Tutorial-of-Sorts: Stretching a Skeleton
I promised a couple of people to have this up sooner, but as is usually the case with me, real life unexpectedly intervened! But, now I'm ready to get into a discussion of how I use the "StretchSkeleton" cheat in Little Hollywick to give a little bit more realism to my sims appearances and personalities(as seen in the picture above).
Overview:
Take a look at the Clock family in the picture above. See how they're all different heights? That's what the "StretchSkeleton" cheat can do for you. In this tutorial-of-sorts I will tell you how and when I use this cheat, although I am sure there are many other ways in which to use it. I use this cheat on every single sim in Little Hollywick. I even go so far as to assign a height to the sim before they're even out of diapers, which I will discuss further into the tutorial. I have a "guide" that I follow to match the numerical values of the cheat in the game to real life measurements. So, let's get started.
Using the Cheat:
Select a sim and open the cheat menu (ctrl-shft-C). Type the following without the quotes: "StretchSkeleton value". The "value" is the number that you will enter to tell the game which height to make your sim. Hit "enter" and voila, you have changed your sim's height. That's the easy part.
Matching Values to Height: Elders/Adults/YAs/Teens
For elders, adults, YAs, and teens I use the following values:
0.87 = 5'0"
0.885 = 5'1"
0.90 = 5'2"
0.915 = 5'3"
0.93 = 5'4"
0.94 = 5'5" (default teen height)
0.955 = 5'6"
0.97 = 5'7"
0.985 = 5'8"
1.0 = 5'9" (default elder/adult/ya height)
1.015 = 5'10"
1.03 = 5'11"
1.045 = 6'0"
1.06 = 6'1"
1.07 = 6'2"
1.085 = 6'3"
1.10 = 6'4"
1.115 = 6'5"
1.13 = 6'6"
So if you want an elder/adult/ya/teen sim to be 6'2" you would select that sim, open the cheat window and type (without the quotes, of course): "StretchSkeleton 1.07" and hit enter. These real life measurements are just arbitrary really. Your sim won't actually be that tall, but he'll definitely be a lot taller than normal sized sims! All those values are just based off of how much taller/shorter the sim looks compared to the default height. You can set up your own height allocations if these don't look right to you!
Matching Values to Height: Children/Toddlers
Children and toddlers are on a different numerical height scale than all the other age groups. They're even on different scales than each other. And I really just label these heights by how far into the life stage they are, rather than by actual height measurements. They are as follows:
1.2 = late childhood
1.0 = middle childhood
.93 = early childhood
Toddlers are handled the same way:
1.2 = late toddlerhood
default = middle toddlerhood
.95 = early toddlerhood
Assigning Heights:
So how do I decide how tall/short my sims are going to be? Well the first generation sims I just kind of picked all willy-nilly like. But for the generations after that, I try to use some form of "genetical logic" as I like to call it!
Let's take the Clock family for example, pictured above again. I randomly decided that Harmony Clock was going to be 5'7" (value = 0.97) and Stephen Clock would be 6'1" (value = 1.06). All 6 of their kids would then fall somewhere in between those two heights, or an inch or two shorter/taller at most because of how random genetics can be sometimes. So, their oldest son Max turned out to be 6'2" (value = 1.07), while Huntley is going to be 6'1 and Oliver will be 6'0. Liam and Charlie will also end up being right around 6'0. Harmony is tall for a woman, and Stephen is tall for a man so it stands to reason (in my mind anyway!) that their kids would be tall! As for their daughter, Ella is 5'8...a little bit taller than her mom since she's got her dad's tall genes too. And that's how I come up with heights for my sims based on the combined heights of their parents.
Picking Heights for Teens:
Teens are a little tricky to pick heights for. Children and toddlers are just one of 3 heights in my game, based on where they are in their life stage (early, middle, or late). I separate teens into the same divisions for height (early, middle, and late), so my sims will be 3 different heights during their teen life stage. But the value of those heights is where the tricky part comes in.
I did a little research and according to KidsHealth.org, "By the time girls reach age 15 and boys reach age 16 or 17, the growth associated with puberty will have ended for most and they will have reached physical maturity." I also read from Drugs.com that boys grow on average 4 inches per year during puberty, and girls about 3.5 inches per year during that time. I'm sure these sources aren't entirely reliable, but they're a good ballpark number for me.
So to tailor that to my sim teens, I've decided that sims will grow around 6-9 inches during their teen life stage, depending on how tall they're going to be ultimately. So early teenhood will have them at one height, middle teenhood will make them 3-5 inches taller, and late teenhood will grow another 3-5 inches. You can see this in the picture of the boys at prom above. Oliver, Huntley, and Joe are in late teenhood and are the tallest out of the bunch. Liam and Sam are in middle teenhood, and are shorter than the older kids, but taller than the younger ones. Charlie and E.T. are in early teenhood and are rather short compared to the other boys.
Taking this one step further, my teens will have heights based on the height that they will ultimately become. For example, look at Sam and Liam in the picture above. (Liam is in the gray suit all the way on your right, and Sam is in the black bowtie all the way on your left.) Sam and Liam are the exact same age, even born on the same day in game, yet Liam is noticeably taller than Sam. That's because Liam is going to be 6'2" when he's a full grown adult and Sam will be only 5'11". So naturally, Sam will always be shorter than Liam, whether they're the same age or not (in my sim world anyway).
That being said, I calculate my teens' early, middle, and late heights based on their final height. Liam will eventually be 6'2", as I said, so I subtract a few inches and put him at 6'0" in late teenhood, subtract a few more and he's at 5'9" in middle teenhood, and subtract a few more again to make him 5'5" in early teenhood. Let's look at Sam, a shorter sim than Liam. He will eventually be 5'11", so following the same method as I did for Liam, Sam ends up being 5'9" in late teenhood, 5'7" in middle teenhood, and 5'4" in early teenhood. Again, this is just how I do it. You can make up your own growth system, or not get that complicated at all (because I tend to get a little crazy with my sims), and still get good results.
Playing & Keeping Track:
You can do this in two ways, whichever one fits your playstyle. You can make these height changes permanent for your sims by setting their height in SimPE (I used to know how to do this, but I can't remember because I don't do it anymore!) or you can manually change your sims' heights each and every time you load their lot. If you permanently change their height, I recommend only doing that to YAs and above, since teens/children/toddlers change their height frequently as they grow (at least they do in my game).
I prefer the second option. I change my sims' heights every time I load their lot. This is because changing a sims' height can affect certain animations in the game. Two adult sims of different heights will not be able to kiss properly or hug or any of those "intimate interactions". Their faces and bodies just won't line up. For that reason, I only change my sims height when I'm wanting a special update or picture. I always change their heights for my posed pictures. I'll also change their heights for some of their regular game-play, but I'll put them back to default when I want a kissing picture or something. The other option is to just not take pictures of the animations that don't line up, or to alter them with Photoshop or something. I prefer to just take pictures of them before or after the awkward animation. Like this one:
Stuart and Rose were actually coming out of a "Tender Kiss" when I took this photo. Their faces didn't line up because of their different heights, so it looked like Stuart was eating Rose's hair. But the after-kiss shot is still cute!
So there you have it! That's how I play with my sims' height to add a little punch of realism to my game. If you happened to make it all the way to the end of this post, kudos to you! I'm long-winded and I know it! As always, thanks for reading and hit me with the questions!