Archaeology Kit 2.0 Beta Prerelease

Archaeology Kit 2.0 Beta Prerelease

Here's the first preview of the update I've been talking about for...about a year or more? There are a lot of new features and a number of important bug fixes. In addition, all Sims regions are supported with customized artifact types, even Moonwood Mill (although the Werewolf pack integration might be more extensive as I learn about it playing).

This beta release is not without bugs. This mod became kind of enormous during the pandemic, and I reworked some aspects of it several times for better gameplay. It's at a point now where I think it's significantly better than the previous release of the Archaeology Kit, and I use the features regularly. I don't plan to make any further significant structural changes to the missions, but may add more.

High level view of the new features

• Museum Contractor mission-type career
• Museums are now manned by Docents who answer questions and provide a way to interact with the Simsonian Institute, the sponsor of the archaeological missions.
• SimLore Skill involved in identifying and using Relics
• Extensive Notebook Entries
• Historical Books (with Cliff Notes)
• Archaeology Dig social event
• New Achievements
• Tutorial (in progress)
• Artifacts 'remember' where they came from. When you dig up a dirt clump, it is tagged with the region and potentially the lot where you found it. This tag is propagated to the artifacts that you extract from them. The mission career missions rely heavily on this.
• No more dependence on the XML Injector

Changes to previous behaviors
Each region now has a single artifact culture, rather than a mish-mosh of proportions of different ones. This simplification makes it a lot easier to understand which artifact culture goes with which region. There are a few that return more than one type of artifact, however, for backstory reasons.

Each Relic now comes from a single pre-determined lot, so that clues can be given about their locations throughout the rest of the mod.
You can't use a relic until it's been identified by someone with Sim Lore skill

Bug Fixes
There's a long-standing, but moderately uncommon, bug if you queued up a large list of dirt clumps to uncover and set it to super speed 3, there was a random chance that you'd throw an exception and render the archeological workbench inoperable. You'd have to sell it and get a new one, since it was stuck in a partially 'filled' state. The speed of your computer had a bearing on whether this might happen. I put in some fixes to change the timing of the extraction sequence, and thought I'd had it fixed since I couldn't get it to happen again afterwards. Until yesterday. 

To deal with it for now, I added a debug cheat interaction on the Archaeology Table itself to replace it for free, by deleting the old (presumably broken) one and putting a new one in your inventory. You can find this by shift-clicking on the archaeology bench with testing cheats enabled.

This was related to the issue where your sim would appear to fling a dirt clump across the lot to the archaeology bench when you selected 'Uncover' or 'Authenticate' on something in your inventory. Now they wait until they actually walk up to the bench to put something on it, as they should.

Many artifact models adjusted to fit on the archaeology bench better. Swords now point upwards instead of being horizontal, so you won't need to see your archaeologist sims getting stabbed in the stomach while they authenticate a sword. Also adjusted a number of the wall-hanging artifact to fit on the bench better. There are still one or two of the Komorebi culture wall-mounted artifacts that are a problem to authenticate that I'll be fixing before the public release.

The Archaeology Dig Site lot trait should work more reliably now. You might need to visit it and stay a bit and/or come back the next day to see the spawned dig sites. It should generally try to keep 3 dig piles available on the lot, and should spawn more if needed every few hours.

Museum Docents and Mission Career
Each museum lot should now spawn a Docent, or museum guide, that serves a similar purpose as a librarian does in a library. They work the same hours as librarians. They will walk around from time to time, giving brief tours of exhibits, reading books and using a computer. If you put a Front Desk object on the lot, the docent will staff it (this is super-handy so that you know where they are when you arrive at the lot).

The docent is your connection to the mission career. If you Ask them about the Institute after introducing yourself to them, they will tell you how to start working for the museum as well as add a notebook entry to that effect.

Donate a Rare non-Omiscan artifact to the Museum to qualify for employment. Once you qualify to work for the museum, you can ask any docent for current Museum retrieval missions. There are several levels of missions that will become available as you complete them and advance in the mission career and Sim Lore skill.

Most missions involve going and finding something specific (or many things) and returning it to any museum docent. Most missions will pay out more if you return more of the types of artifacts requested.

There are 8 repeating mission types with about 2-5 permutations each (so a lot of different combinations), and 9 non-repeating missions where you find and return a specific relic. Testing all of these mission combinations is what I'm spending a lot of time on now.

Archaeological Dig Social Event
You can create a social event on the calendar and invite people to come dig with you. During the event, participants will get a red star with a '1' over their heads after they dig up a dirt clump. Walk over to them and select 'Collect Archaeological Find' and they will give you the dirt clump they found. This was kind of a last minute repurposing of a situation I came up with for something else, so I want to improve it. Should I add a lunch break or something? I think it needs more social interaction objectives.

Careful! There is one lethal relic!
I changed the Wand of Mua Pel'am to use the new meteorite feature instead of the lava bomb effect. It's easier to aim, but it is lethal to any sim that you aim a meteorite at. I don't usually add lethal features, but maybe just this one...? Idk. I'm not sure what should happen to a sim hit by a meteor other than dying, so I may leave this in. It still triggers an earthquake, though. :D

Known bugs in this version
There are a few artifacts that usually hang on the wall, like tapestries and paintings, that don't mount on the archaeology bench correctly yet. I'm going to fix those, but just noticed them recently.

The tutorial only has a single slide image completed right now. I made that one primarily to find out if I could do it. Now that I know that I can add tutorial content, I'm going to flesh it out before public release.

There are also many little things I want to polish up. Reaction effects and animations, more impacts on reputation and relationships, and some chance cards.

Release Track Plans
I'm going to be updating this as often as possible over the near future until it's ready to be released. There are a lot of Lore additions in the new Werewolf pack, and I'm playing it to figure out how to incorporate it into the Lore backstory I came up with. I still have a fair amount of text to clean up and edit.

I think I have a couple of localizations to re-add. Also localization will be MUCH easier now. Translators will be able to simply translate a text file and send it to me.  

I truly value your input and opinions. Please reply to the download thread or message me directly with any issues or suggestions!

THIS VERSION SHOULD COMPLETELY REPLACE ANY OLD ARCHEOLOGY KIT VERSIONS IN YOUR MODS FOLDER

Statistics
XML Tuning: 750 files,  77,000+ lines of tuning code
Python: 12 files, 2400+ lines of Python code
Custom Strings: 735 (and growing)
Custom Objects: 65+

2.0 Release Change Log
6/23/2022, 2.0b, First beta preview release