Database IS ready

[Pegasys]

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

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

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

Thoughts? Comments?

[witch]

Hi Pegasys

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

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

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

cheers
witch

[windy_moon]

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

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

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

Love the database, thanks!

[Kyna]

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

"Sims2.SIM" is damaged and cannot be opened.  Use the recover command to recover this file.

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

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

[ZiggyDoodle]

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

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

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

Much appreciated!

[Lynda]

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

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

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

Thoughts? Comments?

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

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

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

[RainbowTigress]

- Just to let you know, clicking on the thumbnail picture will take you to a full-screen version of the picture.

This does not work for me.  Any idea why?

[knitro]

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

[Pegasys]

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

"Sims2.SIM" is damaged and cannot be opened.  Use the recover command to recover this file.

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

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

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

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

Please let me know if this works.

Thanks,

-- Peg

[Pegasys]

- Just to let you know, clicking on the thumbnail picture will take you to a full-screen version of the picture.

This does not work for me.  Any idea why?

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

Does this solve your problem?


-- Peg

[phyllis_p]

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

Phyllis

[Pegasys]

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

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

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

[Kyna]

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

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

[ZiggyDoodle]

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

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

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

[Pegasys]

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

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

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

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

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

[joanm]

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

- Joanm, I don't know what to say about nothing happening when you click on the Sims2DB.EXE file. Double-clicking should definitely start the database. Did you move the Sims2DB.EXE file from the folder with the other files? Does anything happen at all?

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

[witch]

...sometimes if I put in a female and say she is married, put in her husband, then when I bring him up it says he is female...

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

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

[knitro]

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

[Lynda]

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

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

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

[RainbowTigress]

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

[Pegasys]

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

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

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

[Pegasys]

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

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

[RainbowTigress]

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

[Bangelnuts]

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

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

[Zythe]

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