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Alchemist
Original Poster
#1 Old 30th Jun 2018 at 2:50 AM Last edited by Sunrader : 30th Jun 2018 at 3:14 AM.
Default Career Writing Questions
I'm exploring an idea for using careers, not as "careers," so much, but as stories that lead the player to make choices that affect regular play. I've used Bidou's to edit some careers, but I'm looking to do something more ambitious now. I have a few questions so would like to start a discussion. The first is probably easy. What is this part of Bidou's editor that is pointed out in this image? What does it do? In researching how this is done, I have looked at quite a few of the picked careers on here, but I don't think I've seen one that uses this section.




Second, I know how to use $Me, although I much prefer the ones written in second person (to "you") and I've seen this http://modthesims.info/wiki.php?tit...20Substitutions, but are there others I could use that would work without writing a test for them? It would be nice to name a random member of household or the hood or a community lot, for example.

Third, are there any more current tutes on careers? Some of these are pretty dated.

Has anyone else used careers the way I'm thinking of doing it? More as a way to guide stories? I'd be interested in hearing from others who've done interesting things with them. I'd be interesting in hearing from someone who is just really into career writing, too. What you've learned? What you've enjoyed?

And, kudos to @crookedhalo for the career I've pictured. It's really well-written - love it! http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=277199
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just a girl
#2 Old 30th Jun 2018 at 7:54 PM
Quote:
What is this part of Bidou's editor that is pointed out in this image? What does it do? In researching how this is done, I have looked at quite a few of the picked careers on here, but I don't think I've seen one that uses this section.

Skills? I think they're not used because the game doesn't really check sim's skills when deciding chance card's outcome, but it's been a while since I looked at that code, so I may be confusing it.

Quote:
are there others I could use that would work without writing a test for them? It would be nice to name a random member of household or the hood or a community lot, for example.

You can display a name of ANY sim, lot, or 'hood (although, as for 'hoods, I've only learned how to display primary 'hood name, so far). What do you mean by not writing a test? In most cases, you have to provide an ID of the sim/lot you want to be displayed. If you want to make it random, write code that cycles through them and picks one at random.

I'm not sure I understand why do you need careers, exactly. If you're inspired by chance cards, you can write those without tying them to careers. You can have much more variety of outcomes, choices and rules than career chance cards have. After all, it's text messages + code executed based on user input (clicked button). You so don't have to limit yourself with the way it's done in careers. But you have to learn the language of BHAVs and the game in general. When you know how to 'speak' it at least to some extent - you will be able to 'tell' the game to do almost anything you want. I can see you're really curious and trying to think originally, so more power to you!
Alchemist
Original Poster
#3 Old 1st Jul 2018 at 4:33 AM
Thanks for the encouragement. What I mean is that I know that if I want to use certain strings, the game will have to "find" the variable that goes there. For example, if I wanted to name a relative that is on the lot, I'd have to give the game instructions to test till it finds one and then return that. I'm not ready to learn how to do that, so I'm asking for ones like $Me and $Family that I know work without extra coding on my part. I have learned enough to tweak objects and such, but not nearly enough to program an entirely new way of presenting choices and getting user input. The way the careers are built into the game can already be used for what I want to do keeping the mechanism and just changing the text and the way of thinking about that text. I think that's challenge enough for me for now. Maybe a bit down the road, though.
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