Skills Lose Progress (UPDATED: 5 January 2020)

Changelog

5 January 2020:

• Added Polish translation. Thanks Wojtek!
• Decimal values can now be input into the Change Settings menu

31 December 2019:

• Added French, Dutch, and Russian translations. Thanks SecretX, Lessien Vardamir, and Knight!
• Decreased periodic lags and freezing (hopefully)
• Fixed bug concerning automatic menu resizing

Reminder: When removing or updating mods, it is good practice to clear the ScriptCache.package file from your Userdata folder.

Have you ever felt it was a bit too easy to make your Sims perfect? Want to add a little bit of realism to the skill building process?



What Is This Mod?
This is a pure script mod that makes skills lose progress over time, similar to the social group influence from University Life. Note that the University Life expansion is NOT required for this mod to work. Now, even if a sim has mastered a skill, they have to continue to use it or risk losing their hard-earned skill points.

When a world is first loaded or a new game is started with the mod installed, any skills that are at 0% progress will be boosted to 15% progress to prevent immediate level dropping. When skills are leveled up, the progress bar will start at 10%, and when a skill decays by a level, the progress bar will drop to around 90% to prevent immediate reacquisition of dropped levels. Additionally, a jitter value is used to slightly randomize the rate of skill decay, meaning that for any given period of time, some skills may lose progress faster or slower than others.

By default, all skills that appear in the journal, as well as some hidden skills, will be subject to decay. These settings can be changed; see "Settings" and "Tunings and Translations" below for more info. Note, however, that some hidden skills are tied to special careers or game mechanics, and enabling their decay may result in unhandled behavior.


Settings
All settings in this mod are saved on a per-world, per-savegame basis, and can be changed through the NRaas-style "Skills Lose Progress" interaction within the "Gamefreak130" submenu of Computers and City Hall. Global settings used when starting a new game or loading the mod for the first time can be changed through the optional tuning package (see "Tunings and Translations" below).


Tunings and Translations
The optional tuning package contains the global tuning used for settings in the "Gamefreak130.SkillsLoseProgressSpace.PersistedSettings" and "Gamefreak130.SkillsLoseProgress.SkillTuning" XML resources.


Currently, the following languages are supported:

• English
• Dutch
• French
• Polish
• Russian

Translations are very welcome and much appreciated; formatted string tables and unhashed keys have been provided in the package if you wish to help.

Compatibility and Uninstallation
Built, tested, and (mostly) working on game version 1.69. It may work on earlier versions, but it has not been tested; do so at your own risk.

As stated earlier, NO expansion packs are required for this mod to run.

As this is a pure script mod, conflicts with other mods should be next-to-nonexistent.

Uninstallation should not create a huge problem -- simply remove the mod from the packages folder.

Known Issues

• If a sim masters a skill but then it drops back down to level 9, another certificate will be mailed if the sim masters the skill again. Personally, I think the certificates are generic enough that this is a non-issue, and they can be sold for 1,000 simoleons apiece

Additional Credits