More Random Interests for Freetime+

New info as of 20/04/24: If you use the Sim Blender to randomise interests, I noticed that this process was still using the old limits even with my mod in place. This is because the Blender uses its own BCON which is a copy of the BCON that sets the age limit for interests. What is actually useful about this is it means you can set the BCON there up differently to my mod if you like. In my game, I have it completely unrestricted. I don't know if other mods that allow randomising aspects of sims do the same thing. If so, it should be possible to change it using this method. Also, if you want to edit my mod to restrict or allow different interests per age group, here are the instructions to do that.





Description:

How Sim Interests work:

Sims can have varying level of interest in 18 different categories, for example, Politics, Fashion, and Sci-Fi. This is generated randomly. These are the icons which pop up when sims are using the "chat" interaction as well as some other talking interactions. An interest level of 0-3 means that a sim actively dislikes that topic, 4-6 means it is a neutral topic for them, and 7+ points means they really like that topic. So for example, if a sim really likes Politics, they are more likely to suggest it as a conversation topic, and when they do, their conversation partner's level of interest determines how the conversation will go. If the other sim also likes that interest, the conversation goes very well and they react enthusiastically, gaining relationship points. However, if the other sim does not like that interest, they will react angrily, maybe even sticking their fingers in their ears. The conversation will end and the sims will lose a small amount of relationship points with each other. Sims with a neutral level of interest react positively and accept the conversation.

The problem:

In Freetime, Maxis decided to change sim interests from being totally random at birth and hardly ever changing, to being set according to an "age appropriate" format, where sims created in each age stage have interests which are "restricted" and capped to a maximum of 4 points. You might have noticed that none of your CAS adults or townie adults have higher than 4 interest in Animals. Since some mods and calculators look at interests to decide how to allocate things like wants, including lifetime wants, this can mean that you find some of those don't show up and/or most sims start to follow very similar patterns. Essentially it makes interests useless, which is disappointing (I used to love playing around with interests!) Interests also change based on certain hobby-related items sims interact with but I did not touch on this in this mod, because the process of this is much slower and doesn't really cause a problem.

In addition, the game looks at whether sims are moving from an age where an interest is restricted/unrestricted and either adds or removes exactly 4 points in every affected interest.

The child-to-teen age transition is the most dramatic - sims gain 4 points each in Politics, Money, Environment, Crime, Culture, Food, Work and Weather.

Newly aged up teens also lose 4 points from Animals and Toys.

Teen-to-adult causes a loss of 4 points each in School and Sci-Fi, and newly aged up elders gain 4 points in Health.

Unfortunately, this means that any sims created as child or younger, including born-in-game sims, end up with very similar interests as adults.



One slight issue:

I found that the number of capped interests starts to cause problems with the weighted allocation of extra points when there are more than 3 capped interests. I couldn't figure this out, so I just kept it at 3.

I decided to cap Politics for babies-children, which means that born in game sims will have a maximum of 4 points in Politics. Then at the teen age transition, teens get +4 to Politics. This then may wane over life if they spend a lot of time involved in hobby activities.

I also capped Work at 4 for newly created babies-teens. On the adult age transition, sims get a +4 boost in their Work interest. However, this is also capped for Elders. So on the elder transition, sims will lose 4 points of interest in work, and newly created elders will have max 4 interest in Work.

Lastly, I capped Toys for teens and older. Sims created as children or younger will have a random amount of interest in Toys, and drop 4 points in this interest at the teen age transition, but sims created as teens or older will have this capped at 4.

All other interests are totally random. There is a very slight issue in that teens+ created in game all seem to have a fairly high interest in sci-fi. I couldn't get this to go away even by removing the Politics restriction, so if you don't like this effect and you are likely to be creating a lot of CAS adults or you're just starting a new hood and letting it generate townies, it might be a good idea to remove my mod temporarily or replace it with the mod that unrestricts all interests for all age groups by equinoxts2, then plop mine back in before you start getting in-game births if you want your sim kids to be bored by politics and work chat again.

Other mods to look at

There are already 2 other mods which affect this.

What if you agree with my judgement that all this interest capping/boosting is squashing individuality, but you want EVEN MORE randomness? @equinoxts2 at Tumblr made a version which unlocks all interests for all ages, so you get NO restrictions and NO bumps/drops in interests at age transition. You can grab it here: https://www.tumblr.com/equinoxts2/6...terest-ages-mod

This version is not compatible with mine. You need to pick one - whichever loads last will override the other. However you can swap them in and out e.g. if you're doing a lot of character creation.

@lilbabydilljr, also at Tumblr, made a mod which adds a coin flip to the age transition interest change, so it only happens half of the time. You can use this with mine, and I think that they work really well together! Contrary to his description, I don't think that mod works with equinoxts2's, because equinoxts2's completely negates the change at age transition. It won't cause a problem to put both in, but it just won't do anything because it's coin flipping between two options which are exactly the same. You can grab it here: https://lilbabydilljr.tumblr.com/po...hange-is-random

Thank you to equinoxts2 for the original mod which I used as a base.
Thank you also to MidgeTheTree for some info shared about how interests work. Also some discussions on MATY and Simbology and ModTheSims contributed to my understanding here.

(Update as of 29/06/24: Just some tweaks to the description)