Slowing Down Sim Time

[Gamblor]

I know about the time control clock but if the clock hack can be made to slow down sim time on one lot could a global hack be made to slow down time for all lots?

[J. M. Pescado]

The "time control clock" is a dangerous device that "slows down" time by repeatedly setting the time back. However, this produces irregularities and glitches, as the game and all its objects are implicitly coded to expect a 1800-tick hour. It is therefore extremely disrecommended to casually mess with the time scale like this, as it can rupture the space-time continuum and destroy the universe.

[Sagana]

So, best would be something like turning aging off, using the lot sync timer to track when the right time is (not thanking you for the 'event' addition to this and all, ya know), then turning aging back on - which I guess wouldn't break anything and is rahther a pain but doable?

Or using Inge's method that I've never understood properly to add days to each age on an overall basis?

[Nauthiz]

Sagana, I think you're confusing two things: slowing down ingame time (that means making a Sim hour last longer) and adding days to sim lifestages.

And I am a slow Simmer. Very slow. Sims' life is way too short for me. I've recently finally fought the addiction to Merola's Time Clock. In fact it was causing too much trouble, because motives decayed as usual, and Sims were exhausted already in the middle of the day, etc. So when I installed Seasons, I didn't put this hack back into Downloads. But sometimes it pisses me off how long it takes them to do simplest things comparing to day's length. I saw rumours that Maxis was already going to lengthen Sim day and some people reported that in their games time ran slower, but sadly it didn't happen to me...

As for life length - I hate it too. In Sims 1 they never aged and you could play for months without being bored.  Now their life is ridicously short. With Seasons it seems more stupid then ever - you have baby born in winter and next summer it's already a teenager.

Definitely I would not recommend turning aging off, because it screws up a few things, for example school grades won't rise, no matter how hard your Sims study. Currently I use Inge's NoDaysleftDecrease (here: http://simlogical.com/dinnerbell/index.php?topic=14.0) and I subtract days manually by InSim (I don't know any other hack to add and subtract days, do you?). Once per "year", of course. I know I could make ten generations by then, but I prefer realism. Hey, that's my style of playing

Or using Inge's method that I've never understood properly to add days to each age on an overall basis?

I think you mean Inge's agecons and petagecons hacks - you just change values in SimPE according to your taste. It's quite simple even for someone who doesn't understand SimPE at all, like me.    But you have to be careful f you're using hacks depending on how old your Sims are, like ACR or InTeen - if you set the lifestages too long, they wouldn't work properly.

And I'm sure this post is full of grammar mistakes, but I'm too tired right now to find and correct them. You can laugh at me if you like.

(Edited: corrected link)

[SaraMK]

for example school grades won't rise, no matter how hard your Sims study.

To avoid this glitch, you simply need to let children and teens age one day past their birthday. This same thing happens if aging is on but your teen becomes a vamp or zombie on the same day that they turned into a teen.

[Karen]

I subtract days manually by InSim (I don't know any other hack to add and subtract days, do you?).

If you mean adding or subtracting days left from the current life stage, you can use Merola's multi-painting to do this in-game. 

[ChamiMinds]

for example school grades won't rise, no matter how hard your Sims study.

To avoid this glitch, you simply need to let children and teens age one day past their birthday. This same thing happens if aging is on but your teen becomes a vamp or zombie on the same day that they turned into a teen.

So you keep aging on until the next day then turn it off and these will no longer be problems? Nifty I did not know that, Thanks!

[SaraMK]

So you keep aging on until the next day then turn it off and these will no longer be problems? Nifty I did not know that, Thanks!

Right. You can just turn aging on sometime before 6pm the next day.

I forget exactly how many days they stay teens, but let's say it's 14 days. So, right after a child grows up into a teen, the age will be shown as "14 days left." If aging is turned off at this point (either using the code or by making the teen a vamp or zombie),  you may get the grade glitch. But if you let the sim age the next day, so that he has "13 days left," then the glitch almost always goes away. I don't know if using a hack to take away one day will work too. Of course, with zombies and vamps it's a bit more complicated since they don't actually age. I don't recall if there is a fix for the zombies, but for vamps you pretty much have to cure them, let them age one day, and then vamp them again.

[J. M. Pescado]

The glitch is actually an intentionally coded "Feature" that exists for some unknown sadistic reason. I should probably put the axe to it.

[Orikes]

In Sims 1 they never aged and you could play for months without being bored.  Now their life is ridicously short. With Seasons it seems more stupid then ever - you have baby born in winter and next summer it's already a teenager.

That was one thing I couldn't stand in Sims1. I hated that the sims never changed and that children never grew up. I only played Sims1 for a few months before giving it up for something else. Occasionally I'd reinstall it to add a new expansion, but I generally spent more time building than playing the sims themselves. They bored me.

I absolutely LOVE that they grow up, grow old, and eventually die. It makes the game so much more dynamic for me. I do wish their lifespans were a little longer, but cest la vie... I can always have them take a little elixer of life to add a few days.

Everyone has their own playstyle, though.

[J. M. Pescado]

Sim-lives are only ridiculously short if you play only a single family. Remember, how long a sim effectively lives is equal to the number of days times the number of families: The sim adult lifespan is about 30 days: If you have 30 families, this becomes 900 playing-days in which that sim will be alive. If it takes you about 15-30 minutes to get through a single sim-day, your sim will therefore last 225-450 hours of play.

[Cyjon]

The glitch is actually an intentionally coded "Feature" that exists for some unknown sadistic reason.

I think the original intention was that when a child comes home from school the first time, he shouldn't get a grade boost for having no unfinished homework.  He has no homework because he hasn't gotten any yet, not because he completed it.

There is a similar change that will prevent grades from changing the first two days in a new home.  There is no homework the first day because the family just moved in and homework isn't carried from the old house.  There is no homework the second day because the first day in a new home starts at 8 am which is too late for the bus so presumably the kid didn't go to school on day 1.  Of course, the presence of cars means they might have gone to school that first day so that check makes less sense in the post-NL world.

Of course just because the "first day of age" check makes sense for children doesn't mean it makes sense for teens.  I noticed the check in my "Partial Homework Credit" mod but didn't care enough to fix it.  It would be easy to add an age check so that only children get the free day.

[J. M. Pescado]

I think the original intention was that when a child comes home from school the first time, he shouldn't get a grade boost for having no unfinished homework.  He has no homework because he hasn't gotten any yet, not because he completed it.

This does not make very much sense, since having an unfinished doesn't penalize homework until you accumulate 2, anyway. In any case, the penalty kinda makes it pointless to even go, since you will fail anyway.

[Karen]

Sim-lives are only ridiculously short if you play only a single family. Remember, how long a sim effectively lives is equal to the number of days times the number of families: The sim adult lifespan is about 30 days: If you have 30 families, this becomes 900 playing-days in which that sim will be alive. If it takes you about 15-30 minutes to get through a single sim-day, your sim will therefore last 225-450 hours of play.

And that's pretty accurate in my case.  I have about 35 families at the moment with 176 playables.  It takes me about a week to play all the families in rotation, one Sim-day at a time.  My oldest elder is 78 and one day away from dying of old age.  He was one of the "cheesecake twins" born just after OFB came out, in March 2006.  So he has lasted more than a full year (real-time). 

[SaraMK]

Yes, I realized this after stuffing a neighborhood full of challenge-related families (Legacy, 10 Kids, etc.). The chances of finishing any of the challenges is basically nil. It takes at least a week of real time to cycle through them. I play 4-7 days at a time. They sure don't seem to have short lives this way....

[AuKestrel]

And that's pretty accurate in my case.  I have about 35 families at the moment with 176 playables.  It takes me about a week to play all the families in rotation, one Sim-day at a time.  My oldest elder is 78 and one day away from dying of old age.  He was one of the "cheesecake twins" born just after OFB came out, in March 2006.  So he has lasted more than a full year (real-time). 

Wow, how do you have the discipliine to only play one day at a time? I always want to know what they're going to do the next day, esp. if there's a baby on the way or something. I try to keep myself to a week at a time in each lot I play but then I look up and oops it's already Weds. of the next week. Do you just "stop" at 6:00 a.m. each day or something like that?

[Sagana]

It's not so much that their lives are too short (although it takes them so long to do everyday chores/stuff that it can be hard to accomplish certain things) but that the time sequences don't match well - particularly since seasons.

I don't play one sim at a time, I play generally around 6 families for 3 or 4 days each (depending) and use the lot sync timer to make sure I keep the times more or less the same per round, if I get over-involved with some family or something.

But I want the kids to live at least through a whole 'seasonal' year, which means I need to set seasons to 4 days (easy) and have the kids stay kids about twice as long (not so easy). Toddlers would live through about half a year, and that's ok - I don't think I could stand them any longer than 8 days as toddlers. And also, I want the young adults that go to Uni to have a fall semester, a short winter break, a spring semester, and a slightly longer but still short summer break (during which they could have accelerated classes if they're very anxious to graduate.

And, I want to play in sync - say a fall semester at Uni, then the 4 days of fall at home, then winter break where the young adults might or might not come home for xmas, sometime play the rest of winter in the regular hood without messing the time all up, then the spring semester, spring at home, etc.

The closest I can come to figuring out a way to make this work is play fall at Uni, have fall end whenever the semester ends (which I don't think comes close to 4 days, does it? numbers are not my strong point), then play fall at home and remove 2 days from everyone except the young adults at the end of the season, play my one day of winter with the young adults and the other 3 with everyone else and again set their ages back two days, etc. That way I'll double the child's lifespan and give them exactly one 'seasonal' year (4 seasons, each season 4 days - 16 days instead of - I *think*...

I want them to age. I don't like playing with aging off at all - and I hope this doesn't make the game too much easier for me (that much more time to do things that are already too easy). But I do want kids to live at least through one full round of seasons and I want some way to sync up young adults that makes sense to me and that's all I can think of. And it does sound a bit like a recordkeeping nightmare (for me, I don't like recordkeeping that much) but Pes added that event timer to the lot sync hack and that'll help, I think.

[J. M. Pescado]

Wow, how do you have the discipliine to only play one day at a time? I always want to know what they're going to do the next day, esp. if there's a baby on the way or something. I try to keep myself to a week at a time in each lot I play but then I look up and oops it's already Weds. of the next week. Do you just "stop" at 6:00 a.m. each day or something like that?

You don't have to play "one day at a time". The Lot Sync timer lets you mark down days of "interesting" events (sim-time is not truly in days, but actually in now-days punctuated by critical events), so that you can, say, play 3 days on one lot, and then go do the interesting event on another lot you were about to overrun. It doesn't actually matter how many days are played, as long as critical events all occur in sequence.

Example:
It is day 4 on all lots. A critical event on lot A is scheduled for day 12 (ex: an age transition). A critical event is scheduled for lot B on day 8. All that matters is that you play the event on lot B before you play the event on lot A. It doesn't matter if I play 4 days on lot A and 2 days on lot B, as long as I play the events in correct order: The intervening space has no sense of time.

[Karen]

Wow, how do you have the discipliine to only play one day at a time? I always want to know what they're going to do the next day, esp. if there's a baby on the way or something. I try to keep myself to a week at a time in each lot I play but then I look up and oops it's already Weds. of the next week. Do you just "stop" at 6:00 a.m. each day or something like that?

More or less.  I stop in in the evening, usually, anytime after 6 pm when the age transitions occur.  Sometimes if I'm waiting for some significant event, I'll play the lot through the night and into the next day, but I try never to go past mid-afternoon of the second day.  I have been playing like this for quite a while (I'm on day 122 according to the lot sync timer) and it's really not difficult.

[Cyjon]

I think the original intention was that when a child comes home from school the first time, he shouldn't get a grade boost for having no unfinished homework.  He has no homework because he hasn't gotten any yet, not because he completed it.

This does not make very much sense, since having an unfinished doesn't penalize homework until you accumulate 2, anyway.

It's not the penalty, it's the bonus.  You go up a letter grade if you have no homework.  Since kids start with a C they would get a free bonus to B on their first day.  I'm not saying it's a GOOD idea, just that was the logic behind it.  A better way to have done it would probably have been to start kids with a D then give them the free day 1 bonus to a C rather than skipping a day and generally confusing the issue.

Wow, how do you have the discipliine to only play one day at a time?...Do you just "stop" at 6:00 a.m. each day or something like that?

That's how I do it.  To keep track of events I have evolved from handwritten notes to two Excel workbooks (one for Sims 2 in general and one to track this particular neighborhood), two Word documents (one for narrative events and one for behind the scenes notes which generally involve me typing STUPID GAME!!! over and over) and Legacy (free geneology software which is very nice for tracking my sim generations).

Obsessed?  Me?

[Zazazu]

Obsessed?  Me?

I'm obsessed in the reverse. I can't play more than one family at a time. I tried the prosperity model and didn't get past generation one. I play one family (now moving lots every generation since I'm trying to fill the empty space in my "urban" neighborhood) until I'm so thoroughly bored with them and craving CAS so much I just have to make a new sim. Then I completely forget about the first family.  I absolutely would hate it if time was longer or sims took longer to grow up. I always grow toddlers, children, and adults up at the first opportunity. I usually cut teen-hood and elderhood down by half.

I can't wait to see how those genes will splice...My current family is an Alphabet challenge. A's were cute, B's and C's were mostly ugly, and the D child is extremely handsome.

[J. M. Pescado]

This does not make very much sense, since having an unfinished doesn't penalize homework until you accumulate 2, anyway.

It's not the penalty, it's the bonus.  You go up a letter grade if you have no homework.[/quote]
You also go up if you only have one homework. Homework causes no penalty unless you accumulate two.

A better way to have done it would probably have been to start kids with a D then give them the free day 1 bonus to a C rather than skipping a day and generally confusing the issue.

Would have made more sense if they start at A+, like real life, and lose points by screwing up. Problem with starting with D is then it's impossible to go to private school. It's just wonky, and the penalty isn't even about the homework, the penalty applies to going on the first day, so it ACTUALLY penalizes anyone who doesn't transition at the start of a weekend, while having no effect at all on someone who does, causing Wednesday Night to be *THE* de-facto try-for-baby day. Accept no Kewian-based substitutes.

[AuKestrel]

Wow, how do you have the discipliine to only play one day at a time?...Do you just "stop" at 6:00 a.m. each day or something like that?

That's how I do it.  To keep track of events I have evolved from handwritten notes to two Excel workbooks (one for Sims 2 in general and one to track this particular neighborhood), two Word documents (one for narrative events and one for behind the scenes notes which generally involve me typing STUPID GAME!!! over and over) and Legacy (free geneology software which is very nice for tracking my sim generations).

Obsessed?  Me?

The first thing I thought was, how much RAM do you have?    I take it you are Alt-Tabbing between the docs and the game?

I am really going to try this, just to see if I can do it. I think I'll have to pinch myself and/or stop speeding up night time when they sleep, since there's no way (that I know of) to set my computer alarm to synch with the Sims' clock. I may also have to overcome my fear of the unknown and try out the lot sync timer.

Are you playing a particular challenge? The idea of playing the Legacy challenge Prosperity style interests me but as I said I have not had the self-discipline to do it.

*off to look for Legacy software*

[Cyjon]

The first thing I thought was, how much RAM do you have?    I take it you are Alt-Tabbing between the docs and the game?
...
Are you playing a particular challenge? The idea of playing the Legacy challenge Prosperity style interests me but as I said I have not had the self-discipline to do it.

*off to look for Legacy software*

I'm using two separate computers.  I'm a statistics weirdo so I do Excel things with almost every game I play.

I'm not doing a challenge, though I'm going to do an unoffical Apocalypse challenge in a few game days when the designated victim graduates.  Unofficial meaning I'll follow the rules when I feel like it and ignore them if they become annoying.

You can get the legacy software from http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/DownloadLegacy.asp .  The password is "family" so you can avoid giving them your email (though they've never sent me anything other than the password).  The software lets you add pictures, events, generate family trees and web pages, etc.  It's pretty nice.

[SaraMK]

I'm using two separate computers. 

Have you got them sitting side-by-side on your desk?

I thought I was alone in my insanity.