Seasonal Age Project: RFC (Request For Comments)

[awrevell]

I recently completed my collection of Sims 2 EPs after not being able to afford anything for a long time.

The installation of BV brought with it a sharp contrast between the lifespans of sims and the seasons.  Each season lasts about 6 days so a single seasonal year is 24 days.  I have started a project and am having a fair bit of success so far in altering the way this behaves.  Thanks to Inge Jones I aquired the age BCONs and have altered them to adjust the age differentials.   Once I did this it brought into conflict the time a woman is pregnant.  So I found the BCON which controls this and found out that it was a bad thing to alter this.... so I made my own and changed the pointers in the necessary BHAVs to link to the new BCONS and now a pregnancy lasts 18 days.    This of course started to tick me off since with the original way it was handled a pregnant sim went on Maternity Leave when they started showing.  So I altered the way that was handled and now a pregnant sim can work till they are 20 hours from delivery (this will prevent them from being at work when they are supposed to deliver) They can also leave the lot right up to this point as well.  However I am still having a small problem with this routine.   A pregnant sim will get maternity pay on their days off while they are showing and will not remain on maternity leave after the birth (so if you want the sim to stay home after the birth they have to quit work).  The increase in lifespans also makes some other alterations necessary and I was hoping for feedback and help with that.  I tried out the Harder Jobs package and while it is an improvement I was hoping maybe an even harder one could be made that slowed advancement even farther (as well as perhaps cutting the starting levels in half for college graduates, so they start at 4 or 5 instead of 8 or 9).

I am also interested to know if anyone is interested in me posting this mod here. 

Sim lifespans set by the mod are as follows:
Normal Sims:
Baby         age  0   - 1       (24 days)
Toddler     age  1   - 05     (96 days)
Children     age  05 - 12     (168 days)
Teens       age  12 - 20     (192 days)
Adults       age  20 - 64     (1056 days)
Elders min  age  64 - 67.5  (84 days)
Elders max age  64 - 104   (960 days)

Plantsims:
Toddler    age     0 -    1   (24 days)
Adult       age     1 - 100   (2376 days)
Elder min  age 100 - 150   (1200 days)
Elder max age 100 - 200   (2376 days)
These ages were decided upon with the consideration that plants, if given proper care, can live for upwards of 500 years but when coupled with the human physiology would probably experience a shorter (albiet longer than a humans) lifespan.

Also pet ages were brought in line with this model.
Puppy/Kitten      age 0 - 1      (24 days)
Adult                 age 1 - 7      (168 days)
Elder min            age 7 - 8.6   (40 days)
Elder max           age 7 - 10.3 (80 days)


If anyone has any suggestions for improvements to the ages here please let me know.


Special thanks to Inge, Peter, J.M.P., Quaxi and all the others who have made this insane attempt possible.

[floopyboo]

it sounds interesting, and it looks like you've taken care of all the external factors. But how well does it play with ACR? Have you tested it with custom careers? How does uni fit into all of this?

Don't get me wrong, I am very, VERY interested in this hack, but I am also very hesitant adding something to my precariously balanced hacks without knowing how it's going to play with the big ones I can't live without.

[tayooga]

Your sims are babies for 24 sim days? And teens for 192? How do you entertain them for that long, play them for that long without getting bored?

I am all for the more realistic lifespans, and getting everything in tune to the seasons sounds awesome, but I would grow mighty sick of my sims before they finally hit old age and died.

[Vren Lyet]

I second both comments: I'm intrigued by the idea of syncing a Sim's lifespan to the duration of seasons.

But just imagine a toddler actually being around for 96 days: the little one would have maxed out all the three skills it can master (charisma, logic & creativity).
Even worse: children lasting 168 days would be able to max out everything including all the badges (given you have Monique's computer to have them learn those business related ones).

That's bad - I think.

So learning speed should be altered, too.

[Kyna]

I second both comments: I'm intrigued by the idea of syncing a Sim's lifespan to the duration of seasons.

But just imagine a toddler actually being around for 96 days: the little one would have maxed out all the three skills it can master (charisma, logic & creativity).
Even worse: children lasting 168 days would be able to max out everything including all the badges (given you have Monique's computer to have them learn those business related ones).

That's bad - I think.

So learning speed should be altered, too.

Toddlers can now train mechanical with the toddler table introduced in FT, so that's 4 skills the toddlers would max out.  And my simkids already max out all skills (if there's a body reward/education bookshelf on the lot), as well as the two badges they can train without a hack (gardening & fishing).

[Mirelly]

I'm not even sure I'd want to play with time synched to pregnancy (1 sim day = 3 months)

176 days of adulthood would almost be tolerable, but the other ages .... I play the game a lot and the aging and dying element (which makes possible various dynastic playstyles) was the primary factor in making TS2 desirable for me. I wouldn't have bought it on graphics alone. TS1 and I were in a state of mutual ennui that could only be fixed with a sea-change in game mechanics. Aging did it, for me at least.

I'd be very interested is a such a project as this if it could bring levels of customisation to the table, such as a config text file where the durations, in days, of various life stages could be altered. If this could further be enhanced by a mod which enables full customization of seasons then I'd be even more interested.

I've always wanted a mod that would let me change the length of the seasons. If I could, I'd set

Spring 5 days
Summer 6 days
Autumn 4 days
Winter 3 days

A net reduction of 25% in year length, with a 25% reduction in the free knowledge gain autumnal boost. Winter is a useless season when sims have such ineffectual outer wear, the family boost is pointless too.

I'm ramblin' ....

[J. M. Pescado]

I've contemplated realistic scaling before, but the end result is that the game quickly reaches extremely painful numbers. I mean, 1000 days of adulthood may as well be forever. Consider: 1 sim minute is about 1 second. A sim hour is about a real minute. So call it about half an hour per day, given that you will probably pause a bit to give orders occasionally, loading times, etc., and to make this simple. This means we're talking about 500 hours of continuous play per family. This is on the order of about 3 weeks of continuous play. If you are an unemployed lazy sleeping slacker, this is a month of playtime. Per family. Feel the pain.

[Alex]

It's an interesting concept...

Legacies would be a little difficult to play though. 

[Nailati]

Feel the pain.

I'm feeling it. This is a nifty project, but personally I couldn't bear it. I almost always skip the infant and toddler stages.

[Charamei]

Also feeling the pain. My legacy hood has, oh, twenty-odd families (although half of those are single adults with 9-5 jobs and no lives), in sync. Takes me two real-time days to play one 'hood day. It's already going to take a good year or so to reach Gen 10... and I'm a student with a five-month summer holiday coming up.

This sounds like something that I might conceivably install at the very end of the legacy, when I will switch from generation-mode to story-mode: it would save me turning aging off in the neighbourhood to ensure that everyone was born in sync. In that respect, I'm interested: however, that neighbourhood is a special case, since it is being played with the intention of a story-mode at the end. I wouldn't use it anywhere else - it'd just take too long to play through.

For normal play, I'd rather see a minor expansion in length coupled with a reduction in the times the seasons take. Still interested in this version, but only under very special circumstances, so my overall verdict is a 'no'.

[Sivany]

That does seem to be an awful long life to give your sims, but if that's what you want then why not! Sadly I can't help you with your questions, although there is a thread already in the podium called "harder, harder jobs" which discusses making careers harder so you should check that out if you haven't already.

As someone else already mentioned you would need to adjust the skilling rate to make it more realistic, also what about relationship building/decay? Would that need to be adjusted to take into account the longer lifespans?

[awrevell]

I second both comments: I'm intrigued by the idea of syncing a Sim's lifespan to the duration of seasons.

But just imagine a toddler actually being around for 96 days: the little one would have maxed out all the three skills it can master (charisma, logic & creativity).
Even worse: children lasting 168 days would be able to max out everything including all the badges (given you have Monique's computer to have them learn those business related ones).

That's bad - I think.

So learning speed should be altered, too.

Toddlers can now train mechanical with the toddler table introduced in FT, so that's 4 skills the toddlers would max out.  And my simkids already max out all skills (if there's a body reward/education bookshelf on the lot), as well as the two badges they can train without a hack (gardening & fishing).

Those are both very good points.  This mod does need something that makes it harder to do several things, mainly by increasing the time it takes them to do those things.  I have started a new family with just two adults and had them produce offspring.  This family was then played until such time as the child was able to enter college. During that time I intentionally avoided overskilling my sims and focused instead on the child gaining aspiration points.  

I've contemplated realistic scaling before, but the end result is that the game quickly reaches extremely painful numbers. I mean, 1000 days of adulthood may as well be forever. Consider: 1 sim minute is about 1 second. A sim hour is about a real minute. So call it about half an hour per day, given that you will probably pause a bit to give orders occasionally, loading times, etc., and to make this simple. This means we're talking about 500 hours of continuous play per family. This is on the order of about 3 weeks of continuous play. If you are an unemployed lazy sleeping slacker, this is a month of playtime. Per family. Feel the pain.

The adult and elder ages could be cut down a bit for gameplay sake without messing the balance too much.  Reducing the age a sim transitioned to elder to 50 would change the time as an adult to 720 days,  or this could be reduced to 600 and they transition at 45.  The elder lifespans could be shortened as well, giving them say a minimum of 2 years as an elder and a maximum of 15.  That would be 48 to 360 days in that stage (variable based on game factors)  All the age spans are clearly marked in the BCON so that anyone with a minimal knowledge of SimPE could set them to what they wanted them to be.

it sounds interesting, and it looks like you've taken care of all the external factors. But how well does it play with ACR? Have you tested it with custom careers? How does uni fit into all of this?

Don't get me wrong, I am very, VERY interested in this hack, but I am also very hesitant adding something to my precariously balanced hacks without knowing how it's going to play with the big ones I can't live without.

I don't have ACR in my game and admittedly this mod WILL conflict with anything that effects pregnancy.  As for custom careers, it doesn't effect the career itself only the way the game determines if a sim can leave the lot during pregnancy.  Young Adult sims are a special case, they are only young adults while they are in college and transition to adulthood when their 4 years there is up (I considered trying to sync that to the seasons as well but have yet to find the way to do that).  My mod doesn't effect them in any way, unless maybe you have a hack that lets them get pregnant then they will be pregnant for 18 days but still able to leave the lot up till 20 hours before delivery time.  Since I don't have any hacks which effect pregnancy in any way this hasn't been an issue for me.  

Though I have considered ripping apart the kitten killer and figuring how it works so that I could enact a twisted version that would fit in with the ages on my mod.
This of course would require a whole lot of skill I don't have at this point.   The idea would require a way to convert a playable sim into an NPC without any interaction by the player.  This is because the mod would compare the ages of the teen sim which had been in a sexual relationship with that of their partner.  If sim A had been a teen less than 144 days (18 years old) then it would check the age of their partner sim B.  If sim B had been a teen less than 144 days nothing would happen.  However, if sim B was over 18 (a teen for over 144 days, a young adult, an adult or an elder) then they would get a special token (statutory rape) and after this if they engaged in romantic relations with the teen in public then they would be charged with this and converted into an NPC and hauled away to jail (the animations for catching a thief could be used here) The mod would need a way to determine if someone else saw them engaging in one of the romantic socials in order to charge them only if they got caught.  There could be added a way for the teen to get them in trouble by calling the cops and reporting the activity as well... (all the more reason not to do it... you piss them off you go to jail)

[Charamei]

Though I have considered ripping apart the kitten killer and figuring how it works so that I could enact a twisted version that would fit in with the ages on my mod.
This of course would require a whole lot of skill I don't have at this point.   The idea would require a way to convert a playable sim into an NPC without any interaction by the player.  This is because the mod would compare the ages of the teen sim which had been in a sexual relationship with that of their partner.  If sim A had been a teen less than 144 days (18 years old) then it would check the age of their partner sim B.  If sim B had been a teen less than 144 days nothing would happen.  However, if sim B was over 18 (a teen for over 144 days, a young adult, an adult or an elder) then they would get a special token (statutory rape) and after this if they engaged in romantic relations with the teen in public then they would be charged with this and converted into an NPC and hauled away to jail (the animations for catching a thief could be used here) The mod would need a way to determine if someone else saw them engaging in one of the romantic socials in order to charge them only if they got caught.  There could be added a way for the teen to get them in trouble by calling the cops and reporting the activity as well... (all the more reason not to do it... you piss them off you go to jail)

At this point, you're definitely stepping on toes - partly by introducing unnecessary bloat, and partly because of those of us who use Inge's prison set. You convert my criminals into NPCs, the first thing I'm going to have to do is convert them back so I can send them to the right place, and I won't be happy about it.

I like the idea, but please don't bloat it with this sort of crap. If I want a penalty for statutory rape, I'll enact it myself.

[awrevell]

If I ever figured out how to do this it would be added as an optional side package so that only people who wanted to add this twist would have to add it.  Any mod that has a multitude of features that may or may not be playable for some people should seperate the features into different packages so that the users can decide which features to incorporate into their game.

[Zazazu]

The age lengths are simply insane, seriously. Have you tried playing a standard family (two parents, two kids) at these age lengths at all, or are you just spitballing this? These lengths would really only work for a player who only planned on seeing up to three generations in a neighborhood ---ever. Even if they played for six years.

I'll stick with my shorter teen and elder and longer adult stages, thank you.

[awrevell]

The age lengths are simply insane, seriously. Have you tried playing a standard family (two parents, two kids) at these age lengths at all, or are you just spitballing this? These lengths would really only work for a player who only planned on seeing up to three generations in a neighborhood ---ever. Even if they played for six years.

I'll stick with my shorter teen and elder and longer adult stages, thank you.

I started a family with just two adults in CAS and played them in the game till their offspring was able to go to college.  I understand that this isn't for everyone.  In fact instead of wasting server space with something nobody wanted I specifically started a thread to ask for constructive suggestions and find out if in fact anyone was interested in my posting it.  J.M.P. had a good point that 1000+ days as an adult is a long time.  Fortunatly that is an issue that is easily fixed by anyone with a minimal understanding of SimPE since the BCONs are clearly labeled to allow people to understand what can be done to customize the mod for personal use.

Each age has a min and max setting.  By default these are the same but they can be set to different values and then the length of time in any single lifestage would be variable based on factors determined by the game.  The ammount of time a sim is pregnant is also labled in the appropriate BCON and can be adjusted to the user preference... So how someone would use this, if at all, is up to them entirely.

If you are not interested you don't have to use the mod.  However, I am not "spitballing", I have given this a lot of thought and work so far.  Spitballing is when you just make something up and fire without any consideration.

[Charamei]

If I ever figured out how to do this it would be added as an optional side package so that only people who wanted to add this twist would have to add it.  Any mod that has a multitude of features that may or may not be playable for some people should seperate the features into different packages so that the users can decide which features to incorporate into their game.

Fair enough. In that case, I am interested, and you may be able to talk me into creating a new TS2 folder to test, but I wouldn't be using it seriously for quite some while.

[croiduire]

Well, I do play with lifespans scaled to pregnancy. Uni is also proportionate to pregnancy--close enough to make no nevermind anyway--which makes it convenient, since that means I have no need to alter the firm-coded data. However, I do not focus on skilling or aspiration acquisition (as I've posted repeatedly, I'm always looking for ways to knock that down) and I have no make-things-easier objects at all--no skill-building career objects, no snapdragons, no wishes...nada. Also, every moment on a vacation or community lot is counted and deducted (at least for adults), and when my elders transition I roll a die to determine how long they will live. Some outlive their children, and are set to perma-red, because that's pretty much what happens in RL--they never get above green again--others die within a day or two of transitioning. Keeps it random and interesting.

The challenge of keeping relationships up over a long life is good, and seriously occupies the time, as does routine maintenance--activities of daily living. (Incidentally, I haven't been playing with ACR very long, but so far, so good.) My sims always have time to play redhands or catch butterflies, and since I'm not playing beat-the-clock, I don't care if they goof off. Even so, having played this way since the base game, I personally don't think that scaling lifespans to the seasons is viable from the perspective of playability. Since a four day year strains my ingenuity, I don't even want to consider a twenty day year. I just figure they're on a planet about as far from a hotter primary as Ceres is from Sol...

[Pyromaniac]

I've always thought the Seasons were too long; perhaps, instead of prolonging Sim ages, why couldn't you just shorten the Seasons?

[awrevell]

I've always thought the Seasons were too long; perhaps, instead of prolonging Sim ages, why couldn't you just shorten the Seasons?

With the original durations that would mean each season would be one day.   Hardly enough time to even warant a season change since you are unlikely to get the effect of the season in such a short time.  However, I could look into finding the BCON that controls how long the seasons last and making that accessible... Then people would be able to adjust the whole selection to their tastes.  Provided they had some familiarity with SimPE.  I will look and see what I find about that.

[Zazazu]

Awrevell, while I may be a bit blunt at times, my comment was meant to be constructive. Basing age length to season length would really only be feasible, or rather playable, by a very small portion of players. An non-plant sim is going to be alive for an average of nearly 2000 days by your model. Pescado's already given general statistics of sim time v. real time. By the time a sim grows completely from womb to tomb, you're talking about 48,000 minutes/800 hours of playtime for just that one sim's life. And how many games of kicky bag are going to occur in that time? How many times are they going to burn their pancakes? My point, my main point, is that it's a helluva lot of repetition with the same pixels.

So what are your options? You can shorten Season length and tweak ages accordingly, still coming up with larger numbers, but not as far beyond what the normal player could take. The problem then is that at a certain point (I'd say a length of three days or less) the season blending effect is going to make it so that you have no discernible winter. Then you've kind of lost the point of the mod, haven't you?

Time in the Sims is screwy. Heh, beyond screwy. Jobs generally last for fewer hours than in the real world. Peeing takes a year and a day.  The teen stage (13-18) is almost twice as long as the child stage (5-12). Elders, based on EAxis coding, can live longer as a tottering diaper-changer than as an actual breeder. I agree with you that how it works as coded doesn't feel right. I'm all for changing it. I just don't see more than 10 or so players ever wanting stages as long as you are proposing, for the reasons I've listed before.

Now what you could always do (to save yourself headache, etc) is just take TwoJeff's AgeDuration hack and tweak it as you'd like. Make it how you want it in your game, and enjoy. I just don't see the point of doing work that's already been done. 

(And of course you can post it here...put it in Peasantry.)

[croiduire]

Paladin also has a Seasons and Weather Controller (under Other Objects) that lets you tweak the duration of any season.

[Alexx]

I've always thought the Seasons were too long; perhaps, instead of prolonging Sim ages, why couldn't you just shorten the Seasons?

However, I could look into finding the BCON that controls how long the seasons last and making that accessible... Then people would be able to adjust the whole selection to their tastes.  Provided they had some familiarity with SimPE.  I will look and see what I find about that.

No need to search Seasons length 9:9 day for each season(reason-3days for each month of season) was posted long,long time ago here:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=241473
And this exactly BCON that you want to find.Open in SimPE and change 9 to any length you need.Too simply,but effectively.

[abelle]

I have a neighbourhood in which every season lasts three days and I feel that the seasons are still very much there to experience. I adjust the season length with the weather controller. When the season changes, I immediately select for it to only last three days.
I play it pretending each day lasts a month instead of a year. Started this, because I had a couple I really didn´t want to reach elderhood. Everyone around them did, though and it started to feel strange.

I tried playing with a day being a week in realtime, but it was way too slow for me. I freeze the pregnancy with insim, so every stage will last three days. Everything is in sync and I love it. The long pregnancy really bothered me, because siblings were always too far apart. The toddler stage still is kind of annoying. Especially as my toddlers always start to run out of wants. After about 20 or 30 days toddlerhood, they start forgetting, who their parents are and only have wants for skills. The fourth slot is usually blank. Also taking care of toddlers gets really repetitive, as there is so little they can do.

I wouldn´t want to adjust the length permanently, as I don´t play my other hoods like that. Sometimes I want things to happen faster. If I play with normal time, I just let sims be pregnant only for a day. As the uberlong gestation period really is very annoying.

Did anyone else who is playing with very long lifestages have problems with the toddler wants?

[eccentricgnat]

Hi,

I have to agree that this seems to be a very long time for the sims aging. Why not just turn aging off and then age each sim as you like. Simlogical has a great hack that stops aging, and you use her cake to age the sims up. The sims still can get pg (late can't spell this late in the night)...

I can't imagine having a sim be pg that long, having a baby be in the baby stage that long...I hate the length of pregnancy (in the game already),  it takes forever, and the baby just lies there and cries. I speed up pregnancy to 2 hours, and have them take the baby to the hacked cake (at simlogical) and make the baby a toddler. If I think the toddler is really cute, and some are, I don't age them up for an extra day or two. I have yet have a teen make it much past the 8th day as a teen, and I send them off to college. Adults, if I like them I leave them alone and just play them. If I can't stand them, they get aged and the grim reaper is called, again with the hacked birthday cake.

What is going to happen when you get kids that just won't do homework? Sheee...I barely am able to stand them for the 7 or 8 days they are kids?

Hope this isn't to ignorant (sp again), but it seems to me you could just stop aging altogether, and age up as you like.

Still though, its great folks like you that make the stuff that makes the sims worth playing.  So thanks for the effort, and there are probably folks that will enjoy what you are doing.  Gee this sounds so crabby...I must be in crabby granny mode.

By the way, I do like kids, just not the way EA did them. Real babies are cute and sweet, toddlers drive you nuts with the no no stage...and are cute as well, and kids do their homework because mom and dad say so.  Teens are funny and sweet, I homeschooled my last two...and we have wonderful relationships. My first two are great adults, and I love them much. My grandkids are the best, of course, because they are mine.