Testers Wanted: Harder Harder Grades - Version 2.14 (Updated 9/17/2008)

[syberspunk]

Harder Harder Grades v2.14 for TS2AL v1.0p0
Made by: syberspunk

Since Pescado has an unofficial harderjobs hack in the works, that got me to thinking there should be an equivalent for grades as well. This hack makes it slightly harder to get an A+ for children and teens. It seems to easy (at least to me) to get an A+ in school for our sims. But A+ don't come so easily for some people in real life. Apparently the sims' schools aren't all that challenging. :rolleyes: In anycase, this hack now requires sims to have logic points and essentially puts a cap on grades based on those points. Here's how the "logic" of the mod should work:

Edit: 7/6/2006
As requested, Version 2.10 should be even harder. This is untested and thus feedback would be appreciated. Basically, I just reduced the contribution from each of the four base skills. Each skill normally contributes 1/4th of their total value, which is then modified based on personality traits and aspiration. I reduced this to 1/8th instead, which theoretically should make it harder. I'm not sure how significant an impact this will have. It could be fairly subtle to blatantly noticeable. Please provide feedback as to whether this is now Too hard, or still not hard enough.
Further tweaks to the code to make it a bit harder to climb the grade ladder so to speak, as well as thrown in some randomness of grades dropping. Needs testing obviously.

Edit: 5/31/2006
Added/modified code to lessen cheering. Cheering should only occur if a student has an A- or greater, and their current grade is better than their previous grade. Modifications have only been moderately tested. As such, I have uploaded a separate archive .zip but the .package name is still the same. Just overwrite the previous file. If it doesn't work properly, you can always redownload the older 2.0 version. Please check how it works in your game and provide feedback if possible.


Note: Since a few people requested it, and I thought it was a great idea, I decided to make a version that uses other skills. I will keep the original, simpler version based on logic only available. However, I will also attach version 2.0 as a separate download. The 2nd version still has the same name, so if you choose to use the much more complex version, all you need to do is download and install it in the usual place and let it overwrite the older, simpler version.

The newer version 2.0 also has a slightly different RTFM included in the .zip archive. I am including those differences here in the first post, so previous users can note the difference and decide if they would like to "upgrade" to the newer version, as well as let new users see the differences between the two versions and decide which they prefer.

Short version:

As few people have requested, I decided to make another version that depends on skills other than just logic. Basically, your students grades will increase based on the combination of their logic, body, creativity, and charisma.

Long version (some of the hard code facts):

A sim will have a base skill determined by their aspiration or interests:
Knowledge sims will rely on logic
Romance sims will rely on body
Fortune sims will rely on creativity
Popularity sims will reply on charisma
The base skill for all other sims will be determined by their interests. Interests have been grouped into 4 categories, and depending on the sum of these interests, whichever is greatest will determine which of the four base skills is used.


If a student has no base skill points AND they have a grade that is < D, then their grade will improve if they've completed their homeworks.
If a student has 1-3 base skill points AND they have a grade that's < C, then their grade will improve if they've completed their homeworks.
If a student has 4-9 base skill points AND they have a grade that's < B, then their grade will improve if they've completed their homeworks.
If a student has max base skill points then their grade will always improve.

Otherwise, each skill will contribute a max of 25% to the overall chance of their grade randomly improving.

Each contribution can be modified by aspiration, interests, and personality:
The contribution from base skills will always be doubled.
The contribution from logic will be doubled if sims are more serious, halved if they are more playful.
The contribution from body will be doubled if sims are more active, halved if they are more lazy.
The contribution from creativity will be doubled if sims are more playful, halved if they are more serious.
The contribution from charisma will be doubled if sims are more outgoing, halved if they are more shy.

Mood also will have an affect, possibly doubling or halving the % chance of improving or dropping, just add more randomness.

Sims will still cheer if they get an A. After all, an A is a pretty good grade (I couldn't remember if this is "normal" or if sims only cheered for A+s).

Additionally, sims will have an overall harder chance of getting an A+. The chance will usually be 1/2 the chance that they have for improving their grade in general if they don't meet the regular base skill requirements (as described above). However, if the sim has maxed their base skill, their chances will be doubled.
Mood will have an affect as well, with gold and platinum moods greatly increasing the % chance of getting a + to their grade.

Short version:

I'm interpreting logic points as a representation of the sim's intelligence. Grades are dependent on logic points as well as mood. To put it simply, the higher your logic points and the better your mood, the higher the cap is for students' grades and the better their chances for actually reaching that cap.

Long version (some of the hard code facts):

If a student has no logic points AND they have a grade that is < D, then their grade will improve if they've completed their homeworks.
If a student has no logic points AND they have a grade that is >=D, then their grade will have a a 1% chance of improving.
If a student has 1-3 logic points AND they have a grade that's < C, then their grade will improve if they've completed their homeworks.
If a student has 1-3 logic points AND they have a grade that's >=C, then their grade will have a a 5-15% chance of improving.
If a student has 4-6 logic points AND they have a grade that's < B, then their grade will improve if they've completed their homeworks.
If a student has 4-6 logic points AND they have a grade that's >=B, then their grade will have a a 20-30% chance of improving.
If a student has 7-9 logic points AND they have a grade that's < B, then their grade will improve if they've completed their homeworks.
If a student has 7-9 logic points AND they have a grade that's >=B, then their grade will have a a 35-45% chance of improving.
If a student has max logic points then their grade will always improve.

Mood also will have an affect, possibly doubling or halving the % chance of improving or dropping, just add more randomness.

Sims will still cheer if they get an A. After all, an A is a pretty good grade (I couldn't remember if this is "normal" or if sims only cheered for A+s).

Additionally, students have a 0-25% chance, corresponding to their logic skill (0-10), of getting an A+ if they have an A. Essentially, this puts a cap on getting an A+ unless the student has a lot of logic points.

Finally, mood will have an affect as well, doubling the % chance of increasing a grade with a better mood.

Incidentally... I'm not sure if this was a bug or just "poor coding" but the way it originally worked is that, if a sim was in a very bad mood they were guaranteed to lose a point. Sims in a very good mood were guaranteed to always gain a point. Even though there was code checking if a random # between 0-100, since the threshold was always 100 or more, the checks always returned true. What's the point of having randomness in there if it always returns true?

It appears that Maxis initially wanted to make grades slightly harder and slightly random and then changed it. Who knows whether this was done "by design" to make it super simple and super easy, or it was abandoned or incomplete, or their "design" was flawed. :shrug:

I've tested it out in my game, but have not yet observed the long term effects. A lot of my playable sims have high logic already, so the effect is less noticeable. But play testing in the Pleasant house, Lilith Pleasant with no logic points was stuck with a D after returning from her first day of school. Using the boolprop cheat to up her logic points, she returned with a C.

INSTALLATION:
This MUST be in your Downloads folder, typically found under:

C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\My Documents\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\Downloads


Compatibility:
:!!: Tested in Nighlife and works as planned, so far. Please test it out and let me know if there are any problems. This probably works in Uni and the Base Game, although it hasn't been tested. Feel free to try it out and leave feedback, which is always appreciated.

I have tested this in my game and it appears to work fine.

This hack is compatible with most, if not all mods by MATY crew (Pescado, TJ, and CBoy), dizzy, and probably more. Again, up to you to help me determine any possible conflicts.


:!!: REMINDER and fine print (to cover my ass ) :
Remember to ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR DATA BEFORE INSTALLING NEW HACKS. By using this hack, you agree to absolve me of any responsibility or liability for any potential loss of or damage to your data. You have been warned.

:!!: HOW TO REPORT: Conflicts, problems, or errors
I would appreciate any constructive criticism and feedback that is actually helpful. With that in mind, it would be helpful, when reporting any conflicts or issues, that you include the following:

1) thorough but reasonably brief description of what you were doing
2) clear, comprehendible explanation of your problem
3) list of hacks that may be related to grades
4) archived (.rar or .zip) of log produced by error

Posts which do not include a clear description of what your problem is will be pretty much ignored. (i.e. posts such as "This does not work! I am taking it out! You suck! Nice try! etc.") I can't and won't help you if you don't explain what's wrong.

Please be nice when trying to explain your problem and I might be nice and help you.

:grouphug: Finally, my Thank Yous go to:

J.M. Pescado, twojeffs, dizzy2, and jase439 for being excellent tutors and providing excellent models in their mods. As always, thanks to those creators who've put out some excellent modding tutorials, Quaxi and co for SimPE, and dizzy2 for disaSim2, and the finally letters T and S, and the number 2, all of whom, without which this mod would not be possible.

If I left anyone out, I apologize in advance. You know who you are and you deserve my thanks.

Version History:
v2.00 - Tweaked code to add dependency on additional skills based on personality and aspiration
v2.02 - Added/modified code to lessen cheering.
v2.03 - Changed format to 8007 for backwards compatibility.
v2.10 - Even harder version as requested, needs feedback please.
v2.12 - Updated for Seasons
v2.13 - Updated for Free Time
v2.14 - Updated for Apartment Life

Here's some pics:

We see Angela only maintains her B with no logic points.



Bumping up her logic points, she manages to score an A. Since she has 6 logic points, she normally would only get a 30% chance of getting an A, but since she's in a really good mood, that boosted her up to a 60% chance.




Finally, with her logic points maxed out and a great mood, she has a 50% chance of getting that A+.



Here's Lilith with her miserable D. With no logic points, her cap is at a D (the game starts her off intially with a D-), with only a 1% chance of improving. With a single logic point, her grades improve to a C.

[Grater]

Cool, I'll definitely try this out.

But shouldn't the other skill points help out as well, just less than for logic? It's not like school is all maths. They even grade PE .

[syberspunk]

Cool, I'll definitely try this out.

But shouldn't the other skill points help out as well, just less than for logic? It's not like school is all maths. They even grade PE .

Hrm... heh, well I wasn't a big fan of PE in high school myself. lol. I totally forgot about that and I guess I blocked that out.

Um... I'll think about it. I guess I'll wait for more feedback. As it stands, I was just thinking about school in general, mostly focusing on the academic side. I would say 90% of your classes require intelligence, which I am using logic to represent in a simple way. I suppose I could make it even more complex with regard to other skills and personality, but then again I'm lazy.

And if I did use other skills, I'd have to think about how to keep things on a metric scale. I'd have to think about which skill points or personality traits to use, and what's a reasonable threshold and what not. I guess it isn't that bad. Oops, hit the submit button too quickly. Some possibilities are, as you mention, body skill, as well as creativity, seriousness, laziness, and charisma. The thing is, I don't want the hack to get too unwieldy for me. I'd have to think of a reasonable way to use these as factors. How should they affect things, and do I want to have differences for different specific values for each trait/skill, or have some general threshold based on a sum of these traits/skills. And then, what reasonable thresholds should be set? At least with one skill, I don't have to worry or think too much about it.

Anyways, I suppose I'll think about it after some feedback. If anybody else is interested or feels this needs more tweaking, I'm definitely open to suggestions. If there's a high demand, maybe I'll consider it for an upgrade later.

Ste

[ElfPuddle]

This looks very cool!

In the interest of the arts (just the bias of an English/Drama teacher, I know)...would it be too unwieldy to use all skill points rather than logic...

You might then lessen the percentages, as you'd need 70 points to distribute, rather than 10, but if you've lumped them all together, it would mean less work. Maybe? I'm scared to even think about looking into hacks, but it was a thought. Either way, this looks great, and I'll be downloading as soon as I've posted.

My students can attest that I firmly believe in grades being hard to earn!

[myskaal]

Great idea and I'll definately try it out.

I have to agree I think it would be a good idea to actually include all the skills in some form, if it would be possible. You know.. you've got your home ec types (cooking and maybe cleaning), your shop types (mechanical), the jocks (body), drama and the arts (charisma, creativity), as well as the logical types who excel in sciences and mathmatics.
Or would that be making it too easy again?

Perhaps a way to cap things in relation to certain skills?
Talking out of my wazoo here. I'm not the logical sort.

[ThyGuy]

This is pretty awesome, and makes the game a little more challenging when playing kiddies (Who are the easiest sims to play) and the teens. Plus I can't stand to have all my sim teens getting A+. This will make it easier to keep their bad grades, or decent grades constant.

[Sleepycat]

This sounds great! Thank you 


Will this play nice with "homework sometimes faster fun"?

[Emma]

This really makes sense! Thanks Steve-I'll try it out

[idtaminger]

I definitely second the request for other skills to be taken into consideration. English, for example, needs a good deal of creativity on top of logic. Foreign Languages would entail some sort of charisma, as speaking and such are a big part of such classes. PE, of course, needs body. Art and Music classes need creativity as well. Etc.,etc. W/ all the emphasis on "well-roundedness" in academia these days, you'd expect it to matter for sims too.

[tunaisafish]

Love the idea of this Ste

I also think more skills should be in the equation, but why not all seven?

Could use a weighted score for higher levels, perhaps based on the cumalitive 'base time' that it takes to achieve new levels.
Pescado has posted the 'ticks' in the War room.
It might also be an idea to add something to check the spread of skills.  ie. sims would be penalised for each skill where they have zero points.

My toddlers normally have about 6 in of each of the toy skills before they become kids.  Would like them to at least have to do some more study to get the As

[syberspunk]

I finally managed to install TS2 back again, all the up to OFB, as well as get my neighborhoods back in working condtion (well at least they seem ok so far ).

I had been working on this before OFB was released, but stuck it on the backburner while I was scrambling to update my hacks. Now that I've taken some time to look at it again and test it out, I feel like it's ready for a release.

I've put some of the details up in the first/main post. I decided to use 4 main base skills, as they seemed the most "logical" to me. Even though cooking, mechanical, and cleaning might apply to certain classes, such as home-ec or shop, I felt that the other 4 were more applicable, and I could better associate them with personality, interests, and aspiration while still making sense in having some logical effect on grades.

Things work on the same general principal, with the four skills each contributing about 25% to the overall random chance of grades improving, if a sim hasn't already met the regular criteria for each "grade level" in their base skill.

Although the weighting is a cool idea, I didn't want to have to deal with 'ticks' and time dependent modifiers. That would require me to learn a bit more, and I'm too lazy to do that right now. Lol. Instead, I took a much "simpler" approach, using my original idea as a basis, and expnanding it to incorporate 3 other skills.

The end result is, in general it will be much harder if your sims don't have any skills at all. They will pretty much be stuck at D or C. Therefore, CAS Teens will most likely have the hardest time with this. All other younger sims should do reasonably well, depending on how much time you devote to skilling (and more specifically, which skills you focus on). If you use macrostatics and or the baby controller, your sims will most likely do very well, and in the end, it probably won't be that much harder. Overall, it should be harder to get an A+, but if you have a lot of skills, and are in Gold or Platinum Aspiration levels, then you should get A+'s as easy as before. In this respect, the hack rewards players who keep their sims aspiration levels high. If you bothered or managed to fulfill LTWs, you probably don't want it to be so hard for those sims. So this is an 'out' for those sims.

Anyways, please test it out and let me know if you have any problems with it. I always appreciate feedback. Let me know if it is still too easy or if it suddenly becomes insanely hard. I think it's reasonably balanced. In my test runs, I used the Pleasant house as usual, and there was still some randomness in there. Despite the difficulty, sims could still get an A+ if they had a lot of skill points, so it isn't totally impossible. However, I feel it is still balanced, because you do need several skill points still, and in this way your grades will sort of reflect the time you spent "studying" or building up those skills.

Ste

[laracon]

This is an excellent idea and I hope it works out fine.

How about extending it to only allow entry to college for teenagers at a certain grade?

[ElfPuddle]

It's been a while since I had kids & teens to play with, so I apologize for the lenghty waiting....

This is a FANTASTIC addition. Thanks so very much, syberpunk. My in-game kids are finally having to actually do more than show up to class. Just like like my RL students! Thanks again.

[Magicmoon]

I am using version 2 of this hack. For the first time since playing this game my simkids have a variety of grades instead of every single one having an A+, so I really love this mod.

But the endless cheering (that previous hacks and the Maxis Patch had fixed)  has returned to the game. Yes, I want them to cheer the FIRST time they get an A or A+. Even cheering when they go from A to A+ is cool. But now every single day the kids come home and do that endless cheering thing because they got an A. Well, they got an A yesterday and cheered, isn't that enough? One kid has had a grade of A for 4 or 5 days running and has cheered every single day.

Can you restore the functionality of the patch where they only cheer the First time they get a good grade?

BTW, I removed the no cheering type hacks when the Maxis Patch came out and the endless cheering thing had stopped until I put this mod in.

I have up to nightlife installed.

[syberspunk]

When I get a chance and find some time, I'll take a look into this. Sorry about the constant cheering. And thanks for the feedback. Definitely appreciated. I had only played with this a little in testing to make sure the changes in the dependency on skills worked, but haven't played my regular game in a long time to see what the long term effects were.

Ste

[Magicmoon]

Do you think that I should put one of the old no cheering hacks back into the game? Or do you think that doing so will break things since that was fixed with the last Maxis patch?

If it is only going to be a week or so before you get around to messing with this mod, I can wait until this mod has reached its awesome potential.

I sure am enjoying mods like this that make my Sims different from each other. It gets pretty boring when the exact same thing is going on in every single household (like ALL of my sim kiddies getting A+ grades.)

Thanks again for such a great mod.

[J. M. Pescado]

But the endless cheering (that previous hacks and the Maxis Patch had fixed)  has returned to the game. Yes, I want them to cheer the FIRST time they get an A or A+. Even cheering when they go from A to A+ is cool. But now every single day the kids come home and do that endless cheering thing because they got an A. Well, they got an A yesterday and cheered, isn't that enough? One kid has had a grade of A for 4 or 5 days running and has cheered every single day.

Can you restore the functionality of the patch where they only cheer the First time they get a good grade?

The key which suppresses the cheering is the "Got A+" memory. Since your sims haven't gotten an A+ yet, they won't receive the memory key and thus stop cheering.

On the other hand, the cheering is nowhere near as obnoxious as it was in the original, since it does not stomp queues anymore. I actually don't mind it now, since it causes sims to RUN, usually to the vicinity of The One Desk, as opposed to plod slowly, which means it takes tham about an hour and half to unload even with The One Desk as close as it can reasonably be.

[Magicmoon]

Oh. Thanks for explaining that. Makes sense.

But what is The One Desk that you refer to?

[ElfPuddle]

The One Desk...the only desk on the lot. It has nothing to do with The One Ring...that's another story entirely.

[J. M. Pescado]

The One Desk...the only desk on the lot. It has nothing to do with The One Ring...that's another story entirely.

Actually, there can be more than one desk on the lot, and it does have something to do with The One Ring: The One Desk rules all the other desks on the lot, hence "The One Desk".

[jrd]

It's just like The One Door and The One Fridge: Sims will sado-randomly elevate one item to The One status, and always use that one when possible even if another item of the same type is closer.

[Magicmoon]

Oh, ok. I use Inge's assignable desks. You just have to make sure that there is an unused space right next to the part of the desk where they put their homework because they place their homework on the desk while standing in that square. If that square is blocked they put their homework on the ground instead. So each of the kids put their homework on their own desk. I found that using regular desks that if one child decides to put his homework on the same desk as the child that got off the bus before him, he will put his homework on the ground (Or worse hide it somewhere) instead of choosing a different desk.

I thought that the One Desk was a more awesome object that I had somehow missed...and of course desperately needed since JM made it.

[syberspunk]

New version available that lessens the cheering that some of you may find annoying. Please download and test. Feedback is always appreciated.

Ste

[Ancient Sim]

When I first looked at this I thought "Nah", but I have decided to give it a try.  You're right, it IS boring when they all get the same grades and mine always have A+ as a matter of course.  This is probably in a large part due to the homesometimesfasterfun mod (Dizzy's?), so I suppose I need to take that out as well.  My poor Sims won't know what's hit them. 

Just out of curiousity, you mention the Aspirations being involved in the equation, so presumably the mod works differently for teens than it does for kids?  Anyway, I shall look forward to testing this and I will report back.  As you live in my Pleasantview, don't be surprised if you are attacked by a bunch of extremely angry teenagers the next time you go outside to water the nearest plant.  I'd certainly look out for the Beaker twins, they're NASTY.  Then again, they've both been maxed-out on Logic almost since they were toddlers, so they probably won't suffer much.  Let's hope they don't.

[syberspunk]

When I first looked at this I thought "Nah", but I have decided to give it a try.  You're right, it IS boring when they all get the same grades and mine always have A+ as a matter of course.  This is probably in a large part due to the homesometimesfasterfun mod (Dizzy's?), so I suppose I need to take that out as well.  My poor Sims won't know what's hit them. 

It was JenFlower's and nope, you don't need to take that out. It works fine. I use that hack too.

Just out of curiousity, you mention the Aspirations being involved in the equation, so presumably the mod works differently for teens than it does for kids?  Anyway, I shall look forward to testing this and I will report back.

For those that don't have the typical teen/adult aspirations, the mod will look set the 'base' skill according to their interests. So... for children, Family, Pleasure, and Grilled Cheese, you could manipulate the base skill by changing their interests. Unfortunately, this is sort of blind to the user. But I tried to group interests in such a way that the skill that would be based on them seemed logical i.e. the more scientific interests would lead to a base skill in logic, whereas the more creative ones would have creativity, etc.

Ste