Functional Sheep (Look! A living sheep!) V1.2

What to do when reporting a bug
If Nraas is throwing any errors (called Error traps) please send them to me! It's the only way I know exactly what to fix and what the problem is. And of course, an explanation as to what's happening in your game helps too


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As the Sims 4 Cottage Living is slowly getting closer and closer to Its release date, and MTS is currently doing a CottageCore challenge, I wondered: 'how hard could it be to make a functional sheep?'

I will tell you, it was easier said than done! But! I got something in the end that I'm really happy with to share these cuties with you all!

It might not be so heavy gameplay-featured as you all are used to from my mods, as I made this mod entirely (with its assets and custom script) within 3 weeks. I'm actually amazed I got this done at this state to begin with :p

NOTE: This mod is still at its early stages and I will be adding more features & fix any bugs where necessary!

Recent bug fixes
V1.3 (20-09-2023): [list][*] Fixed an issue where, once loading your save, the sheep would throw an Script Error (sometimes even 10 at the time). This should be fixed now.[*] Fixed an issue where the sheep could slow down the game because it was performing animations all the time. It will now just teleport to different spot when off-camera.[*] Fixed an issue where the moods and names wouldn't always stay persistent.[*] Community/NPC sheep will now function as intended, and living their happy lives. [*] Fixed an issue where with Zoe's knitting mod, the sheep wouldn't be possible to be sheared. THis is no longer the case.[*] Fixed an issue where the moods would stay around a certain value, never going up.




About the sheep



All sheep come with needs, just like your sims! All of them currently share the following needs:

• Hunger
• Thirst
• Social needs
• Coldness
• Bladder
• Sleep

Each need goes from 0 to 1. (0 meaning that they're not hungry, thirsty, etc. 1 being that they're starving, dehydrated, etc).

Sheep are pretty capable of taking care of themselves though! As long as you add a Hitching post (the same that horses use) and a Shelter, they'll be fine

When sheep are cold, they're most likely going to jump to their shelters, so they won't just be hanging out there for sleeping, but also taking shelter from the hail, rain, and snow! (or, super cold temperatures!)

Social interactions

• 1. Sims can also befriend sheep by talking to them! Sheep are pretty quick to trust your sims though!
• 2. If you got Zoe22's knitting mod installed... You can now gather yarn from your sheep! I do hope to make a loom in the future for this.

Checking their needs:
To check a sheep's need, simply click on the sheep and click 'Check info and Mood about this sheep' and you'll see what its needs are (as well as its gender and personality)

Routing to different objects:



I haven't yet been able to make the sheep navigate by walking (EA calls this a 'routing component'), therefore they literally 'jump' to the objects they want to interact with. it might be a bit silly, but it was the best I could do.

In future updates, I hope to have fixed this! But it takes quite a bit of time to get this done.

Sheep and their necessities


While we've talked a bit about what kind of needs they have, what about what they need to stay alive?

Shelters:


Shelters come as bedding (if you made a big indoor barn, for example, this is especially great!) and a regular small house. Each shelter has a total of 4 Spots, so if you got 5 shelters, make sure to have 2!

The shelter will make sure your sheep stays dry (Sheep HATE the rain! and if you were partially made out of wool, you might know why ) and if it's winter, it's THE place to warm up.



KNOWN BUG WITH THE SHELTER:
Sometimes sheep will have a funny way of standing in the shelters. It's pretty meme-worthy though Like this one:



"Got some barley, mate?"

Hitching post:
Just like horses, sheep can eat and drink from the hitching post. The hitching post does have a new thing that isn't too much to see for the regular user, but I made 2 additional slots for the hitching post. So any mod that replaces a hitching post's RSLT resource will conflict with this.

"But why don't they just graze?" You might ask. Well, wild sheep have the ability to travel to different places and therefore get different nutrients. Captive sheep, however, don't. Therefore they also need a mixture of hay and grass to survive. Thus, the need for a hitching post! See it this way: if you were to eat only but an apple, you wouldn't get much nutrition out of it (in fact you might even get sick of the idea of eating just apples)



Grazing patches:
Optional: but can be nice for the players who dedicated a small area for the sheep to stay in, rather than just randomly standing around the front garden.

This patch is invisible in Live mode, but in buy/build mode you can see a green box that is the grazing patch. They do come in 5x5, 10x10, and 15x15. If you ever need a 30x30, just get 3 10x10s next to each other or 2 15x15



Horse ball:
Optional: Because sheep like entertainment too wherever possible! Whenever your sheep get bored they'll start using the horse ball and play with it. That is, as long as a horse isn't using it of course



KNOWN BUG:

Sometimes, when you got multiple sheep, it tends to have this bug where multiple sheep are using the same horse ball. The reason for that is because the script that checks it, tends to get run at the same time and therefore thinks the state of the horseball is that no sheep are using it.

Temporary fix: Place your sheep one by one on the lot, but in such a way that you wait 20 sim minutes and place the second sheep. OR reset your sheep the same way, but resetting Each sheep with some sim minutes between them

Other sheep:
While you could own 1 sheep, it's strongly recommended you don't. Sheep are social creatures and need more sheep to look out for one another (they're prey animals, so the more eyes the better!). You'll notice that their social needs go down quite a bit if you only have 1. Therefore, always get a minimum of 2 sheep!

Social worker


If you don't take care of the sheep or give them any of the items they need, the neighbors might phone up the social worker to have them take a look. This system works the same as abandoning a pet.

Don't be worried though! You'll first get a warning an hour before the neighbors decide to call the social worker.

NOTE: If your sheep had all the items it needs but it simply didn't or doesn't do anything and just stays there, simply reset the sheep through NRAAS > Reset object. There's a slim chance this happens but 99% of it's fine! Also! make sure that if you got a lot of sheep, that you got multiple hitching posts!

Sheep and their personalities

Different sheep will have different personalities! I haven't fully developed the differences yet, but some of them are present!

Different personalities:

• Kind
• Evil
• Playful
• Lazy

Playful sheep:
Tend to make use of the Horseball a bit more than your regular sheep.

Lazy sheep:
Tend to sleep more than other sheep. (at random places usually too!)

Kind sheep:
(NOT YET IMPLEMENTED)

Evil sheep:
(NOT YET IMPLEMENTED)

Alien Abduction
Each week that goes by (so the end of the week when you bought your sheep), there is a 30% chance that your sheep could get abducted by aliens!

When that happens, you got 2 options:

• Save the sheep by going to the military and click 'save sheep'
• Ignore it and live your sim lives.

If you do choose to go with saving your sheep, you'll be surprised with an interactive story that you can play (sort of like a minigame ) and hopefully, save your sheep (and maybe save its buddy Sheo too if you really want a sheep with sunglasses).

Eventually, when you save your sheep, it will be in your family inventory. However, if you lose the sheep, then you can't save the sheep anymore.

"Can I just put sheep in my world and not add any of the need necessities?"


Of course! I put in a check that only has need decays enabled if the sheep is on the home lot of your sims! If you want to add sheep into the wild, simply add an empty lot in the landscape and add the sheep onto that lot. They'll move around, but not needing any shelter or hitching post. Or even a grazing field! (Unless you want to add that of course)

Object related info:

Sheep:

Catalogue: (sort by function) Pets > Horses (Sort by room) Outdoors > Lawn Ornmaments
Price: 1.650
recolorable: No
Presets: 1 (I hope to later introduce different breeds)
Polycounts: High: 8372, Med: 1006
Mesh credits: http://3dmag.org/en/market/item/512/ (although I did make it game ready and unwrapped the mesh)
Textures: Me

(other info)
- Has custom Rig
- Comes with custom animations (Idle, jumping, grazing/eating, play with ball, sleeping)
- Has custom script

Sheep (Sheo):

Catalogue: can't be purchased, as it's a reward. See 'Alien abduction'
Price: 1.650
recolorable: No
Presets: 1 (I hope to later introduce different breeds)
Polycounts: High: 8622, Med: 1006
Mesh credits: http://3dmag.org/en/market/item/512/ (although I did make it game ready, gave it glasses and unwrapped the mesh)
Textures: Me

(other info)
- Has custom Rig
- Comes with custom animations (Idle, jumping, grazing/eating, play with ball, sleeping)
- Has custom script

Shelter (outdoors)
Catalogue: (sort by function) Pets > All - Decor > Misc decor
Price: 120
recolorable: Yes, 3 channels
Presets: 3 (See images)
Polycounts: High: 864, Med: 303

Shelter (Indoors)
Catalogue: (sort by function) Pets > All - Decor > Misc decor
Price: 20
recolorable: No
Presets: 1
Polycounts: High: 145, Med: 73

Grazing patch 5x5, 10x10 and 15x15
Catalogue: (sort by function) Decor > Misc decor
Price: 0
recolorable: No
Presets: 1
Polycounts: High: 24

Upcoming Features:

• Live & death update (involving sheep breeding and sheep dying of old age)
• Working some more on the personalities
• More interactions for sims to interact with sheeps
• Adding a routing component (so your sheep will walk around rather than jump)
• Creating a sheep spawner through town edit/CAW for easier wild sheep placements
• Getting products from sheep (other products other than Zoe22's wool )

Known bugs

• The animations aren't really amazing, but as a non-animator, I have tried my best to make them as nice as possible! If anyone wants to make these animations even better, feel free to share the CLIP files of the edited animations with me!
• When sheep are using the horse ball, they'll first start out with being inside the ball. Currently i'm looking at a workaround for this, but it's not a easy one to fix
• when sheep use the horse ball and all sheep have been placed at the same time, there is a chance that all of them will be using the horse ball. It's therefore recommended that you place one sheep at the time (So place the other sheep once it moves)
• There is a chance that the military base shows that there are sheeps to save from the aliens, i'm still working on a fix for this.

Other Credits:
Thanks to the people on discord for their feedback! As well as Zoe22 for giving permission to integrate her mod into mine (You'll see soon enough what that is It does involve sheep shaving :p) And Battery and Tashiketh for some of the brain breaking logic that exploded my brain (and battery and gamefreak130 for answering any ts3 API related questions)