TUTORIAL - Buffs (Patreon)

We started Messing with the Constructor, we met Commodities and we met Buffs.

We gave a look to them, very briefly... let's give them a proper look, because buffs are probably the most powerful thing in the game to affect a sim behaviour, and not only... they can do a lot of things... really, a lot of things:

I don't even know all the things they can do

Among other things they can: change the way your sim look, temporarily or for good, change the walk style, change the voice pitch, make other sims around the sim with the buff on react, add interactions the sim can only use while the buff is on, affect the skill gain, the success of the interactions, autonomy, relationships, push interactions, etc...

You all see buffs in the UI when they're meant to give the sim a mood, but that's just one of the thigs they can do, for a buff you see in the UI, there are 20 that are working in the background. So let's start from the ones you see in the UI:

Simple, simple one... the happy buff a mean sim get when they've been mean... this doesn't do much more than giving the sim a mood (happy), and this one shows in the UI:

It has a duration: 240 sims minutes. After that, the buff is removed. It also has a category... this is important because some actions affect all buffs in a category, but doesn't impact gameplay much.

You can ignore the audio stings.

Description, name and icon, pretty straightforward what shows in the UI

Mood type and weight, these are the things that affect gameplay more in here, I don't need to explain, given that this is a visible buff, you all know what it means: it gives a happy mood, weight 1

This was easy, let's pick another:

This buff here is not one you see. This poor buff here doesn't even have a name, or a description... it doesn't give a mood, and it's not visible. But it does have something, that appearance modifier there:

This is a buff you get in the actor career, when your sim sits on the makeup chair, have the makeup done, this is the thing that changes your sim's makeup for a while.

It sets this CAS part:

Provided that the sim meets certain requisites:

Otherwise it picks another

There are a lot tuned in this buff.

Here is another that does more or less the same thing:

The Tragic Clown hidden buff, this one gives the Clown hair to male NPCs in the Clown Role

This TestSet says that this buff can only be added to male sims.

And this is the CAS part that is set (ClownHair) OrangeMittens explained how to find this number here 

Let us move on something else:

This one seems like it's not doing much, but it adds a static commodity

Static commodities are referenced in interactions, basically... this buff here forces the sim who has it to play the violin

This one makes the sim use the perky walkstyle 

This one affects the skills gain and autonomy

This one is a proximity buff that gets added when the sim is near to a loved one

This one helps making friends (multiplies the gain in relationship for the friendly track in increase)

This one increases a commodity 5 points per minutes while it's active

This one is awesome, this is the hidden buff that affects the behaviour of the possessed sims in Strangerville. So, apart from the fact that it has some actions that run when the buff is added (loot_on_addition) when it's remover (loot_on_removal) and when the sim is loaded into a lot (loot_on_instance)

It changes the pie menu. It disables everything but one option, and adds a tooltip (Cannot do this while possessed)

It locks all the needs decay. While this buff is on, needs don't go down.

It says that the sim must only care about satisfying these commodities and statistics autonomously, meaning that the sim will only pick interaction that reference these commodities and statistics.

Blocks all the interactions but the ones on this list.

Adds a static commodity, also adds a bunch of interactions only a possessed sim has.

Changes the walkstyle, also changes the run walkstyle.

Here we go, we saw maybe the 5% of what buffs can do.

You cannot add most of these things with the Constructor, but once you have the basis done in there, you can open the mod in S4S and add the options the Constructor doesn't have manually.