More Awesome Than You!

After seeing people mentioning here and there different note keeping styles, starting from simple scrapes of paper, upto creating a whole database from scratch, I though that this deserves a thread of it's own. So here you go. Tell us how do YOU keep track of those little sim lifes.

I personally have a simple excel sheet, where I count rotation days, additional taxes and ages.
Though right now I'm looking for a good genealogy program like this one maybe: http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/ (http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/) for a fresh start neighborhood.

try family echo. and if you search here, you can see how Notovny used it. I've been thinking of implementing it for keeping track of the clowncars.

This is one thing I'm incredibly lazy and uncaring about. In townie-aging hoods, I did keep a spreadsheet of townies, their ages, and what round they were last aged in (since they had two rounds as adults). For my playables, I'll note when sims come back from college in the family information, as well as what house they are in rotation. Once I get more than 5 houses rotating, I usually mark my 'hood map with the numbers. This 'hood, it'll be on a spreadsheet since the map is at such a small scale.

I also note their life path that I roll for at teen transition, in the sim's personal notes (under characteristics) in-game. Notes are typically "Knowledge-no 2nd, Junior dropout, No LTW, Military-Recruit", etc, for aspiration, college, LTW fulfillment, and ordained career.

I don't keep much track of them. I usually play one season per house, sometimes less, depends on the 'hood. I just find that the season-rotation works best for me.

You keep a simple spreadsheet: I keep one of arcane complexity.  I think last time I looked it had 30-odd pages.  I have to sneak the file into work to print it seeing as I am too mean (and too broke) to print it out at home.  I also have little plans for various sims noted down on sheets but I am leaning more strongly all the time towards chance and, at least for now, I roll dice for the non-story-important sims.  I do spread things like skins and eyes about (geneticised) because I like to see the genetics work themselves out and the spreadsheet helps with that.  See, I knew those D&D dice were worth keeping.

PS for family trees I have used GenoPro.  I'm actually generally not too keen on this idea (I can keep family trees in my head) but GenoPro has the advantage of being free off the Interwebs.  I used to like that programme called ... what was it now ...  Sims2 Database?  Yeah, that was handy.  But it seems to have disappeared now.

I have notebooks (way, way too many notebooks) for tracking individual branches of the family tree, as well as determining who is in each college 'class'. I also use my notebook to keep track of plot ideas and to write out scene-by-scene breakdowns of shots I need to get for my various plots.

I've started using index cards to track stats for individual sims. I track:
Name/Gender
Personality/Horoscope/1^o Aspiration/2^o Aspiration
Lifetime Want (and subsequent, if the first is fulfilled)
Parents
Spouse(or partner--not all of my sims get married)/Gender preference
Children (with a note whether they were adopted or if the father is other than their spouse/partner)
Skintone DNA
Eye DNA
Hair DNA

Any other pertinent notes go on the back of the card, and they're filed alphabetically by generation.

I'm still limping along with Sims2DB (which is still available at MTS2, although it hasn't been updated for 2 years).  I print out a "household plans" report for each household and then keep them in rotation order, with notes scribbled all over them to remind me what I'm planning for the sims in each household.

I have been considering the index card method over recent months.

There is a current thread (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,12737.0.html) by Rufio about the program he has developed, including discussion with Inge about importing data from SimPE.  When the SimPE-import function is added to his program, I'll probably switch to it.  Given that SimPE's coders are going to be very busy over the next couple of weeks updating SimPE for AL, I expect it'll be a while.

I made the Windlebridge site for my documentation - its built on a sharepoint server list, with additional lists for houses, hoods, and other little things to keep tracks of :P. With 1000 sims its necessary to keep some track of things. I also use GenoPro for the genealoy - but I have also tried several other genealogical programs. The good thing is that the Gedcom file format can be transferred to try out different programs before you decide.
The advantage I see with GenoPro is the options for saving pictures both for individuals and for events (weddings ect) and places (houses). And that its super easy to generate all the htmlpages to keep local on your comp or publish to a webpage of your choice. Some of the genealogical programs I tried were very pretty but you could only publish to THEIR website.. and I for some reason didnt want to have my fictional families on a serious genealogical big site, that didnt feel right.
Link to Windlebridge main genealogical page: http://portal.charlamov.com/windlebridge/FamilyTreePages/windle/default.htm (http://portal.charlamov.com/windlebridge/FamilyTreePages/windle/default.htm)
I only register the breeding sims in the GenoPro database.

I assume my program in Peasantry was part of the inspiration for this thread (and it's already been mentioned), so I won't go into it again.  I actually used to keep track of genetics too, though, but without SimPE working for me it gets to be a bit of a guessing game.

I don't keep track either. I use the lot sync timer to make sure I play the houses the same amount (sometimes a few days a round, sometimes more - just depends) and the 3 sims any playable knows best get aged up with them when they age up and killed off as elders when the elders die. I find it frustrating that the BV sims don't make the list so any BV (or NPC clerks) my townies are best friends with get teleported in and aged when they do as well. If my sims and I don't know them, I don't care if they stay young too long. I do hate seeing the same names too often so I seldom miss too many townies.

I use a really hip, cool, new system called "remembering".

 I don't like that one. Every new release it gets buggier and buggier, the search option is borked, the creator doesn't support it and it's increasingly incompatible with new hardware. Half the time the data gets corrupted and I swear it's always overwriting my old data without asking.

Hm, I also went looking for personal wiki, as lefty suggested in "how do you play" thread, and this is what I found:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_wiki)
Should be more useful then genealogy for somebody who just likes to take a lot of notes, as opposed to organizing family trees.

ingeli: I'm really impressed by Windlebridge site. That's a lot of work put into documenting.  And all of your sims have such individuality, all mine CAS turn out to be look alikes  :-[

I also use the remembering system. My hood isn't that big and I have no pressing need to write down every detail of a sim's life. I do take a snapshot when a sim ages up, so when I look at a newly aged up toddler and go, "Damn. That kid has some serious FCS," I can look at the toddler pics of its parents or older siblings and see if the poor thing will grow into its face or not.

What's FCS?

On topic: I don't really keep track of my sims on paper. The ones that need to be sorta synchronized, I just try to remember.

Fugly Child Syndrome. My sims are more prone to Fugly Toddler Syndrome, but I do have a couple whose genes didn't mix well for their girl children. The boy is okay.

I'll sorta cross post from the other thread:

I have a program that acts like a wiki that I edit, with a page for every playable (and any townies that donate their genetic material but aren't moved in) detailing things about that sim. I have seperate pages with the pictures I took with captions for myself as I get down to generation 5 and say "hey, doesn't this sim act a lot like that one sim way back when? Let me check..." and a detailed family tree made in photoshop, along with lots of misc info on my sims. I dare say I almost have as much fun working on the "database" as playing! I get a little OCD with it I think.

 To give you an idea here are some screenshots of how I have mine set up for my current hood, though I'm constantly revamping it as I play since the hood is so young:

(http://img397.imageshack.us/img397/6629/onepi1.th.jpg) (http://img397.imageshack.us/my.php?image=onepi1.jpg)
(http://img397.imageshack.us/img397/2323/twoxx3.th.jpg) (http://img397.imageshack.us/my.php?image=twoxx3.jpg)
(http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/5086/threeld5.th.jpg) (http://img144.imageshack.us/my.php?image=threeld5.jpg)
(http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/8201/fourmk3.th.jpg) (http://img297.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fourmk3.jpg)
(http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/6484/fivepf4.th.jpg) (http://img297.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fivepf4.jpg)

When I first started doing this with an old hood it was because I had tried remembering, but as the hood branched out I found I couldn't remember all these sims and stuff, even though I had tons of snapshots.

I also tried an arr'd version of family tree maker, and that was ok, but I find that every genealogy program I try always tends to have some features that annoy me, or not all the features I like, so I haven't really been able to decide on one.

I keep track of my sims in an Access database with about 7 tables in it and various forms/reports.  I'm constantly tweaking it depending on my current style of play (I have built in rules that run based on certain fields for the family/sim/neighborhood).

I play in Windowed mode so I have the database and Sims up at the same time and record pertinent things as I play.

On paper - my chart is one page, all 84 playable sims listed from oldest to youngest, and my ages are modified so that one day = one year in a normal lifespan.  I'm very picky about this, so that if a couple has a child when they're 20, they'll be 40 when the child is 20, or whatever.  If they get out of sync for whatever reason, I'll cheat them back to their proper place.  I play 2-sim-days for each household in the round.  It goes kind of slow, but I have fun with it. 

1. Sync timer for rotations. Then I use the neighborhood family description to keep track of the current day and upcoming events for each family, so I can quickly see where I need to play without loading a family. I think I saw someone here suggest it a long time ago. The neighborhood family description typically looks like this:


2. Simple text file to log events, sorted by day. Also to record random thoughts I get for future reference or storytelling purposes (e.g., that sim kid should be popularity because she keeps being brought home from school by other kids).
3. Sort & rename pictures every so often so I know when and where they happened.
4. Family trees recorded in Family Echo (thanks to notovny for providing that link some time ago).

It may look like a lot, but it's actually very time-effective. I've tried various genealogy programs, but never cottoned on to them, and I don't like the way it looks in a spreadsheet. Reminds me too much of work, I suppose.  :P

Access?

MICROSOFT Access?

You must be a masochist.

I don't.

When my game was working properly, I would just choose a family that hadn't been played in a while, mouse over each one's head to make sure i remembered their named properly, and let them do their things. Sometimes I'd just take over each family member consecutively to let them have a chance to be micromanaged.

Then again, I'm not long-term-goal-oriented with my style of play. I've had one death, one vamp, one plantsim, and three births (two alien). I'm more into decorating and building and making Sim likenesses of real folks, and being OCD about organizing my CC.

Yeah, I'm pretty much on the "fuck it" school of thought. "Who are these people? Why are they so ugly? I made them? BLURGH." Now they're a houseful of beloved romance sims that I have played for weeks, tomorrow they will be all smited to death as visitors on someone else's lot. So yeah, no long term goals. Just kind of banging them together like Barbies until a head pops off. "Oops."

I pretty much just play, I've hardly ever done anything that needed records. Lately, I've been planning things a little more, like, "Boronia will have endless pregnancies." or "Potato-face Brae will spawn with Count Pointy-nose once he graduates college." Even then, I'll only 'keep track' as long as it interests me. I made no note of potato-face Brae's 'plan', and was lucky to remember it when he finally graduated.

Although, I suppose I am keeping track of the generations. I started with a single CAS Sim, Aden Elin. Between him and his wife, they had Baras, Brae and Boronia. Baras had Corona and Chrysopoeia, Brae had Cabbage and Another-C-Name, and I don't have Boronia's list handy, but they all also started with C. (And, by the 10th name -- 14th if you count Baras' and Brae's kids -- I was running low. The final pair got Cadman and Caldwell.)

Boronia's lot did get photos taken, for each birth and age transition, as well as a text file indicating birth order, with names and genders of her children. And that's about the extent of it. I'll probably only play them through uni, ship them off to the holding pen another lot when they graduate, to be friend and romance fodder for future playables. I haven't even decided yet whether to keep up with the spawn photos now that the spawners are elders. I may well continue, if for no other reason than completeness.

Boronia is an elder with 12 kids from 8 pregnancies, potato-face Brae has a pointy-nosed little girl whose name I forget, missions accomplished. Moving on.

I have a list of familynames and put a tick beside them for every week I've played them, to keep em on the same timeline. That's pretty much it :p

Since Awesomeland is based on the Peasantry, I parody or punish what the real source material does.

I pretty much just play. I've started one or two records but never got round to updating them. I don't get much time to play anyway, so I'd rather not waste playtime by record-keeping. Too much like work. I have started to keep rough directional notes in the family bio bit, someone here suggested that. I also play either 3 or 4 days in rotation, so all sims age the same.

I'll marry someone's childhood sweetheart off to another, if the inkling takes me during game. Poor old Sophia Joque ended up looking so ageing-drama-showbiz-queen, she became a vampire. Marcel Joque couldn't take it and moved out. He was in love with Hannah Bell and I was going to move her in with Marcel. She refused to cheat however.  :D Poor Marcel.

I am.  I'm forced to use it at work and it's on my computer, so it works.  I'm not advocating it, but it's better than Excel for what I need.

I use Excel to map houses, as I use Excel at work. There's some strange urge for self-punishment that drives people to use Office and Office-related products.

Actually, I've been thinking about using Access. Better than some other preset database that will never track what I want how I want.

I booboo'ed trying to keep with Italian-sounding names and made a Ramone Vitelli and a Roman Vitelli. They are cousins, but ended up in college at the same time. My inner commentary is full of  "Ramone...no. Ramon. No, no. ROMAN. Yeah. That guy." Didn't help that Ramone's girlfriend actually had more of an attraction to Roman, or that everyone involved (excepting Roman's brother Leonardo's girlfriend) has black hair and either is black or a dark mediterranean.

I am about to start using Access because the Excel file I have is getting too cumbersome and I would like to add thumbnails of my sims eventually. As much as it pains me to say it, OOBase just does not cut it when compared to Access.

I used the neighborhood export tool from SimPe and then added and deleted the tables to suit my needs. I mostly use the file to play matchmaker with my sims and to make sure none of the sims are procreating with their second cousins. Even though the game does not keep track of that, I still find it kind of icky...

I would have used Access if I didnt have got Sharepoint Server, which uses lots of stuff from Access. When you are used to a tool its always easier to not getting a different one. It's easy to import the csv-file from simpe to access/sharepoint.

I set my neighbourhood up so that the houses are laid out beside each other so that I can play them in rotation, always clicking the next house on the right and playing each house for just one sim day that might include one visit to a sub neighbourhood; playing one house usually lasts about 60mins real time for me and is about as much time as I can spare when I play.  There are currently 20 houses, and one Uni frat house in play in my custom neighbourhood.

Effectively, 1 sim year endures for the rotation of the 21 homes in the neighbourhood, starting with the Uni frat house, then house 1, then house 2 and so on, ending with house 20.  During playing a rotation, any significant events are photographed and entered in the family album, with the entry starting with the rotation (year) number.  I am currently playing the 71st rotation which is of course, the 71st year. 

I started this custom neighbourhood with just one house and expanded as the offspring and their friends graduated out of uni and set up home in the neighbourhood.  I use the lot synctimer to guide me.  I don't do any other notetaking, as I enjoy playing more than recording details. and time constraints don't permit me to do both.  I thought about using a program to log the family tree, but heck I rarely ever play beyond a 3rd generation.  By the time I get there, its time for a new EP and for me that usually equates to starting a new neighbourhood.

I do enjoy looking through the founding family's photo album to see how much or how little things have changed in the neighbourhood, who's still alive and who didn't make it.  It's also interesting to see how the family members have grown up and moved on;  I really like that aspect of TS2, which echoes much of what happens in real life.  Using the rotated year system helps to place events on a timeline, and makes the passage of time seem more real, especially as I tend to use the album to record facts rather than to tell a story.

I keep the recording simple to reduce paperwork and allow more gameplay, but I recognise that some players get just as much enjoyment recording the details as others do from playing the game.

Gelina, do you keep track of relationships in the Access database? I have a rough outline of how I want mine, but that's the only thing I'm stuck on the setup of. I'm only concerned with nuclear relations.

Some of them - basically I don't let people that are 2nd cousins kiss and I keep track of the future loves/arch nemisi for most of my sims.  I also keep a running list of make-outs and woohoos for romance sims usually.   I don't keep track of every relationship though.  I also track marriages/divorces.

I started a legacy that I never finished, and I just limited the number of children to 2, and the better looking one was the one that got to reproduce.  The other child just lived with its sibling until it died, watching from the sidelines while the more attractive raised a family and had grandkids and whatnot. 

I'm about to marry two sims from families with 5+ kids each.  I think I'm just going to kill off everyone except the newlyweds.  Tragic fire or something.  Much easier than rotating. 

The Oversoul currently endorses electrocution as the punishment method of choice. Playables with low mechanical points will feel the urge to repair broken machinery after misbehaving, while those more gifted may like to stargaze during a lightning storm. Non-playables who dare to touch the newspaper or attempt a trashcan kicking will be chased off-lot and shocked by one of the many sentrybots the founder, Natalee Vitelli, created. Repeated and aggregious offenders might find themselves suddenly in the middle of a corral and smited into oblivion. As always, those who have more children than the pre-ordained limit for their family will be punished in like measure. Also as always, Romance sims are encouraged to keep it in their pants, as cheating on one of the chosen few is a sure way to piss me the Oversoul off.

I don't track most of the sims I play. I just remember what was going on. If I haven't played a family for a while, I might look at their house in neighborhood view, scratch my head a little, and enter the lot anyway. At that point, I usually remember whatever I needed to know. If there's something really important I don't want to risk forgetting, I can note it in the family bio and erase the note when it's no longer relevant.

For the handful of sims I feel like cloning, I take screenshots of their personality spread. I couldn't care less about interests.

I had one Poverty challenge family where the relationships got really tangled. Two half-brothers who were also first cousins at the same time was one of the easier relationships. Heh. So I made a family tree for them. There is one other family I've played for 14 generations. They have a simple family tree too. I used a drawing program; that's how undetailed the family trees are. :\

There's a custom neighborhood still in the planning stage. I've made notes of the names and attributes of the sims I'm going to use to start off that neighborhood Prosperity Challenge-style. Once I get that going, I don't know if I'm going to bother keeping notes on them or not. Probably not, but I won't rule the possibility out.

Since I have my lap top next to my big computer I use it to keep track via excel using varied spreed sheets that track everything about the individual sim and or its family. 

Hmmm.  I think I will have to talk to jfade about reading sim character files.

I use the lot sync timer in the MATY hood, just to plan rotations, but in other hoods I play until I'm bored with one house and then move on to the next.  I don't plan sim lives.  They do what they want, according to their wants and freewill (i.e. contrary to all her interests, Eevilcat likes to toss footballs), or what I whimsically decide they want (i.e. I decide that Jelenedra likes fish, and Reggikko wants to grow tomatoes).

The database/spreadsheet idea sounds too much like work, or keeping a journal.

I have various notepad files on my laptop, and a random number generator site open at all times.

The notepad files are:
* A "neighbourhood tracker" - every sim from toddler to adult is listed in order of what day (measured by the synctimer) they are due to grow up. This serves 2 purposes - it reminds me what day to age up CAS sims, lets me see how old they are (I have another file which tells me how many years old they are based on days left in age stage) which dictates what they are allowed to do (e.g. teens can't get jobs until they are 16.) and who they are allowed to bring home from school as kids/teens. (I use a TJ hack for this).

At the end of the tracker I have a list of every sim which has the plague, (useful for my apocalypse hood to prevent them from reinfecting each other and wiping out the entire hood AGAIN.) every sim who is gay or bi, and in my apocalypse hood where the criminal family rule, who is mean enough to be friends/breed with them.

* A file for my "special" lots. Currently since my main hood is in its infancy this is just my asylum lot. Sims get sent here when they hit red aspiration failure and see the shrink, and have to stay a minimum of 3 days, or until their aspiration goes green. The file lists mealtimes, and what kind of therapy each aspiration requires. I keep want panels closed on this lot so it's a little mini challenge to get them into green.

When the hood gets more built up I plan on having a prison, orphanage, old peoples' home and possibly a hospital, and a military career lot. These will have their own files indicating things like sentence length, timetable for orphanage (bedtimes, homework, etc).

* A file listing how days left until transition translates into actual age, and markers when specific things happen (e.g. when male sims with the correct genetics start to lose their hair, when the chance of multiples increases for pregnancy, when they have to go to college, when they are allowed to drive, etc.)

* A file which lists what interests and personality combinations I require for each career track. (Because a sim should have to pass an interview, too.) I use this more for my apocalypse hood as it makes it harder, but I might start using it in my other hood too.

* A rich text file with all the apocalypse rules on, colour coded by career track, so I can group them together in sections for easier reference, but they are easy to look up and delete when I unlock a restriction, too.

Some things I keep meaning to implement but am too lazy to:
* Genetics, noted in a sim's bio or perhaps a separate document/spreadsheet about whether they need to wear glasses, go bald at a certain age, go grey young or not at all, cock size, possibly even secondary aspiration etc. I would need expressed and recessive genes for each subject though and a long detailed list so I haven't bothered yet.

* Something to track storylines for each character, note little things about them etc. I don't fancy having a huge notepad file for all my sims so I will probably get the wiki thing someone else mentioned as it should make it easier to keep track. Quite often at the moment I will have a long period where I don't play and it's quite hard to get back into it because I've forgotten all the little characters I have developed - for this reason I like playing with sims of real people. I have most of my family and a couple of my friends in my main hood. I am too lazy though to remember to take photos and/or write detailed stories about all of my characters, though I'd like to for my own entertainment if nothing else.

I use a random number generator a lot - I'd quite like to implement a system where I roll for everything from career to whether they ought to marry this sim, but it seems too rigid. At the moment I mainly use it for decorating/building, because all my houses were starting to look the same and there is furniture etc which I never used to use but now have discovered actually have some fairly nice recolours.

Access and I are having fights now. I am not liking 2007, and apparently forgot half of database creation. But it's a fun challenge, and once I have this database set up I'll be able to use the format for future 'hoods.

I thought I was the only OCD player.  Most of you have me looking so unorganized.

I just HAVE to make sure that everyone ages correctly.  I hate when a younger brother gets to elder stage before his older sister so I force myself to play several houses and sometimes it is a month before I get back around to a house again.  Notes are essential.   I can tell from SimPE when I didn't spend enough time on a family. 

All my townies are remade with sim surgery so I have no ugly people.  I work 'em like dogs to keep fit.  If only I did the same for me... ::)  I really need to get on the treadmill more.  But it is so easy to avoid like I'm doing RIGHT NOW.

...I wish you were MY Oversoul.

If you want, I could post an empty version of mine this weekend.  I'm in 2007 as well, so it should work.

It's fine, I have it most of the way fixed. I had lost the ability to create new records from form view because of an issue with relationship setup, which was caused by duplicate Career Level entries (doi! EAxis had two careers with record store clerk levels and intern levels) preventing the field from being properly indexed. One of those random issues that's caused by something three steps back.  All I have to figure out is how to make the main form automatically populate the house # field when I choose the address.

I used to keep track of it but no longer do.
If I start losing track of sims I just check their family trees.

In my one hood I have had some unintentional incest with cousins thanks to the game not recognizing them as such, losing track of sims, and TJ's casual romance.

I would certainly love that. I remember doing projects in school on access, but alas, now I have no idea how to start  :-\

I'm a bit of a control freak, so I like to document my sims' information, but I don't really track their every move - just milestones like uni, marriage, moving house, etc. I do keep a notepad in which I record the names, aspirations, zodiac signs, turn ons/offs, etc for each sim on a lot, plus notes on whether, or not, to send a sim-teen to uni (I don't lock the go-to-uni want, so only those who keep the want throughout the teen stage go to uni). On a separate page, I match couples based on what sort of dynamic I want their relationship to have (not always a pleasant one), what jobs they will have, and where various sims/families will live once they graduate from uni, save money, etc. I rotate by season, because it bugs me when one lot is in spring, but another is in winter. Other than that, I don't really keep track, and don't mind too much when 'accidents' happen (affairs, twins, etc).

Edited to remove unnecessary extra word.

The only time I keep track is for whatever family I'm actively blogging. In this case it's my 4 year old Primogen family, which started off as a legacy challenge and continues to be a legacy story. I have a Primogen family tree on Tribalpages.com, but it's missing a lot of stuff. Mostly I throw the main line in there for a traceable path. I also have a small notebook so I can keep track of a few things. Their college major, graduation level (Summa, Magna etc) what NPC they married, and the NPC's original last name and who the heir is.

I have another notebook for jotting down story possibilities, or bits that I want to remember for future story entries. I've been blogging the Primogens since Generation 11 (which was the Gen 10 heir from the first, non blogged Legacy challenge) and now I'm on Generation 23 of the same family line.  So my tribal pages helps me immensely, tho I only put their names. There's a few photos but that got mindnumbingly tedious, so I quit bothering with putting pictures in there.

I also have a little notebook for keeping a short summary of each chapter, so I can refer to it when writing the next one. It has the chapter header (G5-ch12) and what filename I'm on. I name each chapter alphabetically a1-1.jpg and so on. Each html file is in order, so it helps me keep track. primogen1, primogen2.html etc. And there's 2 or 3 lines about what happened, because my Remembering software has some borkiness to it, and rather than tax the software, my notes help me keep from uninstalling it completely :)

ingeli, I am trying to put pictures into my very new family tree. Your site seems to use the thumbnails from in-game - how do you get them into Genopro? I've tried a few different ways to get at them, and can't figure it out. Do you use SimPE? Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong place.

I couldn't see any way to contact you from the Windlebridge site, so I'm trying this way. 

Hi - what I do is that I take pictures in game, as a rule when I fix the look of the sim, in "mirror mode" - I think makes a better portrait picture than the thumbnail you can extract with simpe. You can also turn it a bit to not always be a straight on pic, but a little profiled one, which can be more flattering to certain sims.

Then I edit it in PSP so that the size is always the same (100x150 pixels) and upload it to my site. After that I put the url-address to the pic as the picture source in Geno Pro. For example: http://websitename.com/sim_pics/*filename*.jpg - basically you can use any url adress where you can store your pics for this, and if you have it saved locally on your comp, just put in the address of the pic file (for examle C:\\Mydocs\images\filename.jpg), thats even easier. To make html-reports in GenoPro the pics need to be in jpg-format, it doesnt work with gifs.
You have the option to have several pictures of a sim (or an event or a place) in genopro, if you have more than one the program will generate a nice little show-pics application.

Wow.  Everyone has such a variety of playing styles.  And you're all very OCD! 

I've been playing the same hood since I got the game when it first came out, and I'm still only on what is actually part of the first generation of kids starting college.  Obviously their parents are actually the first sim generation, but these kids are the ones who I've gotten to "raise" if you will.  They're the second group to go to Uni, as their older brothers and sisters have already graduated and started families.  It was when I realized that the 3rd generation was the same age as their aunts and uncles that I knew I needed to reorganize and stopped playing my favorite sims until I could get everyone properly aged for their generation. 

I have a limited amount of playing time and tend to not want to spend too much of it on organization, which is how things got to be such a mess.  I keep track in-game by hyphenating my sims' last names when they marry (in SimPE), and their children currently carry the hyphenated names.  When the 3rd generation starts to marry I'll have to be a lot more organized.   

Outside of the game I use MyHeritage Family Tree maker, which is really easy to use and free.  It can export my sims' records into Excel if I want an easily readable list.  At the moment there isn't much in there other than the sims' names and relationships. 

I also have several Excel spreadsheet lists of the current group I'm playing; one lists all the females and another the males, their hair colors (I'm trying to keep a range rather than end up with all brunettes) their aspirations, and any other important info.  I use these for planning who they'll marry, as I usually have them fall in love in Uni and wanted to make sure they all had partners.  I don't use any townies or NPCs, so I have to balance my sims pretty carefully if I want them to have a significant other!  There will probably be a few who I'll just ignore after they graduate except to age them with the other sims. 

My goal at the moment is to catch this group of sim kids up to their siblings.  From there I may experiment a little bit more, but I'm having more fun playing around with hair and clothing recolors at the moment, so who knows if I'll get there before Sims 3 comes out! 

I also have a list of names I liked from one of those name your baby websites so that I don't have two or three of the same name.  I can sort them by gender and by whether or not I've used them before.  Whenever I have a new simbaby, I find a name I like on the list and mark it as used.  Does anyone else have a list of names? 

No, although I probably ought to since I tend to end up looking around me for inspiration.  I ended up calling one "Noobor" since that sounds vaguely like the Simlish they use when they have a baby, and I've occasionally resorted to names from games that are lying around on the desk... Khalid Moo was recently born, for instance.  I occasionally reuse common names (Martin Marener's grandson was also Martin Marener, for instance, although I think that's the only time both first name and surname have been identical - quite often I'll use a variation/diminuative within the same family line since people do get named after relatives, so Lana was a tribute to her great-grandmother Laine, Leopold was named after his mother's uncle Leo...)

As for organisation, I'm crap at it.  The neighbourhood I play is Pleasantview, and I've been playing it since the day the game came out.  I didn't start off organised and, while I could seriously do with some way of keeping track now, the thought of trying to get it sorted is a nightmare.  I have a family tree on TribalPages for the Mareners, but unfortunately hit a snag recently when Lana and Penny were the first non-straight couple to get married, and TribalPages has no option for same-sex unions last I checked.  Maybe when Rufio's program is fully working with SimPe I'll give that a shot - I have on occasion tried listing stuff like Lifetime Wants or making a few notes, but I'm never consistant.  I did recently write down generation lists for my two main families so that I could see who should be at roughly which lifestage at the moment, and I'm trying to get the second family in line with the first, which is a bit of a slog since I started it simply to see how quickly I coud fulfil the Have 10 Children want, and didn't stop at ten, so there's one father, three mothers and eleven children, and he also fathered one into the primary family. (Which was mostly my impetus to finally get on and play this family: the dad was still an adult and the son was an elder and is about seven days away from death.)

Have I rambled enough yet?  Yes.

Thanks, I'll try that way. I did work out how to attach one of the snapshots from in-game, so this isn't much more to learn. I was being lazy and not wanting to take photos of each separate sim, but there you go. (At least there are only about fifteen sims in my hood at present.)

Thanks again.

I do agree it takes time to do it this way, and if there had been a simple way to export the facts about the sims that I need from the game with simpe or another tool, including the pics, I would probably have chosen that path. Then I really started to like the quality of the pics done in "mirror mode", and of course it was a bit tedious to get all the pics needed when I first started the database with appr. 500 sims. I still have many NPC:s to "catch" and take pics of. I am lucky to have a second comp and lots of this stuff I do while game is loading or something. I now do the updating of records in batches of 25 sims or so, exporting the basic data to a CSV-file, editing it, importing to my own database (sharepoint list), then adding stuff like pictures and descriptions and various types of data like group associations, classes, and such. It is time consuming but it enhances the gameplay for me.

Wow - even slower than me.  I'm impressed.


OK - thanks for that.  I shall have a look at it.  I've used Genopro (as have others here) but somehow I can't find myself too interested in it.  Don't know why.


You know, you don't have to worry too much about that.  The whole point of the genetics systems is that it allows genes for the recessive characteristics to carry forward.  You only need two brunettes with recessive blond genes to pass those on to their child and, voila, you have a pure blond new sim to spread more blond genes to the next generation.  As long as you have enough blonds and redheads to start with, they will keep popping up in the following generations.  Part of your problem, I guess, is that you haven't got far beyond the second generation who will tend to be all dark-haired if you're breeding from CAS sims.

Organization, at least my type, doesn't take very long. It's all part of my pre-'hood setup, when I decide what major tenets are going to guide my gameplay. I decide if I want the community to grow with my sims from one house to a whole 'hood, or if I want my starter sim to be someone moving to an existing neighborhood, which will grow with time, but which already is fairly established. I decide if I want the game to be OFB-driven or use EAxis careers and only go OFB if a sim rolls an OFB career. I decide if there is a public school system or if everyone has to pay for private. My current main 'hood is an existing town, not OFB-driven, no tax system, public schools available, mix of my lots and Plasticbox's lots with a few random ones thrown in that fit. My secondary 'hood is still mostly in my head, but it is OFB-driven, hard taxed, public school (played), and grown. Probably isolated, too.

I also map my 'hoods. I like there to be a numbering system and street names.

Anyways, once you've decided what you want to do with the 'hood and what's important to you, you set up a system designed in such a way that the day-to-day takes extremely little time. In Coggeshall Village, my daily play only includes about a minute and a half of maintenance time. Roll for new teens to determine their path, note come-back days for college students and place the house number I'm to play next in 'hood notes.

I don't ignore anyone. If they are boring, I move them in with someone who isn't. I recently moved Nate Vitelli's gay son Aaron in with him, since both sims were kind of boring to me (Nate's almost an elder and single, Aaron is full-on Knowledge and has no romantic prospects since the few gay men in town are repulsive to him) and together they are more interesting than playing two nearly-empty homes. 

I have a list that I'd estimate at around 3,000 lines of names in my RandomStuff script. For every roll, I get three male and three female names. I pick the one that matches with their last name the best. In the case of the Vitellis, I do roll again if I don't get one that sounds slightly Italian.


Coggeshall Village sims started out from a blond, green-eyed, S2 sim. She bred with an S3 blond, grey-eyed sim. So my second generation was all blond-blond, grey or green eyed, and S3. The third generation and at least half of the fourth will be black-haired and S4 with a few S3s. It's weird how they've switched from the lightest values to the darkest in such a short time.

Yeah, I've taken numerous breaks from the sims, so I haven't gotten nearly as far as a lot of people.  I also kept creating new families that I wanted to be at the same generation as families I'd already played, so there are families I haven't played since well before Seasons came out.  Some of my sims are very lonely while they wait for me to play all the other families up to the right point! 


I know that the game mechanics are supposed to work like regular genetics and it isn't such a problem now that I can get into SimPE and edit the genetics of the parents prior to them having kids, but for a while it seemed like everyone's genetics were borked by the in-game CAS, so I'm rather cautious.  Knowing their hair color also helps me keep track of who they are, as it's something to narrow them down if I forget. 

I have various baby names books, something I've sort of been collecting for various reasons... (Still regret not buying one I saw in a second hand store that had the enigmatic message written inside the cover: "I'm leaving you." Man, we talked about what the circumstances surrounding that could have been for ages.) Mainly reasons to do with naming things.

I've already mentioned my tendency to name a CAS sim beginning with A, and his/her spawn get B names, etc, etc. There was a time when every other male CAS sim was Andrew or Anthony, until I hit on the idea of consulting my name books. Then, again, I would have been in trouble without them for the C-generation of my FT family, 16 sims so far, and only one of the B generation is an elder yet. (Admittedly, elder Boronia had 12 of those kids herself. Her brothers are probably done having kids already, at 2 each.)

On one occasion I even used wikipedia to find names. I had one C-named alien kid with a name I later decided was blah, so I browsed various sciency pages, and renamed him Corona. His younger sibling got Chrysopoeia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysopoeia) the same way. (Though now I'm questioning the wisdom of that, as I can't quite remember whether Chrysopoeia is male or female...)

I've been using a random name generator for a while now.  I get a lot of weird ones, but it gives me a nice variety with minimal effort on my part.

Yes, thank goodness I'm starting early! I've taken pics of one family now, edited them and put them in just fine.

However, I must be being dumb about "mirror mode". When I tell them to 'change appearance' using a mirror, there's a static portrait that can't be turned (as you mentioned doing) and the in-game camera doesn't work. I could do print screen, but I suspect that's not what you meant. I think I must have misunderstood what you were doing.

So, I built a segment of wall, covered it with neutral paint, and used moveobjects to put each sim in front of my 'backdrop'. It works; I'm just wondering what I didn't get with your method.

*****
In the past, I haven't tracked my sims, but played each family until I got bored. I mostly like building, and haven't been much involved with the storytelling aspect. However, I recently started a backwoods hood, with four cabins and no townies. (I'll add some soon, when the services get connected, so they can start businesses and have computers.) They've had a few babies, and there are fifteen sims now. I'm currently playing each household for about a week, and after a session of play, I make a few notes about major events or character developments that occurred. I also take pics of special events, and now of sims for the family tree. I have the synctimer installed, but I'm not finding it particularly useful as you have to enter a lot to look at the timer and find out which lot you are up to. It's easier to have a note on paper beside the computer.

Of course, I might be misunderstanding how the synctimer is supposed to be used!

I use the function "Fix flashing blue.." on the FFS debugger, I think it works like a mirror, with some improvement: you can use it on anyone on the lot, not just the playables, and it also works for babies. For me the picture is turnable.. I will have to check if that isn't the case with a common mirror.
To take pics, I use the old program SimCamera. It was made for Sims1, but is still downloadable here:
http://www.june3rd.com/Downloads/ (http://www.june3rd.com/Downloads/)
Its very simple and you can set up a hot key, I for example use F1. And the pics are saved to a folder you choose. I am sure there are plenty of other similar software out there, but this one suits me, and I always run the program in the background while playing. The quality is so much better than the ingame camera.

Oh, that's quite different then, from what I was trying to do. Thanks, I'll see if that camera will suit me - it would be good to keep the portraits separate from the other in-game pics, so I don't clean them out by accident sometime. Saves moving them manually too.

The picture is turnable with just the normal mirror for me.

Yes, I've found out how to do it now. I just never made the right mouse movement before, I suppose. But thanks for the hints, I've got it working.

Actually, any decent graphics programme will do this.

I started with a simple excel spreadsheet just to keep track of which families needed to be played because the scribbling on paper method failed when I kept losing the paper or forgetting to write it down. So actually, i started with a note pad. The note pad got a chart, and then the chart moved to excel when I realized that I could only make so many columns across the six inch page.

And then I wanted to keep track of Uni sims as well, but not mess up my neighborhood chart. So that became a second sheet on my excel workbook.

Then I needed a way to make sure that the sims who graduated Uni broke stayed broke and that I could tell the difference between Sally's cash and Susy's at Uni. So came the spreadsheet for cash spent and earned at Uni (which, granted, is often behind and I end up dividing cash evenly)

And then came several other spreadsheets, and now I'm up to six in my always-growing-less-simple Excel workbook.

the only important stuff to me really is knowing what I plan to do with the sim (which is still on paper) and who I'm playing

Usually I just rotate houses based on generation.  I'll typically play one house until a kid reaches an age transition, then play the next house until the kids in that generation have caught up to the first house, and so on.  I keep track of it from memory, and if I go long enough without playing and the neighborhood is so involved that I don't want to re-learn the family tree, I just wipe and restart.

The last neighborhood I wiped would have benefitted most from AL (since I created a retirement home pre-AL to house all of my senior citizens), but after half a dozen generations, there was way too much going on.

I have a green-cover 3 subject notebook. Each family gets three pages. The first page is sim name(s), aspiration(s), LTW, Uni grad (or not), how old (pencilled in), and a week tick mark. I play a week, Monday 8 am to Monday 8 am, give or take, so I can save the lot with no NPCs or visitors on it.
When the family spawns, I jot down what genetics expressed, what I named the tyke(s), and wether or not I bothered to get them trained in the three toddler skills. Children get a note of what other families their friends with, so I know who to invite over on Saturday mornings.
For my legacy house, which has the entire last section to itself, I note down all of the above, plot ideas, who I want them to make friends with (I have a PC vampire/witch husband and wife team who are in the process of stocking up their original supplies to open a witches' store.) and the heir choice system. I HATE the "vote for my legacy heir!11!!1" crap, so it's a simple system. They get a score based on how many Legacy points they earned from the time they were born till the time they graduate Uni and come home. Then I add a bonus based on how high their relationship is with their parents. Whoever has the highest score is the new heir. The second generation has five children, and so far Isaac (named after Isaac Asimov) is in the clear lead, with six points. He gets a bonus of 2 points for having 100/100 Bff with both parents.
This way, I have all the important stuff noted down, and recordkeeping takes me five minutes a game session, if that.

Really, the only families I have ever really tried to keep track of are my 3rd and 4th attempts at starting a Legacy Challenge.  I wrote all these notes on scraps of paper and index cards that I kept in a drawer on my compter desk.  My (real life) kids got big enough to open the drawer and so they pulled all the papers and cards out and mangled them and stuffed them under the couch and who knows where.  4th attempt at Legacy is still in Uni, so I can re-recreate any info I need on her, but I need a real score card or something.

But mostly I just try to play whichever family I feel like playing, and make sure that teen loves age up at the same time.  I also use the Elixerof Life a lot, even (especally?) for teens.

I use the LotSync timer to keep track of days played.  If any new families are added, they get automatically bumped up to the same 'day' as everybody else.  Colleges are played on the basis of 'one regular neighbourhood day = 1 college year' and are played in between the main Pleasantview and Bluewater Village, with teens moving to college with 4 days before aging to adulthood.

I use Family Echo (http://www.familyecho.com) to do my neighbourhood's family tree.  Almost all of Pleasantview is currently connected, but there are a few that haven't married into the current families.

Hmm, I guess I'm kind of in the middle when it comes to playing styles.

I have a sheet that I made in a drawing program when I first started playing my genetics 'hood.  It lists the last name, then husband (or the sim that is the equivalent if they are same-sex), then wife, and then has places for up to four children (name and gender).  The info I keep on them is astro sign, aspiration, job, skin, eye and hair colors.  I haven't started giving any of them secondary aspirations yet.

At the bottom of this chart are blank areas below the parents for various notes (such as whether they turned elder or when they died) and below the children's info is a Mon-Sun tick-mark area.  As I play a day, I put in a tick mark for that day, and if a sim got married I'll put an 'm' by the tick mark for that day.  Also "pg" for got pregnant, and when there's a birthday, 'p' for preschool (toddler), 'c' for child, 't' or "tn" for teen, and "c#" (like c1 or c2) for college/child number.  But I don't note which one grew up on which day.  When there are 4 tick marks I'll put a line under instead of through the other 4 for the fifth Monday (or whatever) so I don't obliterate my other notes and put any 't' or "c#" notes beside it.

When a baby is born I note its name, gender, skin and eye color.  At the transition to toddler I write in the astro sign and hair color.  At teen it's the aspiration.  When they get a job as an adult it gets entered.

I also may note what other sim(s) the children seem to be attracted to for later possible marriage/partnerships.  And in the column below where I note their gender, I also note if they are a twin.

I have three charts on one 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper and print it on both sides so I don't have an encyclopedia-sized notebook in front of me!  I keep families together on a sheet and have dividers for each family so I can find them fast.  My genetics 'hood is now well into its fourth generation, so I have a lot of sims to keep track of.

It also makes it easier to just transfer the info I keep track of into the "parent" info when they start their own household.

I had two user accounts, but got tired of having to keep separate downloads folders and stuff, so I took my second user account 'hoods and moved them into a storage folder.  As I complete a round of each house, each 'hood, I swap the 'hoods I played with the 'hoods from the other account.  So I have one storage folder for each account and move them back and forth from my sims2 folder to the appropriate storage folder.  I also have a loose-leaf notebook of the genetics sheets for each "account".

I recently started using whatever the database I have on my computer is to enter the names and generation of the sims in my genetics 'hood so I'm not marrying any of the youngest of my gen 3 sims to the oldest of my gen 4 sims.  And I can see at a glance who's married/partnered and who isn't.  But I don't have anything in the database except names and generation.  I thought about putting all the other info I track in there, but just haven't done it yet.

Spreadsheets.

I would perish without Excel.  I use them to keep track of what little real life I have also.

Deb