More Awesome Than You!

Well, B suggested I claim a thread in Peasantry, and I do seem to be getting sucked in to hacking this game (but then, anyone who hangs around MATY long enough would!) so here are the two hacks I've already made.

EmployeeNoDoubleDip prevents playable sims who are employed at a business from heading to work when you play their lot.  This was a quick fix to try to reduce sims getting paid twice or more due to playing different lots.  A more substantial one, perhaps with tokens, may eventually be forthcoming. :P NoCommProtect was made under the same general premise as Pescaso's nouniprotect -- that is, a holy quest to eliminate invincible sims. :D Sims will pass out (and therefore drown) on community lots now, as well as starve to death.  Kids still cannot starve to death, but that's standard Eaxian behavior so I've left it alone.

I'm sort of learning how to hack these things together as I go along, so don't hesitate to yell at me if something blows up.  I will take requests, if I feel like it -- both of these were born from somebody else's complaining.  A little boredom never hurts, either. ;)

Are you already working on this? Just asking because I posted a request over at InSim (http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=58998) (just before I saw this thread) .. I wouldn't want anyone to do double work because of my whining =)

Also:


In case you currently feel like it, may I direct your attention towards this whine (http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=58999)? No Inheritances .. because "from the ether" payments suck.

No, I am not working on that yet, mainly because I don't know a thing about tokens yet, or, indeed, most hacking concepts that aren't immediately obvious. :P  As for No Inheritances... That depends on how hard it'll be to hack in.  I'll look at it.  I'd never really considered it an annoyance, but thinking about it now, most sims have too much money anyway and you can always use Money Orders to spread it around.

Oooh thanks!  :-*


in principle yes (I used to do that before no20K, for example) -- the difficulty with those damn inheritances is just that they often go to sims outside the home lot (of the sim that died), and the maxian dialogue always only lists the first five sims that inherit .. so without extensive tedious bookkeeping, it's impossible to know who exactly now has money they shouldn't have.

You know what I mean? If it's just that the spouse of the deceased (on the same lot) inherits 12.000§, no problem -- it's easy to familyfunds that money away and be done with it .. but when the popup goes "8 sims inherited somehting, and now we're gonna tell you the first five and keep the rest a secret" I'm tearing my hair out every time.

I have no idea how many others are playing like this, but the way I play, I try to build a society/economy from scratch (I started with a randomly generated bunch of sims and I think 50.000§ for the entire hood) with sims employing each other and farms / fishermen feeding the rest of the hood and rich sims building community lots that everyone else can use ("Joe Random Memorial Park") and all that .. in short, what I want is develop the hood from the work that my sims do. In this context, it's incredibly annoying when stuff just falls from the sky and throws everything out of balance .. obviously, Maxis were trying to make everything as easy as possible to keep the 12-year-olds happy, but I'm not 12 and I prefer a less boring game.

Well, it took a lot of digging and trying random things, but here it is. ;D I'm a pretty slow player, but inheritance is only for death by Old Age, right? ??? If not... then this isn't quite complete.  Eaxis uses "Inheritance Tokens" or whatnot.  My eyes glazed over trying to decipher the code that set those up, so I just ripped out the call for setting them up entirely.  A nice benefit of this is that the inheritance messages don't show up at all, but of course there may be a couple loose ends somewhere I didn't notice.  Please let me know if something blows up.

Sorry, I guess I didn't make myself clear.  What I meant was that, if after disabling inheritances you wanted to give some money away anyway, you could use the money order for that.  I wasn't at all suggesting you "undo" the inheritances -- that's why I made the hack, after all. ::)

Wow, I think my head would explode trying to keep track of all of that.  I've only recently made it a habit to sync my lots time-wise. :P I do know what you mean about it being too easy.  I have to actually make a concerted effort to put my sims in aspiration failure, while getting them platinum is a matter of habit.

YES! Hooray! Thank you! Yes, "accidential" deaths don't yield the inheritance (which is why I currently throw satellites at my elders as a workaround)

Thank you  ;D

* cradles precioussss new hack *



To me it sounds like you've done the right thing, throwing out all the Maxian garbage =) I think I have a sim in a test hood who is about to die of old age, I'll see if i can test this tomorrow. Will let you know how it goes.


I thought you were suggesting a workaround for the time being! "I'll take requests when I feel like it" didn't translate to me as "Hacks to go, grab'em while they're hot" :D

Thank you again, I've been wanting this for ages. I think I posted my first request back in the Base Game era.


OT:

It takes some getting used to, but it's so much more fun it's really worth it. The downside (for me) is only that 90% of my sims are still dirt poor (I've been playing the same hood for almost two years now I believe) and live in tiny shacks .. and I *love* building houses. I compensate by clogging the mts2 Lots+Housing department :P

I always try to keep my school schedule in mind when I'm doing stuff like this, and I really wanted to put something else out yesterday because I'll probably be too busy to do anything the rest of the week.  You were just fortunate enough to be the first to ask. ;)

Well, if all your sims are employing each other, then money only gets added to the system when townies buy your stuff, right? Or do you even let townies go shopping? Either way, 90% being poor sounds a lot like real life to me. :D Besides, if you really wanted them to be rich, you wouldn't be wanting to nuke double-payments and inheritances. :P

Exactly -- I don't want them to be rich, I want them to be interesting :). And if someone gets rich, I want them to be rich for a reason .. like the founder of the local publishing house, who enslaves employs two highly creative sims as writers who would otherwise be living on the street most likely (they could never have afforded a computer in the first place). This way they have a job and can at least rent a little shack, and she gets .. well, not filthy rich yet, but she owns a reasonable house (which counts as "pretty well off" in this hood), and she can afford to buy more computers and provide more jobs.

And you're right, money mainly gets added to the system via the townies; I've started this long before OfB so I had to make up a lot of stuff at first (like a town whore dating tourists for the gifts) .. I actually try to not sell too much useless crap to the tourists (townies) though -- mostly food and drinks, and "services" like ripping them off at poker --, because eventually someone might marry them in and then what are they going to do with 34 toy firetrucks?

Eventually, I want to get rid of the townies entirely .. I'm about to make subhoods instead, with the residents of each acting as "townies" for the other. So that everything and everyone has a backstory and is endlessly interconnected, like when the town whore got abducted by aliens it was with a telescope that she got as a date gift from a tourist who is the father of a girl that lives in the daycare that is run by the eldest daughter of said town whore who is married to the cashier of the hamburger stand that is run by the brother-in-law of the farmer who is the sister of the repairman who is the boyfriend of the barkeeper in the bar that was founded by the uncle of the town whore. True story! :D And the scary thing is that I still *know* all of this, even though I haven't touched this hood since March or so. I'm finding this much more interesting than everyone waltzing off to some anonymous "carreer" in the morning and knocking up the girl next door in the evening ..

Er, OK, I could go on endlessly =) will stop derailing your thread now. (But you asked!) My point, I think, is that everyone and everything in this system has an identity, and money changing hands should have a source and a target .. there is no room for silly maxian "life insurance" coming from nowhere, and I'm glad I'm rid of it.

Does this also affect playables who are on a comm lot, but who are there as visitors and not part of the household you are currently playing? (Unselectable playables)

I ask because I believe that JMP said that uncontrollable playables dying on comm lots was a bad thing.

In any case, I'm looking forward to trying both of these mods. I love nouniprotect, but it only affects dormies, not playables of yours from other lots.

Thankyou very much for the no inheritance mod. It's recently started annoying me too as I start trying to integrate my Neighbourhood economy (although not to the degree pbox is going).

*gently places new mod into game and goes off in search of 'new' jewelery after deleting every damned old one out of my game*

I just playtested the no inheritances hack: it worked fine!  ;D  The reaper procedure seemed strangely short but maybe that was just my imagination .. wouldn't be a big deal anyway, it's not like I've never seen it before  :P

I was being a tad stupid and saved after the fact .. which means I coudn't doublecheck for what happens with yellow and platinum aspiration (the tester sim was in green), but I know for sure the inheritances are normally for every death by old age, not just platinum, so I guess it Just Works. If not I'll be back and let you know.

What a relief! Thanks again  :)


Eta, forgot to say: this is with Base+NL+OfB+Seasons p2 + way too many hacks to list (mostly MATY ones).

Pbox, I am really interested in the idea that you've put together as a play style. I think that I'd like to try it. If it isn't too much of a problem for you I would really appreciate if you would put together a step by step explanation/instructions and maybe post it in Planet K. I believe that this would could be considered to be a "challenge". Perhaps the "Real Economy Challenge".

Jordan, thanks for the hacks! I'm trying out no comm lot protect.  :)

I don't see any way to play this as a challenge .. there are so many variables and unexpected turns, how would you want to score that? But if there's interest I can try to put together the rules / general prinicples and experiences from my hood and what hacks i use and stuff, and post the whole thing here in peasantry? I've got some of it written up somewhere anyway .. I also posted about it here (with my old account) I think .. try searching for "plasticbox", I think that was my old username.

Also, do you know that the Isle of Thyme rules/howto have been reposted at S2C? Might be of interest for you too.

And now I'm REALLY going to stop hijacking this thread .. sorry Jordan =)

Oh, I never score my challenges anyway. I just like the rules to give me some direction because I get bored sometimes and fall into a pattern of playing the same way with every house. I would really appreciate it if you'd post something in peasantry, or wherever you'd like. I'll take a look at the Isle of Thyme thing, I've never heard of it before. Thanks for the tip!

/derailment

Ooooh, that's a dangerous thing to say in this community!  XD  But perhaps when you have time you could look into this small but intensely irritating problem for me: that insipid grin on the face of CAS Sims.  I'd bow down before you as a true Mod God if you could substitute a nice, pleasant, neutral expression in its place.  XD

Inge had a 'no gurning' hack so sims don't make those stupid faces as soon as you zoom in to put makeup or whatever on them. They just keep neutral expressions from memory. Not sure about the smiling.

Hmm... that's a very good question.  I really don't know, but I can say that in my testing with a crap lot containing only a pool, the visiting sims acted like they couldn't leave fast enough. :P I'm pretty sure their free will prevents them from drowning unless you have a ladderless pool... But if you're setting up community lots like that, then you're just asking for it. ;)  If I wanted to torture a sim on a community lot, I'd send them to any old community lot and turn their free will off.  That's the easiest way.  If I wanted to kill a particular sim as fast as possible, however, that's where Paladin's assault rifle comes in. :D

Also, while there are people who take requests for houses or comm. lots, I am not one of them.  I consider my building skills sub-par on a good day.  I still build houses frequently, because I find it more annoying to edit a house someone else made than it is to start from scratch, but they definitely value function over form.  They almost all share the same architectural style/price range, anyway: "Modern-type-thing" and "Whatever it takes to move my sims in", respectively.  I'm just throwing this out now, lest I turn down such a request in the future and be skewered with pitchforks. ;D

I'd be willing to test out the 'visiting playables death' scenario if someone could tell me what the possible/probable game-wrecking outcome would be if it succeeded.

I've had a problem with the noinheritances mod. It doesn't seem to like pets (I have all EPs and SPs). It works fine for just sims, but I've been stuck in my game for a bit with a pet who's dying of old age, but once the Grim Reaper reaches it, he disappears and then reappears on the lot and gets stuck in the loop. I've got an error log for it.

[attachment deleted by admin]

Hmm... I have all EPs except Pets and BV, and no SPs at all.  Whether I can fix this depends on whether the Seasons file also checks for pets or not.  Either way, I'm pretty sure I know what I did wrong.  I pulled that BHAV from the base game, for what I foolishly considered "compatibility reasons". :-[ It's getting late here, but hopefully I'll have a fix for you tomorrow.  Surely I'm not the only modder to make a foolish mistake... right? :-X I'm kind of new to this still, in case you couldn't tell.

I don't know anything about modding, but I can kind of see how it happened. At a guess, it seems like there's a link between sims dying of old age and pets, and when the pet died of old age the mod was preventing something happening (ie. the bit you modded to stop the inheritance) but because the game couldn't find it, or whatever, it resulted in the game to loop the grim reaper appearing to try and find what it was missing. Or something like that. It makes sense in my head anyway  :P

Found something new to bother you with ;D -- a trading mod?

I usually have my sims exchange items by selecting a visitor and putting stuff in and out of their inventories. This works, but is not very elegant .. it requires selecting and fiddling and somehow doesn't feel very "in-game" -- it is a workaround, after all, as there's no regular way to exchange things between sims.

Since there already is an in-game method of giving stuff to other sims (Seasons gifts), it suddenly dawned on me that it might actually be possible to write something that would let sims trade/give/sell items in a similar fashion: a "give" or "trade" interaction but without the whole gift-giving aspect (boring animation and rel++) .. much like the gifts, only useful?

It would be great to be able to trade between sims .. or even just give something to someone without ceremony and wrapping paper (poor trees!). Maybe this would work with money too? Perhaps even taking relationships or niceness or charisma into account? Say, I offer you my old lawn chair, can I have that piano for it? Or: how much are you willing to pay? Or: "Sell" > chair, and the price depends on who I'm talking to? Or: how much is that piano in your pocket?

Not that I mean to ask for everything at once -- just to give you an idea what it could be used for .. if this kind of thing would work with money (not just inventory items), I'd love to have a way of paying/giving money to sims directly when I see them, without having to get a money order and fill out the forms .. recycling the tipping animation for that would be perfect (not sure if there's more than one -- I mean tipping the waiter at an owned restaurant).

Buying stuff would be yet another aspect .. playables could be like walking stores, selling small things (like some of the NPCs sell potions and such).

Um, yes. Just talking aloud -- I'm well aware that this is not a "quick fix" request, more like a suggestion for a bundle of new features .. I wrote stuff about sim economy in this other thread over there (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=9638.0), that's why I was thinking about it.

Yikes! That trading mod seems more than a little out of my league. Ask me again in a few months, maybe I'll have changed my mind. ;) Seriously though, if I were to look at that now it'd be a recipe for banging my head into the wall from frustration. The one part I probably could do is nuke the give gift animation... that shouldn't be too hard. I'll think about it.  As for the dying pets problem, try this version.  I haven't tested it in game (because I don't own pets ::)) but I think it should work. As a result, this was taken from Seasons, so you should own that EP unless somebody wants to test it and prove otherwise.

Totally understand =) I just wanted to get the suggestion out there (not sure if it's considered OK to blatantly request stuff in the Podium .. but I guess I shall repost now), and since I've no way of knowing how complicated these things actually are, i didn't want to just presume it's "too hard" based on nothing but a gut feeling.

Does it make sense for non-Pets (but Seasons) users to test the new noinheritances? Or did nothing change for us anyway?

Well, pbox, I'm in that exact situation myself, as I mentioned above (having Seasons, but not Pets).  I haven't tested the new version on my own system yet, but I will soon.  I'll respond soon with results.

As for a new shiny, currently I'm looking at the remnants of code dealing with the scrapped power outage scenario.  I have no idea how much of it is salvageable/currently hooked up, but it appears that there were functions that took energy/water use into account when calculating bills, functions to turn on/off the power, and something that runs a function tied to objects when this state changes.  I'm currently investigating to see how this can all mesh together.  I was probably one of many (well, at least several :D) people who hoped this power outage scenario would return with the Seasons expansion.  Exactly what I can accomplish remains to be seen.

You might want to go snag the new BV edition of the InSIMenator at Insimenator.net, then...I believe I saw something in the list of new features about cutting off power and water to a lot, so perhaps you can gain some insight into that by checking out how Eric has applied it.

Also, I believe there's been an object at Simslice for ages that uses part of the original weather code and power outage scenario (a pylon, if I remember right.  ETA: or possibly it may have been the hidden windmill generator object.)  It's a paysite, but chances are that item is available in the Booty.

Seems like my great ideas have already been done. :( It looks like both mods mainly invoke the built-in BHAVs that I've already noticed.  Ah well.  I can still have the task of tying the scenario/power outage with an actual thunderstorm, which neither mod has done.  That'd still be cool... right? :P At least if they're using Eaxis BHAVs, that holds some promise for the amount of functionality that was left in.  Funny thing, too, in the same group as the power outage scenario are also shells of scrapped engagement and grandchild scenarios.  The engagement one has sort of made a comeback with the NL dates, but I'm not sure WHAT they were thinking about the grandchild one. ::)

Awww, I didn't mean to kill your idea, I just wanted to save you unnecessary work.  *Pats*  However, it would be cool if you could get it to work with thunderstorms instead of tying it to an object, and perhaps pro-rate the household's bills to account for the down time.

Grandkid scenarios would also be neat...it's odd how Sims tend to not realize someone is related to them a few generations along.  XD

Yes, that would be very cool =) I was also hoping for that to surface in Seasons. And if the bills took the amount of electricity/water used into account, that would also be cool!

Well, as long as we're posting wild mod desires that may or may not even be acheivable I shall post my favourite desire.

Truly integrated Risky Woohoo.
Somewhere at the back of any woohoo code sequence (as I understand it) is a test to see if the Sim can get pregnant. Original code excludes teens, males, elders and females that are not selectable (ie non-residents) and we now have mods that include teens and males if we want them included, but not non-residents. Now, Pescado has said that pregnancy tokens created for non-resident Sims is a VBT (and I just have to take him at his word) but what about something different.

My premise is that the test for pregnancy comes around and hits the 'can I get pregnant' question - a mod could be slotted in there that takes the ones that fail 'am I resident' and roll a value for possible pregnancy. If pregnancy 'occurs' instead of impregnating the visiting Sim there is a dialog sequence.

<Mary> is pregnant from Risky WooHoo with <Don>. Mary is a <family sim> does she;
a. move in with Don
b. abandon the baby on Don's doorstep
c. put the baby up for adoption
d. abort the baby

a. and she becomes part of the household (at which time a pregnancy token is applied to her)
b. a countdown token is given to Don and at the end of 72+ hours (providing he is home) a baby 'arrives' made of his and Mary's DNA
c. the baby is made immeadiately and added to the adoption pool
d. nothing happens and the game goes on.

How's that for a tall order?

I don't have any pets in game at the moment (way too many sims to deal with in the house) but I'll test the new noinheritances as soon as I get room (or time, rather :P) to add in a pet.

I would love something that fixed that. My fourth generation legacy heir three-bolted with her great-aunt  >:(

I suppose I wasn't very clear on the grandkid scenario.  It wasn't something to help with family ties; rather, it was (or appeared to be) a scenario you would have to go through in order to have a grandchild.  I didn't see anything for having a regular kid.  So I figured if parents could have kids normally, and their kids had kids normally (as they do now) a scenario wouldn't make much sense. ::) Besides, what if they somehow went through the grandkid scenario before having regular kids (cheat, boolprop, glitch, whatever)?  I probably could fix the family ties if I only knew where/how they were calculated.

Risky Integrated Woohoo: Talk about a tall order! :o The thing is, most of those can be done either manually or through other hacks.  A is easy to set up ahead of time, I believe Inge's shrub takes care of C, and InSIM or something similar can handle D.  B can be done in-game (sort of) if the resident sim is female.  So I guess what you're looking for, mainly, is to be able to have a kid without marriage/move in if the resident is male.  I have no clue WHAT I would do about that.  If I think of something, I'll get back to you.

Just wanted to let you know I had the same problem with the first version of this mod, where I would get an error popping up for grimmy. I installed the newer version and the cat was able to pass on fine, and I have all eps installed. Thanks for the mod :)

Yeah, I know, I'm edging the line on the cardinal necromancy rule, but since it's my thread, hopefully I'm okay... right? ??? In any case, I'm posting to explain why I've been gone.  In short, stupid Real Life rearing its ugly head again.  In particular, I have annoying college application stuff to deal with, so I'll be busy for the next couple of weeks.  That being said, I revived this thread because I plan to get back into modding after things cool down over here.  Just updating so that, you know, people realize I'm not dead or anything. :P

Well, fortunately I get a whole week off of school for thanksgiving, so for a while at least I'll have some time for modding.  I just finished a beta version of a mod that will calculate bills solely on water/power usage.  (It never made sense to me that I had to keep paying for my stuff over and over, anyway ::) )  I call this a beta because I haven't done enough testing to decide whether the bills are too much or not enough.  Also, some of the objects were still coded to calculate utility costs, and some weren't -- I haven't looked through all the objects yet.  It's trivial to add or adjust, but it involves editing the BHAVs which is usually bad for compatibility, so I haven't done any yet.  I also changed the mailbox so it's calculate bills function doesn't require debug mode -- if anyone would like to use that to test certain objects and see whether they affect the bills, I would appreciate it.  And, of course, all comments and questions are welcome.

Does it factor in property tax?

Hmm... Well, if the sims don't pay income tax, why should they pay propety tax> ;D  Seriously, though, the thought just never occurred to me.  It wouldn't be too hard to put in, I suppose, but I think it can wait until tomorrow. :P