Community Time Project v0.4a/v0.5a Pets/Seasons/0.6 FT TEST ONLY

[HelloKit]

This would be an extremely bad idea. In fact, as a rule, it's a bad plan to make a sim go missing for longer than 24h. Like Uni-time, BV Vacation Time functions on what is fundamentally a totally different scale.

Yes, hence why I was so conflicted...

[kuronue]

I was actually debating this myself yesterday. On one hand, if it doesn't, it makes the accumulation of work vacation days kind of pointless. But on the other hand, what happens when there are events like age transitions scheduled to take place during that period of time? If the age transition waits until the Sim returns, does he then have extra days until his next transition? Or will the hack make the appropriate adjustments to keep the Sims' ages in sync? If that's possible, that would be great. But if not, it may be better to leave this alone.

This would be an extremely bad idea. In fact, as a rule, it's a bad plan to make a sim go missing for longer than 24h. Like Uni-time, BV Vacation Time functions on what is fundamentally a totally different scale.

Out of curiosity, what could happen? Would it fuck up the aging process? I know if they have a birthday while off lot that'd probably be bad but what else?

[crammyboy]

Everything related to the sim would be queued up and applied when the sim exits the taxi.

If the lot is empty: Bills would pile up. Burgularies may occur. House could burn down. Trash can kicked (Roaches)...

[floopyboo]

ie: real life would happen. (oh noes!)

I would LOVE that. But I'm just nuts. lol.

[Vren Lyet]

I'd like to have that kind of functionality, too.

But it would be extremely nice if age transitions that "supposedly happen while on vacation" could be made optional upon return (some dialogue box maybe); what if you age your Sim yourself while he/she is on vacation (birthday party in the far east for example) - then you should have the option to turn automatic adjustments off.

Nonetheless, even without such options, real passing vacation time would be awesome by itself already.

[HelloKit]

Everything related to the sim would be queued up and applied when the sim exits the taxi.

Right... and if the sim ages up several days after they were supposed to, then the rest of his age transitions and even his death will be delayed as well. I can work around this with Merola's Multi-Painting, if I am paying attention. But if the Community Time hack could fix this itself, that would be even better.

The other things like bills piling up, fires, kicked trash can... those are the facts of life and I'm prepared to deal with them.

[J. M. Pescado]

Out of curiosity, what could happen? Would it fuck up the aging process? I know if they have a birthday while off lot that'd probably be bad but what else?

If birthdays don't occur on the same day that they're queued, event sequences get slightly messed up. As vacations can last an ENTIRE WEEK, you can imagine how this gets extremely ugly. Fires would be rather unlikely, though, seeing as without sims, there's not much that can be set on fire. Basically, extended-absence vacation is a bad plan for the same reason running Uni-time to the same scale as the regular hood is a bad plan: The time scales aren't compatible, they have vastly different compression factors. "Neighborhood Time" functions as a highly compressed version of real-time where with a large number of inconsistencies, a day is similar in scale to about a year. "Uni Time" has a compression scale of about 3 days to 4-6 months, and Vacation Time is largely real-time, at 1:1. I would argue that one reason community lot time doesn't move "home time" is because community lot visitation largely shares a similar 1:1 scale and thus the amount of scaled time elapsed is basically infinitesimal, but equating vacation time to neighborhood time would simply be a bad plan without rescaling the entire game's time scale. Which is certainly DOABLE. I *COULD* create a single, unified, real-time scale for everything in the Sims, but it'd be an extensive modification and the game would run SLOOOOOOW.

[crammyboy]

You could just make a vacation 24 hours long, from 8am till 8am the next day.  Although this would not be scaled correctly, there would be some impression of "being away" that would allow for a small possibility of events to occur.

[V]

Would the sims be able to get done every vacation thing they need to get done in one day? Or do you mean that the vacation would take as long as it takes, but the "time away" in the actual neighborhood would be about 24 hr?

[crammyboy]

Vacation time would be normal. Home time would be 24 hours.

[tryguy]

Out of curiosity, what could happen? Would it fuck up the aging process? I know if they have a birthday while off lot that'd probably be bad but what else?

If birthdays don't occur on the same day that they're queued, event sequences get slightly messed up. As vacations can last an ENTIRE WEEK, you can imagine how this gets extremely ugly. Fires would be rather unlikely, though, seeing as without sims, there's not much that can be set on fire. Basically, extended-absence vacation is a bad plan for the same reason running Uni-time to the same scale as the regular hood is a bad plan: The time scales aren't compatible, they have vastly different compression factors. "Neighborhood Time" functions as a highly compressed version of real-time where with a large number of inconsistencies, a day is similar in scale to about a year. "Uni Time" has a compression scale of about 3 days to 4-6 months, and Vacation Time is largely real-time, at 1:1. I would argue that one reason community lot time doesn't move "home time" is because community lot visitation largely shares a similar 1:1 scale and thus the amount of scaled time elapsed is basically infinitesimal, but equating vacation time to neighborhood time would simply be a bad plan without rescaling the entire game's time scale. Which is certainly DOABLE. I *COULD* create a single, unified, real-time scale for everything in the Sims, but it'd be an extensive modification and the game would run SLOOOOOOW.

Yeah, I totally agree with this line of thinking.

I always thought it quite odd (let alone unrealistic) that you could go out partying for most of the night, and then come back to the same time that you left (and relive that time), and hence the need for the Community Time Project.  It seemed to be a good balancing mod.

But having read this time scaling idea, I can see how the Maxis system is logical in itself.  If we go ahead and say Neighborhood time is 1:365 (or something like that, since the average age of a Sim is about 71 game days, and Human beings live for close to that amount, but in YEARS), then popping out for a night's entertainment really is a non-event.  So, yeah, I can live with the built-in time behavior, now that I understand what's happening.  The problem is, the different time scales aren't properly indicated when they're in effect, so everyone just assumed (like I did) that time was constant, and that Maxis was cheating by giving back the hours we spent on the community lots.

Having 1 game day represent 1 Sim year (but not using "days" instead of "years", and pretending everything was playing out in real-time) ends up making things very odd.  Bolting on truly real-time modes (Community Time) onto things (while making no indications that the time scale had altered) adds to the confusion.

But, a neat way of thinking about the Sims' time scheme might be to think of the days passing as not being of a contiguous, day-to-day, week-to-week nature, but each day as an instance of one within an entire year's breadth.  So, day 1 is just an ordinary (or perhaps a *noteworthy*) 24-hour day in the life of a Sim.  Day 2 is another noteworthy day, but it's an entire year later (so it's not contiguous).  In my mind, this kind of thing would make the game a little more logical (everything (community time, vacations, everything) would be occurring in real-time within the scope of a year, so the Sim could leave for a week-long vacation, and when they head home, we lose track of them, and then simply catch up on the next "noteworthy" day the following year.

For this to work properly, days would need to reflect the fact that an entire year has passed.  It'd be cool if the Sims were wearing different clothes, and had slightly different skill levels, and slightly different relationship scores.  Which sounds like an awful lot of work.

Anyway, I just had this idea after reading J. M. Pescado's response.  I can perhaps think of things happening in this way when I'm playing, rather than try to actually rework things to play out like this...  Thinking about things doesn't really require much effect, I find.

In regards to the mod, well I appreciate the work that's gone into it.  Before the idea of the different time scales came up, I thought this was a very good improvement to the game.  Now, I can see it's not strictly necessary, or at least not for me (and my game conceptions).

TG

PS I hope I haven't put a downer on you crammyboy.  I still think this was an impressive mod, and I love all your other mods.

edit: Actually, I've just had another idea.  What if there was a button that the user could press to move time along?  You could play Sims in real-time (like how it is now, playing through from day-to-day, week-to-week (but you really ARE just moving one day at a time), and then when you think you've had enough, you hit the button and it fast-forwards things a year.  And you can then go back to playing in real-time, and after a while just fast-forward again to move things along.

With this method, we could conceivably keep most of the current real-time gameplay (which has the time scaling of 1 game day = 365 Sim days), but just arrange things so that instead of:
   day1=365 (baby is born)
   day2=730
   day3=1095 (baby grows into a toddler)

It could be:
   year=year1 (baby is born)
      day=day1
      day=day2
      day=day3
      ...
      day=day99 (time-shift)
   year=year2
      day=day1
      day=day2
      ...
      day=day23 (time-shift)
   year=year3
      day=day1
      day=day2
      ...
      day=day43 (baby grows into a toddler)
      day=day44 (time=shift)
   year=year4
      day=day1
      ...

There's a lot more to work out (like what triggers the baby's birthday?), but I think this idea could work.  Birthday's wouldn't need to happen every year, we just keep the current structure of 3, 4, 7, 15, etc.  And since the user has the power to fast-forward through the years, it needn't be a bore -- since they could just keep moving forward.

Anyway, I just thought of this, which I think rounds out what I proposed.

TG

[Vren Lyet]

Is the latest version (0.6 ft) compatible to games that do not have "Free Time" installed?

I'm playing the Mac version of the game (as stated before) and have all available expansions installed. "Free Time" has not yet been released for the Mac, so I wonder whether the current version of CTP which is described as being for "Free Time" works correctly with my game, too.

[crammyboy]

But having read this time scaling idea, I can see how the Maxis system is logical in itself.  If we go ahead and say Neighborhood time is 1:365 (or something like that, since the average age of a Sim is about 71 game days, and Human beings live for close to that amount, but in YEARS), then popping out for a night's entertainment really is a non-event.  So, yeah, I can live with the built-in time behavior, now that I understand what's happening.  The problem is, the different time scales aren't properly indicated when they're in effect, so everyone just assumed (like I did) that time was constant, and that Maxis was cheating by giving back the hours we spent on the community lots.

So how is Sneaking out logical? Does the sim do this every night for a year?
The problem for me is comm lot skilling. I can send a sim out for 18 hours and they can skill for most of that time before heading home exhausted. Some food, coffee,a piss and shower later, and off they can go off to another lot for more skilling. Commmunity Time makes it feel less like cheating.
For the most part, I don't try to scale sims to RL. It's a game. Sims have very short lives.

[Vren Lyet]

For the most part, I don't try to scale sims to RL. It's a game. Sims have very short lives.

Right! To me my Sims are like virtual pets with a virtual life span. I don't translate sim days to real world years or something like that.

Commmunity Time makes it feel less like cheating.

Absolutely! I totally agree.
Also, it's nice to have a Sim who owns a business go to work there and actually spend time working there.
Okay, fulfilling the "Have 5 top businesses" LTW is quite challenging this way, but anyways - overall gameplay's just better with the Community Time Project in place.

[blackcat]

I agree. I play my sims as they are living on a normal scale, It's just that in real life there are a lot of similiar days, as for sims you try to make every day uniqe.
I really love this mod, it's one of the most crucial mods for my gameplay. I like that I can have parents go out, and their kids can have secret party, so that the parents won't knew, have lovers come by, while the partner is at the grocery store, and so on.

I don't think that vacations should be tweaked, to have sims go on vacation and spend there almoust quarter  of their life is at least strange, or make parents go on vacation, while there child grows up? Honey moons will be strange too.

I wait for the version, where more then one "go out" can happen at once with big antisipations.

Thank you very much for all the work you've done.  

[djacquelynstew]

Hey Crammyboy.  Just want to say again this is the best mod ever (at least for my sims) I think this project is perfect the wat that it is, and I (my sims) cannot go back to life without.  I do have a question. I downloaded when it was just ft test. I see you have v0.6 ft now, is this an updated version or the same one that I tested few days ago,that I should now re-download?

Again, thanks so much for putting this cracked egg back together again.

[tryguy]

Yeah, the time scheme is a hack job, no question.  It's been cobbled together to make things fun, not to be entirely logical.  And I'm not really supporting it; I just got an insight into things and thought I'd share.

Blackcat's examples sound pretty fun, and useful.  So yeah, I'm gonna download it right after this, and have some of that fun too.

As for intentionally skilling Sims up at comm lots, well, that is lame.  There are plenty of easier ways to cheat in that manner.  I personally think community time goes too fast as it is, just by doing normal relationship stuff, than to use it to gain skill points.  I wouldn't waste my time doing that, because I don't generally care if my Sims max their stats out or not.  Just as long as they're doing what I want them to do, and I find what they're doing interesting.

I too just play it in real-time, days flowing into each other, mainly because there's no other way to play it.  I don't really think, "Oh, there goes another year!"  That would be lame in itself.  I think Maxis could have had a time shifting scheme like I'm suggesting where the user plays in real-time and fast-forwards time at their choosing -- this would have allowed the player to choose the rate of progression, rather than the current forced-march of time, as it is now.  But they didn't.  It doesn't make a lot of sense, but it plays well enough.

Anyway, I'll leave it at that.  I'll play around and see if it enhances the gameplay.  I have a feeling that it will, so, let's rock.

TG

Anyway,

[J. M. Pescado]

So how is Sneaking out logical? Does the sim do this every night for a year?
The problem for me is comm lot skilling. I can send a sim out for 18 hours and they can skill for most of that time before heading home exhausted. Some food, coffee,a piss and shower later, and off they can go off to another lot for more skilling. Commmunity Time makes it feel less like cheating.
For the most part, I don't try to scale sims to RL. It's a game. Sims have very short lives.

This is probably why comm-skilling isn't natively a part of the game. Plus, in truth, I never use comm-skilling for this, and if you're trying to exploit skillpoints this way, you are doing things the hard way. Besides, it's totally unnecessary: Once you get past CAS losersims, children can already maximize everything and leaving for a community lot makes your sim "stupid" which can result in a speed reduction in skill gaining of about 5. TS2 is basically a game with a large number of logical holes and inconsistencies, and fixing one tends to reveal others. Ultimately, you have to decide with what holes you can live with: The ability to skill on a community lot creates a bit of an exploit, but the inability to do so renders community lots worthless. The time-freeze effect creates the exploit again, but the lack of it creates other problems (and again, renders it worthless due to the inability to use the +LR boosts, as you lose the innate "IQ" bonus and you can't normally use thinking caps on community lots).

[floopyboo]

The community time project for FT is working as advertised in my game thus far, thankyou. Have only tried out the traditional sense of it though, I have yet to install vacation destinations in this hood.

ETA: Preggo sim returned to her lot at the same time that she left. Is this function or fuckup?

[V]

... leaving for a community lot makes your sim "stupid" which can result in a speed reduction in skill gaining of about 5...

I put a debugger on comm lots to make my sims smart again while they are there.

I am considering using this. But I am wondering what the process would be for uninstalling it, if I should decide that it is not working for me. Is there a process for uninstalling beyond the simple removing the hack from your downloads folder? Or do you have to also scrap all the neighborhoods and return to the backed up versions?

[crammyboy]

Just take it out. The most that would happen is a reset of sims out of world, if they are waiting to return to the lot.

[ghostchoir]

For some reason, this absolutely refuses to work for me. I'm using a brand new computer, which means everything is freshly installed and there are no other downloads on it.

I have the following packs:
Free Time
Seasons
Pets
Open For Business

I downloaded the most recent Free Time hack. And yet...nothing. It doesn't matter whether the Sim goes to a hobby site, their business, a community lot, whether they go by taxi or drive their own car, whether there's just one Sim or multiples - it just won't co operate. They'll come back as if the lot was never installed.

Any idea why this is happening? Or is there something really obvious I've somehow forgotten to do? I had this hack on my original computer (before Free Time) and it worked perfectly.

[floopyboo]

Have you tried it on a comm lot you made yourself since you installed the hack? I noticed that one of my lots (the national park) that I made with the last ep doesn't seem to "do" this hack, but one that I created after I installed this hack is just fine with it.

Create a new comm lot for the purpose of testing this & see what happens. I'm hoping that by modifying my lot & saving I'll be able to get it to work with this hack, if not, well I guess it's going to have to be a vacation hood lot. Oh what a pity.

[Ethendrelle]

Have you enabled custom content?

[ghostchoir]

Yeah, I've tried it on both one that I've designed myself, one of the community lots that was already there, and one of the secret clubs.

And yes, custom content is enabled. I just tested that out by installing another hack, that one ended up working but this one still doesn't. Odd.