Aspiration System

Aspiration System for Paralives is a script mod that brings back the layer The Sims 2 built its

whole life around: a lifelong aspiration, a rolling set of wants and fears, an aspiration

meter that rises and falls with them, and a rewards shop you spend that meter on.

Paralives already ships wants and goals of its own, and this mod does not replace them. It adds the

layer above them — the ambition, the dread, the mood that answers to both — and everything is drawn

in the game's own UI style, docked in the Para profile where you'd expect to find it.

## How it works, in plain words

Four things stacked on top of each other. You only really touch the first two.

1. The aspiration is who your Para wants to be. You pick it when you create them, from a list

that holds Family, Fortune, Romance, Knowledge, Power, Party and more. Children don't pick —

every kid holds Grow Up until they become a teenager, and chooses for real then. The aspiration

isn't a label: from that moment it decides everything the Para hopes for and everything they dread.

It is also for life. Once the game is running the choice is locked, and only a potion from the

rewards shop can shake it loose.

(There is one more aspiration that never appears in the list. You'll know it when you find it.)

2. The lifetime want is the one big dream. A single long ambition — earn §100,000, max out five

skills, see a child married, finish a collection. Each aspiration offers its own, and completing it

is the good ending of that Para's story.

3. Wants and fears are the day to day. A small panel beside the needs holds up to four wants and

three fears, drawn from the aspiration. A want is something the Para would love to see happen: get a

promotion, buy a guitar, flirt with the neighbour across the street. A fear is what they dread: be

fired, be turned down, watch a relative go hungry. They are not a to-do list and nothing is on a

timer — play normally, and the moment the thing actually happens in the game, the want closes by

itself. Each morning on waking, the wants that didn't happen are swapped for fresh ones, and the

little padlock on each slot keeps the one you're actually working towards.

4. The aspiration meter is how well it's all going. A want fulfilled pushes it up, a fear coming

true drags it down, and left alone it slowly slides back. Five bands, from Deep Red to Platinum. A

Para sitting in Platinum keeps a good mood even as their needs fall apart; one scraping the bottom

of Deep Red is in an aspiration crisis — though never a trap, because the very bottom climbs back on

Wants also pay. Every one fulfilled is aspiration points banked, spent in the rewards shop from

the button in the profile: instant effects — every need filled, a pile of cash, a sudden jump in a

skill — and four objects that exist nowhere else in the catalogue.

Where to find all this. Select a Para and open their profile: ASPIRATION and LIFETIME WANT are

right there, with the Rewards button. The wants and fears panel sits on the HUD next to the needs,

and can be dragged and resized to taste. Babies and toddlers have none of it yet, so their panel

stays hidden until they grow into it.

Loading a save from before the mod? Nobody is handed an aspiration behind your back. Paras who

never had one stay blank until you open their profile and choose — once, aspiration and lifetime

want, and from then on it is locked like everyone else's.

Want to delete the mod? Just do it. Every system is independent and its save data won't affect your game.

## Experimental — and feedback is the point

This mod is experimental. It reaches deep into systems Paralives is still building out, it is

tested by one person on one machine, and hundreds of wants and fears mean hundreds of ways for a

gate to fire late, early, or never. Expect rough edges.

That is exactly where you come in. If a want never completes even though you did the thing, if a

panel shows up where it should not, if an icon looks wrong, if a fear triggers on something

innocent — please say so, in the Posts tab, with what your Para was doing at the time. A

report that small is usually enough: "this want won't close" and "this icon is just an arrow" have

each already led straight to the cause.

Suggestions are just as welcome: a want you miss from The Sims 2, a lifetime want that ought to

exist, a reward worth buying, a number that feels off. Tell me what you want out of the system and

it goes on the list.