Seasonal Age Project: RFC (Request For Comments)

[witch]

eccentricgnat, please don't mistake MATY for a family-friendly forum. Just a word to the wise.
*witch taps the side of her warty nose meaningfully

[Charamei]

Why not just turn aging off and then age each sim as you like.

Because then Sims start aging out of sync.

It all depends on how you play, of course, but if Sim A is five days older than his brother, I expect him to stay five days older than his brother until one of them dies, goddamnit. And part of the reason I'm interested in this, for my one particularly bizarre 'hood, is that it opens up the concept of real birthdays. Sim A was born in Spring, but is still the same age (in years) as Sim B who was born in Winter. And I'm too lazy to keep track of who was born when manually, so slowing down aging suits me better.

[witch]

I totally couldn't do a slow ageing. I have managed to stay with a family long enough for a sim to die as an elder maybe once or twice since I started playing the game. I've never even managed a proper second generation. 

[jolrei]

I get bored with the 'hood by about the 3rd generation - I mean lush hood, desert hood, concrete hood, beach hood, flat vs. mountainous - the opshunz!  They are too enticing.  I get tired of looking at the same houses, on the same terrain.

If I was then also looking at the same sims for aeons as well, I would never make it past the first pregnancy.

Edit:  And Uni!  Think how long a semester would be.  It's hard enough to last through 4 semesters without my mouse finger itching to hit the College Clock and skip one or two.

It would be virtually impossible to stop most sims from fulfilling 2-3 LTWs, thus making the majority of the population permaplat by the teen stage.  Many of us feel that permaplat sims are less than completely interesting (trans: dead bloody boring).  This looks like a recipe for universal permaplat-ism.

Some of this could be handled through making it take more time to make friends, fall in love, woohoo, skillinate, etc., but then you're stuck watching sims do really dull things for longer.  I am less interested watching my sims read a book than do some other things.  In fact, it is usually the transition points between activities where the interesting stuff happens (i.e. between putting away a book and going to the terlet is the lulzy surprise realization that "hey, I gotta go now, OMG, OOOPS!"  Consequently, lengthening the amount of time it takes to do things is not something many of us would want, I think (mind you it might improve the "time spent on terlet" to "actual day time available" ratio).

[Zazazu]

Longer lives means more time to piss off the Oversoul. I just had my first cleansing. Not allowed to do much more playing, though, until I get caught up on blogging, so I'm building up a region of Prospect Beach.

eccentricgnat, some of the things you are doing manually can be hacked, you know? I used to do my shorter lengths manually and it got annoying. TwoJeff's Age Duration Hack I linked to earlier works. I'm attaching my modded version, as I do the exact same thing with teen ages as you do.

[awrevell]

In my initial playtest I sped up time during the less boring parts (such as when someone was sleeping or skilling) and everything was fine when I played with a small family.  However, I gave what has been said here a lot of thought and added one of the larger family patches to my game and played a large family (I only created 8 characters for the family but wanted to test the pregnancy durations with a large family so I added the patch).  Much to my chagrin I discovered that the more people on the lot the fewer the occasions to use time acceleration and the more interminable the time became.  With that in mind I started to play with the numbers and want to get further oppinions on the following proposal.

Seasons 4 days in length for a 16 day year.

Humans
Pregnancy 3 trimesters 4 days each for a total of 12 days.
Babies age 0 - 1 years old for 16 days total time.
Toddlers ages 1 - 5 for a total of 64 days.
Children ages 5 - 13 for a total of 128 days.
Teenagers ages 13 to 20 for a total of 112 days. However they can go to college as early as 17 so it can be cut down to 64 days.
Young Adults attend college and semesters are scaled according to seasons as well for 128 hours per semester (1/3 of 16 days) Students of course being the dedicated studyaholics that we know they all are will attend during the summer semester as well and skip spring break to get done school faster, completing a 4 year degree in under 3 years (making them eligible for adulthood at 20 surprisingly enough the same time as a teen who does not attend college.)
Adults ages 20 - 45 for a total of 400 days.
Elders ages 45 - anywhere from 50 to 65 for a max of 320 days.

This will give a total of around 1040 days for each sim

Plantsims
Toddler age 0 - 1 for a total of 16 days.
Adult ages 1 - 50 for a total of 784 days.
Elder ages 50 - anwhere from 75 to 100 for a max of 800 days.
Total possible days = 1600.

[jolrei]

Well, if it suits your gameplay style, okay.  For me, over 1000 days per sim is interminable.  I would never make it to the next generation.  My current practice of just elixiring my favourite sims until I get damn tired of them, and then letting them die seems preferable to me.

[awrevell]

I used to do that, and turn off aging as well.  However, I got tired of playing the game and having a child conceived at the begining of a season and turn into a toddler at the begining of the next season.   This same sim would become a child and a teen before a seasonal year had completed.  This to me was just wrong, a baby that never sees it's first snow till it becomes a teen is so sad, the "child" who never got to build a snowman or make a snowangel... I decided these were things I could fix... and started working on that...

It is worth noting that even though time has been decelerated in this mod it is still possible to "let" bad things happen to your sims.  I mean we all know that we wouldn't make them happen but hey, if they decide to watch the clouds right after we throw in the satelite hack... it wasn't our fault  

However, I have considered looking into making more ways for a sim to die in this mod... like modding the "take a spin" social to include a chance of an accident where the car is destroyed and the sims die horribly.   The spirit of the mod is to allow an improved interaction between sims and the seasons,  it is not intended as a way to cheat death with the sims. 

[Zazazu]

However, I have considered looking into making more ways for a sim to die in this mod... like modding the "take a spin" social to include a chance of an accident where the car is destroyed and the sims die horribly. 

This would be 40 kinds of awesome. Not 41...just 40. If the car is seen skidding past the lot in a ball of fire, then it would be 41.

[Charamei]

However, I have considered looking into making more ways for a sim to die in this mod... like modding the "take a spin" social to include a chance of an accident where the car is destroyed and the sims die horribly.

Oh, yes please! Please!

This game seriously needs more bad stuff. Especially since my 'clinical depression' mod ain't looking like being finished any time soon.

[julialenn]

However, I have considered looking into making more ways for a sim to die in this mod... like modding the "take a spin" social to include a chance of an accident where the car is destroyed and the sims die horribly.

I, for one, am all for more (non-bizarre)ways for sims to die.
Bring on the mayhem!

[MistyBlue]

I am pretty interested in this mod. I never played with aging off, but I usually want my sims to live a little longer than they do. I'm not sure about them living that long, but, hey, if I don't like it I can remove it. I don't see the length of life as a bad thing, though. It would probably take me so much longer to populate my hood, which is a good thing.

And to more accidental deaths...WOOT!

[Kyna]

If you don't sync all your households to the same season (personally, I don't), your sims do get to experience a range of seasons in each age group.  It's just that they're not playable when they are visitors on another lot.

It doesn't snow where I live.  If we want to see snow, we need to visit the ski resorts interstate during the snow season, or go overseas.  If I want my sims to experience a season that they're not going to see in their current lifestage, then I'll send them on vacation - it just seems normal to me as that's what people where I live do when they want to go skiing.

If I wanted a sim to be able to see all 4 seasons in a lifestage, I could do that with 3 shopping districts all set to a different season cycle to the main 'hood and to each other.  Then my sim could go to community lots in those subhoods to experience stuff like making a snowman or building a sandcastle on a beach in summer.

[notveryawesome]

To be perfectly honest, this sounds nightmarish to me. I can barely handle three sim-days of pregnancy, with pregnant sims nearly dying due to their hunger and energy bottoming out at the same time, not to mention the morning-sickness during the first stage of pregnancy, with the puking after every meal, and the subsequent need to flush and clean the toilet. No, thanks. Also, the child, teen, and elder stages are already too long, IMO. This hack is an interesting concept, but it's not for me.

[Swiftgold]

Since I play with 1 day = 1 year, helped by making pregnancies one day long with a hack instead of 3 (for humans anyway; immortals get to keep 3 days for longer gestation period), I always just figured that the Sim world just has seasons that are four years long. It's not this world, anyway, so hey.

Though I do wish for more random ways for Sims to die that don't involve me making them do out of the ordinary stupid things - car accidents, for sure. It's kind of too bad Inteen isn't updating because I've always wanted a random "die in childbirth" to go along with the miscarriage possibility that doesn't involve me -choosing- outright to kill them. I've done this a few times when the story called for it, and there are some lovely headstones in the park's lake thanks to my mad scientist vampire zombie, but it really spices up an otherwise boring family's story when the random unexpected occurs, especially if it means things I never see or do like the social worker coming or kids being orphans.

[Zazazu]

'Die after childbirth', too. Every once in awhile I have a sim mom die the morning after childbirth of either starvation or disease.

[awrevell]

Sorry for the long delay in responding.  My computer melted down and I had to con my sister out of one that needed refitted and am now back online.  As a result of the meltdown I am starting from scratch on this project again.  I had made some inroads into identifying where I needed to insert the code for killing the sim when they went cruising before it happened though... and the meltdown might have taken away the product of my labor but it couldn't take away the knowledge gleaned from working on it    I like the idea for die in childbirth as well and will look into makeing that a reality.  I will address the violent morning sickness that continues through out most of the pregnancy and tone it down so that it will be less likely to cause total motive failure. 

[awrevell]

The first draft of the Seasonal Aging Project is now posted in Peasantry at http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,11789.0.html
This version does not include any accidental death mods as I am still trying to figure those out.

[mageborn]

This sounds interesting. I'm currently playing my first Legacy and noticed that it was a pain that the adults aged too fast (and as elders as well) because they would technically die (if no Elixir or cheats are used) before their children grew into adults (which isn't realistic). The hardest part was my founder wanted 10 Kids (which I fufilled, thanks to tons of Elixir). It would be nice to have the adults and elders live longer in order to see grandkids, but I agree with others that having babies/kids around that long would really get boring. Is this tweakable to custom tastes or are those values fairly set?

[Arina]

This sounds interesting. I'm currently playing my first Legacy and noticed that it was a pain that the adults aged too fast (and as elders as well) because they would technically die (if no Elixir or cheats are used) before their children grew into adults (which isn't realistic). The hardest part was my founder wanted 10 Kids (which I fufilled, thanks to tons of Elixir). It would be nice to have the adults and elders live longer in order to see grandkids, but I agree with others that having babies/kids around that long would really get boring. Is this tweakable to custom tastes or are those values fairly set?

You can tweak any of these mods if you have SimPE. It's fairly easy, just watch out because the values are in hex (converters are easy to find and converting yourself isn't too tricky either )

This thread and the accompanying discussion inspired me to do something like this myself. ^_^ I used TJ's hack as a base 'cause I wanted the adult stage to get the aspiration boost instead of elder and didn't want to change that on my own. Anyway, the way I've done it is to make seasons 3 days long, then to basically have baby-toddler-child as one year (2-3-7), teen as one year (12 days), YA as one year (this also will lower the number of 100% perfect graduates! Every semester is one day, there's a one day break between year 1/2 and year 3/4 and a 2 day break in the middle. I'm forcing exams at 5pm and I can't wait to start this because it will be hilarious micro-management-of-the-sims-I-like breakdowns-and-motive-failure-for-the-ones-I-dislike fun), adult as '3 years' (32-34 days random, -2 to +8 for asp, so actually 2.5-3.5 years), then finishing with elders (who I hate to play >_<) having a random 6-12 lifespan on top of all this. The total average lifespan is just below "7 years" (81 days, I think - but I think more people will get a bonus than a penalty on the adult stage, so it's basically 7 years), and I think this is fairly similar in days to the basic lifespan. It's just more skewed to adults, and makes sure that the sims experience enough of each season.

I haven't tested this properly yet but I'm really looking forward to it. Now I've finished making my 3 million genetic skins and default replacements I can actually play again! Woo!