Misc tip – The fastest way to learn to drive

The Generations expansion pack adds some new interactions at various life stages.  When it’s time to teach teen sims to drive, there is one tip that I like to follow every time.  I can usually get my adult sims to fulfill their lifetime wishes before their children become teens, so I will almost always have one of them use their lifetime reward points to purchase the Motive Mobile van and then make it that sim’s default vehicle.  I direct my teen sims to ask that parent for help learning to drive and just let them go at it.

Normally when a teen sim is learning to drive, the fun bar tanks for both the teen and the adult instructor during the lesson.  Using the Motive Mobile, all the needs for both sims are constantly fulfilled so they can stay out longer.  I usually find that they will continue until the teen has reached level 2 before they stop the lesson, but then I direct them to start the lesson again and they complete level 3 and the teen learns to drive very soon, almost always within 12 sim hours of starting the first lesson.

Even better with this vehicle is that I can send them out after dinner and have them working on this skill overnight while the rest of the family sleeps, and they are also both ready for work and school in the morning with no extra effort.  And since the teen sim is out with parental supervision, she doesn’t get caught for curfew violations.

Minigame added with the recent update

A while ago, I posted about the recent update that was released just before Into The Future.  In addition to the bugfixes that were included in the update, we also now have a hidden object minigame that will appear when sim neighborhoods are loading.  Even though the background on the minigame is the blue beehive background that was added with Into The Future, you don’t need the expansion pack to play the minigame.



The minigame is a screenshot highlighting a bunch of items and sims from an expansion pack, a stuff pack or a set available in the store, and below the progress bar, it will ask you to “Find the …” with the official name of an item that appears in the screenshot.  And in case you don’t recognize where the content being shown comes from, there is a handy icon in the lower right corner so you know what to buy to add the content to your game.  Finding these items is usually pretty simple, as there is usually only one of any type of object in the screenshot (for example, there is usually only one kind of dining table visible).  The only issue that I’ve found with this minigame is the lag that will sometimes occur because the computer is busy loading the full game in the background, and this is noted at the bottom of the screenshot.

The footnote on the screenshot also says you can turn off the minigame in the options panel if you want.  The option is pretty easy to find on the general settings tab.



I’ve left the setting turned on for my game, at least right now, because it not only makes the loading time less boring, but playing the minigame will reward my sims with some extra lifetime happiness points based on the number of objects that I was able to correctly identify and the speed with which I clicked on them.  In my simming this week, I’ve usually gained my sims about 500-700 extra lifetime happiness points with each loading screen, and since I send my sims travelling a lot, I’ve had many opportunities to play the minigame.

The lifetime happiness points that you earn playing this minigame will be split among all your active sims once the game loads.  It’s great when you’ve only got one sim, but larger families might not see as much of a benefit right away from this minigame.