Keeping notes on all sims in your game

I'm trying to keep a record of my families in their various Saves and Worlds in Saves. I wish Maxis could do this for us and put their names in alphabetical order too. I've got about 50 families I use again and again.

I've just put one of my oldest families in CAS preliminary to adding them to a new game and found that one of them has had a sex change for some reason. I had a mum and dad, granny and two girls, now I have two mums which is annoying. This is the second time this has happened and makes my records a waste of time.

I tend to play either one household or one family per save with ageing off, which means it's fairly easy to keep track on my sims, at least at first. I have a simple Word document that I use to note down my sims traits, skills, and the story/plans (e.g. careers, aspirations, relationships, children, grandchildren etc.) I have for them which I cross out and add to as I go along. I would love a built in system though.

I use a physical book.
One Sim and One week/season per page.

I track Skills, Career progress, Major relationships, Club membership, and Aspiration progress.
It reminds me where I am at with their varied goals.

I only use it for my active Sim household/s. Until very recently, that meant only one active household with a maximum of four Sims. Now it’s Four active households being kept track of in a four subject lecture book with dividers built in.

"Kniga_Sitara;c-17047777" wrote:

"Simmerville;d-958788" wrote:
Do you keep notes on them all? Or do you limit it to one family or a group of families? What kind of info do you keep track on? Just skills and relations, or DNA, dreams and hobbies etc, too?

I used a speadsheet to keep track on everything, basically one line per sim, and sims grouped per household, and households grouped by hood and world. It's good for my rotational gaming, so I keep notes on every individual. But - I had a hard time keeping track on the community stats, such as which career is not take by anyone, or what aspiration or traits do I hardly ever use? With nearly 200 sims it should be a goal trying out all aspirations, traits and careers. I wish the game would give is some community stats like this, minimum how carerrs spread, maybe even how aspirations spread.

So, I recently scripted my own system, a full fletched Sims Residents Registry :) It will of course only work if I keep updating it, but I think it will be worth doing that extra effort. I can finally check what options are most popular, which are hardly used. I can look up single males or females, and a lot more.

If you want to check it out, I just posted about it on my blog, Simmerville's Sims.

Would you like the game to add a similar built-in system in a future pack/patch?

You have some automatic system or you must change all manualy? It is look great.
I start new game now, So maybe I Will make some as this. But I search for some automatic...

Thanks. I will need to update manually, that's the big catch. So, I'll not try to update every single skill progress etc, but only major events. Basically, I will probably only update the registry on birthdays. It would be so cool if the game would generate a similar registry automatically.

"Simburian;c-17047607" wrote:
I'm trying to keep a record of my families in their various Saves and Worlds in Saves. I wish Maxis could do this for us and put their names in alphabetical order too. I've got about 50 families I use again and again.

I've just put one of my oldest families in CAS preliminary to adding them to a new game and found that one of them has had a sex change for some reason. I had a mum and dad, granny and two girls, now I have two mums which is annoying. This is the second time this has happened and makes my records a waste of time.

How is that even possible? I've played the same save since 2014, and never saw anyone change gender. Do you have mods that might have trigged it?

"Simmerville;c-17047789" wrote:

"Simburian;c-17047607" wrote:
I'm trying to keep a record of my families in their various Saves and Worlds in Saves. I wish Maxis could do this for us and put their names in alphabetical order too. I've got about 50 families I use again and again.

I've just put one of my oldest families in CAS preliminary to adding them to a new game and found that one of them has had a sex change for some reason. I had a mum and dad, granny and two girls, now I have two mums which is annoying. This is the second time this has happened and makes my records a waste of time.

How is that even possible? I've played the same save since 2014, and never saw anyone change gender. Do you have mods that might have trigged it?

No. I play without added CC or Mods and I have never played with same sex couples except the ones in game. The changed ones were also rather ugly too. They were early families I made though and I wonder if later games like Seasons had this effect on them or if I had made them originally to use both female and masculine clothing and that muddled things. I can't remember now but I certainly know that I wouldn't have given them those looks. :#

It is always so much fun to see how other manage their game :) thanks for posting!

Hmm... I have a tendency to just go completely overboard when it comes to details so I haven't tried anything like this but it looks amazing. For me getting to the part of playing and feeling happy about it and not just checking of points on my list for future plans means forgetting things. Just so I can get to the surprise- and wonder-feelings for how things develop in game.

How I deal with my sims. I play rotational with a town. There is a main household that i play for roughly 3-4 days and then I have NPC-days when I play the rest of the town for worldbuilding 3-4 days. I usually take a few real life days break between switching modes. Overall goals for different sims are tracked the households descriptions in manage towns.

I also mod the game so I have more clubs available and more sims present on each lot. This a way for me to show what the sims are interested in. The children who are curious about science has a club where they play and explore the space museum. It is nice seeing the cops out in the park interacting with the citizens. Sometimes they play chess and other times they are more social. Best friends get clubs to do things they enjoy together, it is nice to see sims grow old and share their life together. I had a little group of girls who used to sit by the fire telling stories. Seeing the last two little old ladies out in the park with white hair was a bit emotional. Each club has a short description of purpose and what kind of lot, if it is specific or general so all info is easy to access. I don't make a group without playing it once myself just to see that it meshes with the sims that are in it and what they would like to do.


I agree that it would be very useful to know which sims has which careers. My game had 3 of my played npc-sims that I play quite often as programmers and then a bunch of extra sims. The business-career had only one sims, a sims that I played once earlier while setting up the household in the correct lot with the correct amount of simoleons. I use careers a lot for my clubs and there are some high-prestige ones that I try to keep exclusive for aliens and vampires. In my little universe the occult are at the top of the ladder and usual sims are 2:nd class. Still able to get rich or getting a good job if they work really really hard but in most cases I get one of my occult for higher positioned jobs. I wish I could keep track of things a bit more easily so I can fire a sim straight away if needed.

"SilentKitty;c-17047816" wrote:
It is always so much fun to see how other manage their game :) thanks for posting!

Hmm... I have a tendency to just go completely overboard when it comes to details so I haven't tried anything like this but it looks amazing. For me getting to the part of playing and feeling happy about it and not just checking of points on my list for future plans means forgetting things. Just so I can get to the surprise- and wonder-feelings for how things develop in game.

How I deal with my sims. I play rotational with a town. There is a main household that i play for roughly 3-4 days and then I have NPC-days when I play the rest of the town for worldbuilding 3-4 days. I usually take a few real life days break between switching modes. Overall goals for different sims are tracked the households descriptions in manage towns.

I also mod the game so I have more clubs available and more sims present on each lot. This a way for me to show what the sims are interested in. The children who are curious about science has a club where they play and explore the space museum. It is nice seeing the cops out in the park interacting with the citizens. Sometimes they play chess and other times they are more social. Best friends get clubs to do things they enjoy together, it is nice to see sims grow old and share their life together. I had a little group of girls who used to sit by the fire telling stories. Seeing the last two little old ladies out in the park with white hair was a bit emotional. Each club has a short description of purpose and what kind of lot, if it is specific or general so all info is easy to access. I don't make a group without playing it once myself just to see that it meshes with the sims that are in it and what they would like to do.


I agree that it would be very useful to know which sims has which careers. My game had 3 of my played npc-sims that I play quite often as programmers and then a bunch of extra sims. The business-career had only one sims, a sims that I played once earlier while setting up the household in the correct lot with the correct amount of simoleons. I use careers a lot for my clubs and there are some high-prestige ones that I try to keep exclusive for aliens and vampires. In my little universe the occult are at the top of the ladder and usual sims are 2:nd class. Still able to get rich or getting a good job if they work really really hard but in most cases I get one of my occult for higher positioned jobs. I wish I could keep track of things a bit more easily so I can fire a sim straight away if needed.

Thanks for all the input! I too love the stories over time, such as your girls and ending as white haired elders. Most of my families take lots of family photos, and although I have not played many generations, it's already emotional seeing some of those old photos.

I use clubs, too, but some of them I hardly played. I wish the game would alarm us when say a leader of a club dies or if there is only 1 or 2 members left in a club. When I get clubs added to my registry, I will keep track on some of that. And yes, the club description can be of great help, notes wise.

Wish I had more time playing this game!

Until my celebrity Sim was on his own, I used the Vault for his earnings. When he moved into his sister's place, I strictly added what he earned, tips, brand and song promotion, concerts and personal singing grahams to the amount the Vault had totaled. Now, he's in his own place and I don't keep notes, per se. I will keep touch with the songs I've had him write, title, and the album titles, too. So much easier.

Besides, this, the most I ever used notes was an elaborate bit of paperwork I created to keep track of the points earned playing Pinstar's Legacy Challenge.

I only keep track of when everyone is born, so when I decide that it’s time for them to age up (since I play with aging off), I know which order it has to be in.