More Awesome Than You!

Now in shiny Boolean Logic Edition!

(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/terror/green.gif)
(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/zip.gif)customerselector.zip (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/ofb/hacks/customerselector.zip)

Recommended:
Business Runs You! (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=3884.0)
No Playable Shoppers (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=3419.0)

Customer Selector v2 for TS2OFBp1-p2
Made by: Flying Fish Systems (J. M. Pescado & Doctor Boris)

Special Thanks To:
BlueSoup Fat Head
Hobbsee the Scrawny Pencil Neck

Congratulations to: Draklixa!

INSTRUCTIONS:
Place in your MYDOCU~1\EAGAME~1\THESIM~1\DOWNLO~1 directory.

FEATURES:
For ages, OFB businesses have been hampered by one thing: The inability to
target your business at a specific clientele without random idiots showing up
who don't fit the profile you want. With this shiny gray box, there are now
dozens of configurations to choose from!

For optimal results, it works best with the new version of noplayableshoppers,
and the new Business Controller. It will function alone, but noplayableshoppers
causes the normal spawner to yield to the Customer Selecter rather than having
to fight. Although if you don't have it, the Customer Selector is prepared to
do battle against it.

SHIFT-Click while in debug mode gives an option to reset all options to
default.

How to use it:
Buy the controller block (small gray box in Misc/Misc for §1) and place on lot. 

There are three choices for each option - OR, NOT and AND
Depending on the option, they're either set at OR or NOT by default. A setting
of NOT will disallow a sim from being acceptable to this block if they have
the NOT-characteristic. A setting of AND will allow a sim ONLY if they have
that characteristic. A setting of OR will allow a customer if they satisfy the
above and any requirements for visitation as normal.

You can make blocks that configure customer interest settings as well,
targetting Sims who are looking for something specific like Entertainment or a
restaurant. Timepiece - Another gray box in the Misc/Misc catalog for §30, which
turns into an alarm clock when placed.

You can attach it to one of the gray blocks and cause it to load a different
policy at a specific hour. For optimal results, you should place two clocks per
box, one to change it at a specific hour and one to change it back.  This is
helpful if you have a club that you want to be frequented by vampires at night,
but regular Sims during daylight hours.  The blocks are conveniently numbered
with ID numbers so you can attach the clock to a specific block.

There are import and export settings on the clock - import copies your current
settings of that particular block onto the clock, saving them so you can order
the clock to apply it at a specific hour.  Export applies those settings back
to the block right now so you can edit them and reimport them, or just because.

Multiple controller block to create 'OR' groupings. If, for example, you want
gay vampires or male robots, you can create one block with permissions for gay
vampires, and another block for male robots.  That way these two specific
groups show up and you don't have to override one or the other.
Simply place more than one controller.

And remember: BlueSoup has a fat head and Hobbsee has a scrawny pencil neck.

COMPATIBILITY:
Compatible with all FFS hacks. Tested for TS2OFBp2.

SIDE EFFECTS:
May cause computer damage, incontinence, explosion of user's head, coma, death,
and/or halitosis.

WARNING:
Do not open, crush, dispose of in fire, put in backwards, short-circuit, or mix
with non-awesome hacks - may explode, leak, or catch fire, resulting in injury
and/or death.

I'm not entirely sure what the changes are, but I'm going to download anyway. I'm sure whatever you've done is most decidedly an improvement.

And indeed, one wonders what changed between this version and the one currently in the brand new "obsolete" directory.

The old override/accept/reject system was replaced with a cleaner system of boolean logic. This could break compatibility with the previous version, if you were heavily abusing the override setting.

I have installed the latest version of this - I do not have Pets.

I placed it on the lot, set ages child and teen to AND and all other ages to NOT. Yet adults/elders still showed up.

I restarted and tried it again. Same occurrence.

This is a home business lot, with the ticket thingy on it.

I finally ended up using TJ's visitor controller, but I don't want to as it refers to all visitors, and I just want to limit customers.

Has anyone else got this to work? Is there some secret 'on' button I am not pushing?

Please help.

Thanks!

Issue will be looked into.

I am wondering if it is because I do NOT have Pets installed...

I get a similar problem (No Pets, but the rest installed): I set kids and elders to NOT, but they still showed up.

Does this only affect home businesses?

In my case I had the selector at an unowned comm lot (a modified version of the NL gambling place). I set the options when a Sim visits.
I am not sure if this is a supported use at all...

I am slightly puzzled by this on further examination. If you set both child and teen to AND mode simultaneously, then nobody should have showed up since it is physically impossible to be both at the same time, which is what AND mode requires. The fact that you're allowed to do this at all is really a bit of legacy coding for reverse-compatibility (there's really little point in having an AND/OR mode on mutually exclusionary options like that).

I am unable to reproduce your results, however. Next time you see an inappropriate visitor, SHIFTCLICK him, make selectable, then SHIFTCLICK the Customer Selector and choose "Test Visitability". If you get a "Not Allowed", he's somehow sneaking onto the lot through an alternate vector.

Not a supported use. Unowned community lots do not use the business customer routines.

Could a conflicting mod cause this problem?

I will test as per your instructions above and let you know what happens.

Use TJ's Visitor Controller -- it's not a fine tuned as this is, but it will keep some of your unwanteds off the lot.

I'm trying to set up a salon to give make-overs to NPCs; especially professors.
Normally the NPCs show up among normal townies and I give them makeovers and everything is fine, but now I'm trying to do just the NPCs, no regular townies, but I can't get it to work.
Setting Townies to "not" seems to also exclude NPCs (apparently they are also townies), but setting NPC to "and" also results in no customers at all.
Any suggestions.
For the record, I am temporarily using a non-awesome hack to allow me to give makeovers to NPCs.

The Customer Selector is not in the Seasons directory. So not compatible or just forgotten?

Ooh, this will come in handy.

*bows down to the god known as pescado*

Fixed.

Thanks. The Customer Selector is an Essential Simming Tool. (TM)

I'm having a problem with this since the Seasons patch (or maybe since Seasons, but I think it's post-patch) -- if I have one of these on a business lot, only 2 customers at a time show up, regardless of the business level.  I tried replacing it, and that didn't fix it.  But if I delete it completely, the proper number of customers show up within minutes.

Pretty much all my business-related mods are from here, so this one has me stumped.

Hmm. That'd be interesting, considering that the code used to derive customer numbers is standalone. But we will look into it. Is it possble that your set of restrictions is such that there are ONLY two customers in the game that qualify?

Well, the only restrictions I normally put on it are to eliminate poor, playables (which I think is a default) and zombies. But deleting the existing controller and putting a new one on the lot without changing anything still causes the problem.

I first noticed it with the sim that owns the Inner Child shop two days ago; it's level 10, but only 2 customers at a time were showing up.  I tried a couple of things, even putting the Paladin customer adjuster on the lot (it showed 2 customers as the max setting), and setting it to 10 customers, and that didn't work.  It was only after I deleted the customer selector that the number of customers started rising, but then it was time to close the store.  So I chalked it up to maybe the selector getting borked in the reset.  But then it happened again last night with two different businesses owned by a different sim.  This time, I replaced the selector right away, leaving it at the default settings, and there were still only 2 customers at a time (one business is L5, the other L8).  I deleted the selector on one lot, and put it in the owner's inventory on the other, and in both cases the number of customers jumped up to normal levels.

Edit: One more test confirmed this problem.  Different sim, different business (Amelia's Closet) -- it was level 4, and with this on the lot, only 2 customers showed up.  Put it in the owner's inventory, and another customer showed up right away.  Business reached level 5, and 4 customers appeared.  Put it back on the lot, and 2 customers left the lot, still holding their shopping bag (never paid, as far as I can tell). Deleted it, and right back up to 4 customers. So something weird is going on.

The only other new hack I've added recently was dizzy's process autonomy hack, and I took it out for this session, so that's not what's causing this issue.

Continued investigation remains unable to reproduce your results. As you can clearly see from this scene at Brynne II Silly's business, "Honest Otto's Used Johns (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/awesomeland/usedjohns0.jpg)", there are clearly more than 2 customers. Not sure why you're getting only two customers. Are you running any anti-visitor-cap hacks or cheats?

Only other hack/object I have that affects number of visitors to a business is Paladin's customer controller, but it's not a global hack, and has to be on the lot to have any effect, AFAIK. And it's not present on these (or any other lots) right now.  I'll remove it, and see if that changes things, but I'm stumped on this one too.  I ran a hack conflict scan, and nothing showed up as affecting the same things as the customer selector, so it's not an obvious conflict.  And the fact that it started only after the Seasons patch is what really puzzles me.

I'll keep playing with it and see if I can find a cause.

Added: ok, this is just weird.  I took out every hack I had related to a business other than ones from here, and I still have the same problem.  I'm going to have to go deeper and see what's causing this.

Solved, I think:  So I sent a sim to an unowned community lot, and after a bit noticed that there were only 2 visitors on the lot the whole time he was there.  Which is strange, because my community lots are usually pretty full.  So when I thought about it a bit, I realized that I also put a new video card in this machine around the same time that I installed the Seasons patch, and I remembered that when it started up, all my graphics settings were reset to the lowest settings.  That clued me in -- I got a Visontek X1300 XGE, and Maxis in their usual idiocy sees all ATI X1300 class cards a low end.  So a quick check of my config log, and I found that the game was forcing maxNumOfVisitingSims  to 2, thinking the card can't handle more.  I'm still not sure why taking the customer selector off an owned lot let the number of visitors go up, but I've added intProp maxNumOfVisitingSims   8 to my userstartup.cheat file.  I'm done for the night, but I'll check it out next time I play and see if that fixes the problem.

Stupid Maxis....

then how did you get four without the customer selector?

I have no idea.  But that's the only thing I can think of that would affect the number of sims showing up on a community lot.  I'm testing out raising the maxNumofVisitingSims right now on a comm lot -- if that doesn't work, then I'm really stumped.

Edit: It worked, and I think I have it sorted out (Pescado can correct me if I'm wrong :) ). Because running a business with only 2 customers at a time doesn't make a whole lot of profit, I'm guessing that OFB bypassed the usual visiting sim generator in the game and ran its own routines to determine how many visitors to send to an owned business, based on the business level.  This mod supersedes the OFB visitor generator, and maybe invokes the game's standard generator to filter the visitors according to its settings.  So the visitor limit kicks in when this is on the lot.  When it's removed, the OFB visitor generator takes over again, and ignores the usual visitor limit, so more customers showed up.

In any case, setting the max number of visitors higher seems to have solved the issue I was having so far.  I only have a level 1 business in the hood I'm currently playing (it's a fairly new custom hood), but 3 customers showed up right away. And it was nice seeing 8 sims on an unowned comm lot again. So maybe I'll bump the max visitors to 10 so I can have a full compliment next time I play my level 10 businesses again with the customer selector active. My computer can handle it -- it did before, and in spite of what Maxis thinks, this is a better video card than my old one.

I'm glad you were able to find a solution, jsalemi!  Your theory makes a lot of sense. 

JMP,

This may be borked a bit in BV.  I sent my business owners to their business for the first time, and it's full of islanders and asians (haven't seen any lumberjacks yet). I saw options on it to ban the new vacation folks, and they all default to 'NOT', but they're still showing up.

Fixed now.

I have the latest version, and I still get the Islanders, Far Easters and the Mountaineers showing up back in the old village, where they have NO business at all to be. All 3 groups are set to NOT. I also have 2jeffs visitor controller, latest version, but it has no options to ban them, could there be some other conflict?
This will mean I will have to kill them all eventually, once this is fixed, because it is not meant to happen that Far Easters go visit my old medieval village, socializing and all. So annoying to see them show up at the old church for example..

I can't see any reason why this would still happen, and nobody else has reported this, so you are probably using an old version, possibly from your browser cache. Clear your cache and redownload again.

The file (package) I have in my hacks/pescado directory is dated 9/13, 6.51 AM, so I do have the latest version, I believe. Doesn't seem to be any difference between owned community lots, the ones without owners, or home businesses - the damn foreigners ;) still come there.

As posted in the Macrotastics thread...

What are the precise effects of business purposes? I've always kind of wondered that.

The precise effect of business purposes is that it sets the target's motives to be appropriate to the business: Rather than showing up starving, bored, and about to pee on your floor, they'll instead show up with only the motives that your business type is intended to satisfy depleted, so that they will actually do those things instead of whining about other things. Instead of showing up not-hungry at your restaurant, then loitering around instead of eating.

Pes, I'm loving the customer selector in general. Sims come in, buy their goods, and get the heck off the lot. Just added it to my collection a few days ago. I'm noticing an issue with the default stray-ban, though. I still have strays come on lot (albeit fewer than I remember before) and head straight for the indestructible flowers I have outside the art store. So far this is only happening with dogs. Using BRY to banish them works, but not until they are first shooed. Strays do not show up at all at my brothel and convenience store businesses, both of which are using the selector and both of which have no plant-type objects outside. The obvious solution is to remove the pretty, but I like the pretty.

Also, ever since adding this to business lots, it calls all employees in at once. This makes no fiscal sense. My level 7-10 businesses typically have the owner doing sales/restocking, a dedicated restocker, a gold level cashier, and a bronze/silver level cashier. For the first half of the day, I'm fine without the second lesser cashier, so I don't want to pay them to stand there like an idiot.

If you want it kept that way, great. Can you point me to the relevant line in the BHAV? I'm just getting used to messing with the lovely twisted code they use.

The ensummonation of employees is not part of the Customer Selector or the BRY, although you can summon or dismiss them individually from the Hammer and Sickle. If your employees are all appearing, either you called them all in, or they're present because all employees are present when you visit as a different fambly. None of this is produced by Awesomeware. As for strays, strays are not summoned by the customer selector: they must be materializing through a different controller run by Maxis, and are not counted as customers at all. None of those issues relate to Awesomeware.

Zazau -- do you use Inge's business hours controller sign?  I noticed after installing BV that it reset, so it was calling in employees as soon as the business opened.  I had to have the owner redo all the settings back to what they were.

Pes, doesn't the customer selector have a ban/allow pets settings?  I thought that kept strays away, because I never see them on my lots unless I change the default (which is to ban them, I believe).

The pets allow/ban determines whether or not owners are allowed to bring their animals. No part of the customer selector loop actually conjures animals indepedently, they must be appearing from the Maxian stray-animal launcher.

Huh. Weird. Since BV lets you pick who goes to a lot, that didn't even dawn on me - I never bring the pets along, just the family members who work there. Scary how quickly we forget what wasn't included in previous expansions. I thought the automatic ban on pets was on all pets, and was just about to edit my post to say that a cat showed up at the convenience store to play with a tourist.

The only Inge hacks I have are the custom school related ones, bottomless bottle, and the new sign that makes everyone switch into swimwear for the public beach. None of those objects are on any of my community lot businesses. They only have awesome hack objects. Again, it didn't happen at the convenience store, so I suppose it's possible that I misclicked. But three times in a row? All employees were playables, which is unique to that biz...it's Edmund, his sister and brother, and my fake hubby. All live on different lots. This was while I was visiting as the owner (the only lot I visit as a customer is the convenience store for groceries...everyone's either poor or saving up to give their kids nest eggs). I'm laying off the two townie workers at the convenience store tomorrow night and will see if it repeats with just the playables being employees. If it does, I guess it's 50/50 time.

*puts on her best impression of Gwilly people* Could the ability to ban strays be added to the customer selector? I used to use TJ's Visitor Controller for this, but the Customer Selector does 90% of what it does, and has the added nicety of keeping customers from milling around goosing each other and playing on their handhelds (cute at the beach, but not at the stores where I want them to give me money NOW, Edmund needs the dough to hire a new whore for the brothel).

The customer controller does not summon strays, so if strays are being summoned, they are not being summoned by anything Awesome. It is either non-Awesome, or Maxis, which has nothing to do with the Customer Selector, so the customer selector cannot reject them since the customer selector isn't the one spawning them.

Ah. I see. Customer Selector = selective spawner. Customer Selector =/= gatekeeper.

The stray summoning is definitely Maxis, as it happened well before I ever had a single hack. Apparently Maxis thinks that it's quite commonplace to have random dogs come off the street and play with people in restaurants.

So, I am new to the residential lot business scam, and I was wondering about the selector. I have been fooling with the "business type" setting and I can't figure out what the best setting is. Do the settings make a particular feature of the lot more attactive?

I have a "nightclub" type place with a ticket machine. They serve plates of food all day, coffee during the day, and there is an open bar at night. There is also a stage with musicians, sometimes. Should I leave the setting on general, or would it make any sense to change it throughout the day?

ETA: Excellent! Thanks!

General means that the motives of incoming sims are not adjusted from the Maxis settings. More specific settings cater the settings of incoming sims to favor the motives that would be addressed by that business. For instance, setting it to "Restaurant" will make sure everyone arrives hungry...because this is a restaurant and there would be no point to visiting at all, otherwise. They similarly will not show up looking for things that your business is NOT intended to provide, so they don't show up and complain about the lack of fun or pee on your floor.

Hmm, I guess necromancy is ok if it's for a legit question in a mod thread?

...anyway. Curious about the new "Hobby" options. I assume Have = only sims with some enthusiasm in the hobby will turn up, and Don't Have = only sims without? Or does it refer to the One True Hobby?

...and why only 2 options? What if I don't care if they have or don't have a certain interest?

...or am I completely off the mark?

That option is still under destruction. It was updated recently, so you may want to grab the latest. As for how it works, currently, setting any "Have" option means your lot is a hobby-based lot, and only sims that "Have" a hobby, defined by either it being their OTH, or they have a hobby membership to it, will show up to the lot. If you set multiple "Haves", they function as an OR, so if you set "Games" and "Fitness" to "have", a sim that has games OR fitness will be valid, and sims that have neither will not be. There is no "Not" version because it makes no logical sense to exclude a sim for having a hobby, merely for not having it.

Ah-ha! Thanks for the explanation, much clearer now.

I've also installed the newest version now (dated 9 Apr). It's still got the two option "Have" and "Have not" for each hobby. Since it's under destruction, maybe you could consider changing the label "Have not" to something less confusing, like "Irrelevant". Or maybe you just enjoy confusing the peasants, which is of course your prerogative  ;D

Pes, I grabed your lates version April 27, 08 and replaced the last version, now the game speed is repeatedly set back to 1 when I set it to either 2 or 3. With the customerselector on lot (it is a home business), it does the setting back. Delete it from the lot and the game speed is all fine.

Can't reproduce issue, and it seems very unrelated since the Selector does not do anything with game speeds.

I restarted the game, and the problem disappeared.  ;D It's all well now. Thanks.

Please someone explain what I am doing wrong...I keep having vacation townies show up on my lots everytime I put a selecter down. Whether I leave the settings on default or change them, they keep coming. ???

The orientation options aren't working for me.

1) Gay female sims don't show up on lots with gay set at "and" and everything else at "not."  They do show up if gay is at "and" and everything else is at "or."

2) Heterosexual females show up if het is set at "not" and no other orientation is set at "and."  Testing visitability gives an "allowed."

I've got all EPs except Pets and AL, all patched, running from a no-cd.  This behavior persists in a new neighborhood in a newly-generated folder with only the three relevant hacks re-added.  I have the 2/25 version of the CS.

(http://cats.moreawesomethanyou.com/doingitwrong.jpg)

Your problem is that you're not understanding boolean logic. If you set a trait to AND, it means that all visitors MUST have this trait. Setting AND Gay, AND Female means that in addition to anything else, they must be gay/female. Setting something to NOT means that a visitor must NOT have that trait: NOT vampire, for instance, means No Vampires. So if you set AND Gay, AND Female, NOT vampires, you get gay, female, non-vampires. If you set "everything else" to "not", you have created a condition where the visitable set is the empty set. For instance, NOT male, NOT female means that your visitors must not be male, and must not be female. Since all sims are one or the other, there are no neutermales, you now have no visitors.

I was unclear: "everything else" referred only to the other orientation options.  I definitely didn't go in and click "not" on every single option on every single submenu on all the lots I tested on.  What I meant was:

1) If the orientation options are set at "and-gay, not-het, not-bi, not-asexual," then only male gay sims show up, while changing it to "and-gay, or-het, or-bi, or-asexual" without touching any other menu allows female gay sims to show up too.  Just remembering to use "or" isn't a problem, but I don't think that's supposed to happen, it's not happening with other options, and I thought it might be related to the second bit.

2) If the orientation options are set at something like "or-gay, or-bi, not-asexual, not-heterosexual," then heterosexual females are showing up (although the male ones aren't), and the controller gives "Allowed: Code 0" when they are made selectable and visitability is checked.  They don't show up if one of the other orientations is on "and," so it can be dealt with by setting up more than one selector block, but that gets a little annoying if there are several other conditions, given that it shouldn't be happening.

I otherwise haven't had trouble getting the selector to work, although I haven't tried much beyond restrictions by age and playability.  It's just the orientation bit, afaict, that is acting strangely.

Try the new version, should be fixed now?

It's working.  Thanks.

Querido el presidente Pescado
Forgive my stupidity, I don't really get the timer system.
I want my club visited by gay sims at night (2100-0800) and by anyone during daytime(0900-2000).
I assigned two timers respectively to the selectors and set the times.
Now what should I do to make one timer the 'beginning' and the other the 'end'?  ???
Thanks!

 

Set the "Gay" timer to be activate at 21, set the "anyone" timer to activate at 09.

Could the customer selector have a setting to spawn only sims who are not supposed to be elsewhere at the moment, like at work? Something like the logic in the phonehack? Would be a vast progress towards realistic businesses.

I just installed this, and I have noticed that adult playable sims and downtownies do not arrive in the assigned uniform.  Playable and downtownie teens and playable and unplayable YAs are all dressed appropriately.

Also, some questions:
1.  Does "Infested" mean "pregnant"?
2.  Why are werewolves banned by default?
3.  What business type should I use for art galleries full of sim-created paintings?  I have never had much luck with customers autonimously viewing easel paintings, and they ultimately spend all their time watching TV.  :P

Hello, I'm not sure if this topic will be touched again even after this post but after downloading the mod I am experiencing issues with business lots. When I tested it on a premade family like the Ramirez in Bluewater Village it worked dandy.. but I think after going to the Tinker family and selecting that no downtownies, NPCS, or townies are allowed made the problem occur, but that's a hunch.

So after failing to get help on MTS, or tumblr I decided to come here for a try to see if I can be helped. While that's said I also tried deleting the mod out of frustration and the same error still came up which is:

An object error occurred in object "Controller - CLP - Community Lot - Populator" #364,
Error: Stack number out of range
The stack trace is saved in
"C:/Users/Kelly/Documents/EA Games/The Sims 2/Logs/ObjectError_N001_t424128.txt".

And I did try going to debug mode and resetting it but no luck. I wouldn't complain but the worse thing is now no sims will come to my business lot, so its practically useless to even work on the said lot. I also get an object error file in the logs part of the EA folders. so-- after posting this i'll try going in game and seeing if it does it, and if so I'll re-download the mod and reset it yet again to see..