Lazy Duchess
patreon
Progress updates (TS3 Multiplayer, OpenTS2, etc.)
🕑 Added 2022-11-21 21:54:23 +0000 UTCHi there!
TS3 Multiplayer
So I have kinda bad news - Discord will be shutting down their Game SDK in a few months, which is what the mod is built around as it provides a safe and easy to use networking framework.
It is a bit demotivating, as it's definitely going to be a bit of work to fully replace the system with one that doesn't depend on the Discord SDK. But oh well, at the moment that's a problem for future me to deal with.
OpenTS2
Some of you probably know that I have a very WIP open source reimplementation of TS2 I've been working on for a while now: https://github.com/LazyDuchess/OpenTS2
This is the project I've been focusing on for a while now.
It's nowhere near finished - won't be for a very long time - but a lot of coding and research has already gone into reading/writing packages and resources in a way that resembles that of the original game.
The benefits to having an open source TS2 should be quite obvious, you could fix anything you don't like about the game if you put some work into it, but my main goal at the moment, with compression and package loading and editing already finally implemented, is to make better tools. SimPE just doesn't work great for me, and OpenTS2 doesn't have much trouble at all loading the entirety of the game's packages in under 5 seconds!
One thing I've been experimenting with are TS4-like body morphs, here's a rough proof of concept:
The fat morph mesh is completely separate from the clothes or any of the Sim's parts, and is not actually a copy of a TS2 model, it's completely different and only loosely resembles the shape of a TS2 Sim, but with some maths it can be automatically adapted to any existing TS2 clothing mesh without any extra work from the user.
This also means there are (hopefully) no negative copyright or legal repercussions, as the morph models don't actually match the TS2 models at all!
Now this is a proof of concept though - the code is there and it's been tested on exported TS2 meshes, but we're far from seeing Sims being loaded and rendered in OpenTS2.
TS3 Attraction
I'm really interested in getting TS3 Attraction further along, as I've taken a bit of an interest into researching custom traits and it seems like a good way to store attraction data by generating a trait for each turn on, turn off and sexuality option.
I played around with hidden custom traits a little and it seems like there are no crashes or obvious issues from uninstalling them and loading a save with Sims that had those traits, which is promising, and could also mean that some custom visible CAS/Reward traits could be added to Attraction to make it a bit of a more involved mod. Maybe.
The way attraction works at the moment is insanely hacky, there are a lot of bad workarounds to try and make attraction work in CAS and transfer it in and out of it, and unfortunately there are a lot of downsides as copying Sims or saving them in the library won't keep the attraction traits. This is why you don't see mods that add custom data like this to CAS, I imagine.
Making custom hidden traits could potentially work around all of these issues, as traits are copied and moved around with Sims.
The proper option would be to make it a core mod with an actual system for custom Sim data, but I imagine that would justifiably be a bit of a bummer for most of you and I'd like to keep it as compatible as possible, but it could be a great feature to have for a community core mod project (I believe there is a WIP one on MTS)
That makes me wonder, what core mod do you guys use, or do you not use any? I'd love to know.
Comments
Julius MA
I'm really excited with the Attraction system for Sims 3! πππ As for the core mods, Simler90's Gameplay Core Mod and NRaas mods are my must have. The former fixes a lot of stuff (e.g.: Bonehilda and cave reset) while NRaas helps deal with lag and a lot of fine-tuning, especially when I try to play rotational. And I'm aware that Simler90's mod conflicts with most NRaas mods. Haven't noticed anything weird yet, but still kinda hope someone will eventually make a version of Simler90's mod so it is also compatible with other NRaas mods.
Anime_Boom
Awesome, looking forward to hearing more from OpenTS2 when stuff is ready to be shown! Thanks for all these amazing projects! :D
Lazy Duchess
Thank you! Yeah unrequited love might be impossible to implement without core modding and even then, as you've seen, it's likely to be buggy. Attraction will be separate from the relationship system though, so it will be one sided with Sims feeling differently about each other depending on their attraction traits.
Lazy Duchess
The morph system is planned as something exclusively for OpenTS2, not vanilla TS2 as that would probably be near impossible to implement as a mod. I'll likely end up making a custom solution for networking, as for attraction traits they could probably be saved externally to a file yeah, but there is a "proper" way to store data into savegames natively and I'll just be using that.
Viktoria S.
Great news! I am especially waiting for TS3 Attraction (though I do wish there was als an unrequited love possibility, unfortunately the mod available on mts is glitchy and causes some worlds not to load) and TS3 new shaders (the ghosts and black clothing look wooooooow on your screens). And TS2 morphs is something incredible too. As for core mods, I use Nraas' MC and Error Trap, and also simler90's Gameplay Systems Core Mod
Anime_Boom
Wow TS4-like body morphs for The Sims 2!?! Even as a concept/test sound really impressive, and an OpenTS2 sounds really cool to I love projects like OpenMW! With the morphing in sims 2 would the clothing matching the morphs be similar to how bodyslide outfit studio for skyrim and fallout work or is it completly in game with no external generation tool required? The TS3 Attraction system working as traits sounds interesting, is there a way to make the game make the stored attraction in some sort of .cache file in the games documents folder were mod scripts are saved? I think the Sims 3 Script Extender on modthesims allows mods to load in custom mod directory file locations to store data. https://modthesims.info/d/652639/sims-3-script-extender-version-1-03.html And as for the multiplayer sims 3 project, Valve has some networking stuff modders can use iirc skyrim together another modder project was going to use it for its multiplayer but Bethesda asked kindly to only use self made sever code and not valves. The game would have to be on steam so sims 3 origin users would miss out.
