More Awesome Than You!

Update 4/30/09:  Improved efficiency, and had the family reunion check tree bypass the extended family algorithms because it was taking too long and causing "Too Many Iterations" errors.

Get them here:
ExtendedFamily:  http://faiuwle.pbwiki.com/f/extendedfamily.package (http://faiuwle.pbwiki.com/f/extendedfamily.package)
ExtendedFamilyPartial:  http://faiuwle.pbwiki.com/f/extendedfamilypartial.package (http://faiuwle.pbwiki.com/f/extendedfamilypartial.package)
InlawsFixMaxis:  http://faiuwle.pbwiki.com/f/inlawsfixmaxis.package (http://faiuwle.pbwiki.com/f/inlawsfixmaxis.package)
InlawsFixNew:  http://faiuwle.pbwiki.com/f/inlawsfixnew.package (http://faiuwle.pbwiki.com/f/inlawsfixnew.package)

I consider my first cousins once removed and second cousins (hence referred to as FCOR&SC) to be family, if only just, so it has always bothered me that sims don't.  I kind of taught myself to mod over the weekend by reading some tutorials and browsing objects.package in SimPE, and made this mod which causes them to be recognized as family in most cases.  While I'm reasonably certain that this will not explode your game, I'd still feel a little better if some more experienced modder can look it over and make sure I haven't committed any cardinal sins.

For those who aren't as fascinated by genealogy as I am, first cousins once removed are either a) your parent's first cousins or b) your first cousin's child.  Second cousins are the children of your parent's first cousin, or, in other words, someone of the same generation with whom you share great-grandparents.

I couldn't figure out how to do everything I wanted to, but here are the things that work:
- No romantic interactions are possible between FCOR&SC.  ACR play nicely with this - the "Casual" menu does not appear, which I'm guessing means that those interactions are not available autonomously either.  Autosoc still allows Romanticate, but they only do the platonic interactions (Admire, Gossip, Bust-a-Move, etc.).
- Family Kiss is available for FCOR&SC, as is Fight -> Torment for children and teens with the right relationship scores.  On second thought, I think I'll leave that one as it is.
EDIT: Forgot to point this out as I never use it, but children/teens can also be Encouraged by their FCOR&SC.

Stuff that doesn't work:
- FCOR&SC are not marked as family in the Relationship panel.  The more I go looking for ways to fix this, the more I begin to suspect that that's hard-coded.
- FCOR&SC dying does not satisfy the "relative dies" fear, which I'm guessing means that their getting married or engaged doesn't satisfy those wants either.  Also, talking and playing with them does not satisfy the talk/play with relative want.  I've looked around, but I can't find anything else to mod that might make this work.  Help?
- FCOR&SC do not show up in the directory spawned by autoyak Call -> Family.

Installing this mod causes a reset.  Someone downthread has reported that it is incompatible with Inteen.

Any help/feedback/etc. is much appreciated.

EDIT: Fixed some of the logic for determining SCness.

EDIT 2: For consistency's sake, I've made great-grandparents, great-grandchildren, great-aunts/uncles and grandnieces/nephews behave the same way as FCOR&SC, since they are just as closely related (although less likely to occur).

EDIT 3: Rearranged the code to be more legible, fixed some minor bugs, and added a new flavor - extendedfamily.package works the same way as advertised above, and extendedfamilypartial.package causes great-grandparents, great-grandchildren, great-aunts/uncles and grand-nieces/nephews to be recognized as family, but not FCOR&SC.  Install only one of these!  I also made some minor tweaks to both of these packages - if two sims who would be considered family because of this mod get married, (e.g. with this mod (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,8196.0.html) or something like it, or if they were married before you installed this) they will have romantic interactions available as long as they are actually married.  They will also still have Family Kiss.

New 2/25/09: In-laws Fix
Maxis was incredibly lazy about writing a function to determine whether or not two sims should be considered in-laws; they made it so that sims would consider the relatives of their spouses (e.g., parents-in-law) as family, but not the spouses of their relatives (e.g. children-in-law).  The only thing they did get right was the relationship between step-children and step-parents (and presumably between step-siblings, but I wasn't able to test that as I don't have any).  I fixed this; there are actually two versions of this hack, because I wrote one, then rethought some things, and then wrote a completely different one.  In the unmodded game, sims consider all relatives of their spouses to be relatives, and that includes cousins, aunts/uncles, grandparents, etc.  Also, the method that Maxis used will not work at all for multiple spouses' families, if you use the marriage of convenience arch.  So, if you want to preserve the Maxis intention of considering extended family in-laws as family, and don't use the marriage of convenience arch, download inlawsfixmaxis.package.  If you don't care about/don't want in-laws other than mother/father/sister/brother/children being recognized, or you do use the marriage of convenience arch, download inlawsfixnew.package.  Note that cousins-in-law, etc. may still not accept romantic interactions if they are married to other sims and you have romancemod installed.

Note that there is an oddity in in-laws relationships that I have not changed - if the two in-laws have crush/love flags set, they will be able to interact romantically regardless.  However, the only way to achieve that situation with this hack installed is to have two sims who were previously involved get married to other people and become in-laws, in which case you are clearly reinacting some kind of soap-opera and probably want that to happen anyway.

This is a stand-alone hack - it does not require, is not required by, is not contained in, and does not conflict with the extendedfamily hacks.  I'm putting it here because I eventually intend to make an extendedfamily hack whereby you can individually choose which psuedo-family relationships you want to be recognized, and inlawsfixnew will probably be bundled into that.

Nice concept, I would think that someone playing a Legacy Challenge may find it particularly useful. Hope that if another modder looks it over it is declared non-BFBVFS. :)

Well, I've been playing with it in my game, and it hasn't caused BFBVFS yet. :P  The only globals I overrode were various BHAVs for checking if sims are related; I doubt those are going to cause any problems.  The main thing I'm not sure about is that I wrote new global BHAVs - I don't think there's any other way to get them called from the globals I overrode.  If some other mod adds global BHAVs with the same instance numbers, unexpected things could happen - but HCDU would probably catch that.  So I'm not really worried - just wondering if there might be some other way to do it that doesn't involve writing new globals.

I love the idea for this mod.  I know it's not so likely to happen in game, but great-grandparents, great-grandchildren, and great-aunts/uncles and grandnieces/nephews are certainly considered family in real life, so it just makes sense for the same to be in the game.

I really like the idea of this. I am tired of making changes in SimPE everytime a new great-grandchild is born in my game.  I think Maxis should have made changes in the family relationships once the elders lives were longer with Platinum Aspirations and Longer Life choice from the genie lamp were added.

Can we get the Awesome in here to have a lookeeloo?

I have wanted something like this since the dawn of Sims 2 time. It would've been amazingly helpful in my last hood which consisted of basically one family, and one family only, and by gen 4, the simPE work I had to do for every sim born was just death.

I wasn't too sad when I lost that hood just because I was so tired of doing everything manually, but if something like this gets confirmed and in the works, I'm gonna miss it terribly I assume.  ;D

I've always wished for at least an in game object that I could click myself to "treat as family," even if it only made everyone treat each other as cousins and nothing more specific than that, it would be so much easier than constantly going into simPE every time a new relative shows up.

I don't know about the Awesome but I'll put it in my game and let you know if anyone falls over screaming. At the moment it'll just be a general kind of test (as I don't have those extended relationships in my current hood) but my downloads folder should be a reasonable test as to whether it causes conflicts and errors (at least with TJ, AH, Pes, Joker's, Dizzy, whatever else all I have in there mods).

By the way Rufio I hate your avatar - I don't know why this is - but for some reason old foreheadskin there really iritates me. I'm assuming this is the desired responce so I thought I'd let you know you're getting it. Everybody always says when they love an avatar but, . . .

I mustn't have been hanging out in the right (or wrong areas).

Mod has serious conflicts with Inteenimater for AL and renders my game inoperable. I've taken it back out.

i've played a few households with this in, but like madam mim i don't have any extended relations to really test. i usually have these kind of problems at weddings and house parties which usually end up resulting in fist fights and tantrums. i threw several weddings with no kissing cousins to tank my scores. does this also change the way step parents and siblings react to each other? after brandi married lazlo, lazlo lost the casual option for dustin.

(http://beta.moreawesomethanyou.com:8080/cats/kittenkiller.jpg)

This doesn't surprise me, as my impression is that Inteen conflicts with lots of stuff.


No; I think it would be fairly simple to let them have romantic interactions, but they would lose the Family Kiss.

It's always annoyed me the way some types of relatives aren't classed as relatives in the game, but I think it's the sort of thing that changes in acceptance levels depending on where you live.  I'll give your mod a whirl and let you know if anything odd happens, if nothing happens I might not post again for a while :).  Cheers!

If I wasn't already having so many odd happenings in my game at present, I'd totally try out this mod.  I love the idea (as I think I already stated lol).

Two cents incoming:

I hate how few generations it takes before sims cease to recognize certain relatives as family, but I wouldn't want a mod that would disallow marriage between second cousins.  I'm not currently involved in playing an entire neighborhood at the moment, but I plan to in the future, and having the occasional second cousin pairing will be helpful for population control. 

I would, however, love to have a mod that would make the game recognize direct descendents better.  I think the game only goes as far as grandparent/grandchild, but doesn't recognize great grandparent/great grandchild, right?  Would be nice if it did.

(I'd also love a mod that would make enable the player to disable romantic wants and interactions between in-laws, on a case by case basis.  Family sims should not be wanting to flirt with their kids' spouses.   :P )   

Well, if you use Inge and Marhis' polygamy/marriage of convenience mod, you can get anyone married to anyone else.  I'm not sure if this mod will let spouses who happen to be FCOR/SC interact romantically - I will check it out.  I do like the idea of being able to configure the mod so that you can turn on and off certain types of relationships being viewed as family, but I'm not sure how to do that.  If I figure it out, I'll do my best to put it in.

Aside from the fact stated in the subject line, and the implied thankyous and dancing in joy...

I need to ask if this has been tested in AL?
Anyone see any BFB on NASA reports?

Yes - I have all EPs except FT and BV.

Awesome, thanks!   :D

I have everything except a few SPs, but including M&G, so I guess I'll edit this post later to report on any BFBVFS or lack thereof.

I just added a fix for EAxis in-laws borkinness to the first post.

I had a difficult time understanding the first paragraph under "In-laws fix" even though I read it several times. So I will pick just this sentence to clarify at the moment.


If I use inlawsfixnew.package it will only recognize mother/father/sister/brother/children in-law relationships when I use the standard Maxis marriage or Maxis arch. In addition, use of the marriage of convenience arch will allow for these same relationships but for all of the spouses of polygamous marriages.

Did I understand this correctly?

The marriage of convenience arch allows you to marry anyone to anyone regardless of how the game thinks they're related.  It also allows sims to marry multiple people at the same time, which can cause issues with in-law relationships - if you have inlawsfixmaxis (or, presumably, if you don't have either fix) then the parents/siblings/cousins/etc. of only the sim's first spouse will be considered family.  If you have inlawsfixnew, then all spouses' relatives will be considered family.  However, inlawsfixmaxis will recognize cousins-in-law and suchlike, while inlawsfixnew doesn't because it would be a lot of code to write and I think it's a little excessive anyway.

So, if you want cousins-in-law/etc. to be family, get inlawsfixmaxis, unless you use the marriage of convenience arch to marry sims to multiple different people, in which case you will need inlawsfixnew.  Does that make more sense?

Edited for clarity.

Yes, thanks for clearing that up. 

To me, it seems that these two statements contradict each other and that was confusing (empashis mine).

"In the unmodded game, sims consider all relatives of their spouses to be relatives, and that includes cousins, aunts/uncles, grandparents, etc."

"...if you have inlawsfixmaxis (or, presumably, if you don't have either fix) then only the parents/siblings/etc. of the sim's first spouse will be considered family."

When I read your quote, it actually confused me, too, and I wrote it.   :-\  I've reworded it now.