Recently I realized that I hate the WA expansion. It comes with terrible clothes, ugly hair, the tombs aren't that fun, the building and buy items are 'meh' at best, etc., etc.

However, I do like the nectar-making, martial arts, and photography skills (not as much as the other two, since it's kind of broken).

And that leads to my question: Is it possible and/or easy to copy the actual gameplay systems data of a whole skill and related objects and save them as separate .package files, to be used like any other mod? I am not a modder (yet), but if someone thinks I can do this myself, I will try it. I've been looking for an excuse to try modding anyhow.

All the code for EP skills is built into the base game code. (At least for recent patches. I'm not sure at what patch level all the EP stuff was rolled into the base game.) It's a matter of figuring out what's restricting use of those skills to the WA expansion. Possibly they're tied to the objects that came with WA.

That's what I've always assumed. I mean, you wouldn't realistically be able to make nectar without that crazy machine, but I did think it was odd that they would apply the skills to the base game if they intended to make them EP-restricted in the first place.

Then again, who ever really knows what the guys at EA are thinking?

IMO they bundled the EP code into the base game for simplification. Previously, when you patched, both the base game and latest EP / SP code had to be patched and people had problems. Now only the base game gets patched and people have, well, fewer problems. The game just checks for the presence of whatever EP before executing its features. In my quick look at the skills I didn't see a version check, leading me to suppose something else is restricting the Nectar etc. skills.

Then perhaps my first step ought to be uninstalling the EP to get rid of all the damn tourists making my game lag! I will look into the objects issue afterward.

This is actually turning out to be way more difficult than expected. All the extra stuff with the Martial Arts skill alone makes it difficult to work with.

I honestly do not believe it is worth the effort. All of the coding for these things is deeply embedded into the expansion, including the animations. It's a ton of work, and you wouldn't really have the original skills, but custom skills that exactly like the original.

If tourists are bothering you, you can install NRaas Register to make sure they stop spawning.

Yeah, I can see that now. But the bizarre part of this is that the skills, as well as the related objects, are all included in the Gameplay.Systems and Gameplay.Objects .dlls, but aren't accessible without the EP for some reason.

I have yet to investigate that, but I do find it pretty weird.

All of the coding for all EPs and SPs are included in the most recent patch. This has been the case since Generations. The tuning for all EPs and SPs is also present in the most recent patch. This is a good thing because it streamlined the update process for both the developers and the users. Users only download one patch, regardless of their EP or SP level. This results in less confusion and patching errors. It also makes modding massively easier, and results in less confusion for modders and mod users.

Almost every single expansion specific object is tuned to require the expansion in question, and many are coded that way as well. For example, if you look at the ITUNs related to Nectar and the Nectar machine, you will notice that almost all of them (except one that is about the LN bar), contains this line: <CodeVersion name="EP1" considerCodeVersion="False" />. If you don't have the EP installed, you can't use the interaction. If you can't use the interaction, you can't gain the skill. Similarly, the rocking chairs from Supernatural were originally hardcoded and tuned to require the supernatural expansion. The store then released rocking chairs, but the rocking chairs were unusable by anyone without Supernatural, until a patch came along and removed the checks for the EP.

In addition to coding and tuning in the objects that provide the skills, there may also be checks at the game engine level. There are a number of things the game engine does that we can't really alter, so it wouldn't surprise me if the engine itself is checking for the presence of EPs and SPs as well. I don't know that for sure though.

Hm, it's possible. I had always wondered why my cloned cameras worked in IP even after I uninstalled WA, then I realized that there was an underwater camera with IP. So I'm not exactly the most observant type.