Gameplay: How do YOU keep track of sim lifes?

[sarianastar]

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

[sleep]

The advantage I see with GenoPro is the options for saving pictures both for individuals and for events (weddings ect) and places (houses).

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. 

[ingeli]

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.

[Quill]

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? 

[coralleane]

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.

[sleep]

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" (...)Then I edit it in PSP so that the size is always the same (100x150 pixels)

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.

[ingeli]

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.

[maxon]

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. 

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

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. 

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.

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)

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.

[Zazazu]

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.

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.

There will probably be a few who I'll just ignore after they graduate except to age them with the other sims.

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 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? 

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.

[Quill]

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

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 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)

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.

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. 

[Faizah]

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? 

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 the same way. (Though now I'm questioning the wisdom of that, as I can't quite remember whether Chrysopoeia is male or female...)

[BrokenRobot]

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.

[sleep]

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.

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!

[ingeli]

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/
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.

[sleep]

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.

[BrokenRobot]

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

[sleep]

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.

[maxon]

To take pics, I use the old program SimCamera. It was made for Sims1, but is still downloadable here:
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.

Actually, any decent graphics programme will do this.

[TimeStop]

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

[kemowery]

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.

[LadyArgonna]

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.

[Gastfyr]

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.

[vecki]

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 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.

[ElviraGoth]

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.

[debbiedoo]

Spreadsheets.

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

Deb