Game Play

GENERAL
I play my hood pretty realistically, so there are no supernatural beings, no resurrecting the dead and no sims living forever. Sims have to earn all of their money by working for it. If they need money to pay for something big, like a house, car or going to Uni, they can take out a loan. I also play based on the sims’ wants. So if a sim doesn’t have a want to do homework or go to class, they won’t go (with the exception of going to work since I rarely see a want to go to work). I do make exceptions, though. Some exceptions are a sim who has a fear of being on academic probation, but doesn’t have any actual wants that will fill their academic bar. I will have them work just enough so that they won’t go on probation (or have them influence someone else to do the work for them), but not enough to get them an A+. This will help with all sims graduating with A+s like I had in other hoods.

AGING
My way of playing is pretty simple. I play in “rounds” where I play each family in a specific order for a certain amount of days. At the start of my hood, each household was played for 5 sim days which equals 5 sim years, with the exception of University.

I've recently changed over to playing a "calendar" type aging system which was adapted from Lakeside Heights. And thanks to Carla at Sullivan, I was able to wrap my brain around this new way of playing and it seems to be working out pretty well. Basically, I'm playing each household based on a calendar year and currently (May 2010), each family update represents 1 month. The example Carla used that really helped me out is:

ROUND 1
Jan '10 - Smith
Feb '10 - Jones
Mar '10 - Jackson
Apr '10 - Klein
May '10 - Wong
Jun '10 - Sawyer
Jul '10 - West
*Because I only have 7 households, that'd be the end of the round.

So then for Round 2, it might go:
Aug '10 - Sawyer
Sep '10 - West
Oct '10 - Klein
Nov '10 - Smith
Dec '10 - Jones
Jan '11 - Wong*
Feb '11 - Jackson
*I will add 1 year to each of their ages at the beginning of the year and if any sims ages to the next life stage, then they will be featured in a birthday post in January/Winter.

This way makes much more sense to me than the way I used to play and I'll be able to enjoy my sims for longer periods of time and will be able to see the seasons change more often, as they should.

Due to the change in the way I play, I don't follow the game's aging system anymore. Here's my aging system now:

Babies, age 0-1 (1 day)
Toddlers, ages 1-3 (3 days)
Children, ages 4-11 (8 days)
Teens, ages 12-17  (6 days)
Young Adults, ages 18-21 (if they go to college)
Adults, ages 18-59 (42 days-if they do not go to college)
Elders, ages 60 +

TRACKING
Here is where my nerdy-ness shows. I keep a detailed database of my sims and basic (and not so basic) information about them so I can easily reference it in and out of the game. Here's a snapshot of how my database looks as of August 2011(created in Microsoft Access):

click to enlarge

As you can see, I keep track of almost everything related to the sim. I have one page for each of my playables, a few playable NPCs and some townies who have or might play a major part in my playabale sims' lives. This helps with planning future careers, seeing who's compatible, and generally helps get all this info out of my head so I can make room for other stuff. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Per a request, I've uploaded my tracker. You can grab it here. You will need Microsoft Access 2007+ in order to add pictures to the form like above.

10 comments:

  1. I have mircosoft access as well, and I can't figure how you got this database set up, this is greatly detailed I wish to have this set up for my own sims as well. If you could explain how to set this up I would greatly appreciate it thanks!!

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  2. Hi Nicky, first I created a table in Access and created a field for each thing you see listed in the pic above. So there's a field for name, household name, DOB, aspiration, all the hobbies and interests etc. Once I had all the fields I wanted, I started entering all the data about each of my sims. When I had data in there, I then created a form. You can create a form to look however you want and it'll pull all the information in from the table it's linked to. The pic of the database above was the most recent version I had and I think I added a field or 2 since then. I had to play around with it a lot to get it this way and when I find more information to gather, I change it slightly to fit it in.

    I don't know how comfortable you are with Access so I don't know if my expanation will be any help at all. But I can answer whatever other questions you have.

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  4. Hi Danielle thank you so much for the info, im off to try it now. If I have anymore questions I'll be sure to ask.

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  5. Your aging system sounds pretty cool. I'm searching for the right system for me and I think I will try yours out. So you play with "aging off", I think?!

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    1. Thanks Svenja. It took a while to find a system that would work for me and this is definitely it. Yes, I play with "aging off" and age my sims manually using the Insimenator. Let me know if you have any other questions! :)

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  6. I've had the hardest time trying to recreate this, but it is so perfect! Is there any way you can save/send the template, or upload more pictures? It would be so helpful, and I would gladly build you something in return. At this point, it's all I actually good at!

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    1. Hi Victoria! I can certainly upload a template for you. Let me just clean it up a little bit and then I'll upload it. You don't have to build me anything unless you really want to! :) I'm happy to share!

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    2. AH! That makes me so incredibly happy! :) I really would love to build you something in return. What are you in need of? (Or just want, haha). Thank you SO SO much!

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    3. Oh there are so many things I want and need!! LOL! What do you like building? I could always use houses/apartments or community lots... so that doesn't narrow it down at all :P. I don't have a lot of 3 bedroom houses, or apartments, that I can remember, so if you can build one of those, that'll be awesome!

      But onto the goods! I cleaned up my tracker and uploaded it. You can download it here: http://www.divshare.com/download/19210138-f8e

      There's a note in there with just some quick info about how and why I track the stuff I track. If you have any questions about it at all, just post here :).

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