Sims At Work - Custom Lots System

This one is a kinda big project, for me, but I so wanted it!

NOTE: MTS doesn't allow to upload pdf, so I've put the instructions in a separate link here

Sims At Work is a system of sorts that allows you to set up a community lot as a "Work Lot", specific for a given career.



The Basics
So, what's so special and different about it that you couldn't already achieve with a properly configured Visitor Controller?
First and foremost, this system pauses the standard CLP (Community Lot Populator) for that lot and replaces it with its own.
Then, sim behaviour is regulated; some regulations are optional and you can choose them only if you want.

• Sims in the specified career will be already on the lot when you arrive: all of them, both playable and not-playable, in their work outfits. Adults, Teens and Elders. Sims who are pregnant (showing) or ill will not, however, show up.
• They won't come and go, but will stay on the lot for the entire time.
• There won't be any other visitors: no walkbys, no vampires, no Matchmaker, no strays, etc.
• Their needs will still decay and they will be able to socialize and improve their Social, Hunger, Bladder, etc., but their needs will never get low enough to cause distress or force them to leave.
• They won't freeze in winter nor have heatstrokes in summer. They also won't change into outerwear in winter, and will stay in their work uniform the entire time.
• They will still have their grudges with certain coworkers, but they'll never resort to fighting - not appropriate for a work environment! (optional).
  Similarly, flirting or "worse" in the workplace might be inappropriate too, so that kind of socials is squashed, as well. (optional)
• Sims from your own family who also have the specified career will be on the lot, in uniform, but will be unselectable (hey, they're on the job, not out for a stroll with you!)
• Apart from population, all other community lot functions will continue to work normally. a cash register will spawn a teen clerk to man it, a podium and community stove will spawn a podium guy, chef and servers for a restaurant, a bar will spawn a bartender and so on. You cannot, however, have the lot as an owned lot with a private business, because that would open another can of worms that I sincerely don't feel like dealing with -- at least for now.
• Optional: you can also have appropriate NPCs joining the working population as visitors (e.g. the Headmaster on Education lot, the University's Lunch Lady on the Culinary lot, and so on.)

The idea is to have a properly and fully populated setup where your Sims can go visit a friend, bring the kids to say hi to dad at work, go to the lot to do something specific and find it populated with actual, appropriate workers in uniform. For example, you could go to Town Hall to change your baby's surname, or to the hospital to cure the flu, and actually find the appropriate sims working there.

This is the basic setup. Everything else - what kind of lot you build and which features you add - is up to you with a nearly endless supply of modded objects and tools available to customize the look and functionalityto your liking.

How It Works - SUPER SHORT VERSION
As an example, let's set up a Police Station

1. Put the Main folder in your Downloads folder.
2. Check for known compatibility issues with other mods in the Compatibility fixes section further down.
3. If you have one or more of the mods listed, pick the corresponding fixes and put them in your Download folder, following the instructions provided.
4. Launch the game, choose a community lot you want to use as Police Station and open it in Build mode.
5. From Collections, open the folder Sims At Work (yellow box with SAW on it)
   
6. Find the Law Enforcement Marker and place it on the lot.
7. If you also want NPC cops roaming around the Police Station, Pick the SimsAtWork-NPC-Marker object and place it on the lot as well.

And that's it! You're done and can go back to playing.
Pick one of your sims, go to the Police Station and you'll find it bustling with Security Guards, SWAT members, Officers, Police Chiefs and Captain Heroes mingling all over the place. Or, if there aren't many Law Enforcement sims in your neighborhood, you might find just a couple of Sergeants hanging around!

How It Works - DETAILED VERSION


Limitations
I wanted to keep this project as simple as possible, with as few conflicts and complications as possible, so there are some limitations to how the system can work:

• The neighborhood must be primary or subhood (such as Bluewater Village). Downtown, Vacation and University hoods are not supported.
• The lot must be a Community lot and cannot have an owner or contain an owned business.
• At the moment, you can't have more than one career represented on the same lot. Using two or more career markers on the same lot will cause the system to malfunction.
• Vampires won't show up either. Dealing with unselectable vampires on community lots is too much of a mess, so for now, they're banned.
• Since the CLP checks don't work with this system, there is a fixed limit to the number of sims that can be summoned to the lot. The current limit is quite high (30 sims), and is stored in a BCON. This BCON can be easily modified in SimPE to suit your needs. Each marker has its own BCON, so you can also set a different limit depending on the type of career or lot.
  

Overrides
All packages labeled OVERRIDE contain modified and new globals.
I've separated them into different packages so you can choose to use only the essential modifications, if you wish.
They are:

• SimsAtWork-OVERRIDE-base - Necessary. The system won't work without it.
• SimsAtWork-OVERRIDE-clothing - Forces sims to return to their everyday outfit (Casual1) when visiting other community or residential lots. Without this addon, many Sims will continue to show up elsewhere in their work outfits. Playables may also still be wearing their work outfit when you load their home lot, but that's easily fixed with a dresser.
• SimsAtWork-OVERRIDE-behave - Violent behaviour is definitely inappropriate in the workplace, so sims who are angry with each other, or even outright enemies, can still argue, but they cannot fight. If you do want them to fight on their work lot, remove this package and enjoy the mayhem to your heart content^^.
• SimsAtWork-OVERRIDE-crumplebottom - Like the "behave" described above, this one also disallows a bunch of socials. In this case, it's romantic socials. The name is self-explanatory.
• SimsAtWork-OVERRIDE-witch - NPC witches, when on community lots, tend to cast their ambience spells over and over with almost no pause, which is quite annoying. This override stops them, and they will behave like in their own homes (where, unsurprisingly, they don't do that).

Some of these overrides may conflict with other mods that deal with portals and community lots; I tried to keep the global modifications at a minimum, but there are still some mods that require a compatibility fix. The ones I've found so far are listed below, and their fixes can be found in the "Compatibility addons" folder.

Global BHAVs Compatibility
All the possible compatibility issues are in the packages labeled with OVERRIDE: they contain modified and new globals which can conflict with other mods.


Compatibility fixes
Any of these addons must load after all other mods, including the Sims At Work system, so it's better to keep them alone in the Download folder, and not in a subfolder.

Optional: NPCs
Not all careers have suitable NPCs who can safely be added to the working population and socialize on the lot. I've chosen a selection that I feel comfortable using in this way.
The list is below:

NOTE about the Culinary lot
Since podiums and restaurant stoves will automatically spawn their own culinary NPCs (hosts, servers, chefs), I set an additional safeguard: if there's a diner podium and/or a restaurant stove on the Culinary lot, the corresponding NPCs will spawn "on the job" and not as visitors, even if you have the NPC marker placed on the lot
The University Lunch Lady, however, will be present as visitor anyway, since their stove works only on University hoods. Be careful if you have a mod that makes them spawn regardless of the hood: don't use the cafeteria stove, or don't place the NPC marker on the lot.

Known Issues
Samantha Ottomas. She's a menace. I don't know how, but she shows up in the Education lot while pregnant. In fact, every other pregnant sim in the Education career show up as well, while Dora Ottomas isn't there (although she should be). And all the Headmasters are wearing the University Coach outfit. Make Samantha quit her job, and the Education lot is back to normal. For the life of me, I can't figure out how and why this happens. I made a fix so at least the NPCs are forced to wear their correct outfit, but I can't stop Samantha to gather all the pregnant teachers and march them off to school.

Conclusions
There would be more to say and explain, but I'll write about it in my journal, since this entry is already long and rambling enough as it is.
Suffice it to say, I consider this mod a permanent work in progress, because there are so many additional things and tweaks that could be done with it.

Consider this whole thing a template: it could be a starting point for different types of lots - not just ones based on careers, but ones based on other things as well. Think of lots exclusively for supernatural creatures, for example. Or a better way to handle the Slacker career - it's definitely too heterogeneous and rather pointless as it is. It would make much more sense to have specific lots for, say, Slackers working in retail, along with the corresponding NPCs. Photographers and video editors could be merged with the Artists, and so on.

As a template, it also makes it possible to create additional Career Lot packages for custom careers with just a few simple steps. I've added to the downloads a pdf with step-by-step instructions on how to do that.

And finally: I know there are better and more elegant ways to program all of this, using lot tokens, settings, and the like. I am, however, not a programmer. I've studied and experimented with this stuff, but I don't feel confident enough in what I'm doing, and fiddling with tokens and multiple globals on this scale can really mess up a lot -- or even an entire neighborhood -- if you get something wrong. (Yup. I did it. That's how I know ).
So, if anyone wants to have fun fixing things and making this all better -- either by themselves or by helping me do it — I'm in. Just ask!