SemiPermaPlat updated for Seasons

[Hook]

SemiPermaPlat is a hack to make your PermaPlat Sims still have aspiration decay, but have it decay slower than normal. This is so the entire want system doesn't become superfluous so that you generally ignore it.  I found playing PermaPlat Sims to be somewhat boring.  Well, now they have to fulfill a want or two every day to stay in platinum, and if you ignore the wants long enough, they'll decay to green and if you try to use an aspiration reward you might be in trouble.

I've been using the old version of SemiPermaPlat in my game without problems.  But I recently made a change that messed things up a bit.  So I looked at the newest code and figured out what had to be done to make it an official Seasons hack.

My original version had aspiration decay at 1/2 rate.  This meant it would take 16 hours to decay through platinum, for example, instead of the usual 8 hours.  The change I made was to make asipration decay at 1/3 rate.  But it turns out adults' aspiration would decay through platinum, but stay at the top of gold, apparently because gold aspiration only decayed 2 points per hour.  So I fixed it that if the decay was under 3 points (when they're awake and home) it would decay by 1 point.

This current version seems to play well.  Aspiration decays fast enough that you have to watch it, but not so fast that it's annoying.  Decaying at 1/2 speed was getting to be annoying.

If you put this in your downloads folder, your PermaPlat Sims will experience aspiration decay at the top of the hour, just not a lot of decay.  If you decide this is not for you, simply take it out and your PermaPlat Sims will go back to full platinum at the top of the next hour you play them.

Enjoy!  Comments and suggestions appreciated.

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[Li'l Brudder]

Oooh!

Shiny!

[witch]

I've been using a really old Objects-floating-aspiration.package aspiration slow decay hack from the dawn of the game, it still works but I always felt it slowed the aspiration loss too much and made, as you say, the wants somewhat irrelevant. This old hack I'm using applies to all sims, does your hack only apply to permaplat sims?

How hard would it be to just slow aspiration decay generally for all sims? I like to play out my own stories, fulfilling too many wants is distracting.

[jsalemi]

How hard would it be to just slow aspiration decay generally for all sims? I like to play out my own stories, fulfilling too many wants is distracting.

Paladin has 'aspiration preserver' objects over on simwardrobe -- as long as the object is on the lot, no sim present on the lot will fall below gold level.  Might be handy for your stories.

[witch]

I have seen those thanks, no what I want is just the aspiration to fall slower all round so I can focus on the story more and the wants less. Cheers anyway.

[Hook]

This is only for PemaPlat Sims.  Other Sims decay at the normal rate.

But it shouldn't be too much trouble to make all Sims have slow decay.  Do you want PermaPlat Sims to have no decay at all in that case?

Anyone else interested in this?

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[cenoura]

Is it OK for pre-seasons?

[Hook]

I had a version from way back when that I'd been using with no problems.  From what I can see in the code, it should work fine.  If it doesn't work, you'll know very quickly, at the top of the hour when aspiration decay normally happens.

Maxis has changed the code a couple of times.  I warned people away from using the old version because I couldn't figure it out at the time.  The new version is quite clean by comparison.  But the old version worked for me, even though the official decay function had changed.

Give it a try, but if smoke comes out of your computer, or decay doesn't work right, remove it. 

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