Aspiration Lock?

[ReneeFox]

Hope I don't get burned in the Burnination Chamber for asking for this. 

Does anyone know of a hack that prevents Aspiration from not going down, but only going up?  I keep forgetting to turn it on and off with the cheat before the hour changes, and haven't hacked anything since The Sims 1 (forgot a lot since then).  More specifically, something that Locks Aspiration at :59 past the hour, and Unlocks Aspiration at :01 past the hour for any given lot I'm playing.  I tried to get into understanding hacks with this game, but it would take forever for me to get a good understanding of the code to create this myself.  Thanks for any leads.   

[J. M. Pescado]

So, you want "no aspiration decay"? That's not hard to make. Just stub out BHAV 0x7FF64E02, 0x1004.

[dizzy]

Another option would be to modify the BCONs at 0x7FF64E02. That way, you can control which levels of aspiration decay and which ones don't.

[ReneeFox]

Ohhh Thank you, Pescado and dizzy. No, I don't think it would be hard for people who create hacks, objects, etc.; I've never done it for TS2. When I read other people's hacks, maybe you can imagine all the confusing activity going on in my brain ... like was this something build-in already? Where is the resource list of all the literals and constants I see all over the place? How do I know whether this is a personglobals hack, or some other kind of hack? What code is essential when building hacks related to Sims, and how do I know what the parameters should be? How do I make this thing turn on at hh:01, and off at hh:59 or vice-versa? Why did this person create the same GUID in 3-4 different places in the hack? Basically, all the things I went through when I started hacking TS1 objects; I got fairly good at it.  Making hacks in either version of the game reminds me of crazy-code with so many Goto's, that it's hard to figure out the flow. And, TS2 is quite a different animal that would take me a long time just to start a hack. I did manage to hack someone else's hack (just for my game), and that took about a week or two of figuring out what they did, and adding to it. It only had 1 BHAV with 20-30 lines. That was just a couple of weeks ago. I think it took a few months for me to know how to start a TS1 hack from scratch, let alone a TS2 one. Oh, another question that keeps lurking is how the heck 2 different BHAV's in the same object are interacting with each other & the game, because I saw no references from one to the other or vice-versa? I did find a resource related to the lock aspiration cheat, but I haven't studied it, yet. Of course, some of the questions running around in my head may be irrelevant, but I don't find out until I try to make one of these hacks.

Another messed-up issue is that I may lose my Internet connection soon, which is absolutely essential to read the tons of material about SimPE and hacking things. I was just trying to save some time that I may not have ... to actually create this hack. But, I will take a look at the stub and BCON.  It IS something I want to be Global, and happen everywhere I go within the game.  Oooops, I forgot to answer your question, Pescado.  Yes, I don't want the decay, but I want the increase.  Locking aspiration makes it so nothing happens to that meter, even when a Sim gains a want; and as I play, I keep forgetting to turn it on and off before the top of the hour.  I'm usually trying to manage doing a bunch of things at one time (while in pause), and you'd be amazed how many times I kept forgetting that one simple task when I let the game rip! I'll study the code, and if I can't figure it out in a week, I'm coming back and begging to have someone create this hack for moi!   

[Soylent Sim]

One, is this supposed to bypass all ASP loss, or just the hourly decay?

Two, even if you do keep loss from fears around, the wants/fears game is so laughably easy that you just reinvented permaplat.  You can already set the permaplat flag with the lot debugger, so if this doesn't pan out you can skip reinventing the wheel.  If you want a sim to be unhappy then decay will already work in your favor.

[ReneeFox]

No, just the hourly decay. I don't want the meters to go down; only up. This one doesn't have anything to do with Motives ... just the Aspiration Meter/Score. I need to get into the game to get the accurate labels of those meters; I can't remember off the top of my head.

[ReneeFox]

I hope you all don't mind if I write out my logic here to get it corrected and understood more by me.  I'll just rattle off what I'm thinking, and questions will be included for anybody to answer ... to save time creating this.

Okay, after studying the BHAV mentioned for a couple of hours, what became clear were 2 lines:

9: [private 0x100E] Get in Temp 0 - Decay - Total (Param 0x0000, Param 0x0001), true A, false Error
A: [prim 0x0002] Expression (Local 0x0000 -= Temp 0x0000), true 2, false Error

Param 0 is the Mood, and Param 1 is Aspiration Score??? I think I have to insert a line that compares param1 < Local 0x0000 (assigned from the aspiration score in line #7), or the other way around, and goto line 9 if true, else goto line 2 to ignore both lines that appear to subtract from the Aspiration Score.  I'm just going through the motions here.  I don't know how to interpret the math going on in these 2 lines; looks like C or something.  It appears that line 9 subtracts Decay, Param 0, and Param 1 from Temp 0? Line A is comparing Aspiration Score to whatever Temp 0 is, and going to line 2 if -= works; don't know what -= is, yet ... is it doing a calculation, or comparison?

OR, adjust true's & false's, and delete the 2 lines so decay doesn't happen at all?  I'm afraid that would negate increasing the Aspiration Score somehow, i.e., one of those 2 lines (or both) handles increasing aspiration???  I have very little idea of what the rest of the code really does in total, but I usually don't know it all when I'm modifying code.  Do I need to understand more or less here?  This code calls resources that handle when the decay occurs, so, I don't have to worry about that as long as I prevent the score from going lower than it currently is.  Line C appears of interest to me, too, but I don't really know what's going on there, i.e., what the constant is, and the purpose of PersonData Flag 1:

C: [prim 0x0002] Expression (Stack Object's PersonData Flags 1 Flag Set? Const 0x0119:0x23)

I don't think I have to worry about the above line, because it is setting flags which is what I want.  I just have to make sure previous logic prevents Aspiration Decay.

Am I close?    Anybody out there? 

[ReneeFox]

Well, geesh!  Nobody willing to share their hacking skills?  I guess some things never change; happened when I was hacking in the Sims 1 world . Anyway, for anybody new to the TS2 hacking-world, I figured it out with hunches.  Even though I don't know the details of what much of the code means, deleting those 2 lines did the trick!  Aspiration still goes up, but it doesn't go down.  Yay!  Thanks so much for the lead to the correct BHAV to mess with.

 

[Ellatrue]

The problem with having aspiration only go up, rather than down, is that it would take a very short time for your sims to max out and reach platinum. In which case, why not just cheat and make them perma-plat? Or use one of Inge's Simlogical hacks (I think there might be some on MTS2 as well) that just freeze the aspiration meter. Having it still change, but only going up, seems kind of pointless.

Maybe what you want is a slower rate of decay? Anyway, glad things worked out.