More Awesome Than You!

Phew, the initial test (alpha/beta/gamma?) version of the Sims2DB database is ready!   :)

Please go to http://www.sims2db.com/sims2dbv05.zip (http://www.sims2db.com/sims2dbv05.zip) to download.

Unzip the files into a folder, and then click on the Sims2DB.EXE file to start the database.

I'm not limiting testers but haven't publicized it anywhere else than here...

If you're not sure what I'm talking about, look down a few postings to the one entitled "Database is almost ready..."

Cheers!

All righty then! So exciting! Thanks for this. :)

downloading now

Wow! This looks great! My Saturday night is planned out, now. :D

Yes!  My free evening will not go to waste!  Thank you. :)

Woo Hoo!!!

Whoo! I'm so excited! I'm glad it's finally here.

What is it? Edit: Nevermind. Wow, read the site, it sounds awesome. Using now.!

Fantastic job, Pegasys! This is exactly what my Sims needed me to have.  :D

Okay, so it's a great program and pretty straight forward, but am I supposed to enter all my families and information in there, or shouldn't it do it for me?

Read here (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=1049.msg36807#msg36807).

I've run across a problem. I clicked on the reports button and now I can't figure out how to get back to the data entries. :-\ I closed out the program and restarted it, but the only two windows that show now are the generated report and Sims2Partners. I've done something dumb, haven't I?

i did that too and it's quite a hassle.


Well then. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I'm sorry but when it says "Are you getting overwhelmed with all the Sims in your neighborhood? Have you lost count?" it makes it sound like it will pull all the data for you, and allow you to simply alter or take notes of things, much like a notepad for each sim. While it is a nice program, it's completely useless if you have a ton of Sims. Not only will you be overwhelmed by all your Sims in the game, can you imagine how long it would take to enter some 80odd or even more Sims in there, what with looking up each of their personality points and interests. Sorry if it seems rude for me to be saying this, but hopefully in the future you'll have it pull data much like SimPE does. I hate SimPE solely because it's just mind boggling, and I was kinda hoping this would be a "toned down" version of the Sim editor included in SimPE.

So, don't get me wrong. This program isn't 100% crap or anything. It will be very useful to those who have the time to enter data for all pre-existing sims, and then update the data each time a new Sim is born or a sim ages. ;)

Downloading. 

Good job, Pegasys!

Well the way I see it, you weren't paying attention to the previous posts on this subject.  Which gives you even less cause for being insulting.  If you have a complaint, why not try constructive criticism instead?

Pegasys,

I'm a little confused about how to enter a historical (re: maiden, etc.) last name for a sim.  Can you help?

Allen

You click the Continue button (on the left side) and it asks you if you want to print the report. Say no and the window closes. The other (small) window where you select which type of report you want, has a small "close window" text link in the top=right corner.

You can always select the window you want from the toolbar Window menu. It will list all the windows currently open.



Now for my experience...

EXCELLENT! I entered all the info for my Legacy family (it's on 2nd gen, so it was easy), and everything looks perfect. I haven't run into any actual glitches yet. You've done a super job. :D

It's under the Life Transitions tab, isn't it? Then when you use the List feature the Maiden Name is a field there. You can edit it right from there as well.

Not having been here very long, and not really using this categoy, I haven't seen previous posts on this subject. When I first read the post, I replied and asked what it was. I did the smart thing and checked out the website, and I didn't see that it said (I don't think it even does) you had to enter the data yourself. What I said could be taken constructively, if you choose to do so. My post's tone might seem negative, but it's not. I was just upset with the fact that the way it is put out, it seems like it will be a tool that will manage your Sims information for you. When it says "Are you overwhelmed by all your Sims?" the first thing that came to MY mind was a tool that would fetch the information for you and store it into a database. I dunno, I'm not saying it's completely stupid, as you can see by the positive feedback by those who have started using it, it's not. It's just not what I thought it would be.

To the original poster, Pegasys, I appologize if you took my post negatively and were hurt in any way. I think I was just caught up in the moment, and my feelings about it. As I said, I hope you could have it pull data in the near future for us lazy folk. ;)

I realize that entering all the data of preexisting Sims is a bit laborious. However, it is impossible for me and the database to pull data out of the Sims 2 program. I am not a programmer persay but a former database programmer (most notably FileMaker). On the other hand, if there is any way to export several of the fields using something like SimPE into a tab-delimited or comma delimited text file, then I could incorporate a script to import that data in.

I think the best way for someone who already has tons of Sims is to simply start entering data with the Sims you're playing now and slowly add in each household as you play them. I would not recommend anyone who has a hundred Sims or more to try and enter it all in at one sitting ! Well, you could try, but...

Thanks everyone for your comments so far and I will look into the problem with the reports button/returning to the data entry.

I downloaded..thank you for this.  I personally don't mind at all entering in all my information...cuz maybe I'm strange like that but whatever.  I think it's a might fine program! :)

I have really only played with it for a short while, but I think it is brilliant.  You have obviously put a lot of work into this.  I wil be able to do some data entry in ernest on Monday, I will tell you if I have any issues.  Thanks so much for creating this.

Yay!  I just downloaded the database.  I see my Sunday morning is set.  I'll be entering all the information from my notebook and checking the game for my latest additions.  Thanks for the directions on getting out of reports mode, SaraMK.  And thanks for sharing this with the MATY community, Pegasys!

I downloaded it am busily doing some transfer of a few of my sims. Have SimPE running copying stuff from there cause I don't remember everything.

Is there any way to retrieve a Sim's maiden/pre-married last name in SimPE? I reinstalled the DB and tracked down just about everything except that little detail. I'm lovin' this program!  ;D

I've put in three full families so far, everything works great.  I particularly like the reports...should make it nice and easy to print the info for use during the game, and it's a lot more legible than my own handwriting. ;)

One minor suggestion/request for future versions...would it be possible to add something to keep track of loves/crushes?  Something along the lines of the marriage/partner input would be great, since then entering it once would make it viewable for both Sims.  Right now I'm just keeping track of loves in the notes area, but something a little more structured would be nice. :)

Thanks again for the program, it's a definite paper saver.

Hee hee.  My husband "caught" me with my notebook last night (new attempt to accumulate data in anticipation of this DB) and laughed so hard he practically threw his back out.

He thinks I'm a geek, can you imagine?   ???  What makes him think that?  Isn't it perfectly normal to keep copious notes on a computer game when you can't be bothered to balance your RL checkbook?

Anyhoo, he'll not catch me so easily if it's on the computer.

Downloading now.  I have tons of Sims, so we'll see how far I get before I start pulling my pretty little curls out.

Big thanks!

---------

Edit:  I just downloaded and started to play. You are a Rock Star!  (There aren't too many times a database guy gets called a Rock Star, so run with it.  ;D)

This may be obvious as I proceed, but any thoughts on unique household names?  Real bear in my neighborhood that many households have the same name. I'm curious what other people are doing.  I guess I could make them numeric... March 1, March 2, March 3....

Also, killer report for me would be by age level.  I'm always keeping lists of who are the toddlers, children, teens, etc. as I like to grow my generations together.

Another report/thing to keep track of - who woo-hoo'd whom.  These Romance Sims are very demanding of variety.

Hee hee. Love this. Will take me forever to get the data in but, I just love all of the little records like scholorships earned etc. :)

I started adding things in last night

Let me tell you this has become a new obssession for me lol

I have my sims running in one window and this in another so I can update as things the database keeps track of happens...oh it's quite a sad sight I'm sure ;)

It can be a bit time consuming. I'm sure when I go to my custom hood it will be a long drawn out process.  I don't mind really though b/c I am always writing things down anyways or keeping track of things in my head..it's nice to have an "all in one" place to put down info.

*cackles maniacally*

Mwahahah! Yet another reason to get a laptop. Yeeees. And maybe a lab assistant too. <lightning crashes>

I've been thinking about putting togethor records for my sims for a while now, but never really got around to it, mainly because I would start with one format, then get annoyed and switch to something else. With the format already in front of me, I'm less distractable.

One random thing that might be useful would be if either it came with or one could download the sims that come with the game -- Pleasantview, Strangeville, Veronaville, and the standard townies. Would cut down on reduntant data entry somewhat. I'd be willing, once I get the hang of the program, to do/help with that. Don't really know how feasible it would be, but something to think about.

Equally random: It would be really, really nice if the game allowed us to edit existing household names. I suppose I could do it in SimPE, but it would still be a nifty feature.

I've been having fun playing with this dbase. 

I was a little concerned that I couldn't print a household report without getting all the households - then I discovered the search button :D  Very nice search feature.

A couple of questions/issues :

* I've been using a genealogy program to keep track of my sims data, and I know I'm not the only one who does this - any chance of being able to import data in GEDCOM format?  Then I wouldn't have to retype the data that I've already got in the genealogy program.

* When a sim marries, and I then change the surname of one of the sims in the database, the children display the parent's new surname, however the spouse field doesn't update the name.  I find I have to delete the union then relink the couple.  (Eg if Mary Smith marries Bob Jones and becomes Mary Jones then Mary's children will correctly show their mother's name as Mary Jones, however Bob is still pointing to Mary Smith as his spouse, and I can't click to go to Mary's record by clicking in Bob's spouse field unless I put in a new link to Mary Jones).  I hope I've explained that without being too confusing.

That glitch aside, I really like this program.  Thanks for sharing it with us.

Two suggestions.  What I've been doing is using the last name, plus the lot name.  One of my lots, for instance, is Fatabs Alpine Lodge, another is Fatabs 3 Burberry Lane.  Going numeric like you were thinking might actually be useful, though, if you wanted to keep track of what generation the household was at a glance. 

My other suggestion is, if most of your households contain a married couple, do use the last name and the maiden name.  Williams-Hart, Smith-Skyart, whatever.  Just a thought. :)

Hi Pegasys

I made a few notes last night as I entered my first characters, hope they're helpful.

I enter data in the new sim page. When I click on list view not all the data shows, even though it has already been entered. I didn't see gender, age or aspiration on the list view & had to re-enter the data.

If I altTab out to another program, then return to yr d'base, the dropdown list of the currently selected field will not work again until I select a different field, then return to the original field.

In the 'do you want to add a sim' dialogue box, the 'no' is on the left and the 'yes' on the right. I automatically kept clicking on 'no'. Don't know if it's counter-intuitive or me being kackhanded. ;)

Do you have Tab set up for field navigation? I tend to use it but tab seems to send me round and round a bit, doesn't go to the 'add children' subform very well, I keep ending up at the top of the form again.

Deleting a child is weird. I tried following the blue arrow, but could only change, not delete a child.

The neighbourhood name is not staying in the field as a default once selected, had to go back and fill it in a few times.

I'm not finding the date fields relevant at all.

The picture thumbnails are very small, they seem to be set to about 2cm square.

Extra data?
It would be good to store genetic character traits as well as in game ones. I would prefer to record numbers rather than just highlighting extreme character traits.

Gender preference would be good considering the game is supposedly using it now.

Is ghost? tickbox

Remaining days

Hope this is helpful. :)
witch

I had the same issue with it. Of course I was tired but....

I had the same issue too.  Maybe it's because I'm left handed too?

I was using tab for field navigation as well.  When I was adding a partner, the marital status field didn't like the tab key for some reason - had to move my hand over to the mouse and select the marital status that way.

While I don't have nightlife yet (although I intend to get it soon), I think it would be neat if the physical data had a couple more categories beyond hair, eyes and skin tone - such as makeup, full face makeup, facial hair.  Then the database could be searched to find someone who matches a sims turn-ons or turn-offs.

Please don't think that I'm criticising your efforts or that I don't like the database - I love it.  I guess I'm just a little bit anal retentive in my own particular style.

Yes same Pegasys, only constructive criticism is meant. I'm viewing myself as a beta tester helping you iron out the bugs. :)

I did this. But when I click on the Sims2DB.EXE file, nothing happens.  Have I missed something somewhere?  The download went fine, and so did the unzipping.

I know this sound silly, but did you double-click?

Yup.  I double clicked.  I tried selecting it and hitting return too.   I'm currently blaming it on the otched patch installation and waiting for the SO to get home tomorrow.  When I install things with him here (even if he's asleep) everything works right.

Thanks all for your comments! I appreciate all the feedback. I'm noting everything, and here's a quick reply to address some of your questions/suggestions:

- A report by age level will definitely be in the next release.
- I looked at the format of a Gedcom file. I can definitely set up something to import names, gender, and basic information about individuals from a Gedcom file. Importing the relationships would be much trickier. Not necessarily undoable, but I'd have to look into it further.
- Adding the default Pleasantview, Veronaville, etc. data is a good idea.
- I'm pretty sure having the surname updated in the Spouse relationship can be done. One quick question, though, for historical purposes might you want to keep the original name, for example Kennedy Cox is engaged to Jennifer Burb; the next entry is Kennedy Cox is married to Jennifer Cox; is it okay if the previous entry now becomes Kennedy Cox engaged to Jennifer Cox?
- Witch, about having to reenter the data which didn't show up in list view... Can you reproduce this? If so, can you tell me what sequence of steps produced this problem?
- To completely delete a child you have to delete the entire Sim record (by clicking on Delete Sim at the top of the screen), otherwise you can "unlink" the child by clicking on Add/Change Parents and blanking out the Parent fields... does this make sense?
- I'm not sure what you mean by "genetic" character traits, with record numbers. What are these record numbers?
- Just to let you know, clicking on the thumbnail picture will take you to a full-screen version of the picture.
- I will look into everything else you all have mentioned as well, such as the tabbing, dialog box order, etc.
- Joanm, I don't know what to say about nothing happening when you click on the Sims2DB.EXE file. Double-clicking should definitely start the database. Did you move the Sims2DB.EXE file from the folder with the other files? Does anything happen at all?

I'm appreciating all of your comments and viewing it all as constructive.

Downloaded and had a play - only 'problem', if it could be called that, is sometimes the database doesn't retain what's entered.  I think that's more to do with the method for entering though... just 'tabbing' resets the info to the default.
And sometimes there are issues with adding partners - I have to add both partners to the database before creating the partnership, otherwise it only appears on one sim's record.  You know how creating the partnership can create the second sim?  Well when it does that, their relationships panel is blank.  Adding the partnership to their record then leads to a duplicate record on the original sim - and working out which one is the 'duplicate' record just does not work!

I like it though, much more comprehensive than my Access database, which I think I've attached a screenshot of (ie I think I did it right :) )

EDIT: or not  :(  too big by 22 measly kb.

As I'm the only person who asked about importing GEDCOM files, there doesn't seem to be a high demand for it.  Since it's not a quick and easy addition to your database, it wouldn't be worth your time for you to add it just for one person.  Consider my request withdrawn.

I love your database. But one thing bothers me, I would like to hide some field that I do not use (mainly the "date" ones). And I would really like an option to manually save the data. I had it freezes once (no big deal and I was doing a lot of things at the same time on the computer) but I lost half an hour of work...
The reports are really handy and I really love it
Tanks a lot for your work
pioupiou

I agree with some of the others about it being more intuitive that Yes should be on the left, although I'm right handed.  I think this may be due to years of conditioning by Microsoft.  :-\

It looks great, I'll try it out more later, lots of printing coming up..and i can add my numbers thing to the side ( I keep track of a certain member of each family so that I rotate all familys 3 days.) The numbers tehy were talking about were for the genetics, with like a 1 for black hair and 4 for red,...stuff like that, then you can match sims up to get eh stuff you want, but some of the that could go in notes if necessary. or you could add a column to click or enter next to where you have hair and eye color displayed, just name it recesseive genes and have the same thing basically.

What I thought witch was referring to, and at least what I would like to see, is a way to record peronality points such as 6 active/lazy, 4 sloppy/neat, 3 grouchy/nice, etc. instead of just a check box for each trait.

I'd like to see this too, most of my Sims have 5 or 6 points in each trait so they don't really qualify for either personality type but I'd still like to keep track of what their personalities are.

That would be good too :)

I love it!

I have the same issue earlier reported where information isn't retained for spouses.  I've tried creating everyone separately and then linking, but for some families, this won't ever solve the problem.

I'd also prefer an alternative to "Date" (although I don't want that done away with - I can find uses for it).  I keep track of what Sim Day it is and only use the real date to keep track of when I last played a house.  I'd much rather be able to enter that Cassandra Sands was born on Sim Day 13 and her sister born on Sim Day 15,  even if they're born on the same real-life date.

(I know I could do this through notes, but it would be nice to eventually have the ability to pull a report of all Sims born between Sim Days X and Y, etc.)

I agree. The current system is quick and easy but I didn't know what to do with my sims that had 5 points in a trait. I ended up leaving it blank.

* I've been using a genealogy program to keep track of my sims data, and I know I'm not the only one who does this - any chance of being able to import data in GEDCOM format?  Then I wouldn't have to retype the data that I've already got in the genealogy program
Okay, I definately know what a GEDCOM file is, since I've been using Family Tree Maker longer than I've been Simming.  I'm kicking myself now that I never thought to use it for my Sims!!!!

Pegasys:  Great work you did, hon.  :)  I just skipped (yes, I skipped) over to Hubby and said, "Guess what?  Someone made a Family Tree Maker Program for the Sims!"  Hubby just put his head in his hands and groaned.  He knows that this is an unholy marriage of my two obessions, TS2 and Genealogy. 

Downloaded and I like it a lot....

I am always trying to figure out who is related and a spot on the family information page for siblings in addition to children, parents and spouses would help gather that information. Just a thought.

Great job and it looks like you really put a lot of time into the database.

Your Simming Friend,
Twink

One easy way to make the date fields (birth, marriage, death, etc.) more flexible would be to make these text fields, not true date fields. So you could then enter "12 days before Elder" or "15 Sim Days."

In the process, however, you would lose the ability to sort or search by "after" or "before" a certain date.

We can still keep track of when a Sim was created in the database, but this wouldn't necessarily be the "birth" date. So in essence there would be two fields, a Birth date which is however you want to enter it, but not sortable, and a Creation date which is the date that the record was created.

Thoughts? Comments?

Hi Pegasys

Yes, what the others are saying about character traits is correct, eg nice/grouchy = 4 and so on. Sims also have a genetic character which may be different to their ingame character, this would be good to record by numbers as well.

I don't have the d'base here to test the failure of data carrying over from the new sim screen to the list view, will get back to you if I replicate this. I wonder if this is connected to the d'base having difficulty connecting the spouses.

Sim age in days will be useful for some and days till next transition. I want to know the generation number of my sims too. I don't have an all over date, either for families or for the n'hood. I just can't see how to make an all-over date work when families are played for different lengths of time. Maybe a box to say what number the member of the family might be? ie this is the 34th sim born in this family line?

cheers
witch

I love the database.  I only have 25 Sims entered so far...lost count of how many to go, I'm thinking at least 60.   :P

Doubt this is realistic but wouldn't it be great to have the database calculate relations.  Brothers, sisters, half siblings, step siblings, nieces, nephews, cousins....   Imagine if once you got the Sim data entered, you could then get a list of everybody the Sim is related to and what their relations are!

The game itself should do a MUCH better job of this.   >:(  The little family tree pop up is not much use...you can keep clicking the dots for more, but it's not user friendly...and personally, I like lists, not diagrams.

Love the database, thanks!

Pegasys, I'm getting an error message when I try to open my database.


I can't find the recover command to recover my data.

The error happened when I was updating a child to a teen and updating her aspiration.  That worked ok.  Then I want to put in her LTW - tried clicking on the LTW fields to get the drop down list of LTWs and the data base didn't do anything for a few seconds and then it crashed.  Now when I try to open I'm getting the above error message.

Simply excellent,  Pegasys - thanks very much for all your work!

I find the database very easy to use and quite intuitive.  Especially like the household function which allows you to edit each member of that household.  I have 14 YAs at Uni and hadn't kept track of their aspirations but did find my sheet listing their majors, so it was easy to add that information from the household option.

Recognizing this is a beta test, will we be able to modify the fields or delete those one would never use?

Much appreciated!

This lovely utility is going to make me go out and buy ink for my printer and a three hole punch, I can see it now!

I personally think two different date type fields would be ideal - one for real-life date tracking and one as a flexible text field for sim day tracking.  I don't know how many people would use two different fields though, so that might just clutter things up.  I could just pick a random year in the recent past (1980 maybe) and use real-life dates for sim days.

I fiddled around with the reports a bit and they're great.  I would LOVE it though if the picture we've entered on the sim's tab showed up next to their name in the Household report.  It looks to me like you can print individual tabs (which I assume would include the picture) but the tabs need to be set up to print as Landscape (which is why I can't see the picture attached) and I don't see any place to set up printing as landscape as Page Setup is greyed out.

This does not work for me.  Any idea why?

The only weirdness I've experienced so far, (haven't done much just got names and relationships in) is that sometimes if I put in a female and say she is married, put in her husband, then when I bring him up it says he is female, glitch? not sure...also, wondering, say I have a sim that is married when I put her husband as died (after he dies) and put the grave and stuff into the system, will it automatically say she is widowed?

I'm sorry that this happened. Just so I can understand better, were there a lot of other things happening on your PC at the time you were updating the record? I don't think it had anything to do with updating the LTWs but just that for some unknown reason, FileMaker runtime locked up at that time. Although this can happen, it is pretty rare (not that this makes you feel any better, though).

In any case, let's try to fix it this way. Press Ctrl-Shift at the same time you click on the Sims2DB.EXE file. It should open up a dialog box asking you to select the damaged file. This will recover the file and should fix the problem.

Please let me know if this works.

Thanks,

-- Peg

One thing I've noted is that *right* after you insert a picture, in order to go to the full-screen view, you need to click somewhere else first, then click directly on the picture. (Which is a bit annoying, so I just fixed it - in the next release you won't even have to click somewhere else first. Thanks for pointing me to this.)

Does this solve your problem?


-- Peg

What a nifty program! I keep my stuff in an Excel sheet at the moment, but this offers a lot of things my sheet doesn't have -- and it's prettier ;-)  May have to try it out.  You are definitely more awsome than me!  Congrats on such a massive work!

Phyllis

Yes that's a glitch the husband is supposed to be set to male. Will be fixed; thanks for pointing it out.

Oh, and yes if you set the status of the husband to "Dead" it will say she is widowed in the Marital Status field up at the top. It won't say it in the Spouse(s) box, however; that will stay "Married".

Thanks Pegasys.  Ctrl-shift recovered my data.  You might like to add how to recover a file to the help file.

I had 2 other windows open - one was my sims game, which was paused.  The other window was my email program (Outlook) which may have been doing one of it's periodic 'check for email' things at the time.

Now that I have 60 Sims entered, I did notice one oddity:  When I add a child to a household I fill in the relevant data.  Only time I do use dates is when I am dealing with twins, which I seem to have more than my share of.   And then I just make up the dates since I have never paid attention to Sims birthdates.

But when I go back to the "card file" for that child, the origin of the Sim is left blank.  If the child is born to a set of parents, it would seem logical that the origin field should read "born in game," unless the child was adopted and the "adopted" box checked.

No big deal - but I've got to stop playing with Pegasys' DB and get back to the game!

I think (have to go back and check) that if one or both parents are "born in game" then the child is set to "born in game" otherwise, it's left blank because the child could be a CAS (or a Maxis-made Sim). Maybe the default should be set to "born in game" .... lemme think about that.

Me too! I really should be playing the game, at least to help improve the database  ;) !

It seems to have been a bad download.  The SO downloaded at a friend's with broadband, burned it to CD and brought it home.  Voila!  It works.  Stupid computer will roll over to let him rub its tummy.

Yes, I've had the same issue - again connected to the spousal irregularities?  :P

Edit: Sorry Pegasys, I see you've already responded to this one.

Also, it would be nice if we could edit the relationship (ie married, widowed)....I can't select the partner and change it, Its not too bad if it still says married down there, but maybe some people would be driven nuts. the upper box does change though. Had something else, but can't think of it right now.

I saw that part as more of a record of their relationship.  Not necessarily that they ARE married to that person, but that at one point in time they WERE married to that person.  For example,  you can enter a partner with the "Go Steady" relationship.  If that sim grows up and marries someone else, the new partner would be entered with the "Married" relationship, but the "go steady" relationship would still be there as a record of that sim's past relationships.

ETA: Actually, I think I'm talking about something completely different, so disregard if necessary.  I was speaking about the mid section where you enter the sim's partners, not the section at the top to denote their Marital Status

I would love a place to keep track of Make Outs and Woohoos for my Romance Sims.

Yes, like Lynda describes, the lower box is meant to be a "record" of what happened in the relationship, and the upper box "Marital Status" is the current status. You can't enter directly into the Marital Status because it's a calculation based upon what is listed in the lower box.

At this time the only way to change the relationship is to click on "Add/change partnership." Because of the way the DB is designed right now, you can't change it from "Married" to "Divorced" for example by selecting the partner and changing it. Otherwise it wouldn't automatically change on the partner's side. I wrestled with how to design the whole partnership aspect in the database, there are different ways with different trade-offs.

On a different note, yesterday I spent a long time working on adding ways to track relationships to other Sims. It's not too difficult to establish who is related by blood to another Sim.  It's harder to establish how (grandmother, uncle, etc.) This part will require a lot of testing if I can get it working... 

Yes and somebody has requested "In Love With"s too. I'm thinking that there will be a whole 'nother tab dedicated just to social relationships and chemistry. I suspect the Tabs are going to get a little bit smaller so that I can squish a couple more in.

So when can we expect this wonderful new update?  Not that I'm pressuring you or anything.  ;D  I assume we will be able to update the one we are using without loss of data?

I hope that is the case as well to be able to update with out losing data currently saved

It seems to dislike having two sims of the same name.

Vecsta or anyone else who has had this issue -

I have tried reproducing this problem several times and can't. The only way I get a similar result is if there is another Sim with the exact same name. I suspect you may have had duplicate names in the database. I should have mentioned this earlier, but as Zythe recognized, the database goes a little funky with duplicate names. At least one character in the first or last name needs to be different. I think I'm going to add a warning message when somebody tries to enter a duplicate name.

If this is NOT the problem, please let me know, and please provide any extra detail as to how this problem occurs.

I was going to post this in a new thread, but I think it is relevant to this one.

I just realized that I already have all the info on the Maxis families, and it would be selfish not to share it. It might be useful to some of you. I slapped it all into HTML, and the formatting is absolutely hideous (sorry). All the info is there except DNA (only expressed traits are included) and LTW and Turn on/offs. LTW and Turns on/offs can't be compiled because they seem to be randomly generated when you load the game, so they are different in each person's game.

Anyway, I only uploaded Veronaville so far, and the file is under 20kb so you might as well download it and see if it is at all helpful to you.

http://www.geocities.com/saramkirk/maxis_sims/index.html

Umm... soon ??  :P In Sim days or realtime?  :D
I was originally hoping by Nov. 1 but I'm not quite so sure of that date anymore. But yes, barring unforseen circumstances, you will be able to transfer the data you've already entered into the new update. 

One thing I am excited about is that it appears I've got the relationship indicators working. In other words, you'll be able to see how Sims are related by: father, mother, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, etc.

For something this cool Microsoft Time TM will be fine.  ;)

Ditto I love it already and it will be even better in the newest version when it comes out :)

Do you mean as in the sim you are trying to create a relationship for or just having a duplicate floating around the system?  I did have 2 Bella Goths (I had been including parents of active sims with their own personal records until I noticed the system didn't like duplicates) and changed the elder one to Bella Bachelor-Goth, but the problem was still there.  I've since deleted the premade dead sims I'd included.

I don't have any new sims to add at the moment to test this out but I'll give it a shot with some random names at the next opportunity.

hmm I have to Bella Goths  in my game one is the original and the other is a clone and lives in a different neighborhood

This is what I'm going to do. I've got myself and my boyfriend in my neighborhood (in game, we are married with four ugly, ugly kids...too bad, neither of us is that bad-looking in the game or even in real life) and I'm going to give each of us our real birth date, then assign birthdates to all other sims based on differences in ages between siblings and differences between parents and children. I'm also going to try to link most birth dates to their star signs, just for fun, though it won't work with twins (most have different signs) or with those modeled on real people (cause I want to give us our real birthdays.) I'm actually excited about this part of it, and I have 95 sims. Probably will be less excited by the time I'm done...

Anyway--I played with this for several hours last night. At first there were some things I didn't like and found non-intuitive (the way you can't double-click a sim from the list to get to that sim's record--I had a hard time navigating around this until I realized you can click the "back" arrow and get the sim you want, but this took me a long time to figure out) but by the end I was having a good time.

One thing I would like changed is the "rank" for children. It seems that each child is only allowed to have one rank, but this doesn't work when sims have children with multiple different partners--I'd like for the rank to be assigned to the parent and not the child, if that makes sense. So if Andrea is Ellie's fourth child and her first three were by other men, I can have Carl's file say that Andrea is his first child, and not his fourth. Because that looks weird, when he only has one child.

Another thing is perhaps it could be possible to change the names of the "mother" and "father" field? I have a gay couple with three adopted kids and it kind of weirded me out to have to decide which of them was the mother. Although I'm not actually sure what I'd prefer to call them.

I would also love to have MORE REPORTS! And statistics, if at all possible! And graphs!

I would also probably die of sheer joy if you could make it actually diagram family trees. This is probably unrealistic, but I'm *thrilled* that you've got the relationship thing working, anyway. I've been keeping track of this by hand, and it's kind of annoying, what with all my sims with children by multiple partners--there are some complicated relationships in this generation.

Lastly, I'd like to add my voice to the worshipful clamor: this was a fantastic idea and thank you so much for making it public. I am having way, way too much fun with this.

I also find this a bit of an annoyance.

My suggestion is to make the labels into drop-down menus. So instead of it just being a label it would be a drop-down menu and you could select "mother" or "father." Then you could have all the combinations. But I don't know if it could then still handle the automated creation of the second parent's file.

I have been waiting for a program like this!!  I just accidentally ran into this thread, and can't believe my eyes!  I can't wait to try this out.  Thaaank you so much! 

I will report back after I've put it to some use.  I just had to start my game completely over.   So, I'll put the two new families in.  *doin' a happy dance!*

I like to enter data!  I'm weird like that. 

Katemonster,

Thanks for your feedback! You pointed out something that was an oversight on my part - that the rank will be different depending upon parent. Hmmm. There's no easy way to correct this - everything in the add-a-child part is tied to the *child*, not the parent and making it otherwise would be a major reworking. Thus, I should probably remove the rank field, which would force people to use the Birth Date field to rank the children, but I know people find the Birth date field and date fields in general awkward.

This brings me to the whole conundrum (and it is a conundrum for me) about Sim dates/Sim days, because real-life dates don't seem to express what's happening in the game, but when one uses Sim days to mark certain points in time, it's too relative... to say, for example, a Sim is born on Sim Day 15 - day 15 relative to what? The mom's age? The father's age? The household age? And later on to have in a birthday field "Born on Day 15"  out of context seems strange.

Benes (ha ha  ;) ) to anyone and everyone who has some good suggestions in this area.

Having the Mother and Father field titles a drop down is a good idea, however it's a bit tricky so I don't know that this will be implemented right away. For properly assigning *blood* relationships, it is important that the Mother be in the Mother field and Father be in the Father field (and not vice versa).  However, you have reminded me that for gay relationships and adoptions I need to look into this further (otherwise the database might say that a gay man is a grandmother, which of course doesn't make any sense).

More reports, statistics, all doable. Graphing, not really doable, unfortunately. If I could do family trees they would be very very static not dynamically generated like true family tree software, or even the in-game family trees generated by the Sims 2.

It appears I've got relationship thing working - except in the case of adoption and gay partners (which I will try to resolve). Also just to let you know up front - at least right now, it will only be blood relationships, not "step" or "in-law" or "wife of," etc. Right now what seems to be working is determining:
mother, father, brother, sister, half-brother, half-sister, uncle, aunt, half-uncle, half-aunt, nephew, niece, half-nephew, half-niece, cousin, grandmother, grandfather, granddaughter, grandson, great grandmother, great grandfather, great granddaughter, great grandson. Cousin will only be first cousin. It will flag other relatives but other than these will be noted as "Distant Relative." (So a 1st cousin 3ce removed would simply be a "Distant Relative").

I have no idea if it will help, but I'll explain how I use Sim Days.  Sim Day 1 is the first day I play the neighborhood.  Therefore, the adults I started with in CAS were born on negative Sim Day twenty-something (I can't recall off the top of my head how many "days" sims live before reaching adult.  Somewhere between 26-28 I believe). [other side note, I call a negative Sim Day "BS" for "Before Sims".  ;)].  Everything in the neighborhood is run based on that.  So if someone is born on Sim Day 15, it's the 15th Sim Day I've been playing the neighborhood.

I can imagine Sim Days would be pretty tricky since people use different frames of reference for "Sim Day 1"

according to simpe and enhancer  the life span of a sim from birth to adulthood is 26 sim days. 3 as babies, 4 as toddlers ,8 as children,and 14 as teenagers if you  dont send them to Uni. Uni adds 12 days to their life span as young adults

So if you started a new neighborhood, moved in your first family, they'd start on Sim Day 1. Let's say you play them for 5 Sim Days. Then you start another family. Do you start them on Sim Day 1, or Sim Day 5? I guess you get to choose when that family enters the neighborhood, some would be in on the beginning, others would arrive later. Hmmm. It's interesting. But I'm pondering how one could try to calculate Sim Days for a neighborhood that's been up and running awhile.

Edited to add: Also what do you do with "aging off" if you play that way? Do the Sim Days advance?

Thanks for your input, Lynda.  :) Gives me food for thought. 

Sims you are trying to create a relationship for. Having a duplicate floating around in the database won't harm the database but it will always try to link up the *first* person who has a given name and won't connect subsequent Sims with the exact same names. So you can have them in the database but not do much with them.

Sim Day 5.  Sim Days are regardless of individual families the way I play.


While I think it could probably be technically POSSIBLE to do this, I think it would prove to be far too much hassle for those who don't keep track of their sim days like I do.


I don't play with aging off, ever.

I think another use of "Sim Days" could be the number of days playing a specific HOUSEHOLD, regardless of the rest of the neighborhood.  In this case, "Sim Days" could progress while aging is off.  It wouldn't really be tied to any other household in the neighborhood though.

the maximum time it can take if you let them autotransition to their next life stage each time instead of growing them up a day early is 30 days. 3 as a baby 4 as a toddler, 8 as a child and 15 as a teen. This is without Uni of course.

I'd really like the "date" fields to just be made flexible--so that you can put in days if you choose or real-date formats like I'm doing. I'd also like to be able to put in just a year instead of a full date (ie for graduations).

I'm finding it really hard to do this real-date thing, although it's not as bad as I expected--I think I only have one sim who's a "child" and sixteen years older than a "teen"  ::) I need to do some catching up with some houses tonight.

Well I've pretty much decided, based on feedback here (plus my own while playing the game) the dates will no longer be restricted to a real date format, but will be more flexible so that you can enter text (such as "Sim Day 211"), plain numbers, or dates if you choose. This does mean that the sorting will not necessarily work with dates in the standard format (mm/dd/yyyy) unless you put the year first 2005-11-12, etc. but I think everyone conceives of dates in different ways and the database is not meant to impose a certain way of thinking.

thanks for the info :)

Could you rename mother and father "parent a" and "parent b" and possibly make it so that when you create a new sim the db generates a unique id for them so that if I have two sims with the same name they don't get strangely merged in places?

Will consider about ways to rename the parents but if there is a mother it *has* to go in the first field, father in the second in order for the relatives calculations (upcoming) to work. I might consider putting in "Mother/parent A" but there's little space for that label in the main "Family" tab right now, so I'd prefer some alternative like a drop down, which I will look into.

And the DB does generate a unique ID for the Sims behind the scenes. This is why you can rename the Sims and things still work. However,  I prefer that the ID  not be needed or seen in data entry, which is why it relies on unique names in selecting Sims for parents, children, and spouses. You can simply place any one additional letter or number anywhere in the first or last name to make it unique. For example, "Ivy Copur", "Ivy A. Copur" or "Ivy Copur 2", etc.  If I get a lot of feedback that people really want to have duplicate names I'll consider it but it's not a trivial change.

I adore this!  Thank you so much.  I'd love if there was some way to track familiar relationships and for the married/joined partner to be called "spouse" instead of husband or wife, both of which have been mentioned.  I've been using this for a few days already and very, very nice.


NaelisSim

You're welcome! Yes there will be a way to track familiar relationships;  definitely in the upcoming release. Soon! (I am alternately having a blast and getting really tired of this database at the same time...)

Actually the terms "husband" and "wife" are not used in the DB but "mother" and "father" are, which is what you're probably wondering about?

Mother and father is probably it.  Sorry.  Oh, now of course I finally remembered the thing that hit me as maybe could be different: I have a 'hood full of siblings so I have three Walsh households.  I also have a woman's father living with her, her husband and their kids, and her father's last name is different from theirs, but they are still the same household.  All the Walsh households show up as one household and Ralph Albertini shows up in his own household.  Since I set up my hood with addresses, including a field for that as a way of sorting (I've seen where the address is on the tabs) could help with the multiple last names being seperate households.  I think I can fix Ralph's category, but I'll have to test that out later.  Again, I'm still loving this.  So much easier than the way I have been doing it.  Yes, I am anal and I do know it.


NaelisSim

I've worked around the problem of multiple surnames by giving my households double barrelled names in the database, combining the family surname with the wife's maiden surname.  For example, I have three Gladstone families in one neighbourhood.  Lucas Gladstone married Kari McAuley.  So in the database I've recorded the household name as Gladstone-McAuley.  The others are recorded as Gladstone-Shankel and Gladstone-Frost.  The sims themselves are still surnamed Gladstone.

Actually I go into SimPE and rename my families (but not the sims) to match.  I rarely use the familyfunds cheat, but I'm hoping giving my families different names will make working with the familyfunds cheat easier.

I suppose I could have achieved the same effect by using Gladstone1, Gladstone2, etc.  But I grew up in a country town where people gossip in the style of 'Lucas Gladstone, the one who married the McAuley girl, well he .... ', so this seemed more natural to me.

I am not sure if this has been mentioned so forgive me if it has or forgive me if I'm missing something but I have a suggestion that I would love to see if it could be worked out.

Okay how do I explain this lol

I would like to be able to group my sims by neighborhood.  I know you can put what neighborhood they are located in..but you have to scroll through EVERY sim in every other neighborhood that you previously entered in order to get to the sim you are looking for.  For somebody who plays multiple 'hoods and multiple families, this can get a bit frusturating, especially as the # of sims you enter grows.  Same thing with families...I would like to be able to click on a family name or something and have the database be able to draw up that family.  I don't know if that one is possible or for that matter if the other one is either..but it would be really nice to see down the road.

I was taking a look at your site and in the discussion section it looks like somebody has mentioned this issue about the 'hoods so yeah..I think that is the same thing that I'm getting out.  Their solution to what they do is interesting and I might have to try their method for now.

Thanks. I'm enjoying this program by the way and can't wait to see future updates.

The search button allows you to pull out only the records for a particular neighbourhood, or whatever combination of data you choose to search.  Much less scrolling, particularly as you can search on several items at once - such as blond adult romance sims in neighbourhood MyTown with a turn-on of red hair (if, for example, you're looking for a date for your red-haired romance sim who likes blonds). You can then flick backwards and forwards using "previous sim" and "next sim" through the sims that matched your search criteria.  The reports generated are based on the sims that matched your search criteria.

It took me a while of using the database before I figured this out - at first I was annoyed because I couldn't work out how to print a report for just one household. 

I understand wanting to have different neighbourhoods totally separate in the database as I'm the person who posted on Pegasys' forum about it.  I use separate folders for each neighbourhood, each one with the database unzipped into it.

Yes as Kyna mentioned, the Search button is very helpful in that regard - also the Household browser lets you first select the Neighborhood, then the household. I will look at easier ways to deal with different neighborhoods for the future. I am getting close to releasing the next beta version, I expect it will be this week. But already I have a few ideas for the release after that. 

One issue is that I have been spending more time on the database than playing the game and I have really only played in one neighborhood.  So I need to get busy populating another 'hood and see what happens when one has more and more Sims in multiple neighborhoods. I love having a charitable excuse for playing the game  ;D

Aha..the search button

LOL..sorry I'm still trying to figure out how to work everything.  I'm still just on the basics of entering sims and haven't really generated any reports or anything like that..now that I know about the search button and have figured it out...yes..that solves a few of my issues in and of itself lol

I think that will also help with the finding particular families and what not as well.

Thanks for the help!