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Original Poster
#1 Old 2nd Mar 2025 at 11:57 AM Last edited by Flame7 : 12th Mar 2025 at 3:01 PM.
Default Real Week and Weekends For The Sims 1
A new flavor of the mod and a complement have been added.
(at the end of this post!!!)


Hello,

this mod shows the current day of the week. The day changes
at midnight and without you having to do anything.

Just hang it up on the wall, maybe in the kitchen. It's a modified
painting "Flowers" from the base game. No other object is needed.
The mod goes into the Downloads folder.

If you don't know what the current day is, you can ask it in the menu
of the painting. However, the visual codes for the individual days are
easy.

It handles the weekends by itself. The adults don't go to work and
the kids don't go to school. Remember: The sims must go to
work / school on Monday.

It displays some basic information about the active sim's career / school.

When a Sim reaches level 10 in her / his career, a new option appears
in the menu: "Stay in the current career".

In addition, it allows you to unsubscribe from / subscribe to the newspaper.
I don't like cleaning it every day.

It works with all other objects in their original version. It doesn't
change how they normally work. It does, however, change some of
their values temporarily. These are the following objects:

Car Portal (For the job stuff)
NPC Controller (Newspaper delivery)

Please, read the instructions in the zip file carefully!!!
You'll find additional details there.

*** Downloads ***

Version 1, Flavor A (the original):

https://simblr.cc/ts1/mod/3508-from...-to-sunday.html

Version 1, Flavor B (the first day of the week is a Monday instead of a Sunday):

https://simblr.cc/ts1/mod/3581-from...iginal-mod.html

*** Complements ***

Version 1, Flavor A

The family friends and neighbors are available when you call them or when you
invite them over on a weekend. They're not at work. They can still refuse to talk or
to come over for other reasons. Details in the zip file.

Thanks to BellaDovah (the original idea), purplewowie and LUCPIX

https://simblr.cc/ts1/mod/3580-othe...-the-phone.html
Field Researcher
#2 Old 2nd Mar 2025 at 4:09 PM
I am excited to try this. Thanks for sharing! There is this mod that introduces a similar concept, but it has a few issues: weekends only applied to the active family rather than everybody, so if you called someone on a weekend they could be at work which was a shame, the notification informing that the school bus will arrive in an hour still showed even when the school bus wouldn't actually come on a weekend, and I've even seen it just sometimes not work for some people so the school bus and/or carpool would still come even though its supposed to be a weekend day. So, if this is without those issues then its definitely a big improvement!
Field Researcher
#3 Old 2nd Mar 2025 at 5:51 PM
There are at least three calendar type objects (this one, Damon's, and one from the shuttered Coaster's/Simlane site) that do similar things at their core (i.e. weekends and such--actually, staring at the Coaster's one I'm not sure it does weekends but it DOES do holidays) but I kind of love that they all have slightly different scopes in terms of how they work and what extra stuff they do. (For instance, your object does things that the other two don't, and Damon's and Simlane's had differences that had me using one or the other in different situations.)

Which is to say: Who cares if it's been done before?! It's never been done by YOU before, and that's something to be happy about! AND you brought something new to the table!
Test Subject
Original Poster
#4 Old 2nd Mar 2025 at 6:15 PM Last edited by Flame7 : 2nd Mar 2025 at 6:34 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by BellaDovah
I am excited to try this. Thanks for sharing! There is this mod that introduces a similar concept, but it has a few issues: weekends only applied to the active family rather than everybody, so if you called someone on a weekend they could be at work which was a shame, the notification informing that the school bus will arrive in an hour still showed even when the school bus wouldn't actually come on a weekend, and I've even seen it just sometimes not work for some people so the school bus and/or carpool would still come even though its supposed to be a weekend day. So, if this is without those issues then its definitely a big improvement!


Hello BellaDovah,

I'm really sorry, but I must disappoint you. This affects Sims
on the current lot only, maybe I should have indicated it, I
didn't think about that. Shame on me.

I don't know yet what makes the game decide whether the Sim
from outside the lot is at work or not. I usually call them before
9:00 a.m. while some other Sim is preparing a meal and they
usually come over.

I'll have to look into it.

The carpool and the schoolbus doesn't arrive on a weekend
and the warning about the carpool and the schoolbus is
disabled.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#5 Old 2nd Mar 2025 at 6:19 PM Last edited by Flame7 : 2nd Mar 2025 at 7:52 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by purplewowies
There are at least three calendar type objects (this one, Damon's, and one from the shuttered Coaster's/Simlane site) that do similar things at their core (i.e. weekends and such--actually, staring at the Coaster's one I'm not sure it does weekends but it DOES do holidays) but I kind of love that they all have slightly different scopes in terms of how they work and what extra stuff they do. (For instance, your object does things that the other two don't, and Damon's and Simlane's had differences that had me using one or the other in different situations.)

Which is to say: Who cares if it's been done before?! It's never been done by YOU before, and that's something to be happy about! AND you brought something new to the table!


Hello purplewowies,

thank you for the information and also
for your kind reply.
Field Researcher
#6 Old 2nd Mar 2025 at 9:05 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Flame7

I'm really sorry, but I must disappoint you. This affects Sims
on the current lot only, maybe I should have indicated it, I
didn't think about that. Shame on me.

I don't know yet what makes the game decide whether the Sim
from outside the lot is at work or not. I usually call them before
9:00 a.m. while some other Sim is preparing a meal and they
usually come over.

I'll have to look into it.


Thanks for the clarification, it would be great if you could look into it, no pressure though! @LUCPIX may be able to help.

Quote: Originally posted by purplewowies
There are at least three calendar type objects (this one, Damon's, and one from the shuttered Coaster's/Simlane site) that do similar things at their core (i.e. weekends and such--actually, staring at the Coaster's one I'm not sure it does weekends but it DOES do holidays)


I like how the domcal also introduces holidays in the form of every last day of the month (30) being a holiday.
Field Researcher
#7 Old 2nd Mar 2025 at 9:51 PM
Ooh, I actually know how the phone determines this (I'm looking at the base game phone for this so it's possible it changed in later expansions but I can't imagine its underlying logic changed).

The phone performs a check that looks in the neighbor's person data for their job type and job promotion level, gets the start and end hours for that specific job, and then does a check to see if the current time is between those hours (with some fun math to make sure it properly calculates if the Sim is at work if the job is an overnight one). Then if they are, then when the person picks up, it rolls one of five random messages (well, there are actually 7 different messages, but you get one of five and which five are available is slightly different between adults and kids).
Field Researcher
#8 Old 2nd Mar 2025 at 11:09 PM
Also, will this work ok with this mod? As this makes a custom NPCController.iff file in GameData>Objects to fix the issue where the thief appears and then immediately de-spawns without stealing anything.
Field Researcher
#9 Old 2nd Mar 2025 at 11:24 PM
Quote: Originally posted by BellaDovah
Thanks for the clarification, it would be great if you could look into it, no pressure though! @LUCPIX may be able to help.



Oh I'd be thrilled to be able to collaborate and brainstorm, as long as Flame7 is okay with the idea of us working together! Just tell me what are you expecting to see in this mod that isn't currently there.

Quote: Originally posted by purplewowies
Which is to say: Who cares if it's been done before?! It's never been done by YOU before, and that's something to be happy about! AND you brought something new to the table!


It's Sunday and it's the forum quote of the week already. Thanks for saying this; one of the biggest psyche challenges for me as a creator is to always double check on archives to see whether anyone in the mid-term and visible past has done anything similar to what I am proposing, by dreading the potential of having a person emailing me something along the lines of *blank space* HAS ALREADY DONE THIS IN 2002, YUO'RE SO PATHETIC LMAO when my verdict is basically your take in here; the Edith experience that one gets from the endeavor makes it all worth it, and it's totally fine to have different Mods in the Modverse(tm) that serve the same purpose, provided it's not straight-out plagiarism. For a quarter-of-a-century old game, it's perfectly natural and expected for a creator to have a "3 spider men pointing at each other" moment, and that's nice. Sometimes I'll fancy boosting all my Sim's needs using the black shower. Maybe tomorrow I'll use the magic mirror. The day after tomorrow, the super duper egg chair. After that, the "Make All Happy" debug Mail Box pie menu interaction..


PIAZZI ROCKS
(so do you)
https://www.youtube.com/LUCPIX
Test Subject
Original Poster
#10 Old 3rd Mar 2025 at 11:02 AM Last edited by Flame7 : 3rd Mar 2025 at 12:10 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by LUCPIX
Oh I'd be thrilled to be able to collaborate and brainstorm, as long as Flame7 is okay with the idea of us working together! Just tell me what are you expecting to see in this mod that isn't currently there.


I'm totally OK with this idea. Let's work together!
What am I expecting to see in the mod? Well, I don't
want to be a dictator. More heads, more ideas and
then we'll have to find some common grounds.

Please, feel free to read the following posts for some
initial ideas. These are actually answers to other posts.
What do you think?
Test Subject
Original Poster
#11 Old 3rd Mar 2025 at 11:37 AM Last edited by Flame7 : 3rd Mar 2025 at 2:37 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by BellaDovah
Also, will this work ok with this mod? As this makes a custom NPCController.iff file in GameData>Objects to fix the issue where the thief appears and then immediately de-spawns without stealing anything.


The Week Manager (this mod) only prevents the paper girl
from being spawned, it means that it acts as if the newspaper
were already delivered. It doesn't touch anything else. So, if
that mod doesn't intervene in the newspaper delivery I
don't see a reason why it shouldn't work, but just in case,
it needs a check, just to be sure.

As for the Holidays, I haven't seen the code yet, but I will,
probably today.

When this mod was been developped, there were several,
sometimes competing, ideas.

1. Anniversaries - maybe once in four weeks (a year)
(There is not much of a year in this game)

2. Vacation days - The Sims 2 or 3 style: every Sim who has
a job earns one vacation day for a certain
number of days they have worked

3. At Level 10 - one additional day free (maybe Friday)

Yes, the game normally keeps track of the "Day of Month" and
there are 30 days in a month. But it's not convenient to base
the holidays and anniversaries on these numbers, since there are
7 days in a week and 30 days in a month. The thing is that 30 is not
divisible by 7, so it would fall on a different day each time and
sometimes on a weekend.

Then I didn't know if it was worth it, since with this week manager
mod, they only work 5 days, out of which they can take 2 days free.
So, the minimum is three days.

Another thing is that I don't know if it makes much sense to keep
the current system (once missed OK, twice missed - fired). Maybe
it would be better to decrement the Sim's performance when they
don't go to work. This way they would risk being demoted and not
fired.

The last idea and the one with the vacation days would probably
require modifing the "Car Portal" itself.

What do you think? And what does everyone who wants to collaborate
think?

UPDATE 1:

I've just looked into the domcal's code. According to that,
every multiple of seven (days of the month) the adults get
two days off and the kids one. On 28 and 29 both the adults
and the kids and the "holiday" (day 30 of the month) would
be just another day off for the kids only.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#12 Old 3rd Mar 2025 at 11:46 AM Last edited by Flame7 : 3rd Mar 2025 at 5:32 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by purplewowies
Ooh, I actually know how the phone determines this (I'm looking at the base game phone for this so it's possible it changed in later expansions but I can't imagine its underlying logic changed).

The phone performs a check that looks in the neighbor's person data for their job type and job promotion level, gets the start and end hours for that specific job, and then does a check to see if the current time is between those hours (with some fun math to make sure it properly calculates if the Sim is at work if the job is an overnight one). Then if they are, then when the person picks up, it rolls one of five random messages (well, there are actually 7 different messages, but you get one of five and which five are available is slightly different between adults and kids).


According to this, I think that the phone's code would have to
be changed in such a way, that it would check up on the week
manager to see if it's a weekend and in that case it would
bypass the neighbor's check and let the sim be invited directly.
Field Researcher
#13 Old 3rd Mar 2025 at 1:21 PM
If people you call on a weekend are also off and can't be at work, then this would already be the perfect mod for me. But, many of the ideas you listed sound intriguing - some kind of holiday system or earned vacation days, sims performance decreasing to risk being demoted rather than fired, I think wherever your creative vision takes you will be the best way to go But you do already have a fantastic and complete mod, I'd only request for the phone check addition and then anything else (if anything) could be a bonus!
Test Subject
Original Poster
#14 Old 3rd Mar 2025 at 1:47 PM Last edited by Flame7 : 3rd Mar 2025 at 2:06 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by BellaDovah
If people you call on a weekend are also off and can't be at work, then this would already be the perfect mod for me. But, many of the ideas you listed sound intriguing - some kind of holiday system or earned vacation days, sims performance decreasing to risk being demoted rather than fired, I think wherever your creative vision takes you will be the best way to go But you do already have a fantastic and complete mod, I'd only request for the phone check addition and then anything else (if anything) could be a bonus!


I have just seen your post, after I had added an update to
my previous post that was answering yours.
Please, check that.

The phone option could also be considered a bonus or
an enhancement. That's fine. I believe it could work with
the week manager as it is, but first of all, the phone's code
should be studied carefully.

Then, there are now more people that are willing to
collaborate and they might also have some additional
good ideas. It would be a good thing to make them all
compatible.

Now that I have reread the first line in your post, you would
like to see the weekends on different lots somehow
synchronized? Unfortunatelly you don't have an access to
an object from a different lot, so I think that wouldn't work.

The best I can think now is to make the other sims available
if it's a weekend on the current lot.
Field Researcher
#15 Old 3rd Mar 2025 at 2:10 PM Last edited by BellaDovah : 3rd Mar 2025 at 2:20 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by Flame7
you would like to see the weekends on different lots somehow synchronized?


No not at all, sorry if I'm being confusing! I plan to play rotationally so I would prefer to relive the same days with each family if that makes sense, not make one family progress the weekdays in another. I just want to be able to call people on a weekend without them being at work, but it not actually change anything on their lot so when I went to play them next it wouldn't actually be the weekend or anything like that. Hope that makes sense
Field Researcher
#16 Old 3rd Mar 2025 at 2:15 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Flame7
I've just looked into the domcal's code. According to that,
every multiple of seven (days of the month) the adults get
two days off and the kids one. On 28 and 29 both the adults
and the kids and the "holiday" (day 30 of the month) would
be just another day off for the kids only.


That's really strange! Thanks for looking into that. That's certainly not how I, and many others, expected it to work, perhaps not even the creator because that's not what the description suggests... I'm just in the process of building my mod list for a rotational playthrough of the pre-made families, and that mod seemed like a must-have for me, but this mod has come out at the perfect time and I'm really excited to use this now
Field Researcher
#17 Old 3rd Mar 2025 at 6:17 PM Last edited by LUCPIX : 3rd Mar 2025 at 8:59 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by Flame7
Yes, the game normally keeps track of the "Day of Month" and
there are 30 days in a month.


And the in-game year is always 1997, regardless of the house you're playing in! Dang! That's sort of weird. I believe it has to do with the (plausible) speculation that the game was first ported from Macintosh to Windows in 1997 (real-world time), and they never really put their hands on this particular Simulation Global since then, because... do you really know any player who has played with a save file for more than 365 Sim days?

Here is a demo I've Photoshopped using real prototype assets 👇! I think that was the last time in development that the calendar-related globals were really printed onto the screen to the players' delight.


Wait I had an idea! I've just launched Edith and modified the "Day of Month" and "Month" Sim Globals to make the lot take place at 12/31/97 just to see if the "Year" global updates itself upon the beginning of a New Year and, wow, the "Year" in the lot is in fact updated to 1998!! The miracle of life...



Quote: Originally posted by Flame7
But it's not convenient to base
the holidays and anniversaries on these numbers, since there are
7 days in a week and 30 days in a month. The thing is that 30 is not
divisible by 7, so it would fall on a different day each time and
sometimes on a weekend.


> It's noteworthy that we do have the possibility of setting specific events to specific "Day of Months" instead of relying to math operations, if, in practice the math won't math; we can tell the engine that we want holidays/special events to take place specifically at day 1, 5, 9, 30, whatever, through a conditional Expression node.


"Is the current "Day of Month" 5? Then..."

> What if we tweak the "Year" Sim Global so players can be aware of the current in-game year and trigger a special event or message when a new one starts? No need to stick to a fixed 30-day cycle—we can define a custom month length and use that to our advantage. Expecting someone to play 365 Sim days for this seems excessive (works in SimCity, where a week flies by in seconds, but not here). Maybe we shorten the year/month cycle instead? A 100-day Sim Year could work—it lines up with the time needed for the 100-day Maxoid Easter Egg to appear.

P.S.: all my suggestions are feasible- I swear I'm not playing the idea-guy here lol! I can help with it if everyone's aboard with the suggestions.
Screenshots


PIAZZI ROCKS
(so do you)
https://www.youtube.com/LUCPIX
Field Researcher
#18 Old 3rd Mar 2025 at 10:07 PM
There are two ways of doing weekend approximation. One is how dd_domcal does it--get close enough by making specific days of the month weekends. The other is similar to how the mailbox handles bills, something I implemented in an object I shared here: https://modthesims.info/showthread....114#post5981114 (In short, every day it decrements a value until it hits zero and then it goes back up to a specific number.)

There's also technically a third option where you figure out some way to know if the in-game date is a specific day of the week (which would add realism). This would not be impossible (in fact, there are algorithms that can be used to look it up) but it presents an enigma since months that would have 31 days in real life end up skipping a day of the week, and you'd have to invent one day of the week (or two if it's not a leap year!) to account for days 30 and/or 29 in February.)
Test Subject
Original Poster
#19 Old 4th Mar 2025 at 11:52 AM Last edited by Flame7 : 4th Mar 2025 at 12:44 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by LUCPIX
And the in-game year is always 1997, regardless of the house you're playing in! Dang! That's sort of weird. I believe it has to do with the (plausible) speculation that the game was first ported from Macintosh to Windows in 1997 (real-world time), and they never really put their hands on this particular Simulation Global since then, because... do you really know any player who has played with a save file for more than 365 Sim days? ... .... ... ... ...


This is indeed interesting.

I'm talking here now as a player. I probably never play past 160 days and even that number of days
seems to me a little bit too much, so, if the length of the year is too long, I wouldn't get to see many
years in my game.

I believe that years make more sense in The Sims 3 and in The Sims 2. They have at least seasons.
They got it about right: a year corresponds to four seasons, 4 weeks. Even there I get like 6 - 7 years
in one save.

You know, everything can't be realistic in this game without the game becoming boring. I'm just fine
with the weeks and some of the weeks could be somehow special (like every fourth week, or so).
If you wanted to have many years in one save, days would have to be shorter which I wouldn't want.
And a year lasting only two weeks would seem like short to me.

I don't think it's a good idea to have realistic numbers of years. People often play the game to take a
break from real life and relax for a moment. Different years mean different things to people and
some really bad years would bring back those bad memories while they're playing the game.

Even in the other games there is no clear definition of a year. On the one hand 4 seasons = 1 year,
on the other hand a Sim gets to live about 90 (?) days (could that be years?)

Also, this game doesn't even have aging. I don't mind not having years in the game.

If you want to make certain weeks special, the question is, in what way would they be special?
Just more days off work? Anything related to seasons (like festivals) doesn't make sense here.

When I was making the week manager I had mainly one idea in my head: make the game more
relaxed. I can't play every day, not even every week, I don't remember if my Sims went to work
yesterday or was it two days ago? I don't want to have to keep track of that.

Weekdays and weekends certainly add something to the game. It makes time to flow again.
You know: "Bad Mondays", "Hey, it's Friday, tomorrow's weekend, what are we gonna do?", etc.
On a weekend you get to do whatever you want.
Field Researcher
#20 Old 4th Mar 2025 at 5:57 PM
The mention of seasons reminds me I at one point recently was thinking "hmm... it'd be fun to add automatic handling to the Simlogical season controller" but then the whole reason I didn't even go through with trying was that a real year felt too long (90 days per season? that's three times longer than the longest span Sims 3/4 lets you do!) but I didn't wanna arbitrarily pick and track another cycle length.
Field Researcher
#21 Old 4th Mar 2025 at 9:23 PM
I think seasons and years have always been a subjective thing in the sims series. In the sims 2 the default is just 5 days per season, but I mod that to be 7 days instead, and while I do see a complete seasonal cycle as a year, that's not reflected by the sims' lifespans which are more like 1-2 days is a year-ish. Sims 3 and 4 gave us more control, with playing with 28 day seasons being quite popular. For the sims 1 I could see 28 days being a season and therefore a year being 112 days. I tried to play around with Simlogical Seasons Controller, a really cool concept but a lot of work to get set up on every lot to play rotationally with the snow cover on the ground and everything and it annoyed me that the snow couldn't be on slopes and things, I also couldn't get the trees to change state for some reason but still, it would be really cool to have seasons simulated in The Sims 1. When I was planning on using the domcal, I was planning on making that 30th day holiday day being a holiday, like Easter, Thanksgiving (Halloween the Friday before), Christmas & New Years, but I don't think having an extra day off work is strictly necessary to do something like this, with this mod I was just going to make it every 4th-ish weekend instead which works too.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#22 Old 5th Mar 2025 at 3:09 PM Last edited by Flame7 : 5th Mar 2025 at 4:18 PM.
BellaDovah or someone else,

please, could you tell me if the mod works for you correctly?
There is a player saying that some / the text strings are missing.
He/She is playing in portuguese. I have to fix that.

Thank you!

UPDATE:

Oh my ......, I have just found out that the strings for other
languages are missing and that it doesn't use English
by default. I will correct it soon.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#23 Old 5th Mar 2025 at 5:29 PM
I have just updated the first post.

I had to update the mod, since all strings for menus and dialogs
in other languages were missing.
Field Researcher
#24 Old 7th Mar 2025 at 11:51 PM
@Flame7 No idea how tricky this would be so no expectation of course, but as well as the sims you call being available on weekends, may I also cheekily express my interest for a flavor in which the week starts on Monday rather than Sunday please?
Test Subject
Original Poster
#25 Old 8th Mar 2025 at 11:30 AM Last edited by Flame7 : 8th Mar 2025 at 11:44 AM.
Quote: Originally posted by BellaDovah
@Flame7 No idea how tricky this would be so no expectation of course, but as well as the sims you call being available on weekends, may I also cheekily express my interest for a flavor in which the week starts on Monday rather than Sunday please?


Hello,

*** as for the "Monday instead of Sunday":

I don't know what do you mean exactly. Is it one of the following?:

A. The object's initial day (when you place it on the lot) would be a Monday?
In this case you can just click on it and select "Adjust" --> "Next Day" and
it will be Monday.
Does it mean, you would like to have this done automatically?

B. The week number would increase on Mondays instead of on Sundays?

C. Something else? Or both of the above?

*** As for the "Invite people on a weekend and the invitee is not at work":

I've already done it for the adults. I have tested it and it works flawlessly.
They are always available starting from "Friday - 3 p.m." until the end of
the weekend. Well, except at night (I believe: 1 a.m. - 7 a.m.).

I still need to do the same for the kids, and perform some additional testing.
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