Rumors of a delay in the Sims 3 release date are gaining more credence. Snooty Sims reports that Electronic Arts is quoted as saying “We are evaluating the launch window” in an article at the Eurogamer website.

European stores are being told that the game will be released in “the first half of 2009,” which could mean as late as June. Will the game hit the U.S. before being released in Europe? Doubtful. EA has said they will issue a definitive statement regarding the release date on Tuesday, February 3rd, so stay tuned!

In the mean time, more delicious videos and articles are being released every day. MSN’s French site has a video following a group of French Sims bloggers as they visit Sims 3 headquarters and get a tour. Although the voice over is in French (obvy) there is still a lot of great gameplay video, illustrating many of the points I had heard before, but had not yet seen.

I also enjoyed seeing the Sims 3 developer office environment. What are those big green leaf thingies? Are they to help filter the overhead fluorescent lights? Very cool! And their Sims mega wallpaper is the awesomest!

The official Sims 3 blog has seen a few updates, including one which is “VIP Access Only,” by game designer Eric Holmberg-Weidler. To read the VIP blog you have to sign up for Sims 3 updates, but trust me, it’s worth it! Holmberg-Weidler breaks some nitty-gritty news about game play features which you will not want to miss. (I had promised myself I wouldn’t use the word “revolutionary” in this post. Oops!)

Once you have successfully impregnated your female Sim, you will want to watch her carefully until she gives birth. I have had female Sims nearly die of hunger on me before, because I wasn’t paying enough attention. (And by the way, elder female Sims cannot get pregnant. However, elder male Sims are still fertile, and can impregnate younger female Sims.) As a rule of thumb, I now make my pregnant female Sims eat before sleeping if their Hunger need is less than half full. If they get hungry while they are asleep, I will wake them up and make them eat. It takes a long time for a Sim to die of exhaustion (mostly because they will pass out involuntarily). However, a Sim can die of hunger relatively quickly. So learn from my experience, and feed ‘em up! Once your Sim has entered pregnancy, if she has a job, she will be granted three days of maternity leave. The maternity leave is granted based on when the Sim was impregnated. Linda Shin (the one who nearly starved to death) got pregnant right before her carpool arrived, so she actually worked on the first day of her pregnancy. Each of the three Sim Days corresponds to one of the three trimesters of human pregnancy. Every day when your Sim awakes, there will be a mini-cut scene and a “bwooing!” noise, as her belly magically expands. After the first such incident, she will also change into maternity clothes. Most Sims are struck by morning sickness at least once during pregnancy. When this happens, your Sim will race to the bathroom and vomit into the toilet. (Note: you will want to have someone clean that toilet right quick after this happens!) Some Sims spend their entire pregnancy vomiting; others only vomit once or twice. After a morning sickness incident, I usually have my Sim take a bubble bath. This helps boost their Hygeine and Comfort needs, plus - I mean, wouldn’t YOU want a bubble bath after something like that? One clothing quirk: after I installed the Seasons expansion pack, I found that my pregnant female Sim could not “change into outerwear.” It was winter at the time, so I had to watch to make sure she didn’t go outside for the next three days. I’m not sure if this is a glitch in the game, or if Seasons simply didn’t include maternity outerwear. (Honestly, she was small enough at the time, she could have fit into one of those parkas, if you ask me.) In the case of another female Sim, the fourth-generation Kana Alphabetti changed her hair style on her second day of pregnancy. I actually quite liked her “pregnant hair,” which was much cuter than her previous hair style. After she gave birth, her hair returned to her usual long braids. I haven’t seen this happen with any other female Sims, so I’m not sure how common this is. Since all of your female Sim’s needs will be dropping fast, you will have to prioritize. I generally ignore the Fun need altogether, since no one ever died of insufficient fun. When you need to bump up the Fun need, I suggest sedentary activities like watching television, reading a book, or playing a video game. Active Sims can engage in strenuous activities without hurting the baby, but since playing basketball and bowling both cut into your Sim’s energy, why make things harder on yourself? At the end of the third day, your Sim baby will be born! Stay tuned for the next installment, All About Babies.

Female Pregnancy

Sim fertility has been a big topic of mine recently, since I’m doing a generational challenge (follow a line of Sims through 26 generations, one for each letter of the alphabet). The basic facts of Sim life are simple: when two romantically involved Sims are together on a property with a double bed, click on the bed and tell your Sim to “Relax.” If you are in control of both Sims, tell them both to Relax. If you are only in control of one Sims, have it relax on the bed, and most likely the other will follow.

Once they are in place on the bed, click on the other Sim and choose the menu option “Try For Baby.” If “Try For Baby” is successful, you will hear a little lullaby sound effect play after your Sims have finished their, err, exertions.

A Sim has to be older than teen to get the bed options. If you have the University expansion pack, your Sims can engage in hanky panky while they are at college. (Once you have upgraded them to a double bed, of course.) Sims have to have fallen in love before they will engage in either “Woo Hoo” or “Try For Baby.”

I have read that the “Woo Hoo” option does NOT include a risk for pregnancy. Can anyone confirm or deny this? At any rate, “Try For Baby” is not 100% guaranteed. Interestingly enough, I have found that the odds for “Try For Baby” seem to vary by couple. Out of the three couples I have set to generating heirs, three had 100% success with “Try For Baby” each time. (I’m having each heir give birth to three babies: an heir, a spare heir, and a spare spare heir.)

The third couple, Connor and Kana, have a little more trouble getting pregnant. I have had them “Try For Baby” seven times, with three resulting pregnancies. This means that “Try For Baby” is only 42% effective for this particular couple. I’m not sure if that is a glitch in the game, a quirk of the random generator, or if some Sims are just less fertile than others.

Naturally, a double bed is not the only place that your Sims can “Try For Baby.” The option will also appear in the photo booth, the car (if you buy one for your family), the hot tub, and changing rooms at clothing stores. (Naughty!)

Same sex Sim couples will not get the “Try For Baby” option. If you wish to obtain a baby for your same sex Sims, have them phone the adoption agency and request an adoption. Note that your Sims will need to be financially solvent in order to be approved for an adoption! (I have had Sims turned down for adoption in the past.)

Male Pregnancy

Yes, male Sims can get pregnant! But the odds are very low. If a male Sim is abducted by aliens, there is a small chance that they will return home having been impregnated by the alien Pollination Technician. After three Sim days, the male Sim will give birth to an alien baby.

1. The release date on the Amazon page has been changed to February 16th although the original official release date was February 20th. No one is sure if this is a weird Amazon glitch, or an actual change in the release date, or just due to the discrepancy between “ship date” and “release date.”

2. It may not ship with SecureROM. In response to much consumer outrage, EA has started pulling SecureROM from many of their titles. After the SecureROM debacle with regards to Spore, I think it’s a safe bet that EA won’t ship The Sims 3 with SecureROM.

3. Several high profile bloggers have posted what they learned at the super secret Sims 3 “Creators Camp” conference. Snooty Sims probably has the best list, which features an extensive set of changes.

The most remarkable to me is that Sims will age even if you aren’t playing them. This means that you won’t be able to “warehouse” Sims by sticking them on a lot - they will still age. Hmm, I hope the “family bin” will hold a lot of Sims!

4. I desperately wish I had been invited to that conference.

5. The #1 question being asked on Sims 3 forums across the internet is, “Will my computer play it?” The short version of the official recommendation is a 2.0 GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 128MB video card.

This is a big step up from The Sims 2, which requires an 800 MHz processor, and 256MB of RAM. However, it’s almost identical to the Spore system requirements. (Fun fact: I bought this very computer specifically to play Spore. I then decided that I didn’t really care for Spore. But it’s come in handy in other ways.) My computer has a pair of 1.6GHz Pentium Dual processers, I wonder if that will be good enough?

6. You do NOT want to download the game directly from EA’s download service. Here is what I learned about EA’s download service: it doesn’t allow you to keep your downloaded game. You download it, install it, and then a month later the game files go away.

This is a problem in at least two scenarios: your installation of The Sims 3 blows up and you need to reinstall, or you buy a new computer and want to play The Sims 3 on it. In either case, you will NOT be able to do this if you originally bought it through the EA online store.

Sure, you can pay an extra fee in order to have the game files available for a while longer. But this is just paying more for something that (in my opinion) you ought to have anyway.

Hold the line, people! I know it is going to be hard for some of you, but I STRONGLY advise that you wait until you can get your hands on a physical copy of the game. Whether that means pre-ordering from an online retailer, or haunting the nearest physical retailer on the release date. Trust me, you’ll thank me later!

For the second generation, Aaron and Alice first had a pair of twins, which I named Bob and Baxter. I initially chose Baxter to be the heir, since he seemed a bit more studious. This left me free to let Bob become a vampire, just for fun.

Unfortunately, this decision would cause me some problems later on.

My original goal was that each generation should be comprised of three children. I hadn’t been paying enough attention, and Alice aged into the “elder” category before I had a chance to get her pregnant again. Oh no!

My solution was to adopt a third child. I didn’t really think this through. This is the second decision that caused me some problems later on.

To adopt a child in The Sims 2, have one of your adult Sims pick up the phone and call a Service. Then choose “Adoption Agency” from the menu. (Not the pet adoption agency, mind you!) If your Sims family meets the adoption agency’s income requirements, a random baby will be sent out to you within 24 Sim hours.

(By the way, I read somewhere that if your children are taken by the Social Worker, you can re-adopt them if you move fast. Apparently children that are taken by the Social Worker are put into the adoption queue. All you need to do is phone up the adoption agency and ask to adopt a child, and your taken child will be returned to you. Note that I haven’t tried this yet - just passing it along!)

Aaron and Alice adopted a little girl, who I named Bea.

I sent Bob and Baxter off to college. Bob became a vampire, and I left him on his lot. (I think of this as “warehousing.” It allows you to keep the Sim available for visits, but they don’t age if you don’t play their lot.)

Bob met a beautiful woman named Linda Shin. They moved into the main Alphabetti house and got married. I quickly had them “try for baby,” since I have found that the first “woo hoo” immediately after marriage is usually the most sure-fire time to get pregnant. Sure enough, I heard the lullaby sounds after they tried for baby. Not long after, their baby girl Clarissa was born.

At some point after Clarissa became a toddler, I suddenly realized that I had made a TERRIBLE MISTAKE. Only 2 generations into my alphabet challenge (one generation for each letter of the alphabet) and I had accidentally thrown away the family name.

When Sims marry, the game determines who takes whose name based on which Sim you’re playing when you click on the wedding arch. I hadn’t been paying attention, and had been controlling Linda Shin when I clicked on the arch and selected “Get Married.” This one tiny mistake meant that Bob changed his name from Alphabetti to Shin, and their baby’s name was Clarissa Shin.

Bob was a vampire, and the third child Bea - having been adopted - couldn’t properly carry on the blood line. What to do?

In the end, I had Bea become a witch, make a batch of Vampirocillin-D, and give it to Bob, thus curing him of his vampirism. Bob then married Lila Mendoza, a Fortune Sim with whom he had strong chemistry.

Aaron and Alice had both died of old age by this point. I decided to let Baxter and Linda stay to help raise Bob’s kids. Once Bob and Lila’s three children (Clementine, Connor, and Cassandra) went off to college, I decided to warehouse Baxter and Linda by moving them into their own lot. Their daughter Clarissa I sent off to college.

If you have played The Sims 2 with the Pets expansion pack for very long, you know that toddler Sims will often fall asleep in the pet bed. Unfortunately, when I was playing last weekend, one of my toddlers became STUCK in the pet bed.

Connor fell asleep in the pet bed, and awoke with his “hygiene” need at critical level. He cried and cried, but would not get out of the bed. I sent various adult Sims over and instructed them to pick him up, bathe him, cuddle him, etc, but the action vanished as soon as it hit their queue.

At first, I just thought that Connor was pitching a temper tantrum. I tried buying a teddy bear and setting it beside the pet bed, to tempt him out. No dice! Then I tried clicking on the floor in front of the pet bed and instructing him to “Crawl Here.” I even tried queuing up half a dozen “Crawl Here” requests, but after a moment in his queue, they all vanished.

Soon the issue started getting urgent, as his Hunger need slid into the red. I received a pop-up warning that if he didn’t get fed, the social worker would come. I tried the moveObjects cheat, but Connor still couldn’t be moved.

I realized that if he could just hang on a few more hours, he would be eligible to grow up into a child. Surely a child could be instructed to leave the pet bed, get some food, and take a shower? It was a race to the finish line - a race that I lost.

The social worker showed up just as the “Grow Up” action became available for Connor. I accidentally clicked to have him grow up into a child just as the social worker entered the lot. I have only had the social worker appear on single-child lots, and I didn’t realize that she would take ALL of the children! The family icon for Connor disappeared (which meant that I was not able to control him) along with those of his sisters Clementine and Cassandra.

As the social worker carried little Clementine back to her van, I realized that Connor was, although a child now, still stuck in the pet bed. Worse, he seemed to be frozen facing the corner. It was all very “Blair Witch.”

This was a disaster.

I exited the game without saving. I have a personal policy of not weaseling out of bad events this way, but in this case, the problem was caused by a glitch in the game.

This is the part where I remind you to back up your game frequently. I have a series of backups, and I create a new backup every time before I start playing. That way, if the worst happens, I can restore the game back to the previous gameplay session - or the one before that.

To back up your Sims, go to My Documents -> EA Games -> Select the “The Sims 2″ folder -> Copy this folder and paste it somewhere else. I copy it over into the same directory, and burn all of my backups to disc every few weeks.

Luckily, the last time I had saved the game was BEFORE Connor fell asleep in the pet bed. The first thing I did was delete the pet bed. Sure, the family cat Adrienne has to sleep on the people beds, now. But better safe than sorry!