Ring Up Customers at Register

First, I apologize for my long silence. That wasn't very kind of me.
This mod gathered a bigger crowd than I expected. And unfortunately, I can't do better than (very) sporadic updates. Hence the adoption.

: Compatible with Snowy Escape Patch 1.68.156.1020

Update : december 8, new Ring Up Only at Register, Ring Up All Customers, added Chinese (mumulinovo + momooo) translationUpdate : november 22, added Polish (Sisi345) + Spanish (Gonzii) translationsUpdate : november 20, added French (Aranel) + Portuguese (qlaqercoixsa) translations, added patch 1.68.156.1020 small changes

New stuff (update december 8)

• You can now "Enable Ring Up Only at Register". Which will force owners and employees to ring up customers at the cash register only. No more tablets !

• You can also "Ring Up All Customers at Register" from the cash register. This will make the sim stay at the register and ring up all incoming customers at the register on his own. No need to click on each customer anymore . Kind of how it worked in the Sims 2 (more info on how it works below).

And here is a sneak peek into what I'm currently working on :

Summary

Do you like running after your customers all over your store ? Then this mod is not for you.

This mod brings all the "Ring me Up" customers in one spot... the cash register. And they wait for you there, in line. And even better, you can actually ring them up using the cash register instead of the tablet.

Introduction

Like a lot of simmers, I really enjoyed the Sims 2 Open for Business. And I missed the customers waiting in line in both Sims 3 and Sims 4. But the Sims 4 retail system was still a lot of fun for me. And the "tablet Ring Up" does make sense in art galleries or museums and such. Then a few months ago I made the convenient store in the pictures. And because it felt so weird to ring up customers using a tablet in a convenient store, I got motivated to make this mod.

Mod description details

Customers
Customers arriving on the lot will behave normally as they have in the past. But when they are "Ready to Buy" and the little notification pops up, the mod kicks in.

• By default, this mod will make customers wait in line at the register. If you sim suddenly wants to do some leg work, this mod can be disabled/enabled at any time by clicking on the register. And customers will start to wait near the object they want to buy (EA's default). The change will affect the new "Ring Up" customers. The customers already waiting somewhere won't move.

• "Ready to Buy" customers will actually look for the register until they find it. Which means that, even if a customer gets interrupted, or stuck somewhere, or you move the register while he was waiting in line, or you reset the sim or anything that makes them not "wait in line at the register"... That customer will keep looking for that register until he finds it.

• As they are walking toward the register, the option to "Ring Up" customers is disabled. This is mainly to prevent overzealous employees from leaving the register and trying to ring them up halfway (and you know how well EA handles "try talking to moving sim").

• I also froze the timer for the check out as they are walking to the register. That way, if you have a 64x64 mall, the customers won't rage quit before reaching the register (or if you would like to build a maze-like shop, that works too). The timer will start counting down when they are waiting in line at the register.

• Waiting in line. Yes. The customers won't clutter around the register, they will wait in a realistic not-perfectly-straight line while complaining and getting angrier with time. I also decided to create a way for customers to walk forward. Long story short, I added a frequent check for customers to see if there is space for them to walk forward or not. So as to not destroy everybody's CPU, I set that check to every 2 to 4 sim-minutes. So some customers will react faster than others. And if you look closely, you might see some impatient sims cut in line, feigning indifference to the annoyed stares of those with manners .

• If the customer is buying something in the world (so not from the big fridges with inventories), once they have been successfully rung up, they will give you the money and go straight home from the register (more info about animations below).

• If the customer is buying clothes from the mannequins, I thought it would have been quite strange for him to change and wear his new outfit at the register. So after paying, he will leave the register, go back to the mannequin, change his outfit and then leave the lot.

• If the customer is buying from the big fridges with inventories ("Lice Cold Retail Freezer" and "Cat Loves Food Inc. Professional Grade Warming Rack"), I let them do what EA has always made them do : they help themselves to the fridges, pay you with a notification and leave without being rung up.

• If you use the default "Ring Up" interaction with the tablet, customers will always go back to the object first before leaving.

Cash Register
This mod considers an object to be a register if it has the object_StoreRegister's ID (105696). So it will work with any EA or CC registers. When customers are "Ready to Buy" they will look for the closest register. So you can have multiple functional registers. But my recommendation would be to have only one register, because multiple "Ring me Up" locations kind of defeats the purpose of bringing all the customers in one spot... But if you're going for the "multiple stores on the same lot" type of game, then go ahead, it works

If you are going to use multiple register, make sure you put them at least 10 "spaces/squares/slots" away from each other, or in different rooms. For more detailed explanations as to why that is, please read the following.



Employees
Employees, just like owners can "Ring Up" and "Ring Up at Register". I didn't specifically set a preference, so they might do both. I thought about making them only use "Ring Up at Register", but I liked the variety in interactions. I did notice them going for the register more often but that's EA's default "do the less time-consuming / most rewarding thing".

If the mod is disabled/enabled they will act accordingly.

Owners
Owners have a couple of interactions added to the customer's and register's pie menu.

• Like stated earlier, from the register, you can disable or enable the mod. This might seem like a silly option, but it's not. This information will be tied to the lot. If you own multiple retail lots, you can set different values for each one. If ringing up with a tablet feels weird in a convenient store, ringing up at the register at an art gallery is even weirder. That way I don't have to install/uninstall my mod everytime I play a different type of retail.

• Also from the register, you can "Enable Ring Up Only at Register". Which will force owners and employees to ring up customers at the cash register only. No more tablets !

• Owners can now "Ring Up at the Register". Which does exactly that. Instead of going to the customer, they will look for the register closest to the customer and actually use it. The normal "Ring Up" can last up to 10 sim-minutes (it depends on your retail skill). But this new interaction will last as long as the animations I chose (more details about animations below). That's why the "Ring Up at the Register" interaction will always be around 6 sim-minutes. No matter how low/high the retail skill is. And no matter what store perks you buy (they will still affect the normal "Ring Up" though).
  
  I tried my best to explain to the player when and why the interactions don't work. For example, if a customer is already being "Rung Up at the Register", the interaction is disabled until you finish/cancel it. If you see that message but nobody's at the register, that could be because an employee is still walking to the register from who knows where, just wait a bit. And if an owner/employee can't reach the register because it is currently in use, I added animations (more info below) with my own Thought Balloon, so that players could still understand what the employee was trying but failing to do.

• Similarly, but in such a better way, your owners can now "Ring Up All Customers at the Register". Which makes the sim do the "Ring Up Customer at the Register" on his own. Please keep this in mind though, EA's "find closest thing" works as well as a my unemployed uncle (pointedly looking at all the sad chopping boards left on bathroom counters). Because apparently, the sim closest to the register is "so far away", always getting rung up last, but the second person in line is "just about right". So I decided to force the cashier to only ring up the customer right in front of the register. That makes them unable to ring up customers at the back of the queue. But because of that, the next customer in line needs to walk forward before your sim can ring them up.

• If the store is open, owners can "Call Ready Customers to Register". While creating this mod, I added this interaction before making customers come on their own. I then upgraded this mod so that I wouldn't have to call them each time. So this is not very useful anymore. But I guess for now I will leave it in, in case you feel a customer is taking too long to find the register on their own.

• This one is really just for fun. And I had a lot of it. At any time, you can call at the register everyone on the lot... for no reason.

Animations
I really tried to make my own animations, but I quickly realised that I wasn't any good at it. So I decided to frankenstein EA's existing ones.

• For the one that illustrates "can't reach the register", I really wanted to remove all the sims screaming the generic "routing failure" when the register was already in use. So I used 6 different animations (some head shaking, shoulder shrugging, head scratching, arms crossing, etc.) to replace that. I don't know if any of them are restricted to certain packs or not, but they looked pretty generic. So I used all 6 of them, that way it would look more natural and less repetitive/annoying.

• For the animations happening at the register I went with a short "convenient store" kind of conversation. Which is "Hello. that'll be $$. Thank you. Have a nice day." For that I used 2 different hello/goodbye animations (with all the emotion variations), the default "grab" animation and duplicated the one for the register (for some reason the default one was extremely restricted). And those animations put together will be the duration of a "Ring Up at Register".

Installation

Un-zip (extract) the downloaded file and install both the .package file and the .ts4script file in your mods folder.
Don't forget to enable script mods in the options menu of the game.
Make sure only one copy/version of the mod is in your mods folder.

If you don't see the new "Customers..." options appear on the register, then the script was not properly installed.

Compatibility and requirements

You need Sims 4 Get To Work for this mod to have any effect (obviously).

This mod should be pretty compatible with most mods even some who alter retail. This mod has its own resources and doesn't use any default EA tuning files. Though, through script, I do change the "outcome" of the WaitToPurchase (000000000001B5EA) interaction. So to be on the safe side, try it without any other retail mods first. If it works, try adding others one by one.


Credits and Thanks

Thanks
Lots of thanks to the creators of these modding tools which helped me understand Sims 4 :
TS4 Tuning Description Browser - scumbumbo
XML Extractor for The Sims 4 - scumbumbo
Tuning Inspector - MAL22
Script Reloading - fetusdip & scumbumbo

Translations
Chinese - by mumulinovo & momooo
French - by Aranel
Polish - by Sisi345
Brazilian Portuguese - by qlaqercoixsa
Spanish - by Gonzii

Additional Credits
VS Code, S4S, Blender, Photoshop