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Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 12:56 AM
Default How do you track your 'hoods?
I was editing through my town's Google doc and I thought, "I wonder what the people over at MTS do to track their 'hoods", so here we are. Do you use spreadsheets, or, like me, do you prefer using a Google Doc/Wordpad file? Do you have one file per town, or is the information more separate?

I'm doing a BACC, so I have a list detailing all of the different career tracks: How many Sims are in that track, how many positions are available, names of Sims who've reached the top, etc. Below that are a list of households and the Sims in each one plus their sexuality and a tag that shows which kid is going to inherit the house. Below that is a more detailed list of each Sim, which includes their origin (ie, were they a Townie? Were they born to Sim X and Sim Y?), and their fertility. I have all of my community lot information out at the top + how much Simoleons are left until I can create a university, and some other various information.
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Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#2 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 1:16 AM
I don't really. I jot down things that I might forget is all. For example, I know that I have one head of staff, one nurse, one midwife and that I need another doctor. I don't need a spreadsheet to tell me this. I guess it depends how many sims you have. Your town sounds much larger and older. I tend to have one sim in any one position and that one sim stands for however many there would actually be. So my one nurse stands for all nurses. I have one headmistress, one highschool teacher and one primary (elementary) school teacher. They teach at my playable schools. I have one up and coming teacher at uni. Most of my careers are owned businesses. I keep in mind what I have and what I need. I tend to jot down in a sims bio that I think they will be a vet or a toy shop owner etc.

Who inherits I decide by who wants it or who would continue to live there due to job or marriage. Maybe no one will inherit. Those other details I don't track at all, they are not important to me. I only have about 5 townies at most, I see them as tourists passing through.
I started out as a BACC player back in 09 but decided I didn't like keeping track nor did the rules line up with my own ideas for expansion. I placed a pet store once I had a vet since that made sense to me. That's how I advance, by asking "Does this make sense in this environment?" and "What would this town be needing next in rl?"

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Mad Poster
#3 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 1:41 AM
Organisation? The horror. :P
Scholar
#4 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 1:45 AM
It depends on how strict the rules are for the hood. The BaCC has a spreadsheet, because I need to keep track of the village's finances and of when new homes are built and ready (most Sims work in construction for now; it takes them a certain number of workdays to build a new house or community lot, and a new family can't move in unless there's a home ready for them). A couple of my hoods have a good old-fashioned spiral notebook, mostly to keep track of how many Sims are in each career and what level they've reached. The rest just wing it, with no notes except to maybe jot down baby names on scrap paper, if I have something specific in mind for the family. I also have a rolling list of baby names (again on a piece of paper) that I use for all hoods; I usually assign the top name, then erase it and add a new one to the bottom of the list.
Link Ninja
#5 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 2:06 AM
I use an excel to just keep track of playable sims. A column for first name, last name, and married surname name if applicable. This way I can sort and see who is married in game. There's a column for each age range and any they have actually lived get an 'x' in the cell. So this way I know who was born in game vs. created in CAS. I also keep track of who their mother, father, siblings, significant other, and children are as the time goes by. another piece info I record is their current career track and place of origin in my hood (between main hood and one a few down towns)

I also have a tab to move this information after a sim passes. It's my 'grave yard tab' and also added in is the cause of death, where their current resting place is, and their grandchildren at time of expiration.

I transferred this recently to a google doc so I can update it whenever I have down time. I also use a lot of color coordination. There's different colors for gender, step-family, adoptions, and half-siblings. Asterisks behind a name indicate a sim is a twin.

Uh oh! My social bar is low - that's why I posted today.

Mad Poster
#6 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 3:11 AM
Spreadsheets are work. Story albums are the easiest and fastest way to not lose track of what's going on.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#7 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 3:36 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Peni Griffin
Spreadsheets are work. Story albums are the easiest and fastest way to not lose track of what's going on.


Aww, one of my favorite things is updating my 'hood document! I never really got a hang of using the story album feature.
Mad Poster
#8 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 3:59 AM
I just use familyecho.com (totally free online service) to keep a family tree of my hoods, you can add information about the sim in their biography. It works well enough for my purposes. Pro-tip if you want to do this: you can use SimPE to load the character file and extract the game-generated portrait as the sim's picture, you don't have to try to take well-posed pictures in-game if you're terrible at that like me. The only downside of it is it's hard to share the family tree with other people.
Mad Poster
#9 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 4:05 AM
Well, different strokes.

The album doesn't have much "hang" to get. Select the open book icon, select "organize." Choose the pictures you want from the thumbnails (just like you do when ordering pictures), then select the open book viewing icon to get a full-sized snapshot above a text field and make your notes in the text field. You don't even have to save it; it saves automatically. Every time I open a household I open the story album to refresh my memory of what was happening when I was last here. No extra files to open, no tabbing back and forth, everything right there in the game.

And if I need to refer to my notes when the game's closed for some reason, I have an .xml reader to open the albums without going through the game.

You can also use the individual bios and lot information to keep you abreast of what's going on. The game expects you to need to keep track, and provided more than one text field to use as you see fit.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#10 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 4:13 AM
Bio's and lot information is what I use.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Top Secret Researcher
#11 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 5:32 AM
Never used to. Made notes on paper. Then started a spreadsheet. You've just reminded me that I created it. I don't think I've updated it...
Field Researcher
#12 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 8:26 AM
I have a spreadsheet to keep track of challenges and who I’ve played already. It’s also a nice overview of how my sims’ households changed over time, since I make a new tab every week.

I use Trello to keep track of my sims individually. Lastly, I also use FamilyEcho for my family trees. It’s less work than you might think.
Undead Molten Llama
#13 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 8:43 AM
Very complex multi-tabbed spreadsheets with multiple linkages across the tabs!

They're all slightly different, with different tabs for different "functions" of each neighborhood, and not all neighborhoods have all the same functions because I'm constantly coming up with new scenarios to play. But there's always a tab that tracks basic statistics because I like statistics. Things like population, age distributions, married vs. single ratios, aspiration distributions, how many Sims born in each generation both alive and dead, male/female ratios, gender preference distributions, etc. etc. That tab also has the household play order list, so that I remember which household I'm on in the rotation even if I don't play the neighborhood for months. Then there's a tab that's basically a list of all the playables in the neighborhood, grouped by household. It contains each playable's personal stats -- name, address, gender, ACR ideal family size, aspiration, LTW, OTH, etc. etc. Then there's a tab that's basically a giant text box containing all the neighborhood's rules. I play by many different rule sets that I dream up, and this way if I forget details for the particular neighborhood I'm playing I can look stuff up easily because it's in the same place as everything else about the neighborhood. There's a tab that keeps track of the stats for all the player-owned businesses in the neighborhood. If I'm playing in certain ways, there's a tab that tracks careers -- What the requirements are to open each one, which ones are currently open, how many openings each one currently has, and who is currently working in each career and what level they're at, etc. This one usually has linkages to the stats page (for the careers that have population triggers to determine when it's opened or gets more slots) and to the businesses page (for careers opened by placing certain types of businesses or having a certain business reach a certain level.) And there are a bunch of other ones for more specific kinds of neighborhoods.

I keep templates of each tab so that when I start a new neighborhood, I can just copy/paste together the tabs I need for that neighborhood and then create any new ones I might need for that specific neighborhood, which then also become templates in case I want to reuse them for future neighborhoods. I'm always combining ideas from previous neighborhoods into new ones, so I've learned not to throw anything away.

I'm mostly found on (and mostly upload to) Tumblr these days because, alas, there are only 24 hours in a day.
Muh Simblr! | An index of my downloads on Tumblr.
Scholar
#14 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 9:41 AM
Currently I use two spreadsheets,, an Openoffice file, a Rich Text file and the backs of three envelopes, as well as the in-game resources. When I tried playing a BACC, I think I was up to four spreadsheets.
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#16 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 3:12 PM Last edited by maxon : 20th Apr 2018 at 5:24 PM.
I only have one hood ... and a gloriously esoteric, arcane and impenetrable spreadsheet to go with it.

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
I'm here on tumblr and my site, tflc
Scholar
#17 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 4:30 PM
I just use my memory...
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#18 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 4:57 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Peni Griffin
Well, different strokes.

The album doesn't have much "hang" to get. Select the open book icon, select "organize." Choose the pictures you want from the thumbnails (just like you do when ordering pictures), then select the open book viewing icon to get a full-sized snapshot above a text field and make your notes in the text field. You don't even have to save it; it saves automatically. Every time I open a household I open the story album to refresh my memory of what was happening when I was last here. No extra files to open, no tabbing back and forth, everything right there in the game.

And if I need to refer to my notes when the game's closed for some reason, I have an .xml reader to open the albums without going through the game.

You can also use the individual bios and lot information to keep you abreast of what's going on. The game expects you to need to keep track, and provided more than one text field to use as you see fit.


Huh. Well, I always had a hard time getting it to work. I guess because I never really wanted to use it, so I didn't take the time to get familiar with it? I dunno. I tried it several months back and was having issues with it. I also don't really care for taking screenshots. I much prefer my doc (I'm so used to tabbing out for various games that it's not even really something I think about anymore), but as you said, to each their own!
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#19 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 4:57 PM
Quote: Originally posted by alljoj
I just use my memory...


Fair enough. I have a hard time remembering where I was in the rotation last, let alone all of the other information I like to keep track of.
Field Researcher
#20 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 4:59 PM
I have a spreadsheet which has each rotation down the side (we're currently on Day 60) and the names of the sims born that rotation next to it. Each time I start a new rotation, I highlight the cell which says that day in green, and then highlight in yellow the days where sims born that day grow to toddler, child, teen, go to college, and graduate. It helps me see at a glance what's going on this rotation, and check who's a potential prospect for a teen to date.

I also have a word document which has all my households listed in the order I play them, and I change the colour on each one when I've played it, to help me keep track of who's next.

♫Cuz I don't have a home in this life, I have to roam. Got nowhere to lay my head, so I'll follow you instead, and set my gaze on the place I'm going to. Til then I'm homeless, but I'll roam with you...♫

My Simblr: http://natteryaktoad.tumblr.com
Mad Poster
#22 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 8:30 PM
I use the info boxes that pop up when you click a house in Neighborhood view. If I need to keep track of a storyline in more detail, I use Windows Notepad.
Scholar
#23 Old 20th Apr 2018 at 9:52 PM
My BACC hood was the start of me using spreadsheets to track stuff, and I became very familiar with "IF" statements whilst working out my (slightly more complicated than standard) taxation system for the hood. That one has multiple tabs, all labelled, and data in one tab can and does affect others. If it didn't I'd be constantly having to update each part manually... which is definitely too much work! I discovered how to build formulae I didn't even know existed thanks to that one.

My newest version of Pleasantview (and the uberhood subhoods) has an associated spreadsheet as well, but that's because I wanted to work out their starting ages and keep everyone in sync. Yes, there are in-game tools like the Sync Timer that have been created, but that's only useful if they stay as they should (I've had times where I've been into a lot and the timer has reverted to "install for family") and I'm playing it regularly. It's also useful for keeping track of Uni students and whether or not they've had to do extra semesters. I'm also using the free family tree builder from My Heritage to keep a record of the family ties.

No need to use my full name, "Selly" will do just fine.
Instructor
#24 Old 21st Apr 2018 at 8:36 AM
When a Sim dies, I click on the memory of their beloved ones and use that portrait in a Word document, where I write things down if I want to. Otherwise it's just names.
Field Researcher
#25 Old 21st Apr 2018 at 11:46 AM
I don't keep track down to the individual Sim level, just by household. So my spreadsheet lists whether they've hired maids, gardeners, etc, if they've got any outstanding loans, all the invisible things.

It also lists where that household is in rotational play. I sync up the young adults by having teens go to Uni with 4 days remaining (where non college goers get to play out those 4 days), so I need to know when to reinsert the graduated new-adults back into the main hood. If it wasn't for that I could probably manage the rotations by memory and the seasons flags over each lot.
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