Sim wants to fall in love with her husband's alien son

[BlueSoup]

How (in completely dumbed-down terms  ) do I make it so that she recognizes him as family, and doesn't want to fall in love with him?

This rolled as a want as soon as he moved out to his own house.

[Brynne]

Have you tried marking them "family" in the simpe relationship browser?

[BlueSoup]

Yeah, Brynne, when I said dumbed-down, I mean I have no idea how to use SimPE.  So, a tutorial or step-by-step instructions that I can read that tells me how to do that specifically would be awesome.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Which version of SimPE do you have?  the SimPE classic or the new one?

[BlueSoup]

I don't have it currently, I uninstalled it when I realised I didn't want my game to explode into a large fiery ball visible from outer space should I start mucking with it.

So, I would be downloading it again, and whichever version they offer (or someone tells me is better) would be the one I would download.

[gali]

1) Click on "tools", "neighbourhood", "neighbourhood browser".
2) Click on the chosen neighbourhood, and click on "open".
3) Click on "tools", "neighbourhood", "sim browser"
4) Click on your key board the first letter of the sim's private name (M for Melody).
5) After you openned the sim's file, click on "relations".
6) Find the relative, and choose for the wife "parent" (Scroll), and for the son - "child"; then check the "family" rectangle of both.

Edit: if you have NL, you can use only the latest version of SimPe.

[Brynne]

Ah, okay, lol. I'm not sure what level to write this to, so I'll do a very very "never-used-simpe" beginner version.


Open Simpe, and go under Tools to neighborhood to neighborhood browser. Click on your neighborhood. Once it's finished loading everything, go under tools again, neighborhood, and then to sim browser. A window will pop up with all your neighborhood sims. Click on the one you want to edit and go to the plugin view. Find the relationships tab, and go there.  Find the sim in the relationship box that you want to mark family and click on him/her. You'll then be able to see the relationship status. The pull-down menu should say "Unknown/undefined" something like that. The very last box says "family", click that. Commit and save. It should automatically do the other sim at the same time, but I always go to that sim's browser to make sure. 

If they still refuse to see each other as off-limits, I have actually gone back into SimPe to make them cousins. That definitely nips the flirting in the bud, but I'm not sure what it's doing to the character data behind the scenes... 

[Brynne]

Whoops! Gali beat me to it. Ah well, they both explain it the same way.

[Regina]

Well, there are two other replies already, but since I have it all typed out I'll post it anyway! 

I haven't yet installed the shiniest version, but I can tell you how to get through it.  First off, you're probably not going to explode your game, which is the really great news! LOL

Start up the program, then go to the Neighborhood Browser (which I'm thinking is under Tools), then choose your neighborhood.  It may take a bit for stuff to load.  On the left-hand side of the screen near the top you should see a little area with options.  Scroll down until you see Sim Description and click on that.  Again, this may take a little bit to load.

This will bring up a screen that will list all of the sims in that neighborhood.  Find the sim in question and click on her name in the list.

Now look down below and you'll see a Relationships area.  Choose that.  After you do, a long bar will appear on the bottom left of the screen showing all other sims in the neighborhood.  Find the alien step-son and click on his icon.  Now to your right you should see what their relationship is and be able to adjust it.

Make sure after you do you hit the 'commit' button, which you'll find near the top right of the bottom half of the screen.  Then before exiting SimPE choose File>Save.

I always advise making a back-up copy of your neighborhood beforehand, but this is a very easy process and shouldn't cause any harm to your game.

[Dark Trepie]

Well, if you want to get all technical about it, the woman isn't related to the alien kid in any way.  So they're fair game for romance.  But even still, wanting to flirt with the guy you probably taught to walk, talk, and use the potty is...ewww.

I've had this happen in a couple of other familes with step kids/parents.  Most notably with Dina Calliente and Alexander Goth.  After he went to college they both kept spinning up wants to flirt with each other.  They eventually went away though after I ignored them for a while.

I'll try the mini SimPE tutorials here to try to fix the situation in Strangetown with Lola, Chloe, and the Curious brothers.  Because dammit, they're siblings!  By blood relation no less!

[ZephyrZodiac]

I had a curious similarity when I had Brandi Broke married to Don Lothario.  while the boys were kids, Don saw them as family, but as soon as they grew up, he lost the family tick, and I had to replace it. 

I also had a sim, who was the youngest broke brother's daughter, fancy her great-uncle (and he was knowledge, not romance) and in those days I had no idea how to change it (and this was while she was still a teen!  - I did discover, though, that I had unknowlingly downloaded a teenage woohoo hack in a house!)

[Brynne]

That drives me nuts with the extended family not being recognized as family. I go into SimPe and mark every last relative "family" because I get a little weirded out when a sim eyes her cousin's son, or something. Maybe it's because in real life I know a lot of my own extended family and really get weirded out by the thought of....ugh. Let's not even go there.

[Oddysey]

It would be interesting, though I don't know how possible, if there was a hack that extended the "family" mark if the sim had know the family member in question as a child, and made a sim completely off limits to anyone who remembered "teaching to walk" or any similiar wants. It would probably annoy as many people as it pleased, because it would somewhat limit family drama, but it could be interesting.

Especially if anyone can understand what I'm talking about.

[BlueSoup]

Thank you all for your replies.    I know technically they aren't related, but she did help with his upbringing, so I definitely view this as an icky situation.  

Thanks again!

And Brynne - good call about marking all the relatives, I would so do that too, if my game was that big.  I tend to only play a couple of different families (and nowhere near as huge as yours), so I haven't run into that yet.

[Brynne]

I understand what you're saying.
In the Inseminator there's a relations adjuster that lets you set/clear flags for crush, love, married/joined, engaged, friends, best friends, and enemies. I've always thought it would be great if there was also an option to set a family flag. 

[ZephyrZodiac]

Interestingly, some Maxis families have all the ticks in place - for instance, the Pleasants all seem to recognize the whole family, Mary-Sue sees Lucy as family, although she's Daniel's niece, not heres.  But there are odd ticks that shouldn't be there, like Lilith and Dirk being in love and yet having the family tick!  So many careless errors!  (Oh, and Angela and dustin have the family tick too!)

[Brynne]

Thank you all for your replies.    I know technically they aren't related, but she did help with his upbringing, so I definitely view this as an icky situation. 

Thanks again!

And Brynne - good call about marking all the relatives, I would so do that too, if my game was that big.  I tend to only play a couple of different families (and nowhere near as huge as yours), so I haven't run into that yet.

I had teleported a ton of sims, all blood-related in one-form or another (some marriage-related) onto my lot so I could take pictures of the different branches of the family tree. I immediately exited the game and went into simpe when one of my sims said "Oh robitaw" over her great uncle. He used to change her diapers!

[Oddysey]

I think they set up the neighborhoods, and they were rushed and didn't play them at all, so they didn't realize the extent of the illogicalities inherent in them. Or something. Maybe "Maxis Monkey" is more than a joke.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I'd be interested to know how many Sims2 programmers actually play the game - or do they go home and play SSX3?

[Venusy]

I understand what you're saying.
In the Inseminator there's a relations adjuster that lets you set/clear flags for crush, love, married/joined, engaged, friends, best friends, and enemies. I've always thought it would be great if there was also an option to set a family flag. 

If you've got the latest version, simply hit "Spawn.../Family Tree". I think it got split from the relationship adjuster a while back.

EDIT: Misunderstood question. The family tree only allows parent and child flags to be set, instead of the family flag. Whoops.

[Brynne]

It did. There's the "quick relations" one, and then the "relationship adjuster" which is the one that has the flag options.

Edit to add: sorry, read that wrong. The family tree is actually a seperate thing, but doesn't have anyway to make someone a family member past the standard Maxian family tree.

[Regina]

That drives me nuts with the extended family not being recognized as family. I go into SimPe and mark every last relative "family" because I get a little weirded out when a sim eyes her cousin's son, or something. Maybe it's because in real life I know a lot of my own extended family and really get weirded out by the thought of....ugh. Let's not even go there.

I know what you mean!  I was raised in an extended family and a cousin, no matter how distant, was a blood relative and totally off limits.

My dad's brother, on the other hand, has six kids and out of the 5 that are married or soon to be married, at least four of them are married to cousins, a couple as close as second cousins. EWWWW!!  It seems that nearly all of my dad's relatives are married to either blood or step relatives.  It's bizarre!

[skandelouslala]

That drives me nuts with the extended family not being recognized as family. I go into SimPe and mark every last relative "family" because I get a little weirded out when a sim eyes her cousin's son, or something. Maybe it's because in real life I know a lot of my own extended family and really get weirded out by the thought of....ugh. Let's not even go there.

I'm the same way but never thought of going into SimPe to fix it.  Just b/c my poor simmies don't realize that they want to flirt with their 2nd or 3rd cousin doesn't mean I don't realize it lol

I did have one incident where I got confused and one of my sims had a little relationship going on with their 2nd cousin.  When I realize what I had done I was slightly disgusted with myself lol  But in my defense the 'hood was getting huge and I was losing track of everybody...who was related to who and what not..especially when their were some babies being born out of wedlock and what not heh.

[Andygal]

yuck!

I'd never touch a second cousin. Not that I know how to define most of those relationships I have no idea what second cousin once removed means lol. Anybody know of a website that explains that stuff, cause I'm tired of being clueless.

[cabelle]

You can find a good article here on the definitions of cousins and how they're determined. Here's what it says about what each type of cousin is and what "removed" means-

First Cousin: Your first cousins are the people in your family who have at least one of the same grandparents as you. In other words, they are the children of your aunts and uncles.

Second Cousin: Your second cousins are the people in your family who share the same great-grandparent with you.

Third, Fourth, and Fifth Cousins: Your third cousins share at least one great-great-grandparent, fourth cousins share a great-great-great-grandparent, and so on.

Removed: When the word "removed" is used to describe a relationship, it indicates that the two people are from different generations. "Once removed" indicates a difference of one generation, "twice removed" indicates a difference of two generations, and so forth.

My 2nd great grandfather married his first cousin I have no idea what the story behind it was. They had something like 8 kids (double ewww) but my granddad (my mom's dad) says he remembers that they were both really kind and caring people. It does crack me up that I am my very own 4th cousin.