Talk:Young adult

From the Note section: When they´re on their second half of senior year, a lot of adults from the base neighborhood will come, almost as if telling them ¨Hey, I´m one of the people who will live in your neighborhood, just to let you know.

For whatever it's worth, I've never seen this happen. Could it depend on having - or not having - certain EPs installed? Dharden 23:01, October 6, 2009 (UTC)

Technical info: Age in The Sims 2, Young Adults
"When examined in SimPE, a young adult is shown to be an adult with a special flag set."

Correct. And overall very thorough article. But I feel a little generalization is in order, linking growing up, behavior and outfits, mentioned at the beginning of the article. Very little of this technical information belongs to the main page.

Young Adult is a separate age from Adult, as a characteristic of the sim's 3D model. As far as I can tell, the body shape is exactly the same, but is treated as distinct one. This is most apparent when adults and young adults try to plan their outfits at a wardrobe, when each will have their own set of clothing available, and when a sim changes and loses their current outfit as they transition into Adult when leaving college. Occasioanally this happens to hair as well. Clothing can be set to be valid for either or both ages at the designer's choice. Normally, adults are not supposed to live in the same household as university students, so an exploit or a mod has to be used to move sims in. But the fact that outfits are lost can be noticed after graduating in an unmodified game.

All sims also have an assumed age, which determines their behavior and available activities. It is distinct from the character model, as can be witnessed in some Headmaster NPCs, which appear elder but act as adults, or a number of teen hacks. Most Young Adult behaviors are enabled by setting the field in Person Data, which can be done to either an Adult or Young Adult ages. The flag has no effect on other ages, so, for instance, a teenage student is undefined.

When entering or leaving college, sims do transition to the intended physical age, which is why they lose the days gained from the Elixir, among other things. They actually get forced into that stage, regardless what their current one is.

The "growing up" process simply does not account for the Young Adult stage at all, and if made to grow up through modification, their assumed age (which is usually Adult) determines that they should become Elders. Similarly a Teen would never become Young Adult. The transition from "youth" is undefined because it was never supposed to be seen, not even on campus.

If a mod or command switches a sim between young and full adult, and they don't lose their outfit, then the person will be able to do everything the current age can except dressing into their outfits. In addition, if a YA is brought into a playable family outside of college, through any process, they will transition into adults upon arrival on their home lot or reset.

In my opinion the distinction in wardrobe is rather important to a non-technical user, because some outfits are locked to young adults. Students also cannot dress in most NPC clothing or have their own set. It makes no difference in which neighborhood the clothing is bought.

I feel strongly negative about this forced change, and made a hack which unifies the ages in a continuous growing up process, which is why I decided to post what I have discovered.

-- J7n (talk) 13:08, January 11, 2013 (UTC) 212.142.84.209