I am currently setting up a new neighbourhood, which consists of Peni Griffin's Widespot and Land Grant College with Isle St. Croix and Prometedor as vacation destinations.

I want to make the main 'hood and the college feel distinctly different from the vacation destinations, and one way that I intend to do that is by altering the seasons and using mods to change the climate and the weather. The picture below gives a rough outline of what I want to do for each 'hood.



I play in rotations, so the column on the far left shows the "date". The column next to it shows what special event takes place that day, if any - I use Phaenoh's calendars, and my sims celebrate/acknowledge some of the special days that she came up with.

The next three columns are for the different subhoods. As Widespot and Land Grant College are (in my mind!) located close to each other, they share the same seasons/climate/weather.

Directly underneath the name of the subhood is a line of text showing the climate. I will alter the climate using crumplebottom_marky4444's mods - in Isle St. Croix I will use his Colder Temperatures mod and in Prometedor I will use his Global Warming mod. These mods will alter the temperatures, making Isle St. Croix colder than Widespot/Land Grant College and Prometedor significantly hotter. A downside of using these mods is that they are default replacements for the EA temperatures/weathers, which means that only one can be in the game at any time. So I will have to exit the game, swap the mods in and out and then restart it in order to play the vacation 'hoods. This will take a bit of time, but as the majority of my households will be in Widespot/Land Grant College I won't have to do it very often!

The seasons are shown in different coloured text. At the start of each rotation I will set them correctly for each subhood, using the season-setting button that is found in the game. As you can see, Widespot/Land Grant College use a standard seasonal set up, but the vacation destinations will require frequent resetting as their seasons aren't 5 days long. EA set up the vacation destinations to only use one or two of the seasons, but I don't like not using all of the seasons, as I like the special effects that they have (like the boost in skilling in autumn, and the tendency to roll date wants in spring). I don't necessarily want all of my subhoods to have the standard 4 5-day seasons, though. As you can see from the picture, I basically want Isle St. Croix to have a long, cold, snowy winter and Prometedor to have a long, hot, dry summer.

Next to each season I have also written the type of weather that will occur on that day - I will use Sophie-David's Seasons Automatic Lot Based Weather Control mod objects to set the correct weather on each day. As the mod is lot based I will have to set this for each individual lot, but it's pretty quick to do!

Does anyone else do anything similar to this? Any questions, comments, suggestions regarding seasons, climate and weather? I haven't actually tried my ideas out properly yet, but I'm excited to see if they work the way I want them to! :-)

I don't go to the extent of altering the seasons with a mod but I do vary seasons by place using the in-game buttons. My two universities for Little Carping are an example of this. Redbrick is an august traditional British university and has two autumns, a winter and a spring. Clearly it's located to the north of Little Carping itself (which has the regular four seasons). This means that students get the autumn boost for longer than normal and Redbrick has a reputation of academic excellence. Metropolitan, on the other hand, has two summers, an autumn and a spring. Students can do just as well there as at Redbrick but they have to work just that bit harder for it. They have great parties though.

My holiday/vacation spots also have suitable weather. I can't, myself, see the point of using a mod for this since the game sets you at the beginning of season 2 (is that right?) when you visit on holiday anyway. Do you mean you will change the season when you arrive there? Or can you effectively live all year round on an owned lot? I don't have sims that own a house in a vacation destination so I never play that aspect of the game. I get why you might like to experience summer in what is normally an autumnal or winter destination or whatever - like you're making out they're visiting 'Japan' in the autumn rather than the spring. However, if that's what you're going to do, if *I* were doing it, I'd just use the Season Controller from SimWardrobe and change the season when your sim family arrives. You can use that in game, so no swapping out needed.

It seems like a lot of work to keep up, but neat idea Did you know that you can mod the length of seasons? It only affects seasons that start after the mod is in place, but I thought I'd mention it in case you might find it helpful. Since you'll be swapping the climate mod for each place any way, it shouldn't add hassle but depending on when and how you plan to transition, it might not help.

I modded my seasons to better match the climate in Sweden, giving a 24 day year, with seasons that aren't all the same length. Winter is the longest, and spring the shortest. Feels more real to me that way

I use the Season Controller to set the correct season/number of days remaining when my sims arrive on vacation. It bugs me no end if my vacation destinations aren't synchronised with my main 'hood!

I do have some sims, sometimes, who effectively "live" in vacation destinations - they have to return back to the main 'hood to age, and pregnancies don't progress whilst they're living in vacation destinations, so it's something I only tend to do for older, retired sims/couples. For example, in my old Pleasantview the Oldies basically lived in a house in Takemizu Village, and in my current Widespot/Land Grant College I want to have some of the college students' parents living in Prometedor and Isle St. Croix. Though I may just make them as locals, so I don't actually have to play them, I haven't decided yet.

My main reason for wanting to use all of these mods is because without them one winter is basically the same as another (and the same for the other seasons). So, for example, winter in Widespot would be as long, cold, snowy and so on as winter in Isle St. Croix (unless I set two or more of Isle St. Croix's quarters as winter, which I don't like to do because then my sims miss out on the season-specific bonuses/common wants). But using these mods in the way I explained in my first post will allow me to make seasons different depending on where a sim is - Widespot will have a relatively short winter compared to Isle St. Croix, with less snow and warmer temperatures, for example. And Prometedor will have a really short, warm winter, with no snow whatsoever. In my mind that's more "realistic" than missing out entire seasons in vacation destinations. But in all three 'hood it will still be winter on Winter's Day, which means that sims are more likely to roll Give Gift wants and wants to interact with family members :-)


That is helpful to know, thank you! I think that I'll leave my season lengths as they are for now and see if I can make it work by changing them on the neighbourhood screens, but I may try the edited seasons as you suggested! :-) The seasons in your game sound great!

You might already know about it, but in case you don't, you can also mod the vacation days when travelling. Carrigon has a mod over at Sims2Workshop (here) that gives much longer options, rather than the 3-7 days Maxis gave us. I figured it might be helpful if you have Sims living there. Carrigon's options are all rather long, but I find that preferable since you can always end vacations early, but you can't extend them once you are there. It doesn't affect price either, so the only downside to longer ones is that you have to end it yourself if you want a shorter stay.

I might look into that seasons mod. I modded the lengths of seasons to match what I am used to, but the weather is still rather off. It's a little boring that there's so little variety between seasons. I'd love for winters to be more snowy, and autumn to be more rainy. I often use the aspiration point weather-object to force snow in winter, and clear weather in summers, so it might save me some fiddling

I am familiar with that mod, I tried it once but unfortunately I couldn't get it to work in my game, probably due to a mod conflict of some time. It was a real shame, as it would be very useful to me, both for sims who "live" in vacation destinations and for YA's who study abroad (because they're away for 8+ days to complete their course, and in the vanilla game I have to bring them home and then send them on vacation again, as they can't stay on vacation for that long). Perhaps I will try it again, as I have changed some of the mods that I use since I last tried!

The weather mod is amazing. I still haven't used it properly in actual gameplay, but it has so much potential! I'm very excited about using it when I actually get a 'hood set up :-)

Did you rename the mod? It's one of those rare types of CC that has to have that name. Depending on setup it might be finicky about sub-folders too. If it still doesn't work, you could try replacing the original file in installation files. The downloads-version is supposed to replace the installation one because what's read last is what the game uses, but if it's not doing that it may help to go to the source directly.

I don't think I've ever renamed any CC, so probably not. Perhaps it was a sub-folder issue? I am pretty keen on my subfolders! :-D I'll try it straight into Downloads, and if not I may try going to the source (writing it like that makes me feel like I'm on some kind of epic quest or something! Lol? :-D).

**ETA** I found the AL and M&G versions and have replaced them in Programme Files - now to see if they work this time!

**ETA** It works! I'm so happy! Thank you gummilutt :-)