TUTORIAL - Traits (Patreon)

In our Constructor Tutorials we also met traits... it's the first thing we met, in fact. 

Traits, too, can do a lot of things:

But they don't actually impact the sims behaviour as much as Buffs. Unlike buffs, thoug, trait sticks, they're permanent, that's it... they stay on the sims until I decide to remove them, buffs are more volatile... a sim can lose a buff when you reload the game, when it's loaded into a lot, when the buff runs out... a trait is not lost in these cases, and this is the reason when I want a buff to stay on my sim, I attach it to a trait:

Some traits just do this... act as containers for a buff. The buff is the one affecting the gameplay, the trait makes it so that the buff stays on the sim, and gets given every time the sim is loaded, as long as the sim has the trait. Some traits do a bit more than this one, some traits can be lost in some cases.

There are 3 types of traits:

PERSONALITY

These are the ones that are given in CAS, they take a personality slot, they can randomly be given to NPCs.

GAMEPLAY

These are traits the sims can get during the gameplay, they don't take a personality slot, they cannot be given to NPCs randomly, they can do pretty much the same as Personality traits, these are the traits you can get, for example, by completing an aspiration or buy from the reward store.

HIDDEN

These are given in many different ways, usually by an action, they don't take a personality slot, they cannot be randomly given to NPCs unless they're global traits. You don't see them in the UI.

There are other special types of traits:

But you'll hardly need anything more than Personality, Gameplay and Hidden traits.

The Constructor allows you to create Personality traits, but also Hidden and Gameplay traits (Aspirations are gameplay traits with some options enabled, the constructor deals with the options automatically if you select the specific option, but they have nothing else different from the game's point of view)

Your trait doesn't have to be a Personality one, it can be also a reward, or a hidden trait, it doesn't have to take a personality slot. It depends on what you're trying to do (I don't use custom traits in my gameplay, because I find that a lot of people make personality trait because that's what they learned to do, but those traits would work better as reward or hidden and don't need to steal me a personality slot, like I don't like Maxis making Cat Lover and Dog Lover personality traits, I don't want you to learn how to do one thing and then have to stick to it because that's the thing you can do, I want you to understand what you're doing and be able to decide HOW you're going to do it).

Let's start by looking at a Personality trait:

We already gave a look to a personality trait in the Constructor tutorial, this one is the same. It has age restrictions, it has buff replacements, it has a core buff, it has conflicting traits, it has a whimset.

It has an interaction attached only Active sims can use (there are other ways to do this, like using tests in the interactions instead of adding the interactions to a trait or to a buff)

Questions: 

Can a Gameplay trait have a Core Buff?

Sure.

Can a hidden trait have a Whimset?

Yup.

Can a hidden trait have Buff Replacements?

Yeah!

They can do the same shit. The differences are very few.

Let's look at some options we can find in some traits:

Can disable Aging:

The OccultVampire trait disables aging for every life stage is not Baby, Toddler, Child and Teen.

Can disable Death:

Baby Ariel NPC CANNOT die (in my game she can because I removed this shite) it doesn't matter how much you try.

Can add Commodities:

This is the charge only witches have, the trait says so...

Change the Plumbbob:

Completely change the Needs:

Robots do not have the Hunger, Bladder, Hygiene, Energy, Thirst, Oral Hygiene, Hands Hygiene needs. Instead they have: Charge, Durability, Death Timer, Enhancement Tracker. Apart from that, they're just sims with a trait that modifies them, and with a buff that adds an outfit.

Some traits are NPCs only:

This one gets removed when a sim is added into an active household and also, it forces the sims to use wands. By the way, this one also sticks if the sim is uploaded to the gallery (allow_from_gallery TRUE)

And then there are traits that...

Do nothing at all... they just sits there to be used in other things like tests.