When switiching active houesholds?

[WildPigeonChase]

I know when you switch active households in a neighborhood they lose their wishes, promises, opportunities, along with other things, but what exactly in that does it mean? I understand wishes/promises/opportunities aspect, but what does it mean for lifetime wishes? For example, my Sim is a private investigator, and his lifetime wish is to solve 35 crimes (Pervasive Private Eye). He has completed 13 so far, would switching households turn that back to zero? Or will he be assigned a completely different lifetime wish?

If so that would really stink. Would turning off aging and story progression stop that?

[twallan]

He has completed 13 so far, would switching households turn that back to zero?


Yes.


If so that would really stink. Would turning off aging and story progression stop that?

No.

The only way to resolve it is to use a mod that retains your dreams and opportunities when you switch households.

[MasterController] has an option to enable that ability for instance, but it only works if you switch households using that particular mod.

:)

[WildPigeonChase]

Yes.



No.

The only way to resolve it is to use a mod that retains your dreams and opportunities when you switch households.

[MasterController] has an option to enable that ability for instance, but it only works if you switch households using that particular mod.

:)

Darn, I was afraid of that. I don't know why EA would make something so dumb. Thanks though!

[eskie227]

Darn, I was afraid of that. I don't know why EA would make something so dumb. Thanks though!

Retaining dreams and opportunities consumes significant memory. If EA built that into every household, you would rapidly fill the game's allotted memory space and, well, bad things can happen. Even when using Twallan's mods to retain dreams and opportunities, there is a warning that excessive family switching will rapidly deplete resources. So EA designed within the constraints of its game engine and 32 bit memory space. Not really dumb, just realistic development choices.

You have the option of using a mod such as Twallan's to circumnavigate the limitation, used within reason.

[WildPigeonChase]

Retaining dreams and opportunities consumes significant memory. If EA built that into every household, you would rapidly fill the game's allotted memory space and, well, bad things can happen. Even when using Twallan's mods to retain dreams and opportunities, there is a warning that excessive family switching will rapidly deplete resources. So EA designed within the constraints of its game engine and 32 bit memory space. Not really dumb, just realistic development choices.

You have the option of using a mod such as Twallan's to circumnavigate the limitation, used within reason.

But in the the Sims 2 you could have dozens of families in a neighborhood. And TS2 was a much smaller game. I can see that allowing a seamless neighborhood-household gameplay could take up a lot of space, but since you can only play one family at a time anyway I don't see how it would be an issue.

[ButchSims]

But in the the Sims 2 you could have dozens of families in a neighborhood. And TS2 was a much smaller game. I can see that allowing a seamless neighborhood-household gameplay could take up a lot of space, but since you can only play one family at a time anyway I don't see how it would be an issue.Because, in the Sims 2, you only loaded one household at a time. With the Open World in Sims 3, the whole purpose was a dynamic town, so you didn't have to micromanage every household. You're not really just playing one family at a time. You are playing a whole town.

[eskie227]

Remember, unlike TS2, TS3 is operating as an open neighborhood with a story progression engine running. Imagine keeping story progression running and maintaining dream/opportunity/lifetime wish fulfillment going for multiple families. Every time you switch households, the one you left must continue to "evolve", so when, or if, you return to it, their lives have advanced, accumulating lifetime points, along with aging, births, deaths, and whatnot. Keep switching between several families, and start to imagine the kind of memory "bloat" that will result.

Just look at what automatic memories did to savegame file sizes. One week of a town of 80 residents filing away "memories" of their first bowel movement created massive file sizes. And those are just little bitty image files with labels to be kept in a database. Now, think of something far more complex like LTW, LTR, wishes, and opportunities. It does create stress on the game engine to manage this across multiple families.

Again, it can be done. Twallan has mods that provide the capability to do this. Still, even those mods will stress the core game engine, doing something it was not meant to do. If you're already running on a borderline machine, the performance hit may be intolerable. I'm running on a pretty robust machine, and I'm careful (OK, not always) how I employ mods and content that can even cause me potentially some lag or even unstable game play.

[WildPigeonChase]

Remember, unlike TS2, TS3 is operating as an open neighborhood with a story progression engine running. Imagine keeping story progression running and maintaining dream/opportunity/lifetime wish fulfillment going for multiple families. Every time you switch households, the one you left must continue to "evolve", so when, or if, you return to it, their lives have advanced, accumulating lifetime points, along with aging, births, deaths, and whatnot. Keep switching between several families, and start to imagine the kind of memory "bloat" that will result.

Just look at what automatic memories did to savegame file sizes. One week of a town of 80 residents filing away "memories" of their first bowel movement created massive file sizes. And those are just little bitty image files with labels to be kept in a database. Now, think of something far more complex like LTW, LTR, wishes, and opportunities. It does create stress on the game engine to manage this across multiple families.

Again, it can be done. Twallan has mods that provide the capability to do this. Still, even those mods will stress the core game engine, doing something it was not meant to do. If you're already running on a borderline machine, the performance hit may be intolerable. I'm running on a pretty robust machine, and I'm careful (OK, not always) how I employ mods and content that can even cause me potentially some lag or even unstable game play.

Since it's story progression mode that keeps everyone advancing, I would think that turning it off would solve the problem of massively increasing memory.

I just wish EA had made some sort of way to make it possible (without mods/unstable gameplay). Maybe a disable option for that. I don't know about most players, but I can't imagine just playing one family forever. That would get boring rather quickly, and really limit the playability of having all different types of Sims to mess with. You can switch neighborhoods, but then the families can't know each other.

[babele44]

I don't think that story progression has got a lot to do with what you describe. The default story progression is just some simulation that changes things randomly, kills Sims, marries them off, gives them skills, promotes them, moves them around town or emigrates them for good. It doesn't keep track of Sims' actual aspirations or progress in life.
If you see a Sim in the professional sports career working out in the gym it's not story progression that sends them there to further their career, it's metaautonomy, and their own autonomy pushes them to the work-out machine. And I don't even know whether the game really gives them skill points for using a skill object unless your own Sim is near them, which causes the other Sim to be drawn into high detail mode.
Memories on the other hand are created regardless of SP on or off. It's a horrible system the reason for which I have never understood. The default game does not encourage you to switch households und seems to be made such that you should consider your neighbours as some kind of lively decoration, so why give them memories for every fart they let out in the library?
I used to play the whole town up until Generations with the help of Awesome but my saves were suddenly growing disproportionately, even with memory creation disabled. I had to abandon that approach and now switch households only accasionally.

[twallan]

And I don't even know whether the game really gives them skill points for using a skill object unless your own Sim is near them, which causes the other Sim to be drawn into high detail mode.


Inactives do receive skill points during interactions just like actives. Their progression is a little different since the game does not update them as often though.

So it may appear as though they receive a bunch of levels at the same time, when in fact they have been performing the interaction all day.

:)