mental illness in the sims 4 [#blog4mh]

For simmers everywhere, making the perfect Sim is always fun – you get to customise appearance, voice, personality, clothing, and aspirations, all of which will affect the way your Sims behave. Something that has been rising in popularity in the mod market allows you to give your Sim traits related to mental illness. In January, I chanced upon Depressed Trait by saphryn and, of course, gave it to the Sim I named after myself. A few days ago, I found several more similar mods. I downloaded  Social Anxiety Disorder – Trait by iridescentlaura and Bipolar Trait by emile20 and got to playing. They are absolutely brilliant (in retrospect, I should not have started with a household of three Sims, each with social anxiety, bipolar I, or depression).

It is difficult for individuals who have never experienced mental illness to empathise with those who live with it on a daily basis. Perhaps, with such mods, it could make it easier for mental illness to be understood, and give individuals a rough idea of just how frustrating living with mental illness can be.

Read more…

(I just wanted to show off my pretty Sim in the image)

 

sparx: a game that combats depression – #blog4mh

This post is a continuation of Gaming: The underused depression rehabilitation resource, where I talked about games with hidden therapeutic value, namely Stardew Valley and Pokémon Go.

If you have not read the first post (or you’re too lazy to read), you can find a summary of the two posts together here. If you’d like to read the whole paper which includes the full content of both posts  (~700 words) and proper references, you can click here.

gaming: the underused depression rehabilitation resource

The effects of gaming is often seen as negative, and gaming as an escape from issues such as depression and anxiety is deemed unhealthy. However, the tendency of individuals to use gaming as a coping mechanism can be used to rehabilitate instead of harm.

I wrote a one page article about it, which you can view in PDF, in the format it was supposed to be in (and with an image about rehab vs treatment), here. Get the updated version here.

playing games from the 90’s on your mac (free)

I’ve been spending the past few weeks looking for old games I played when I was six; games like SimCity 2000, SimFarm and SimTower. After fumbling through the Internet like a blind rat in a maze, I managed to be able to play them all (legally). I decided to write a short blog post on how to play those games. 

Short version

1. Download Boxer
   Just open the zip file and tada! you’ve got Boxer.
2. Head down to Abandonia
   Search for the game (e.g. DinoPark Tycoon) you want and download it.
   Make sure it’s compatible with dos box
3. Unzip the file
4. Import the game
   Open Boxer and drag the unzipped folder onto “import a new game”
5. Install the game
   The installer is usually something like “setup.bat” or “install.bat”, so just click “launch installer” and follow the instructions.
   The installer is sometimes an .exe file.
6. Play the game
   You can access all the games you have installed from the “browse your games” menu upon opening Boxer.

Long jibber-jabber version (get links from above)

1. Download Boxer
   Boxer is an emulator that allows you to play MS-DOS games. MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating Software) is the operating system that IBM PCs used to run on. DOS is no longer in use and there is no other way you can play DOS games without an emulator, unless you have a really old IBM PC, then good for you.
2. Head down to Abandonia
   Abandonia is a site whereby you can download dos (I’m going to stop capitalising them because it annoys me) games for free, as they are freewares. Freewares are softwares that you can use for free, and these old dos games are sometimes released by the makers as freewares after a decade or so, because they’re awesome people.
   You can find said freewares, or any of the dos games, anywhere else on the Internet and install it the same way.
   Search for the game (e.g. DinoPark Tycoon) you want and download it.
   Make sure it’s compatible with dos box
3. Unzip the file
4. Import the game
   Open Boxer and drag the unzipped folder onto “import a new game”
5. Install the game
   The installer is usually something like “setup.bat” or “install.bat”, so just click “launch installer” and follow the instructions.
   Sometimes, there are a lot of .bat files that you can choose from use as an installer, so don’t just click on any of them. I have SimCity 2000 which gave me quite a bit of trouble – instead of installing it like that, I had to open the installer “install.exe” and install it manually, for some reason that eludes me.
   When in doubt, consult the all-knowing world wide web.
6. Play the game
   You can access all the games you have installed from the “browse your games” menu upon opening Boxer.
   You might want to create a folder for all your DOS games to keep them organized. Note that, even though the same game, accessing it via the external folders (i.e. accessing it manually) will not have the same save files or configs as when you access it directly through Boxer.

 

Any questions, mail me at claireleong@mail.com.
I’m not an expert, but I’ll try to help when I can.

 

review of the month: terraria

Terraria is a land of adventure! A land of mystery! A land that’s yours to shape, to defend and to enjoy. Your options in Terraria are limitless. Are you an action gamer with an itchy trigger finger? A master builder? A collector? An explorer? There’s something for everyone here.

-http://terraria.gamepedia.com/Terraria_Wiki

Those who have been hanging around me recently would have seen this post coming, considering the fact that I have spent majority of my time playing Terraria, and when I’m not playing Terraria, I’m talking about my achievements on Terraria, beaming like a child who topped her class for the first time (e.g. “I defeated Skeletron!”, “I built circuits!”, “I found the goblin!”)

Often compared to Minecraft, I find Terraria to be a lot more interesting and captivating than Minecraft. But I’m not here to insult Minecraft, so I shall keep some comments to myself :p
First of all, I personally dislike first-person games because: 1 – I have terrible depth perception in 3-D games. 2 – They make me queasy after awhile, and 3 – I prefer the simplicity of 2-D games, such as the earlier versions of Pokemon and Harvest Moon.
Secondly, Terraria has a lot of good music tracks that represent your time and location. For example, there is a music track that plays in the day, and different one in the night.
Thirdly, the fun you can have in Terraria is limitless – you wanna mine, you mine; you wanna go to hell, you go to hell (literally); you wanna fight monsters, fight; you wanna build, build, you wanna go online, go online… The list goes on and on.

Another thing I love about Terraria is how I can bring one character from world to world, and with it my items and money. I screwed up the first world that I played because I let the Corruption take over too much of the land. So what did I do? Start a new world. Your characters can alternate between worlds seamlessly, even if it is a world set up by someone else on a different server altogether.

Everyone should at least try Terraria, no matter how old you are and no matter how much of a “gamer” you are. It is worth the small amount of money to buy it off of Steam.