#sims 2 test of time challenge

[glowyjellyfish]

A Test Run of my Test of Time variant

After getting the downloads folder set up, I made some random sims to test that things worked properly and also to test that my planned rules would work okay. So far, it mostly has--I learned that I somehow missed the Basket Weaving set and added that in, and I think I need an Inventory Trade mod--not sell from inventory, but one where sims swap goods in each their inventories. And I discovered a bug or something where the hunters didn't bring back the carcasses they collected, which defeats the whole purpose of the hunting grounds. I'll have to figure out whether that happens regularly or not.

Featured above: my Hunting Grounds community lot and a Camp residential lot. You'll see the men going on a two-day hunting trip--technically, I don't intend to gender restrict hunting, but most of the women were pregnant and I couldn't remember which ones, so men only it was! Lots of socializing, including the mothers chitchatting while holding and taking care of their babies. Naked lady giving birth because sometimes the sims wander out of the waterfall shower and forget to put their clothes on, lol. The one single dude I had wasn't interested in the single lady I had, was randomly made bi by the hood gender pref roll, and fell head over heels for the handsome random Test Sim I made earlier. If I continue playing, I'll pair them up and let one or the other or both work on getting abducted via weird stone.

I did have a slight flaw where I did not reduce the funds to low/zero, removing a fair amount of challenge I am sure. I'm also considering having my Real Game involve ten single sims rather than five couples, and let the sims pair up how they like, and debating whether to stick with 1 day = 1 year or go with Proportionate Aging for this. I don't like that the hunting trip took basically two years, and six months would be much more plausible. On the other hand, I may need to set the Hunting Grounds up differently in order to make it viable--ie, have a sim own it, play it forward until the animals start spawning, then have the sim sell it, so that hunters can start hunting immediately. I'll have to think about this.

I did add a new rule that forbids putting away leftovers--they can use a fridge to pull food out of to cook, that's just how the sims works, but they can't keep leftovers until they have a little more preservation technology. Jury's still out on whether I want to allow Pottery and Basket Making at this stage--they can DEFINITELY do that once they discover Agriculture and move from the Band stage to the Tribe stage, but I'm not sure yet if they should be able to start now or not.

(My variant breaks the "Neanderthal" stage into more realistic "Band, Tribe, and Chiefdom stages, and advancing to the next stage requires events and discoveries, not just time passing. For example, completing the Band stage requires a sim to achieve maximum reputation and influence to become a leader, and also requires that the band discovers five randomized Sun&Moon crops--each one unlocks when a sim earns a gardening talent badge from planting seeds they dug up. I'm still tinkering with my rules, though.)

[timeless-toaster]

A New Era

The elders of Moonwell Valley have gathered around a campfire. The reason is the unfortunate disaster that hit the peaceful place they share.

I've watched the people of the Valley for two generations now, and I saw them develop a more and more comfortable lifestyle, even with the occasional hardships they had. However, one faithful day generations worth of progress has disappeared in a swift moment. An earthquake has struck Moonwell Valley, and brought down the houses of all the tribes.

The people knew they could only rebuild what was lost, by joining forces. After a long meeting, it was decided, that Cliff Hunter would be leading the rebuilding operations, as his family had the most resources.

And so a new era began...

~~

Where It All Started

Previously On Moonwell Valley

Next On Moonwell Valley

[sychik]

ANCIENT ROMAN NECESSITIES. PART 1: WOMEN

I know, it's very unexpected. I've been having lots of fun with the Test of Time challenge, and then I got to Ancient Rome… and the fun ended :/ enormous respect to all creators who have made cc for that era, but it's just not enough. I hereby present to you the results of my latest hyperfixation.

the meshes are my own, frankenmeshed from maxis meshes and modified. no need to fret about violating my TOU, because I don't care. use, modify, recolor, include. they all should have fat and pregnancy (tf-af) morphs.

1) long-sleeved, low-waist tunic. because of… common sense reasons, it's suited best for women who are more well-off. tf-ef, 28 swatches. DOWNLOAD

2) tunic with a stola; again. tf-ef, 73 swatches… I am sorry. I went ham. the actual Romans probably weren't THAT fun with their color combinations, anyway, but my sims Romans will be. they all have pretty borders, for the sake of consistency. DOWNLOAD

3) simple shorter tunic for working class women. tf-ef, 20 swatches, no fancy dyes or borders. DOWNLOAD

4) girls: shorter basic tunic and longer fancy one. those aren't as different, I guess. DOWNLOAD SHORT | DOWNLOAD LONG

that was a lot. if you encounter any issues, don't hesitate to contact me! also, my post-creation aversion is kicking in, so I hope you'll enjoy this more than I do :D

[liri-sims]

Don't get me wrong - this isn't a default replacement for the cab itself. This is a replacement for the stupid little thumbnail of the cab that appears on every comm lot entry in hood view...

...and for the larger thumbnail of the cab that appears when you go to the lot by taxi. I rarely do, but not everyone has the option to walk to lots, so.

Yes, it may look a little weird because the image is flat but the loading screen is angled - some images it's worse than others - but I don't feel like trying to warp the images.

Most of these started out on a light-colored background and will probably look weird on dark UI replacements. Wherever possible I've used artwork from the period, or reproductions of that artwork. Of course, some of these periods covered many years, but this is just a start.

I've included many options. There are a couple of prehistoric choices, an Egyptian boat, a Greek chariot, a Roman sedan chair and three Roman carriages, half a dozen medieval choices - carts, carriages, and people on horseback - a couple of 17th-century choices, and a handful for the Regency era, one late-18th century and a couple early -19th. Gaps include more Renaissance styles, Baroque/Rococo, and anything post-Regency-England, but I plan to address those in later versions; I was trying to cover eras that seemed popular first.

I fully intend to do additional versions of this, and carry on through additional eras - I have plenty saved for the rest of the 19th century, and a lot of medieval equestrians waiting to be converted.

I've tested most of these but not all, so if any of them don't behave as expected, or have weird marks/artifacts that don't seem intentional, let me know!

Download: SFS or Box.

[nonsensical-pixels]

something something for an upcoming upload 👀 @clepysdra's gladiator sandals converted from ts4 to ts2 as a pantless bottom! i've always desperately needed something like this for the test of time challenge 😊

they're for teens to adults, but enabled for elders; they're also unisex - wow, a male pantless bottom! they're medium-poly at just 2354 polys. 13 swatches, all other ages are repo'd to adults of their gender. categorised as everyday, formal, and outerwear!

DOWNLOAD: SFS | MF ⚔

credits go to @clepysdra for the original ts4 meshes & textures! 🥰

SWATCH

if there are any issues that you find with this set, please don't be afraid to let me know! happy simming, and when you download this, do keep in mind,

Love, ~ Ky 💖

[sartsasims]

Pharaoh's palace

[sychik-personal]

long technicalities post

I just had to change some things before starting the new "year" (which amounts to approximately 8 human years in my game).

first of all, MODS I found myself in desperate need of:

antibodies after a sickness

get dressed autonomously

mini residential and community lots

also forgot to link the Stolen by Fairies mod. I thought about making my own multi-PT with gods instead of fairies/elves, but antiquity will pass while alien elves are timeless.

now that my sims won't be permanently sick (as realistic as it is - though I will make it worse in other ways), won't be prancing around in underwear in front of their servants, and I can finally have a proper 1x1 cheap taberna instead of ending up with lots of unused space and disrupting the look of the city part of the map...

ROS

the modified ROS scheduler doesn't do it for me. it's amazing, but it's linked to days of the week, and it tends to land on the same events a lot. I also got tired of the money events, though it was my fault for leaving them there. and all in all, even modified, it's not historical enough for me.

as a VERY cool base for my own ROS list I ended up using @12raben's random event list. they also have some useful mods in the beginning of the post. I haven't changed that much. I made some events less gendered, deleted a few, and made some others more reflective of my own situation with the ToT challenge. that said, right now it is tailored to the Roman era - I'll be stuck in it for two more generations, I think, and I don't mind. I'm thrilled about the party events, because I hate bothering with parties in my own game and I need something to MAKE me throw one. I also added two events for visiting the community lots - because I hate that too.

Health System

another part of it is the health system. for this idea, I have to thank @guessimate and this post (also the author of the Warwickshire Challenge - this, I think?). I like micromanaging in small amounts, so my version is somewhere in between. I used fewer age groups, made the starting Health Score reflective of the parents' Total Health Score (unless for a new sim), tweaked the Random Health Rolls and Modifiers. "fat" in ts2 is not really that fat (not a bad thing either, especially in those times), so I made being unfit less punishing and being fit more rewarding instead. Flu in ts2 is caught from roaches, it kind of resembles dysentery (or similar) in my opinion, so I made it more punishing. there was no mention of Pneumonia, but I feel like getting to this stage should be more severe. Food poisoning is rare enough, so it's also more punishing.

regarding the Midwife modifier: if there are multiple Vestal Virgins, I will make it so one of them will have to take on a Medicine career, so that I even have a midwife.

on the basis of THS, I divide my sims into four groups: Sickly, Weak, Average, Healthy. the Sickly get a whole special treatment, adapted from The Sick Child ROS in 12Raben's post. the health category also affects the outcomes of some events - I will have to test it, of course, to see if it's viable.

the main reason for adopting this combination (ROS + health system) is that predestined deaths at a certain age don't do it for me, either. I don't like coming up with the reason for someone's death unless it's obvious. this way, health will be dealt with its own module, and random accidents with their own.

all at once in an Excel sheet:

ToT rules and rolls

feel free to copy, modify, alter and delete my dumb comments if you like

[ts2-testoftime]

HELPFUL SITES FOR THE TEST OF TIME CHALLENGE

These sites are particularly helpful for The Sims 2 (2004)'s versions of the challenge. I'm talking general places to find mods, custom content, and other stuff that you need for an immersive and enjoyable game experience.

anna220's Original Version of the Challenge - useful for inspiration as well as helpful tips on how to play the challenge, as they intended it

PleasantSims' Edited Ruleset - has some helpful CC and mod links for the Neanderthal era, and a ruleset up to the Victorians

🌟Chicklet's Test of Time Blog - more inspiration, rulesets, and finds for plenty of stages in the challenge, and more!

leopardeyes' Just Another Test of Time Blog - plenty of inspiration for the Neanderthal era

🌟The Plumb Bob Keep - in my opinion the best repository of historical custom content, mods, and so much more; it's especially useful in later stages of the challenge but offers so much for earlier eras, too!

🌟 AlmightyHat's Historical Blog - custom content, tips and tricks, and creator assistance; essential to any historical challenge!

ModTheSims' Themes and Challenges Page - mostly medieval downloads, but plenty of other juicy custom content, too

This ts2history Blog - some incredibly useful custom content for later stages of the challenge

Kalynn's Pinterest Board - more historical CC, best for later stages of the challenge but useful in earlier ones, too

Let me know if you have any other sites that you frequent for this challenge, but these are the ones that I use myself 😊 A 🌟means I consider it especially useful to my own playthrough!

[cruciferous-spatula]

This morning on House Qallariq: Autumn is here.

Wakin and Sacha are getting the final harvestables of the year planted

In the evening, Sumaq and Saminchay's father Entzu drops by

and bonds with his youngest

While the young people occupy themselves outside

The adults do some catching up.

Mutia's got a mean streak.

And Sky has had quite enough of her nonsense :( use a phone? I can't even use the phrase "has ran" without smirking like one of those smug asshats who think grammatical errors matter at all while making more than any I know in my own writing every day of my life jfc who even am i

existential crisis aside, and oh shit we lost the cat oh no... aside, the evening passes without further incident

peace out

[froynlaventje]

I've finally finished playing the Picaso's next round. Bran and Gaba are getting along well and are now friends.

Gaba had her birthday and is now a child. Her favorite thing to do is playing with big brother Bran and she gained the lucky trait.

Bran meets Bumelia Parviflorum

But right after that the whole family passes out due to heat stroke. Only mom Jessica is still on her feet.

Jessica stays awake until evening falls and passes out just as her family wakes up. It does not last long, since the sun is down now.

Jessica has a want to have another baby and that night chimes are heard from inside one of the tents....

The next day Bumelia walks by again and she and Gaba become friends.

And Agapios Sipos walks by as well. No one seems to like him much, but at least he manages to catch a fish so he's going home with some food. The Sipos family has just moved in from elsewhere and will soon be played.

The next evening Jessica finishes potty training Dob. It's a good thing she got that done before the new baby arrives.

In the last night of this round with the Picaso's, Jessica gives birth to their second son. They name him Mondi.

[glowyjellyfish]

I just want to note real quick that I would very much like to start a modified Test of Time challenge and obsess over it, but because I am a dumbass it is taking me a million years to whittle down the stupidly large downloads folder I made by combining several completely different downloads folders because I simply had to have every potentially useful piece of CC I already had.

…this is for an Ancient & Classical downloads folder. The volume of CC should be very small and manageable, but nooooo I had to do it the stupid way.

…I am going to significantly modify the TOT rules to be—from what I can recall of history and anthropology classes about ten years ago—more historically accurate and less… racially weird. i.e. Roman era slaves are not based on skin color, nobody invented that idea until colonialism was running rampant. Roman era slaves are mainly prisoners of war and serious debtors (which I believe is more accurate but probably not 100% accurate). And slaves are not lumped in with The Poor but are a distinct class themselves.

Also nobody gains power based on money before we even have money, that’s absurd. You gain power based on friends and influence and reputation.

Also we don’t go directly from “generic primitive” to “Ancient Rome”, we start with a band level society and progress through tribe and chiefdom and THEN we can advance to the State level society of Ancient Rome.

Also we’re using Sun&Moon products like crazy so our sims can hunt and gather until they learn agriculture.

Also eras change based on large global events and unlocking, not time passing; this is mainly so I can play with Proportionate Aging without it taking twenty two seasons/rounds for my adult sims to age to elder and even have a chance of dying. Although I could also play without that mod. I really like the calendar and age system I derived from it but it does take so long to play.

My OH WELL, I HAVE LOTS OF TIME TO DECIDE BECAUSE MY STUPID DOWNLOADS FOLDER IS STUFFED FULL OF RANDOM MODERN AND MEDIEVAL CRAP THAT HAS TO BE CAREFULLY PURGED BEFORE I CAN EVEN THINK ABOUT PLAYING.

[timeless-toaster]

OOC: The end of Tribal Stage, and my reflection on the journey.

So... phew, that was a long road. Unfortunately I didn't record exactly when I started the Test of Time challenge, but from what I could gather from my files, the earliest date is 2022.06.22. It's 2023.11.30. as of writing this post. I didn't play continously, as a lot of simmers can probably relate. I had my hyperfocus moments on the game, then I had my "not opening Sims 2 for a month" phases.

I wanna talk about the thing I've seen commonly said regarding this challenge: is it boring?

My answer is nah and yah.

In my opinion it really depends on your playstyle, how much you like breaking rules, and how much you like making stories.

Do you hate breaking rules and insist on keeping everything like "it's supposed to be"? Then yes, with the original rules I believe this challenge is very boring, long and repetitive.

Especially if you're the kind of player who plays purely wants and fears and doesn't deviate from that at all. There's not many very interesting wants you can fulfill in the first period. Warning for wants'n'fears kinda simmers: the wants in the first stage of the challenge mostly consist of nature hobby wants, skill point and love/family wants. (I'm just saying, cause when I discovered wants and the fears playstyle, I used to play like this. I still play loosely like it, but now I understand that sims will never roll for certain things that I wanna do.)

However if you like to make storylines I think the limitations (and how you could break them) actually give you a pretty good playground for storytelling.

Okay, this broke the rule, but why? How am I gonna play with it in the future? (Me starting with the rule that only men can be heir, but making a family with a woman heir. Contributed to like 75% of the drama.)

Also, real talk here. I'm not gonna lie, I didn't have that much fun in certian parts. The start feels a little too hard, and limiting, with the food and overheating (god, the overheating is so freaking annoying), and by the original rules your sims are not even meant to bathe/shower?! From the start I was like "I'm not gonna listen to them complain 24/7 shouting for a shower, and I'm not gonna spam the Wash Hands action for 4 in game hours". That was the main reason I stopped with the Apocalypse challenge.

Elders got boring too, news flash I know.

Also I had a huge push when the closing generation aged up to teens. I got really hyped for the end of the stage, and wanted to rush through it. (One of the reasons I stopped with the Moonwell Valley posts.)

But overall I don't think this challenge is more repetitive than playing regular Sims 2. It is a game that becomes repetitive if binged for too long, no matter what... I think. Take breaks, guys, the game is still here after 20 years, it's not going anywhere.

I did make a modified ruleset for the challenge's first stage, where I tried to fix whatever I found annoying rather than challenging.

Overall I enjoyed it, I like the lore of the neighbourhood I created. If it says something, this is my second longest running Sims 2 game. (I played a total of 540 sim days in Moonwell Valley, and my second longest game in Veronaville I played 621 sim days.)

[sychik]

TS2 palla and pallium: texture FIX, overhead palla

super tiny post with tiny cc updates, I have very little energy as of late.

I figured out what I didn't like about the palla (other than the obvious clipping, sorry, it wasn't fixed). it's the wrong side not being properly mapped. shame on me for making it solid color. swatches were updated as well: tiny bit of texture, and small changes to the vibrancy. pallium suffered from the same problems.

DOWNLOAD FIXED PALLA

DOWNLOAD FIXED PALLIUM

and the overhead thing. this is what I wanted the palla to be like initially, because most of the images I see show it pulled over the woman's head. I wasn't feeling very ambitious then, but I feel good enough to make this modification now. works best with, umm, braided updos? swatches are same as "normal" palla.

DOWNLOAD PALLA OVERHEAD

[liri-sims]

Followers gift part 2: Medieval magazines!

So, magazines didn't really exist until the 18th century. But before that, there were cheap, widely available publications - broadsides, chapbooks, pamphlets - that covered a wide range of subjects like news, true crime, political commentary, entertainment (some ballads were literally just existing poems set to music) and news-of-the-weird subjects like witchcraft and prophecies and that woman in England who claimed she kept giving birth to rabbits, and so on. A lot of the same subjects covered by Sims 2 magazines, in other words. They weren't done in periodical form, but neither are Sims 2 magazines, which are the same week after week.

So that was my initial model. I started out with monochrome woodcut prints from 15th- and 16th-century books and broadsheets, but my early attempt at defaulting the magazines made me think that color might be advisable to make the images easier to recognize at tiny sizes. That led me down a rabbit hole of medieval manuscript art, with the end result that some of the magazines are using art that is far, far too lavish for a mass publication. But it's aesthetically pleasing!

All the magazines have unique interiors, unlike the originals. Most of the text is just Lorem Ipsum (I did include a bit of Chicken Little/Henny Penny in the children's magazine, because one of the illustrations cried out for it) so you're not missing anything by not being able to read it. I used Simlish TrueBadoor for all the text, titles and articles alike.

Man, that floor is pixelated. Hestia and Osanyin need to remodel their foyer. Above you see the entertainment/fashion/sports magazine, with a focus on music. That cover, like many of the others, dates to just a bit before 1500; that was my target zone, though I wasn't super-strict about it. I may well do another default later, with earlier artwork - the Codex Manesse has a lot of good candidates - but I'm a little burnt out right now, which is why I haven't followed through with the hobby magazines.

I replaced the catalog descriptions and titles in the UI, too. Mostly not very period-accurate, except for the judgmental tone towards frivolity and avarice, though I did sometimes use period titles complete with the spelling of the time.

You can see one cover for "All That Glittereth" up above, but it will display a different one when you bring the magazine home; this is normal, if annoying. Maxis for some reason included two money-themed publications and then mixed them up. The UI in use shows a sim buying the magazine in an OFB owned business, but it should look a lot the same in an unowned, NPC-run lot.

And as you can see from the image at the top of the post, I also did a recolor - two recolors, in fact - of this default replacement magazine rack by Motherof70, with my magazine covers. The rack has nine magazines on display and there are only six interest magazines, so I included the alternate cover for Rat Race and two of the hobby magazine covers (or at least early versions of them. I change my mind a lot.)

All the textures are 512 x 512, except for the magazine rack itself, which is 1024 x 1024.

Acknowledgements: These were all built on the template of Lolabythebay's 1920s magazine defaults, and some parts - the page edges and spines - are used barely altered. I adjusted the colors on the spines but kept recycling the underlying graphic. I would never have made sense of the Maxis mapping, let alone been able to increase the resolution of the texture file, without her hard work.

If not for Xia's hobby magazine defaults, I'd have had no idea where to start on looking for the catalog descriptions to replace them.

And I probably wouldn't have thought of doing the magazines at all if not for the default rack.

As for art credit: I've been painstakingly bookmarking all the images used and would be delighted to do a link post, but I don't know how many people would be interested, and this is already getting long.

Magazine replacements: SFS or Box.

Magazine rack recolors: SFS or Box.

Everything is compressorized and seems to work fine for me. Let me know if there are any problems!

[nonsensical-pixels]

then vs now... just 20 years apart 👀 from stone age to roman times...

(it's also a monitor + computer upgrade apart lol)

[plumbob-boy]

LyleSnake's Test of Time Challenge

I wasn't enthused about the existing versions of the Test of Time Challenge so I went ahead and made my own. It's inspired by existing Sims 2 challenges, other games, and history of course.

What's different about mine compared to the others?

No slavery or patriarchal ownership of women

Supernatural Sims incorporated into the challenge

Scoring system based on skillpoints and talent badges

Historically inspired abilities

Occupations that incorporate the expansion packs

Here's the short version:

Start with eight adult sims split evenly between two huge lots. these are the first tribes

once their grandkids are adults, move on to the next era

there are 6 eras, so the challenge will last a total of 18 generations

count up each sim's skillpoints. when you finish the game, that number is your score

I have the detailed guide here on google docs

rules for the early modern era coming soon

let me know how your playthrough goes if you decide to try it out!