its own characteristics, pros and cons regarding the goals of a challenge. We are allowed to improve this a little bit by adding community features if and only if they are missing, and those are either EA community lots, or the bookshelves if needed.

I think we are allowed to bulldoze empty lots with the idea that we can then replace them by larger lots on which we can plop the extra large EA lots from the Library (example: the Movie Studio, 64x64). So adding a small 10x10 residential lot is probably out of bound.

At the set up of the file, you can only add ready made lots from the Library. They have to be designed by EA and unaltered. You can use the default ones from the Library OR copy paste a lot from another town (ex: the Laundromat from Twnibrook). And that's it, no plopping the movie studio rabbit hole on an empty lot. At least, not at this point. Later, when you play the challenge, you can always add a rabbit hole structure to a venue lot owned by your Sims, providing a/ it's not explicitly forbidden by the specific rules of a challenge, and b/ your Sims can afford it.

This need to be confirmed by Metro, of course.

All confirmed. Well said, BellaClo.

[Chuckles_82]

I know we can't add families, but can we copy-paste empty EA built houses and place those on empty lots?

[Metropolis Man]

I know we can't add families, but can we copy-paste empty EA built houses and place those on empty lots?

No. That's not an allowed use of Edit Town. It's mainly for missing commercial type buildings.

[MomOfMany]

So we can only add the missing lots in the beginning before we actually begin the play? We can't add them like halfway through the challenge when we decide we need or want them?

[Metropolis Man]

So we can only add the missing lots in the beginning before we actually begin the play? We can't add them like halfway through the challenge when we decide we need or want them?

Exactly. You need to research your needs for a particular event before you actually create your scoring file if you intend on using Edit Town.

[goldengalaxia]

I'm very excited to start participating this year in my first challenge!!

I read through the rules and I have one question on the scoring file.  Is there some way we are suppose to submit the scoring file to you Metro? Or is it me just posting up my final stats once the challenge week or date is achieved, etc?

Thanks for the clarification! Sorry if this is an easy question and I just missed something~ 

[MarianT]

You just post your final stats in the thread for that particular challenge. "Scoring file" just refers to the game that you play for the challenge, starting after the start date, as opposed to practice runs you might have made earlier.