Mod #2 - No Overheat

You know how when you start a game in Oasis Springs (the desert map), your Sim is immediately dying of heatstroke? I hate that, so let’s fix it.

Tip

Like last time, the point of this tutorial isn’t actually overheating, it is about figuring out how to change some aspect of the game we know nothing about.

The technique used in this tutorial won’t always work, and there are other ways to figure things out, but it’s really cool when it does.

DLC

This tutorial uses the Seasons DLC. If you don’t have this DLC, you can still follow along and use Lot51 to view the files that are discussed.

I didn’t think about this until the last minute. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Finding the File

Somewhere in the game files is a tuning file that controls the overheating interaction, but where on earth is it? We know the popup contains the phrase “burning to death”, so let’s start there.

1. In Sims 4 Editor, open the String Table Browser
2. Search the phrase “burning to death”
3. There are 3 results, but the one we are looking for starts with {0.SimFirstName} is burning to death and has the key 0x718198DE.
4. Selecting this entry shows us any tuning files that reference this string, which in this case is action\loot_Notifications_TemperatureDeaths_Burning. Click it to open in in the tuning browser.

This tuning has a class of LootAction, which has a fairly generic description of A list of loot operations. In Sims 4, loot essentially means anything you can receive as a response to something, good or bad. Sure enough, looking at the description tree, the tuning contains only a single <List> node called loot_actions. Clicking the variant dropdown shows us this list can contains hundreds of different data types, including buffs, payments, weather, and more.

Looking back at the actual XML we see it uses the variant notification_and_dialog, references some audio, and references the string we used to get here. How boring. This is just the annoying popup and nothing more. We didn’t find what we needed. All hope is lost.

All hope is not lost. Click the Usage button at the top, which shows files that reference this file. A single result, commodity_Death_Temperature_Burning. Success.

Exploring

Spoiler alert, commodity_Death_Temperature_Burning is the correct file, but if it wasn’t we could keep going down the rabbit hole of usages. We can go the other way too! Ctrl + Left Click a tuning references in the XML editor to open it. Just be warned there is currently no back button (maybe in the future) so don’t get lost!

Additionally, the string table trick won’t always work, in which case you could try search random keywords, or blindly scroll the tuning list to look for keywords that pop out. It isn’t unreasonable to think we could have found commodity_Death_Temperature_Burning without the using the string table, it would just take longer.

Understanding the File

This is perhaps the most important step of tuning modding.

Reminder

This section talks about editing a Commodity tuning. Don’t forget, the point isn’t commodities, it’s how do I understand this new tuning type I’ve never seen.

First, we can see c="Commodity", so the Commodity.tdesc is loaded. It has the following description:

Represents any commodity that has a value and changes over time. This class updates lazily, which means it generally only processes change when either a new delta is added, a delta is removed, or someone tries to inspect the value of the commodity.

A little technical, but a value that changes over time seems like a good takeaway. Let’s continue exploring by clicking around the XML. The tree on the right will automatically select the corresponding root node, which in turn shows the node’s description at the bottom. Read the names of the nodes present in the file, their descriptions, and see if you can understand what is happening.

Challenge #1

Can you understand this file without me explaining it?

Solution #1

• This tuning tells the game to track a variable with a range of 0 - 100
• It naturally wants to converge to 0
• When the variable reaches 2, a notification will appear (the one that annoys me)
• When it reaches a value of 100, it triggers a failure interaction of death_Overheat, which presumably kills the sim
• It decays at a rate of 0.208
• It has several usages, which are most likely other tuning files that cause the variable to increase, since it never appears to increase on its own

This matches what we see in game. Do something that causes the Sim to get hot, get a notification, then die. A tale as old as time.

Editing the File

In the future you’ll likely be able to import this file directly into a package (I’m a broken record, so many things to improve), but for now we’ll be using tdesc.lot51.cc again.

1. In tdesc.lot51.cc, click Import EA Tuning
2. Search commodity_Death_Temperature_Burning, select it, then click Import & Edit

Override

Unlike the previous trait mod where we were making something completely new, we now want to override the game’s functionality.

To do this, simply use the same resource key as the game’s resource. Mods always load with higher priority than game files, so overriding is automatic.

Challenge #2: Can you figure out what changes to make to fix the issue?

Challenge #2

Can you figure out what changes to make to fix the issue?

Solution #2

We want to make two changes.

1. Remove the states field to prevent the annoying popup
2. Remove the commodity_failure field to prevent dying

This should be a nice clean solution. The overheat variable is still tracked, so we’re not at risk of breaking anything that relies on it, but it no longer directly causes anything to happen. Perfect!

Download the XML and SimData, import it into a new package in S4E, and enjoy not overheating! If you have an issues, the final XML can be found below.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<I c="Commodity" i="statistic" m="statistics.commodity" n="commodity_Death_Temperature_Burning" s="182175">
<T n="_default_convergence_value">0</T>
<U n="arrow_data">
  <T n="negative_double_arrow">-20</T>
  <T n="negative_single_arrow">-1</T>
  <T n="negative_triple_arrow">-30</T>
  <T n="positive_double_arrow">20</T>
  <T n="positive_single_arrow">1</T>
  <T n="positive_triple_arrow">30</T>
</U>
<T n="auto_satisfy_curve_random_time_offset">120</T>
<T n="decay_rate">0.208</T>
<U n="initial_tuning">
  <T n="_use_auto_satisfy_curve_as_initial_value">False</T>
  <T n="_use_stat_value_on_init">True</T>
  <T n="_value">0</T>
</U>
<T n="max_value_tuning">100</T>
<T n="maximum_auto_satisfy_time">1440</T>
<T n="min_value_tuning">0</T>
<T n="remove_on_convergence">False</T>
<T n="ui_sort_order">0</T>
<U n="ui_visible_distress_threshold">
  <T n="threshold_value">0</T>
</U>
<T n="weight">1</T>
</I>