Thursday 23 April 2009

Community lot schools - a kind of not really tutorial

I'm still feeling my way around community lot schools but I've had a couple of requests for a post on how I run my schools, so I'll attempt to explain it a bit here.

The most important thing is Inge's school set. I could not run my school without this. It makes everything so much easier. I use the set as is, except I have edited all of the items in Sims 2 Categorizer so that they are available in the community build catalog. The set was designed to run a residential lot school but I haven't run into any problems at all running my schools on community lots, apart from the initial placement issues (now solved with Sims 2 Cat).

I think the easiest way for me to do this is to go through each piece of the set and explain how I personally use it. This is by no means a comprehensive tutorial. There are a lot of options to this set that I don't use. Some will be self-explanatory when you look at the pieces in your own game and some you'll have to figure out on your own. I also don't use all the pieces, so I won't be commenting on those.

The school bell is what I used to set the principal. Whoever you set as the principal can also act as a teacher (more on that later on). I also use the school bell to start and end school for the day.

The pupil token is what you use to enrol students in your school. When you click "enrol", you'll see all the surnames of the families in your hood that have teens or children (townies are included). You'll need one pupil token for each student. Once you enrol the Sim, the token will change to a picture of the Sim and you'll have the option to assign them to a particular class (1-4). You might not need the class option at first but as your hood grows, you might be grateful for a simple way to split the kids into smaller groups! You can expel a student at any time by clicking on their pupil token. I have found I need to do this at the high school when I've sent a former student to college or at the primary school when a student has moved on to high school.

In my high school, I've hidden the tokens in the roof. The roof is inaccessible but because any enrolled Sims immediately teleport to the lot and become selectable as soon as you "start school", it's easy for me to teleport them down (this is an Insimenator option). I generally prefer to hide hacked objects in the foundation but it's not possible to do with these, unless you make a really elevated foundation. When you build your school, you might want to plan a way to hide these tokens, if it's something that would bother you.

Each of my classrooms has a classroom controller. Set a Sim as the teacher (this can be any adult or elder currently on the lot) and then choose Gradework or Classroom period as the subject. With gradework, your Sims will sit at their desks working from their workbooks (more on this later). Classroom period is what you would want to run a music or art class (or anything where the kids didn't need to be sitting at a desk for the whole time). The Classroom period will keep the kids in the room but not tied to their desks. This will let you direct them to paint, play music, build up their badges on crafting stations or whatever else you happen to have set up in the room.

The classroom door is fairly self-explanatory. Just make sure you note what Inge says about making sure green arrow is pointing in towards the classroom. I personally don't use the classroom door any more. No matter what way I had the arrow pointing, I'd always get Sims getting stuck. The other school objects will work just fine if you decide to use regular doors as well.

You have a choice between the classroom table and workbook or the school class place. I use the class place, because it allows me to use any kind of table I like. I just put down a class place for each student I want in the room (it looks like a pencil and you should be able to see it in all my classrooms in my most recent school post). As I understand it, the classroom table works the same way but it's one piece and you obviously won't be able to choose what kind of table to use.

And that, readers, is about the it. As always, you're welcome to leave comments and I'll elaborate/clarify any particular points you like or answer any more questions you have.

14 comments:

  1. You do what I do (with the schools on community lots and stuff), but I didn't think to edit the stuff in SimPE to make it available in community lots.

    I use this method for the older kids. For the younger kids, I just use the meeting controllers. (Half the time Amberle has them out front catching bugs.)

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  2. Thanks for this post! It is very informative. A couple times I've seriously looked at going with the Inge items, but reticence to add more mods stopped me. (Right now my school is just a residential lot that I teleport the kids to). Actually, the community lot like you have done is more appealing because as it is, everytime I play it, the teacher in residence will age so he'll get out of sync with the other sims.

    I was wondering when you play the school lot...once a round, more?

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  3. Thank you so much for this post. I've tried the school on a residentual lot in one of my old hoods but I find the community lot school much more appealing. I'll definitely try this in Wellington once I have someone to be the teacher.

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  4. That's interesting, Lunar. I haven't really played with the meeting controllers yet, though I have one in every section of the high school just in case. I was going to use it to call them all to lunch after morning classes but it turns out they all headed to the cafeteria autonomously anyway!

    CissieMae and Francesca, I'm glad you found the post helpful.

    Francesca, I play the school however many times I feel like it while I'm playing the teacher's lot, just like I do with any other business. For my first school round, I sent Simona down once. Last time, I found it a lot more fun (and wanted to find out what happened with Zelda) so I sent her down twice. It doesn't mess up my synching at all, so why not?

    The reason I decided to do my school on a community lot was that I am not fond of home businesses at the best of times but also because I didn't fancy trying to build a school and a family residence on the one lot. The aging wouldn't have been an issue for me, because I likely would play a residential school just once per round, like all my other families.

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  5. I can see with the community lot you have a lot of flexibility.

    I've decided to do the residential school with Inge's set, and since I play 2 day rounds, to play it one day in the first half and one day in the second half.

    Thanks again for the post.

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  6. I hope it goes well for you and I look forward to reading about it. Although I don't mind anyone who wants to take ideas from me, you have to adjust things so they work for your play style.

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  7. I hate to post here and waking up this old thread, but I have a school question.

    When I did my primary school updates before, the teachers were employees of the community lot business (school). Now that I'm doing the secondary school, I wanted to try using your method, by setting an adult on the lot to be a teacher, so that they can keep their Maxis career. But when I did this, they taught for an hour, before both of them up and left suddenly. I couldn't even cancel it; it just popped back into their queue.

    How exactly do you set your teachers?

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  8. LaurelCrossing, don't worry about waking up old posts - I don't mind. :)

    All I do to set them initially is teleport them onto the lot and then set them as a teacher in one of the classrooms. I wish I could be of some help to you with your problem but I'm afraid it's not one I've ever run into. :\ Once I set a Sim as a teacher, they appear on the lot any time I choose "Start School" and remain there until I "End School". I really have no idea why it's not working for you!

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  9. Thank you, thank you for your wonderful description of running the community school. I downloaded Inge & have been playing with the classes! It's been so much fun experimenting!

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    1. You're welcome! I'm glad you've found it useful. :)

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  10. Hey Carla, I've run into a bit of problem. I edited the collection in simpe to appear on community lots, but the book never appears when I start the gradework lesson for the class. I usually just use Simwardrobe's technical controller, but I want to give this a try.

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    1. Hmmm, I'm not sure. The only thing I can think of is the tables. Are you using Inge's tables? You either need to use them or you need to place a class place on the EA/custom table in front of each chair you want students to use.

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  11. No, I'm using the class place on custom tables. I tried the one that allows you to assign students, but no result. I tried the automatic one, and it said there were no students on the lot, but there were.

    I feel like my trouble is in the order of things. So could you give me a step by step breakdown of how you start a class? Thanks and sorry for the trouble.

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    1. It's been a long time since I played my schools and even longer since I set them all up, so it's highly likely I'm forgetting something. I'm pretty sure I just placed the class pieces when I built the school (which I did before the lot had an owner - not sure if that would matter), set up the owner as the principal, enrolled the kids and assigned them to classes. Then I assigned each class to a classroom. With each classroom, I set them either to gradework or class work (class work will allow you to do whatever you want with them - skilling, for instance). Then I started class.

      I don't know if that helps at all, because it seems like you'd need to do one step before it would let you do the next anyway. But like I said, it's been a while, so I could be wrong!

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