Sunday 15 February 2009

A note about aging

I have just finished going through everyone's profiles and adding in their actual ages (as opposed to just life stages). I may well revise again, because the way I have it now still looks a little messy, due to my torrid love affair with parentheses, but I wanted to at least get the numbers up.

I have revised the way my Sims age, which has also affected when they'll go to college and how long they stay teens so I wanted to explain everything here, to limit confusion. I'm still not completely confident about it (particularly with the teens who don't go to college), but I'm going to give it a go. As with everything in Sullivan, this is a work in progress.

Babies will now be babies for just one day, to represent one year. Toddlers will still have four days, representing ages 1-4 and children will still have 8 days, representing ages 4-12.

A lot of bloggers edit the Teen stage to 8 days (when a Sim teen turns 18) and I considered doing the same. However, my rounds are 5 days long and any teen who reaches college age in that round goes off to college at the end. 8 days wasn't working for me because I would then face the problem of having to send a teen to college in the middle of the round, which I hate doing.

The only solution I've found to my problem is to leave the Teen stage as is (15 days) and send the teens to college at the end of the round in which they turn 18. That may mean some teens go at 18 and that some go at 22, so I've devised a way of dealing with that too.

If a teen goes to college at 18, they'll arrive back in the hood after graduation at the age of 23. If I send a teen at 22, they'll still be 23 when they come back. I can't have that. Instead, I will adjust their ages so that they're the same number of years apart as they were pre-college.

Example: by Day 65, Magdalena will be 19 and Araminta will be 20. At this time, they'll both go off to college and return on Day 70. They'll arrive back in Sullivan with 39 days left in their age stage but I will take one day off Magdalena and 2 days off Araminta. This means Araminta will still be one year older than Magdalena and 12 years older than her little sister Zelda.

I'm trying to avoid situations like I have with the Moretti kids right now. Arianna and Caterina are twins, so they're the same age, but little brother Filippo is also the same age, and he shouldn't be. I'm not going to go back and fix those indiscrepancies (there's weird aging stuff with the Sacha Lachance's kids too) but from now on, I will be much more meticulous with it.

So to summarise, the Adult age stage will last for 39 days only if the Sim goes to college at exactly 18. Otherwise, I'll shave up to 5 days off to ensure age differences are kept in sync.

Anyway, this has probably confused you all but I wanted to at least attempt to explain what I'm doing with the aging situation in Sullivan. Age differences not staying the same throughout my Sims' lifespans has long bothered me, and I'm excited to finally have a way to deal with it.

9 comments:

  1. No, I get it - I try to keep the age differences for my sim siblings too - I don't want them all to be the same age. I usually do that by staggering their arrival in university. And then making sure that their re-intro to the hood is also staggered. The lot sync timer (from MATY) is very helpful to me since I can set what day it is in one family in relation to the other families.

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  2. Ha, well, I'm glad it makes sense to at least one of you. It gives me hope for the rest!

    Do you mind if I ask how you do your staggering? How long are your rounds?

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  3. My rounds are around 4 days more or less. I can't play longer than that since it cuts too much into real life.

    For staggering the sim siblings when they transition -- take for example, Mercutio and Romeo Monty - Mercutio is 2 days ahead of Romeo. So I make sure that Mercutio is already in his junior year in uni by the time Romeo starts as a freshman. And I keep that day difference when they get re-introduced to the hood.

    The lot sync timer makes sure that the rest of the hood are aging up accordingly also. So no one gets too old in relation with their friends.

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  4. Yeah, I use the Lot Sync Timer but mainly to check how many days I've been playing the current lot. It doesn't work too well for me for checking other families' aging, because I usually have more than one family with the same surname.

    Thanks for explaining your staggering. That's what I was imagining but wasn't sure.

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  5. Hey, I looked this post up again to see how you were handling this, as I'm re-considering and re-working aging in Simdale Valley. I have also decided to use the same baby/toddler/child days to relate realistically to years, since a day is a year in Simdale. I was considering playing shorter rounds but I like the way the seasons work with my current rounds (each house played for the current season). When the population doubles I may start playing shorter rounds & changing the season more, like Lake County. Are you still going to keep pregnancies the game length (3-4 simdays?) I also am still not sure if I want to mess with the teen age bar or not...I changed it in SimPE using INge's tweak but I may change it back.

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  6. still working out my aging and rounds, and I wondered, how will you take years off your new adults after college? I know you can take a few years at a time with the green bottle stuff, but how can you take just one day, for example?

    Thanks,

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  7. I left my teen stage the same because I don't like sending kids to college in the middle of a round and I'd be forced to if I changed it to 8 days. I might remove the NoAdultTeens flavour pack for Inteen though, so my teens graduate high school at 18.

    Pregnancies are still 3 days. I can't advance those in a way I'd be happy with even though it does bother me that they are pregnant for 3 years.

    I take years off with the Temporal Adjuster which is part of InSim - you can take off as few or as many days as you like with that.

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  8. Thanks for letting me know about thte Temporal Adjuster. After I asked, I found the multi-painting that you can add/subtract days with.

    I decided to move to the two day rounds. I liked the 5 day ones for getting deeply involved in a family, but I'm enjoying having everyone interact more this way.

    I went with the sim blender (two jeffs) for advancing pregnancies during the proper months (for them to end up being 9 months). I go into the household just to advance the pregnancy and can have them interact for a few minutes if I want; I'm trying it on the first family with this round, so I'll see how it goes.

    I always enjoy your posts.

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  9. I'm glad you're enjoying reading about Sullivan and that you've found a system that works for you in your hood.

    Just a word of warning: I have heard that the multi-painting shouldn't be used with AL because it hasn't been updated and a lot of code changed with AL. So it's been updated and it's escaped my attention (I've never used it), I would proceed with caution.

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