Creating Custom PremadeSimTemplate Tutorial - Pt 1 (Patreon)

This is a moderately advanced tutorial.

Our ultimate goal for this tutorial is to create a custom Sim, add it to the game as a premade and add a relationship between them and an existing premade.

We'll start by familiarising with the base concepts.

To begin with, create a new save to export Sims with the household tool 

I'll export into a package the Vatore and Count Straud for this first stage.

 Add all of the Sims you want to work on into the same package. If you want to do makeovers, do them before you begin working on the templates.

Open the package you saved in S4Studio to find the Household Templates 

 The things we're interested into are the premade_household_template_id

And under sim > edit item

premade_sim_template_id

Only premades from Get Together and up have a PremadeSimTemplate

Sims from Base Game and custom Sims will not have this file associated at all, so we will need to make one for them and we'll learn how in the next tutorial. For now take note of where these IDs are in the household templates and grab the number you see next to the premade_sim_template_id

Search this file under tools > export tuning and add it to your package

Do the same for Lilith and Caleb

  These files you just exported contain some information for the generation of the Sim at the beginning of a savegame like traits, skill and, depending on the occult, rank and powers/spells unlocked

 We'll look at this files in the next tutorial when we'll make one from scratch. For this tutorial we will only need the IDs of the templates.

To fix the relationships we need to work on a Maxis module called world.premade_sim_relationships (ID 419601810556282288) and we will need to make an override because it's currently impossible to use the Core Library to inject into it.

If you scroll through this module, you'll notice that it has a sequence of actions and template IDs that direct the game on what relationships to add to two Sims who exist in the game but do not live in the same home.

We will, as you might expect, add our own instructions to this file.

A warning regarding this module: if you mess up and add a relationship with a Sim whose template does not exist in game, the game will fail to load any households and return you to the world selection screen. The same thing happens if you make a mistake in your loots. 

We'll start by adding a negative relationship between the Vatores and Count Straud. To do this we can reference Maxis loot actions:

So let's add our relationships at the very bottom of the module:

VIDEO

Relationship Bits

To fix up the relationship in accordance with Maxis "canon", I also want to make Lilith and Vlad offspring/master. To do this I need to add a relationship bit between them with an action.

Some actions you can find in the Maxis module already do this, especially for the newer premades:

There are two kind of relationship bits: bidirectional and unidirectional. Brother/Sister happens to be bidirectional, so we only need to add it to one Sim for the other to get it too:

Other relbits are unidirectional, which means that I need to add different relationship bits between the actor and the target and the target and the actor. Sentiments, for example, are unidirectional. So are Uncle/Aunt > Nephew/Niece, Grandfather/Grandmother > Grandson/Granddaughter etc. Vampire Master> Offspring is also Unidirectional.

 This is important because the tuning of our actions will be different depending on the directionality of the relationship bit. Bidirectional relbits will work if you set up the tuning of the action the way I'll teach you in this tutorial, but unidirectional ones will not work correctly if you write the tuning the way it's shown in the Maxis premade setup above. 

In the world.premade_sim_relationships:

sim_a = ACTOR

sim_b = TARGET

Setting up unidirectional relbits will likely require you a lot of testing to get it right.

Since an action to make Sims vampire Master/Offspring doesn't exist in game, I will need to make a new one.

If I also want to fix the friendship/romance, I'll need to do it in this custom action.

VIDEO

That's all for the first part. It's a bit more complicated than doing the same with a mod at the beginning of the game, but the advantage is that you only need to do it once and the relationships will always be there at the beginning of the game as long as you keep your mod inside the folder.

Next we will apply what we learnt in this tutorial to make a custom template for the Landgraab and Johnny Zest.