[Misc.] Important Patch-related Preparatory Information (Patreon)

First, for those who missed it:

TOMORROW (JULY 23) EA IS RELEASING A PATCH UPDATE FOR THE BASE GAME.

And then, on Thursday, A NEW PACK IS RELEASING.

Let’s talk about the consequences of that for my work in particular, So we can all be prepared.

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Obviously, I CAN’T KNOW EXACTLY AT THIS POINT which mods will be affected or not, and to what extent, but from what we’ve seen in the EA livestream and patch/pack notes, I can tell some stuff with good confidence:

1.       RPO M7 (Jealousy)

As you can see, these features of RPO M7 (right) will now have a bg EA equivalent (left):

 Therefore, I will remove my version – BUT if warranted, I will leave my same menu in game, and make it give/ungive the EA stuff. This way, you can adjust these things on your Sims from Cas AND from live mode.

I have in mind to add some other "quality of life" adjustments to EA's boundary system also. You'll likely hear of that soon after the patch happens and I have the files.

2.       Road to Romance

The pack is adding a romance skill.

Therefore, the mod “Road to romance” will now need to have two versions: one that is as of now for people who don’t have the pack, and one adapted for the pack. The latter would remove my custom skill and add its effect, interactions and benefits as additions to the ones of the EA skill.

3.       Open love life

Just a comment on that one - it’s not going to go anywhere. The romantic boundaries that EA is now adding already existed in my RPO mod and didn’t warrant retiring Open Love Life any more than their EA equivalent shall. What I will do however, is integrate between the two systems better.

So, if in CAS you make a new sim and give them “all jealousy”, OLL would then be very likely to give them the “prefers exclusivity” flavor. And if you make a new Sim in CAS and give them boundaries that align with more nonexclusive preferences, OLL will assign something that fits that.

The EA boundaries apply and take precedence in any relationship that has not been explicitly made into one of OLL’s possible arrangements. Within said arrangements, it is OLL’s system which takes over. Preferences are one thing, but agreements are another. The agreement supersedes the preference / boundary, on a relationship-to-relationship basis.

If you don't understand my meaning, here's examples:
Say Sim A has a boundary that anything is cheating to them, BUT then they agree to an open arrangement with a Sim because they think it's better than losing them entirely.
Or Sim B is not jealous, but agreed explicitly to be exclusive with another and therefore would consider any extra-relationship romance a betrayal of trust and agreement. OLL has always considered breaking an explicit arrangement a betrayal, no matter if the sim feeling betrayed doesn't care that much about their partner sleeping around. 

4.       RPO M17 (charm and chemistry)

if you install that, it means you don’t want the EA system for romantic chemistry. Therefore, I think that I will try and block the EA system for romantic attractions in this mod. But it will depend on whether there is demand, because I really don’t know that anyone would want to use RPO M17 over the EA system. We shall see.

5.       RPO M16 (Meet and Mingle) and the EA dating app system

it is totally fine to have several dating apps in the game and will not cause issues. Therefore, M16 will stay as is and keep on with its planned developments when the time comes.

What I would like to do is add more of my filters from Meet&Mingle to EA’s dating app. But of course, I’ve not seen the code yet much so I can’t tell for sure what is going to be possible or not.

6.       Everything else

I hope I will be proven wrong, but have a strong feeling that a lot of structural changes (in addition to what is mentioned above) will be required in the aftermath of this patch, In many if not most of my mods.

We are also in a situation where both the patch release and the pack release will require update work.

This all means that update times will be longer. Depending on the severity of changes necessary, it could also mean that some of the newer versions will need further testing than what I usually do after patches.

7. Side note: On Law and Disorder

Needless to say, the work in progress on that mod is continuing, but will have to be halted during the patch Updating madness.
For those who missed the last progress post about Law & Disorder - it's here.

Feel free to share your thoughts and feedback!

Many thanks to my Patrons for keeping my work alive!