Goals and design philosophy

Design Philosophy

Our approach to developing Lifestyle is governed by a few core principles which help us form a cohesive and clear direction for the mod, they are:

• Vanilla Feel

For every new feature we add the intention is to try to keep it as close to a "vanilla feel" as possible. This means using vanilla items instead of creating new ones when possible, imitating the vanilla art style, not adding features that would contrast with the vanilla game too much, tying new mechanics into the vanilla systems and making the mod mix with the vanilla gameplay as much as possible, while still offering a new and interesting experience.

• Open Development

We want to keep the community updated whenever new information is available to be shared. We're also open to suggestions and ideas, implementing them if we believe they fit the mod.

• Fun over Realism

In the process of adding a new feature we consider it's impact on gameplay and our subjective interpretation of a fun experience. We're not interested in adding or reworking a feature for the sake of realism. Likewise a feature may be scrapped or reworked in order to make the experience more fun and engaging. It's not and never will be the intention of this mod to perfectly emulate real life activities, only to parody them in a way we consider to be fun and engaging.

• No paid requests

While we hold no opinion for or against commissions, Lifestyle does not and will never add or rework a feature in exchange for payment, nor will we accept or prioritize suggestions based on donations. This mod is a passion project with zero profit in mind and we want to keep it like that. We're currently not accepting donations, but this might change in the future in the form of anonymous donations that only offers our appreciation for your support in return.

• Modularity and compatibility

With compatibility in mind we try to avoid making global changes to the game or replacing vanilla code as much as possible. Features are added with compatibility in mind and we strive to guarantee that any incompatibility caused by Lifestyle is fixed, with the caveat that we're not obliged to fix incompatibilities caused by other mods as it can take time better spent developing the mod. In the same vein, new features are added in a modular way, which allows them to be easily expanded upon later either by ourselves or by the community.

• No real world voices

Whenever we add or rework a feature related to voices, like expressions or singing, we avoid adding a real spoken language, resorting instead to grunts or simlish-esque gibberish. This design serves to parody and pay homage the old sims games, to keep the voices from becoming too repetitive with time and to not exclude those that might not speak/understand whatever language we had decided on using.

• No release dates

We're not professional game designers and only do modding as a hobby on our limited free time. As such the speed of development is dependant on the team availability and desire to mod. We like to keep to internal schedules, but we're not bound by them. For this reason we won't announce release dates for updates or new mods. They will be released when ready and not at a set date.

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Goals

Picture this: you've found or created a nice base, fortified it, cleared the surrounding area from zombies, installed a generator or two and gathered enough fuel and supplies to survive long-term. Your immediate needs are taken care of, you're relatively safe... now what?

This is the question Lifestyle seeks to answer. It's #1 goal is to improve a rather forgotten aspect of the game by adding activities and mechanics that expand on the characters, giving them more personality and options for things to do and skills to improve that aren't directly related to killing and surviving. You may forget the mod is installed during those few first days when you're constantly battling for your life, but once you've settled then it's at this moment that the mod truly shines.

Another goal is to expand into life after the apocalypse trough different aspects which are separated into branches of the main mod. Lifestyle: Hobbies, as the name implies, focuses on providing hobby activities to the game. As it was the first branch to be released it also contains the main mod functionalities which are required by all other branches. Other branches being worked on are Lifestyle: Weird and Lifestyle: Social Butterfly (names may change).