Hello everyone,

Following @tizerist's suggestion that bartenders should actually tend bars and not try to show off how beautifully they can make bottles fly, I played around with the JAZZ data for professional bartending.

What I did:
With Smooth Jazz script editor, I changed what animations are looped when making drinks, so that only the lower skilled one without any stunts, will be played. I also changed the chance of playing the fail animation to be the same as the expert skill level, whatever may be the bartender's actual skill level. And finally, I replaced the blowtorch animation at the end of making flaming drinks with the one for regular drinks ; the bartender just puts the drink on the bar and it magically lights up.

What the issue is:
After much trials and errors on my part, everything seemed to work, but when tizerist tested this, he encountered a glitchy animation when sims try to get regular drinks autonomously: bottle at the wrong angle and flat hand for the bartender, resulting in the bottle actually not being held.

The thing is, I can't seem to replicate the issue in my own game:



So that's one of the reason I'm timidly posting in this section and see if any of you could help test this and see if there is a common denominator causing the animation to not play correctly?

Attached to the post:
There's a version for Late Night and Island Paradise, because with the added Poolbars, the Jazz script got a slight makeover.
And a version for Late Night without Island Paradise.

As complementary information, I'm on patch 1.67.

Now for the favours asked:
Could any of you see if it's even working at all for them?
Do you also come across the glitchy animation?

And possibly, maybe, do you have any pointers to help me figure out what should be done to prevent this? I'm a bit stumped, I admit, as I have only superficial knowledge of the actual mechanics of the game or scripts and everything else is pure guess work and a lot of breaking things that I then try to fix.

Bonus question:
While I'm here, I'm also wondering, how the effects are linked to the animations? If the link can be "severed"?
The thing is, with the low skill animation playing, when the bartender is stirring the drink in the shaker cup, the liquid sloshes everywhere.



I suppose that's an effect attached to the animation. Would it be possible to get rid of this for a tidier look?

Thank you!

Is it okay to reply to myself?

Well, good thing is I found when the glitchy animation happens:
If a sim sitting at the bar or a counter is ordering food, the plate will stay on the bar in front of them once they're finished. While still sitting, if they order a drink next, the bartender will want to take the plate away. And here is the problem, the hand then gets stuck as if the plate was still there once it suddenly disappears! Hence, the glitchy animation.

Now, I couldn't remember how these transitions were played before, but when I took out the mod, the glitch was still happening.

I don't know if it's something that could be corrected in the Jazz script actually, I'd have to take a closer look...
I thought another work around could be playing with the attractiveness of stools when ordering food, maybe in one of the game's XMLs if there is such a thing?

I'll still try to see if I can find some information about animations and effects such as the one I described above.

This is a wild guess, and you probably thought of this yourself already, but that sloshing drink effect could be a SWB, which might rely on a texture (or several). If that's the case, replacing the texture with a blank image might render the effect invisible.

In at least some interactions, vfx are called by the C# code, not by the Jazz script.

You know what, I actually have a way of making things harder for myself, because I actually hadn't thought of that, haha.
But now that you shined a light on my obliviousness, I found the right texture and got rid of the sloshing shaker!

Thanks a lot for your suggestion, Butterbot!

Wow, excellent. I was going to suggest the 'no effects maker tool' to do this, but in my excitement, forgot about it.
Well done for another nice improvement!