how to modify an aging mod, and updates on real-time pregnancies/aging...

My Mods:

I'll link to these first in case anyone wants to just swipe my mods and not bother with the tutorials. ;)

These are tested with all EPs except Supernatural. Though I imagine they'd work just fine anyway.



LH Real-time Aging Mod V.1

S: 1 SimDay = 1 year
M: 1 SimDay = 1 half-year (2 halfs/year)
N: 1 SimDay = 1 season (4 seasons/year)
L: 1 SimDay = 1 month (12 months/year)
E: 1 SimDay = 1 day (360 days/year)

LH Real-time Aging Mod V.2

S: 1 SimDay = 1 yr.
M: 1 SimDay = 1 season (4 seasons/year)
N: 1 SimDay = 1 month (12 months/year)
L: 1 SimDay = 1 fortnight (24 fortnights/year)
E: 1 SimDay = 1 week (48 weeks/year)

* aging mods are modified from a realistic aging mod by Absimilard at MATY (original - not mine).

And then you'll need preggy mods for your new timespan, so I have those here too:

LH Real-time Pregnancy Mods to match any one of those lengths above.

LH 36-day pregnancy

update, 6/26/17: sorry, I guess 4shared closed my old TS3 account. I reuploaded what I had installed in my own game, which was v.2 of my aging mod, and the 36-day pregnancy. Sorry, that's all I had saved from my TS3 stuff. But if that's not to your liking, I guess you can modify it by using the notes below. 

*** On How to Modify Aging and Preggy Mods ***

First off:

This assumes a very basic knowledge of s3pe. Like, enough to open a file and commit your changes, lol! If you worked with SimPe at all in Sims 2, you'll be good to go. If not even, this shouldn't be too hard to figure out.

With modding the aging mod, I figure it's not the modding part that's difficult, so much as which numbers to use.

On Modifying an Aging Mod:

The first thing to do in modding your own aging mod is decide the how short/long your lifespans will be in relation to each other. In the big picture. These are calculated in Sim-days.

Now get yourself a notebook and a sturdy calculator. For real, you need the calculator. I was *awesome* at advanced math in high school, and I had to force my brain around this one.

(But then, you know, it's also been a little while since high school, lol!)


First we'll have to wrap our brains around the concept of "SimDaysPerAgingYear".

An aging year is a unit of time that is kind of vague and doesn't really have any tangible relation to the game ages. The default value for an "aging year" is 8 (days), and I just left that as default in mine as well. Theoretically, you could change it. But I don't really know how it would make a difference, and we don't need to make this harder on ourselves, so I didn't change it. ;)

8 is a nicely divisible number, so let's take it as gospel then.

Okay? Good.

1.) make a chart!

This is a tedious (or else SUPERfun, if you're a dork like me!) step, but this will be useful to you later, and useful if you ever want to remember or describe what your aging stages are, or what they relate to. Make this chart in Sim days.

Also note, this will help you ensure that all your numbers are divisible by the same factor. They need to be! So change your numbers as you like, as long as your multiplication factors are consistent.

It should look similar to this:

Note the multiplication factors. You'll use that in a minute.

The (optional) in the 1SimDay= row just means that you can equate your lengths to real-time measurements (days, weeks, months, years, whatever), but you don't have to. Sim time is arbitrary - but *my* Sims' time on the other hand, is not. ;)

2.) aging stage length

Consider the "short" aging stage your default, even if it's not the one you'll be using. All of your longer stages will be multiplication factors of this smallest length, so this will be where you work from. The smallest common denominator.

Remember your basic algebra?

Where x = your AgeStageLength value, x = days / default aging year (8)

(Because remember that 8 was our default aging year.)

If you want to use numbers from my chart as an example:

using the baby stage, x = 0.5 / 8

x = 0.0625

example 2, child stage: x = 3.5 / 8

x = 0.4375

And so on...

Do that for each aging stage in your chart, straight down the "short" lifespan length (short baby, short toddler, short child, etc.). Remember, you don't need to worry about the longer stages, because they're going to be a multiplication factor of the short stage.

3.) Sim Days Per Aging Year

Remember your multiplication factors? You're going to use those now.

Short is your default still, so 8, in our case.

Whatever you multiplied from short to medium, do that again here.

Likewise, whatever you multiplied from medium to normal, do it again.

Mine look like this (just as you can see in the chart above):

8 = short
short x2 = 16 medium
medium x2 = 32 normal
normal x3 = 96 long
long x30 = 2880 epic

4.) Maximum Sim Days Per Aging Year

Default was about 96, if I recall. I went ahead and multiplied mine though, because with a superlong lifespan like I have, it seemed like something I should do. *shrugs*

Not sure what to advise on this one, lol!

Just don't change the others.

5.) Percent Chance of Elder Death

Note that this percent chance is *each day* after the minimum number of days you set for elders to live up above.

I do not believe you need to keep these as multiplication factors of each other like you needed to up above, but it might be a good idea anyway. Think about this chance in relation to how long you've made your lifespans. On my short lifespan, which is 65 days, an elder has a 9% chance of dying each day. On my epic, where the minimum lifespan is 23,400 days, the chance is only .025. If I recall, I did make my percentages by the same multiplication factor, just because it was easy to figure out what the proportional number should be.

Instead of multiplying, you'll divide here. So:

short = x%
medium = short% / 2
normal = medium% / 2
etc... however you had your multiplication factors set up

This might be something you want to play around with though. Statistically, it might work out that with such a low chance of elder death, after all those days, maybe they might never die, lol! I did pretty well in algebra; not so great in my college stats class. ;)

6.) Percent CAS Offset

This is the maximum number CAS will offset your newly made Sims from the bottom of their age bracket. Put one if you want one - or don't. I left mine at 28%, because I usually need to edit the ages anyway, and it doesn't really matter to me.

7.) Done!

Save, commit changes.

Load up the game (in a test hood!), and try out your age brackets! Use the generations sliders, and you should still be able to adjust the age brackets, within the multiplication factors you set. If you've made your calculations correctly, the numbers you see in game should match up with your chart!

And whoa boy, what an exciting moment that is! Let me tell you, lol!

***

On preggy mods: A trick: So you CAN figure out how far along your Sim is preggy in TS3. Do Master Controller > Status > Relationship, and it tells you how many hours along the pregnancy is, the father, and the gender of the baby. He-he, I know if Mariah and Micah are having a boy or a girl! :D

And on the topic of TS3 pregnancy, in my very long-term real-time preggy experiment, Mariah has been pregnant for 907 hours, which works out to just over 5 weeks, lol! So it is working... VERY slowly. (And preggy hours *do* transfer between hoods as well, because she's been through about five different moves by now, and the pregnancy is still going strong.) But that's what I wanted, I suppose. I'm just looking forward to dressing her up in all kinds of cute maternity clothes, when the time comes. For now, she's not even to the point of getting morning sickness yet! For now, if we're being realistic, she's probably only just found out she's pregnant at all, lol!

I also have my preggy mod modded, so that she'll get morning sickness at 8 weeks, and start showing at 12. Which I find a little more realistic, and also, for being preggy as long as she will be, I wanted to see some evidence of it a little sooner. I think the original creator made it so that she wouldn't get morning sickness until 12 weeks, and wouldn't show until 20 weeks.

Don't know about y'all, but IRL, women usually start puking up and showing a lot sooner than that! (TMI, sorry, lol!)

Pregnancy mods are *not* interchangeable from higher to lower. In a test hood, I took out the preggy mod, and though she was only 5 weeks along in real time, according to default pregnancies, 5 weeks is like 12 whole pregnancies overdue, lol!

So her belly popped, she adopted the preggy walk. But since she missed the cue for labor, which would have happened sometime around 72 hours (remember, she's at 715 or something), she just remained super-overdue pregnant, and I had no idea how to cue her labor. And still don't, actually. So the point is, if you use this super-long preggy mod, you're stuck with it until your Sim gives birth. (Unless you want to end the pregnancy and start over, that is.)

The real TS3 Mariah is fine and still progressing in her real-time pregnancy - you can expect baby Buchanan #2 in about 35 more Sim-weeks (for real!). LOL!