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College Tuition and Student Loans

by kestrellyn Posted 24th Jun 2018 at 11:48 PM - Updated 6th Jan 2024 at 6:05 AM by kestrellyn
 
187 Comments / Replies (Who?) - 161 Feedback Posts, 25 Thanks Posts
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Mad Poster
Original Poster
#26 Old 4th Jul 2018 at 10:13 PM
I can't reproduce this. Are you sure you put it in your Downloads folder? Did you remove the other version of the mod first?
Criminal Mastermind
retired moderator
#27 Old 5th Jul 2018 at 1:48 AM
I must have placed it into one of my four Downloads (I have 4 setups with different mods installed to play different themes). I will get back to you later and let you know how it is working out with both Semester Changes and this mod installed.
Field Researcher
#28 Old 5th Jul 2018 at 3:46 AM
Quote: Originally posted by kestrellyn
@Chaavik, @koololdster, I have made a version that works with Semester Changes. Make sure it loads last. It will bill for two semesters of tuition at the end of every year (or if you drop out).


Thanks! I will try it with my next college Sim.
Forum Resident
#29 Old 5th Jul 2018 at 1:06 PM Last edited by natboopsie : 29th Jul 2018 at 11:07 PM.
Kestrellyn, thank you so much for your work so far on this mod, especially on being willing to create new versions for compatibility with existing hacks.

I have Semester Changes and had started testing your original mod, before you released the version specific to that Cyjon mod. Indeed, your original version and Cyjon's mod didn't really work together; HCDU reported the clash in the way the game initializes a new semester.

To let you know about my experience (but as background only; not directly relevant now that you've released the Semester Changes version of yours), I tried anyway with changing load order to see if that let your original version work with Cyjon's mod, loading yours last (loading yours first caused none of your code to run). That didn't work well; the game consistently did not put sims on the proper schedule when starting a new semester but defaulted to two 72-hour semesters. This could be fixed in game manually each time, by using Cyjon's Debugger object, as he described; that would adjust the individual sim to the intended semester length (and skip one semester per year) per his mod. But most problematically for me, since I play both uni-in-the-main-hood (using Squinge's Mega College Pack mods) and regular uni, the Debugger's Fix Student function is not available in the main hood, only in uni subhoods. Since it had previously been no issue in my hood to have main-hood-uni students run on the same schedules as uni-subhood students, I was unhappy with that.

Also, when I tried that as a workaround, I started having a very strange problem: after playing a household where I initialized a college fund (whether as a debt or an available balance for future college), my OFB sim businesses would have no customers at all, except the business reviewer. There seemed to be no cure for that other than restoring from backup! So when I saw your Semester Changes version, I had been in the process of trying to figure out if maybe there was something predictable about how I was using your mod in whatever household was played prior to the businesses becoming unusable. (I really want to use your mod, you see.)
Edited to add: the bug mentioned in this paragraph appears to be a hidden hack conflict (not reported by HCDU) unique to my Downloads mix and is definitely not caused by only putting this mod into your game. More details in post 51 in this thread.

Anyway, your new Semester Changes version has now solved the problem of wanting to keep all my YA's to Cyjon's four (unless they go on academic probation) 48-hour semesters for their entire college experience! That is working very well for me; all my students are having their new semesters' lengths set properly. I also have not had any trouble with the Professor Von Ball object disappearing. I deleted your old mod version and added this new one in its place, but all instances of the PVB object as well as the tokens were kept when changing versions.

I am still watching for that major owned-business glitch and will report back about any further occurrence.

Even with the Semester Changes version, though, there is definitely some bug with the numbers, or at least the displayed numbers. My student (Joan) who was initialized with no college fund (and thus who accumulates all tuition charged as debt) has appeared glitch free in that regard. Three semesters played, and Joan's accumulated a student loan balance of exactly three semesters' worth. That's great. But one of the other students, who did start college with some funds, just got this message at the end of sophomore year (played as one Cyjon semester, but paid for as two semesters by your mod): "Carlijn paid $10,650 for the year in tuition from her college fund and accumulated the remaining $-8,150 in student loans. Total loans: $-8,150"

The problem there is, Carlijn was initialized with a total expense of $10,000 for college. In other words, her semesters should cost $1250 each, or $2500 this time because it's the whole year. So she should never be paying anything close to $10,650 for a year, right? However, her actual balance (which is a withdrawable positive balance, so not a loan) remains correct at $8,150. Perhaps it's only her displayed figure that's wrong? Still, it's something I'm sure you'll want to look into.

So I'm going to finish playing these test YAs, probably today, and will let you know in detail of the outcome for each of the two final years they have.

I do also have a couple of suggestions/thoughts. One is that it would be nice to have Professor Von Ball available to place on community lots as well as residential ones. I currently can place him at any residence, main hood or uni and private house or dorm, but sometimes I'd like to be able to check loan balances while my students, or graduated/former students, are out and about. Those who might build a university registrar or bursar's office as a community lot, for example, might like to have him available. And also, since you can withdraw money from an available college fund balance at any time, perhaps some irresponsible students would want to do that to fund, say, clothes shopping or something?

Second, perhaps in the SC version you could add an option to initialize the college fund for just $5000. Why? Because your Semester Changes version charges students twice (two semesters) for tuition at the end of every academic year, but Cyjon's mod only has them receiving one grant (one semester) at the end of the same year. (That's always been something I personally liked about his mod, since I like to have my sims have fewer easy opportunities to gain money.) In other words, with Cyjon's mod, even if they make Dean's List every year, they still can only earn a maximum of $4800 from uni---a larger difference from your current minimum initialization of $10,000 than I think you originally intended.

I will write again later today or tomorrow with my further test results.
Lab Assistant
#30 Old 5th Jul 2018 at 7:33 PM
Default Fix works!
I tried the version that works with Cylon's semester by sending a Sim through college. It works nicely! Thanks for tweaking it!
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#31 Old 6th Jul 2018 at 1:06 AM
Hey, @natboopsie, thanks so much for your detailed report. I think your error is just a display problem (it even correctly prints that you have -8,150 in debt, which is the same as having +8,150 in credit, it's just that for some reason the code that decides which message to print seems to have gotten the idea that you're paying much more tuition than you are). This function got a lot more complicated when two semesters had to be payed at a time, because for silly reasons having to do with the game's reliance on signed short integers dealing with numbers that can potentially be greater than 10,000 is much more of a pain in the ass than dealing with numbers that can't.

I don't have time to work on this tonight, but I will give it a look tomorrow. In the meantime, I'd love to hear about any further experiments you perform! I don't think there should be anything in the mod that affects owned businesses at all, so I definitely want to know whether that continues to be a problem or not.
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#32 Old 7th Jul 2018 at 1:50 AM
@natboopsie, I think this problem should be fixed if you redownload the file.
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#33 Old 7th Jul 2018 at 2:14 AM
...And, all three packages have also been updated to allow Professor Von Ball to be placed on a community lot.

I haven't made $5,000 education available, because I feel that that is way too small a cost and that the solution to the grant money not covering the $10,000 education is to mod the grant payout to be higher, which makes perfect sense when you only get it half as often. This can be done without interfering with either this mod or Semester Changes, and I'll be happy to make the mod and upload it if you would like.
Test Subject
THANKS POST
#34 Old 7th Jul 2018 at 3:20 PM Last edited by Simtastics : 15th Jul 2018 at 3:21 PM. Reason: Have now used Mod
Love this mod!
I've been keeping detailed notes by hand for years and paying with school by putting a car in a sim's backpack then giving it as a gift to an NPC.

Tried this mod to pay for private school too. Gave the loan to the parent when the kid got into school. Worked perfectly. No more corvettes in the backpack.
Forum Resident
#35 Old 7th Jul 2018 at 6:02 PM
@Kestrellyn

So sorry it took me an extra day to get back here. Also sorry that I didn't get any notice of your @ mentions, so I didn't realize you had been addressing me!

Really appreciate you fixing the display issue I had mentioned!

I also don't disagree with your logic that it makes more sense to double the grant payout in order to more closely match the minimum tuition level you have. For my particular hoods, it's not needed to have a version that does that, though---but thank you anyway. I already have a manual recordkeeping setup where business taxes pay for a SimNation scholarship fund for teens who qualify for college but can't afford it. (Life is already verrry expensive in my hood thanks to manually applied taxes and a slew of other mods, including much slower skilling and Cyjon's Bigger Bills at level 4, so $10,000 for college is quite difficult for the majority of my households to be able to achieve, especially if they have more than one child.) It makes plenty of sense that the administrators of that scholarship fund will get into the business of providing smaller grants to cover this new shortfall. Maxis scholarships are expected to make up some of the difference too, though with slower skilling, those are much harder to come by for my sim teens also.

Anyway, I did at least manage to test even more extensively than originally planned. Hopefully there were not so many changes in your re-uploaded version that all the testing will now be irrelevant!

First, I want to mention the best news: since I replaced the original version of your mod with the Semester Changes--compatible version, that glitch where owned businesses would suddenly stop generating any customers (other than the business reviewer) has never appeared again! It had happened four or five times during the period that I was using the incompatible version of your mod along with Cyjon's SC mod. I had never seen it before then. Since it disappeared once I swapped to the compatible version, it seems reasonable to conclude that it was some strange side effect of the mod clash. If I see it reappear, I'll definitely let you know.

Here's the extensive rundown of my test results. I'll summarize before providing the exhaustive detail in each case, and those exhaustive details will all go under buttons...to help keep you from feeling exhausted indeed.

Overview: I tested in two different hoods. One was a hood that I created only to test this mod (and which only had YAs in a normal uni subhood, no other playables). There, interest rates for your mod were set to 4%. The other is my main hood (where I tested in both the uni subhood and in my uni-in-the-main-hood household). In that hood, interest rates were not set for YAs, only for non-YA usage. I have the UC. I don't use AGS. I initialized every YA mentioned below for $10,000 expected cost, since I do not anticipate having uni cost more than that in my hood, for reasons already mentioned earlier.

Summary of test-hood testing of your Semester Changes version:
* Household included YAs only, in a standard on-campus dorm.
* An apparently corrupted token for one of the YAs once caused him (the student Graal, during year 3) to be unable to complete his semester; timer did not reset from "Final Exam in Progress" and he did not start a new semester, but the game kept returning him to the lot anyway. Deleting his token using Prof Von Ball solved the issue, though of course the money associated with it disappeared.
* Students tended to return from finals with varying amounts of hours left in their new semester, mostly quantities in the mid-50's. This glitch occasionally happened with Cyjon's mod in before I ever had yours, but it seems much more frequent now. Hard to say if it's more than a coincidence, though.
* Cyjon's Debugger can no longer be used to Fix Student (changing their timer to 48 hours remaining). Without your mod as well as with the original version (the one not specifically compatible with Semester Changes) of your mod, that Debugger's function works fine on campus. The kludgy workaround is to use Pescado's College Clock object to "Sync to Me" on a student that was further along in their semester, though of course that can end up losing them too much time.



I also played my main hood's college subhood and main-hood-uni households. Since it's my main hood, though, I only played any of those through the end of one semester; I just didn't want to take any of them too far ahead of the rest of the hood!

Summary of main-hood uni-in-the-main-hood results:
*Testing included 2 YAs who live in a main-hood residential lot (set up to look like a dorm, but with a regular kitchen where they cook their own meals) along with the lot's adult caretaker and the caretaker's toddler son.
*Generally, no problems. Even the adult caretaker, given a token to represent a loan he manages on behalf of the dorm, properly accrued interest on the loan which changed correctly when it was partly paid back.
*Both students progressed to the next semester correctly, except that again, the number of hours remaining was off: 46 and 52 hours this time.



Summary of main-hood uni-subhood results:
* This testing included two mixed-age households (because I use Lamare's suite of mods to allow non-YAs to live on uni campuses: http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=600518), so no households that included only YAs.
* All ungraduated YAs in the dorm began their next year with 57 hours to go, but otherwise no problems.
* The graduated YA also living in the dorm (Candice; moved in after graduation from main-hood uni) had a glitch I've not seen before with Lamare's mod on aging to adult. Her aging happened to initiate just as the other students returned from their exams, and I had to use the batbox to Nuke the stuck move-out to get the problems to stop so she could be played normally. Hard to say whether this was directly due to your mod.
* The YA living with his teen sisters in private on-campus housing progressed with no problems at all; he even was progressed to 48 hours correctly.



EDIT TO ADD: So, what seemed most relevant to me, now that OFB businesses appear to work reliably with your Semester-Changes compatible version, is the ongoing variance in students' remaining hours for the new semester. Like I said, that used to happen with Cyjon's mod even before I ever had yours, though not so often. It might be really annoying to track down why it happens more often now, I understand---so maybe the best workaround for that issue would just be tweaking the compatible version of your mod so that the Fix Student functionality on his Debugger is restored, at least for on-campus YAs. I also wonder vaguely if your mod is doing anything that would stop his mod from properly recognizing the presence of his required basic mod, Smarter EP Check, when it runs. Just a thought.

Finally, I wanted to mention why I have been so excited about this mod; I have been hoping so long to find an alternative to one of Monique's that's never worked robustly for me with the UC!

So instead, I have started to use your hacked Prof Von Ball object throughout my hood to handle adults with debts generally. Your mod seems wonderfully flexible that way because of the ability to assign payees---only sim-to-sim loans are allowed for adults in my hood, so I think that with the payee function, I can use it to replace Monique's Automated Payment mod, http://www.modthesims.info/d/203984.

I have limped along for a while with Monique's mod since I've had the UC (and before I had the UC it was always great). The problem is that its token gets wiped, setting some or all loan balances in the hood to $0, every now and then as I install new mods. And then the sim taking out the loan thinks they earned the money every time I have to redo their loan. Argh!)

So I appreciate the ability to accrue interest on loan balances. I'm hopeful your token will be more robust in case of hood resets than Monique's! I know it's possible, because I also use Christianlov's Wallet Controller, and it doesn't lose its data under normal circumstances, no matter what new mods I install.

I have noticed about your mod that like Monique's, interest is accrued on community lots as well, which makes it possible for a sim who spends much time off the home lot to accrue quite a bit more interest than intended, since they may pass 3am several extra times in one rotation. I don't know if that can be fixed, though to get around it if not, I'll just have everyone's loan interest set at 0 or 1%.

One thing that Monique's mod does that I am also hoping this one doesn't: when Monique's checks to see whether any sim on the lot accrues interest (which it also does on community lots, like your mod currently), it will then accrue interest to the account of every sim on the lot with an eligible account, whether in the currently playable household or not. (I know because her mod generates a pop-up in each instance to advise of new interest accrued.) So I haven't had the chance to study whether your mod does this as well, but I hope it can be avoided---again, it makes it too easy for sims to accrue too much interest. I think if avoiding that means the PVB object cannot be available on community lots, that would be a trade that I would happily make.
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#36 Old 7th Jul 2018 at 10:28 PM
Thanks again for your thorough testing!

Quote:
First, I want to mention the best news: since I replaced the original version of your mod with the Semester Changes--compatible version, that glitch where owned businesses would suddenly stop generating any customers (other than the business reviewer) has never appeared again!


Great! I'm not sure why that particular conflict would have caused it, but I am glad it has stopped.

Quote:
Overview: I tested in two different hoods. One was a hood that I created only to test this mod (and which only had YAs in a normal uni subhood, no other playables). There, interest rates for your mod were set to 4%. The other is my main hood (where I tested in both the uni subhood and in my uni-in-the-main-hood household). In that hood, interest rates were not set for YAs, only for non-YA usage.


Incidentally, interest never accumulated for YAs, no matter what hood they are in or what interest rate you have set. I figure that since the timing of college is so different to the timing of the rest of the neighborhood in an unmodded game, it just doesn't make sense.

Quote:
* An apparently corrupted token for one of the YAs once caused him (the student Graal, during year 3) to be unable to complete his semester; timer did not reset from "Final Exam in Progress" and he did not start a new semester, but the game kept returning him to the lot anyway. Deleting his token using Prof Von Ball solved the issue, though of course the money associated with it disappeared.


If this happens again, you should go into debug mode, send him to his final once again, and note if you get a popup about an error log. Then post the stack trace from the error log here. Also, you should check the settings of the token with Professor Von Ball and tell me what they are.

Quote:
* Students tended to return from finals with varying amounts of hours left in their new semester, mostly quantities in the mid-50's. This glitch occasionally happened with Cyjon's mod in before I ever had yours, but it seems much more frequent now. Hard to say if it's more than a coincidence, though.


This isn't a glitch, this is Cyjon's mod working as intended. Normally, the semester length is a multiple of 24 hours. At the end of this time, the final exam starts, and lasts for a few more hours after that. Then, the new semester begins, but because 24 * x + 3ish hours have passed since the beginning of the previous semester, the new semester starts 3ish hours after the old one started and thus the final exam time has moved 3ish hours. As a result, after a few semesters you start to have final exams in the middle of the night because the time moves every semester. This all assumes you don't visit any community lots, which naturally causes the final exam time to move even more. Cyjon's mod wants to make all final exams always happen at a certain time of day, and the way to do this is to change the number of hours in a semester that begins, say, in the middle of the night, to a number that's not a multiple of 24. How many hours it is exactly depends on when the semester started.

Quote:
* Cyjon's Debugger can no longer be used to Fix Student (changing their timer to 48 hours remaining).


As I said, that is not necessarily what it does. It changes the number of hours remaining to a number such that the final exam will happen at a certain time of day. I would guess that it is only available if either the student is in their first semester of the year still, or if the final exam is scheduled for a time of day the mod thinks is inappropriate. The debugger is its own self-contained object - nothing I could do in a separate file could possibly change how it operates.

Quote:
(It would be interesting at some point to see how it works if he also is the payee for some students' outstanding loans, as well as still making payments on his own "loan", but I did not have a chance to play that scenario at this time.)


The money he receives as the payee will go into the family funds for the house - it won't explicitly go to pay off the loan unless you choose to use the family funds in this way.

Quote:
* The graduated YA also living in the dorm (Candice; moved in after graduation from main-hood uni) had a glitch I've not seen before with Lamare's mod on aging to adult. Her aging happened to initiate just as the other students returned from their exams, and I had to use the batbox to Nuke the stuck move-out to get the problems to stop so she could be played normally. Hard to say whether this was directly due to your mod.


This sounds more like it's something to do with Lamare's mod.

Quote:
I also wonder vaguely if your mod is doing anything that would stop his mod from properly recognizing the presence of his required basic mod, Smarter EP Check, when it runs. Just a thought.


Smarter EP Check is just a new global BHAV that he added, I do not add or modify any global resources in this mod, so I doubt there would be a problem.

Quote:
So instead, I have started to use your hacked Prof Von Ball object throughout my hood to handle adults with debts generally. Your mod seems wonderfully flexible that way because of the ability to assign payees---only sim-to-sim loans are allowed for adults in my hood, so I think that with the payee function, I can use it to replace Monique's Automated Payment mod, http://www.modthesims.info/d/203984.


Interesting, I hadn't considered this use case before! Would you like the ability to use Professor Von Ball to do something like allow sims to take out loans from each other, too? That is, actually get money in family funds from the another sim when they initialize some debt?

Quote:
So I appreciate the ability to accrue interest on loan balances. I'm hopeful your token will be more robust in case of hood resets than Monique's! I know it's possible, because I also use Christianlov's Wallet Controller, and it doesn't lose its data under normal circumstances, no matter what new mods I install.


I don't think the token should be deleted on a reset, but I can test to make sure.

Quote:
I have noticed about your mod that like Monique's, interest is accrued on community lots as well, which makes it possible for a sim who spends much time off the home lot to accrue quite a bit more interest than intended, since they may pass 3am several extra times in one rotation. I don't know if that can be fixed, though to get around it if not, I'll just have everyone's loan interest set at 0 or 1%.


That can definitely be fixed, thanks for reporting it.

Quote:
One thing that Monique's mod does that I am also hoping this one doesn't: when Monique's checks to see whether any sim on the lot accrues interest (which it also does on community lots, like your mod currently), it will then accrue interest to the account of every sim on the lot with an eligible account, whether in the currently playable household or not.


It should only accumulate interest for sims who are part of the current family (and should accumulate interest for all sims in the current family, even if they happen to be off-lot at 3 AM for whatever reason). Incidentally, interest accumulation has nothing to do with Professor Von Ball - you can delete him and interest will still accumulate.
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#37 Old 7th Jul 2018 at 11:36 PM
Ok, all three files have been updated to not charge interest on community lots, and as far as I can tell, resets do not affect tokens at all.
Forum Resident
#38 Old 8th Jul 2018 at 3:34 PM
Quote: Originally posted by kestrellyn
Thanks again for your thorough testing!


You are very welcome, kestrellyn. But I just noticed that you are also faiuwle! So really, I owe you thanks for your older mods. Particularly the one that makes all sims use any loose books on the lot before taking a new one off a bookshelf...it was such a small thing that nevertheless has made a rather substantial difference in my enjoyment (by reducing irritation, lol---in fact, in game, I still consciously appreciate that mod every time I see a sim go to study using a book already lying on the floor!).

I am so happy to be able to tell you that directly (glad you are still modding). Heck, in gratitude for that mod alone, I would have tested this mod for you.

Quote: Originally posted by kestrellyn
Incidentally, interest never accumulated for YAs, no matter what hood they are in or what interest rate you have set. I figure that since the timing of college is so different to the timing of the rest of the neighborhood in an unmodded game, it just doesn't make sense.


I agree with your reasoning---even if you hadn't set up the mod that way, I would have still set the rate to 0 during their uni years. I was aware that that is part of your design; I was only being extra-precise about what I was doing in case it helped you use my results more effectively. Sorry that I did not clarify that I understood about that.

Quote: Originally posted by kestrellyn
If this happens again, you should go into debug mode, send him to his final once again, and note if you get a popup about an error log. Then post the stack trace from the error log here. Also, you should check the settings of the token with Professor Von Ball and tell me what they are.


Thank you so much! You're right, I didn't think to try anything like that at the time (heh, even in a test household, I am drawn in by sims, so I was more thinking, "poor Graal, he's so tired; how can I help him finish the final?" rather than "I've got to get this error log!")

But it's really great to have your specific directions on how I can get a stack trace in future. (edited to remove some questions that I just had to read the forum's auto-generated linking on the term "error log" to answer!) Is the "stack trace" the entire contents of the error log file? If not, is there likely to be a clearly marked section of the error log that is the stack trace?

Quote: Originally posted by kestrellyn
This isn't a glitch, this is Cyjon's mod working as intended.

OMG, you are so right. I had completely forgotten that one of his goals was finals at the same time for all students in a semester---and that he never guaranteed that all semesters were exactly 48 hours. Ha, thanks for the reminder. So yes, then you're completely correct that his Debugger probably still is working fine.

Thanks also for the reassurance that Smarter EP Check is not affected in any way by your mod---though of course since there's actually no problem with Cyjon's mod working, it sounds like I never had any reason to worry about that anyway. (Really appreciate your patience with my non-modder lack of clear understanding on some of these!)

Quote: Originally posted by kestrellyn
The money he receives as the payee will go into the family funds for the house - it won't explicitly go to pay off the loan unless you choose to use the family funds in this way.


Appreciate this clarification as well; I haven't actually had any payees receive funds, so I'm glad to know in advance how it will work.

Quote: Originally posted by kestrellyn
Would you like the ability to use Professor Von Ball to do something like allow sims to take out loans from each other, too? That is, actually get money in family funds from the another sim when they initialize some debt?


Wow, thank you for asking! It never would have occurred to me to just request that of you. (I discovered the game only after its original heyday was long over, so I've never had the chance to speak to many modders whose work I use heavily---and also never developed the habit of thinking that I can just ask a modder to make something for me, heh.)

Goodness yes, kestrellyn, I would be delighted if your modded PVB had that functionality also! And perhaps it would be an improvement that others would appreciate also, since even student loans could now be done privately from one household to another.

So to be clear, I'm thinking the mod would now provide the ability to fund a college fund (or pay off a loan balance) not only from the current household's cash balance but also from a different household's (where the money would actually disappear from the other household's family fund)? That would be fabulous.

For your consideration, I'll mention some very useful ways that Monique's mod handled such transfers of family funds. (Of course I leave it up to you to choose which of these functionalities you might include in yours.)
* It allowed you to borrow money from any sim whether known by that sim or not. You could choose the other party from among all playables, NPCs and townies, and even playables currently in the bin. (Affecting household funds for binned families was hard to find elsewhere and particularly useful; same with being able to make the transfer even if the active sim didn't know the other sim/household.)
* It allowed both borrowing and loaning funds to another sim---in other words, the active sim could also "push" money into another sim's household funds, not only take money from another household's funds. In the case of binned sim households, for example, this was especially great---for example, one household could help another in the bin to be able to afford the starting price of a house.

Another flaw that Monique's mod had in transfers between sims was that any two sims could have only one loan between them at any given time. That is, a loan could be erased but not changed in value in any other way, except by paying it down; in particular, you could not forgive only a portion of the loan, nor could you have an existing loan increased (so that the borrower borrowed an additional sum from their existing lender). I would love for some or all of that limitation to be removed!

Also, I really like that you already ask the user to initialize the price of a college education separately from funding it (or not). This adds greatly to the flexibility of the mod. Thus my preference would be that you do not move to tying those two together, so the matter of the funding always remains a separate step. In fact, keeping them separate while adding household-to-household transfers would mean that the PVB object would then have even more use cases possible, like one-off payments to/from sims who had neither a college fund nor any student loans. So for example, some hoodwide tax payments (each household to one sim acting as tax collector) might be managed as well...as long as they're in the $10K multiples you offer.

Joy: I saw that you uploaded a version which no longer accrues interest on community lots, and even better that you have confirmed that hood resets do not delete the mod's token. I'm also really excited that with this mod, I won't have to put up any longer with random playables accruing interest to their accounts when not being played, just by accident of being generated on the same community lot.

Thank you so very much for all this, kestrellyn. I appreciate this mod so much already, so I'm sure I'll just be delighted by any further work you wish to do on it. I will try to check back in every few days here, or if there is something particular you want to talk with me about, please PM me so that I will get a notice emailed to me about it and know to come back by.

*Ongoing TS2 informational projects (come on by to contribute, get info, or spectate!): (1) the SimPE Preservation Project and (2) Conflict Tracking for the 3t2 Traits Project Mods
*Need a Pescado mod? Use his hack directory: in the first post, find the link for your latest EP, then go in hacks/
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#39 Old 9th Jul 2018 at 12:49 AM
Quote: Originally posted by natboopsie
You are very welcome, kestrellyn. But I just noticed that you are also faiuwle! So really, I owe you thanks for your older mods. Particularly the one that makes all sims use any loose books on the lot before taking a new one off a bookshelf...it was such a small thing that nevertheless has made a rather substantial difference in my enjoyment (by reducing irritation, lol---in fact, in game, I still consciously appreciate that mod every time I see a sim go to study using a book already lying on the floor!).


Thanks! :lovestruc I'm glad you like it.

Quote:
Is the "stack trace" the entire contents of the error log file? If not, is there likely to be a clearly marked section of the error log that is the stack trace?


The stack trace is the first part of the error log, before the part that says "global simulation variables".

Quote:
Goodness yes, kestrellyn, I would be delighted if your modded PVB had that functionality also! And perhaps it would be an improvement that others would appreciate also, since even student loans could now be done privately from one household to another.

So to be clear, I'm thinking the mod would now provide the ability to fund a college fund (or pay off a loan balance) not only from the current household's cash balance but also from a different household's (where the money would actually disappear from the other household's family fund)? That would be fabulous.


I don't think this would work exactly as you imagine it, because it would be impossible for a single token to track both a positive college fund balance and a debt owed to another sim at the same time. However, what I have thought of is this - there will be a third sim you can specify, called the Sponser. If you don't have a Sponser, everything works as it currently does with the Payee and the sim going to college. If you do have one, it works like this:
  • When you pay tuition out of your college fund, that money disappears from the college fund and goes to the Payee, as usual.
  • When you fail to pay tuition and accumulate it as student debt, then actually what happens is that the Sponsor pays that money (to the Payee if they exist) instead.
  • When you pay back student loans, that money goes to the Sponsor, not the Payee

So, the Sponsor is a 3rd party who is not affiliated with the university who will cover the cost of your tuition, but then you will owe them the money afterwards. The Payee continues to represent the university itself. If you just have student loans you want someone else to be able to pay for, you can handle that already by having that other person inherit the student loans from the sim who has them. Also, with this mod, it would be hard (or take some extra work) to make it possible to owe money to multiple sims at once.

What I thought you meant was to have adults and elders take out loans from other sims where they would receive that money in family funds from the other sim, but then initialize a debt with that sim as the Payee (or maybe the Sponsor in this case).

Quote:
* It allowed you to borrow money from any sim whether known by that sim or not. You could choose the other party from among all playables, NPCs and townies, and even playables currently in the bin. (Affecting household funds for binned families was hard to find elsewhere and particularly useful; same with being able to make the transfer even if the active sim didn't know the other sim/household.)


Payees are currently limited to playable adults and elders (townies have their own sort of fictional "family funds", so giving money to them is sort of like giving money to no one, and I wanted to not have every playable in the dialog as it's currently limited to 150 sims), but you can definitely choose sims in the bin.

Quote:
* It allowed both borrowing and loaning funds to another sim---in other words, the active sim could also "push" money into another sim's household funds, not only take money from another household's funds. In the case of binned sim households, for example, this was especially great---for example, one household could help another in the bin to be able to afford the starting price of a house.


That could work if it were about setting up a loan that sims received in family funds, as I original thought it was, but I've gotten a little confused about what you actually want.

Quote:
Another flaw that Monique's mod had in transfers between sims was that any two sims could have only one loan between them at any given time. That is, a loan could be erased but not changed in value in any other way, except by paying it down; in particular, you could not forgive only a portion of the loan, nor could you have an existing loan increased (so that the borrower borrowed an additional sum from their existing lender). I would love for some or all of that limitation to be removed!


Borrowing additional money should be easy to implement. Forgiving parts of loans would also be easy, but only if it (sort of counter-intuitively) happened from the borrower's side, as there's no token for the Payee/Sponsor, so finding out if someone in the neighborhood owes them money is a more expensive operation.

I'm not sure this is the best mod to use for just household-to-household transfers - there are other mods that focus on that entirely, like Pescado's money orders, that I think should be used generally for that purpose.
Forum Resident
#40 Old 12th Jul 2018 at 3:26 AM
Hello, kestrellyn. Read your reply to me last night and took some time to get more clear on what, indeed, I am asking you to do.

Quote: Originally posted by kestrellyn
The stack trace is the first part of the error log, before the part that says "global simulation variables".


Never ever have known that. Many thanks for the info.

Quote: Originally posted by kestrellyn
What I thought you meant was to have adults and elders take out loans from other sims where they would receive that money in family funds from the other sim, but then initialize a debt with that sim as the Payee (or maybe the Sponsor in this case).


Actually, that's the primary purpose I wanted. The rest was really either pie in the sky or just me not sifting through my thoughts enough before writing my last post. Sorry I made you wade through it all!

The thing that was most important to me was just that transactions also be able to affect other sims' household balances (even just one other sim's per instance)---and you're saying that can happen, which is great! For other transfers, such as a sim in another household giving a sim in the current household a monetary gift (not a loan) to, say, help with upcoming uni, I can just go on managing that sort of thing as before. (Using banking functions of Monique's computer, which works separately from her much-buggier automated payment system.)

Quote: Originally posted by kestrellyn
However, what I have thought of is this - there will be a third sim you can specify, called the Sponser. If you don't have a Sponser, everything works as it currently does with the Payee and the sim going to college. If you do have one, it works like this


Aha, adding a sponsor is a very, very interesting idea indeed!

When I first read this suggestion, I admit I thought sponsors wouldn't be necessary in my own hoods, since my plan from first seeing your mod had just been, as you say, to have a (ersatz) sponsor inherit student loan debts if I didn't mean for the student to pay off that debt themselves.

But as I gave it more thought, I realized your new idea adds more utility because
  • A single sim can be the sponsor for more than one YA. Said another way, multiple YAs can have (and simultaneously owe and pay) the same sponsor. I'm not sure, but it sounds like using Inherit alone, a (pseudo-sponsor) sim would only have been able to inherit one other sim's loans.
  • Using a sponsor system gives my playstyle room to grow, by allowing YAs to continue to be liable to some party for their college debt even after the original payee has gotten the money. That is, I don't assign a particular payee currently, but if I do in the future (a uni bursar, as in your example), and that bursar's fund starts running low (which in my hood would likely result in lack of uni grant money for orphaned and needy sims), it would be a great benefit to be able to have them fully paid sooner in some cases, while the student continues to repay their sponsor only as their means allow. (And if I don't have a payee which needs paid sooner rather than later, I also still retain the option of having the student unsponsored and owing their college debt directly to the payee through adulthood.)

An important detail, though: what happens if you have a sponsor and that sponsor dies? Can someone else inherit the sponsorship, or does that end your indebtedness on that loan?

Quote: Originally posted by kestrellyn
Also, with this mod, it would be hard (or take some extra work) to make it possible to owe money to multiple sims at once.


No problem. I don't want to make this so much extra work for you. Since with Monique's mod all debts died with the owing sim, I was already in the habit of having toddlers most often be the ones owing and "lending" money, since the youngest sims are least likely to die soon (and immune from some forms of death for longer). Likewise, I do not mind spreading loans out within a household using your object if more than one is necessary, though of course now, per your statement about who will be available in the dialogues, it'll be elders and late-stage adults who take on loans, since they're most likely to have already paid off their own and thus have space for new indebtedness (and still without risk to the loaner, now that those loans can be inherited by others even if the elder dies).

Quote: Originally posted by kestrellyn
you can definitely choose sims in the bin.


Yay!

Quote: Originally posted by kestrellyn
Borrowing additional money should be easy to implement. Forgiving parts of loans would also be easy, but only if it (sort of counter-intuitively) happened from the borrower's side, as there's no token for the Payee/Sponsor, so finding out if someone in the neighborhood owes them money is a more expensive operation.


All sounds good to me.

I don't know whether it was part of what made Monique's tokens more fragile, but her system generated a custom physical object (included in her mod) into the other sim's inventory when a loan was initiated from one side (and that could be either the payee or payer). So you could theoretically find out from looking at the object in either sim's inventory about all the details of their loan. ("Theoretically" because as I said, way too often, the objects lost track of their loans and so indicated $0 was owed any longer, sigh.)

I really don't need that kind of object-generating functionality, though. I would be quite satisfied to simply have the sim owing the money reliably and accurately able to generate details of the loan on demand (like by clicking on Prof Von Ball), when I'm playing them.

Quote: Originally posted by kestrellyn
I'm not sure this is the best mod to use for just household-to-household transfers - there are other mods that focus on that entirely, like Pescado's money orders, that I think should be used generally for that purpose.


Yes, you're right. I was just getting all pie in the sky again! I do prefer to have as few Pescado mods in my game as possible (which is not to say I don't have a couple dozen!). But I have and still plan to use (Chaavik's redo of) Monique's computer banking functions to accomplish all such basic, non-loan transfers; the increments available there for such transfers are much more granular and a better fit for that routine stuff (several Art and Nature sims in my hood create products that business owners buy regularly from them to resell at their business lots, for example).

FYI, I'm now running the most current (July 7) version of this mod's Semester Changes--compatible version. I don't have any other YA-including households to play at this point in my rotation, but I have seen no oddness in my regular households so far. Will let you know if I find any issues, though it might be two or three weeks before I get back to any YAs.

Meanwhile, please know I'm in no rush to get these new functions added to your mod. I won't even be able to play again until the weekend at least!
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#41 Old 13th Jul 2018 at 1:25 AM
Ok, thanks, I think we are on basically the same page, then. Now that I have thought about it, I really like the idea of setting up a Sponsor as well. Also, I think for loans that are taken out, they should assign the lending sim as the Sponsor instead of the Payee. The main limitation is you could not take out loans from multiple sims.

Quote: Originally posted by natboopsie
When I first read this suggestion, I admit I thought sponsors wouldn't be necessary in my own hoods, since my plan from first seeing your mod had just been, as you say, to have a (ersatz) sponsor inherit student loan debts if I didn't mean for the student to pay off that debt themselves.

But as I gave it more thought, I realized your new idea adds more utility because
  • A single sim can be the sponsor for more than one YA. Said another way, multiple YAs can have (and simultaneously owe and pay) the same sponsor. I'm not sure, but it sounds like using Inherit alone, a (pseudo-sponsor) sim would only have been able to inherit one other sim's loans.
  • Using a sponsor system gives my playstyle room to grow, by allowing YAs to continue to be liable to some party for their college debt even after the original payee has gotten the money. That is, I don't assign a particular payee currently, but if I do in the future (a uni bursar, as in your example), and that bursar's fund starts running low (which in my hood would likely result in lack of uni grant money for orphaned and needy sims), it would be a great benefit to be able to have them fully paid sooner in some cases, while the student continues to repay their sponsor only as their means allow. (And if I don't have a payee which needs paid sooner rather than later, I also still retain the option of having the student unsponsored and owing their college debt directly to the payee through adulthood.)

An important detail, though: what happens if you have a sponsor and that sponsor dies? Can someone else inherit the sponsorship, or does that end your indebtedness on that loan?


You can actually have a sim inherit multiple debts, or inherit debts when they have debts themselves already - the various debts will just accumulate into one sum. The main problem is that you can't have multiple different Payees for each debt, once they are inherited they effectively become one debt (which also means they share the same interest rate, in addition to the same Payee, etc.) Maybe I should have made it more obvious in the mod description.

If the Sponsor dies, presumably I will make it so that the same thing happens as when the Payee dies - the setting will be marked as "INVALID" and any money that would have gone to them (or, in the case of the Sponsor, come from them) will go to (or come from) nowhere instead. However, you will be notified about this when you click on Professor Von Ball, as the option will say something like "Designate Sponsor (Current: Firstname Lastname INVALID)" and you will know you have to change it. You'll also be notified whenever the mod tries to take/give money to them finds that they have died. You can change the Sponsor to any adult or elder in the previous Sponsor's household and the effects should be more or less the same, but you'll have to do it manually.

Quote:
FYI, I'm now running the most current (July 7) version of this mod's Semester Changes--compatible version. I don't have any other YA-including households to play at this point in my rotation, but I have seen no oddness in my regular households so far. Will let you know if I find any issues, though it might be two or three weeks before I get back to any YAs.


No problem, take your time!
Forum Resident
#42 Old 13th Jul 2018 at 2:10 PM
Quote: Originally posted by kestrellyn
Ok, thanks, I think we are on basically the same page, then.


Yay!

Quote: Originally posted by kestrellyn
Also, I think for loans that are taken out, they should assign the lending sim as the Sponsor instead of the Payee. The main limitation is you could not take out loans from multiple sims.


Not being able to take out loans from multiple sims is not a problem. And it doesn't necessarily matter to me how sim-to-sim loans are set up, as long as they can remain between those two sims only. (So if Bob borrows from Mary, he should be able to pay back Mary directly, including any interest.)

Quote: Originally posted by kestrellyn
You can actually have a sim inherit multiple debts, or inherit debts when they have debts themselves already - the various debts will just accumulate into one sum. The main problem is that you can't have multiple different Payees for each debt, once they are inherited they effectively become one debt (which also means they share the same interest rate, in addition to the same Payee, etc.)


Thank you for this explanation. It sounds like I can always just manually adjust the interest rate assigned to an aggregated set of loans (becoming one single loan) if I disagree with what the game assigns, right, just as I could before?

Quote: Originally posted by kestrellyn
If the Sponsor dies, presumably I will make it so that the same thing happens as when the Payee dies - the setting will be marked as "INVALID" and any money that would have gone to them (or, in the case of the Sponsor, come from them) will go to (or come from) nowhere instead. However, you will be notified about this when you click on Professor Von Ball, as the option will say something like "Designate Sponsor (Current: Firstname Lastname INVALID)" and you will know you have to change it. You'll also be notified whenever the mod tries to take/give money to them finds that they have died. You can change the Sponsor to any adult or elder in the previous Sponsor's household and the effects should be more or less the same, but you'll have to do it manually.


All good, except at the end there...wait, you can only have someone in the same household as the previous Sponsor (or Payee?) inherit the loans? Hm, generally that will be fine with sponsors (though flexibility might still be nice). However, I'm definitely hoping I can change payees to a different household entirely if the original one dies. I'm thinking that uni bursar is a professional position, so the new one wouldn't necessarily be living in the same house. Though perhaps you just were clarifying that if I wanted the same effect (since payments are made into household funds anyway), then of course using someone in the same household would work the same as before the death.

Thank you again for your continued work on the mod. I've been so grateful to finally be able to stop using Monique's AP mod. (Side benefit: I also suspected hers was causing my game's ongoing resets of Christianlov's otherwise still-good-for-UC AIO NPC and Nanny, and it appears that was correct---now that I can do quite a bit already with yours, I've removed Monique's mod from my game, and now the AIO set is working well again. Yay!)

*Ongoing TS2 informational projects (come on by to contribute, get info, or spectate!): (1) the SimPE Preservation Project and (2) Conflict Tracking for the 3t2 Traits Project Mods
*Need a Pescado mod? Use his hack directory: in the first post, find the link for your latest EP, then go in hacks/
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#43 Old 14th Jul 2018 at 1:29 AM
Quote: Originally posted by natboopsie
Thank you for this explanation. It sounds like I can always just manually adjust the interest rate assigned to an aggregated set of loans (becoming one single loan) if I disagree with what the game assigns, right, just as I could before?


Yes. There's nothing special about aggregated loans - they are the same as every other loan.

Quote:
Though perhaps you just were clarifying that if I wanted the same effect (since payments are made into household funds anyway), then of course using someone in the same household would work the same as before the death.


Yes, that's what I meant. I would probably make the requirements for being a Sponsor the same as the Payee - alive, playable adult/elder.
Forum Resident
#44 Old 15th Jul 2018 at 7:32 PM
Thank you for the clarifications! It's sounding great.

*Ongoing TS2 informational projects (come on by to contribute, get info, or spectate!): (1) the SimPE Preservation Project and (2) Conflict Tracking for the 3t2 Traits Project Mods
*Need a Pescado mod? Use his hack directory: in the first post, find the link for your latest EP, then go in hacks/
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#45 Old 19th Jul 2018 at 3:28 AM
Ok @natboopsie, I've updated all three versions of the mod with the changes we talked about. Let me know how it works for you!
Forum Resident
#46 Old 23rd Jul 2018 at 12:54 PM
Thank you so much! I've just gotten it now, but I will be able to start testing it this week.

This period where I've been able to play is coming to close, though, so I don't know if I'll be able to check it out in a test hood as well as my main one. But my main one is about ready for the uni rotations again, so at least there'll be those.

By the way, I did come across the no-business-customers bug just once after installing the penultimate edition of the semester-changes version. It was right after I put in Inge's Sleep Later patch, though---and that conflicted with another mod that changed sleep, so I was seeing if load order would help. But I played with those two conflicting sleep mods for a bit and then removed the other (leaving me with only Inge's), and in that time and since I've not seen the no-customers bug a second time. (Yes, I know the sleeping mod thing may have been a mcguffin if the no-customers issue is indeed related to your mod---which we haven't properly established either---just wanted to mention it because it was the only thing I was doing differently at the time.)

*Ongoing TS2 informational projects (come on by to contribute, get info, or spectate!): (1) the SimPE Preservation Project and (2) Conflict Tracking for the 3t2 Traits Project Mods
*Need a Pescado mod? Use his hack directory: in the first post, find the link for your latest EP, then go in hacks/
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#47 Old 24th Jul 2018 at 7:56 PM
Well, I regularly play businesses and have this hack in my game. I haven't noticed a lack of customers, although sometimes it takes some time for replacement customers to show up when other leave the lot. I think that is just standard behavior that I don't normally notice, though.
Forum Resident
#48 Old 25th Jul 2018 at 12:41 PM
I'm glad you have watched for it! So it could also be a problem that my game developed concurrently with my introduction of your mod and not actually related to yours, since correlation is of course not causation.

But you would notice this lack of customers. When I say "no customers," I mean none except the business reviewer, who continues to come and go normally. The first couple times it happened, I had my sim owners wait on the lot 12 hours in one case and 24 in another, and no other customers or even walkbys were generated. So, absence of real customers, not a periodic lag in generation---unless my game needs even longer than 24 hours to start generating them!

I guess I'll keep tracking it and mention it when I report on whatever results I've had.

Enjoying the way the current version works thus far; one family took a loan from another sim family and went on vacation, though I've yet to play them much there (tourist families generate in a normal, timely manner, though). Have not gotten to the YAs at all yet. Also starting to see the end of my time to play; in mid-August I'll be packing things up and won't be around my simming machines until next year sometime. But I'll observe as much as I can in the time I have left.

*Ongoing TS2 informational projects (come on by to contribute, get info, or spectate!): (1) the SimPE Preservation Project and (2) Conflict Tracking for the 3t2 Traits Project Mods
*Need a Pescado mod? Use his hack directory: in the first post, find the link for your latest EP, then go in hacks/
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#49 Old 25th Jul 2018 at 7:02 PM
Hmm, how does time work on vacation lots? Do you think it makes sense to accumulate interest there? I actually have BV but I haven't installed it yet so I wasn't thinking about vacations when I made this. Maybe now would be a good time to do that...
Forum Resident
#50 Old 28th Jul 2018 at 7:43 PM Last edited by natboopsie : 28th Jul 2018 at 8:24 PM.
You might have noticed I'm not here much, so I hope you'll forgive my slowness of response.

I had thought about the vacation lot issue when I was sending that family to the mountains. I personally prefer that they not be charged interest while there. They don't age in vacation hoods (they have a vacation timer which looks like the post-graduation timer for YAs, but shows the time remaining in the vacation as booked), so I tend to see it as extra time for me with each group that goes. Plus, most of the time they're there, at least in my game, they're on community lots anyway!

But to go into detail, when they come back from vacation community lots, the time at their "home" (meaning the hotel, campground, or owned vacation home) is changed to be the same as it was when you left your most recent community lot. This seems to be so that sims can be billed for hotel nights whether they were on the hotel lot at check-out time or not, as well as to allow the vacation period to be measured as total time you've played any part of the family (because you can take only part of the family to a vacation community lot while leaving the rest at the hotel/vacation home). So time on vacation lots is somewhat like uni that way, but then also unlike uni in that the time has passed for the entire household when you come back---even though the sims who stayed back asleep, for instance, will still be sleeping and not significantly more rested when your POV returns, since to them you only just left.

I guess you could also make the case that they should be charged interest while on vacation, since they have use of any borrowed money while there. But then the counterargument could also be opened: why should sims with college funds be allowed to earn extra interest by going on vacation?

I am happy to keep on with your mod however you decide it should be handled, really. If I don't want them charged/accruing interest while on vacation, I still have the freedom to adjust the interest rate to 0 until they return---flexibility that I greatly appreciate your having built in.

Did see the no-customers issue again; it happens whether I'm playing the business-owning family or am visiting their business community lot with another household. That is, if I've brought another household to shop at a playable-owned business, I still know when the glitch has happened because they will be the only customers present no matter how long they stay, unless the business reviewer is there as well.

However, I figured out that the game is generating an error when the bug occurs, so I captured the stack trace! Here you go.



Edited to add: I've set aside some time tomorrow to do a 50/50 to try and get to the bottom of what's causing the above bug. Please note that I'm not stuck on assuming it's your mod; I'm providing the stack trace in case it helps confirm whether it is or isn't!
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