Smarter Pie Menu: Searchable Interactions V2.0
🕑 Added 2023-05-16 18:35:15 +0000 UTCSPM v2.0 is now public!
I quickly received a lot of feedback on SPM after release, so I've created a v2 with several improvements.
V2.0 Updates
- All subcategories with a single result will have the result brought to the top pie menu when searching, as long as there is room for all of them. This prevents unnecessary clicking through categories like "Mean" just to see a single result.
- A settings button has been added to the pie menu, which is only visible when using the shift+click pie menu (cheat interactions)
- The settings button gives you two options currently:
Change Search Mode
Change Search Text Size - Change Search Mode lets you pick between search always being enabled, or you can activate the search by pressing T or the Enter key.
- When using a key-triggered search mode, activating the search will display "search for..." so you know the search is active.
- Search Text Size lets you change between the normal text size and a larger option for those who have trouble seeing the normal text size.
===========================
Simply open the pie menu and start typing whatever interaction you want, it will narrow the results for you. When there's only a single interaction found, you can press enter to run the interaction.
Features
- Searchable Pie Menu: As soon as the pie menu is opened, you can type to filter the interactions. If results are found, the menu will refresh with the filtered results.
- Press Enter to Select: If your search returns a single result, you can press enter to immediately select that interaction.
- Time Controls with Search Active: Hold alt and press `, 0, 1, 2, or 3 to set the respective time.
- Pan Camera with Search Active: Press the arrow keys for the respective directions. There is a small delay before moving which is unavoidable due to the core game engine restrictions.
Really happy with how it's turned out. 😊
If you find the mod useful, please consider supporting me by joining me here on Patreon when/if possible. It's always appreciated! 🧡
Installation
Install by opening the zip and dragging the "Tmex-SmarterPieMenu.package" to your mods folder. That's it!
Conflicts:
Only known conflict at this time is Dark UI
Comments
Gábor Mészáros
Hi there! Is it possible that with the new update this became outdated? For me it does not work properly 100%, sometimes typing text fails to search.
V337
Would it be feasible to add a function of easily queueing up interactions? For instance shift clicking an interaction doesn't close the picker and you can queue up the same interaction again or another one of your choice until you either quit out or click an interaction normally.
Damier Don
for some reason i can't get this to show in my game.
Kevin Godwin
Don't know if it's intentional or not but with the search mode option(with T or Enter), it automatically goes back to search mode whenever I go to a second tab of the pie menu sort of making the option useless. Like if I click on another sim it will be in non search mode but once I click the friendly tab, it automatically goes back to search mode.
WebGremlin
I had considered this but I have multiple monitors and alt-tab a lot. I would have preferred software (like Logitech) to remap the keys as that could be set for specific applications only. However, for anyone else using US-INT, this can be done with keyboard layouts too. If you follow the steps here, you can have US-Standard active for only The Sims: https://winaero.com/enable-per-window-keyboard-layout-windows-10/ Thanks Twisted for thinking along :)
TwistedMexi
As this is happening with the raw input into the textfield UI controls, my best recommendation would be to add the US qwerty keyboard to your computer's input options. It'll put a little keyboard icon next to your system tray and you can switch between international and just US. Switching to US before opening ts4 should automatically take care of the mappings for you
WebGremlin
Thanks for coming back to me. I see, that's unfortunate but it makes sense. Reg. second issue. Yes it definitely happens in the cheat console. It's a Windows keyboard layout, so it's just how our keyboard work. Perhaps this explains it better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_and_American_keyboards#International_or_extended_keyboard_layouts. Solutions that have come to my mind (no idea if feasible, just trying to think along): - An option to not accept the grave character (`) as valid input in the search field (perhaps this could also make the default pause keybind work while the pie menu is open?); - For the user (me) to use external software to remap the grave key to P as this pauses the game as well. In which case it would be nice if alt-P could be added to your mod's keybinds.
TwistedMexi
As the code is actually in the pie menu's UI file, it can't work until the pie menu has loaded. For the second issue, I'm not really sure what you're explaining. I would probably need to a see a video of it, but I'd also be curious what happens if you type into the cheat console for example. The pie menu is just taking a regular textfield input so it should be identical to typing in any other field in the game.
WebGremlin
Hi Tmex, this mod is an absolute lifesaver, I don't think I could go back to playing without it. Thank you. I have two comments / requests if I may: - Would it be possible to have the alt-modifier work all the time, not just when the pie menu is active? For muscle memory it'd be nice to have the consistency. Also, I sometimes have a small delay when opening the pie menu (I don't think that's related to your mod) but say I click to open the pie menu and immediately try to pause the game by pressing alt+`, it doesn't work until the pie menu has actually loaded. If the keybind would be uniform whether the pie menu is open or not, that'd be alleviated. - Where I am from, the US-International is the default keyboard layout. With it, certain punctuation marks become sticky as to create accents on letters (E.g. pressing ` followed by an e makes an è). So if I pause the game using ` and then open the social menu and start typing to search, the ` is "loaded up" and I either print an ` (if the letter can't have an accent) or make an accented letter. I'm not sure what an obvious solution would be to this, but perhaps you could give it a thought?
Avery Kiste
does pink ui conflict with this too?
TwistedMexi
Not currently but if you change the trigger setting to not always be on, you can use both
TeaLuNix
Heyo! Is it possible to turn off numbers? Idk if it's too much to ask though :/ I just keep getting annoyed when I want to speed up/pause my game/etc and end up searching the numbers instead lmao T-T xD Other than that I absolutely LOVE this mod!! ♥
Teela
Thank you. This mod is wonderful! It works regardless of the language of the game.
Marissa
This is so cool! Does it need updated for the horsies? Just wanted to check bc I saw TOOL was updated.
celticlass
I am having visual problems with BetterBuildBuy. Will that be updated soon? I miss it!
Harley quinn
if you open your last exceptions error in your documents folder you should be able to narrow it down that way. It should bring up a webpage with all the info
TwistedMexi
BE works fine on the latest patch. If you can't start your game you'll need to manually remove mods until you can at least load the game
AlonnaEscada
Hello I really love the better exception are you going to update it for the newest patch release my game won't start so i can't see what is causing the conflict do you have something that shows whets causing the conflict so i don't have to delete all of my mods please let me know usually when my game is up and running i am able to resolve the matter through Better exceptions but because my game wont load i cant see what mod is bad any recommendations or do you have any tools i can use to fix this
TwistedMexi
You'll need to enable the debug interaction cheats with something like mccc, or adding my always testing mod might be enough
Jocelle
HI mexi! I have a question regarding your cheats when it comes to shift+click are the options to start fires and create sims no longer an option? i think like a month ago i was able to shift+click and do all kinds of cheats, but now there are only 4 options: create animal, teleport here and tool options and the gear for the smarter pie menu settings. there were so many other cheats available and now i cant find them. could you please help me?
ShanayaSims
I can’t wait to try this! Looks amazing!
Tristan Chambers
Hi. Sorry to be one of those annoying people, and I'm not bothered by the current setting but my job has put my brain in permanent copy edit mode about this: have you considered changing "normal" text size to "default" or "standard"? Again, I don't personally care and if you prefer to keep the wording as is that's obviously your choice. I just thought I'd share the thought that particular part of my brain had immediately while watching the video.
Kirsten
Love this!
Emma O'Sullivan
i am getting the same exception just wondering if its to do with a trait after reading your comments, what trait did you find that was causing the problem please?
Robyn
Put your mod back in after removing that stowaway trait and all is working well! No new exceptions! And your mod works GREAT!! LOVE IT!! Thanks so much for being so responsive!! I'm a huge fan of you and your mods. Thanks!! :0)
Robyn
Oh by the way, your Better Exceptions mod helped me realize what might actually be causing it! And I really wasn't doing anything specific at the time. I'm currently adding build mode cc back in slowly because I was getting another error from something there. The whim exception just came up randomly while I was waiting to see if I got the other exception again. And the only new thing I had added other than clothes or build mode cc was this mod. Love your mods!! :0)
Robyn
I found out it might be a trait mod I didn't know I had! Sometimes they come over when you download a custom sim. I did get the error again after I removed this mod, so pretty sure its NOT your mod. I am going to put this back in the game now and see if it still happens! Thanks!! :0)
TwistedMexi
I wouldn't think so, but might have something to do with the interactions being moved out of categories. What were you trying to do in game when it happened?
Robyn
Unfortunately, after I installed this I started getting exceptions. This one came up. Last Module Called: whims_tracker.py Last Function Called: _generate_whim_buckets_for_type_and_whimset Error message: Exception in Sim Timeline: Exception resuming Element (AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'guid64'), CategoryID: whims_tracker:1357 I removed the mod and the error isn't coming back. Could your mod be causing this?
Cathi H.
Thank you so much!
szanne7000
💞🌸💞
Wendy Hubble
Thank you TM. This mod is unbelievably useful.