Go Out (For Tea)

Updates 31/08/2026 & 1/09/2026

Bug fix #1: Go out with Cars - sims wouldn't correctly join an interaction when you selected more than one sim, now fixed.
Bug fix #2: Go out with Cars - Selecting Go Out.../1 hour could sometimes result in the sims glitching and not returning properly. Updated to hopefully fix this. The "1 hour" interaction will now set the return hour to be either "current hour +1" or "current hour +2" depending on if the "minute" is greater than or lesser than 30. Bug was occurring if the car was set to return too soon after leaving.

Update 27/08/2026

New addon for "Return Time Notification" added, new "Go Out With Cars" addon added, Uni Break Clock updated. More info below. Also cleaned up mod description, updated the notification settings of the main mod, re-did conflicts section to be clearer, re-organised downloads to be less confusing (hopefully!) 😊

Original Description

After years of SimPE dabbling I finally became brave (and desperate) enough to learn how to read and edit Sims 2 BHAVs.

"Go Out" is a mod to help handle the vanilla Sims 2 "quirk" wherein a sim will return home from a community lot at the same time they left. It is designed as an alternative to Community Lot Time, but you can absolutely use both together if you want to.

I made this mod because I wasn't happy with CLT's limitation where if a sim is off-lot waiting to come home, no other sims can leave the lot. As I play a lot of Open For Business, this was becoming increasingly limiting. Teenager: "I want to go out with my friends after school!!" - Too bad son, Mum's still trying to come home from work so you're stuck here mate!

It was also irritating me that CLT would occasionally just randomly fail to initiate, and there was nothing I could do about it.

My mod adds a custom menu to the sim when you click on them. You can tell them to "Go Out" for [x] amount of hours, and they will disappear from the lot and idle off world with needs frozen until it is time for them to come back. In a household with multiple sims and/or pets, a pop-up window will also appear asking you if you'd like to send sims out as a group.

The options for hours are set to 1-12 by default, but in the TA_GoOut_Action file, there is a configurable BCON where if you want to, you can enable larger amounts of time to appear in the menu, for example up to 24 hours. Thank you to @picknmixsims for this nice feature 😊

Sims will always idle until their expected return time unless you cancel the interaction, in which case they will come home. There is also a "Go Out.../ Indefinitely" option where the sim will simply be gone until you cancel their interaction, and not automatically return.

This mod was cloned from the Maxis "Jogging" interaction, with many tweaks. The interaction is available for toddlers+, and toddlers+ are able to go off lot. Dogs and cats may too, but unfortunately I couldn't work out how to enable this for kittens and puppies. I will try to revisit this in the future if I learn something that might help!

When a sim leaves the lot, you will get a notification pop-up telling you what time to expect them home, which will remain on screen until they come back. This appears in 12-hour am/pm time by default but in the TA_GoOut_Controller file there is a configurable BCON where you can change to 24-hour time.

When they return home, another notification will appear letting you know they are back. This one will self-close after a few seconds.

It is less automatic than CLT, however, they payoff is that it is much more flexible than CLT as you can use your own discretion, and of course, send multiple sims or groups of sims out at once! If your sim was Downtown for 10 hours but really you feel like it would have been more like 2 hours IRL, that's fine, just send them out for 2 hours. Your call!

Update 27/08/2026

There is also now an optional "notification addon" to display a message when a sim comes home from a community lot which tells you know how long they were gone for. This is to make it easier to know how long to send them off-lot for. This mod comes in 3 flavours: Go Out Only, Go Out Plus Car Mods, and Latest Vehicle Maintenance ONLY. More information in the conflicts section.

Groups & Dates:

When a sim is on a Date or Group Outing, the amount of hours you select for the sims to Go Out will be added back onto their event timer so it is voided once they return home. For example, 1 hour in game = 1 minute on their event timer, so if you go out for 3 hours, 3 minutes will be added to their event timer.

Young Adults:
When a sim is a Young Adult / University student, you are prompted to choose if you would like to freeze their college clock or not when they "Go Out".

This is because if a Young Adult visits a community lot in a University subhood, their college clock continues to progress (unless you have a mod). They may go to class from a community lot, take exams, etc. Therefore when they return home after say 5 hours, you would want to freeze their clock while they "Go Out" for 5 hours, instead of repeating that time again and potentially missing class.

However, if a Young Adult visits a community lot in a main neighbourhood or Downtown, their college clock automatically freezes. Therefore when they return home after say 5 hours and you send them to "go out", you would want their college clock to continue ticking down.

The code for freezing University time was borrowed from Inge Jones's University Break Object mod. I did have to tweak this code slightly, so I have re-uploaded my edit of this mod, and have re-meshed it from a bust to an alarm clock converted by @jacky93sims which a University sim may keep in their dorm room.

This is all optional, you do not need the clock for my "Go Out" mod to work.

A sim must claim a clock as theirs, and may take a break from University independently of everyone else in the dorm. If you'd like ALL sims in the dorm to take a Uni break, you'll need lots of clocks! - Or just send everyone to a lot in a Downtown or Main hood for Spring Break 😂

Update 27/08/2026 New options on the clock:
- Toggle weekends off (automatically go "on break" on weekends
- Synchronize all students (sets all playable students to have the same amount of hours left in their semester)
- Set hours til final exam (multiple options)

When a Young Adult is "gone out" (or on break) with their semester clock "paused", they should not get any notifications to go to class, or a push from the game to go to class.

From testing, this feature appears to be fully compatible with Squinge's College Mega Pack to have YA's attend University in your main hood, bearing in mind that rule with Community Lots.

Pregnancies:

From my testing, pregnancy always freezes when a sim visits a community lot of any kind. Therefore, the pregnancy timer will continue to tick down in time while a sim is "Gone Out".

However, if you play with Chris Hatch's "Visit Sims" mod which enables sims to visit other residential lots, a pregnant sim's pregnancy timer WILL continue to progress while they are visiting. When they return home and you send them to "Go Out", you may want to pause their Pregnancy. I have therefore made an alternative version of the mod which gives you a pop-up similar to the Young Adult's popup, asking if you'd like to pause the pregnancy or not.

Kids:
If children or younger are going to be left home alone, the Go Out mod will not allow your chosen sims to leave the lot unless a Nanny is present. If a child comes home from school and your adults are off-lot for too long, a social worker will come to collect them after a number of hours as in vanilla gameplay. If you would like this not to happen, I suggest playing with a no social worker mod.

I have also made a version that is compatible with the "Playable Nannies" mod by LazyDuchess, so my code will recognise when a custom Nanny is on the lot. Please only use this version if you have Playable Nannies in your game.

By request from AniBats I have also made a version of the mod which doesn't care at all about whether there is a Nanny or not, so if you'd like to abandon your younglings, you can use that version instead! 😂 This one pairs nicely with the no social worker mod.

Aging:

Aging does not currently freeze when a sim is "Gone Out", so if they are gone at 6pm when age transition triggers, they will age up a day as normal. I have left it this way for now as I believe sims do not age up on Community Lots without a mod. If you'd like to freeze your sim's age while they are gone out, I'd suggest using an individual aging control mod.

Bon Voyage:

Bon Voyage / Holidays / Vacation time is currently not addressed by my mod. If your sims visit a community lot while on Vacation, you would want to use the "setHour" cheat when they return to their hotel to have their travel time make sense. This is because Bon Voyage code is very different, and to "freeze" holiday time would be a difficult and potentially game-breaking task. I may revisit this in the future when I know more about modding.

Time Speed Mods:
My mod is compatible with Chris Hatch's Time Controller mod, and with Merola's Time Control Clock. Sims should "Go Out" and idle until their expected return time.

While I was exploring compatibility. I looked into the code and found the way Merola's clock slowed down time was a bit odd, so I have re-uploaded a fixed version of this mod with a new mesh converted from TS4 and 50 recolours (because why not!!) removed 27/08/2026 as my version was broken

The only other main time speed mod that I am aware of is the Lazy Duchess Relativity mod, which is reported by LD to be broken and is unsupported, so I have not checked compatibility with that mod.

Can I break it?

The mod has been tested fairly rigorously and should be fairly sturdy, but I'm sure things will come up that don't work as expected 😂 Please let me know if you find bugs, and send an error log if possible, and let me know which version of the mod you're using.

If you use the "setHour" cheat while your sim is gone out, they will still return at the time the pop-up told you they'd be back. So if they're supposed to be back at 8pm and you set hour til after 8pm, they won't be back til 8pm the next day. That's on you, sorry 😘

Update 27/08/2026: Go Out With Cars

This adds a new interaction to cars to "Go Out" with the same options as the sim interaction. "Indefinitely" will send your sims off lot until the interaction is cancelled, while selecting a certain number of hours will see them come home when the "hour maths" checks out. Note: the "minutes" are not considered. If your sim leaves at 9:55 am for 2 hours, they'll come back at 11am.

You get a pop-up once the sim is in the car asking if you'd like to freeze motives on the outing or not, which means you can also use this to send your sims out for miscellaneous errands and have their needs tick down if you'd like to.

Conflicts:

'AptHack' by Pescado: remove it, also remove my TA_ijUniBreakPatch file, and use my compatible version of AptHack instead. This version of AptHack also includes Kestrellyn's get apartment deposit fix.

'No Finals at Night' by TwoJeffs: Remove it, also remove my TA_UniBreakPatch file, and use the TA_UniBreakPatch_NoFilesAtNight file instead.

Note: No Finals at Night & AptHack are not compatible. I have not made a patch to fix this, sorry

'Lot Transition OFB Motives Fix' by Simler90: remove it, and use one of the "notification addon" versions that have the fix bundled in.

The notification addon also conflicts with many other car mods.

Use 'GoOutOnly' if you only have my Go Out mod.

Use GoOutPlusCarMods if you have any of the following mods: Drivers License, Burglars and Alarms, Taxis Cost Money, Visit Sims.

Use 'LatestVehicleMaintanceONLY' if you have the latest version of Vehicle's Maintenance.

Choose only ONE version, and make my mod load last.

Similarly, 'Go Out With Cars' conflicts with many, many mods. I have made compatible versions for every single mod, and mod combination, that I am aware of:

Use Z_VehicleMaintenance_Z_Addon_DrivingOptions_A_GoOut with the latest version of Siknoy and I's Vehicles Maintenance mod. Since I am a collaborator and co-creator of this mod, I have taken the liberty of including a copy here.

Use Z_Z_TA_Cars_GoOut if you have ZERO other mods that affect cars.

Use one of the "ONLY" versions if you "only" have that particular car mod, for example, "only" Drivers License mod, or "only" burglars and alarms, etc.

Use "Z_Z_TA_Cars_GoOut_EverythingButVM" if you have every mod other than Vehicles Maintenance.

Use "Z_Z_TA_Cars_GoOut_DriversLicence_VisitSims_TaxisCost" if you have that particular combination of mods.

"Go Out With Cars" will also show a conflict with the Playable Nannies mod by LazyDuchess. This conflict is handled internally in every version of the mod, but must load AFTER playable nannies.

choose only one version, and make my mod load last

DOWNLOADS:

TA_GoOut - this is the main mod, all files required.

TA_GoOut_NotificationAddon - contains the token and mod required for the "Sim was gone for x hours" notification. The TA_GoOutToken is required, and you must choose only one mod version to use from the 3 folder options.

TA_GoOut_OptionalControllerVersions contains optional features and compatibility with other mods. If you need or want to use one of these, delete 'TA_GoOut_Controller' and replace with the version of your choosing:

Use TA_GoOut_Controller_PlayableNannies if you use LazyDuchess's mod and want the game to recognise your custom nanny as a valid babysitter for kids left alone.

Use TA_GoOut_Controller_PlayableNannies_PregPause if you want the above PLUS the option to pause pregnancies when your sims go out.

Use TA_GoOut_Controller_PregPause if you only want the extra option to pause pregnanies

Use TA_GoOut_Controller_WhoNeedsANanny if you don't want the game to care about kids being left home alone when your sims go out.

Use TA_GoOut_Controller_WhoNeedsANanny_PregPause if you want the above PLUS the option to pause pregnancies when your sims go out.

TA_GoOut_UniBreakClockUpdated contains the re-meshed and re-coded IngeJones University Break Object.

CompPatches contains required compatibility patches for AptHack and No Finals At Night.

Credits and Thank-You's:
PicknMixSims! William my Sensei, you are a wonderful human being. Thank you for your "suggestion" to start again after a week of messy coding to make a better mod and for all of the help along the way 😂💗

Gummilutt my teacher and friend, thank you so much, you know this mod would never have happened without your help!

MorePopcorn my soul-twin, can't wait to do more modding with you 😘 Thank you for sitting down with me for 3 hours and teaching me how to really read code line-by-line, helping troubleshooting, making so many changes and tweaks and all the things!

And a big thank you to my wonderful Beta testers!

Inge Jones for her University Break object & Patch