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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 9th Jan 2021 at 3:15 PM Last edited by nnie : 9th Jan 2021 at 3:19 PM. Reason: spelling error
Default Testers Wanted - Be Mean to Your Loved Ones is being a little too mean
My girlfriend and I made a mod that allowed players to direct their sims to irritate or even fight eachother no matter their relationship. You can find it here: https://modthesims.info/d/651160/be...loved-ones.html

We edited the guardian behavior for the irritate and fight interactions, removing the requirement for specific STR and LTRs. We were hoping that it wouldn't change the autonomy of the characters, or at least leave it so that they'd only irritate or fight one another if otherwise in a bad mood/low aspiration. I wasn't able to test it at length myself due to computer trouble, and wasn't aware of this forum until now.

Now I've gotten some feedback where it seems people are seeing more autonomous fighting.

So I'm looking for some testers to help me out! All you have to do is play with the mod, and report back if you see any changed behavior, and let me know if the sims were in a bad mood/low aspiration, and what major mods you're using.

Other than that, if any modders or wise simmers out there have any other helpful insight, that'd be great.
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Test Subject
#2 Old 15th Jan 2021 at 12:17 AM
This is just a guess - I don't know much about modding sims 2 yet! But you haven't had any replies yet so I thought I'd take a stab... Please correct me if I'm wrong on any points! It'll help me learn a lot.

I *think* autonomy works like this:
  • Objects advertise that they'll fulfill some motive to your sim - They can totally lie about it and claim they're the best thing to do even if they're not.
  • The objects only advertise in a distance range - this is the attenuation value in the pie menu functions: higher = closer your sim must be to consider using object
  • Sims, when evaluating what they want to do, will pick an object on the lot that they think will fulfill their motives. They have a list of things they can do, then pick randomly from them
  • The Autonomy value in the pie menu functions control whether it can be performed autonomously. 0x32 - can perform autonomously, 0x64 - no autonomy
  • When calling the guardian BHAV, param 0 indicates whether the interaction was selected autonomously or not (1=autonomous, 0=directed)

So I haven't managed to find the interactions in the base game yet to compare them with your mod - (is there a handy list of what has what in the package files anywhere, perchance?) - but my guess is:
  • The mean interactions probably have high motive advertising/low attenuation because it's fun to have your sim constantly slapping their enemies if they're in the same room
  • They also are, obviously, enabled for autonomous behaviour and you wouldn't want to change that - so since your guardian functions remove the checks for relationship, they should do it with the same autonomous frequency as they would their foes? Did you do anything to prevent this? I think people would report that it seems to be happening a lot because it's a lot more common to be surrounded by loved ones than hated ones. The amount you'd expect to see it would vary drastically depending on how many objects are on the lot.

So I think you have a few options for fixing the autonomy:
  • Check param 0 in the test functions, run different logic if it was selected autonomously:
    • If autonomous, say, 80% of the time do the relationship checks, otherwise skip them so your sims can be mean to family randomly - you could configure that chance per interaction so sims are more likely to insult grandma than slap her (Prim 0x08 is random number generation)
    • If non-autonomous, pass the check
  • You could clone the interactions so you have a "loved ones" version and the original ("hated ones") version is left alone. I think this would help with mod compatibility? I'm not sure what the "done" way is, but it seems better to me to not override BHAVs where possible.
    • It's essentially the same amount of work: if you do this, I think you'd also have to deny the guardian test from passing in your version if the relationship is low & it was selected autonomously (where the original behavior would otherwise be able to kick in) or else you'd be doubling the chance for it to happen. But then you could edit the motives/attenuation for the pie menu functions in order to control advertising instead of having to tune by random number

To any experienced modders out there: how did I do? Please give me a report card
Test Subject
#3 Old 21st Feb 2021 at 2:42 AM
This is a cool mod, I played with it and all my sims were attacking each other automatically. I played the sims for 12 years almost, but I've never made mods. I would suggest to set it where the relationship doesn't fade away from loved ones, and that it wouldn't be as autonomous as often. Its a good concept tho!
Test Subject
#4 Old 21st Feb 2021 at 5:18 AM
I recently installed this mod and my sims were at their business just randomly shoving the customers autonomously lol. I would suggest that it's never autonomous and just a choice we have to manually make.
Test Subject
#5 Old 25th Feb 2021 at 7:06 PM
I had similar issues when I installed it! All kinds of random fights breaking out everywhere! Admittedly kind of funny with the sheer chaos of it, but also led to lots of random Sims being furious at each other. It seemed to mainly happen with Sims who had low relationship scores, still considered acquaintances by the game. I’m unfortunately not tech savvy enough to guess why it does that, but I do know that generally, not knowing someone very well isn't the same as having overwhelming urges to beat them up. I agree with maybe making it exclusively non-autonomous if possible!

That said, I can put it back in and look for any other factors that might be affecting it. I do appreciate that it’s being looked into, because I like the concept of the mod a lot!
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