What I'm Working On #031

Sul sul! I'm back with another update on how I've been spending my modding time this week. I feel like this is going to be one of those updates where it doesn't look like I've done a lot, but I actually made a lot of progress, and the steps forward are really impactful.

My big success of the week for the Regency update was getting the new tuning file types for the game finished. I now have a reliable way to make synchronized animations with 4 or more sims at once using the group dance tuning from Get Together. I think there's a way to get this to be base game compatible, but I haven't had a chance to look into it yet.

This took me longer than I hoped to figure out because my initial plan didn't work the way I thought it would. For modders who might be reading this, passing along a parameter through a trait or the interaction itself didn't appear to work. Instead, all of the sims with the "follower" job would follow the actor's parameters, because only "x" is listed in the ASM, though interestingly the age and species parameters still work. My eventual solution was to derive a class from the SynchInSituationMixerInteraction and override the get_asm method from the parent class to specify unique actor names for all the sims. This is better anyway because now I can handle things more directly.

But the possibilities for this are endless. I'm already planning to redo my Violin/Piano Duets mod, but now? Quartets, even orchestras, seem easier now knowing that this works! Or ballet dances with more than two sims (which I still need to get to eventually - but animation just takes so long 😖).

Speaking of music mods, I also spent some time this week updating all the instruments to be heirloom compatible for those who use Life and Death, and fixing a couple of outdated tags on the objects themselves. I also fixed yet another a small string bug for the French Horn mod.

And that's pretty much it! I've been chugging away at animations, but now that I've confirmed how to get it all in game, things should move along a lot more smoothly.

Until next time, ~JS