Building Modding Tools and Getting Updates Ready

I’ve been building modding tools this month! I’ve developed software for a living for many years — really boring software, mostly internal stuff used by corporations. Anyway, software developers like me have been working for years to make building software even MORE boring.

What does that mean? It means that things that I build end up the way I expect them to, rather than risking questions arising like ‘did I remember to import that?’ or ‘what’s actually in there?’ There are fewer of these mysteries nowadays than when I started in this field. However, The process of making a Sims mod still has a lot of places for dumb mistakes to creep in, so I’m trying to reduce that.

Automated Mod Builds

To start with, I wrote a command line tool that uses a ‘build plan’ that lists everything that should go into the mod. Then when run it, it builds the .package file for the mod automatically, and exactly as I planned it, every time.

S4 Shell Tools
https://github.com/simsonianlibrary/s4-shell-tools

The process of putting together the final download package for a complicated mod used to take me several hours of painstaking work with a lot of manual details to get wrong. Now I can do that in just under a second and be sure it came out exactly the way I told it to every time, even if it’s 1:30 AM on Saturday night. :)

I’ve been talking with a number of other modders about how we can improve the quality of our modding workflows (not necessarily making it ‘easier’, per se, just less error prone), and we’re getting a lot of ideas. Hopefully this will all result in a number of new modding tools that might lead to better mods. A few definitely will be.

Speaking of that, what am I doing with these tools?

The Archaeology update is one of my test beds for these tools, since it’s hugely complicated. I’ve also been working on a brand new mod, sort of based on the results of the survey I took. It’s going to be ‘Cyberpunk’ flavored, with many new capabilities for the player provided by technology, rather than Magic like my other mods. It’s also a mission career, with a lot of cool widgets to play with. It’s coming along nicely so far. I'm having blast writing it!

I also have an update I’m finishing up for the Perfumery mod to fix some missing strings issues. And a long list of feature requests for a few of my other mods. This is why I needed better tools. Lots to get done.

Thanks for your support!