Monster Under the Bed |
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Put away all your toys, because he's always watching. Watching and waiting. And annoying. • The Sim kids have it easy, so we thought we'd force them to face the consequences of some of their actions, not least of all their sloppy behavior. If a child Sim leaves out their toys when they go to bed, they risk a visit from the terrible Fred E. Kroogre, a monstrous figment of their imaginations who wanders the room, takes away toys, and generally makes a nuisance of himself. Like most imaginary friends, he becomes more real as time goes on: the first night may just feature a glowing toy box, but a laughing, chatty Fred isn't far behind. • The trigger to the event is hidden in the child's bed: when they go to sleep, it checks to see if the room and Sim have the right conditions, and conjures up one of three Monster Controllers based on how many nights the Sim's toys have been out. • Night one's controller causes a glow and fire effect to appear near the toybox and the toys, so a vigilant Sim player can see that something's got to be done. • Night two causes Fred to appear. Fred is essentially just a hollowed-out Sim: one whose characteristics (such as age) are set manually in the Init routine, and who has been stopped from entering the Main routine so he won't behave contrary to our instructions for him. The controller then orders him to appear at half-opacity next to the toybox and wander over to the bed, where he'll start laughing at the child before fading away entirely. • By the third night, the controller creates a full-featured Fred, complete with limited (NPC-Type) interactions. He wakes up the kid and chats for a while, basically keeping him from sleeping until the timer runs down and he fades away again.
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