Testers Wanted: Dancing with Fitness and Body Skilling (Updated 9/16/2008)

[syberspunk]

Dance Fitness and Body Skilling v1.05 for TS2AL v1.0p0
Made by: syberspunk

Note: 3/16/2006

A version for the base game ONLY is now available. However, since there is no Goofy dancing in the base game, ALL sims will benefit from this hack, regardless of dance skill/experience. I am too lazy to delve into trying to figure out if there is a way to separate skill. I would prefer not to put any more effort Therefore, this hack is provided "as-is" and the only support I will provide will be in the sense of troubleshooting any errors. There are no further plans to modify this base game version in any way.


Note: Again, posting here since some people may not want to bother heading over to MTS2. Enjoy!

As requested over at MATY this hack allow sims to build body skill AND fitness while dancing.

This is a global hack that affects all stereos, instruments, the DJ Booth, the Karaoke Machine, and Cars!!! Your sims should be able to gain body skill and increased fitness while dancing Solo or dancing together!

To balance this skill gaining, I have also added slight and increased motive decay to Energy, Comfort, Hunger, and Hygiene. Also, the skill gain should pretty much be the same speed as the Work Out interaction with Stereos. So, you will gain body skill, but it will be fairly slow.

Sims with higher dancing skill will have a faster motive decay when it comes to Energy, Hunger, and Hygiene, but a slightly slower decay when it comes to Comfort and a slightly bigger boost when it comes to fun.

This hack will NOT affect Goofy dancing, Slow dancing, OR the Smustle. Look for a future update to the Skillinator mod by J.M. Pescado over at MATY with regards to the Smustle.

:!!: NOTE: Your sim requires a little bit of dancing skill BEFORE they can actually gain any body skills or increased fitness when dancing solo. If your sim does not have enough skill yet, then they won't benefit from this hack yet. But... once they've gained enough dancing skill, you should see them start to gain body skill and fitness as well!


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

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


Compatibility:
:!!: This definately works in Nightlife. This might also work in Uni and the base game. Despite overriding BHAVs on objects that are specific to Uni and NL, if those objects don't exist in your game, it should be harmless (i.e. nothing "bad" should happen since those objects like the instruments and the car don't exist in your EP-less game). Please report back if you do have a problem.

I have tested this in my game and it appears to work fine.

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 to dancing, stereos, instruments, the djbooth, karaoke, or the car
4) archived (.rar or .zip) of log produced by error

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.

:grouphug: Finally, my Thank Yous go to:

baratron for the request over at MATY. 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.

If I left anyone out, I apologize in advance. You know who you are and you deserve my thanks.

Version History:
v0.10 - Compatible version made for base game only
v1.01 - Minor Update for OFB that allows Sims to Watch dancing
v1.02 - Updated for Pets
v1.03 - Fixed minor bug with Invalid Constant
v1.04 - Updated for Free Time
v1.05 - Updated for Apartment Life

[veilchen]

Good idea Steven, I'll try this one out as soon as I can. It always struck me as odd that dancing didn't improve body-skill, especially because there are fitness classes that are entirely based on dancing.

Thank you for taking the time to make this, and you're right, I most likely wouldn't have found it on MTS2. Still love the site, but I have gotten used to just go over to search for specific items, not to browse.

[Sleepycat]

Hooray!! *dances around the room* Thank you!

[Oddysey]

Most awesome. Most awesome indeed. No more idiocy with the work out bit.

Yet another reason to always check syberspunk's stuff whenever I'm over at MTS2. Not like the pictures aren't enough, of course. 

[Athena]

Thanks muchly :]

Does this affect slow dancing?  *hope it doesn't*

[wishy-washy]

Thanks for this.

Also:

Sims with higher dancing skill will have a faster motive decay when it comes to Energy, Hunger, and Hygiene, but a slightly slower decay when it comes to Comfort and a slightly bigger boost when it comes to fun.

Shouldn't Sims with a higher dancing skill lose less energy when dancing instead of more? They've already built up their endurance.

[Renatus]

Shouldn't Sims with a higher dancing skill lose less energy when dancing instead of more? They've already built up their endurance.

I think this would make more sense, too. Even when someone is better at dancing and uses wilder moves, they know how to move as well. Case in point: I'm a good dancer, and although out of shape I can dance for two hours straight. I have friends who are in shape, are so-so at dancing, and can't go for more than 20 minutes at a time.

[syberspunk]

Thanks muchly :]

Does this affect slow dancing?  *hope it doesn't*

Yes, you're right. I forgot to mention that. I will update the first post in a bit. Since you're not moving fast enough to build body skill or increase fitness, this logically does not affect while slow dancing. Also... if I'm not mistaken... slow dancing doesn't even require music? Whatever the case, I did not mod that part.

Shouldn't Sims with a higher dancing skill lose less energy when dancing instead of more? They've already built up their endurance.

I think this would make more sense, too. Even when someone is better at dancing and uses wilder moves, they know how to move as well. Case in point: I'm a good dancer, and although out of shape I can dance for two hours straight. I have friends who are in shape, are so-so at dancing, and can't go for more than 20 minutes at a time.

Yeah... I thought about this, and initially, I was going to make it so that those with higher skill have a smaller energy decay... BUT, I felt that since you ARE gaining 3 skills at once, there should be Some kind of penalty. Especially since, as an alternative to the "Work Out" this boosts fun way more, and dancing appeared to only affect Energy and Fun. The penalty is fairly minor, however, so it shouldn't be overwhelming. I felt that if the energy decay was lower if you had higher dance skill, then this might get a bit "abusive" and too "cheaty" for my tastes. So... as an alternative, I made comfort decay less instead. Sort of my interpretation rather than mechanically realistic.

How it really should work, is that I should detect what type of dance they are doing, and based on that I should change the motive decay. In this case, if sims were do a much higher energy dance, I could set motive decay faster for those with lower skill. The much more tamer dances could have a lower decay overall. This would require a bit more work, but I may consider this as a later, more improved update. How it currently works, is that I just go by dance skill and assume that those with higher skill will be doing the higher energy dances, and thus their energy motive will decay faster; so it is kind of backasswards.

The problem is, I don't know just yet, how easy it would be to access the dance types, and how much it may affect performance by adding more lines of code. As I understand it, the more lines of code, the bigger the mod, and the more time required for your game to load. Not that these changes would significantly bloat the mod, but those bits (or bytes ) add up, especially for those of you who have Gigs of Downloads (You know who you are!!! ). I'm not sure if there is a limit to how many lines of code a BHAV should have, and if this also can majorly affect the "in-game" processing, thus slowing down your game overall. I know doing certain things, like searching for objects, can cause the game to slow down (and was also responsible for thsoe "too many iteration" errors). So I want to avoid doing too much at once. Alternatively, I could try and create new BHAVs to abstract code into separate "function calls" but this also leads to other issues, particularly concerning compatibility. It's like being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Sorry for all the technical mumbo jumbo. I'm hopin someone with far more Awesome knowledge than I can clarify that for me.

But that doesn't mean I won't reconsider it. I definately would like more feedback, perhaps after some in-game testing and bit longer-term results. If people find that it makes the game far too easy now that you can gain these 3 skills at a time, then I may have to tweak it a bit more. I definately would love to know what you guys think as far as what Should decay, how fast, and depending on what factors (actually, I'd prefer to keep that as simple as possible and split it up only into two groups: those with relatively "high" dance skill and those with "low" dance skill).

This is definately open up to discussion and debate, as I would like to make the mod as realistic as possible, and hopefully please the community in general given a consensus, while still having it somewhat balanced in the game. I mean sure, it's great to be realistic, and gain all these skills at once. I totally understand where you're coming from, as I have taken a few dance classes myself, and it definately is not easy to keep up with. But I also know that the longer you practice, the better you build your stamina, and the longer you can last. But then again, this is a game, and essentially by enabling this, i am taking away part of the challenge, so it has to be balanced in some way.

Ste

[Torkle]

I've looked all over in SimPE and can't find where Dance skill is listed for a sim.  Am I blind, or just looking in the wrong places?  Maybe I've got the wrong plugin viewer or the order wrong in the plugin heirarchy.

[jrd]

Dance skill is stored as a token under the memories.

[syberspunk]

Edit: Jordi beat me to it.

Dance skill is stored as a token under the memories.

I thought that's where they were stored, but I when I opened up SimPE, I didn't see any in Daniel Pleasant. Then I remembered that I had just wiped out my test neighborhood and let the game recreate a new one. So maybe Daniel doesn't start out with any Dance Skill to begin with (I didn't save when I exited the game after testing).

I've looked all over in SimPE and can't find where Dance skill is listed for a sim.  Am I blind, or just looking in the wrong places?  Maybe I've got the wrong plugin viewer or the order wrong in the plugin heirarchy.

Hrm... I also took a look in SimPE, and right now, I can't find it either... From what I recall, I believe the game stores this info as Tokens, in the form of "Dancing Experience" and "Dance Skill" and I believe that "Experience" goes from like 1-1000, and "Skill" goes from 1-10. Why they needed two separate tokens to measure this, beats me. *shrugs* But then again, I haven't taken an in-depth look at how skilling works in general. I believe the other skills (Cleaning, Mechanical, etc.) are stored as fields in the "array" of Person Data for each sim. I did not see a field for Dancing Skill (although I did see one for Romance Skill, which Pescado has explained is currently not used anyway. Go figure Maxis. ).

Which also makes me think about another possible factor: fitness/fatness is stored and readable... so maybe I could also take that into account. The fatter you are, the more energy drain, discomfort, stinky, and hungry you get. If you are more fit, then you might have a slower decay. Hrm... the possibilities.

Ste

[Emma]

Thanks for this

[SciBirg]

Thank you!

But...what has dancing skill in common with cars? 

[Kyna]

Cars have stereos.  Sims can dance to the car stereo.

[SciBirg]

Wow! I have never tried that.

That will be interesting. 

[nectere]

I tested this last night, it seems to work great, however did you fiddle with the social motive? I have never noticed sims dancing alone in a house alone getting a rise in social, it was rising at the same rate as the Fun motive.

[Emma]

I tested this last night, it seems to work great, however did you fiddle with the social motive? I have never noticed sims dancing alone in a house alone getting a rise in social, it was rising at the same rate as the Fun motive.

That happens with the smustle dance I hate it when that happens!

[nectere]

I could see the smutle, if others were smustling as well. But on my test Data Base was home alone and dancing autonomously to the stereo - regular solo dancing. I have never noticed this before previous to installing this mod. Just curious.

[syberspunk]

Edit: Sorry for the ugly pictures. I tried resizing them on photobucket, and the larger ones just got really blurry as they dropped down in resolution. And  it looks like I cut off the part with the skill bar over Angela dancing solo. She really is dancing, and not just standing there letting her motives drop Anyhew, I'm too lazy to go back and redo these pics. If you still have problems where sims actually have some dancing skill, are actually gaining body skill, and NOT doing the Goofy dance or the Smustle, and they are still gaining social instead of decaying, please take some in-game pics and post/link them here for me to look at. Then I'll try and take a deeper look into things, but according to my code, at least superficially, I am not changing anything directly involving the social motive.

     F: Manage Inventory: Access the Neighbor Counted Inventory from ID my person data neighbor id (0x1F). with category 0 GUID 0x0DA265F4 (0x7F8F26D3: Token - Dance Skill). Find the token. Put count into Local 2.; true: 10, false: 10
    10: Local 2 > 6; true: 11, false: 16

These two lines check the dance skill: if greater than 6, then assume "high" dance skill, if not, then low dance skill.

    11: Set Motive Change: my motives Fun (0xF) += Const 0x2007(Tuning - Skill Gain Tuning):0x5(90 (0x5A)) per hour, stop at Const 0x2007(Tuning - Skill Gain Tuning):0x6(75 (0x4B)); true: 12, false: error
    12: Set Motive Change: my motives Energy (0x5) += Const 0x2007(Tuning - Skill Gain Tuning):0x7(-6 (0xFFFA)) per hour, stop at Const 0x2007(Tuning - Skill Gain Tuning):0x8(-25 (0xFFE7)); true: 13, false: error
    13: Set Motive Change: my motives Comfort (0x6) += Const 0x2007(Tuning - Skill Gain Tuning):0x9(-2 (0xFFFE)) per hour, stop at Const 0x2007(Tuning - Skill Gain Tuning):0xA(-80 (0xFFB0)); true: 14, false: error
    14: Set Motive Change: my motives Hunger (0x7) += Const 0x2007(Tuning - Skill Gain Tuning):0xB(-2 (0xFFFE)) per hour, stop at Const 0x2007(Tuning - Skill Gain Tuning):0xC(-50 (0xFFCE)); true: 15, false: error
    15: Set Motive Change: my motives Hygiene (0x8) += Const 0x2007(Tuning - Skill Gain Tuning):0xD(-6 (0xFFFA)) per hour, stop at Const 0x2007(Tuning - Skill Gain Tuning):0xE(-75 (0xFFB5)); true: 19, false: error
    16: Set Motive Change: my motives Fun (0xF) += Const 0x2003:0x0 per hour, stop at Const 0x2003:0x1; true: 17, false: error

These 6 lines above set the motives if the sim has high dance skill.

    17: Set Motive Change: my motives Energy (0x5) += Const 0x2003:0x2 per hour, stop at Const 0x2003:0x3; true: 18, false: error
    18: Set Motive Change: my motives Comfort (0x6) += Const 0x2007(Tuning - Skill Gain Tuning):0x3(-8 (0xFFF8)) per hour, stop at Const 0x2007(Tuning - Skill Gain Tuning):0x4(-60 (0xFFC4)); true: 19, false: error
    19: Get in Temp 0 - Personality Skill Bonus(Const 0x131(Personality Tuning):0x4, Const 0x2007(Tuning - Skill Gain Tuning):0x0(100 (0x64))); true: 1A, false: 1A

The top 3 lines above set the motives if the sim has low dance skill, and the last line is after setting motives for either case, it checks to see if there are any skill bonuses due to the sim's personality.
[/Edit]

Hrm... that's odd. I'll have to take a look at that, but AFAIK, I did not intentionally affect social. Thanks for letting me know, I'll look at it today.

Ste

Edit: Ok... I took a look at this, and I did see that social was increasing, but that only seems to be the case when sims are doing the Goofy dance. At this point, the sim wouldn't have enough dancing skill anyways to even benefit from my mod.

I tested it out, and hopefully these pictures show this better than I can explain it. I tested it on the Pleasant family, and apparently Daniel and Angela Pleasant have sufficient enough skill to gain body and fitness from dancing. They don't do that awkward Goofy dance. I had Daniel do it solo, and his social appears to decay as expected. I had Angela join him, and both social motives were still decaying. I then send Daniel off and had Angela stop entirely, and then Dance Solo by herself, just in case it was some odd fluke with Daniel already starting off with the social motive decaying causing the effect to propagate to Angela. It appears that Angela's social decayed as well, regardless of whether she joined or did it on her own.

I went to look at Mary-Sue and Lilith, and both have no or little dance skill. As a result, they both did the Goofy dance. I had both dance solo, and then join, etc. following a similar procedure as above. It appears that Social does increase, but that is due to the Goofy dance, and shouldn't be something caused by my mod. I think that when these two new dance socials were cloned, the Goofy dance and the Smustle, however they were created or from whatever social they were cloned from, the social settings for them are either buggy or "as designed" In other words, either Maxis was too lazy to have the motive setting dependent on whether sims were actually dancing with other people or solo, OR the setting is just totally wrong, or this is "as designed" by them. Take your pick, but I tend to be inclined towards one of them.  If I'm not too lazy, I may try and look into why this is the case. But I'm lazy, so don't expect a fix any soon.

I suspect that it may have to do with the fact that the "settings" for socials are now contained in this huge global array of BCON values. Which seems to be a great design idea, in theory (because it makes the code a bit more modularized/object oriented) but either they've been lazy or careless about how they've cloned these settings for new socials. Unless this is all "by design" and it is intentional for the Goofy and Smustle dances to have social gain when performed solo.

[nectere]

Ok thanks for checking, I guess I just never noticed it before then.

[myskaal]

I have never noticed sims dancing alone in a house alone getting a rise in social, it was rising at the same rate as the Fun motive.

Definately not the hack that's rising social. It is a change from the base game, but whether it came with Uni or NL I don't know. Whichever, social rises when dancing alone without the hack.

Thanks for doing this one, Syberspunk!


(oo stealth post?.. I don't think I've even said Hi here yet.

Hi!)

[veilchen]

Well, I tested it extensively and I'm happy to report that it works like a charm. I have plenty of mods installed, as well as NL and Uni. No conflicts or anything of the kind are popping up. The same goes for your other mod, adult/teens can dance together again, and no problems in game.

I just wonder why maxis 86ed that feature in the first place? Agreed, some of those moves are provocative, but it's not exactly dirty dancing or a latin hot-step.

As far as the social motive goes, I noticed that too. It increases when dancing alone, goofy, regular and the smustle (that name still cracks me up). I thought it was just another maxis glitch though.

* veilchen hugs Steven

Thank you so much, I really appreciate these mods.

And of course: Hello Myskaal ;D

[Rascal]

Thanks for this!

I'm just reporting that it seems to work fine in the base game (no eps).

[Emma]

Ahhh! It is goofy dancing that raises it? You can't even tell them to do that! 

Thanks for looking into it-I will be waiting for this fix if you can manage it

*sits in thread-waiting*

[idtaminger]

I love the features of this, but is there any way to get rid of the skill bar on top, while they're dancing, and yet still have them skill? It really ruins the group pictures at parties, unfortunately. And yet, how stupid is it for sims not to build body skill while dancing?