In December 2014, you were brought The Sims 4 Buff and Trait Factory, a tool used to create traits for The Sims 4. It’s finally time for a successor: introducing The Sims 4 Mod Constructor.
(Note: The program is still a work in progress, and the finished version may differ from the screenshots shown in this post)
Mod Constructor, named after the Invention Constructor from The Sims 4 Get to Work, is a program that generates tuning mods without any actual coding required. The first release will focus on traits, but future versions will add support for other types of mods such as social events, aspirations, and maybe even careers and interactions down the line.
While Buff and Trait Factory allowed you to generate simple traits, Mod Constructor allows you to go advanced and access features that were previously limited to advanced modders.
Mods in Mod Constructor are made from a tree of resources and components that interact with each other. The XML code is generated from files which contain the code used by the game, with instruction tags that are parsed based on the content created in Mod Constructor. The resources and components shown in bold have their own XML files, while normal weight components are extensions of other files. You can also add references to components from the game or from other parts of the mod.
If you didn’t understand all that technical stuff, don’t worry – you’ll understand how the program works when you see if for yourself.
Examples of New Features:
- The program is built to support generating all different kinds of mods, which leaves room for a lot of exciting features to be added in the future.
- For the first time in any of my programs, you’ll be able to export straight to .package format. No more having to package all the files yourself!
- Saving and exporting has improved in other ways too – resources are saved together as one mod instead of separately (if that wasn’t the case… there would be a LOT of save files to load).
- There are various tools to help you find content you’re looking for, including a bookmarks system with categorized resource IDs, as well as the ability to save your own values to reuse them later.
- Buff replacements – you can instruct a trait to replace any in-game buff with a different one.
- There are advanced options for specifying which conditions are required for an occasional buff to appear – you can restrict it by age, venue, the Sim’s emotion before the buff was applied, and more.
Planned Features:
(Features which aren’t added yet, but hopefully will be by the time the program is released)
- Proximity buffs – buffs that appear when the Sim is close to an object or a particular kind of Sim.
- Buffs that are always active under certain conditions, instead of just appearing at random times.
- The option to copy extra needs to custom traits, such as the Video Gaming need from the Geek trait.
- More occasional effects other than buffs. The loot resource is already set up, all it needs is more components.
- The ability to customize how long emotions last, at least under certain conditions.
