More Age Groups

[ella_in_wonderland]

(I'm at a risk of sounding like a pervert here, BUT I'M NOT ONE)
I was wondering if there were any meshes/hacks out there that make children (girls) look a little bit more curvy, like a thirteen-year-old would. I find it annoyingly unrealistic that sims go from looking like seven-year-olds to looking like seventeen-year-olds in one day.

I know that first part could have gone in WCIF, but I want to know what you guys think about this - could Maxis have added another age group between Child and Teen - Preteens?

[MattShizzle]

I think that would be a good idea - "tweens" is a common term. Maybe they could have interactions available somewhere between children and teens - ie romantic ones for teens minus make out and maybe a couple others. And be able to do at least some cooking.

eta another extra age group could be "middle age" - ie between adult and elder.

[julmoo]

Tweens could be one where they are just moody and try too hard to be like teenagers. Bad make up, bad dressing, etc.
But I think large toddlers would lead to extreme hairloss in my case.

I kind of like the age groups the way they are right now, I just find them out of balance, with teenagers being teenaged for AAAAGES.
However I have mods for that :3

[MattShizzle]

P much all the ages other than adult are too long. Elder even more so than teen IMO.

[Petchy]

@Simonut: I really think the OP was asking for something to create a gap between the 8-year-old looking children and the 17/18-looking Teens that Maxis gives in the game, not trying to make the younger ones look more sexually evoking, but instead create an age around 13, like you said, a more teen-looking child which has grown up a little, but is still too young to be able to drive, cook meals unsupervised, and still enjoys doing child-like things. I don't think that's particularly weird or unrealistic to place a new age-range here. When I was myself around 12/13 and wanted to create "my family" as sims, I didn't feel it particularly correct to class myself as a "child" but I was much too young for a "teenager", which I classed as my older sibling.. A Pre-teen age would have been perfect here. I think that, especially with TS3's Teens looking very adult-like, the shift could be moved towards something like this: Baby -> Toddler -> Child -> Teen -> Young Adult -> Adult -> Middle-Aged -> Elder

[rogue_55]

@ >> Ella in wonderland >>Give me a break here Please ! Let children be children, why on earth would you want a child ( girl ) looking curvy? A child is a child and a thirteen year old is just that a "Teen" I do not think it is unrealistic for a child to look like a child the way Maxis have it in the game.

Sorry I may sound rude here, but you wanting a child to look curvy is a bit unrealistic to me. I can see a child being or getting fat as the game have it but "Not Curvy" And if truth be told yes you do make yourself look like what you said in your very own post above a pervert.

I do not care if anyone Agree or not Agree that is your call. But sometime people need to heard the honest truth. A child ( girl ) being Curvy what will be next ? :blink:

I kind of understand your point of view, but I am proof that curves at a young age can be realistic for some girls. I started developing when I was around 9 or 10 years old and I wasn't fat. I'm not saying I would want my sim girls to have to go through that though, because I honestly hated it. It was very embarrassing for me. I don't think the person who asked the question sounds like a pervert though. I think they just wanted something to make their game appear more realistic. We really don't get a realistic transition from child to teen and I think that's all they are asking for. I agree that it's probably not a good idea to add curves to female children though. People who make meshes would risk getting themselves in trouble for that and that's not worth it. It would probably be more acceptable to make them gradually get taller instead if that's possible.

[dieKristina]

I would also have loved to have more age groups in the game. A preteen lifestage is one age group I would want - like OP said the contrast between child and teen is to big, so a lifestage inbetween would be great. I would also love to have a lifestage between adults and elders - the contrast is way to big even there.

[victory101]

I actually like the age groups as they are. Honestly, having a pre-teen stage actually sounds like it might make the game less fun for people like me. It's always a huge relief for me when my children to age up into teens, because it means I don't have to worry about their parents neglecting them to the point of a social worker visit/death, plus I can stop inviting over that irritatingly useless nanny. Adding a pre-teen stage, which basically just sounds to me like a bunch of children with slightly older-looking body types and a few teen-based interactions but without the freedoms that come with actually being a teen in the game (freedoms that make my life, player, much easier XD), would feel to me like it was just dragging the child stage out for longer than necessary.

But YMMV, of course. It already sounds like a bunch of people would have been interested in it! Now I'm curious about how different the game would have been if they'd included more age groups to cover the 'in-between' periods on some of the more radical jumps.

[MattShizzle]

Best of all would have been gradual aging.

[sushigal007]

Add me to the list of people who would love a tween-age and a middle-age life stage. Sadly I don't know of any bodyshapes that would achieve the former, but at least hair, makeup and clothing can be used to make sims look a little older than fresh-out-of-college.

[Firelira78]

I think it is easy to do that with teenagers.

When my sims age from 'Child' to 'Teen', I pretend they're essentially children of 13-14. I make the girls wear short, fluffy, cutesy dresses and give them pigtails. The boys wear smaller shorts and have hair covering their forehead. I try to give them the innocent schoolboy look.

After sometime, I pretend they've become 17-18, more mature and are busy with college preparations, that's when I give them more 'older' looking hairstyles and full jeans for boys or jeans and longer dresses for girls. Also, make-up, especially around the eyes help for girls as moustaches do for boys.

This does help to keep the illusion of a larger age span in my eyes. I do a similar thing with sims who have just become adults and sims who are about to become elders themselves and have adult age kids. I make sure when an adult sim is standing next to his/her adult child, it should look like their ages are at least 20 years apart.

[Macaroodle]

I agree, I would have loved to have a preteen and middle-age life stage. I'd also like a preschooler age (a little older than a toddler, but at that stage where they wear stick-on earrings, heart sunglasses, and tutus everywhere- and bring their dolls and stuffies) and a senior age between middle-age and elder. Senior could cover the 50's-60's age group without giving them white hair, bad slouching, etc. that elders have.

Firelira- good ideas! I've started playing young teens as junior high-age kids too, and I've been kind of stuck as to how to make them look younger. I've been keeping them from wearing makeup and growing facial hair, and I stick girls in modest clothes that don't make them look especially curvy. Etsu Cho, for example, is wearing this (http://modthesims.info/d/366936) navy blue cardigan.

Ella- you didn't come across as a pervert to me. It's not like you were asking for double-D mesh outfits for kids!

ETA: has anyone tried using stretchskeleton to make young teens shorter?

[esmesqualor]

I do what Firelira78 does. There's a lot of teen clothes that fit the 'tween' look that I wouldn't use otherwise.

[joandsarah77]

No. My own daughter is 10 1/2 which makes her a 'tween'. While she may be somewhat taller than a Maxis child and a little wider, she is very much a child. Maxis children are supposed to be aging to 13 not 17. 17 is only one year off adulthood.

I tend to wonder how is it some of the world has this idea that tweens need ie romantic ones for teens minus make out My daughters mind is on her Little's Pet shop toys, her pet baby guinea pigs and when she will get a play date with her friends, who when they are over also play Littlest pet shop and hide-n-seek. I think it's really sad that some countries children seem to be growing up more quickly than normal, that romantic interactions have started to be seen as normal for that age group- it isn't.

What I would like to see, which was sadly neglected was a middle age. There is a far more massive jump from adulthood to elder.

[Saturnfly]

I'm pretty happy with my sim kids as they are, but have always found that Teens time-span is way too long, I would love it if there was sort of a "tween" stage that could be integrated into their time, since I don't think kids in TS2 are actually at the tween stage, but more or less around 8-10 years old.

[ronaele]

No. My own daughter is 10 1/2 which makes her a 'tween'. While she may be somewhat taller than a Maxis child and a little wider, she is very much a child. Maxis children are supposed to be aging to 13 not 17. 17 is only one year off adulthood.

I tend to wonder how is it some of the world has this idea that tweens need My daughters mind is on her Little's Pet shop toys, her pet baby guinea pigs and when she will get a play date with her friends, who when they are over also play Littlest pet shop and hide-n-seek. I think it's really sad that some countries children seem to be growing up more quickly than normal, that romantic interactions have started to be seen as normal for that age group- it isn't.

What I would like to see, which was sadly neglected was a middle age. There is a far more massive jump from adulthood to elder.

10 1/2 and fixated on littlest pet shop toys does not constitute a "tween". Everyone grows at their own rate, and you wouldn't have to make your sim tween use those romantic interactions. Not to mention that a 10 year old would be between fourth and fifth grade.

[Simsane]

I feel that the child stage should be just the way it is but it might have been nice if Maxis had created a "young teen" stage where they could cook and didn't need a babysitter but couldn't yet drive, go out on dates or get a job and then the "older teen" stage where they could also drive, date and hold jobs. But I too try to use the clothes and hair styles to make my teens appear younger. While doing that, I don't let them drive, date or hold down a job. Then, after a while, I change their hair and clothing styles somewhat, start letting them have facial hair and wear make-up, etc. At that point, I also let them start driving, dating and holding down jobs. So, I pretty much break up the age myself. That has always worked for me.

I truly do wish they had created a "middle age" stage though. I find it quite a shock when they go from being adults to elders.

[MattShizzle]

Actually when I was ages 10 thru 12 it wasn't at all uncommon for boys and girls to ge "going with" each other and to kiss each other in a romantic way. This isn't recent, it would have been 1984 to 1986.

[Sof_m9]

You can always use stretchskeleton 1.1 or 1.2 to make children look like preteens.

[omglo]

No. My own daughter is 10 1/2 which makes her a 'tween'. While she may be somewhat taller than a Maxis child and a little wider, she is very much a child. Maxis children are supposed to be aging to 13 not 17. 17 is only one year off adulthood.
But they can drive and immediately go to college, which is closer to 16 or 17 than 13.

I wish there was a more gradual transition too, so the ages would correspond better to real life.

[StrangeTownChick]

In this world, kindergarteners call each other "boyfriend" and "girlfriend". It means nothing in the way we'd think of boyfriends and girlfriends in high school, they just act like friends and maybe hug.
That semi-pointless thing being said, a lot of people do break up the teen stage. I've been starting to dress my younger teens as "middle schoolers" and once they are halfway through the age, they become "high schoolers". Can....can someone get Peni Griffin in here? She has an amazing system and I'm basically using hers.
Anyway, and once I get University I plan to send teens off to college on their last day of teenhood (halfway in if they can age up to teen with two or more skills maxed and be considered a gifted child).

[labellavienna]

I don't know about others, but I live in the US and am pretty Asian in terms of culture (my mother is traditionally Asian in the sense). The schools I grew up in and attended all my life were 85% Asian and the remaining numbers were mostly other minorities. The neighborhood and community that I resided in was predominantly Asian.

The thought that kids started dating each other at age 10 is pretty shocking to me...none of the girls at my school (Asians) would even consider "kissing" another person of the opposite gender until we were done with high school, the idea was simply alien to us. We were more worried about getting good grades, not pissing off our parents, and competing with one another to get into the best colleges. I actually didn't have my first real boyfriend until I was 19 =[

[MuletotheFoxxes]

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that they were originally going to add a middle aged age group, but dropped it because of release dates.

Middle aged would be nice, but I find it pretty easy to just change their style as they get older.

Tweens though, I see no need for such a thing. Maybe some young teen less curvy clothing meshes. Those I might like.

[Darby]

Changing adults to a more middle-aged look would be SO much easier if there were more salt and pepper hairstyles out there. I've long lamented that lack. :(

[labellavienna]

I agree, it's like either I want my sims to look really old or mid-twenties forever. =[

Who jumps from looking like they are 25 to looking like they are 70 in just a few days? Not every senior citizen has a head full of grey hair.

[joandsarah77]

10 1/2 and fixated on littlest pet shop toys does not constitute a "tween". Everyone grows at their own rate, and you wouldn't have to make your sim tween use those romantic interactions. Not to mention that a 10 year old would be between fourth and fifth grade.

Over here the tween magazine for parents is for "Parents of tweens 9-12" It's considered the age, not how mature or immature the tween is. A lot of the 'mature' tween things going on I think is do with the culture you come from and what the kids are exposed to via the media and friends, and area they live in as well as the growing at their own rate. My daughter is a very average 10 year old for around here and pretty much on average 'growth wise'

Actually when I was ages 10 thru 12 it wasn't at all uncommon for boys and girls to ge "going with" each other and to kiss each other in a romantic way. This isn't recent, it would have been 1984 to 1986.

Can I ask if you're American? Ever since coming online 12 years ago I've noticed how 'mature' American children are in this regard. At 10 through 12 I didn't give it a thought. Dating was something teenagers did if their parents allowed it, and many did not until 15 or so. Most kids of this age here think the other has 'germs'


But they can drive and immediately go to college, which is closer to 16 or 17 than 13.
They have to because they are encompassing the whole teenage agerange which is 13-18/19
But if they are 17 on becoming teen why would they then stay teens for 15 days?

labellavienna, I agree and I am not Asian, I'm Australian. I think we are less concerned about pleasing parents and grades, but most kids (from 'good' families) do not date until somewhere into their teen years.

Changing adults to a more middle-aged look would be SO much easier if there were more salt and pepper hairstyles out there. I've long lamented that lack.

Yes that^ I want it for both adults and elders.

[victory101]

Changing adults to a more middle-aged look would be SO much easier if there were more salt and pepper hairstyles out there. I've long lamented that lack.

I agree with this so much. I love salt-and-pepper hair, and honestly wish there were more people (or even just one; I don't think I've ever actually seen it before D: ) who included them as a color option for adults. I would make them myself if I were any good at hair recolors :P


Can I ask if you're American? Ever since coming online 12 years ago I've noticed how 'mature' American children are in this regard. At 10 through 12 I didn't give it a thought. Dating was something teenagers did if their parents allowed it, and many did not until 15 or so. Most kids of this age here think the other has 'germs'

I don't think 'mature' is really the right word for it. Most kids over here in the States are just in such a big hurry to grow up, and they see relationships and dating as being the epitome of adulthood. Which isn't all that unusual, but these days a lot of parents just don't pay much attention anymore, so a lot of children really don't have anyone around to tell them that it's okay to just be a kid and enjoy it.

A lot of it does depend on where you're at, though. In the area I lived in until I was 12, the attitude that the opposite sex had 'cooties' was very prevalent among my peers. Then I moved several states over and suddenly everyone was talking about dating and sex. It was very disconcerting :/

ETA: Tweens and pre-teens, at least in my area, refers to people age 12 to 15. That's interesting; I always figured it was a universal thing. It didn't occur to me that the term might differ from place to place. You learn something new everyday!

[M.M.A.A.]

Although having more different life stages can be fun, it can still be boring, if you consider the amount of time it will take to finish one generation. EA designed it that way so that things would run smooth but not too fast neither too slow, i.e. it is somewhat the 'ultimate balance'.

[joandsarah77]

I also had no idea a tween could refer to anyone over 13 either. :lol: Tween here means an older child before teenagerhood. Well you become a teenager as soon as you turn 13.

That is why I put apostrophes around the word mature. I didn't mean mature as in they really are mature, but rather they think wearing certain clothing and having boyfriends/girlfriends is mature. It's a sad state of affairs when a child feels they can't act like a kid. I've seen comments where tweens have said they still play Barbies-only they pretend not to around their friends. My husband told me today that someone he knows thought Littlest Pet shop was for little kids and was surprised my daughter was playing with them. I guess that is why youtube is full of tweens and teens making movies with them then...

[victory101]

I also had no idea a tween could refer to anyone over 13 either. :lol: Tween here means an older child before teenagerhood. Well you become a teenager as soon as you turn 13.

That is why I put apostrophes around the word mature. I didn't mean mature as in they really are mature, but rather they think wearing certain clothing and having boyfriends/girlfriends is mature. It's a sad state of affairs when a child feels they can't act like a kid. I've seen comments where tweens have said they still play Barbies-only they pretend not to around their friends. My husband told me today that someone he knows thought Littlest Pet shop was for little kids and was surprised my daughter was playing with them. I guess that is why youtube is full of tweens and teens making movies with them then...

Anyone over 13 is technically a teenager here as well -- like it's what you put down on paperwork and for doctor's visits and stuff -- but it's generally accepted in my area that anyone under 16 is still really too young to be associated with a lot of the stuff that teenagers are known for, so they get stuck with the pre-teen label. I really only hear tween associated with 12 year olds, specifically, though. Anything younger is just a 'kid', and anything older is 'pre-teen' or 'teen'.

The Littlest Pet Shop thing doesn't actually surprise me, actually. Toys like that are marketed for young girls here -- under 8, usually. In fact, most toys tend to be aimed at younger kids right around that age or younger. I don't really see a lot of things geared towards the 9-13 range, except for some video games maybe. (But to be fair, I don't pay attention much anymore...)

And there's also a lot of peer pressure in that regards; like I said, a lot of kids are trying to be grown ups, so they tend to treat anyone actually acting their age as 'immature' or a 'baby'. I got made fun of when I was 9 for playing with a Barbie, which is incidentally around the time I lost interest in them and started avoiding a lot of my old toys. Guess it left a bad taste in my mouth and kind of ruined the fun.

[ella_in_wonderland]

Just for the record everyone - I was not trying to sound like a pervert and in no way do I think it is perverted to request a real life thing like a pre-teen age group. However, since from reading some answers I guess pre-teen (10-12) was not the right word to use. Perhaps young teen or early teen - I was referring to girls around 13-15.

[joandsarah77]

I would never think of anyone of 13-15 as being anything other than a teenager. Maybe this also comes from us not having middle schools. We have primary and high school. For the most part you are 5-12 at primary school and 13 to 17 at high school.

They do the marketing thing here too although it's mostly just 'over 4' rather than 'under 8' Her friend who is 10 and her sister 8 are just as big into the LP's as is her other friend who is not only 10, but a boy. The clothing marketing though is horrible. Boys stuff looks like trash and most cute pretty girls clothing stops at size 7 which drives my daughter wild. I'm quite sure if I let her she'd be out with a placard protesting that just because you are over seven does not mean you want to dress like a teenager or wear grey and black. The strange thing is I buy quite a bit of her pretty cute clothes from Gymboree which is an American brand. Given the culture that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

ella_in_wonderland, that puts a whole other spin on the topic. I guess it was just one of those cultural misunderstandings. I've had some very interesting and enlightening conversations on the internet learning about jumpers, thongs and ah what Americans call a bum bag. >cough<

[omglo]

They have to because they are encompassing the whole teenage agerange which is 13-18/19
But if they are 17 on becoming teen why would they then stay teens for 15 days?

Because the teen stage tends to be popular with the players. Teens are teens longer than they're children and half as long as they're adults, which doesn't make any sense if Sims are aging similarly to people.

Maxis could have restricted some things to older teens, sort of like that hack that only lets teens near the end of that life stage go to college. I don't think we're meant to think of Sim time like real time.

[victory101]

Given the culture that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.


This is basically a very nice, concise description of American culture all on its own :P

But in all seriousness, one of the nifty things about the States is that there's so much that caters to individual taste. There are lots of younger kids who like to dress like they're in they're late teens, but there's also plenty who like cute stuff, and there's a ton of things out there to suit both. (There's also lots of older ones who like cute things; you can find plenty of classic 'cute' clothes for adult women in American shops.)

But this is getting really off-topic, so I digress >_>

@ella: That's kind of what I figured you meant. I still kind of think it might've dragged things out a little more, but an age corresponding to middle schoolers might have been kind of neat to have. Especially if they'd gotten new/unique interactions, as opposed to just rehashed teen ones that they would have gotten anyway...

[maxon]

Ugh - I'd hate a pre-teen stage. I think the younger ages are out of proportion and too long anyway. I'd guess this is because it's mostly younger people who play the game. The other objection I have to it is that it's an advertising term - invented by people who want to sell you stuff (just as teen is, as a matter of fact). So no.

Middle-age, OTOH, I'd be happy with. I have some salt and pepper hairs but you're right Darby, there are not too many around.

[Macaroodle]

joandsarah- Ever since coming online 12 years ago I've noticed how 'mature' American children are in this regard. At 10 through 12 I didn't give it a thought. Dating was something teenagers did if their parents allowed it, and many did not until 15 or so. Most kids of this age here think the other has 'germs' but most kids (from 'good' families) do not date until somewhere into their teen years.
I'm American, and in general my friends (who tended to be well-behaved) didn't date until we were a ways into our teens. Heh- I remember being at a friend's sleepover when I was about 10 and one of the other girls told us what French kissing was. I thought it sounded so gross! But I remember in sixth grade (ages 11-12), there wasn't a lot of choice as to where to sit in the cafeteria, and so my best friend and I had to sit right near these gross girls who told sleazy stories.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that not all American kids grow up too fast. :)

(Oh- and I loved my Littlest Pet Shop! I still have mine stored away somewhere.)

victory- . I got made fun of when I was 9 for playing with a Barbie, which is incidentally around the time I lost interest in them and started avoiding a lot of my old toys. Guess it left a bad taste in my mouth and kind of ruined the fun. That stinks! I'm sorry you got made fun of. Every school has their jerks, I guess. :(

Okay, middle-aged hair... Here (http://www.modthesims.info/d/143189) are base game recolors of the OFB perm with some gray hair in it. It's unbinned, by the way.

Officially, Mermaid Cove is closed, but when you visit it via the Wayback Machine, at least some of the downloads are still available! Here (http://web.archive.org/web/20081217120150/http://www.hairfish.com/mermaidcove/) is her download page with links to AF and AM hair with gray and/or white streaks. Again, unbinned. Hope that helps, even if the quality isn't the best (they're all old-ish hairs, from circa 2006). :)

ETA: fixed link- thanks, victory! :)

[Amairani]

I sometimes wish there were more age groups as well. In my "perfect game" I'd love to have:
baby -> toddler -> kindergarten /pre-school kid (corresponds to 3-6 years olds, would love to have an option of "Send/Drive to Kindergarten" for them in addition to existing "Hire a Nanny") -> elementary school kids (7-11) -> middle school kids/high school kids (12-18yo, either as one Age group or separate one, but preferably separate) -> Young Adults (19-25yo, they can either go to College, or not) -> Adults (26-55yo, ideally with Middle Age group starting at 40-45) -> Mature Age group (or how to say it in English more correctly? Pre-Seniors? 56-65yo) -> Seniors (66-75) -> Elders (above 75).

In addition to what was said above about Kids going straight to Teens, also with Adults turning into Elders at 55 days (=years in Sim world), makes it not only unrealistic, but makes me wonder if game is build based on Soviet Union/current Russia system, the only country I know of where people can retire at age of 55 and start receiving pension. Where I live, and in most countries, people have to work for 10 more years or so, before they can be called Elders and think of retirement. Also, many people at 55-65 are still very energetic and don't resemble Elders imposed by game developers.

I also find the Adult life span of 29 days (years) too short. Quite often it takes that long for my Sims to earn enough for traveling, house refurnishing, to rise their offspring to Teens (and gain more independence from parental obligations, since Teens are capable of taking care of themselves, unlike kids, in Simworld..), to reach respectable job positions (often it means to reach LTW), to learn enough witch spells to bring havoc at community lots (XDDD).. Anyway, just when my Adult Sims reached the point where they can finally start enjoying life and be able to woohoo anytime they want instead of skilling, bam! they get grey hair, bent backs and rasp voices :faceslap: I'd love for them to have 10 more days till the next age stage.

[Peni Griffin]

Now, see, here's what I don't get.

You don't play this game unless know how to interpret random events into story and character and project human emotions and thought processes onto handfuls of code and colored light. Most of us on this board wound up here because we're comfortable with tweaking "the rules" to suit ourselves, whether through the creation of custom content, the hacking of code, or the development of personal playstyle. So why would you need hard-coded transitional life-stages?

Gradual aging is like the open world - the programming realities make it impractical without sucking most of the fun out of the game (for the value of fun I want from the game). If nothing else, it would remove a lot of the interpretive control the player has; and it's precisely this interpretive control that the existing lifestages maximize.

Practical example: I introduced the Thyme family because I had a surfeit of female-oriented teens. I could have alleviated this some by not deciding to make Naomi Gavigan a lesbian; but as soon as I realized she was a clone of her big brother Ezekial, I'd been seized with the idea that she was like him all the way down, same gender orientation and all, and I'd always played her that way. So I had a bunch of teens wandering around wistfully trying to hit on Sparrow Hawkins and being let down gently. It wasn't as bad as the generation of lesbians, but I had five or six boys and Naomi who had nobody to date and for some reason couldn't meet suitable townies to save their lives. So I made Hi Thyme and his four daughters, doing my best to randomize their appearance and chemistry within limited parameters to achieve a good balance between providing the range of spares with good chemistry without deterministic matchmaking, plopped them down in the neighborhood, and watched them meet boys. (I'm afraid I did make Justine a lesbian out of the box. Player favoritism, plus it simplified things if I didn't make them tell me what gender orientation they wanted.) It worked spectacularly, with Spring and Summer practically knocking each other down to get Tommy Ottomas's attention, Rosemary bringing John Amos Aerius home from school on her second day, everybody trying out Emilio Casa and finding him wanting, and triple boltage out the wazoo. I have to call this one of my more successful experiments, even with (or even because of) Spring's untimely accidental death. During the course of play I decided the birth order of the girls based on their relationships with the Lonely Boys and each other, and I sent them off to college (or would have, in Spring's case - she died the morning of the day she was supposed to leave) in synch with the boys they chose, so that Summer and Justine were teens for a much shorter time than Rosemary, who got her full teen stage.

I couldn't have done any of that with teens formally divided into two stages. I'd have had to decide when I built them who was more likely to orient toward the older Lonely Boys and the younger ones, and I would have had to either design them more deterministically or create more than four Thyme girls. The long lifestage and the capacity to send teens to college at any point gave me exactly the flexibility I needed.

It's true that a split lifestage with romantic interactions limited would mean I wouldn't get situations like the one with Frank Munny and Tina Traveller, in which Tina's autonomous behavior has caused Frank to fall for her even though he's enough days older that it squicks me, but you know what? Teens behave inappropriately once in awhile, and that creates a story conflict I can use. So it's all good. The split lifestage would also mean that the programmers would have had to decide for their players which romantic interactions were and were not allowed, and that would mean inevitably getting it wrong for a good chunk of the potential audience. I would feel much, much squickier about a program-imposed interaction which I didn't think should cross the middle/high school barrier than I do about Tina's pursuit of Frank and his eventual surrender.

Don't want your younger teens to drive? Make them walk or call a cab. Don't want your adults to go from looking 25 to looking 75? Go on a CC hunt and give them mid-life makeovers. Can't find the CC you want? Make your own, or make do. Even with Maxis content you can change hairlines, swap out young-looking pony-tails for mature chignons or perms, change makeup and clothing habits, add glasses and change their style, swap out the sports car for a mini-van, mini-skirts for mom-jeans, tank tops for ties.

The software is an enabler. The key to this game is the wetware between your ears.

[victory101]

Officially, Mermaid Cove is closed, but when you visit it via the Wayback Machine, at least some of the downloads are still available! Here is her download page with links to AF and AM hair with gray and/or white streaks. Again, unbinned. Hope that helps, even if the quality isn't the best (they're all old-ish hairs, from circa 2006). :)

I appreciate the thought, but that link doesn't work :)

ETA: Apparently I can't spell today -_-

[iCad]

I agree that teenhood is far too long. But I tend to think -- although I may be giving them too much credit -- that the devs did this deliberately so that players could in fact simulate a "young teen" and an "older teen" stretch of 7 days each. That they didn't create a "young teen" body shape and an "older teen" body shape might have something to do with the fact that boys and girls mature differently? Generally, girls physically (and often emotionally/psychologically) mature more quickly than boys do and also have more obvious physical evidence of having done so. Girls tend to (at least) start to develop breasts and hips and start their periods around 13ish, so even though they may still be emotionally young, their bodies are, indeed, ready to go, so to speak. Some girls start even earlier. I, like a previous poster, had to start wearing a B-cup bra and had to start wearing "junior" size clothing (stuff meant for teens) because I had fully-developed hips, all when I was around 9. I had my first period a month or two before my 10th birthday. All of it was mortifyingly embarassing for me at the time, but...Hey, it happens. (And I was a skinny little thing as a kid, so my "development" had nothing to do with being fat.) Boys, on the other hand, while they'll often acquire the ability to ejaculate fairly young -- usually, again, around 13ish or so -- they don't show much outward evidence of physical/sexual maturation until later, when they can grow facial hair and their bodies become more maturely muscular. And while I have heard of 15/16-year-old guys who can grow beards and need to shave daily if they want to be clean-shaven and my own son started shaving every few days when he was about 15 or so, for many guys, that doesn't happen until they're in their late teens/eariy 20s. Or even later. Heck, one of my good friends, who's in his 40s like me, STILL can't grow a beard, no matter how hard he tries, nor does he have much in the way of body hair...although that might have more to do with the fact that he's mostly Navajo with a dash of Mexican thrown in, both ethnicities not known for surpluses of body hair. :) (He has gorgeous long black hair on his head, though, which I love to play with. :) )

But anyway, I tend to think the logistics of realistically portraying, physically, a "tween" stage might have been difficult. Because to realistically portray it, you'd need different body shapes for the genders and, to be really realistic, perhaps different behaviors as well, to realistically the simulate the differential rates of emotional/psychological development that the genders tend to display as well. I don't think I'd want a tween stage unless it WAS significantly different than both the child and teen stage. AND I'd want the "real" teen stage to be shorter, if there was a tween stage.

All that said, I have Inteen in my game, so that when the 2nd week of teenhood hits, my pixels have, in my mind, achieved growed-up-ness. Basically, they've turned 18, and Inteen gives them all the "adult" stuff, meaning adult-track jobs, not attending school anymore, the ability to move out, all the romantic interactions including the possibility of pregnancy, etc. So for me, the first week of teenhood is all the teenhood they get and, at least in my head, that's the stretch when they're young teens, still dependent on parents and such but also fairly independent. Like, they can cook for themselves. (My daughter became the chief cook in our household when she was 12ish because she truly enjoys cooking/baking...and does it better than either I or my housemate does it. :lol: She just turned 15 a couple of weeks ago.) And they can have a teen-track part time job because I myself got my first job, working at the local library shelving books for a couple of hours a day when I was 13. But I don't, for instance, let them drive, although the game allows them to do so. I will let them go out on dates once they're a few days into teenhood -- which in my mind would be when they're 14ish -- but I won't let them do any more than kiss chastely until they're about a day shy of the second teen week. So, basically, I treat them like tweens at first and then give them more freedoms as they progress toward the second week of teenhood, at which point they are a "Young Adult" in my mind, even if they don't go to college, and have all adult "benefits."

Now, the fact that a young teen immediately looks like an older teen is a little bothersome to me, but I also do like a previous poster does, dressing the younger ones differently and giving them "younger" hairstyles and accessories and not letting the girls wear makeup until they're getting close to the second teen week. Once they hit the second week, both genders get more grown-up clothing and hairstyles, the girls get makeup and more grown-up jewelry if they're the jewelry-wearing type, and the boys get body hair and some sparse stubble (because often that's all teens can grow, the poor dears) and maybe some piercings to further differentiate them from their younger counterparts, if they're the piercing type.

On the other hand, I DON'T make my adults look progressively older. I don't know why, but the insta-aging at the adult/elder transition has never particularly bothered me. In fact, I suppose that the "aging" I do with teens I do mostly to make the teen stage more interesting to me, not because I'm particularly trying to be "realistic." Because otherwise I think it's very much too long and I just want them to grow the hell up already. :lol:

[Macaroodle]

I appreciate the thought, but that link doesn't work :)

ETA: Apparently I can't spell today -_-

Oops, sorry! It should work now. Thanks for telling me!

[omglo]

When I think of having more life stages, what's appealing is that there could be all sorts of new interactions. I'd love my toddlers to grow into preschoolers who got taught to tie their shoes and write their name. There could be more rites of passages and interactions for the other stages too.

[Peni Griffin]

Oh, thank you, macaroodle! I've always regretted that Hairfish's site went away before I got into the Sims - she was my favorite creator for Sims1 for certain kinds of content.

[gazania]

Okay, middle-aged hair... Here (http://www.modthesims.info/d/143189) are base game recolors of the OFB perm with some gray hair in it. It's unbinned, by the way.

Officially, Mermaid Cove is closed, but when you visit it via the Wayback Machine, at least some of the downloads are still available! Here (http://web.archive.org/web/20081217120150/http://www.hairfish.com/mermaidcove/) is her download page with links to AF and AM hair with gray and/or white streaks. Again, unbinned. Hope that helps, even if the quality isn't the best (they're all old-ish hairs, from circa 2006). :)

ETA: fixed link- thanks, victory! :)

One thing I would love to see are more retextured hair of styles like these. D. J Mur's version is very nice of the OFB perm, but perhaps a more modern version, a litle smoother ...

But if I go on, I fear I'll be directed into the WCIF section. :) And I'm not that great with Sim PE to try it myself.

If I recall, Mermaid Cove also had bags for under the eyes. I see there are bags here, too, for adult female:

http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=241762

And some interesting middle-aged features here ...

http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=246697

There are some slight salt- and pepper- hairstyles for men on MTS as well. Not overdone (some really go over the top) ... subtle and smooth:

http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=472583

There are several links in the Overview.

I find some "middle-aged" features a little TOO exaggerated ... particularly those Maxis wrinkles. (C'mon ... grant me a BIT of fantasy, please!) . But the links above don't seem too bad.

I wouldn't have minded seeing an extra stage or two myself, by the way, particularly middle-aged, perhaps ages 4 - 5 and a brief pre-teen stage. Perhaps in Sims 4 ... 5 ... 25. :)

[fruitsymphony]

I did try to make a grey/brown hair recolor. I uploaded it
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/89037828/grey2.package
if someone wants to test it.( It looks blurry in my game but perhaps that is because I don't have a graphics card.)

[Sunbee]

The stage I'd like is the middle-aged stage. Seems like sims hit retirement age a little early, on the other hand, elderhood cuts in at about the right point for menopause.
Middle-aged, I'd like to come with the option to change aspiration and turn-offs, as at mid-uni. Pregnancy chances would end altogether at about fifty, just as it does now, and the real age up to elder at sixty-five. So, I'd take ten days from the elder stage and ten from the adult stage. The elder stage would then vary from one day to whatever it currently does minus ten. At midlife, a sim could retire but they'd only get part, maybe 50%, of the retirement they'd get by waiting til elder.

[maxon]

Oh, thank you, macaroodle! I've always regretted that Hairfish's site went away before I got into the Sims - she was my favorite creator for Sims1 for certain kinds of content.
She was a quality recolourer though I didn't always like her choices. However, I still have a lot of her stuff if you want something in particular. I have those middle aged hairs, for example.

[joandsarah77]

fruitsymphony I'll try your hair. I have every salt and pepper type hair I've come across in the last however many years sims 2 has been out including everything from Mermaid Cove. I’m wondering why more streaked typed hairs haven’t been made. Someone recently made me a grey streaked hair by combining the brown pooklet version my sim was wearing with the grey version. I don't have that uploaded but I might be able to find the link on her journal that she put up for me.

Although the idea of more life stages is nice, like Peni Griffin said, the programming realities make it impractical and for the most part I think using your own rules, cc and mods is the best way to achieve much of this. Middle age still would have been nice and not too hard to achieve though as it would have continued to use an existing body type.

just when my Adult Sims reached the point where they can finally start enjoying life and be able to woohoo anytime they want instead of skilling, bam! they get grey hair, bent backs and rasp voices I'd love for them to have 10 more days till the next age stage.

Well you know you can stop that right? You can turn their aging off, use elixcer or put on an aging mod. I have both a double aging mod so adults have 60 days as well as a hack that lets me turn individual sims ages off or on. EA won't be doing any more with this game, so it's up to us to make it what we want.

[DigitalSympathies]

When I was a preteen, we had kids showing up drunk for tests, kids went out to smoke during lunch breaks, there was a girl who had a baby, etc, etc. Then when I moved, it was totally different, and then again, I move to another country and bam, the kids act really mature. Around here, it all depends on the area, but in my neighbourhood which I'm moving out of soon, they're pretty mature. My sister's about to become a tween and she's still pretty normal, thank God. My brother, who's just in his teens, is most concerned with dance and performance right at this moment - he has a love for the stage. I think it all depends on the area and the influences, what country you're in, etc. I'm not American, by the way. This all took place outside of there.

That being said, I do use some preteen meshes popular on the exchange, with my recolours, as well as height changes, for when the kid hits the twilight days of their childhood years. Teenagers start off a bit shorter and with some custom meshes as well, and work their way into whatever style. I remember a long, long time before I found this website, my friend and I on another site had successfully figured out how to make a four-to-six-year-old sim, but it proved really glitchy and ended up destroying the game we were experimenting in because it replaced the toddler stage. I was just the tester and the advice-giver, he had all of the elbow grease-type stuff.

For middle aged sims, I usually do end up dressing them differently. My biggest pet peeve is all of the female clothing is so very . . . non-40-to-50-something for adults. There are very few plain t-shirts or sweaters, very few non-flashy pants and stuff, you know, that I really long for. I also started using some CC wrinkles and effects as they age, and put a difficulty slope on them getting a new job if they quit their careers.

[TortureTheNannies]

I agree with Ella's request in original post.. and like you all did, request the middle age group. On the other hand, why i never asked for this myself? It looks like EA did a balanced job of simplifying real aging with this metamorphisis. It seems the kids go from eight to sixteen overnight. However, real children fit into that stage where they have the curvy body but no desire to get the mind that an older teen would have with curves. On the other hand, the mind-body imbalance can be reversed too. If i had to program all the different behaviors, I'd pull my own hair out. And as others have written, a middle age would people who are still young looking, but have teens and no desire to have another baby. that would change our family sims a great deal.

I hope someone treated Ella's request like a WCIF, although life stages seem beyond the scope of MTS creations. I'm sorry, I don't know where to find what she wants. I'd simply use the wants and certain outfits to suggest an age.

[joandsarah77]

This wasn't a wcif thread, I thought it was just chat.

[maxon]

For middle aged sims, I usually do end up dressing them differently. My biggest pet peeve is all of the female clothing is so very . . . non-40-to-50-something for adults. There are very few plain t-shirts or sweaters, very few non-flashy pants and stuff, you know, that I really long for. I also started using some CC wrinkles and effects as they age, and put a difficulty slope on them getting a new job if they quit their careers.
Why? Do you think older people have trouble finding work? I would have thought it was the other way round but maybe that's too much of a generalisation.

[joandsarah77]

Hmm what is 40-50's clothing? I wear jeans and a nice t shirt most of the time unless I'm just at home and right now it's track pants and a sweatshirt top. (It’is winter over here and I am smack bang in the middle of that age group) I also have lots of things like that in game, as well as nice dresses and skirts from this site and people's LJ's/Dream Widths and a multitude of great cc theme threads on GOS. Where are you looking for your cc at at?

[Phoeberg]

Why? Do you think older people have trouble finding work? I would have thought it was the other way round but maybe that's too much of a generalisation.
I've seen a lot on the news, in newspapers etc. about older people who have been made redundant and have been unable to find new jobs for various reasons, such as employers believing they lack technological skills that younger candidates might have simply because they're older. Given the choice between a 25 year old and a 45 year old a lot of employers would apparently choose the younger candidate. In the UK 60% of 25 year olds who lost their job would be back at work within a year compared to just 40% of 50 years olds.

Back on topic, I would have liked a life stage between child and teen too. Not necessarily a long lifestage, maybe four or five days which could have been taken off the teen life stage. I always imagine the child life stage to equate to elementary school age and the teen life stage to high school. A 'pre-teen' one could have been the equivalent to junior high/middle school age, maybe 12-14. Still, I agree with what some others have said here; it's not so hard to dress teens to look younger or older depending on what you want.

[Darby]

Why? Do you think older people have trouble finding work?

In many cases, yes. Employers would rather hire a recent college grad, train them, and pay far less than the salary an older worker with years of experience doing the same thing would command.

Thanks to everyone who posted links to salt-and-pepper hairs and things. I particularly like the facial hair with touches of grey!

[rogue_55]

Just for the record everyone - I was not trying to sound like a pervert and in no way do I think it is perverted to request a real life thing like a pre-teen age group. However, since from reading some answers I guess pre-teen (10-12) was not the right word to use. Perhaps young teen or early teen - I was referring to girls around 13-15.

I would like to apologise for my other comment. Although, I don't think you were trying to sound like a pervert, I still misunderstood what you were asking for. I hope you will forgive my ignorance.

After reading everyone's comments and considering that the original sims didn't have teens or elders at all, I am thankful to have them as they are in the sims 2. Many of you have some good ideas that will help me to make my sims ages more realistic. Like some of you have mentioned, I already dress my younger teens more child-like. I only let the girls wear very subtle makeup or none at all until they get older. I also don't let the younger teens drive.

[StrangeTownChick]

The only problem I can see for dressing teens as younger in the first days of the stage is for people who like to take birthday pictures or film their kids growing up. Who knows what the teens will wind up in? Other than that, it seems a pretty good system.

[ella_in_wonderland]

I don't understand why you're getting so angry Simonut.

[iCad]

I see no reason to apologize for what I said in my post # 4 I stick to what I said no matter how many people "Disagree" maybe I will get the world record for disagree points (lol ) Ella in wonderland said "Curvy child" like a thirteen year old. Then "After the Fact" she comes back and say she did not mean that. ( post #32 ) Why do that not surprise me ?

With all due respect, many 13-year-old girls ARE curvy yet are still considered children. It's not a case of sexualizing children but simply a statement of fact. As I said in my post, I was wearing a B-cup bra and had hips, a perfect little hourglass figure, by the time I was 10. I certainly didn't ACT mature, but my body was, indeed, fully mature. And I know I'm not the only girl who developed early. If the OP had been asking for curvy 6-year olds, that's one thing. Curvy 13-year-olds are entirely another matter.

And 13 isn't really that early to develop curves. My daughter was born prematurely and so she's always lagged behind a bit in terms of physical development. She just turned 15, but she's got fledgling curves now. And she's a year or two behind most of her peers in terms of physical development. In fact, she's sort of got the opposite problem than the one we're talking about. Instead of early growing up, she's been frustrated by people treating her like a much younger kid because she looks younger than she is. Our household all went out for dinner for her 15th birthday...and she was given a children's menu, meant for kids under 12. She understands why it happens, but it still pisses her off that it happens. :)

Of course, I'm speaking of physical maturity here, not emotional/psychological maturity, which are sometimes (but not always!) two entirely different things. Basically, our species's "early" sexual development compared to when kids are expected to act like grown-ups is a result of the fact that, as a species, we have artificially extended childhood and the length of time we allow kids for "growing up" and acting like kids in order to make the length of childhood align with the artificially extended lifespan we've created via technology, medical technology in particular. In fact, the entire concept of "teenhood," a long and gentle transition between childhood and adulthood, is pretty much a modern invention, meant to lengthen the amount of time available to educate young people in a more technologically-oriented society. Not very long ago at all, 14 was considered the age of majority. In some places, it's still the age of consent.

Given all that, I didn't take the OP's original post as "perverted" at all, but simply as a request for more of a realistic transition in terms of body shape between childhood and teenhood. Nothing to get all riled up about.

[omglo]

Actually, to me, it reads like you misunderstood, Simonut. The original post and post 32 are basically the same. One just had more clarification.

[ella_in_wonderland]

I am definately not trying to sexualize children. All I'm saying is that Maxis could have added a new age group to the game and showed the development of a child physically, more realistically. This is something that happens in real life in case you hadn't noticed. And I'm terribly sorry about your student and I can only imagine what she is going through, but I don't see how this thread could be inspired from or encourage child abuse.

EDIT: And yes, there are bad people out there who exploit childrens' innocence but, being a seventeen-year-old girl, I am not one of them. So please don't accuse me of being one!

[gazania]

I did NOT interpret your post to mean that you want 10-year-old girls who look like a Playboy model, Ella. I understood it to mean that you wanted girls and boys in the very earliest stages of puberty. Not quite a child; not quite a woman or man.

However, we now live in such a sensitive time that people are concerned that portraying children in that stage, even as pixel dollies, would be fodder for pedophiles playing the game. Never mind that from what I read, supposedly, there are ways to do that already. Someone once actually posted a couple of pictures from a site of these child-woman Sims on another site. They looked like those heavily-made-up, sexily-dressed girls you read about concerning certain beauty pageants ... only much worse. Much, much worse. Enough people complained to the site's host after that to remove the site ... but I'm sure there are other more sleazy, secret ones.

How terrible that we live in such an age. How grotesque that people associate a developing innocent young lady or gentleman in such a sexual light. I believe that your comment was in no way meant to be interpreted that way.

What type of world do we live in where I recently saw people object to Sims 2 children in underpants without undershirts? Back when I was a child (in ancient times), the only time I wore an undershirt was under a thin shirt or during the winter, to keep warm!

On a related topic, I do believe there is an Italian site that has tried to portray tweens, but they might have been forced to remove the downloads because of the furor. I suppose portraying tweens may be very difficult, indeed.

[maxon]

In many cases, yes. Employers would rather hire a recent college grad, train them, and pay far less than the salary an older worker with years of experience doing the same thing would command.
Maybe it's my experience then - my impression, at least in my line of work, is completely the opposite.

[labellavienna]

I don't know about most people but this entire thread is seriously creeping me out, oh let's just have three pages of text dedicated to casually discussing the bodies and shapes of 10 year old kids! Lol

I also disagree that Maxis needs to implement an age group for the "in between" stages of adolescence and puberty. It's not like one of those fundamental things that are missing from the game like learning to walk or stressing out over work etc.

[DigitalSympathies]

Society today is too easily offended. It's like on Tumblr, I saw a headline: "Celebrities: They carry baskets at the supermarket JUST LIKE US!"

*headdesks*

And then three posts down there was somebody getting offended over the people laughing at this headline.

[iCad]

@>> @ ella in wonderland > hahaha I am not angry, but what disturb me is to see people who seem to forget about many children in the "real world" who have and still is suffering from child abuse, from people who have taken advantage of their child-like mind and body.

I think we all agree that child abuse, be it physical or sexual, is reprehensible, and I doubt that anyone has forgotten that. My best friends are foster parents, known in the area for their ability to deal with and turn around the "tough cases." Many of those cases are child abuse victims. Their two daughters, whom they adopted, are sisters who were physically and sexually abused by both of their parents. The older one was old enough to remember what happened to her, and she will tell you horror stories because she's healed enough, after almost 10 years with her new parents, that she CAN talk about it.

But that doesn't change the fact that girls, in particular often physically mature well before they emotionally/psychologically mature. That some people take advantage of this fact of life in order to do harm really has no bearing on whether or not one would like this realistically portrayed in the game. I think that's why people are saying that you've misunderstood.

I know the Sims is only a Pixel game, but it is really sad to see someone say they want children to have curves and look more like a Teen.

Except that the OP didn't say that. She said that she wanted 13-year-olds (young teens) to look like 13-year-olds, not like 17-year-olds (older teens). And many, perhaps most, 13-year-old girls DO have at least the beginning of curves if they're not already all the way there yet. In other words, she simply wanted a more realistic transition FROM child TO teen, in the same way that a lot of people would like a more realistic/less sudden transition from adult to elder(ly) by having a "middle-aged" life stage.

Again I see no reason what- so- ever to apologize for what I have said in all my posts here, I am a person who try to be honest and stick with my conviction. ( Be true to self. )

I don't think you need to apologize for your opinion. It's your opinion to have and we're all free to have opinions. But I do think that you have misinterpreted the OP's intent and are putting words into her mouth that she didn't actually say and then taking her to task for it, which is really kind of rude.

[Josepina]

Maybe someone mentioned this but there is a less curvy teen body shape. If you make them a little shorter than other teens then it is like a middle age group. There aren't many clothes for this body so it would only be worth it if you are keen on doing some conversions. A less curvy teen might also sound better than a curvier child.

BTW I browsed around the net trying to find out what age children stop believing in santa and the median is about 9. Does that sound wrong to you? I was about 9 but I was also quite shy, naive and we moved a lot so I figured I just didn't get the word. Maybe parents who sit around on the net discussing this sort of thing don't have time to raise informed children.

[TortureTheNannies]

There is an old project to produce teen fem and adult fem body shapes. However, that does not complete another body stage. Also, female body shapes (and maybe males too) look more varied and less predictable than sim bodies.

[joandsarah77]

I think teen sim clothing meshes which are somewhat more androgynous used with stretch Skelton to shorten the sim could be useful for the more in-between look. That is one thing, but if you say curvy child, that immediately springs to my mind at least a child sim (Who look about 8) with added boobs. I really don't think that was what was meant, but using the word ‘curvy child’ is an unfortunate word combination. Apart from real world sensitivity on the matter there are also some rather horrible boobed sim child meshes around(mostly they were on the exchange) with some equally disgusting stories, one I read was about a boobed child sim being raped by some passing male adult. :wtf: Things like that leave a very bad taste in my mouth and what I immediately thought of when I first read 'curvy child'.

[Darby]

Maybe it's my experience then - my impression, at least in my line of work, is completely the opposite.

My understanding of this is based mostly on my husband's experience in computer systems administration, so I don't doubt there are other realities in other fields. I'm glad the experience that comes with age is still valued in your line of work. That's as it should be!

And to stay OT, I'll chime in with my completely immaterial opinion that the devs did a great job with the age groups overall. I'd love to have had a middle age, but heck, after years of playing Sims 2, I'm still over the moon over the fact that sims have an entire lifespan, birth to death! The absolutely most discouraging thing about the original game, for me, was the fact that families could never progress.

[ella_in_wonderland]

I think teen sim clothing meshes which are somewhat more androgynous used with stretch Skelton to shorten the sim could be useful for the more in-between look. That is one thing, but if you say curvy child, that immediately springs to my mind at least a child sim (Who look about 8) with added boobs. I really don't think that was what was meant, but using the word ‘curvy child’ is an unfortunate word combination. Apart from real world sensitivity on the matter there are also some rather horrible boobed sim child meshes around(mostly they were on the exchange) with some equally disgusting stories, one I read was about a boobed child sim being raped by some passing male adult. :wtf: Things like that leave a very bad taste in my mouth and what I immediately thought of when I first read 'curvy child'.

Yes, I agree that was a rather risque mistake ("curvy child") on my part. I apologize for that.

[maxon]

Apart from real world sensitivity on the matter there are also some rather horrible boobed sim child meshes around(mostly they were on the exchange) with some equally disgusting stories, one I read was about a boobed child sim being raped by some passing male adult. :wtf: Things like that leave a very bad taste in my mouth and what I immediately thought of when I first read 'curvy child'.
Oh I know, some of those were absolutely godawful. When I still visited the Exchange, I reported a few of those.

[McChoclatey]

I wasn't curvy when I was 13! :cry: *sniffle sniffle* it's just not fair *sniffle* y'know?

Anyway, on a more serious note, maybe you can make a request to some of the modders who like to work on teen body shapes. I think a pre-teen shape is a pretty rare piece of custom content, unless, y'know you'd prefer to use some of those boob'd skins on the Sims 2 exchange. I never liked them, but that's the closest I can think of when it comes to seeing CC similar to the attempt at creating a more preteen-esque body shapes. Hmmm...maybe clothing could work for you, perhaps? StretchSkeleton to make 'em a bit taller?

I dunno, I think your best bet is requesting.

[iCad]

Yes, I agree that was a rather risque mistake ("curvy child") on my part. I apologize for that.

Except that, at least in your original post, you never actually put those two words together. You said:

I was wondering if there were any meshes/hacks out there that make children (girls) look a little bit more curvy, like a thirteen-year-old would.

So, I see no reason for you to apologize for anything. Don't apologize for not saying what people think you said. :) With that final clause there, without any further clarification, it was very clear that you weren't looking for C-cupped 6-year-olds but rather for more realistic-looking young teens, especially once you said that it annoyed you that young teens look like 17-year-olds.

I dunno, call me stubborn and aggressively pedantic because I can certainly be both at times -- Friends of mine who are into astrology tell me that it's because I'm an Aries/Taurus hybrid, born on the cusp -- but I think that if you're going to communicate with people in written form rather than in spoken words, then it's of vital importance to, actually read what people say and then respond to what they actually said, not to what you think they might mean. Maybe I'm overly-sensitive about this issue, myself, because as a Christian who disagrees with what a lot of other Christians think about certain issues and who gets into a lot of debates with them both online and face-to-face, I get words put into my mouth often, so that people can then try to beat my arguments down. To me, it's more forgivable when discussing things face-to-face because human memory is fallible, and it's very easy to not remember exactly what someone said or didn't say. But when you can easily scroll up and look at what someone actually said and their words are clear and unambiguous and the person obviously isn't trolling just to mess with people...Well, there's just no excuse. And on a written forum when someone does that to someone else, that's when big blow-ups tend to happen. Over something that no one actually said. Doesn't make much sense, does it? :)

ALL that said, you know what would be really cool? It would be really cool if there could be a physical transition somewhere in the teen age range. Like, children would age up to a young teen body shape and then maybe at the end of the first week would "pop" into the older teen body shape currently used for the entire stretch of teenhood. Kind of like pregnancy pops. Girls would get curvier, boys would maybe get more muscular or something.

In theory, it'd be easy to add the necessary morphs to teen meshes, I think. I've gotten pretty good at adding pregnancy morphs to adult and teen meshes, myself. The snag would be programming the transition, which I have NO idea how to do, if it could be done at all. Maybe some programming could be hijacked from the programming that governs pregnancy pops, which is based on tokens, I believe, but I don't know. But it'd be cool! And maybe something similar could be done to make adult bodies look a little more middle-aged at some point in the adult life stage, too.

[Peni Griffin]

It'd be cool if teen girls shot past teen boys so you had that awkward period when all the girls have gotten their growth spurts and the boys haven't. But in play I don't find I miss it much. Though I could use it to explain the situations in which a teen girl is chasing a teen boy who's too old for her, and he lets her catch him...That doesn't work the other way around, though.

[Darby]

So, I see no reason for you to apologize for anything... <snip>

Hear hear, to the two paragraphs that start there, iCad! *applauds*

(I'm sorry - I have nothing to add to keep this strictly OT, but I needed to respond with more than a click to the agree button.)

[socherish]

@ >> Ella in wonderland >>Give me a break here Please ! Let children be children, why on earth would you want a child ( girl ) looking curvy? A child is a child and a thirteen year old is just that a "Teen" I do not think it is unrealistic for a child to look like a child the way Maxis have it in the game.

Sorry I may sound rude here, but you wanting a child to look curvy is a bit unrealistic to me. I can see a child being or getting fat as the game have it but "Not Curvy" And if truth be told yes you do make yourself look like what you said in your very own post above a pervert.

I do not care if anyone Agree or not Agree that is your call. But sometime people need to heard the honest truth. A child ( girl ) being Curvy what will be next ? :blink:

I had curves at 13. More than some girls in my school have now. And alot of girls I knew also had little curves at that time. My baby cousin is 10, we always tease her because she has two mosquito bites :p. Does that mean the "honest truth" is she doesn't look like child? Boobs don't make children look like adults. They look like children with boobs. To think that some curves will magically make a child look adult seems more pervy to me than realizing that alot of children do have them, because what normal adult would look at a preteen, at their young baby face, and think the kid looks like an adult just because they have curves? And to say it's unrealistic is just false. Some people like a little extra diversity and realism in their games. Though I don't really mind not having a preteen like stage, I certaintly don't think the OP is "pervy" for wanting it.

[cupcakescankill]

PEOPLE,
TO MAKE PRETEENS IN SISM 2,HACK THE CHILDREN TO ACT LIKE TEENS,GIVE THEM BIG BOOBED CLOTHES AND TEEN MAKEUP AND CUTE HAIRSTYLES AND YOU`RE READY! just type in google sims 2 hacked kids and find some videos.Some of them look like preteens

[M.M.A.A.]

PEOPLE,
TO MAKE PRETEENS IN SISM 2,HACK THE CHILDREN TO ACT LIKE TEENS,GIVE THEM BIG BOOBED CLOTHES AND TEEN MAKEUP AND CUTE HAIRSTYLES AND YOU`RE READY! just type in google sims 2 hacked kids and find some videos.Some of them look like preteens

Ok, I think you've gone too far with the 'GIVE THEM BIG BOOBED CLOTHES'. If that actually happened, I think all preteens would look like tortured children forced to participate in a beauty contest, with breast jobs. No, a preteen is still considered to be a child, but their body becomes somewhat more defined, males become a bit more muscular with some change in voice, females a bit more curvier with a change in voice too, but not to the extent of 'bodybuilders' or 'supermodels'.

IRL, this when usually the menstrual cycle form females start, and where males get an increase in their sex-drive (if that's what its called). Of curse, we can't have those in the game (unless with mods\) due to the fact it is a sensitive subject. Bear in mind that little children also play this game and I am sure their parents would not want them to learn about these things at such an early age.

[maxon]

ALL that said, you know what would be really cool? It would be really cool if there could be a physical transition somewhere in the teen age range. Like, children would age up to a young teen body shape and then maybe at the end of the first week would "pop" into the older teen body shape currently used for the entire stretch of teenhood. Kind of like pregnancy pops. Girls would get curvier, boys would maybe get more muscular or something.

In theory, it'd be easy to add the necessary morphs to teen meshes, I think. I've gotten pretty good at adding pregnancy morphs to adult and teen meshes, myself. The snag would be programming the transition, which I have NO idea how to do, if it could be done at all. Maybe some programming could be hijacked from the programming that governs pregnancy pops, which is based on tokens, I believe, but I don't know. But it'd be cool! And maybe something similar could be done to make adult bodies look a little more middle-aged at some point in the adult life stage, too.
You'd link it to the days left counter - we know you can do that because Jase did it for Inteen. You could also perhaps use the height modifier. It'd be a big hack though and likely conflict with Inteen.

[BeckyBoo8]

I wish there were more life stages. Like in a Sims series I watch on Youtube, Alyssa's son Josh turned 5 so in that episode he was a child instead of a toddler now. He looked more like a 5th grader than a 5-year-old.

[simmer22]

The stretchskeleton cheat is a bit nice. I tend to use it at about 0.8-9 on a toddler for 1 year, regular toddler for 2-3 years, 1.1 on toddler for 4 years, then 0.85 for child as 5-6 years, perhaps 0.9 for 7 years, regular child for 8-11, 1.1-1.15 on child for 11-12-13. I think the teens look more like 14/15-18/19 years old, so the 13-14 years is a bit shady whether I use a scaled-down teen or a scaled-up child.

For storytelling/pictures I also use some handy deco babies for newborn, and tend to use the infants for a more mobile age at around 5 to 12 months.

I do wish there was a pre-teen age (10-13 years) and an age between toddler and child (4-7 years), and perhaps an age between infant and toddler (around 1 year)

[Simsica]

It'd be a big hack though and likely conflict with Inteen.

As if that is hard :P

Seriously, though, a big hack - anything involving new body shapes would require new clothes for the shape. The reason why I don't use Warlok's shapes - besides the fact that only the females are "shaped". Nothing half-way like this has ever appealed to me. Not to mention the reasons why it is half-way like that.

If clothes can be made to fit without actual re-meshing, this would not be as impractical, though. Those that made clothing would know - is it possible to use the same meshes for say a tween and a teen?

[DigitalSympathies]

Those that made clothing would know - is it possible to use the same meshes for say a tween and a teen?

The necks (not to mention the animations) wouldn't line up if you took an Exchange tween mesh and stuck it on a teen's body. Too short as well. At least, that's what I think you're asking here. Ignore me if I'm wrong. :lol:

[maxon]

Seriously, though, a big hack - anything involving new body shapes would require new clothes for the shape. The reason why I don't use Warlok's shapes - besides the fact that only the females are "shaped". Nothing half-way like this has ever appealed to me. Not to mention the reasons why it is half-way like that.

If clothes can be made to fit without actual re-meshing, this would not be as impractical, though. Those that made clothing would know - is it possible to use the same meshes for say a tween and a teen?
Well, that's why I mentioned the stretch skeleton cheat - you could get some of the 'growing' to work with that. Wouldn't require new meshes though your kids would start out a little dumpy and get more slender with age. It would depend how much you used it. At 50% height, the fat effect is very noticeable but at 85% much less so.

[Simsica]

If the skeleton dimensions can be set in a BHAV, the hack could be made, and I believe it wouldn't even be that big. Well, depends on how many new groups you'd want.
But my -admittedly quick - search through Simantics variables (person data, object definition, etc.) didn't turn anything having to do with the body length/height.
Is there a cheat object containing the interaction to stretch skeleton?

[Katya Stevens]

Tutorial-of-sorts: Stretching a Skeleton (http://chickadeelee.livejournal.com/27149.html)

In-game cheat is "StretchSkeleton [x]" where [x] is the value you want a sim to get. 1 is the default (which in the post I linked to they defaulted to 5'9" for young adults to elders).

To change a sim's height in SimPE, it needs to be done from within the character's file (http://sims.ambertation.de/en/kb/entry/85/).

[gazania]

Ok, I think you've gone too far with the 'GIVE THEM BIG BOOBED CLOTHES'. If that actually happened, I think all preteens would look like tortured children forced to participate in a beauty contest, with breast jobs. No, a preteen is still considered to be a child, but their body becomes somewhat more defined, males become a bit more muscular with some change in voice, females a bit more curvier with a change in voice too, but not to the extent of 'bodybuilders' or 'supermodels'.

IRL, this when usually the menstrual cycle form females start, and where males get an increase in their sex-drive (if that's what its called). Of curse, we can't have those in the game (unless with mods\) due to the fact it is a sensitive subject. Bear in mind that little children also play this game and I am sure their parents would not want them to learn about these things at such an early age.

Agreed with the big-boobed ... anything. Most preteen females do NOT have big boobs. No matter what you do to make a child look older, most normal, slightly looser-fitting clothes should be fine enough. My 12-year old daughter certainly didn't run around provocatively dressed! Stretchskeleton should do the trick if this age group is truly a concern, IMO.

Secondly ... there's a bit of a "squick" factor with hacking a child to act like a teen for me. OK ... a HUGE "squick' factor. The game still considers them children, right? Do they still act like children in-game? The thought of a child-teen trying to make out with an adult is really crossing the line for me. Or am I mistaken?

[lauratje86]

Secondly ... there's a bit of a "squick" factor with hacking a child to act like a teen for me. OK ... a HUGE "squick' factor. The game still considers them children, right? Do they still act like children in-game? The thought of a child-teen trying to make out with an adult is really crossing the line for me. Or am I mistaken?

If a pre-teen sim is a child sim with a different body mesh to make them look a bit older then they still act like children, yes. They wouldn't be hacked to act like a teen, that's pretty much the point, as I understand it - people want a life stage where children look more like pre-teens/younger teens but don't have access to teenage interactions like the romantic interactions, getting jobs, driving etc. So really it's "anti-squick" as they look like young teens but don't interact romantically etc, unlike Maxis teens.

In my game I consider teen sims to be aged 12 - 20, so I have a slight squick factor as some of the 12-year olds do interact romantically with older teens and adults. They're not humans though, they're sims, to it doesn't really bother me. A 12 year old human kissing a 20-something year old human - wrong. A 12 yearday old sim kissing a 20-something year old sim - I'm OK with that.