(UPDATE: 23-JUL-2016) Eat Outside Restaurants + Waiters

Updates

23-JUL-2016: Waiters should no longer be stuck hanging around the entrance of comborabbitholes for the whole day

19-JUL-2016:

• Fix for a problem where new games could not be started with certain worlds with this mod installed due to the world having "lotless" rabbitholes.
• Waiters can have individual starting and end times which you can set (see the Waiters section)
• Waiters will now first go to the table to take orders (animation requires Late Night) before going into the restaurant. They should also route closer to the table than before when bringing food to the table.
• If the rabbithole has multiple exits and a specific table was selected, sIms and waiters will now use the exit closest to the table.
• Sims who ordered any drink like foods (Juice/Fruit Punch/Coconut Juice etc) or ice creams from waiters will have their food handed to them directly instead of being placed on the table where they wouldn't be able to eat them. (Note: animation tends to glitch on picnic tables and children may stretch momentarily when receiving the food so you might want to avoid adding these items to the menu if it bothers you)
• Menu window update: Selected recipes will now un-highlight themselves once added to the menu

4-MAY-2016:

• You can now have Waiters assigned to restaurant rabbitholes. If there is a waiter on the lot, sims will sit down first to order instead of going inside, and the waiter will bring their food to them. See the Waiters section for more details.
• The Eat Outside... interaction is now available on all dining tables, picnic tables, bar tables and island counters on the lot. Clicking on a surface and your sim will (try to at least) to sit at that specific surface to eat instead of letting the mod choose one for them.

3-FEB-2016: Improvements to the Set Menu interaction:

• Interaction renamed to "Available Foods..." (or its equivalent in your game's language)
• Setting a restaurant's menu can now be easily done in just 2 windows, one for adding/removing recipes and another for editing a menu item's name/price/whether or not it is suitable for vampire/mermaids.
• Interaction is now always visible by default. To hide/restrict the interaction see the Set Menu section below.

The mod now fully use in-game strings so no longer needs any translations.





Mod Description

It had always bothered me that the Eat Outside interaction was ONLY available on bistros, yet almost every diner rabbithole lot in every default EA world so far has had tables/chairs/picnic tables outside even though Sims could only eat inside. (So much so that this was what got me into script modding into first place)

With this mod, not only can sims eat outside ALL diners, bistros and the Eiffel Tower rabbitholes (as well as any of their combo rabbithole versions), you can also

• manually choose what your sims order
• set custom menus for each restaurant
• assign waiters to restaurants who will take orders and bring sims their food

Details

Although the mod started out as a direct copy of EA's original Eat Outside interaction customized to be usable at rabbitholes other than the bistro (NOTE: The original interaction on bistros is replaced with this mod's custom version), the following tweaks/changes have been made:

• A popup menu will appear allowing you to manually choose what to order from the restaurant's menu. (user directed and for active household sims only)

• Sims will go inside the rabbithole to order the food before exiting outside to eat like in the original interaction. However, if there is a waiter on the lot, sims will first sit down outside and a waiter will come take their order before bringing their food to them from the rabbithole.

• Each restaurant can have their own customizable menu. See the Set Menu section for details.

• Food quality is still random, but always between Normal and Great at diners and between Great and Perfect at bistros and the Eiffel Tower.

• In the original interaction the sims would only choose empty dining tables on the lot to eat on. With this mod, all dining tables, picnic tables, bar tables and island counters on the lot will be considered (the group may be split into smaller ones and seated at different tables). Also sims will be guided to sit at their own individual seats to reduce the chances of them route-failing (If they still can't get to a seat they'll find somewhere else to eat)

• If you want a sim or group of sims to dine at a specific table instead of letting the mod choose one for them, theinteraction can be accessed by clicking on the table instead of the rabbithole.

• If the sims exits the rabbithole to bad weather and there are no indoor or sheltered surfaces on the lot (tables with patio umbrellas don't count), they will go back inside to eat instead

Set Menu ( Updated 3-FEB-2016)

As mentioned above the mod let's you set individual menus for each restaurant rabbithole via a new Available Foods... interaction. Under the interaction you have the following options:

• Common/Spring/Summer/Fall/Winter (requires Seasons): Set different menus for each season. The Common menu is used for any season that has no menu set for it. If neither a menu for the current season nor a common menu is set, the restaurant will use a default list of recipes instead (tunable)

• Add/Remove: Choose which recipes go into the menu. TIP: You can add the same recipe multiple times and just change their names to add variety (or at least the illusion of it) to the menu. Once you've confirmed your choices the Edit window automatically pop up.
• Edit: Edit the following details of the items in the menu;
  • Name: Rename the food on the menu, so you can make it something snazzy to match the restaurant, or have variations of the same item.
  • Price: Set the individual lunch prices for the food on the menu (by default the higher between the recipe's register cost and the restaurant's lunch cost is used). This is the price sims will be charged for buying the food during breakfast/brunch/lunch (before factoring discounts for being a celebrity/being a chef/Lifetime Rewards, etc), slightly more is always charged for dinner.
  • Set Occults...: Selecting Vampires makes the food item restore thirst if eaten by vampires (doesn't work for ice creams). Selecting Mermaids only has an effect with this mod installed, it makes the food item replenish more hunger to mermaids when eaten)

(These interactions are now always visible by default. If you prefer to have it hidden, in the cheats console (CTRL+Shift+C) type testingcheatsenabled true and then the new cheat HideSetMenu true. Doing so will restrict the interaction to ONLY appear if the sim you are controlling either owns the rabbithole or the lot itself, or works there in the Culinary career at least level 8)


Waiters ( Updated 19-JUL-2016)

As of the 4-MAY-2016 update, the mod allows you to assign Waiters to restaurant rabbitholes. If there is a waiter on the lot, sims will sit down first and a waiter will come to the table to take their order (NOTE: the order taking animation requires Late Night). The waiter will then go into the rabbithole and bring their food to the table. The sims at the table are free to chat with one another while waiting.

Assigning waiters is totally optional and up to you They might seem out of place stationed outside Hogan's Deep Fried Diner perhaps, but that local "fancy" bistro that has a reputation of forcing customers to carry their own food outside to eat could probably use one.

To have a waiters on the lot, click on the rabbithole building and use the new Waiter... > Hire interaction. It may take a while for the game to assign a sim to the role, the NRaas Register mod can be used to manually assign one if you prefer, see below)

You can have multiple waiters on the lot, and each one will have their individual interaction menu (Waiter 1.., Waiter 2... etc) on the rabbithole building. Through this you can

• remove a waiter role using the Fire Sim interaction
• set individual start/end times for the role (by default waiters will work from the restaurant's opening to closing, I added this functionality after feeling bad for the waiters working at diners which never close)

To manually reassign the waiter role to some other sim, use the NRaas Register mod. (NOTE: The NRaas > Register interaction only shows up on a waiter's interaction menu if you've gone into build/buy mode at least once on the lot after hiring the waiter)


End Notes

Final build and testing done on patch 1.67.

Base Game compatible, no expansions required.

Current version of the mod no longer needs translation.

Additional Credits:
The Jones' for S3PE and s3se. Special thanks to Inge for answering my questions when I first started with this mod (and modding in general)

Those who tested the mod over at the NRaas Wiki forums (brappl, JustMe___ and Chain_Reaction for taking the time to look into the Nraas Cupcake (non?)issue)