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Looking For Best Way To Create Custom Uni Neighborhood....
yoshi_dragur2012
Posts: 1,670 Member
...because the two Uni campuses in Briechester hood are too #@%^@! tiny. Seriously, a total of THREE common lots between the 2 schools aka a pub/bar, a library
It's been hard adjusting to the culture shock of not being in a TS3 open world. And sadly, even TS2 Uni had milky way size proportions relative to TS4. To say space is a premium commodity in TS4 Uni is a pure understatement. There simply isn't any room to build and create your own customized Uni world the way you could with TS2 & TS3.
So I've been looking to create my own custom Uni hood using one of the other worlds. Going to use that MTS mod as a baseline that creates vacant hoods by removing all sims/building etc. So you can customize your own neighborhood.
Ran across a possible working solution in this old 2019 thread:
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/969219/university-in-other-neighborhoods
So it seems you can definitely recreate Uni in the other worlds. However, before going to all the trouble to create my own custom college hood, I've got a few questions for ppl who've done this:
1. Will your sims get the typical acceptance letter from your custom Uni when they apply to college? i.e. will your custom Uni show up in the Uni menu like the other two, when Sims are researching schools and getting their acceptance letter? Or do you need to pretend they got an acceptance letter and just move them to the new custom Uni hood?
2. If pretending is the case, then how do sims in your custom Uni hood get progression for homework etc. so they can get their degrees & graduate?
3. Basically how do you get the game to recognize your custom Uni hood? How do you designate a hood to be a Uni hood? Is this anything like the way it was done in TS3 where you would need to specify it in CAW? Or is this designation done in the game like with how you set lot types/characteristics from build mode?
It's been hard adjusting to the culture shock of not being in a TS3 open world. And sadly, even TS2 Uni had milky way size proportions relative to TS4. To say space is a premium commodity in TS4 Uni is a pure understatement. There simply isn't any room to build and create your own customized Uni world the way you could with TS2 & TS3.
So I've been looking to create my own custom Uni hood using one of the other worlds. Going to use that MTS mod as a baseline that creates vacant hoods by removing all sims/building etc. So you can customize your own neighborhood.
Ran across a possible working solution in this old 2019 thread:
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/969219/university-in-other-neighborhoods
So it seems you can definitely recreate Uni in the other worlds. However, before going to all the trouble to create my own custom college hood, I've got a few questions for ppl who've done this:
1. Will your sims get the typical acceptance letter from your custom Uni when they apply to college? i.e. will your custom Uni show up in the Uni menu like the other two, when Sims are researching schools and getting their acceptance letter? Or do you need to pretend they got an acceptance letter and just move them to the new custom Uni hood?
2. If pretending is the case, then how do sims in your custom Uni hood get progression for homework etc. so they can get their degrees & graduate?
3. Basically how do you get the game to recognize your custom Uni hood? How do you designate a hood to be a Uni hood? Is this anything like the way it was done in TS3 where you would need to specify it in CAW? Or is this designation done in the game like with how you set lot types/characteristics from build mode?
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In the game, you can put student housing, and a campus commons in any world, but by default they have to be tied to either Foxbury, or Britechester University. There is no generic Student Housing, or generic Commons lot type. Also there isn't a "University Campus" lot type, so sims still have to go to class at the rabbit hole universities in the Britechester World.
| Picture in Picture mode | Custom Paintings | Preset scenarios for resident sims | Placing my own lots |
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Without needing any mods you can build functional student dorms and commons in any world, so I expect that will be the same for a custom world that is added through a mod.
Students can enroll in britechester or foxbury no matter where they live. I don't know what mod you want to use for a custom uni but since we can already enroll for any available degree while living in any world, you already have a lot of possibilities in an unmodded game (If you don't mind that the uni name is either britechester or foxbury) . If I understand correctly what is said in the link you shared, that simmer built dorms and commons in another world but technically still attended one of the two universities in the game.
With the two regular universities they can enroll, attend classes, do homework, write term papers,... no matter where they live. Sims can even stay on a normal residential lot and not move to student housing.
If students live outside of the university neighbourhood they will commute to university. The difference of commuting is that your Sims will go to uni the same way the go to a rabbit hole job, this means they will vanish at the end of the lot instead of walking to a building in the neighbourhood and vanish there.
I had two students enroll and attended uni while living in an apartment in evergreen harbour. One was enrolled in britechester while the other one was in foxbury. They progressed through uni and graduated without any problems. Another sim went to uni while living in sulani. I don't know how in real life one can commute on a daily basis from a tropical island to a British uni, in this case britechester, but she managed just fine .
I might add an Internet cafe and a gym, not sure what else, maybe a restaurant of some kind.
As for making a uni campus in another world, I don't see the point when you can just change Britechester to your own needs. Unless you want, say, a desert or snowy campus. Then just plop a Dorm and a commons down in that world and you're good to go 😄
I think if you wanted to do a university in a different world, then you could just decide that's where your Britechester is, or your Foxbury, and create your own lots including a student housing and a student commons and make it look however you wanted. The only thing I'm not sure about is if a student is living in a student housing lot outside the normal university neighborhoods, do they go to class like a commuter in the same way that students living on a residential lot would do, or do you get a loading screen and get taken to the regular campus neighborhood, or does it glitch or something.
Yes it is. If I were the lead designer, I'd taken this obvious into consideration. Instead of creating 2 schools, create a single University with 2 colleges. The college of liberal Arts (Brichester U) and the College of Engineering & Science (Foxbury). Allow sims to take classes freely between these colleges. This would give you more build/buy space to place lots, dorms/Greek houses, and off campus residences for your sims to have a superior Uni experience. Why did the design decision for Uni in TS4 have to become so ridiculously complex? Why not stick to a formula that actually WORKED for over a DECADE? If the devs were so set on creating 2 competing schools, then why not create TWO neighborhoods for each University? Allow simmers to decide whether they want to turn on progression in the non played Uni hood like you can in any other hood? And if that's the case, guarantee that all YA sims in the unplayed Uni hood graduate with a minimum of a B grade?
This traditional design would've worked far better for sim relationships. Just ask any simmer who plays large families like me. It's virtually impossible to progress your 4-6+ Brady Bunch household in the 2 Uni school setup. So if some of your big sim family are geeks v. social butterflies, you're screwed. Any sandbox goals to give your geek & social butterfly sims the best career starts is insanely challenging. Because it's practically impossible to keep your Tech & Liberal Arts major sims in superior academic standing when you're busy switching between the schools. So they'll end up flunking out of their distinguished degree programs. Because the game stagnates sim degree progression once you switch between Unis. Where's the bloody *headdesk* smiley when you need it???
And because of this stagnation, you can't enjoy the whole point of college. Which IMO, is the dorm life & larking around the campus hood. All fundamental QoL game mechanics which EIGHTEEN YEAR OLD LEGACY GEN TS2 continues to put TS4 to shame. Even if your sims are living together in the Gibbs Hill townie neutral zone, their socialization opportunities are still limited. My weak workaround for this gamebreaker was to form a social/adventuring club. Which would kill 2 birds with one stone: instead of studying electives, have my sims do social club oriented activities each weekend. Activities that would give my sims the same career/socialization skills they'd get from studying additional class electives. Traveling to hoods like Selvadorada and Mt Komorebi each weekend to improve my sims fitness/athletic, charisma, logic etc skills while socializing to keep their relationship status. Hell I got so desperate, that I used Zero's longer Uni terms to give my tech and social butterfly sims a gap year. Had them all travel to Evergreen Harbor regardless of their major. Where they would put their skills to use working on a green SimEarth humanitarian project. Helping their fellow Sim Citizens clean up polluted Evergreen Harbor and save the environment.
But NO. Thanks to academic/degree progression stagnation, I'm forced to waste this precious little R&R time on the weekends making my sims keep up their grades.
So even if they attend the same Uni school, socialization and trying to maintain good relationships is near impossible. Festive events like Spice Market, seasonal holidays etc. are pointless. All the free time they have is on the weekends. Where my poor sims end up with starring roles yet again in The Breakfast Club in detention. Just so they can catch up with their homework....
That remained the case even if you keep your adventure club sims local hanging out in Gibbs Hill. Even after I took that big waste of space library lot. Transformed it into the 5 story + basement Gaia sized obelisk sky scrapper of an architectural aberration aka the current Mall of Briechester. If I didn't know better, I'd swear the townes of Gibbs Hill have been secretly voting to fire me as The Builder since I constructed that thing. Because no it's not a generic lot type. But yet the leviathan thing has remained underutilized and mostly vacant by townies like the Pleasants to date...
This degree progression stagnation & poor QoL out of class issues were NEVER an issue in TS2 or TS3. Simply because your sims ALLL attended A SINGLE UNIVERSITY/COLLEGE in a SINGLE Uni college town. Smh. /end of rant>
1. Play each household entirely through one term, but save before 6pm on the last day (the time at which they receive their grades and are prompted to re-enroll). Change households before this time. The student(s) will be in limbo until you play their household again. Played sims do not re-enroll automatically. Unplayed sims do.
I like to see what grades my sims got, so I save before 6pm, find out their grades, don’t re-enroll and quit without saving so I’m back at the save point before 6pm when I switch households. You use a mods that show their grades so you probably don’t need to do this.
2. An alternative method would be to play through a term and simply not re-enroll the household until you return to them. They lose scholarships (not always all of them) but I used to play this way until I realized I could work with method 1.
As for balancing a social life and studies, I don’t enroll in 4 classes anymore, I’ll do 3 tops. It takes an extra term but at least it’s more enjoyable for me and I turn aging off anyway.
I don’t see how creating a custom hood will be the solution for your issues unless you put everyone in one household which you could do anywhere except the dorms, anyway. I understand where your frustration is coming from, though.
I haven't been playing as long as some, but I've taken 15-20 sims through Sims 4 university so far and for the most part have enjoyed it. I happen to prefer it over Sims 2 vastly, mostly because you aren't stuck in the dorm any more-- you can visit family and friends who don't live on campus, and go out to have fun outside the university world. I also like having sims able to attend university at any time of life, having one household member in school while another is not, and some sims have extra struggles like needing to hold a job or parenting while in school.
Here are some suggestions to help with some of the things that are driving you crazy.
4-6 sim household in university-- Don't switch back and forth between households during the week. That does make it very hard to keep up with everything. Instead, either have them all live together in a residential lot, or split them up into a Britechester student housing household and a Foxbury student housing household. If you're on a residential lot they will all commute to class on their own at the appropriate time without you having to travel to the campus lot at all.
Splitting them up into 2 households is a little more tricky but totally doable:
Then play Household B for the full length of their university term (one week). At the end of finals, rotate away in the same manner.
When you return to Household A, the first thing you'll see is the "Do you want to re-enroll?" pop-up. Click yes and proceed on with your second term for that household, etc.
Socialization-- I'm not sure exactly what the struggle is that you're having, but here are some ideas, maybe you can be more specific on what the trouble is:
2. get to know the dormmates
3. meet up with professors outside of class
4. go to the student commons/dining hall and get to know other students there
5. join the student organizations-- in my game the advancement goals for these organizations are broken, but the activities are fun, and build skills and relationships. Sports and e-sports are rabbit holes, less fun, but they lead to valuable career boosts for the relevant careers.
6. attend spirit day, tea & poetry, etc
7. click "socialize with other students" during class to meet new people (this does drop the grade somewhat, so this is a good choice for a class where you did the homework and already have high skill in the subject, or for a character where you like playing someone more social and less studious)
8. visit the other campus and cause trouble
9. travel to literally any other location in the game that you'd normally travel to for socialization if you weren't in university.
Gap year-- You don't need a mod. Just don't re-enroll for the next term right away. Move to a residential lot. Take all the time off you want. Then re-enroll in university when you're ready.
Autonomous homework on vacation-- If you can stand to allow them to do homework once for each class, after that's done, it won't be possible for them to do any more homework after that, until they've returned from vacation and gone to class. You could even control for it by having them sit down and do the homeworks all in a row before they leave for the weekend vacation. They will not autonomously do term papers, presentations, or study on computers. They will not autonomously study from those larger course textbooks unless you bring the textbooks along with you.
Spice Festival, flea market etc-- The City Living, Cottage Living and Mt. Komorebi festivals don't occur during class hours if I remember correctly. I'm not sure about the Island Living ones as I don't have the pack.
I'm not sure what the trouble is that you're having with attending these. If it's just that the autonomous homework bothers you, again, you can either let them do it once for each class and then it won't happen again, or you can do it all before you go to the festival.
Grades-- Not rotating households during the term should solve this for you, but some more basic advice that will also help:
- "Take Notes" during every class.
- Don't be late to class.
- Edit all papers and presentations until they're Excellent or Outstanding.
- Don't forget to actually submit term papers.
- Don't forget to actually go and give presentations during school hours.
- Homework doesn't really matter that much unless you want all very high grades or you are coming to university with low skill in the subject. Only my very most driven academic achievers actually do all their homework. That's one way to free up a lot of time during university.
- Before the last class of each term, you can email the professor to see how you're doing in the class. If the answer concerns you, spend some extra time studying from the course textbook or on the computer before you attend the final class session.
The MTS mod I was referring to is here:
http://modthesims.info/d/659091/empty-worlds-with-custom-names.html
Lets you create your own custom worlds.
What you said here:
"Students can enroll in britechester or foxbury no matter where they live. "
Yes. But you misunderstood me. I don't want my sims living at home off campus while attending Uni. I want them to be a part of an inclusive Uni experience that you got in TS2 & especially TS3. In TS3 you could designate an entire world as a Uni world. Then build whatever custom Uni you wanted based on that. And use a mod like Twallan's Traveller (based on WA) to let your sims attend it.
The problem is the custom Uni world name doesn't show up in the acceptance letter screen. So even if I were to rename Briechester world and/or it's vanilla Unis to some other custom names, my sims would still be forced to attend the vanilla game in the renamed Briechester world. And not attend say, the better design layout of my custom Uni world. Which for example, could be based on a vacant Newcrest world. Or even a Henford on Bagley world (for an agricultural degree based Uni school etc). So based on what you said, it doesn't seem possible that a custom world would show up in the admission screen. Which means the game doesn't realize your custom Uni hood even exists. Lol Ah well.
That's right, you can't use a custom Uni name. But you can't customize the name of any world or neighborhood in the game anyhow.
To solve this one, try creating a student housing lot or a residential lot in another world and have that be your version of Britechester or Foxbury. Have your students move there when they begin university. You can customize all the lots in that neighborhood to your liking.
No it's the same household of a large sim family. e.g 4+ kids. I typically play legacy families of 4 kids and invite their potential high school sweethearts to attend Uni with them. As this expedites their friendly & romantic relationships after graduation. Because we all know how much of a grind careers have become in TS4. Especially with Get to Work & free lancer (like fashion photographer) type careers which are 100% hands on.
Even if I stick to my 3-4 legacy sims, they're all differently skilled in terms of being creative v logic. So they're a mix of socially challenged & genius archetype geek/nerds (Foxbury) and popular social butterflies (Briechester). So it's not possible for all my child turned YA sims to graduate with distinguished degrees unless I split up the family.
In which case, degree progression stagnation issue will happen. And I'm not wasting time keeping the Foxbury degree sims at home while freezing the sims aging while progressing the Liberal Arts minded sims at Briechester. That is a complete waste of time and unproductive. I mean I get the disadvantage of not being able to play in an open world like with TS3. But it's completely insane how this was never an issue in TS4's 18year old predecessor TS2. All of your YA sims in your legacy household would attend Uni and graduate together regardless of what major/degree they had.
Yes. Learned this the hard way. Which is why I created an adventure travel based club for my sims. This lets them develop the same skills they would pick up with electives by doing social activities in other hoods like Mt. Komorebi (skiing, hiking, rock climbing athletic based skills), Selvadora (archeology, charisma and other cultural related skills). Granite Falls (wellness skill) etc.
With a single Uni (either Foxbury or Briechester) in a single dedicated hood (Like Newcrest as it has the largest amount of lot build space) sims would be able to live anywhere. More specifically, a single custom Uni hood with a single custom Uni (that would grant BOTH regular AND distinguished degree options of regular based on sim's high school abilities) would solve the penalty of lost progression.
Finally I always play my families together in the same household. Regardless whether it's a dorm, on/off campus housing or apt dwelling. This is best way to maintain their social relationship statuses while at college.
Thanks for all your suggestions though. They're a few that I haven't tried so will give that a go. I suppose I'll temporarily quit and re-fire up TS3 if these aren't effective. Or if my patience for self trolling does me in. Whichever comes first.
You said earlier… When/why are you switching between unis? Because you want them to live in a campus neighborhood and sometimes you load the other one?
Splitting up the household is kind of the only way around this problem if you want to live on campus and have access to the quad all the time. Otherwise you’re essentially “splitting up the household” by leaving some on a different lot while you play the others. I usually play 4 sims at uni at a time and I try not to let them travel individually because yeah, leaving some behind wastes their time and time can be precious at uni.
Maybe I’m still missing something but I hope you can find ways to enjoy it for what it is. You might want to try a mod that lowers the classes required for graduation if that helps you juggle different households without feeling like it prolongs an already long process.
If you are creating your own university, with it's own look and feel, you can try to search the debug catalogue for the buildings used in the original uni neighbourhood. If you place them off lot with the tool mod, they might have the option to attend classes and come closer to the full uni experience. It's worth a try.
I can confirm this. I have had sims in one household attend different universities. The only issue was that they were unable to both attend the graduation party at the same time. I used a mod to generate a graduation photo for one of the two.
I once played two friends where one would have benefited from going to Foxbury and the other was better suited for Britechecter. They went to Britechester together because I decided so. I have also built campus areas in Windenburg and Mt.Komorebi that I pretend to be exchange locations. Sims typically go there for one semester. My Britechester attending sims went to Windenburg which matches the spirit of Britechester more, but if you wanted you could also mix things up and have a different kind of exchange location, so all your sims would get something they enjoy.
Updated with Werewolf Diaries (1)
But what I have done is create a new campus, in a different world that is tied to that uni. So, I have Foxbury-Oasis, which is based in Oasis Springs. I have only used the lots closest to the water, but I have made a Student Housing, Student Commons, a gym, and a bar/cafe that is my student hangout. There are other cheaper neighbourhoods nearby that I could change to more student accommodation if needed.
I figure that Foxbury is specialised in science, and what's a better scientific base than the desert? So I figured they would like a separate campus in a different location. Sometimes I have sims start off in the proper Foxbury campus, and then move to the desert for their remaining years. You miss out on the university events, but it does give a different feel to the uni experience. And then if you need to travel back to the Foxbury campus for, say graduation, then it kind of makes sense.
I also have a separate one for Britechester in Del Sol Valley, because of the drama/music degrees - I figure some sims would like to be near the lights and action.
Updated with Werewolf Diaries (1)