In my current play schedule, each "round" lasts 12 sim-months, representing 1 year and 4 seasons. In sim-days, this is 28 days/season, and 112 days/year. So each month lasts approximately 9-10 days.
I also use MCCC to modify pregnancy to a length to match 9 months of sim time. Without the mod, babies would be born in 3 days, whether you are playing the sim or not, whether you have aging turned off or not, whether you are on vacation or not. Having super-long pregnancies and constant aging was the only way I could figure out how to keep everything in sync realistically.
Blogging:
I aspire to visit most households once per round, but they may not always have a blog update, depending on whether anything interesting happens or not. I am approaching this project with the motto of: if it's not fun, don't do it!
Because TS4 does not keep track of the number of weeks passed, I had to get inventive about how I would keep track of them myself. So I'm using a spreadsheet. You could also easily keep a paper notebook, if that's more your style!
(click for bigger)
My calendar chart has approximately 28 sim-days per season, or 112 sim-days per year. Along with days of the week, it also notes reoccurring festival days. Dates are approximate, since I'm only playing about 10 actual days of each month. When I've finished playing a day, I'll color it in on the calendar so that I know exactly where my worlds are in time. I'll also delete that family from the households list so that I know they've been played for the quarter. The stories I post here on the blog, or the outtakes or notes I post on my Tumblr blog, then become history keeping for what was happening to my sims on that day in time.
I don't have a static order for when I play each household. It depends on what's happening in their stories and who I want to visit next. I don't schedule too far ahead of where I'm at in the current play session, but I do usually have an idea of who I'll want to play in the next 3-4 sessions. Other events (like baby due dates, birthdays, holidays, and graduations) are marked on the schedule too.
All of my sims age constantly and together, whether they are main character families or background sims, so it doesn't matter who I play or when or for how long. None of my sims are "townies" exactly. They are all marked as played and housed. They all have friends, family, careers, lives. I have little stories for all of them in my notes, even if I don't write much about them on the blog. I do try to visit each household at least once per 12-month round, even if it's just a few hours. I also like to make sure that everyone has had a chance to go to work or school once per round, so they can progress in their careers.
Although, I will confess, my favorites get a lot more attention than my lesser-played families. But since everyone ages together, that doesn't matter! ;)
Additional Gameplay Posts:
- modified aging and pregnancy
- love and marriage
- marriage and divorce
- notes on playing a fake university
- notes on playing a fake hotel
- notes on childhood education
- career rules
- aging and laws
- health, birth, and death
- on randomizing genetics
- death by sickness, kind of
- traits and aspirations
- notes on injury damage
- collected thoughts on lot deterioration, ghosts, and jail
- notes on population and residence
- my simming calendar post-Seasons EP
Posts written for TS2 and TS3, but still applicable to my TS4 play:
- views on sex: a study on fictional nookie
- career rules: a study on impoverishment
- playing cupid, on attraction scores
- approximating the TS2 personality matrix
- goldfish: thoughts on TS2 vs. TS3
- more fleeting gameplay thoughts on Tumblr
Hi! I've been an avid reader of all your sims stories since Sims 2 (which I still read from time to time!) I was wondering whether you could tell me how to modify a pregnancy and aging mod to my own liking because I really don't like how they do aging in sims 4 and and I would like to modify a mod for myself. OR, do you think you could upload your modified pregnancy and aging mod because I quite like yours. Thanks xx
ReplyDeleteHi! Thanks for reading!
DeleteIt is very easy if you want to do your own modifications. For aging, look for the phrase: "age_transition_threshold" There will be one for each aging stage. The number you enter is the number of days per NORMAL aging speed. Keep in mind that by default, fast is 4x more, and slow is 2x less.
No tricky business. The number you enter is exactly the number of days they'll have per stage.
The pregnancy mod is a little harder. You would look for the line that says: "PREGNANCY_RATE" and change that number. I do not know the exact formula for this--I usually just guess and check it in game until I get the length I want. A smaller number gives you a longer pregnancy.
I will also upload my versions if you want to use those. Hope this helps.
I still use the paper system that I learned from your TS2 blog to keep track of my round, and ages-- maybe I'll move it to a spreadsheet, but I still really like the simplicity of the paper one. Your solution for non-played elders dying is one I hadn't thought of for my rotational 'hood-- I was planning to play with aging totally off unless it was time for a pregnancy or death. But I didn't like that solution because sims actually show the physical signs of aging in TS4 really well if they are allowed to age-- have you noticed that? I think I might adopt something very similar to what you are talking about. That death thing is just maddening... I've lost sims that were very close to the family through that.
ReplyDeleteOh, that's exciting to hear about the elders aging. I haven't noticed much, but only because until I fixed my elder lifespan, I'd been too scared to let many of my sims be elders at all. I have two at the moment, but a few more are coming up on their 60th birthdays soon.
DeleteWhen you say all your sims age constantly and together, does that mean you have aging on for active, inactive, and npcs, all the time? I imagine that's what you mean, because then you can play any household for any length of time, and everyone ages the same. If that's what you mean, have you found it to work as it should (ie, do inactive sims really seem to age exactly with the ones you were playing?) I'm about to start up my rotational neighborhood again this week, and trying to decide on an aging and rounds system. With your extra-long life span, it gives you lots of opportunities to play each sim, through each time period, it seems.
ReplyDeleteYup, that's right, aging for everyone all the time! It mostly seems to work as it should. The only times I've noticed it not working is with pregnant sims (which I guess is intended by design, from what I've read), and very occasionally an elder will fail to age a day when everyone else does. But that doesn't bother me too much because I want my elders to die when I tell them to die anyway, lol! Everyone else ages as expected though.
DeleteBut yes, I really enjoy the setup I have going on so far. I get plenty of time to visit whichever families I want and I don't really have to track how much/little time I've spent with anyone.
But in any case, because I don't know of a way to edit the exact days within an aging stage, most of my sims are still being aged manually when their next transition is due. Do you happen to know of anything that modifies the days within an aging stage?
Laura, thanks for the response! Your post really helped me realize that overall, for rotational play, the all aging on options should work really well (if culling and pregnancy are controlled). Coming straight from Sims 2 I was still trying to figure out how to keep everyone together, and decide the length of a "round," when the game will really take care of that. As you say, the missing piece is that the game doesn't tell you how much time has passed, and as far as I know there's no way to change days left on an individual sim, like we could in Sims 2. So for a long time, I guess I'll have to use manual aging. My question right now, is how long to set the life span, to get plenty of time to play each family, and yet feel like the whole neighborhood is progressing at a quick enough rate to be satisfying.
DeleteYeah, that's the thing—it all comes down to trial and error, I think. I've modified my timespan a couple of times since I've started. I've come to settle on 120 days per sim-year between about 30 households, but that's just me. I do like things to move rather slowly compared to some people. The good thing is that there are tons of aging mods out there, and they're quite easy to modify, too. If there isn't one out there that suits your needs, let me know and I can probably whip something up for you rather easily.
DeleteAhhh! I just read that MCCC--Pregnancy extension can enable aging while pregnant! It's probably not a big deal for most people playing 3-day pregnancies, but 90-days of not aging with each pregnancy adds up to a lot! So at least that problem is solved! (I didn't have the pregnancy extension in my game before because I didn't want any story progression pregnancies, but I'll add it just for this! I'll just have to be sure to lock everything else down, lol!)
DeleteYes!! I saw that too, as I was going through each setting in MCCC, that aging can be turned on during pregnancy. I was very excited about that, especially with the 90 day pregnancies. I just hope it does work-- it makes me a little nervous that it might conflict with the mod that Tanja1986 made, that you edited for 90 days. But it is worth a try, I think!
DeleteWell, I only tested through one day with Lucy so far, but she aged a day! So I'd say it works just fine! :)
DeleteThanks, Laura! I borrowed your version of Dark Gaia's and just tweaked a few of the ages but decided to go with the 120-day "year" too and replicate your spreadsheet to keep up with the passage of time. It's so nice not to be stressed about running out of time and just be able to enjoy seeing what happens. I linked back to your blog on mine, referencing that you came up with this system. Happy New Year!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad it was useful to you! Sharing ideas is what makes this simming business so much fun!
DeleteHappy New Year! :)
Ever since ts2 your gameplay ideas have been really inspiring, I'm reeeeaaalllly looking forward to you sharing your ideas on ts4 traits and aspirations!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Amanda! I'm looking forward to sharing the post about traits and aspirations! I'll do that one once I finish this last chapter of Drown. I want to get it finished while the motivation is hot so that I can get back to my main timeline gameplay! :)
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