Early Access - Home Regions Update

Keep Sims in Home Regions has received a big update! Check out all the new features below. This update will be in Early Access for a short time to gather feedback from Patrons before public release. Please let me know if everything is working as expected for you and if you notice anything off.

Total Revamp of the Mod's Code

LeRoi has worked his magic, and the mod's entire script base has more or less been rebuilt again from the ground up! The functions and navigation should still feel familiar to anyone who’s been using it already, though. There are a number of new icons, new tooltips, and new menu descriptions to help you get around the new features. There are a few new, smarter SimFilters included, too, such as making sure the ghostly vendors in the Magic Realm are actually Spellcasters.

Support for More Worlds 

Home Regions now supports filters in Granite Falls, Batuu, Sixam, and the Magic Realm. You can now move your townies there just like any other World, and Sims who spawn there will correctly be assigned to the local World instead of nowhere or another random World. Destination Worlds are sorted to show up after Residential Worlds, and Hidden Worlds show up last. 

Speaking of nowhere, you can also now move Sims to… Nowhere. Any townies living in Nowhere won’t show up to any situation or background event anywhere that requires a local Sim, and will only occasionally show up when a soft filter, or tourist exception allows them in.

Additionally, moving Sims between Worlds with special hidden traits (such as Batuu) uses a smarter process now so that those traits get properly applied and cleaned up.

Townie Population Equalizing

This update includes a fix to the way townies are generated when they aren’t required to live in a specific World. Normally, the game puts population quotas on certain Worlds to make sure that Sims with specific cultures show up in those Worlds, for example Sims with Island culture for Sulani. Unfortunately, these quotas are set quite high (30 townies for San Myshuno alone), and the end result for most players is that all townies live in just three Worlds and most of them will have Japanese names. Several mods have come out over the years trying to address this, but unfortunately they usually do so through brute force methods that basically get rid of the Japanese nameset altogether.

This update makes it so truly randomly spawned townies (like those coming to Worlds with a soft filter or tourist event) can come from any World instead of just three, and incidentally makes it so more townies use the more extensive “Default” name list. Townies spawning in Worlds with specific cultures are unaffected and still come with their special traits and name lists.

World Exemptions

Is one of your Sims the main character of your save file? Would you like to grant them to ability to visit any world they want to, even while you aren’t playing them? Now you can, with the World Filter Exemption settings! Want to give Bella Goth a secret way into StrangerVille? Go for it. Have a well-travelled celebrity Sim who lives in Willow Creek but does her shopping in Mt. Komorebi? You got it! Have a self-insert Sim who wants to check out what kind of wacky antics your other Sims are up to at all times? It’s all up to you!

Shift-click any Sim with testing cheats enabled, and select the new “World Filter Exemption…” menu. Here you can add or remove permissions for that Sim to break through the mod’s usual filter and show up in as many Worlds as you want.

Note: This is a setting saved on the Sim, and by default this will carry over to other save files if you transfer the Sim via the Gallery, your library, or tray files. If you’d rather it didn’t, you can change this in the mod settings. Shift-click anywhere on the ground with testing cheats enabled, and then open the “Home Regions Settings” menu. From there, click the “World Exemption Behavior” option, and select Enabled or Disabled.

Soft Filter Values

Sometimes the soft filter feels too much like a light switch, just plain on and off. Need to go into finer detail to get the vibe just right? Try the new Soft Filter Values. For each World, you can set the likelihood that the Sims walking around are locals or out-of-towners. 

Shift-click anywhere on the ground with testing cheats enabled, and then open the “Home Regions Settings” menu. From there, click the new “Soft Filter Settings” menu (which includes the already existing World Toggle), and then select new “Set Soft Filter Value” menu. Choose a decimal between 0 and 1, with smaller numbers preferring local Sims, and larger numbers preferring out-of-town Sims.

(Requires the World’s Soft Filter to be turned on)

Notification Settings

Moving lots of Sims and changing lots of settings and getting sick of all the notifications spamming you? Don’t worry, now you can turn them off, in grand and granular fashion. 

Shift-click anywhere on the ground with testing cheats enabled, and open the “Home Regions Settings” menu. From there, click the new “Notification Settings” menu. In there, you can choose to turn on or off notifications when Sims get moved from one World to another, notifications when you add a World Exemption, and even notifications when you change settings.

Reset Settings to Default

Did you press a few too many buttons and now you have no idea what the mod is doing? There’s an easy way to fix that right in the game now. Restore your settings to default for a nice, fresh start.

Shift-click anywhere on the ground with testing cheats enabled, and open the “Home Regions Settings” menu. From there, click “Restore Home Region Settings”. You will be prompted whether you are sure you want to proceed. Click “Restore” to start over, “Backup and Restore” to start over but keep your old settings file safe just in case you want to go back, or “Cancel” if you changed you mind.

Tourist Toggle

Historically, Home Regions has allowed Sims to break through the filter to attend events where tourists would be expected. This includes large festivals like those in San Myshuno or taking pictures in Del Sol Valley. Now, you have the ability to turn those off per World. If you want the farm festivals in Henford-on-Bagley to really have a home-town feel, now you can. 

Shift-click anywhere on the ground with testing cheats enabled, and open the “Home Regions Settings” menu. From there, click on the new “Tourists Toggle”. Select any of the available Worlds in that list, and you can choose whether its tourist events should be “Open” or “Locals Only”. When set to Locals Only, the mod will do its best to make sure all tourist roles are filled by Sims living in that World or ones from its Allowed Worlds list. 

Modder Resource: HomeRegionInjectionHook

For modders, this update includes the ability to add your mod’s NPC roles to Home Region’s systems, including the global bypass and soft filter. You can now create a “HomeRegionInjectionHook” snippet and add your situation job tunings to your preferred list. You can even create rules for situations jobs with similar prefixes if you use a certain naming convention. There are several examples included in the package for NPCs from other mods that had already been bypassed, but now some of that power is in your hands and you don’t have to rely just on me to clear up any blockages or conflicts. If you’d like more information, feel free to contact me on Discord for further details or questions.

Note to Translators

This update includes a bunch of new strings. Translations will need to be updated; right now the existing strings are included but all of the new strings are in English.