Dev Blog: Update on Arranged Marriages Etc.

Hey guys! Sorry for the quietness since my last update post, time got away from me and I also didn't have anything important to post about as I was still at a stalemate with my mods until a few days ago, lol. Also, I've decided to name these WIP posts "Dev Blog" for a number of reasons, so this should make them easier to identify.

Arranged Marriages

But first things first, I finally got the parent to parent "arrange a marriage" system working, which you can see in the gif above. After working on something with Pancake off and on the last two weeks (more info coming soon, still in early stages), I continued making this system but hit a roadblock immediately, specifically that the second SimPicker would not activate. After much frustration I finally asked in my Creator Musing server and Lumpinou and Adeepindigo gave me an idea, and now it works, which I'm very grateful for.

There are still some quirks to correct (like the second blank name) and things to improve, but I am happy with how the system turned out so far. I especially can't wait to get the success and failure system working, which I want to make sure that traits, wealth, reputation, etc. for sure play a part. Unfortunately this section is huge (and painful) but will be worth it once I've got it working in a way that I want. If it doesn't work out as intended then I'll just add the important tests only and go from there.

Besides the social impact and interactions I want to add, I also want to add other arrangement systems. I've had my own ideas and received several suggestions on what can be added, including a matchmaker NPC/system, and I think the ones I am adding will give players a lot of variety and storytelling options to choose from. Of course not all the options will be released in the first version of the mod, but I will be adding what I can. For now I want to get the general system in place and build off of it as I go.

Functional Broom

Still no improvement here, unfortunately. Pancake took a look but still has no idea what to suggest, so it looks like I'll be redoing the broom animations. Still going to focus on Arranged Marriages for now, then when I need a break (which may be soon because of the tests) I will work on fixing the animations and try to get it released by early May.

Other

Like I said, working on something with Pancake that is for family players, and I think they will be quite happy to have this new functional object added to their game. I know I am! It's something I've been wanting to do since I started modding, and Pancake and I wanted to work on it together. I was hoping to show a preview of it in this update but I'm waiting on Pancake to fix and send the rig to me for adjustment and additional animations. 

I also started researching something big as a personal project that's also related to a group project. I don't want to reveal what it is yet or give a hint until a prototype is working, but so far it looks like it's possible and I am extremely excited to start it. Like this is something I was dismissing before because of the work involved, but research has shown that it might be slightly easier than I thought, and if it works out it will all be worth it. Or, maybe and hopefully, EA will release it before I get to it. I'd be happy with either one, but hopefully they'll wait just a bit for me to actually test it, lol. 

Also aiming to get two previous small mods I've shown off before released sometime in May as well, so there will hopefully be a lot of posts coming your way soon!