Thank you!

mmmm
Smarty!! TY!
Gonna try it!
Very interesting!

much much better idea....it would be cool if all skills would have an effect on school work but yours is an A+ 100% better then maxis way of it ....

well done will try it out tonight and let u know.

Don't know about all skills, but think creativity, charisma, and possibly body should play some part. Or don't they have children riding through school purely on their looks or athletic ability where you're from. I know that atleast half my honor roll in both Jr. High and Highschool were dumb as bricks when it came to anything remotely logical.

Wonderful idea and I'm so glad you've done this. Modders like you continue to add so much more realism to our game. Thank you for putting in the hard work.

great idea ; maybe creativity skills and others just like they require for work....

Thanks for this great hack - it makes a lot of sense. School was way to easy for sims before, and this challenge will be more fun.

Julie =)

Fantastic - always looking for ways to make the game a bit harder and this is a great idea. Glad to hear that a harder career is also being worked on....it's too easy to get promotions and bonuses!

Wow, thanks! I was thinking about a mod like this, since I've always been annoyed about how my lazy/dumb sims continue to pull an A+ just by doing their homework.

Thanks! I love hacks that make gameplay a little more challenging.

I like the idea of making grades harder, but I don't think that logic alone should be the determining factor.

Creativity is more aplicable for writing & art classes
Body for PE ect. . .

The jobs that the sims will eventually have call for all of the skill, it seems unfair to give bias to one of them.

So nice work, but I'm gonna pass for now.

This is brilliant, but if you ever plan to rehash it, maybe creativity can rat in, too? Logic is very helpful in school, but if you have creativity and logic, then you can use creative problem solving. Would be neat, and even more challenging.

Don't get me wrong, this is absolutely brilliant, and I'm dashing off to put it in my game right now! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I think this would work better if you did a combo of skills. What I mean is this. Use, Logic, Creativity, Body and Charisma. Use the same scale as you do with your current system of logic but instead of only using logic as the basis of the system, use the total pool of point from the four skills of Logic, Creatitvity, Body and Charisma. That makes more sense to me, because you should be able to be a well rounded person and get an A+, or be super smart in one subject and get an A+. You might want to make the scale a little harder though, cause it's easier to get the lower skill points. So you would need, say 12 points total to get A+ or something like that.

Thankies! Much more realistics!

I finally managed to install TS2 back again, all the way up to OFB, as well as get my neighborhoods back in working condtion (well at least they seem ok so far :P).

I had been working on this before OFB was released, but stuck it on the backburner while I was scrambling to update my hacks. Now that I've taken some time to look at it again and test it out, I feel like it's ready for a release.

I've put some of the details up in the first/main post. I decided to use 4 main base skills, as they seemed the most "logical" to me. Even though cooking, mechanical, and cleaning might apply to certain classes, such as home-ec or shop, I felt that the other 4 were more applicable, and I could better associate them with personality, interests, and aspiration while still making sense in having some logical effect on grades.

Things work on the same general principal, with the four skills each contributing about 25% to the overall random chance of grades improving, if a sim hasn't already met the regular criteria for each "grade level" in their base skill.

Although the weighting is a cool idea, I didn't want to have to deal with 'ticks' and time dependent modifiers. That would require me to learn a bit more, and I'm too lazy to do that right now. Instead, I took a much "simpler" approach, using my original idea as a basis, and expnanding it to incorporate 3 other skills.

The end result is, in general it will be much harder if your sims don't have any skills at all. They will pretty much be stuck at D or C. Therefore, CAS Teens will most likely have the hardest time with this. All other younger sims should do reasonably well, depending on how much time you devote to skilling (and more specifically, which skills you focus on). If you use macrostatics and or the baby controller, your sims will most likely do very well, and in the end, it probably won't be that much harder. Overall, it should be harder to get an A+, but if you have a lot of skills, and are in Gold or Platinum Aspiration levels, then you should get A+'s as easy as before. In this respect, the hack rewards players who keep their sims aspiration levels high. If you bothered or managed to fulfill LTWs, you probably don't want it to be so hard for those sims. So this is an 'out' for those sims.

Anyways, please test it out and let me know if you have any problems with it. I always appreciate feedback. Let me know if it is still too easy or if it suddenly becomes insanely hard. I think it's reasonably balanced. In my test runs, I used the Pleasant house as usual, and there was still some randomness in there. Despite the difficulty, sims could still get an A+ if they had a lot of skill points, so it isn't totally impossible. However, I feel it is still balanced, because you do need several skill points still, and in this way your grades will sort of reflect the time you spent "studying" or building up those skills. :D

Ste

Edit:



Actually... it's funny that you mentioned this, because this is ultimately what I ended up going with as far as which skills I decided to use.

And yes, it is kind of easy to get those lower skills. What I decided to do is have a base skill or main skill depending on aspiration or interests. And then having each of those skills modified based on personality. So now you can focus on the specific skill, or build up several other skills and still have a chance of increasing your grade. It will be more of a challenge for those other aspirations, whose base skill will depend on their interests. :P

For those sims who don't build up their base skill, they will have a random chance of their grade improving. As the total number of skills they have increases, the chance increases. So yeah, if you focus on building up those lower levels of several skills rather than sticking to one track, you will have just as good a chance. But there will still be some randomness because the chance can be increased or reduced based on your sims personalities.

I may revisit this if I ever think of a better way to compensate for how easy it is to build those earlier skills. I just didn't want to have to think of a weighting scheme or anything more complex that requires more thinking. :P

New version available that lessens the cheering that some of you may find annoying. Please download and test. Feedback is always appreciated.

Ste

Updated the format. It should definitely be compatible with Uni or just the basegame. If you have NL or later, you do Not have to update.

Ste

Is this compatible with Pescado's "no cheering" hack? I love the idea but I don't need any more conflicts (just had to reinstall...)

I'm not sure if they are compatible. You should check it with a hack conflict tool. I thought the NL patch changed things anyway. I don't use Pescado's hack, which I'm pretty sure isn't needed for OFB, so I can't be sure.

Ste

Jordi was kind enough to pm and provide me a copy of an InTeen compatible version of this. So I have removed the 2.0 version and replaced it with the InTeen v2.11 by Jordi.

Here are the details:



Thanks Jordi.

Ste

I download verion 2.11 and my simmies grades just kept dropping. One had eight logic points and all other skills at least four, most six or more but the grades just always drop.

Hrm. Well... have your sims been doin their homework, and have they been going to school? I haven't played a regular household in awhiles... but I haven't really made any significant changes since 2.11 as far as I can recall, and that was working for me. What aspiration are your sims? Do the skills match? Even if a sim doesn't have any points in their base skill, if they have several points in other skills, their grades should increase so long as you have them do their homework and go to school.

The only other thing I can suggest is to check your downloads and make sure you don't have any conflicting hacks. :shrug:


FYI - For InTeenimater users, Jordi is maintaining the InTeen compatible version which can be found over here.

Ste

I love homework/school/grading hacks! It makes for a better variety of students and keeps me on my toes when it comes to making me more aware of my Sim's personalities/moods/aspirations and how it affects their grades. I think the "interests" part of the game is highly overlooked and I am glad to see that you actually use it for part of your hack.
The best part is that it works beautifully in my game. Thanks!
(On a side note, I officially have a separate folder for your hacks with your name on it! You've joined the ranks of JM, TwoJeffs, Monique, Jase etc!) Kudos!

I am having a problem with your hack. I have downloaded this mod twice now, and both times I my sims will not get on the school bus, no matter what I do. When I uninstal this mod, the problem resolves.