Two hacks came to mind while playing today.
The first would be one to make visiting kids stay til 7 instead of 6 so they can stay for dinner or birthday parties.
The second would be one to make all kids walk to and from school, since in my small town the school is definitely within walking distance of everyone's house. I know there's one to disable the bus and have you manually make them walk, but the bus still brings them home. I want them automatically walking there and back.

Sounds like something Gummillut would come up with

I'd love that first one. I hate having birthday parties and all the kid's friends run off at exactly 6pm.

Sounds like something Gummilut would come up with

Children Stay Later is a Squinge mod: http://www.insimenator.org/showthread.php?t=99418
Walking to school I don't know of any.

You don't have to wait til 6pm for sims' birthdays, you know. You can take them to the cake anytime before 6 and have 'em blow out the candles. I always thought kids' birthdays were a bit weird in TS2 anyway. You have an 8 year old, invites a bunch of other 8 year olds over for a party, blows out his candles, and now he's 15, partying with a bunch of 8 year olds. Seemed weird.

I have always wanted something to adjust the curfew clock in the game, too. But I was looking for something effecting teens on community lots. They all leave at 8pm. On Friday or Saturday night, they ought to be able to stay out much later than 8pm. Frankly, even 8pm on a school night seems a bit early. Perhaps 9 or 10 on a school night, and maybe 11 or 12 on Fri/Sat would seem more realistic to me. I know if you have an outing, they can stay on the lot later, but if you change lots, they go home. Might be playing at the Arcade and want to go to the diner for a meal. Call a taxi, head to Red's, and when you get there, everybody goes home. Outing over.

Along that line, i think it'd be REALLY cool if the "sneak out" option would be a playable mini-game. Your teen sneaks out with a friend, to a community lot... When the game generates Townies to populate the lot, there would be the chance of populating a cop (same with whenever the game spawns a new visitor). If it should spawn a cop, the mini-game would kick off, sort of like when your sim decides to skip out on a bill. A clock would pop up, and your sim would have to attempt to avoid being spotted by the officer. Whoever you snuck out with would have to also avoid being caught, The possible outcomes could be that you and your 'partner in crime' successfully avoid detection and get some kind of boost or reward (like an aspiration bonus and influence points, or maybe a group outing kind of gift left on the porch). You succeed, but your buddy gets busted... Your buddy succeeds, but you get busted. Or you both get nabbed. The last two would generate a "Busted!" memory and trigger any Fears. Perhaps if you escaped and your buddy got caught, it would harm your relationship score... or maybe improve it! You might like him better, cuz he didn't narc! That could be subject to personalities.

All the mechanics already exist in the game. "Sneak out" with wants and fears exist. The whole avoiding detection /getting caught thing can be swiped from the dine-and-ditch mini-game. And heck, if somebody was able to create that, you could probably easily tweak it to be a ditching class mini-game, too. The only thing with ditching class is, you'd have to make it so that sim wasn't eligible to go to school when they returned from the community lot... otherwise, you'd be able to ditch school, get home and catch a ride to school, and cheat the system. Though, if your sim suffered the consequences of missing a day at school via the loss of a letter grade, i guess it wouldn't really matter.

[Edited to add]:
Perhaps, if either you or your buddy got nabbed, you could throw in a chance card. It might say, "Your friend XYZ was busted. Can he keep a secret? Is he gonna narc on you? Perhaps it's best to come clean now, and cash in your brownie points, so they go easy on you."
• [ Come clean // Let's see 'em prove it // Ignore ].

Similarly, if you got busted and your friend didn't, you could have some kind of chance card about whether or not you should narc on him... "Why does XYZ get off scott-free, when he's just as guilty as you are! That's no fair. You were partners in crime, 50/50. No reason why you should take all the responsibility, is there?"
• [ NARC!! // Stick to the buddy code // Ignore ]

There'd have to be different possible outcomes for each one... Even that would be fun to hash out what the results would be... hahhaha

-gE
>=)

I like to do birthdays as soon as I can--so 6pm. I just thought it was kind of annoying when Lucas and Keith Agnarsson had two of their cousins over all day, but they had to leave before they could watch the twins' little brother Michael grow from a baby to a toddler.

But who is to say they are all 8? That is up to the players imagination. Why can't they be 10-12 and the birthday child be turning 13? It's all in the mind.

Dunno... i guess they all just look like a bunch of 8 year olds to me. Confidentially, the new teen could be 17 for all we know! hahaha. The interactions from teen to child (and vice versa) are not what you'd typically consider for a 13 year old to a 12 year old.

Maybe i just need to upgrade my imagination... :O
hahhaha


-gE
>=)

On school days it can be hard to get the kid to the cake before six! Or maybe I just teleport in too many people...

If you take a teen date or outing to a community lot before 8, and do not change lots, they'll stay forever or till their needs go critical, unless you change lot. Pretty sure this is vanilla. If they arrive at a lot later than 8:30, they'll leave immediately. If you use the Visitor Controller to make a teen-only lot, they will also stay indefinitely.

I recall that in Base Game (until Nightlife) both teens and kids could show up on community lots, but when Nightlife was released they removed that because of the Downtown neighborhood (I assume no one wants kids at their night clubs).

I use moveobjects to make sure the kid is close to the cake and nobody else is at the far end of the lot. It's a bit cheaty but helps considerably.

Children can show up on community lots, but only do it if you bring a kid along.

Having had a birth on almost every lot on my last rotation, I'd love something similar to the marriage mod where you can choose what last name you want the couple to have, but for babies. I understand that the baby takes the mother's last name if she's not married but sometimes it would be nice if they could have their father's name. One of my couples have been strolling along quite happily without getting married, but now she's pregnant and I don't feel like she'd want to get married for the sake of the baby, but I would rather the child had the dad's last name. I know there's a cheat way of doing it (with boolprop?) but it would be nice to just have a dialog box pop up once you've given them their first name.

In spite of the fact that it's easy to edit in SimPE, I agree with you. A dialogue mod would be very nice.

Agreed. I wonder if it would be possible for the new baby dialog box to include last names.

Teens quit showing up because Nightlife introduced the infamous curfew that nearly everybody hated. When I first installed Nightlife, I reset Veronaville so Romeo could take Juliette on a date. They arrived at the club and had just gotten out of the cab when Juliette primly announced that it was past her curfew and walked home. It wasn't even very late in the evening!

gummilutt has written a mod to let children and teens walk to school. It's the Carpool & school bus flexibility mod here. I'm pretty sure it's the one StrangeTownChick referred to in her post. At present they still come home in the school bus, but she says [she] "may continue working and add the ability to walk back from school, but for now, at least we can have our Sims go to school in our preferred method".

I have an old version of the Visitor Controller from Simbology. (It's a global mod rather than an object mod; you customise it by adding and removing special paintings, and it's the right version for my EPs.) On weekdays it lets visiting children stay still after 8 p.m. and teens stay till midnight. On Friday and Saturday nights, when there's no school the next day, teens can stay as long as adults, and I think children stay longer too.

I have the kid relax in bed or play with the table if it's near the hour, then send them to the cake at 6:05 or something. There are a few activities that sims won't interrupt to age. Not really a cheat, but a quirk.

Occasionally, I'll have them relax in bed at 6pm, then turn aging off (so it only prevents that one sim from aging up hourly) until everything is ready to blow out the candles and turn it on again. That's more cheaty, but it works.

Well I use No aging during party now, otherwise I can't really be bothered when a sim ages up on his/her own.

I just read all comments, and it only works for toddler and children. An update was in the works, in 2007..then no replies follows. So..What happens if you have a teen or an adult...

Individual frame pieces that could be combined to create (or enlarge) a frame on a wall hanging- You'd want to have a left, right, top, and bottom piece that could overlap without clipping, and you'd want them to have the full range of the wall available to cover, so you'd probably want a couple iterations of each, but it'd allow so much more flexibility in making various artworks actually look like they're meant to be displayed next to one another.

I am SO interested in your (ingenious) idea, I made a notepad with it.

Christianlu's last name copier would fix that. I've used it a great deal. http://modthesims.info/d/289073

enjoy

How did *I* missed this one?!? Thank you smorbie. I know I will enjoy this.