TS3 Apartment mod - Updated for patch 1.55 - 1.63/1.67

10.06.2014:
No changes needed for 1.67

20.10.2013:
No changes needed for 1.63
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21.06.2013
File Name: ani_TS3ApController_1.55.zip

Update for patch 1.55

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1.4.2013 - Testers needed for v2
FileName: ani_TS3ApController_v2_TEST.zip

Changes:
- Minor pets can be added to a household and they shouldn't die when not in the active household.

Bug Fixes:
1. Roommates should only get 1 set of roommate interactions
2. This version should fix the bug that no sim is active when switching household.
Note about bug 2: I was able to make the above bug happen in my test hood, and the reason for this was that the sim who should have been active, was still a roommate and I think this happened because I didn't check if a sim was already a roommate or not, before re-assigning to be a roommate. So if you had 3 households, and you kept switching between two of them, the third would be made a roommate multiple times. Adding a check to only handle the roommate part if the sim is not already a roommate fixed the multiple roommate interaction bug and seems to fix this one as well.

Bugs in V2:
- If your minor pet is a bird, and he is in your sims inventory and you switch to this household, and put the bird into the cage, he will be on the branch diagonaly But you can just put him back to your sims inventory and then put him back to the cage and he'll be ok.

Please note, v2 has been only tested in my test hood where I would create situations that would let me test the changes/bug fixes.
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EA and apartments

When EA announced we are getting apartment in UNI, I got really really excited. I should learn to take any EA announcement with a pinch of realism but the optimism in me always thinks of the best, even when it's EA we are talking about

What does this mod do
This mod will let you simulate having multiple families on one lot but without having to have all of the sims active at all time. If you then set up the lot to look like apartments by using either EA's uni locked door feature or the MoDoor, you can play 1 household as multiple families.

The short instruction for using this mod:
- Merge the families you want to have living in apartments
- Add the apartment controller into the lot (Kitchen -> alarms) and go back to live mode
- Click on the object -> Family -> Create Family.
- Enter the required information.
- Family Name: This will not change the household name. It's just what you want to call this apartment family.
- Family Funds: How much money does this family unit have. The amount will be reduced from the combined household's family funds.
- Rent: Rent is paid at Monday at 9:00. Only the active family pays rent. If you don't want to pay it, keep it at zero.
- The members: Who lives in this family unit.

After you create your families. select Family -> Set Active Family.

The family you select as active will be controllable, the other families are turned to roommates until you decide to play them.

And you are done

Here is also a video showing how the mod works. Sims shown in the video are by sixamsims.




The interactions - Family



- Create Family: Create the apartment family.
- Edit Family: Edit the family information. You can only edit the inactive families, if you want to edit the current active family, you need to switch to another family for a moment.
- Set Active Family: Which family you want to play.
- Delete Family: Select a family from the list to delete. The sims will turn into controllable sims, and their funds will be added to the active families funds.
note: The sims made active by deleting a family are not combined to the currently active family. They will just be active. So if you switch families, these sims will stay active until you re-asign them to another household.
- Show Active Family Info: Show some basic information about the active family.

The Interactions -> Settings



- Reset Lot: Combine all apartment families back to one single household. Deleting the controller also does this.
- Stop EA Roommates: When testing this mod, I noticed that EA's roommate advertising was active after exiting the game. Even though I didn't activate it (I guess having roommates on the lot activates it). This mod will automatically, when added to the lot or when the game is loaded and you have this mod in your world, turn advertising of roommates off. But, just in case it fails, you can use this interaction to turn it off. This interaction will stop advertising for roommates, but it will not kick out existing roommates like using the phone will.

Things to note:
- Ageing: If you are using a mod to have TS2 style ageing, you will need to manually turn off the ageing of the apartment residents you are not currently playing. You can use Buzzler's ageing mod to do this.
- Pets: Pets can be roommates too but you need still to take care of them. If you don't want to feed them when they are not in the active apartment family, you can buy them the aspiration reward "Bottomless Pet Bowl" so you don't need to take care of their feeding. I currently don't recommend having pets in apartments because the EA doors don't let you give them a key. If you lock the door for some sims pets can't use it. For cats I'm currently the animated cat door , but for dogs I don't know is there anything similar for them.

- Babies: When a baby is born, they will be normally added to the list of active sims but until you assign then a family they will not belong to any apartment family and will always be active.
- Death: If a roommate dies, they will be removed from the list of apartment family residents.
- None Active Families: This mod will turn the families you are not currently playing into roommates. So if you have any mods that effect how roommates operate, it will effect these sims too.
- Family Limit: There is no limit on how many apartments you can have. If you are using a mod that lets you have more than 8 sims on the lot you could theoretically have an apartment complex of 30 sims. But, because all the other households are visible and their residents are going on with their daily life, for computer performance, it might be best to keep the apartment limit to low. I plan that I wouldn't exceed 4 apartments/lot.
- Other stuff: Because you are still actually handling one household, there are a lot of quirks you will need to learn to live with. Here are a few example what I noticed.

- When doing laundry my active sim wanted to put her laundry into the neighbours basket. So I had to relocate both baskets so my active sims basket was always the closest to her.
- When the neighbors put leftovers into the fridge in their apartment, my sim was able to grab a plate from her fridge in her apartment.
- My sim had to call the babysitter when she was trying to leave the houe because the neighbors had left to work and they had a toddler. So I had to make the mom take unpaid vacation so my sim didn't have to take care of the toddler.

Bugs:
- If the active sim dies and he is the only one in the household, You will need to switch to another family, make them click on the apartment controller and select a valid family. Then you can go back and play the other apartment families on the lot.
- If you stumble upon the bug that roommates become part of the active household when you load your game, you can always re-select the active household and they will become roommates again. This doesn't happen in my game, but if it's an issue with other players I'll have to make a fix for this.

I have used this mod in my game for over two full sim weeks without problems. I did however destroy one of my test hoods while developing this mod. If you decide to use this mod remember to backup your game before installing.

When updating your game for a patch or new EP/SP it's safest to reset all your apartment lots before patching.

Improvements for the future:
- Better UI.
- Do something with the bills so the active family doesn't have to pay the bills of the whole apartment block.
- Do something with pets so they don't need taking care of when not in the active family.
- Do something with minor pets so they will survive and not die of old age and neglect when not in the active family
- Maybe add the option to automatically turn off the ageing of the inactive families
- Add the possibility for the player to choose what day and time the rent is paid.
- Make the "Stop EA Roommates" interaction lot specific, instead of world specific as it now is.
- Try making an apartment room marker so only the active households apartment is visible.
- Do something so the active family doesn't need to take into consideration other apartments babies or toddlers.

Compatibility:
- This should not interfere with any other mods because I don't override any resources.
- This mod should work without uni but you do need patch 1.50 because that's where the code for roommates came with.