Simysteries - anyone know why.......?

[ZephyrZodiac]

Okay, I have been messing around a lot in SimPE recently, and a couple of odd things really puzzle me and I wondered if anyone knows the answers.  So I thought I'd start a thread where we could try and answer these question, and post other mysteries as well.

I'll start with this one.

Why are all toddler skill tokens "owned by (N00X_User00000)  (Mortimer Goth in Pleasantview, but it's actually the first sim to be created in a neighbourhood.)

[Lythdan]

I was wondering what those were too. I was looking through memories of my neighbourhood today, and I saw those 'toddler skill tokens' as well.

[RainbowTigress]

I believe JM says this is because SimPE is not set up to properly recognize the owner of these tokens, and it simply names the first sim, which is Mortimer in Pleasantview.  I'm not sure now exactly where it was he said that now, but it was said in passing in one of these threads on here...somewhere...

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, I suppose you can't expect Maxis to actually program anything properly!  (I did do a search before I put the question but I didn't come across Pescado's answer, just one or two references to toddlers and skills (not always together.)

Anyone else have a question?

[RainbowTigress]

Here it is.  I got lucky.

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=102.msg1976#msg1976

It's actually not a Maxis bug, it has to do with SimPE being programmed to recognize the values.  For example, in the past SimPE wouldn't recognize the Therapist or Grim Reaper and labeled them Unknown, but in later versions of the program, they are properly recognized.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Oh, perhaps it's because I tend to use the classic version for most things.  I'll have to have a look in the NL version.

[Ancient Sim]

OK, I've got one.  How come Sims take 30 years to reach the end of their teen years (3 baby, 4 toddler, 8 child, 15 teenager), but are only 26 when they transition to adults? 

(Incidentally, because of this, they will increase the age-gap between themselves and their parents by 4 years as soon as they transition.  I was in the habit of sending mine to Uni 4 days before adulthood and playing the home lot 4 years, until I realised that by doing this I was increasing the age-gap four years.  Now I don't play the home lot at all until the YA is an adult, that way the age-gap doesn't increase).

As for the toddler skill tokens, I can't remember who mine are owned by, but the illness ones and travel ones are all owned by dead Sims, usually ones that have never even been played (many without character data).  Les Pleasant is a favourite in my game for travel - in fact (and please don't laugh) when I first saw it I thought he'd maybe been one of the drivers before he died. 

[C.S.]

Thanks for starting this, ZZ, I've been wondering about the toddler skill tokens too, and why it's always Mortimer who own them.

I've got 2 (potentially stupid) questions:

1) what does the token Motive Transport do?
2) why aren't grandaunts/uncles recognised as family?

[wishy-washy]

OK, I've got one.  How come Sims take 30 years to reach the end of their teen years (3 baby, 4 toddler, 8 child, 15 teenager), but are only 26 when they transition to adults? 

I'm not an expert or anything, but do you by any chance age your children a day early? You know when th emessage comes up: "It's time to buy so-and-so a birthday cake." I always age my kids right then so they actually end up missing a day of their lives. So baby actually has 2 days, toddler 3 etc. If you do that in between every transition from baby to adult/Y, it would subtract 4 days from their life. Right? I don't know...makes sense to me. Is that even what you were asking?

[Renatus]

Ancient, the way I've worked the math out for the ages - really roughly, mind you - is that the teen stage is 'artificially' lengthened to be about twice as long as it actually should be. Sims are actually about 20/21 when they age to adult, and then are a mere 50 (!) or so when they age to elder!

Of course my method doesn't account for those three days sims stay as babies, which I do because otherwise the sims don't get out of being toddlers until they're about 7 years old, which is ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is if you do count it all as a straight one to one ratio - they're 29/30 by the time they reach adulthood. This makes the age at which they reach elderhood marginally more sensible, but throws the rest of it completely out of whack.  More game design wankery...

I have no idea why they decided to make the teen stage so long. It isn't more fun to play for anyone, I imagine, even Ea's mistaken target audience... no one really likes being a teenager. :p

[eaglezero]

I have no idea why they decided to make the teen stage so long. It isn't more fun to play for anyone, I imagine, even Ea's mistaken target audience... no one really likes being a teenager. :p

I like the teen stage a lot more than the kid stage -- teens have more time to build skills! (Although, I have to say, as a teen I spent most of my time doing schoolwork, and all time at home not spent doing homework was spent kicking stuff to maximize fun so I could continue doing homework, or something along those lines.)

[ZephyrZodiac]

If kids grow up with stuck smart milk, they can build skills really fast, and have time since they do their homework in no time flat!  Also, unlike teenagers, they WANT to learn, so unless the skill drains all their fun, they'll be keen to do it.  And in RL, you are a kid for 8 years and a teen for only 7.  (At least, here in the UK where kids start school at 5 you are!  And in reality, 3-5 yrs is not really toddler!)

[skandelouslala]

2) why aren't grandaunts/uncles recognised as family?

Grand anything isn't recognized.

I remember being horrified when I first realized great grandparents didn't recognize their great grandchildren as family.

And I felt accomplished for having everybody alive that long...pssh lol

Any great or second isn't recognized beyond that point.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Seems odd that, having provided both Aging off and elixir of life, that the Moxoids didn't realise this could mean not just great-grandparents and great great uncles and aunts still being around, but even more generations than that!

[Ancient Sim]

I have altered all my ages now anyway using Inge's agecons mod, mainly to give them 10 extra years as adults and 10 less as elders, although I've also altered the other years a bit so they go to school at 5 instead of 7 to coincide with the fact that I am British like, y'know???  My teens also get 5 years less and I class each 2 years as 1 year so they go to Uni at 18 (I actually give them 11 years so they can go after work on the 10th day without transitioning before they get the chance, but I never use that extra day).

Quite why they go to Uni at 30, spend all those years there (depending on how you look at it, this could be as many as 27, making them 3 days into elder in terms of days played!), then graduate and mysteriously become 4 years younger (or 31 years younger if you prefer) is probably the biggest mystery in the entire game.

[twojeffs]

Thanks for starting this, ZZ, I've been wondering about the toddler skill tokens too, and why it's always Mortimer who own them.

I've got 2 (potentially stupid) questions:

1) what does the token Motive Transport do?
2) why aren't grandaunts/uncles recognised as family?

1) It's used to store the sim's motives when they move from lot to lot. There are several of those 'transport' type tokens used to store various things while sims move.

[Torkle]

Grand anything isn't recognized.

Which is why you can do this kind of inbred family:



Picture rotated by suggestion from eaglezero.

[Kristalrose]

I have had a little pondering of my own regarding relationships.  Why is it that an adopted child looses their memories and family-ties to their birth family?  I had a orphaned child whom I had another family adopt.  She still has a birth sister in UNI, but she no longer recognizes her.  Now that she is a teenager, she cannot date her adopted brother, which ruins my entire storyline! 

Oh, and bloodlines:  Is there a hack that I might have installed that took the Polination tech out of the picture?  I have two alien children by diffrent "fathers."  They are realted anyway through marriage.  (They are step-uncle and step-niece).  But, amazingly, there's no Polination tech in their line, and the line comes straight from their "father" to them.   

And why did  my alien male suddenly develop crushes on their "mothers" (the female who raised them) when they become YA?  If my orphan girl can't date her adopted brother, then the alien shouldn't be able to have a crush on the woman who raised him!  EWWWWWWW!

[ZephyrZodiac]

All valid questions (although they can be rectified by chacking the family box in SimPE) which Maxis could so easily find answers to, I think.  Now, to some extent I can understand the adopted sibling, as British and presumably US law counts adopted children brought up together as being family and they AREN'T allowed to marry in RL.  What I find hard to understand is that, if you have two teens nearing transition, so in RL terms they are around 19, and their parents marry and they all move in together, suddenly those teens are off limits to each other.  I have a strange instance of this in my game, where the son of each partner in the marriage was going steady with the other.  As soon as the second partner and son moved in, this going steady remained, all the associated wants remained, but could not be fulfilled.  Right I thought, I'll move them out when they grow up, and then it's bound to be okay!  But, no, it wasn't, and now they were desperate to woohoo, the one with the family aspiration was desperate to get engaged and joined, the romance sim had all the corresponding fears.  But the only physical contact they could have was friendly hug and family kiss!  I had to get the parents to split up so they could have a normal relationship, then get the parents back together again!  (I didn't have SimPE back then!)

[C.S.]

Grand anything isn't recognized.

I remember being horrified when I first realized great grandparents didn't recognize their great grandchildren as family.

And I felt accomplished for having everybody alive that long...pssh lol

Any great or second isn't recognized beyond that point.

*groans* I could accept making them recognise great-grand anything as family would make the game codes way messy than necessary but if they could recognise grandpa and grandma as family, why not their siblings too? Well, it was more of a bemoaning than questioning.

I'm just paranoid about how since romance sims greet guests by planting a kiss on another sim's lips (and getting 'Kissed so-and-so for the first time' memory) instead of giving a friendly hug, that it would create a situation where first kisses are stolen unwittingly. First time I saw that was when Nina called Daniel up to invite him on an outing, I had Daniel decline the invite, she somehow teleported to the Pleasant lot after Daniel hung up, and not wanting her hanging around making a nuisance of herself (I had 2 dates going on at the time), I had Daniel tell her goodbye because everybody else was busy. He sauntered over to Nina and instead of giving her a goodbye hug, he kissed her goodbye. I looked in their memories and there it was, the 'kissed (insert name) for the first time'. Huh??! I'm not worried about teens greeting adults, I'm worried about YAs greeting adults. Putting a tick in the family box in SimPE could only do so much .

[Lythdan]

I have a strange instance of this in my game, where the son of each partner in the marriage was going steady with the other.  As soon as the second partner and son moved in, this going steady remained, all the associated wants remained, but could not be fulfilled.  Right I thought, I'll move them out when they grow up, and then it's bound to be okay!  But, no, it wasn't, and now they were desperate to woohoo, the one with the family aspiration was desperate to get engaged and joined, the romance sim had all the corresponding fears.  But the only physical contact they could have was friendly hug and family kiss!  I had to get the parents to split up so they could have a normal relationship, then get the parents back together again!  (I didn't have SimPE back then!)

I have this problem too. What I found out is that crush status overrides it, at least if they don't have crushes at the time of the marriage of a family member. See, most of my neighbourhood is related by blood or marriage, which definitely closes the pool for romance sims! I now use the mistletoe to get them the crush, and then they have most of the options available, but 'family kiss' still remains.

[ZephyrZodiac]

But the point it, these two sims weren't family, even though they are step-brothers, and had they grown up and got joined BEFORE the parents married, it would have been acceptable even in RL!  If I'd done it that way round, I'd never have had the problem!

Sad thing is, though, since NL the most I've been able to get for them is one lightning bolt, and to do that they BOTH had to change aspirations.  Their turn-ons/offs are as near the same as I can get them, but unfortunately Jean-Paul is Scorpio and David is Libra, so unless I actually change the personality of one of them, (which would mean they were different characters and I refuse to do) there seems only one option left, which does sometimes work - Public Woohoo in the phot-booth!

[MissDoh]

But the point it, these two sims weren't family, even though they are step-brothers, and had they grown up and got joined BEFORE the parents married, it would have been acceptable even in RL!  If I'd done it that way round, I'd never have had the problem!

Sad thing is, though, since NL the most I've been able to get for them is one lightning bolt, and to do that they BOTH had to change aspirations.  Their turn-ons/offs are as near the same as I can get them, but unfortunately Jean-Paul is Scorpio and David is Libra, so unless I actually change the personality of one of them, (which would mean they were different characters and I refuse to do) there seems only one option left, which does sometimes work - Public Woohoo in the phot-booth!

Well from my experience, if both turn ons match (In those case I always choose haircolor and either glasses, beard, make-up or fitness) and there is no possibility to have the turn off on both side (a bad turn off would be underwear or swim suit, a good one would be vampirism or an hair color) and they have good aspiration match it should show 2 bolts instead of 1 even with bad zodiac signs.  You could try to have them with the same aspiration it does help, that is if the # of bolts is actually that important.  I personally don't really care about that and match Sims the way I want too, it is not that hard by playing with the turnons/off to change a stricted bolt to a 1 bolt.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Oh, I shan't split them up, it just seems a shame that it just doesn't seem to be working for them at present.  I think David might just as well go back to being Romance, but I'll leave Jean-Paul as knowledge, at least till he gets permaplat!  David is in the military career at present, but however many times I re-roll his LTW, military just doesn't appear, but he's very keen on being a celebrity chef, and he can achieve that just as easily in his original aspiration!

[ElviraGoth]

I wish I could choose their LTWs.  Some sims are just perfect for Captain Hero, others have the personality that's just begging to be a Mad Scientist.  And they want to be a Celebrity Chef.  It seems like the LTW should take more of their personality into consideration, not just interests.  And I never think to have my sims get a magazine to read about whatever I want them to be!