Go Out (For Tea ?)

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

"Go Out (for Tea)" 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 as there are no conflicts.

I made this mod because I wasn't happy with CLT's limitation wherein if one sim (or group of sims) is 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. There is also a "Go Out.../ Indefinitely" option where the sim will be gone indefinitely, until you cancel their interaction.

This mod is based off 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 unless you close it. 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, and requires you to keep a rough track on how long your sim was gone for so that you can send them out for roughly the same amount of time. 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!

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 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 😂

The University Break mod now affects sims individually, rather than all sims on the lot.

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. However, there is a KNOWN ISSUE from testing where some testers have reported still getting these pop-ups, so there seems to be a hidden mod conflict somewhere! If you have this issue, please run a HCDU+ on your mods folders and let me know if anything is reported, or if you can figure out which mod is conflicting, let me know and I'll see if I can sort it!

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, pregnancy 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!!).

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 😘😂

I am a baby modder, I have been doing this for approximately 3.5 weeks, please be patient with me as I'm sure I've messed something up somewhere, despite trying to catch and fix all of my mistakes 😂

Conflicts:
Pescado's AptHack will conflict with the University Sims going out. I have uploaded a compatible version of AptHack which Gummilutt kindly coded, so you can use that and remove my "TA_ijUniversityBreakPatch" file, or just make sure that AptHack loads AFTER my mod.

No Finals at Night by TwoJeffs will conflict with the University Break Patch, so I have made a compatible version which you can use. Download the "NoFinalsAtNight" file, replace my "TA_ijUniversityBreakPatch" with that version instead and then make sure my mod loads after No Finals At Night.

None else are currently known other than something else potentially hiding and messing with young adults, as previously mentioned. Please do let me know if you find any conflicts in your games and I will try to resolve them.

DOWNLOADS:

Go Out For Tea - Use this version by default. Yes you need all files.

Go Out For Tea - Playable Nannies Compatible. Use this version if you have LD's Playable Nannies Mod. Yes you need all files.

If you want to be able to pause your sims' pregnancies, e.g. if you play with Visit Sims or another mod that lets you travel to residential lots, get the base mod and download the "preg pause" version of the mod and use one of the files inside to replace the TA_GoOut_Controller file, either the base version or the playable nannies compatible version.

If you don't want the mod to care at all about nannies, get the base mod and grab the "who needs a nanny" file and use one of the files inside to replace the TA_GoOut_Controller file.

Also included is Simlogical's University Break object tweaked and re-meshed as a clock, along with my version of Merola's Time Control Clock with simplified code, re-meshed as a cute clock and with 50 recolours because I have no chill.

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

Merola64 for the original Time Control Clock