Hack Request - Uni Pledge Tracker

[Hegelian]

Does there exist somewhere (other than pen and paper), or would it be difficult to make, a means of keeping track (or finding) Uni students who are pledges or non-resident members of a greek house? Perhaps something that could be added to the phone controller ("call pledges"; "call greek house members") or Jeff's college adjuster, or maybe some decorative object like a painting or statue? Is this information stashed in the lot file somewhere, findable with SimPE??

I have a greek house I'm playing in parallel with some other lots, and I tend to not play at all for extended periods of time, so now I have no idea which student friends of the residents have pledged or are non-resident members. 

Thanks!

[J. M. Pescado]

Well, under normal circumstances, pledges will never join unless you lock them on the lot. I generally lock them in the bathroom until they join, which simplifies that a lot. I just don't pledge enough sims and they don't stick around long enough to make it hard to track, though. I mean, you surely have, what, no more than 5 or 6 sims of college age at a given time on average?

[Orikes]

Well, under normal circumstances, pledges will never join unless you lock them on the lot. I generally lock them in the bathroom until they join, which simplifies that a lot.

I've generally found that two visits is enough to get someone to pledge. Usuallly I have them writing a paper for someone, or they're obsessed with a bubble blower, but I've never found it that difficult to get sims to pledge a greek house.

[Hegelian]

I mean, you surely have, what, no more than 5 or 6 sims of college age at a given time on average?

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I'm rather half-heartedly doing a legacy-type thing (mostly because I've never done one), and so I expect several generations of the founder's family to pass through this greek house. The house currently has seven members and six pledges, but there are only four residents. I like to have several playables on a Uni lot, otherwise it gets pretty dull, and multiple residents helps keep the coffers full.

As I play the house over time, some sims will graduate and others will move in, so it's nice to have a pool of members and pledges from which to "restock." Popularity sims often spin the want to ask someone to pledge, and of course pledges allow for free house cleaning and gardening.

Since I tend to play in fits and starts, I now know the identity of only one of the six pledges, and none of the four non-resident members. A tool that allowed me to track these sims would be useful. In the future I will try to remember to keep their names in the Storytelling "book," but I'm likely to forget as that's a place I rarely go.   

[J. M. Pescado]

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I'm rather half-heartedly doing a legacy-type thing (mostly because I've never done one), and so I expect several generations of the founder's family to pass through this greek house. The house currently has seven members and six pledges, but there are only four residents. I like to have several playables on a Uni lot, otherwise it gets pretty dull, and multiple residents helps keep the coffers full.

Same. My point is that normally, you KNOW who's there because there's not that many sims in college at any given time before they graduate and never return.

As I play the house over time, some sims will graduate and others will move in, so it's nice to have a pool of members and pledges from which to "restock." Popularity sims often spin the want to ask someone to pledge, and of course pledges allow for free house cleaning and gardening.

I actually rarely, if ever, see this want. Free house cleaning and gardening is nice, but a fine example of getting what you pay for. The time it takes to chase down, interrupt, and then go through the influence animations is often longer than if you had simply done it yourself! And often they don't even *DO* what you tell them to, like when you tell them to repair something and they don't. Like the saying goes, there are three ways to get something done: Do it yourself, pay someone to do it for you, or forbid your children to do it.

Since I tend to play in fits and starts, I now know the identity of only one of the six pledges, and none of the four non-resident members. A tool that allowed me to track these sims would be useful. In the future I will try to remember to keep their names in the Storytelling "book," but I'm likely to forget as that's a place I rarely go.   

...honestly, how many sims do you really have to choose from, anyway?

[Hegelian]

Currently the household has 34 friends. A few of these are adults or teens/children, so there are probably 20-25 YA friends. Of these, six are pledges and three (not four) are nonresident members. I know the identity of one of the pledges, and none of the non-resident members.

[miros]

I have this problem too.  I'm hoping that the non-residents (whoever they are) will be enough to answer the call when my next group of playables are ready to go to college and pledge at Mom/Dad/Grandpa/Grandma's old frat.

Maybe you could have a non-member pledge the frat and see who shows up in togas?

[J. M. Pescado]

Currently the household has 34 friends. A few of these are adults or teens/children, so there are probably 20-25 YA friends.

That is a fuckload of YAs. How is it that you have this many?

Of these, six are pledges and three (not four) are nonresident members. I know the identity of one of the pledges, and none of the non-resident members.

You'd think you'd keep track of who's joining. I mean, if they're not at the frat house, wouldn't they be in a dorm or house somewhere on the campus?

[rohina]

I've had some problems with pledges staying pledges through a number of generations - I can't say for sure whether dormies (and playables from other houses) lost their pledge status because the person who pledged them graduated or because we had some issues with having to rebuild the Greek house 4 times.

[Morague]

I remember asking for something like this a couple of years ago. Then I started writing down who got pledged. With 6 to 8 Greek house members & each having 20 or so YA friends - it's next to impossible to remember who you actually invited to pledge unless you have written it down.

I have never resorted to locking them in a room, but that is an idea. Kinda defeats the purpose of getting them to pledge, though. I generally get them to do a paper, then send them away & reinvite them so they are refreshed & ready to start over Sometimes they just bugger off on their own, too.

I would love to see something that could give a list of current pledges & how much time they have left to become a member.

Morague

[nocomment]

JM - I think they're pledging non-playable sims and using them to write papers and such.  They want a way to know who these pledges are so they can call them and invite them over to do more work.

Also, a way to know who the non-playable members are, so they don't bother to invite them over.  I assume once a non-playbable becomes a member they simply ignore them.  They want a way to identify non-playable non-members so they can pledge them.

[RainbowTigress]

I've had this problem too, a long time ago.  It's been awhile since I really played Uni.  At that time, I discovered that there is a token you can see in SimPE about Greek house membership, but it's rather time-consuming to go through each YA's memories to find this.  It seems that it shouldn't be difficult for someone to clone an object that you could click on in the game and get a list of students with this token.  I asked for this a long time ago but no one seemed to have any interest in it at the time. 

[purplehaze]

I'm in the same boat. I recently returned to a Greek House I was playing months ago, and I have no idea who my pledges/members are anymore. It was at one time a level 6.  I guess that graphite and paper would have done the job.... if I had thought to use them. 

[RainbowTigress]

Or remember where you put them. 

[Hegelian]

JM - I think they're pledging non-playable sims and using them to write papers and such.  They want a way to know who these pledges are so they can call them and invite them over to do more work.

This is correct, more or less. I also would like to know who's available to become a member, and which non-resident members are available to move in.

I'm not on my desktop at the moment, so I can't pull up the Neighborhood browser and see how many YAs are in the neighborhood. There are as many as the game creates by default (less one deceased), plus a few more I made myself so that my playables had some reasonably attractive townie students to meet (since almost all of the Maxis-made students are rather unattractive or worse).

[Edit]  There are 90 YAs in the Uni neighborhood, including my born-in-game playable and his townie girlfriend from high school, and 15 that I made myself and converted to townies with Inge's shrub. Three townie YAs that moved into the greek house have graduated and left the neighborhood.

Since the Greek house letter tracks the number of pledges and members, I'm assuming this information is somewhere other than in just the individual sims' memories? [Edit] I've just looked, and if the info is stored in the lot file, it's not in an easily-accessible place.

Does anyone know whether house members that have graduated but are still sitting in the bin in the main neighborhood are counted as still being members?

In any case, I just thought I'd ask. If it can't be done or no one wants to bother, it's no big deal. 

[kuronue]

It's also needed because if you plan to send other playable sims to the greek house, it has to have someone living there to keep it open, and if you move your playables in, suddanly you've got your former dormies aging and graduating as well, requiring them to be recycled every couple generations

[seelindarun]

I think if I had such a hack, I'd probably play more pledges and non-resident members in the greek houses, as Hegelian does.  As it stands, my greek houses have to be extremely elitist.  Only playables pledge, and all members move in.  To keep the house open between generations, I pledge one dormie as a placeholder.  When the new generation is ready for uni, the dormie has to move into a dorm as a non-resident member, and he gets moved back only if the house is about to go empty again.  It's a little awkward having the same dormie at the frat generation after generation, but I do avoid having to play a sim I don't really care about.

[kuronue]

meh, it gives my legacy hood more characters for story purposes if I move out a few extras each generation

[Moa]

I try to keep notes, but when I compared my notes total against the reported number of members and pledges, I find I'm short one or two and I have no idea who they are. Since I only send my Sims to Greek House if they roll up a want to do so, I occasionally need to move in a nonplayeable to keep the house open.

I think pledges tend to walk past the greek house frequently, and once they pledge you can't pledge them again, so I suppose I could find out by just paying attention over a period of time - click on the Sim in question and see if the pledge option comes up. A hack would definitely simplify matters. That's really the sort of information the game should provide us with when we click on the house letters. (Actually, I'd like a list of all pledges and members, past and present.)

[GayJohnScarritt]

   Since we're asking for a hack, may i add one thing?  I'd like to be able to move a 'qualified' Greek house member directly into the Greek house from the Sim Bin.  Instead of having to place them in a dorm, entering that dorm and then have them call and move to the Greek House.   Yes, i know, those situations are few and far between (mainly the time's between playable generations living in the Greek House).  The less i'm forced to play those townie YA's, the better.   

[Hegelian]

I think pledges tend to walk past the greek house frequently, and once they pledge you can't pledge them again, so I suppose I could find out by just paying attention over a period of time - click on the Sim in question and see if the pledge option comes up.

Parties are a good way to screen large numbers of suspected pledges/non-resident members.   

[jsalemi]

It's also needed because if you plan to send other playable sims to the greek house, it has to have someone living there to keep it open, and if you move your playables in, suddanly you've got your former dormies aging and graduating as well, requiring them to be recycled every couple generations

Not necessarily -- you can leave a dormie-turned-playable as a placeholder in the greek house to keep it open, and then when you move in a real playable, use something like Inge's transporter bush to turn the placeholder back into a townie/dormie. Then they'll still count as a member, but won't live there and age until you move them back in to be a placeholder again.