More Awesome Than You!

Using the aging off cheat, turning Sims immortal (vampires etc) or switching off aging using Insim prevents teens and children from improving their grades unless some arcane formula is followed. Somebody on MATY mentioned Inge released a hack that switches aging off but allows grades to improve. I tried it but it also seems to freeze grades. Exactly what causes these frozen grades and how can I unfreeze them while keeping aging of?

Frozen Grades is caused by the "first day effect". If you freeze a sim's age immediately after he transitions, his grades are similarly frozen. If you allow a day to elapse so that nobody is on the first-day-immediately-after-transition (8,15), grades will function normally. This is why it is important for a toddler to never transition such that the very next day is a school day.

So I should always time transitions on either Friday or Saturday, amiright?

Also, I assume that if you used elixir of life or otherwise reset a Sim teen/kid back to zero days elapsed, his grades would freeze again? This seems to be happening to me. I switched aging back on and their grades went up to B+, but I reset their ages over the weekend and installed Inge's no aging hack. Their grades froze solid again.

The no aging hack cannot affect school grades.  Not sure if the ageing off cheat can.

Does this only apply if someone is using some sort of aging off cheat?  Or do you mean even in normal non-cheating gameplay?

This is Awesomeland rules. For normal gameplay, when your toddlers transition is of minimal effect. It's ridiculously easy to get up to an A+ after just a couple school days. If I didn't have hardergrades and avoid directing child skilling apart from what they have wants for, all my simkids would be geniuses.

Zazazu, is this (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=131960) the hack you're using? Which version do you use?

Ah, I see.  Thanks for the clarification.  I have noticed that if you age a toddler up during school hours on a school day, you'll get this stupid "spawn missed school and lost a grade" and their grade goes down to a D!  I was shocked when that happend, but when the sibs got home from school, the newly transitioned child (the one with a D from "missing school") scrolled on wants to "do homework" and "learn to study".  Sibs had all leared to study already, so I had mom teach the "new" child to study with his brother's homework!   :D

Yeah, it's really very easy to get an A+.  What does that harder grades hack do?  Does it make it so kids/teens actaully have to do homework every single day?  lol  I usually have them do all thier homework anyway, since you can't delete it even with moveobjects once they got to uni.   :-\

Not exactly. I get it here (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,3091.0.html).

Gastfyr, never age spawn up during school hours. I usually age right at 6 pm or when they are at an appropriate tiredness level to go to sleep at the proper time once they transition.

And looking below I see why Pescado has the grade woes he does. I always prompt aging and don't let them do it autonomously.

Friday/Saturday/Sunday are all good. Alternatively, you can force premature transition after 1500 (school out) but before 1800 (age-up) on Mon-Thu, resulting in the subsequent loss of a day at 1800, putting you at 7 days and thus avoiding the penalty.

It seems to freeze grades in my game (or contribute to freezing grades). The situation was one where I swtiched aging back on and the teens went up from C+ to B+ on Friday, then I installed your hack and reset their ages. This immediately froze their grades again. Removing the hack and allowing them to age one day allowed normal grade increase to resume. I'm using CAS teens and I don't know if that makes a difference.

The aging hack does not affect grades. However, age itself affects grades in a completely seperate code. This particular "effect" is actually deliberately coded into the game for some incomprehensible reason, as a specific penalty. Since an aging hack thus never allows a sim to advance beyond that penalty day, same as Aging Off, the penalty continues to be applied and their grades never increase until you change their day.

It all makes sense now. Thanks. I'll just let all my CAS Sims age one day before installing Inge's hack, then make sure I age all subsequent generations up on appropriate days to avoid the penalty.

Tunaisafish found where the problem was and I have made a seperate fix for it at http://simlogical.com/slforum/index.php?topic=1952.0

The reason I decided to make it seperate is that it is a problem that could also affect players who are not using my no-aging but are using SimBlender or InSimenator to alter days left etc.

It was just a stupid pointless bit of code EA put in so that lack of homework would not mean they had actually done some.  However, since the grade increase is only going to occur while a kid is at school anyway, why the hell wouldn't they have got a grade increase just by doing their work *at* school well?

Is that what the motivation for that piece of code was? I found it ages ago, and always wondered what on Earth the purpose of it was, but given that it was obviously intentional, I left it alone. As for "lack of homework not meaning they had actually done some", that seems like a bizarre interpretation. I'm not sure I follow, given that lack of homework DOES count as homework being done.

Well in the new attempt to appeal to "hardcore gamers" that was introduced with Sims 2, getting your sims to do their homework is regarded as a mini-challenge.  So they try to make sure the sim can't get good grades without doing it, even down to making sure they can't accidentally get a good grade just because there is no homework due to them not having been at school before.

The amount of hassle this causes for people with aging off, or who use other age cheats, just isn't worth it though. 

I am keeping it as a seperate patch as it will not only be useful for people who use my particular no-aging patch.  Also some people who do use my no-aging patch will wish to get round it in different ways, such as using SimBlender to move them on by one or more days.  Then they won't be forced to have a more complicated hack than they required.

I play with aging off constantly, and grades do rise.

Well that's why I kept it seperate.  Not everyone will want to have it, if they are happy without

If your sims are frozen on their first day of the life stage, then you are not getting the 'homework' part of the grade change calculation applied.  Install Inge's patch to fix that.  There are other factors of the calculation such a mood that are taken into account.

Before I found the homework bug, I had a household of orphans where grades were permanently frozen at C+, irrespective of mood.
I think they start at C so there might have been one increase.  Still looking into that part.  It might be a an EA bug or another subtle conflict with the mods I use.

I didn't see a "homework" part. There isn't any homework involved in that particular grade penalty, it was simply "If current day = day 0 of age category, NO SOUP FOR YOU!".

The reason the day check was there, was because the sim gets a +3 credit if no homework is found on the lot.
So for sims that were a toddler the previous day, they obvioulsy didn't do the homework so should not get the +3.

That's in '2037 Calculate Grade' where the days check is.
That's called from 2016 Grade - Update' where the mood constants are referenced.

Pescado, you probably haven't noticed if you are still using a prehistoric version of SimPE, but in the PJSE resource finder there is an option to search for calling BHAVs to any other BHAV now, so you can trace what uses a BHAV, or a primitive for that matter.

That's not new, that option has existed for a million years, it's even in the prehistoric version.

Which doesn't explain why that logic still fires for 12s, or why it simply means that you have to time your age-up. It's kind of stupid that way.

It's kind of stupid in every way.  It's neither logical nor awesome so I killed it.

Yep, it's a halfassed bit of code.
If you age on a weekend, the code running on monday assumes you were given and completed your homework.  So it is more lenient than it should be there.
Suppose that makes up for 12's harshness.  Swings and roundabouts.
It's hardly a great issue though, you get about 3 weeks to get the grades up.  Any bit of EA logic in there to stop my whole hood having A+ helps.
Probably why it has gone unnoticed since the start.

It's only a real bug with aging off.

Getting good grades should be harder, and there should be other factors involved apart from just doing your homework.  For example, how about if they made skills a factor?  Kids who bother to skill keep their brain sharp.  Also I think skills themselves should deteriorate if they are not exercised, just like hobby enthusiasm does.  Actually, why should doing a hobby increase enthusiasm for it anyway?  Having to do something should decrease enthusiasm.  So for example, with tinkering, I would have their enthusiasm go up by tinkering and by reading about it, but go down if they have to fix a broken shower.   Cooking enthusiasm would go down if the sim has to cook a basic meal for the family, but go up by reading about it or preparing party dishes.

Syberspunk did this already. The thing is, the game is kinda balanced for the BBS smacktard, not for awesome super-achievers like us.

This was actually present in the game's leftover codes, but was largely gutted. Apparently, it was a really bad idea, and I can see why, given how aggravatingly irritatingly the base "enthusiasm" decay works, which is basically where all that code got recycled into. Can you imagine how annoying it probably was for a sim to be unable to even go to sleep without losing a bunch of skillpoints? Augh. And how exactly WOULD one "exercise" some skills, anyway? The Mechanical skilll, for instance, has absolutely no functionality outside of repairing broken stuff.

The enthusiasm loss is possible.  I did that in the food mod with burnt/spoiled food as that has to be the most annoying spam hobby to get rid of.
So you could in theory make some of those tinkering items lose points too if you like :)

Hi Tunaisafish, I've had no problems with grades. After 8pm, I put 'aging on' grow up the toddler/child of my choice, put 'aging off' cheat back on. The kid goes to school and with doing homework, going to class the grades go up. They get the family hurrahs and the money rewarded by proud family pop up. All works normally and I've not noticed a problem. There is quite a number of sims at the A+ level. I've also had, when a sim missed school, a grade was deducted and the grade went down. After a day or two, the grade would go back up. I don't find anything frozen or any negative factors with it this way.

But that wouldb't be possible if you had someething l ike my no aging hack in.

Hi Inge!
I searched and found the thread where you mentioned the 'no aging birthday cake'. No links were given, and no search provided the location of it being here. Leads me to believe it is posted elsewhere. I will search it out to learn more about it.

Where will you begin to look?

LOL! The ol' Google of course! Very easy to find as Google responded well and lead me to your site, Simlogical. I've been there so many times and have quite a number of the mods from there, but had not seen the birthday cake mod before. I've downloaded it, and know it works with the aging cheat off. I am assuming then, that the disablePuppyKittenAging should not be used either.

Obviously not on this page, despite you helpfully providing them with a direct link.

How nice of you to point my misread out! With sarcasm too! How very special. Thank you.