Testers Wanted: Dance Together - Teens and Older (Updated 3/15/2008)

[syberspunk]

Dance Together - Teen and Older v1.03 for TS2FT v1.0p1
Made by: syberspunk

Note: I am basically posting this here as well since some people may not want to bother heading over to MTS2. 

As requested over at MATY this hack re-enables the "Dance Together" interaction between teens and older. Apparently this interaction was disabled in Nightlife, and is no longer available between teens and older sims. Whether this was done by accident or as designed is unknown. :shrug: This hack basically re-enables the interaction so teens can once again dance with their older sibs, parents, grand parents, and adult friends.


INSTALLATION:
These MUST be in your Downloads folder, typically found under:

C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\My Documents\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\Downloads


Compatibility:
:!!: Nightlife or later. This will NOT work in the base game or Uni (it probably isn't needed).

I have tested this in my game and it appears to work fine.

This hack is compatible with most, if not all mods by MATY crew (Pescado, TJ, and CBoy), dizzy, and probably more. Again, up to you to help me determine any possible conflicts.

:busted: This hack is probably not necessary if you have the InTeenimater.

However, I have discovered that it is compatible with JenFlower's Teen Woohoo (non-pregnancy). After testing with Teen Woohoo alone, I found that my Teen sims still could not dance with their parents. The two hacks seem to work together fine in my game.

:!!: REMINDER and fine print (to cover my ass ) :
Remember to ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR DATA BEFORE INSTALLING NEW HACKS. By using this hack, you agree to absolve me of any responsibility or liability for any potential loss of or damage to your data. You have been warned.

:!!: HOW TO REPORT: Conflicts, problems, or errors
I would appreciate any constructive criticism and feedback that is actually helpful. With that in mind, it would be helpful, when reporting any conflicts or issues, that you include the following:

1) thorough but reasonably brief description of what you were doing
2) clear, comprehendible explanation of your problem
3) list of hacks that may be related to teen interactions or dancing
4) archived (.rar or .zip) of log produced by error

Posts which do not include a clear description of what your problem is will be pretty much ignored. (i.e. posts such as "This does not work! I am taking it out! You suck! Nice try! etc.") I can't and won't help you if you don't explain what's wrong.

Please be nice when trying to explain your problem and I might be nice and help you.

:grouphug: Finally, my Thank Yous go to:

Kyna for the request over at MATY. J.M. Pescado, twojeffs, dizzy2, and jase439 for being excellent tutors and providing excellent models in their mods. As always, thanks to those creators who've put out some excellent modding tutorials, Quaxi and co for SimPE, and dizzy2 for disaSim2, and the finally letters T and S, and the number 2, all of whom, without which this mod would not be possible.

If I left anyone out, I apologize in advance. You know who you are and you deserve my thanks.

Version History:
v1.01 - Fixed bug involving "Flirt - Feed Bite" table romantic interaction
v1.02 - Minor tweak to improve compatibility for future EPs
v1.03 - updated for Free Time

[Ness]

thanks syberspunk!

limited testing so far has seen my teen sims dance with adults and elders...  I'm a happy ness once more!

[Kyna]

Thanks for this Syberspunk. 

I can stop sending my teens on outings together all the time just to get the dancing scholarship.  I enjoy watching my sims on outings (and it's always fun to watch my other sims who are not part of the outing, but happen to be present on the lot) but sometimes outings break up the rhythm of the lot I'm playing.  I was starting to resent having to do outings for each generation of teens in my 'hoods.  Not to mention the continual maintenance of the Teens group - keeping track of who has just aged into or out of the group, working out which of my current teens knows a newly transitioned teen, and remembering when I play their lot to add the new member to the group.

It was much simpler when a parent or grandparent or other older household member could teach them dancing.

I'll be playtesting this mod once I'm done reading the forum.

EDIT:  I just took a look at your pics.  Those blue bars over their heads - are they showing the progress of the dancing skill?  Or is that to do with your other dancing related mod?

[Brynne]

thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou

[reggikko]

* reggikko smooches Ste

Thanks, darlin'!

[Sleepycat]

Thank you!!

[syberspunk]

Thanks for this Syberspunk. 

I can stop sending my teens on outings together all the time just to get the dancing scholarship.  I enjoy watching my sims on outings (and it's always fun to watch my other sims who are not part of the outing, but happen to be present on the lot) but sometimes outings break up the rhythm of the lot I'm playing.  I was starting to resent having to do outings for each generation of teens in my 'hoods.  Not to mention the continual maintenance of the Teens group - keeping track of who has just aged into or out of the group, working out which of my current teens knows a newly transitioned teen, and remembering when I play their lot to add the new member to the group.

NP. Plus, this also ultimately helped lead to an update in the PJSE plugin. So thanks for that!

And... I wasn't aware that dance skill only increases when you "Dance Together" or have I misinterpreted what you are saying? From what I saw "in game" and glancing at the code, I thought dance skill should increase whether you are dancing solo or together. *shrugs*

EDIT:  I just took a look at your pics.  Those blue bars over their heads - are they showing the progress of the dancing skill?  Or is that to do with your other dancing related mod?

And yeah, those blue bars are because of my other hack. They are due to body skill. I did not want to try and implement a bar for dancing skill, especially as Pescado pointed out, you can't have two skill bars going at once. So yeah, you won't really be able to tell how much dancing skills your sims have unless you use SimPE. I felt it wasn't really necessary, since there are other visual clues, such as the change in their dance styles.

* syberspunk smooches reggikko back. Your welcome 'hun.

PS. You ladies all know that you don't need this if you have any form of Teen Woohoo. I was under the impression that some of you either used JenFlower's mod or the InTeen. If that is the case, then this shouldn't be an issue.

[Emma]

Oh thanks! I miss the dancing between my adults and teens

[Kyna]

And... I wasn't aware that dance skill only increases when you "Dance Together" or have I misinterpreted what you are saying? From what I saw "in game" and glancing at the code, I thought dance skill should increase whether you are dancing solo or together. *shrugs*

I always assumed that 'dance together' was the only way to learn dancing skill.  Looking at the Prima guide for the base game it says 'Dancing skill is earned invisibly whenever a sim dances with another sim (solo dancing doesn't count)'.  Of course, we all know how accurate the Prima guides are

[SciBirg]

Thank you again!

I really missed my sim parents being able to teach their spawn how to dance.
My mom taught me! 

[syberspunk]

I always assumed that 'dance together' was the only way to learn dancing skill.  Looking at the Prima guide for the base game it says 'Dancing skill is earned invisibly whenever a sim dances with another sim (solo dancing doesn't count)'.  Of course, we all know how accurate the Prima guides are

Hehe, true. I haven't bought a strategy guide in a long time, and I've glanced at the ones for The Sims 2 in the store. Well, one time I went with my sister to B&N and we kinda just sat there for a couple of hours and read through them. I only wanted to see if it would actually be worth purchasing, but meh, it wasn't. There wasn't a lot of new or surprising information in them. It contained a lot of stats minutiae that I didn't really care about (like the motive adjusting properties of objects and relationship adjusting results from socials). Stuff that if I really wanted to know, I could probably dig through the code with SimPE. But I don't really care about it that much.

Incidentally, I did go back to check the code and I found this:

# Title = Dance Solo - Animate - Overlay
#
# Format = 8009, Params = 1, Locals = 1
# Tree type = 0, Header flag = 6, Tree version = FFFF8012 (-32750), Cache flags = 0

     0: .Dance - Add Skill(Me); true: 1, false: error

So... it appears that Dancing Solo should also increase dancing skill. This is called during the animation for dancing solo and dancing together. I presume that all kinds of dancing will up dance skill, at least including Goofy dancing and the Smustle.

Ste

[VJay]

In my game, your mod conflicts with the flirt interaction "Feed a bite". My sims jump off the chair when I tell them to feed a bite. lol  When I remove your hack from the downloads folder, the interaction works again so I suppose it's because of it. oh it's not really important but I thought I'd let you know anyway.

[Lythdan]

In my game, your mod conflicts with the flirt interaction "Feed a bite". My sims jump off the chair when I tell them to feed a bite. lol  When I remove your hack from the downloads folder, the interaction works again so I suppose it's because of it. oh it's not really important but I thought I'd let you know anyway.

I'd just like to add that this is happening in my game too. I took it out and it stopped happening. Since I barely ever have sims that eat at the same time, it's not much of a bother, but still...

[syberspunk]

Edit: Okay, I actually took a real quick look myself, and both of you are correct. There is a bug with the mod. I have corrected it and I will post an update shortly. For some reason, the site seems very slow for me right now...

In either case, I will post an update both here AND MTS2. Unfortunately, the best way for me to mod this, with the least potential for conflict, is to add a new semi-global BHAV.  I had thought I had picked a high enough # but apparently I chose one that was already being used, i.e. the "Feed Bite" interaction. Anyways, it should be fixed now. However, because of this situation, it Will most likely conflict with future EPs and may need to be constantly updated. I wish there was an easier way to do this, but regrettably I cannot think of one that is better.

Ste

[Ancient Sim]

Is this still needed in OFB?  Now that the kids can dance with adults, surely teenagers can as well?

[syberspunk]

Edit: Update posted - Please test it and let me know if there are any problems. I am still in the process of updating things, and haven't quite yet had a chance to actually run/test things "in game" yet.

Tentatively, it would appear that the code has not changed and it looks like it would still be required. I am not quite sure how the interaction with children works. Perhaps it is a completely different/new social but displays the same option "Dance Together" and uses different settings?

Alright... I went and dug a little further, and the Dance on Toes interaction is indeed a new social altogether. This checks if one of the sims is a child and the other must be a teen or older. I do not think this option allows for teens to dance on the toes of adults. I wonder what would happen or how it might look if this were enabled that way (whether there are even animations for it or if it would just error out).

I had been planning to rewrite this slightly anyways, so I figure I might as well take care of that now. I will post an update shortly. The update isn't necessarily needed right now, but the method I used was to create another semi-global instance of a BHAV. This is fine for now since OFB has not used that instance, but future EPs might eventually take over that instance, thus resulting in a need for an update. So, to anticipate this, I will re-write it so it is all contained within one BHAV. This should prevent any future potential conflicts. The only reason I did it that way initially was just to bang it out quickly and get something working.

Ste

[Motoki]

Well I can tell you that I tried having a teen dance with an adult without this hack in OFB last night and it didn't work. Which seemed pretty stupid to me given how much of a stink they made about kids now being able to dance with adults, but knowing Maxis, they probably don't even realize they broke teens dancing with adults in NL. Anyway, this fix is going right in my game. Thanks!