Wednesday 20 April 2005

Pic of the day: I can do it too! Kids like to make their own food with the toy stove. (Sceenshot from Sims 2.)

Sims2 kids

Here are some random things you may not have noticed about children in Sims2. In this game, children are very important, as the Sims are no longer automatically living forever, and since they now have DNA that can be mixed to create new and interesting combinations. Even if you can play the game in the same way as the original Sims, there are some differences.

First off, children become a mix of their parent's traits, body and soul. However, this is a mix rather than an average. Children will for instance inherit the skin color from one of their parents. Even if the skin colors are quite different, the child will not have an average of the two. The same goes for hair color. It will be one or the other.

Personalities are also inherited. Two shy sims are pretty near certain to have a shy kid. But a lazy, neat sim and a sporty, slobby sim could get a neat, sporty kid or perhaps the exact opposite. It will not automatically become an average; indeed, this is one of the least likely outcomes.

Sim children are not limited to exactly 25 personality points like created Sims are. Usually they have more, although this could possibly be connected to how they are treated as babies or how the mother is doing during pregnancy, I am not sure. There is also a chance of mutation so that even if you have two parents with 10 points in a trait, the kid may have 9. But generally children inherit personalities.

During school and high school, parents can (and sometimes wish to) encourage some of their own personality traits in the children. You can not encourage a trait that you don't have pretty strongly yourself. On the bright side, it is enough that one of the parents has the trait, and you can encourage it beyond your own level. For instance if you have 8 or 9 nice, you can encourage your kid up to a full 10 nice, if you spend enough time on the project.

Children no longer come with fixed skills. But on the other hand, many skills are now trainable through practice even for kids. So the old strategy of letting the kids pay their way through painting is still valid, it just takes quite a while before they are maxed out. (You can no longer complete another person's painting, so forget the old strategy of letting the parent max out the price.)

You no longer need to spend money on food for the kids. Buy a toy oven the day they start school, and train them to bake their own food. This food is for some reason free, the kids like to bake, and it raises their cooking skill which will come in handy later in life.

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Children learn new skills faster the younger they are. You may want to spend some days with Aging Off (that's a cheat code, people) to let the toddler maximize his or her charisma using the rabbit head. This is the last time in life they will have fun practicing charisma, unlike many other skills. On the other hand, children are more helpless the younger they are, so there is a price in extra work and attention to zoom in on early childhood this way. Similarly, grade school kids learn faster than teens, but they are more restricted in other ways. Teens can do most things adults can, including cooking for guests and taking care of babies and toddlers. Adults learn slowly but are better teachers. Elders are the best teachers of all.

Teaching ability plays a role when helping toddlers learn to walk, talk and probably potty train. (You can also give them smart-milk from the reward to make them learn faster.) The next phase of teaching is helping your kids with homework when they start school. Kids that have recently started school will have the "get help with homework" wish, and parents may have the "help with homework" wish. But even if not, you should be sure to help them the first times. This cuts down on the time spent on homework, the kids don't lose fun as fast (doing homework alone is horribly anti-fun), and they learn to study. The more you help them when they are small, the faster they will study when they grow older, and the less pain it causes them. Or so it seems – there are probably limits to this.

Some career rewards not only build skills by use for the adult, but can be used to teach young people those same skills. Again, an older sim teaching a younger can make the learning process faster. Maximize the age difference for best results.

With the University expansion pack, having skills is even more valuable than ever before. Teens with high skills get an enormous starting grant when they call for grants before going to college. This could easily be enough to buy a small house of their own, complete with furniture. Not that there is anything wrong with dorms, in which case you could use the money to get some much needed improved beds and chairs. Also, you need some minimum skills to succeed at the university, so make sure the teens have a broad selection of skills before you send them off.

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Getting good grades can be a major source of wish fulfillment for children and their parents too, while getting seriously bad grades can be a trauma. Even though your sim children can pay their way by painting and making their own food, you should consider letting them pursue school instead. The aspiration points can really flow in when they get into fetching an A+ every day. Especially if both of the parents are excited about it too.