base hood uni, something like a tutorial

The simplest part of building a base-hood uni is... building it ;) Your base-hood uni can be anywhere, downtown, shopping district, vacation hood, whatever... just not the regular uni hoods. The trickier parts are getting your university to act like a university, and getting your students there.

The set I use is the Lion/Argon Base Hood University Set from MATY. There are two files to this set, one for the mod, and one for the record. Put them both in your downloads folder. The record is found under decorations > wall paintings.

Then you'll stick the uni gold record on your university lots (each of them) somewhere, anywhere is fine. That's all. You stick a record on every lot you want to be designated as "on campus" and it will behave as a university lot. You can put them on residential, dorm, community, or apartments.

[First of all, disclaimer: this is just the way I work my base-hood university. There are other mods to use than these, and other ways to do it, but I can't tell you about those because I haven't used them. I didn't build this mod, I've just been using it for a couple/few years, and can vouch that it's useful and didn't blow up my game. As always, back up your game before trying anything new.]

This is Amy, a senior in high school in Lakeside Heights, and she has a few more months left before graduation, but we'll send her to orientation a little early. She's a smart girl - maybe she qualifies for early placement classes or something...

Let's make sure she remembers to apply for those scholarships.

Here's how she did:

Not bad.

So far, we're doing everything just as you would for sending a teen to a default game university. So we'll send her then. She'll click "move to college" on the computer.

[note: if you don't care about the scholarships or the "went to college" memory, you can skip this step. Just save your game, with your teen ready to transition, and go straight to your real dorm and the teleporting in step. I don't do it this way, but I believe if you move your teen in, save, exit and re-enter the lot, your teen will become a YA. Or take your teen to a community lot and come back? Or just use the SimBlender to age to YA.]

To collect in-game scholarships, and to get the "go to college" want fulfilled, you'll have to actually send her to a real in-game college. So here she is then, in the Sim bin of my Sim State University. Your university doesn't have to be anything special - all you'll need is just one residential lot. It's going to be our "college orientation" lot, and we'll use it as a sort of pit-stop between teenhood and her life at LCU as a YA.

Note that she's received all of her scholarship money.

I have one placeholder Sim in this residential lot - I honestly can't remember why I needed a placeholder Sim there, but there must have been a reason at some point. I've been doing this for a good two years and I can't remember back that far. Maybe you don't need one? I don't know.

Oh, maybe it was to make sure the game loads on pause? Maybe that was it...

So anyway, I'll add Amy to that household. If you have more than one Sim going to college, you can add them all to this household at this time. Note: write down how much scholarship money each student has earned before you merge them all together ;)

Then enter the lot.

I left the game on pause the last time I used this lot. If your game is not paused when you load the lot, then super-quick pause it!!! Or your Sim will age to adult. It's not really a big deal if you don't catch it in time, you can just age her back down with the SimBlender. It would be a bigger deal after you've got all her outfits set up, but as you can see here, on new transitions, you'll have to redo all of those outfits anyway.

Nice dress, Amy ;)

(Don't mind my hacks all spread out all over the lawn - as you can see, this is just a functional lot.)

You won't need to unpause the game at all, but you'll see that her scholarship money is there in the household funds. And we'll have her buy a $5000 painting, and stick that in her inventory so she can take it home with her. Do this for each of your Sims, and once everybody has their scholarship money, you can save the game and head over to your real university.

My university campus is built right into my downtown, Lake City. This is the main reason I wanted this, so that my students could still exist in a real city, interact with adults and families and as well as their fellow YAs. Their families can come and visit them on campus, and their teenage or adult friends can travel to the campus community lots if they want to.

And I'm sending Amy to my Freshman dorm, lovingly named Frosh Hall.

[this is the teleporting step, if you skipped "orientation".]

You'll have to teleport your students in, so I usually keep one RA in Frosh Hall, because someone has to be there to use the teleporter to bring the new students in. This is the only time you'll have to use the teleporter, and any other time they move - move out through the computer or newspaper, and end up in the base neighborhood Sim bin.

But since I have my own Sims living in Frosh Hall still at the moment, I'll just use Vicky.

Vicky really must have a stick up her butt, because she dances like she's not even moving, lol! And what is that other girl doing??? (Not one of mine, I swear it!)

See, our base-hood uni kids are just as ridiculous as any uni kids!

So Vicky heads over to the computer lab and uses the teleporter (make sure you remember the household name your new YA was in!). Now Amy is here on the lot, and Vicky can add her to the household.

Welcome to Frosh Hall, Amy - don't worry, Vicky isn't mad at you, just Summer.

So now Amy is a college student at LCU!!! She can deposit her scholarship money in her bank account, pay her tuition, pick out some new clothes, pick out her dorm room.

But before she really gets to living, we have one more thing to do. Testing cheats on > shift click > spawn > semester tester. Click on that and "start class". She says, "But it's a giant apple!"

Sure it is, and we'll hide it in the closet, but in a base hood uni, her timer won't progress without her having one on her home lot. And if her timer doesn't progress, then there's no way for her to take her final exams. Bonus though, the timers on base-hood unis don't keep running on community lots like the regular uni timers do.

Wanna be cheaty? If you don't like having all those tallies there in the corner, they can all share one semester tester. Have it running for one of them to keep track of hours (I like to pretend that "exam week" is at the same time for all of my students.) Then when it's time for exams, you can cheat them to 2 hours with the College Adjuster, and have them take their exams in turn. Or if you have a larger bunch of students on one lot, maybe spawn an extra semester testers just before exam time. Only one student can use the semester tester during her exam though, and the next student will have to wait until the first returns.

Now she's done! She can decorate her dorm room, change her clothes, go to her classes, do her assignments and term papers... or just focus on making friends? You know that's what they're really going to college for ;)

***

notes:

- For some reason, the group study doesn't work for me, and if it doesn't work for you to a bothersome degree, you might want to try out some of Squinge's college mods. I can't help you with those though, because I don't use them. I never really used the group study anyway.

- Graduation works as normal.

- Teenagers cannot live on any lot with a uni record, or they will age to YA.

- You cannot have a regular uni hood and base-hood uni playable in your game at the same time. With these mods in place, your YAs will age to adult in the default university neighborhoods. This is why we kept the game paused above. (Further note - I've seen people say that they've got the two working simultaneously, but I never could.) So basically, if you want to use these mods, then all of your universities need to be in base hoods.

And of course, have fun! :)