Testers Wanted: Townie Resurrect Dialog (Updated 6/23/2007)

[syberspunk]

Townie Resurrect Dialog v2.00 for TS2SEAS v1.0p3
Made by: syberspunk

Ever hated the fact that, when you resurrect a townie (or any other non-playable), the sim automatically joins your family and becomes playable. This hack gives you a dialog with the option to make the sim back into a townie.

There are two versions of this hack:

The regular version should detect what type of sim they were. If the sim was a service sim (npc), townie, downtownie, or orphan (from the adoption pool), then you will get the option to return them back to that specific "pool" of townies. If the sim was a pet, the options would be strays, orphans, or "display" pets (whatever that is?).

The "with choice" version will give you a choice to make the sim a townie or downtownie. You can make a sim an orphan (placed into the adoption pool) if they are a teen or child. If the sim is a YA, you can only make them a townie (since YA downtownies will never properly show up at Uni). The same options for pets show up as above.

:new: 6/23/2007

Note: Previously, you were unable to resurrect Young Adults if you were not on a College Lot.  So, even if your sims did know other dead sims, who were Young Adults, you would falsely get the message that you don't know any dead sims.  This is somewhat buggy, as the game really should inform you that you don't know any dead sims that you are allowed to resurrect, since normally, the game adds the resurrected sim to the current family household, and consequently makes them playable.  Thus, if you are playing on a non College Lot, the game prevents you from resurrecting Young Adults and vice versa, if you are on a College Lot, the game prevents you from resurrecting non Young Adults. 

Since this hack allows you to resurrect sims and make them townies (and downtownies, npcs, etc.) again, I decided to enable the ability to resurrect any type of sim on any lot, with the caveat that Young Adults on non College Lots will automatically be turned into dormies, and conversely, non Young Adults on College Lots will automatically be turned into townies.  Please note that this will always happen if the sim and location matches either of these scenarios, regardless of whether the sim was playble or not (in other words, formerly playable sims resurrected in this manner will automatically be made a dormie, if YA, or townie, if other age).


ETA: This part above doesn't work.  See post below for explanation.

Additionally, I included option for service sim in "with choice" version, with the caveat that, only sims who had been service sims will be presented with the option to be returned to that service.  All other sims should never have that choice, since they wouldn't have the special npc code, and any attempt to turn those sims into service sims would most likely "break" them (in other words, they wouldn't function properly as npcs, because they don't have any npc code to run).

Finally, I renamed the hack to townieresurrectdialog because apparently I am an r*tard and do not know how to spell. So please note, you will actually have to delete the previous version, because the new one will not overwrite it.

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

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

:!!: Note: You can use subfolders, however, be aware of 'benign' conflicts that depend on the load order of hacks.


Compatibility:

Obviously this requires University.

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.

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 aging, moving in sims, or inheritance
4) archived (.rar or .zip) of log produced by error

HOW TO PRODUCE AN ERROR LOG:
1) Open the cheat menu - Ctrl + Shift + C
2) Enable the debug mode - Type: boolprop testingcheatsenabled true
3) Hit Enter
4) Play as normal until an error occurs. If an error dialog box pops up, note the location of the error log and choose Reset. If the error pops up repeatedly, choose Delete and exit WITHOUT SAVING!
5) Post your error log here, preferably as a .zip or .rar archive.

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.

Finally, my Thank Yous go to:

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.

Version History:
v1.01 - Fixed minor bug for players who don't have Pets yet
v2.00 - Added code to handle Young Adults on non College Lots and vice versa (other ages on College Lots).
   Included option for service sim in "with choice" version.
   Also renamed the hack so that it is actually spelled correctly now.

Just showing an example where I have two resurrectable sims:


Here is the dialog allowing you to choose whether you want to make a sim a townie or not:


Here, I have chosen yes, and the sim was successfully resurrected and placed back into the townie pool:


Here is the dialog again, this time for the 2nd sim:


Here, I have chosen no, and the sim was successfully resurrected as normal and becomes part of the playable household:


Here is just an example of the "with choice" version. Depending on the type of sim and age, you may get several options:

[syberspunk]

This hack is somewhat experimental. I've tested it with Kaylynn Langerak (or whatever her name was), by killing her off via buyable fire and having Don Lothario resurrect her. I put her back in the service sim pool and I was still able to hire her as a maid.

My other tests were with dead YAs that had died thanks to nouniprotect, since that's pretty much the only dead sims I had in my game thus far. I haven't tested pets and child/teen orphans, so I'm pretty much going by the code. Please leave feedback if you run into any problems with this.

Ste

[Emma]

Wow! Definitely trying this one out Nice one Ste. I might stop fencing off my cowplants now.

[jrd]

"Display" pets (two families) are the Pets in Pet stores. I don't know why there's two, one is used by the normal Pet stores, the other appears to never be called (no Pets are in this famiily by default).

I added a Pet to this family and removed all the ones from the other display Pets family, and a new Pet was spawned in the store in the first DP family. Oddity.

[syberspunk]

Updated

v1.01 - Fixed minor bug for players who don't have Pets yet

You only really need to redownload if you don't have Pets, otherwise you should be okay.

Ste

[Magicmoon]

Yesterday was the first time since installing this mod that I have had death/near death. I have not yet tested this scenario in a clean game to be positive that this is causing the problem. I'm not even sure how to test it in a totally clean game because I would just have to wait and hope that a similar scenario occurred. I could put Lot debugger in and smite a Sim over and over, but so far smitten visitors don't die but go home instead.

I'm playing a Uni hood with 2 dorms, one male, one female. No townies/dormies.

I'm playing the male dorm in the winter. Some of the females come over. A couple woohoo in the outdoors hot tub, but when they emerge there is a fight going on which they choose to watch and soon the visiting female drops dead. I assume she froze to death as I had to keep canceling freeze on her boyfriend just so he could beg for her life.  He pleads and is successful. No dialog boxes appear that are related to this mod, but I didn't expect them to since she was saved, not resurrected.

But then I notice her in the lineup, like she is part of the family. I spawned InSim's selector and chose "group unselectable>visitors" and she disappeared from the lineup. So I guess she was just selectable rather than moved in? When I went to the female dorm, she was there.

Two days later, the same female is visiting again and gets struck by lightning, which again kills her. Same guy pleads again and wins. Again she is in the family line-up and de-selecting visitors fixes the problem. But before I made her unselectable, I tried to fix her appearance in the mirror so she wouldn't stay scorched. But I couldn't give her any commands to do things unless it was something a visitor could normally do. For example; only 'get a snack' was available on the fridge. She could watch fish, but not feed them, and could 'practice speech' in the mirror, but not 'change appearance'. Which is odd if you think about it because if I use InSim to make a Sim selectable, they can do anything a householder can do. So I guess the game was still seeing her as a visitor. Oddly enough, she looked normal, rather than scorched when I played the female dorm again.

So one of two things. Either the game works this way and I never noticed it before because all successful saves have already been family members, or one of my mods have caused this. I wonder what would have happened if I had saved the game while she was still in the family line-up?

I am using the original version of this mod. Any ideas?

[syberspunk]

Two days later, the same female is visiting again and gets struck by lightning, which again kills her. Same guy pleads again and wins. Again she is in the family line-up and de-selecting visitors fixes the problem. But before I made her unselectable, I tried to fix her appearance in the mirror so she wouldn't stay scorched. But I couldn't give her any commands to do things unless it was something a visitor could normally do. For example; only 'get a snack' was available on the fridge. She could watch fish, but not feed them, and could 'practice speech' in the mirror, but not 'change appearance'. Which is odd if you think about it because if I use InSim to make a Sim selectable, they can do anything a householder can do. So I guess the game was still seeing her as a visitor. Oddly enough, she looked normal, rather than scorched when I played the female dorm again.

Ok, you just confirmed something that I had suspected about InSim.  First, to address the issue at hand, namely:

So one of two things. Either the game works this way and I never noticed it before because all successful saves have already been family members, or one of my mods have caused this. I wonder what would have happened if I had saved the game while she was still in the family line-up?

I am using the original version of this mod. Any ideas?

Yes, I do.  In my experience, I also noticed this.  When visitors on your lot are saved from death, they end up sticking around in the UI as selectable.  However, their status remains as a visitor.  So, even though you can click on them, the only interactions available to them are the ones that are enabled for visitors.

I think I mentioned this a looooooooonnng time ago, probably in the Podium or in RL.  I can't remember.  I don't think it generated much discussion, and it seemed fairly harmless enough.  As you mentioned above, the visiting sim is fine the next time you load your game or go to a different lot and see them again.  Since they are a visitor, I imagine they get reset later on.  If they are a playable sim, you will most likely find them, relatively in the same state that you had last saved them on their own lot.

I think that the saved from death interaction had initially been created with the singular thought or at least had only been tested with the thought (duh Maxis EA) that the dying sim would presumably be from the same household.  Almost as if they hadn't considered the possibility that a visiting sim could die while visiting and that you would actually want to save them.  I think that, for some reason, the game has to make the sim selectable so it can run through the being brought back to life interaction.  It's been a long time since I looked at this, so I'm not 100% sure about it, nor do I understand why they did it that way.

Anyhew, it seems to be a minor bug and I actually have a fix for it in my personal stash.  Maybe I'll dig through my hacks and post it up for other people to test it out.  Basically, it checks if the sim that died was a visitor, and if so, it should make them unselectable again.  If it was a member of the household, they should still be selectable.  I think this should also work for dormies.  Even though dormies are kinda part of the current household, they are still flagged as non-playable "visitors" and as a result, they should be made unselectable too.

As for what might happen if you had saved?  I suspect that the sim would still show up in the UI skew selector thingie.  However, they would still be considered a visitor.  They shouldn't be part of the household.

Going back to the puppy killer, I was toying around with it, and one time, I made a teen sim selectable because I had wanted to test something out.  Apparently, whatever InSim does to make a sim selectable, it causes the game to treat them as if they are part of the household.  I did this in a dorm, and as a result, the teen ended up running away.  So, nowadays, if I want to make a teen selectable, I only do it through the debug menu.

I think I reported this as a potential problem, but I haven't checked back to see if it's been fixed. *shrugs*


So... to summarize:

Yes, I believe this is how the game "works" and I actually have a "fix" for it. 

Ste

[syberspunk]

Update 6/23/2007

v2.00 - Added code to handle Young Adults on non College Lots and vice versa (other ages on College Lots).
   Included option for service sim in "with choice" version.
   Also renamed the hack so that it is actually spelled correctly now.


Please read the first post (or README) for details about the new features.

I have kept the older versions (as v1.01) as the new features of the 2.00 version are somewhat experimental.  At the moment, they are untested, and I am solely relying on the "logic" of the code, assuming that it should work as described.  So please bear that in mind, and report any problems, preferably with error logs if possible.


ETA:

Back to the drawing board.   I finally had time to test this in game, and it looks like they abstracted the bhav used to populate the array of dead sims to choose from into Lua.  As such, the changes I made actually don't do anything.  Until I can figure out how to get this working, I am removing v2.00 since it is pretty much pointless.  Sorry to get yer hopes up.  I blame stupid Maxis EA for leaving in old and unlinked code.  It's often hard to tell from the spaghetti mess what was unlinked and no longer being used (at least until I actually sorted the code.


ETA2:

There's no "harm" in keeping the newer version in.  Basically it will just be slightly larger than the older version... however, since I'm lazy... I don't feel like backporting the other change for the with choice version.  So... if you actually want to keep that option (to change a sim back to a service sim), you should keep the new version.

Ste

[Emma]

Ste, I'm using a regular version of this hack and all worked fine up to FT, but after a few cowplant mishaps I'm getting all the ressurected townies being added to households.

[update] Since installing Ikea sp, it now works again. WTF?