More Awesome Than You!

I did do a search and didn't find the answer I was looking for so here's a new thread, sorry if somewhere using bizarre language I didn't think of it was already summed up.  But here goes.

I started a family.  It spawned many children. Eventually it was too big (8), so I moved two of the adult offspring out on their own, and one got married.  Total # of sims in family 1 is now 6, in family 2 (active is now 3).  I want to switch back to family 1.  I don't care about lost wants or anything like that (well, I *do* care but I am choosing to accept that suckage for now), I just want to switch active households. 

Is there a way I can do this?  I can't find any UI to support it, the only thing I can think of is trying to invite someone from family 1 to move in and then seeing if I can move all but 1 other adult sim into family 2, then moving them out again elsewhere and setting them active.  This is however kludgy and annoying.

Is there a better way, oh people of awesomeness?

I don't actually have the game, so someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the Change Household option is under 'Edit Town'.

That is correct - After the Edit Town UI comes up, there is an icon with 2 houses on the left.  Click that to change active households.

This just goes to show how poor the UI design is.

It's likely hard to find, because you are not meant to do it in an unmodded game.

In Edit Town mode there's a little button all the way on the left with two tiny house icons.

Yup.  Hover mouse, it says Change Household or something like that.

I've done it, and it works seamlessly.  If your previous active household Sim was visiting   the Sim of the new household, he will still be visiting when you switch.  That's very different from Sims 2.  The problem is, of course, that you lose your Lifetime Rewards, but I can live with that until we get a mod to save them , which I expect won't be that hard once better tools are available and widespread.

I had never actually visited "edit town" because to me that sounded like it was just building creation which I hadn't gotten to yet.  I was able to do it without any problem once y'all pointed me in the right direction.  I agree though - horrible UI design there. 

I can live with it, although I'd prefer not losing the want progress, it's not a huge deal.  None of the lifetime wants reset but if it is going to "lose track" of things like the "have 10 boyfriends" want (which really should be "have 10 lovers" to keep it gender neutral, but that's another story) then I will just avoid those wants.

I am sure it's sacrilege but I actually like the story progression and seeing what mischief they get up to when I'm watching another household.  It may get annoying with particular sims that I have a master plan for but for others I'm finding it quite amusing.

What about losing your family because the game decided to delete it? I hope you're taking measures against that.

Well I am seriously disappointed in the fact that each game is pretty much one household and that's that... (yes, I found that out the hard way tonight - lost about 4 hours worth of house-building/family building when the game decided to award my mommy-sim a short short adult lifespan- she'd be dead by the time her kid got to be a teenager).

Well, anyway...I got to thinking about this, and considering I never was one to play 'legacy style' and the whole 'no cheating' whining thing...oh God, if I could just get my fat fingers around their necks...
oh wait, I digress (it's late here).

One thing I used to do was to take 16 sims (usually 8 female, 8 male) university students and put them in 2 dorms and let them sort themselves out into couples and those 8 couples became the basis for the beginnings of a neighborhood...

Anyway, I'm wondering if it would be possible to make a household with 8 young adult sims (say 4 male or 4 female or who cares, get funky and do what you like) and let them mate and spawn - but now from the OP's post, I'm realizing that even that creates problems with offspring because you can't even switch between houses within the single neighborhood...

Someone at EA really was asleep at the wheel on this and the delay from Feb. didn't help any.

Please, someone tell me, is there at least NO Marsha Bruenig?

You *can* switch households.  It may lead to unwanted consequences but there is absolutely nothing stopping you from clicking "Switch active household" in the Edit Town UI. And they seem to be fairly adept at raising their kids - as in, they're not dropping dead or getting taken by the Social Worker (yet).

Well that is good to know this morning (serious coffee imbibing going on here).

I explained it to hubby with a movie and TV show analogy this morning. I think it's kind of like a combination of Sliders and Groundhog Day...each saved game is it's own little universe (Sliders) and each saved game essentially starts over at day zero with EA made sims except for the family you install (Groundhog Day).

Essentially they sucked the uniqueness that was each of our games right out of it...Even if we each installed the Sims2 right out of the box and played it without ever installing a hack or one bit of custom content, because no two people played the game the same way within a couple weeks of playing, everyone would have a completely different looking neighborhood - and no one's neighborhood was 'wrong'.

And what is up with the scavenger hunting for crap? If I wanted to scavenger hunt for crap I'd go to bigfishgames and buy one of those kind of games (I hate them, in case you haven't already figured that out, too).

Anyway, I think I'm going to try my 8 young adults and see where it goes idea...might be the only way the game stays viable for me.

Yikes!  I suppose I could copy the family and put it in the library but then all the relationships are gone too, if I have to restore from there.  They really ought to have differential behavior for player created families so that even if they "progess" they don't just go poof en masse...

Are you talking about a family of eight in one household?  If so, I wonder if they even CAN have children without somebody moving out.  As it is now, Sims in a playable household of eight don't get the option to "Try for Baby."   

That's because when you're not playing a house and they no longer have any active instructions, they get "put on a bus". Meaning the game doesn't actually simulate them anymore, it just abstracts their actions, making assumptions of nondestructivity...for the most part. It's when you forcibly confront them, forcing them to the active high-detail simulation, and then corner them in their homes, that it all goes to shit and they pee themselves and die.

Then the whole open neighborhood concept is a big cakelie.

Lie?  Uh, I guess it depends on how much you read into it.  Remember University?  When the dormies went into their rooms and closed the door, we were supposed to imagine they were brushing their teeth, doing homework, whatever.  But really, if you looked in Buy-mode, you could see they were just standing still for a few hours and then walking out with their motives refreshed. 

's the same thing here.  When you can't see Sim townies, they effectively don't exist.  It's Sim-solipsism.

To be fair that's pretty much the only way they could do it. Simulating every sim in the neighborhood would most likely make your computer explode.

I don't know if this is related to changing households, but I expect it is:

I was playing a Sim, who had convinced a townie to dump her boyfriend and 'Go Steady' with him.
But then I tried making a new Sim and changing households, and I got talking with the same townie. When I asked if she was single she said she was in a relationship with the boyfriend I made her dump with the other Sim.

So it seems like relationships reset if you change houses. At least, they seem to if the girl/boyfriend has not moved into the household.

Just another nail in the coffin for this so-called open town.

BAH!  Changing households also results in the loss of non-purchased inventory.  For example, any of the crap your sim scavenged... seeds, produce, etc.  Gone!  Worse than that, if your sim bought a business, also gone!  I had a sim who had completely bought out 4 businesses.  When I went back to play her household, they were all gone.  Not even sold.  Very annoying.  I had to motherlode her 4-times to give her back the value of her businesses.

I also noticed when you go to change households, a dialog pops up with 3 options, "Yes, Save", "Just Continue", and "Cancel".  I had clicked "Yes, Save" every time, but I noticed you don't lose anything if you click "Just Continue".  At least, not from simply switching households.

It was a big lie as well! You never got to actually see the Sims in a classroom at all, it should have been called "Outside the University" or something.


While I agree it needs to be abstracted (because it's pointless to simulate things that the player mostly doesn't care about at a given moment) it should (and could) be abstracted precisely, the sims are just a bunch of values floating around that the game changes, so it should be easy to change them to reflect the same values that you would see if you were playing the family without interacting, without any computer exploding.

But that would lead to the same values for all households (the sims peed themselves and died), so it needs to have good AI first for a real open neighborhood and story progression to ever be "true."

I should have figured that out when I had one Sim call another and was disappointed to see the second Sim protesting in front of City Hall rather than talking on the phone. 

biohazard...you didn't believe me did you.

Is it because I'm the sewinglady - and so I couldn't possibly be right?

Look...I'm serious here...each save - each instance you make...each time you enter Create-A-Sim and make a new family and install them in a neighborhood the WHOLE F'ING neighborhood resets.  All the pre-made sims don't know any of the sims you previously made and installed in that neighborhood and the new family you just put there cannot possibly meet the previously installed families you put there because they are in their own Sim-universe which was started the moment you put them there. Sliders and Groundhog Day. Seriously.

I spent yesterday making an 8 sim family. In order save me some brain-ache (or possibly to make me more, I can't decide which), I went with 4 young adults, each with one child - two children, two teenagers. Yes, I installed them all in one house. Yes it is incredibly difficult to play and no it is not fun...so I'm about to start the infernal game again...and as soon as I do I am moving half the sims - two adults and two children into their own home within the same neighborhood - but basically, they've lived together long enough that I've got an idea of who's falling for whom and therefore who's moving and who's staying put...so hopefully playing the game will get a little easier.

Now to figure out the idiocy that is gardening and to find the toaster...or did they give them waffles but no toaster to cook them in?

Waffles go in the oven. Yeah. I know. Kills me, because I use my toaster every other day and my microwave maybe once a week, yet we always have microwaves and no toasters in the game.

Oh, and P&L for having trouble running an 8-sim household including 4 adults. I see your 4YA/2T/2C, and raise you a 2A/2C/3Tod/1B.

You win. I'd have to kill someone or rather some sim...

I wish people would stop saying this.  It is absolutely possible to play a family, then decide to create a new family, and have them exist in the same neighborhood as your first family.  Just go into Edit Town and go into CAS from there.  Get out of CAS, place them in a house, and they are in your current, active neighborhood.  You can then decide to switch to them as your active household, or go back to the first family.  Either way, both are now in the same universe.

Multiple saves files are meant only for creating multiple copies of the neighborhood. Don't want parallel universes?  Don't create more than one save.   

Okey, dokey...but then you must save that particular way...and it's a way of saving that I wasn't aware existed... sooooooo....now I know. Learn something new every day. In other words - the way I have been entering CAS and saving the game, what I have been getting is what I have been describing. I am now going to try what you are describing and see if there's a way to go between households, BECAUSE...

I have also learned what happens when you split up an 8 member household within what I am calling a 'single save'...the 4 sims you leave behind become unplayable insofar as I see no way to return to make them that the active family again...so there's no going back? Or is there - again something I just don't know about. The sims still exist within the neighborhood. The house is still there. The funds were sucked from it, the relationships still exist with the four sims that I moved to a new lot...but I've go no way except for 'visiting' to return to that lot.

It works the same way - Enter "Edit Hood" and on the left there is a button with an icon of 2 houses.  Click that button (hovering over it tells you it is "Switch Active Household") and then select the new house you want to play from the hood.  

Unless you install AwesomeMod (I'll let you find that on your own, since if you can't find it, you should probably avoid trying to install it anyway), you should be aware that doing so results in the family that you are leaving losing all of their inventory and current locked wishes, and they will be free to do whatever the hell the game decides to have them do - you are leaving them to the mercies of Story ReProgression, regardless of whether you have it enabled in the options or not.

I haven't installed the mod yet... I haven't played the game for a whole sim week...I've been that unimpressed. I figure that very soon I will either get A) so frustrated with it all that I quit and never play it again or at least not for several months or B) will at least be forced to figure out how to install the mods...migraines and all.

A good bit of the unimpressed and the inability to figure things out (like how to actually force a sim to jog - not on their own but tell them to do it and not on the treadmill) and this whole why do I have to play scavenger hunt to garden thing...well I feel like a five year old and a good bit of it has to do with the migraine thing - and yes, I've seen a doctor - and yes, he's put me on meds - the first one made me a drooling idiot (like I wasn't one without that already) second one might be helping, slowly.

I do appreciate your help...and I would never have been able to stomach the sims2 without awesome-ware and a few TwoJeffs hacks...so I figure sims3 is going to be same way.

Reporting back... playing with the awesomemod installed and my original 8 sim household split into two households and switching back and forth... and so far there's been no big fiery ball in space over my neighborhood or computer.

Any locked wants are lost when the active household becomes inactive, and of course, they continue to age... but so far, so good...

Now I'm going to further the experiment (and possibly more headaches) by trying to add another family across the street from the first house I put in Riverview...

In any case, it's a success...my sims shall live to see another day, now to get back to real life important things like work (ebay).