The Sims: Hot Date FAQ/Item List
E-mail: Kobe_5@hotmail.com
GameFAQs username: Zzyzzyxx
Version 1.4
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******************************TABLE OF CONTENTS********************************
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Version History
Intro
What’s New
Downtown Area
Building Downtown
How To Put Objects Downtown
Social Interactions
Interests
Item List
FAQs
Credits
Legal Stuff
The Sims: Hot Date is the third expansion pack made for the best selling PC
game of all-time, The Sims: Hot Date will give you many more hours of fun with
all of the new objects and downtown area. With the previous expansions, you
just kind of tried out all of the new objects and got bored with it. In Hot
Date, you’ll not only spend time seeing all of the new objects, but you’ll also
spend time building your lots downtown, seeing what all of the new social
interactions are like, meeting the Townies downtown and much more.
Note that everything in this FAQ/Item List is strictly about The Sims: Hot
Date, so you should already have a general idea on how to play The Sims. If you
don't, I recommend that you go take a look at one of the FAQs over at
http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/game/25322.html.
Downtown area: You can go out on dates and do many other things downtown.
125+ objects: Some of them can only be bought downtown and some can only be
bought at home. Some of them include the Love Tub, 1000-Gallon Fish Tank, and
Fishpond.
40+ social interactions: Instead of just kissing another Sim you’ll have
different types of kisses to choose from such as "peck" or "suave."
Lifetime relationship bar: You now get two relationship bars. The lifetime bar
kind of shows you how much that Sim has an effect on yours. It doesn’t increase
or decrease as much as the other bar. The bottom bar is the same one that you
previously had.
Townies: These are the new Sims that you can meet and date downtown.
Interests: There are now 15 interests that you can change from buying and
reading magazines in the downtown area.
Gift inventory: You can view all of the gifts that you own that you bought
downtown.
Easier to see who’s who: Now all you have to do is hold your cursor over a Sim
and you can see their name.
Buy mode layout: When you click on a category you’ll have more categories that
you can click on to make it faster to find what you’re looking for. Any objects
you’ve downloaded will appear under the "all" category instead of what they
really should be under.
Grass brightener: You can now make your grass greener or browner with a tool in
build mode. You could always change the grass color of your lot by typing in a
cheat but now you can do it in certain spots for §1 per click.
Flat roof: You can now have that flat roof that you always wanted on your
house.
Wallpaper, floors, skins: Well, there were a few more of these in each of the
expansion packs, weren’t there?
Tougher to build relationships: No more getting married over night, it’s going
to take some time with Hot Date.
The downtown area is the main focus of Hot Date. This is where you go to meet
the Townies, go out on dates, or just go and shoot some pool at the bar. It
does cost §50 to take the cab downtown so you better make sure you have some
money when you go downtown because everything is pretty expensive. There’s one
lot in downtown that is vacant and all the rest are filled. You can always
bulldoze the ones that you don’t like and build your own, however. There is a
downtown area for every neighborhood that you have.
When you go downtown, the game remembers the time that you left to go downtown
and when you get back it will be that same time. Your motives will not be the
same though. Make sure you have a lot of energy when you leave for downtown so
you can stay longer. There’s no way to get your energy up downtown unless you
move some objects downtown on your own, which I explain in the How To Put
Objects Downtown section. Also, you can’t save your games while in downtown.
You have to call a cab to go home and then you save it. Don’t worry, it doesn’t
charge you to take the cab back home. Next I have a list of all the pre-built
downtown lots with a short description of what each lot has. Note that every
lot has restrooms so I didn’t put those in the description.
21 Wright Way, Hedman’s Hideaway: This place is just a big, fancy restaurant.
There’s not much to do here besides eat and maybe play slots.
22 Wright Way, Cory’s Place: There’s a little outdoor restaurant here along
with a fishpond and rental shack.
23 Wright Way, Vacant Lot: This is the lot that you can build on. The only
things that are there are a couple of stalls and a rental shack.
24 Main Street, Wrensday’s: This lot has two stories. On the first story, there
is a small restaurant, a small shop that also has clothes racks, and a pinball
machine. The second story has a bar, piano, chess table, and a lot of seating
and things to look at.
25 Main Street, Solana Towne Center: There’s a small shop with mostly magazine
racks, a restaurant, an ice cream stand, and a small game room with a jukebox,
pool table, and a couple of pinball machines.
26 Main Street, Landgraab Mall: As you can tell by the name, it’s the mall. It
has four different small shops along with a small restaurant. For
entertainment, there’s a train set and a jukebox.
27 Main Street, Old Farm Square: This place has a fancy restaurant and a small
shop. There are many things to do like dance in the DJ room, play pool,
pinball, slots, or even ride the mechanical bull. It’s my favorite place to go
besides for the one that I created, of course.
28 Main Street, Barrett’s Boardwalk: There’s a shop and a clothing store, a
small swimming pool, an ice cream counter, a couple other food counters, and a
room with 6 pinball machines, a jukebox, and four slot machines. There are a
couple chess tables and a BBQ grill outside.
29 Main Street, SimCity Beach: At the beach, there’s a couple fish ponds with a
rental shack, a BBQ grill, a hotdog stand, and a small shop where you can get
new swimming suits. There’s a bar and a jukebox on the small second story.
30 Main Street, Crumplebottom Memorial Park: At the park, there’s a BBQ grill,
two ponds with a rental shack, and a hotdog stand. That’s pretty much all
besides for the love swing.
When you’re downtown, you’ll run across other people from the neighborhood and
the Townies. The Townies are in every neighborhood and they are all un-housed.
If you’re having trouble making friends with the new relationship changes, just
marry a Townie and you’ll probably get a lot of friends. All of their names are
random. A Townie might have the same name and be a completely different Sim
from one neighborhood to the next. The characters on the back of the box are
just Townies and you’ll randomly see them.
To start building downtown, click the button that says Switch to Downtown View
that can be found on the neighborhood screen. You can't go in buy or build mode
while you are downtown with one of your Sims. Then you can either select a lot
that you want to build on or you can bulldoze one of the pre-built lots and
start out with nothing. Before you bulldoze a lot, you should build on the
Vacant Lot that is there unless you just want to add on to another lot.
There are many different things that you can build downtown. Some of the things
that you could build are restaurants, shops, bars, parks, motels, or maybe
something like an arcade. I'm sure there are other things you could build but
those are the things I'll talk about in this section.
Remember that there is no limit to how much money you can spend on building
downtown.
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BUILDING A RESTAURANT
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To build a good restaurant, you need to have many things. First you should buy
a host podium. The Gastronomer Restaurant Podium has more expensive food, but
it spawns a Maitre'd, waiter, and a Minstrel. The Minstrel just walks around
the restaurant playing his guitar and if he comes to your table, he expects a
§5 tip from you. If you have a piano in your restaurant, you won't have the
Minstrel. The Bel-Air Series Restaurant Podium serves less expensive food, but
it only spawns a waiter. Make sure that you have plenty of walking room around
your podiums so that Sims don't get too crowded.
You should also have a stove, refrigerator, food processor, dishwasher, and a
bar in your restaurant. You will get a chef from the stove and a busboy from
the dishwasher. If you have a bar, you will get a barmaid. She will bring
drinks out to your Sims. It would be good to place an open surface somewhere
near the stove so that your chef will have somewhere to set his food when he's
done cooking it.
Make sure that you have plenty of tables with seats or booths in your
restaurant. I usually put a ceiling light over each table to make the
restaurant look a little nicer.
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BUILDING A SHOP
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One shop you could build is a retail shop. You should have plenty of magazine
stands, flower displays, jewelry displays, and toy displays. When a Sim buys
something, it goes in their gift inventory. They can then give it to another
Sim to build on their relationship.
You could also build a clothes store. All you really need are a bunch of the
display racks and dressing booths. Your Sims can purchase new swimsuits,
formalwear, or pajamas. Yes, two Sims can make out in the dressing booth.
You also need a cash register for your shops. You can either choose the BS-PA4
Cash Register or the Antique Cash Register. There's no real difference other
than the antique register has a room score of 1. Cash registers spawn clerks so
your Sims can buy their stuff. You can't really buy anything without them.
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BUILDING A BAR
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There's not really much that you need to build a bar. The first thing that you
should probably get is the bar. You can either get the TransLight Bar Station
or the DTS Bar System. It doesn't matter which one you get. You should also
have a bunch of counters. It's good to block off the bar with counters so that
no Sims can get in the way of the cash register. I usually put other things in
my bars such as pool tables and dartboards. You can download the dartboard at
www.thesims.com.
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BUILDING A PARK
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There are a lot of things that you should have in your park. There's usually a
pond in every park. Your Sims can feed the fish or sail a boat in the pond. You
need to have a rental shack somewhere near the pond. Your Sims buy their fish
food, rent sailboats for the pond, and rent picnic baskets at the rental shack.
You should also have things like a swimming pool, basketball hoops, a barbecue
grill, picnic benches, bathroom stalls and sinks, and a place to eat. You could
build a small restaurant or just have some food stands in your park.
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BUILDING A MOTEL
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To build a motel, you need to put a bunch of objects downtown, which I tell you
how to do that in the next section. Instead of putting a double bed downtown,
you should just put in single beds unless you want the heart bed downtown so
you can have your Sims make out. You should only put in single beds to avoid
Sims trying to go in other Sims beds that they don't know, and then they get
rejected. When they get rejected you hear that really annoying noise. Unless
you like to hear really annoying noises, you should stick with single beds.
Other things that you should remember to clone are toilets, showers, and the
hot tub and love tub if you want them. If you put all of those things downtown,
you could pretty much have your Sim live downtown. For all you non-cheaters,
food is the only thing downtown that would cost you a lot if you were planning
on living there. You can't really live downtown though, because when you're
done playing, you have to have your Sim go back to their house before you can
save the game.
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BUILDING AN ARCADE
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If you build an arcade, you can actually have your Sims run their own business
while downtown. You need to download some arcade machines off of other sites
and then put them downtown. Some sites your can get them from are
www.thesimsresource.com or www.simsplus.com.
Everytime another Sim plays one of the machines, §1 will go in your account. I
know that that's not very much, but if you just build a big arcade with nothing
else downtown, the only thing that other Sims will be able to do is play the
arcade machines.
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*************************HOW TO PUT OBJECTS DOWNTOWN***************************
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First of all, you need to download The Sims Transmogrifier. You can get it at
http://www.lushcreations.com/Transmogrifier.htm. Once you open it up, just
click Clone Objects File on whatever object you want downtown. The object that
you cloned will then go to C:\Program Files\Maxis\The Sims\Downloads\
Transmogrified. My Transmogrifier only had object from The Sims and Livin’
Large in it, so if the objects that you want are from a different expansion
pack, you need to move Expansionpack3.far (Hot Date is called Expansionpack3,
House Party is Expansionpack2, and Livin’ Large is Expansionpack) into
C:\Program Files\Maxis\The Sims\GameData\Objects. You can find
Expansionpack3.far (or whatever expansion you want) in C:\Program Files\Maxis\
The Sims\ExpansionPack3. Make sure that you put the .far file back to where you
got it when you’re done cloning your objects, otherwise your game will be
messed up.
Once you’re done with that, you need to open up The Sims Menu Editor. You can
download it at http://blueprint.simfreaks.com/. You need to open up the object
file that you cloned, which will most likely be in C:\Program Files\Maxis\The
Sims\Downloads\Transmogrified unless you put them somewhere different. When
it’s open, check the box called Allow to Visitors. Then other people will be
able to use the object that you want downtown. Click Apply when you're done.
The last thing that you need is SimCategorizer. You can get it from
http://paladinx.home.together.net/. Once you get it opened up, click the Load
button and then select the object that you want downtown. Now you can change
any of the categories that you want the object in. Just select a category under
Downtown and that’s where the object will appear downtown. If you want an
object to only appear downtown and not at your home, click Clear All Flags,
select a downtown category and a function flag category, but not a build mode,
room flag or home sub-category. If the same object is already in your house,
you should make it so it’s only available downtown, otherwise the object will
appear in your home buy mode twice. When you’re done, click Save.
If you're a real newbie and don't know how to open up .zip files, you need to
download this program called WinZip to unzip them. Go to www.winzip.com and
download it there. Once you unzip the program, it will appear in C:\unzipped
unless you chose otherwise. You can then open it up.
Below is a list of all the social interactions in The Sims: Hot Date. It
depends on your Sim’s personality, mood, and relationship with the other Sim as
to whether or not you’ll see some of them. First I listed the category and all
of the interactions for that category are listed below it.
There are now 15 interests in Hot Date, allowing your Sims to talk about lots
of new stuff. They are as follows:
60’s
Exercise
Food
Hollywood
Money
Music
Outdoors
Parties
Politics
Romance
Sports
Style
Technology
Travel
Weather
You can see what your Sims interests are by clicking on the new interests box.
There are 10 points for each interest to show you how much your Sim is
interested in each subject.
Your Sim can change their interests by buying magazines while downtown. There
are five different magazines to choose from.
Livin’ Large: ups 60’s, music, and parties
MAXSIMUM: ups exercise, outdoors, and travel
The Avarix: ups money, politics, and technology
Victor’s Digest: ups food, sports, and weather
WhooNoo!!!: ups Hollywood, romance, and style
You can purchase many things from the previous expansion packs and from Hot
Date for the downtown area. I already listed the objects from Hot Date above,
so I won’t list them all again. These objects can only be purchased downtown.
Remember that you cannot enter the buy or build mode while you are downtown
with your Sim. You have to push the Switch to Downtown View button from the
neighborhood screen to build downtown. All of the objects all have a price, but
it doesn’t really matter since everything you buy downtown doesn’t cost
anything anyways.
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CASH BARS
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TransLight Bar Station
Cost: §4,994
Motives: Fun 2
Size: 3x2
DTS Bar System
Cost: §5,217
Motives: Fun 2
Size: 3x2
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CLOTHING SALES
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Porto-Cabana
Cost: §193
Motives: None
Size: 1x1
Dressing Booth by VanVille
Cost: §480
Motives: None
Size: 1x1
Q: I can’t find any of the characters on the back of the box downtown!
Where are they?
A: There’s no certain place that they’re at, they’ll walk by sooner or later.
Note that they might not look like what they look like on the back of the box.
They might even have a different skin color. I can’t tell you their names
because they all vary.
Q: I’m not sure if my computer is fast enough to run Hot Date. What are the
minimum requirements?
A: This is what it reads from the back of the box:
Windows 95/98 (Windows NT is not supported); The Sims for Windows 95/98
installed; 300 MHz Intel Pentium II processor; 64 MB RAM (128 MB recommended if
also using other expansion packs for The Sims); 4x CD/DVD-ROM drive; 600 MB
free hard disk space plus space for saved games and Windows swap-file; High
Color (800x600 resolution) capable 2 MB video card with DirectX 7.0 compatible
driver; DirectX 7.0 compatible sound card; Keyboard; Mouse.
You should have a much better computer than that, though. The game can get very
laggy when you go downtown.
A: I have The Sims and all of the expansions installed on Windows XP and I
haven't had any problems. There are also many other people that say it works
fine on their computer.
Q: Do I need anything else on my computer to be able to play The Sims: Hot
Date?
A: You must have The Sims installed on your computer. You don't need any of the
previous expansion packs installed, but I suggest that you buy Livin' Large and
House Party before Hot Date, unless you know that you won't be buying either of
them in the future. If you think you will be buying the other expansion packs
in the future, you should buy and install them in this order:
The Sims
The Sims: Livin' Large
The Sims: House Party
The Sims: Hot Date
A: Claire will walk down the sidewalk at random times. A little box comes up on
the lower right hand corner of your screen like when there’s a burglar, so you
won’t miss Claire if you think you’re going to.
Q: Can I download lots for my downtown area anywhere?
A: www.thesims.com has a big lot exchange. You can share the lots that you
created or download other people's lots. You can also download other Sims for
your Sims to date from thesims.com. Another site that has lots is
www.thesimsresource.com.
