Testers Wanted: Ask About Relationship Status Interaction (Updated 12/3/2006)

[syberspunk]

Heh, yeah, it is kind of an adult question to begin with. But I figured, for people who let their kids play the game, they might not necessarily want the option to have the word 'sexual' in it. So for those who keep their game sanitized in that way, I thought 'Gender Preference' was a fairly neutral, non-sexual term to use. For those who don't care to much, they can easily just change it to something more 'realistic' or whatever they prefer.

And sure Emma, no problem. I'll send it shortly.

Ste

[Magicmoon]

I downloaded the new version and I can't find 'ask about gender preference' even on sims that my sims know well. I still find 'ask about relationship status' but it just reports their eligibility.

[Emma]

And sure Emma, no problem. I'll send it shortly.

Ste

I got it thanks!

[syberspunk]

Stupid me. I uploaded the wrong file. The correct version should be up now. Sorry about that. Emma, I'll resend it to you again, just in case I sent you the old .zip again.

Ste

[RainbowTigress]

Silly Syberspunk. 

[Emma]

Stupid me. I uploaded the wrong file. The correct version should be up now. Sorry about that. Emma, I'll resend it to you again, just in case I sent you the old .zip again.

Ste

Haha, thanks! 

[jsalemi]

Stupid me. I uploaded the wrong file.

Ste

* jsalemi points and laughs at Ste. 

[Avalikia]

I finally got around to testing this and it didn't go so well.  I had Ealdgyolo ask Tancred (another playable) about his relationship status, and he correctly responded that he was single and that he had a crush on Ealdgyolo, but then I got the error I've attached.  I'm not sure what happened since error logs are gibberish to me, but I thought I'd stick it up just in case something bad is going on.  Everything was fine after I hit reset.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[twojeffs]

Syber - Is this interaction set to run immediately? If so, that's the cause of the error. If the interaction ever runs the 'idle' function, it must go into the sims queue and run from there or you'll get those errors every time.

[syberspunk]

Thanks Avalikia for the bug report. The ironic thing is, I pust that idling code theoretically to avoid too many iteration errors...

Anyways, I updated it. So please redownload and test it out. I'm not quite sure yet if it definitely fixes the problem. Theoretically it should, but I change to code slightly to do it in another way, and it needs testing. In particular, I need to know if it will still report crushes And loves, or just one or the other.

Syber - Is this interaction set to run immediately? If so, that's the cause of the error.

By 'immediately' do you mean if I checked the 'immediately' flag on the pie menu functions resource? I just looked, and that flag isn't checked. I basically just cloned this interaction from ask about zodiac sign one. And then I just changed the bhavs and dialog text accordingly. I vaguely recall reading something, probably over at MTS2, I think Pescado mentioned how certain primitives can't be called at certain times or in certain types of bhavs.

Like, I don't think you can use dialogs or idles inside a Test bhav.

If the interaction ever runs the 'idle' function, it must go into the sims queue and run from there or you'll get those errors every time.

I'm not sure what you mean by going into the sims queue and running from there. Is it possible that the error is related to the fact that the reporting stuff is called from inside an 'Event' bhav, which is run as part of the Animate Sim line in the 'Interaction - Person B' bhav?

I know I could probably have just called the bhav directly, instead of part of the Animate Sim. But I was just following the ask about zodiac example. I was hoping to figure out a way to actually get speech bubbles with icons of the faces for their crushes and loves but it seemed too complicated at the time. Anyhew, is it because it is somehow called through this Animate Sim primitive that the code isn't being run on the sim's actualy queue, and thus it can't idle, causing the error?

For now, I disabled the Idle line and changed the Set to Next to search for NeighborID with rel var1 and temp1, setting temp1 flags to crush and love. Hoping this will narrow the search down and avoid TMI errors. I hope I did it correctly. Regardless, I'd appreciate anything that would enlighten me on the situation, because it isn't quite clear to me when certain primitives, like Idle, can and cannot be used.

Ste

[twojeffs]

Yea, I was asking about the 'immediately' flag in the pie menu options, that flag bypasses the sims queue and immediately executes the code. Ticking that is like all of the code running as a test bhav (assuming the test returns true if applicable) and will puke if certain dialogs (some will work) or idles or a few other things are called in the code anywhere. The animation event trees probably work the same way I'll bet - in fact I'm sure they would 'cause that makes sense. Calling an idle in the middle of an animation run is probably a VBT.

You're work around sounds sensible and should work fine.

[Avalikia]

Glad to be of help!  I'll test the new version when I can, but the neighborhood I play most of the time is fairly new and there's very few Sims that have a good enough relationship with anyone outside of their lot to actually answer the question instead of being offended.  I should say that the rejection side of things runs very, very smoothly since I've had that happen numerous times with no problems.

[syberspunk]

Heh. Glad to hear it. I'm curious tho, as far as the rejections go... have you noticed several different messages, or have they all kinda been consistently one message? I threw in some different ones depending on the level of their preference towards males and females. I suspect that the messages probably will eventually homogenize, unless your go to extremes to make sims vary in preference, most likely using hacks or SimPE to set prefs in a certain way. I can't wait to use the random gender pref setter in the TWOJEFFS mod to see what happens.

Ste

[Avalikia]

Actually, I don't think I've thought to use the gender preference question since I'm so in the habit of using the testingcheats for that.  I'll have to try that one sometime.  As for the relationship status rejection, I've only ever gotten the one that says "That's a rather personal question" or something like that.

[syberspunk]

For the relationship status, there is only one rejection response. For the gender preference there are a few responses that depend on the gender preference for males vs. females. I was just curious if that part worked. Right now, the majority of my hood is pretty much not set. I plan on changing this after I've set up all my playables how I want them to. Then I'll probably randomize the rest with TWOJEFFS.

Ste

[twojeffs]

*twojeffs chases syberspunk around the forum kicking and stomping.

[Magicmoon]

I think the acceptance of the gender question is set too high.

I had a sim whose relationship to the other sim was 75/54. But yet she still refused to answer the gender pref question. By the time their relationship is this high, I've usually figured out on my own what their pref is and the question becomes useless. Because by this stage in the relationship I've already asked "Do you like what you see?". If the answer is yes but they refuse ALL advances (and they aren't already in a relationship) then it is pretty clear they aren't interested in that sim's gender.

Other times they refuse to answer the question even if they just had sex with that sim.

In fact, they get turned down so often for the question that I've given up trying and just use the adjuster from ACR to find out.

[Avalikia]

I agree with magicmoon.  Also for the relationship status question.  In real life, pretty much everyone will answer the question if they don't have a negative impression of you because it tends to naturally come up in conversations.  However, if you wanted to loosen that up, you might want to limit who the single sims will tell all their loves and crushes to.  Friends of a gender they're not attracted to and friends of the gender they are attracted to but have extremely bad chemistry with are prime candidates.  I can't imagine why a single sim would tell their loves and crushes to someone they were in love with or highly attracted to.  "I'm single and I'm passionately in love with James, you, John, Robert, Michael, William, David, Richard, and Charles." would definately not go over very well.

I do think that asking for a gender preference is more of a touchy subject, but they should probably tell their friends at least, and perhaps sims they're really attracted to as well.  As always though, these are merely suggestions that you can take or leave at will.

[syberspunk]

I do agree actually. I also have plans to tweak the autonomy on the adults go steady hack. I've been playing a bit more lately, and as fun and funny and surprising as it can be, it does seem kind of odd and totally random for certain sims to just try and ask other random sims to go steady, even if they might have some strong attraction to them. In my case, one of my YAs suddenly autonomously queued up the interaction to ask one of his professors to go steady. Hehe. Silly sim. I cancelled that quickly, but I was just lucky that I happened to catch it.

As for this hack, since they are both meant more to be informative, functional hacks, rather than totally realistic, I will think of ways to tweak the acceptance requirements. For sure, I'll lower the acceptance requirements for the gender pref one. It can be a touchy subject, but you're right, if the requirement is unbalanced and too high, it almost seems pointless.

And I'll think about the reporting loves thing. It may not be realistic, the main reason that feature was included was so that players can find out who was in love with who, in case they already had plans for their sims but forgot who they were intending to pair them with. Althought it might be nice to make things a bit more realistic and prevent sims from blurting out to their lover the names of all their other lovers, it might be equally annoying if, the only way to find out who their lovers are is to find a sim who isn't in love with them to ask them. I'll have to think about it. For now, it is innocuous really because it's not like the asking sim actually knows that the askee sim is in love with other sims or potentially cheating on them. It would be different if this actually caused jealousy in game, but I don't think I want to actually involve that and makin it too complicated or messy. The interaction, at least when it comes to listing loves and crushes, seems to be more useful as a practical, informative interaction for the benefit of the user.

I'll try and poke around with this when I have time, maybe Sunday.

Edit: 10/15/2006

Ok. I've tweaked this ever oh so slightly. I lowered some of the requirements. In general, a sim should at least have 20 LTR with the asking sim and be in a good mood. Otherwise there are some personality and mood dependent factors (how nice or outgoing the askee sim is) along with some random randomness thrown in for good measure. Somewhere along there, if a sim isn't very nice or outgoing, your sim should at least be 60 STR. So you figure close to or already friends. But this definitely needs testing and some feedback. If all seems reasonable, the next major upgrade will retain these changes. If not, I don't mind going back and trying to tweak it some more.

Ste

[Talismana]

Anyhew, I think I'd be most interested to see if anyone who only has the basegame or Uni report back as to whether it works for them or not.

Ste

Syberspunk, I run the base game only.

Yes, I know, I'm a little late to this one, and all, parties what with the way pesky day to day living keeps barging in...Anyway, I didn't notice anyone else in the thread having mentioned running only the base game, So, I'll be certain to report back following the test run...this is assuming my game hasn't already FUBAR'd itself due to sheer neglect.

[syberspunk]

Fixed a bug that may occur when reporting crushes and loves if the target sim is single. Let me know if you run into any problems while you have debug mode on.

I also removed the older version, so the present one should contain the tweaked acceptance code as well.

Ste

ETA:

 Added Feature for v3.00

Sims can now ask others to scope out the room. The other sim has to have a decent relationship before the option appears (STR >= 20). They also have to be a visiting sim and not in the same family household. I wanted this feature so I can sort of play cupid with my playable sims for townies/dormies/downtownies. I highly recommend using twojeffs ACR mod to enable autonomous casual romantic interactions. Now you can use all your influence points to get other sims to flirt with each other and the ACR mod should help things further along.

I have also tweaked the acceptance code for the relationship status option. This part probably needs more testing. It now has a random chance of accepting, with a default chance of about 40-50% chance, and factors such as outgoing, nice, Mood, STR, and LTR potentially boosting those chances up to 100%. I also added a dialog message where, if the sim is in a poor mood, they will tell you, so you can try to ask again later when they are in a better mood.

[Talismana]

Syber, I apologize for never getting back to you about my base game only test of this hack, but I rarely am able to play recently and it entirely slipped my mind...unfortunately, much the results of the actual test have slipped my mind as well, however, I DO recall that, although some of the interactions worked, others were hit and miss, and assuming I recall correctly, the gender preferance question was almost always, possibly always, ignored.

If I'm able to play any time soon I'll try to remember to retest and respost the results in a more timely fashion.

[Talismana]

Has anyone attempted to use this mod with Seasons?

EDIT: Thanks for responding, Joe I'm rounding up mods in prep of installing all the EPs up to Seasons which is turning into a daunting task, so any help is greatly appreciated.

I hesitated resurrecting this thread, but failed to find any mention of compatabilty, or lack thereof in the Seasons compatabilty thread, or elsewhere, so...hopefully your response will prove helpful to others as well.

[jsalemi]

Yea, it's been fine for Seasons, BV and now FT.