ON HIATUS I play The Sims 2 in my integrated version of Pleasantview, with all of the original playables, townies, service sims and more. I also make the occasional speed build, machinima, tutorial and recommendation video. Favorite mods: anibats.tumblr.com/mods
Hi guys, I've been cooking up a lotta stuff in my modding kitchen!
(I'll be honest, it's chaos over here lol. I got my fingers in too many mod pies!!)
This mod feeds into a larger project of mine, coming soonβ’οΈ, but here is an overhaul of Inge Jones's wonderful 4-key gender choice door mod.
So, what have I done? Read on and find out...
Firstly, I have redone the pie menus so all locking options are now under "lock.../".
Secondly, I've added locking functionality to arches... Because @kashmiresims asked me to and I said, "sure I should be able to do that!"
Thirdly, I've added key locking to community lots, and the locking information is now stored on a hidden lot token that persists between loads. This means that you can set up a community lot to have keys assigned to doors and those changes won't be "forgotten" when you load in and out of the community lot. Yey!
And fourthly, I have gotten rid of the limit of 4 keys. You may now give out unlimited keys to as many sims as you like.
Gender locking remains as it was; you may now lock any door for either females only or males only if desired.
Key locking has been very much re-done. To start with, you select Lock.../ Allow Me Only, or Lock.../ Allow Only
This will lock the door and give the first key to whichever sim you select.
The Menus are much cleaner than Inge's original mod with all the text strings about giving key 1 to - sim on lot etc etc. Cos honestly, those menus were a bit of a pain in the butt to navigate in my opinion!
The Lock / Allow Only / Any Sim menu is sorted into households, similar to other mods you may be familiar with such as SimBlender's teleport feature, etc.
Once the door is locked, you then get a "keys" menu -
Within this menu you may reset the door, removing any and all assigned keys. You can remove keys to any sim assigned a key, and give out extra keys to any sim you like, again with the options of sims on the lot, or the entire neighbourhood of sims.
If anything goes wonky with the door, just hit reset and start again.
Once the door has a keyholder lock, if you then unlock the door, you can then re-lock the door for keyholders only.
I think this mod is fairly solid and working well, but it probably needs more testing in a variety of different games so please do let me know of anything broken or not working as intended.
Aaaaand that's it. That's the mod. As I mentioned, this mod will be required for the next mod I have coming out (which is a cool one imo) so I recommend grabbing it lol.
Download here
In terms of conflicts, it will definitely conflict with Inge's original 4-key gender choice patch, so replace with mine.
It should work fine with Inge's colour keys system.
I don't know of any other conflicts yet so if you find them, let me know!
Veronaville Speed Build | The Moon-Kiss'd Lea β€ | The Sims 2
Perfect for Valentine's day: a mystical and romantic park to add some Summerdream fairy magic to my Veronaville. This was one of my must-haves to add early on in order to have a neutral and private place for the "impossible love" scenarios in town.
Veronaville Speed Build | Veronaville Market β‘ De Capulet | The Sims 2
The premade community lot Veronaville Market must be one of the most confounding builds ever produced by the Maxis team. In this video, I transform it into the Capp family restaurant: De Capulet
Let's Play The Sims 2 | Downtown S02E03 | The Creelman Toyonaga family
New Episode! The Creelman Toyonaga family had desperately outgrown their old townhouse after the sudden birth of little baby Eric. Their new house is far more spacious for this growing family; perhaps big enough for Ash to reach his dreams?
This video contains the complete makeover of the Veronaville sims - premades and playable townies alike. Plus a casting of some new actors; original townies added at the end.
Veronaville Speed Build | Three Thrifty Tudors | The Sims 2
These three thrifty tudors house the remaining families in Veronaville: the McCulloughs, McCarthys and Butlers respectively. This video completes the residential lots and finally allows me to start playing!!! I can't wait! π
Veronaville Speed Build | House of the Dean | The Sims 2
Jonathan Chun is on his second marriage after his first wife and son betrayed him. As the Dean of Veronaville University, and the current owner of the manor that goes with the title, he can't complain much; even if his new young wife has a wandering eye.
Veronaville Speed Build | Bianca Monty | The Sims 2
Next to the towering Univeristy building sits two homes; one for the reigning headmaster and one for his deputy. Bianca is living in the second with her son Sebastian and her niece Viola Monty.
Let's Play The Sims 2 | Pleasantview S03E04 | Bendett & Cox
New Episode! Marisa Bendett uses the city funds to establish a town square; a meeting place for the whole town and the perfect place to celebrate the changing seasons. β
Let's Play The Sims 2 | Downtown S02E02 | Landry & Dalton
New Episode! Season 2 of Downtown continues with setting up Londoste for Warren Landry, a fun outing to Lucky Shack Cards and Drink and some teenage shenanigans.
Let's Play The Sims 2 | Pleasantview S03E03 | King, Bear & Cormier
New Episode! Gordon King's crime group are still wreaking havoc all across Pleasantview. Nasim finds himself in the middle of it all as he's forced to make life-changing decisions.
After years of SimPE dabbling I finally became brave (and desperate) enough to learn how to read and edit Sims 2 BHAVs.
"Go Out (for Tea)" is a mod to help handle the Vanilla Sims 2 "quirk" wherein a sim will return home from a community lot at the same time they left. It is designed as an alternative to Community Lot Time, but you can absolutely use both together as there are no conflicts.
All information below this cut π And warning... there's a lot. Sorry. My "simple" mod turned out to be quite complicated but hey ho!
I made this mod because I wasn't happy with CLT's limitation wherein if one sim (or group of sims) is waiting to come home, no other sims can leave the lot. As I play a lot of Open For Business, this was becoming increasingly limiting.
Teenager: "I want to go out with my friends after school!!" - Too bad son, Mum's still trying to come home from work so you're stuck here mate!
It was also irritating me that CLT would occasionally just randomly fail to initiate, and there was nothing I could do about it.
My mod adds a custom menu to the sim when you click on them. You can tell them to "Go Out" for [x] amount of hours, and they will disappear from the lot and idle off world with needs frozen until it is time for them to come back.
In a household with multiple sims and/or pets, a pop-up window will also appear asking you if you'd like to send sims out as a group.
The options for hours are set to 1-12 by default, but in the TA_GoOut_Action file, there is a configurable BCON where if you want to, you can enable larger amounts of time to appear in the menu, for example up to 24 hours.
Thank you to @picknmixsims for this nice feature π
There is also a "Go Out.../ Indefinitely" option where the sim will be gone until you cancel their interaction. Other set amounts of time are not cancellable, so if you make a mistake with how long you send your sim out for, you will need to use the batbox or similar to "force error" on the sim to get them back.
This mod is based off the Maxis Jogging interaction, with many tweaks. The interaction is available for toddlers+, and toddlers+ are able to go off lot. Dogs and cats may too, but unfortunately I couldn't work out how to enable this for kittens and puppies. I will try to revisit this in the future if I learn something that might help!
When a sim leaves the lot, you will get a notification pop-up telling you what time to expect them home, which will remain on screen unless you close it. This is displayed in 24-hour format because the Sims 2 stores time in 24-hour format, and when I tried to tweak it to appear in 12-hour format, the game would get confused about when the sim should return, sometimes returning at 3am instead of 3pm.
When they return home, another notification will appear letting you know they are back. This one will self-close after a few seconds.
It is less automatic than CLT, and requires you to keep a rough track on how long your sim was gone for so that you can send them out for roughly the same amount of time.
However, they payoff is that it is much more flexible than CLT, as you can use your own discretion, and of course, send multiple sims or groups of sims out at once! If your sim was Downtown for 10 hours but really you feel like it would have been more like 2 hours IRL, that's fine, just send them out for 2 hours. Your call!
Groups & Dates:
When a sim is on a Date or Group Outing, the amount of hours you select for the sims to Go Out will be added back onto their event timer so it is voided once they return home. For example, 1 hour in game = 1 minute on their event timer, so if you go out for 3 hours, 3 minutes will be added to their event timer.
Young Adults:
When a sim is a Young Adult / University student, you are prompted to choose if you would like to freeze their college clock or not when they "Go Out".
This is because if a Young Adult visits a community lot in a University subhood, their college clock continues to progress (unless you have a mod). They may go to class from a community lot, take exams, etc. Therefore when they return home after say 5 hours, you would want to freeze their clock while they "Go Out" for 5 hours, instead of repeating that time again and potentially missing class.
However, if a Young Adult visits a community lot in a main neighbourhood or Downtown, their college clock automatically freezes. Therefore when they return home after say 5 hours and you send them to "go out", you would want their college clock to continue ticking down.
The code for freezing University time was borrowed from Inge Jones's University Break Object mod. I did have to tweak this code slightly, so I have re-uploaded my edit of this mod, and have re-meshed it from a bust to an alarm clock converted by @jacky93sims which a University sim may keep in their dorm room.
This is optional, you do not need the clock for my "Go Out" mod to work.
The University Break mod (if you download it) now affects sims individually, rather than all sims on the lot. A sim must claim a clock as theirs, and may take a break from University independently of everyone else in the dorm. If you'd like ALL sims in the dorm to take a Uni break, you'll need lots of clocks! - Or just send everyone to a lot in a Downtown or Main hood for Spring Break π
When a Young Adult is "gone out" (or on break) with their semester clock "paused", they should not get any notifications to go to class, or a push from the game to go to class. However, there is a KNOWN ISSUE from testing where some testers have reported still getting these pop-ups, so there seems to be a hidden mod conflict somewhere! If you have this issue, please run a HCDU+ on your mods folders and let me know if anything is reported, or if you can figure out which mod is conflicting, let me know and I'll see if I can sort it!
From testing, this feature appears to be fully compatible with Squinge's College Mega Pack to have YA's attend University in your main hood, bearing in mind that rule with Community Lots.
Pregnancies:
From my testing, pregnancy always freezes when a sim visits a community lot of any kind. Therefore, pregnancy will continue to tick down in time while a sim is "Gone Out".
However, if you play with Chris Hatch's "Visit Sims" mod which enables sims to visit other residential lots, a pregnant sim's pregnancy timer WILL continue to progress while they are visiting. When they return home and you send them to "Go Out", you may want to pause their Pregnancy. I have therefore made an alternative version of the mod which gives you a pop-up similar to the Young Adult's popup, asking if you'd like to pause the pregnancy or not.
Kids:
If children or younger are going to be left home alone, the Go Out mod will not allow your chosen sims to leave the lot unless a Nanny is present. If a child comes home from school and your adults are off-lot for too long, a social worker will come to collect them after a number of hours as in vanilla gameplay. If you would like this not to happen, I suggest playing with a no social worker mod.
I have also made a version that is compatible with the "Playable Nannies" mod by LazyDuchess, so my code will recognise when a custom Nanny is on the lot. Please only use this version if you have Playable Nannies in your game.
By request from @anibats I have also made a version of the mod which doesn't care at all about whether there is a Nanny or not, so if you'd like to abandon your younglings, you can use that version instead! π This one pairs nicely with the no social worker mod.
Aging:
Aging does not currently freeze when a sim is "Gone Out", so if they are gone at 6pm when age transition triggers, they will age up a day as normal. This could also be changed, or made optional. I have left it this way for now as I believe sims do not age up on Community Lots without a mod.
Bon Voyage:
Bon Voyage / Holidays / Vacation time is currently not addressed by my mod. If your sims visit a community lot while on Vacation, you would want to use the "setHour" cheat when they return to their hotel to have their travel time make sense. This is because Bon Voyage code is very different, and to "freeze" holiday time would be a difficult and potentially game-breaking task. I may revisit this in the future when I know more about modding.
Time Speed Mods:
My mod is compatible with Chris Hatch's Time Controller mod, and with Merola's Time Control Clock. Sims should "Go Out" and idle until their expected return time.
I did notice an issue with Merola's Time Control Clock while I was exploring compatibility. I looked into the code and found an error with the way Merola's clock slowed down time, so I have re-uploaded a fixed version of this mod with a new mesh converted from TS4 and 50 recolours (because why not!!)
The only other main time speed mod that I am aware of is the Lazy Duchess Relativity mod, which is reported by LD to be broken and is unsupported, so I have not checked compatibility with that mod.
Can I break it?
The mod has been tested fairly rigorously (thank you to @anibats, @ch4rmsing @doubledash7, @joplayingthesims, @katieraecreates) and should be fairly sturdy, but I'm sure things will come up that don't work as expected π Please let me know if you find bugs, and send an error log if possible, and let me know which version of the mod you're using.
If you use the "set hour" cheat while your sim is gone out, they will still return at the time the pop-up told you they'd be back. So if they're supposed to be back at 8pm and you set hour til after 8pm, they won't be back til 8pm the next day. That's on you, sorry ππ
I am a baby modder, I have been doing this for approximately 3.5 weeks, please be patient with me as I'm sure I've messed something up somewhere, despite trying to catch and fix all of my mistakes π
Conflicts:
Pescado's AptHack will conflict with the University Sims going out. Here is an edited version of AptHack to work with my mod: Download and then you can delete my file called "TA_ijUniversityBreakPatch"
None else are currently known other than something else potentially hiding and messing with young adults, as previously mentioned. Please do let me know if you find any conflicts in your games and I will try to resolve them.
DOWNLOADS:
Okay, this is more complicated than I would have liked. But bear with me:
Go Out For Tea - Main Mod Download. Use this version by default. Yes you need all files.
Go Out For Tea - Playable Nannies Compatible. Use this version if you have LD's Playable Nannies Mod. Yes you need all files.
If you want to be able to pause your sims' pregnancies, e.g. if you play with Visit Sims or another mod that lets you travel to residential lots, get the base mod and then download this ZIP and use one of the files inside to replace the TA_GoOut_Controller file, either the base version or the playable nannies compatible version.
If you don't want the mod to care at all about nannies, get the base mod and then download this ZIP and use one of the files inside to replace the TA_GoOut_Controller file.
Simlogical's University Break object tweaked and re-meshed as a clock - Download
Merola's Time Control Clock with simplified code, re-meshed as a cute clock and with 50 recolours because I have no chill - Download
Credits and Thank-You's:
@picknmixsims William my Sensei, you are a wonderful human being. Thank you for your "suggestion" to start again after a week of messy coding to make a better mod and for all of the help along the way ππ
@gummilutt my teacher and friend, thank you so much, you know this mod would never have happened without your help!
@morepopcorn my soul-twin, can't wait to do more modding with you π Thank you for sitting down with me for 3 hours and teaching me how to really read code line-by-line, helping troubleshooting, making so many changes and tweaks and all the things!
And as already mentioned, thank you to my wonderful Beta testers!
I can't get over the fact that @teaaddictyt learned enough about modding in just three weeks (!!!) in order to create such an incredible, multifaceted and damn useful mod βοΈ That is a huge achievement! Congratulations on the release, Beth π₯ I can't wait to start using this
