Hi, guys!

Could anyone here help me figure out what skills I may need to make some custom majors, please?

I understand that what I want to do is possibly a bit far-fetched and might even be impossible to do, but I would like to give it a try and approach my final objective as close as I can. And my final objective is making going to university meaningful, more beneficial for gameplay and maybe a bit more fun, no matter what career or profession you choose to pursue (Well, almost...).

I also understand that major creation is very similar to career creation and that it requires the Nraas Careers mod to work.

I also already know some C++ and I have some very very minimal XML and tuning mods knowledge.

I want to possibly but not neccesarily do all of the following:
--Make some custom majors
--Change skill and career linking for existing and custom majors
--Assign majors to professions (I do realize that this is the thoughest one and I might not ever finish it, but I will give it a try)
--Link custom majors to custom skills and custom careers (I would really like to make a custom Computer Science major, and while I do know that there are individual mods for having a proggraming skill and proggramer, hacker and gamer careers (and we also already have a game developer career in-game), I do also know that such mods are available separately and are not tied into each other, so I will most probably need to make my own versions of them)

Before jumping into such a big project, I would like to know what it takes and if I need to learn any new skills for turning my dream into reality. I found some tutorials online, but I've seen some people saying that they were outdated and I would really like to know if there are any actual up to date tutorials. I am also currently researching exactly what my idea of a complete overhaul of the current system would look like.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Hi there
Some excellent ideas there.

Pretty much most, if not all, of what you want to do requires XML tuning. I'll break them down for you into sections.

Custom Majors/Degrees
-Something I'm also working on and have yet to have success with. If you download Nraas Careers Academics module, Twallan did create an Education degree, designed to tie into the Education Career from Ambitions. I'm working on basically copying what he did to see if I can get them to work.

Change Skill and Career Linking
- Very easy. In fact, Twallan did do something with this in the above mentioned Academics module of the Careers base mod, so I recommend opening that .package up in S3PE to see what he did and if it suits your needs. The files you need to do that for yourself are in the GameplayData.package file, under 'AcademicCareer' (or something like that).

Assign Majors to Professions
- Again, Twallan accomplished this in the Academics module. So you might want to check that out

Link Custom Majors to Custom Career
- Now that's the tricky one. I've been working on this for ages and had no luck. I suspect the degrees don't recognise the <altguid> field used in the custom careers. Now Twallan did mention the possibility of adding a <Degree></Degree> field for custom careers, to allow individual careers to be linked to majors/degrees but unfortunately he never got around to doing that before he retired. In the meantime, I'm still trying to work on a workaround.

As it stands right now, I don't think there are any tutorials for custom majors/degrees since I don't know if anybody has them working (I've been away from the community for two years so I'm a bit out of the loop).

I hope this helps A lot of what you want to do matches my own ambitions for the Degrees/Education/Careers/Professions. It's great to know I'm not the only one :D

Thank you for your reply!

I'm happy to gear that the lack of custom degrees and overhauls for the current system couldn't go unnoticed. The fact that XML modding is all I'll need is good news too. I suspected it might be so, but I thought that it would be better to ask first before blindly working.

I would really like to know: Are you more into completely new degrees or into replacing the old ones? Anyway, I am really curious about how the final mods will turn out. At the moment, I think that probably you are way ahead of me; I've barely managed to come up with a few realistic ideas about which degrees to choose for each career, not to say that I also need to think about skills and traits.

I'm into creating new degrees, more specific. For example, the current Science and Medicine is fine but I prefer the idea of them being separated into Medicine, Veterinary Medicine, Biology, Chemistry and Physics degrees and assigning them to appropriate careers, such as:
Medicine Degree --> Medical Career, Nursing, Psychologist
Veterinary Medicine --> Veterinary Career
Biology Degree --> Science Career,
Chemistry Degree --> Science Career
Physics Degree --> Science Career

There are bound to be others to suit the separated scientific degrees but you get my point.

Your best bet could be to research University Degrees and see what the real world has to offer. They could give you ideas for realistic degrees and therefore which careers to assign them to.
I've also played with the idea of creating Vocational Degrees, such as Mechanics/Engineering, Dance, Drama School, etc. These would be aimed for jobs such as Mechanic, Dancer, Performing Arts etc.

Another idea could be to sit back and decide which careers you feel should benefit from a degree.

As far as skills and traits, sit back with a list of available skills and see what they work with. For example, a Music Degree would require the four instruments, and the Virtuoso trait could be useful. However, a Biology Degree would make sense to link to the Science and Gardening skills. A Chemistry Degree would link to the Science and Logic skills (logic for the use of the chemistry table from Generations).

Hope that helps a bit. I have a degree coded but I can't get it showing properly for registering at the University.

It surely helps. Thank you again!

Well, I am working on a mod that should approach of realism a bit less than what you are currently working on.

Basically, my idea starts from the more or less abstract careers that the game already offers. My mod is aimed more at examining everything from the gameplay perspective, revamping what we already have to be first meaningful to the gameplay and then realistic.

For example, the politics career needs lots of charisma to advance, just like the business career, and according to study.com (which explains things based on how the educational system works in the U.S.), the situation for occupying a senator position is the following:



Therefore, I want to place the politics career in the Business major.

I also want to split Science and Medicine, and I'll possibly make separate majors for Military, Law Enforcement and Firefighting, since I've read that IRL they are split up, while also basing each major around the skills and traits needed for the linked job.

I also am a mod addict, and I can't play without the Variable Career Metrics Updated and Extended mod by Kidhedera and SimsMX and therefore I would like to base my mod around the additions in this mod too (For example, the Science major will most likely include Fishing, Handiness, Gardening, Logic, Inventing, Science and Alchemy).

EDIT: Basically, the difference between my mod and yours is that I split everything completely differently than you do for most of the majors, and for the most part, yours will be more detailed and custom-career-linked.

Nice idea, linking politics to business. Quite realistic. Many civil servants in the UK government have experience and/or links to the business and law sectors so that makes perfect sense.

I imagine you've already found it but in case you haven't, in the GameplayData.package, if you look at the Careers XML file, it gives details of each career in the game and what skills they use and indeed even what level of the skills they need. That might help you with linking your careers and degrees. Obviously also accounting for the mod you have to adapt the metrics.

Excellent ideas though