Hi,

I just start a mod for improving the bowling gameplay on the Sims 4.
I intend to make improvements like those shown below.

Where, Sims:

• Sit while waiting to bowl when playing together with other sims;
• Talk, cheer, and heckle while waiting to bowl when playing together with other sims;
• Do not take forever to bowl because they are doing other things (like chatting);
• React (be surprised, for example) when watching a Bowling Fail or a strike.
• Gain bad moodlets (as the embarrassing one) when doing a bowling fail;
• Gain good moodlets (as the happy one) when making a strike;
• May gain a good or bad sentiment when bowling together other sims based on their friendship, traits conflict or matches, and humor;
• Gain other moodlets than the confident one when winning a game by a random choice weighed by their traits;
• Gain random moodlets when losing a match based on their traits;
• Can sometimes cheat the game if they are kleptomaniac; they win the game if they are not discovered by other players.

What else do you think could be included to enhance the bowling experience in Sims4?

Well, given that sims can take an entire day to bowl 10 frames with another sim or two in the game, I had to throw in a faster bowling mod before I lost my mind. Some moodlets might be OK, but anything like talking or sitting would be the last thing I'd want them to do.

I'm a very satisfied user of that faster bowling mod. That said, anything that enhanced the sense that Sims went bowling together, or at least were more aware that they were part of a group that were involved in the same bowling match (as opposed to each merely waiting his or her turn), would be pretty great. I've likewise wished recently that Sims could go to karaoke together also, you know, like real people do. Instead of just going up to the karaoke machine and belting one out, and getting an occasional spectator or heckler, that is. That being said, both might be too much to ask of a game that is allegedly about young adults' group activities....

The sit while bowling element, I already tried modding that myself a good while ago. The results were not good. But, perhaps another modder may have more success. I came to the conclusion that you have to make chairs, sofas a snap on "child" element to the "parent" object bowing lane, so the sitting activity is recognized as part of the bowling event. Just as dining chairs snap to dining tables and are part of the dining process. Just putting in the coding to sit on any nearby seating was not enough. (Borrowing chunks of coding from the hospital "patients sit at reception" mod I did also did not do the trick.) I abandoned that idea. But, perhaps another modder may fare better.

By far the biggest problem with any type of object interaction, is other sims who are not involved in the group activity, who will get the random push to go talk with a sim who is involved in a group activity. In some cases such as bowling, this will cause the sim who has to take their turn bowling to take forever. Usually after a long enough delay getting their ears talked off, the game just ends the bowling session.

The game is rife with annoyances like this, the hot tub one of the most noticeable. Sim decides to get in a hot tub autonomously. Nice. But not a minute later gets out again. Annoying. Not because the hot tub is bugged. But 9 out of 10 times because another sim decided of all the sims on the lot, the hot tub sim is the one they now want to talk with. The ESP telepathic message is sent to the hot tub sim, they then get out and stand there waiting for other sim to come from miles away.

What the game needs is a new bit of coding from Maxis that is a "do not disturb" block. A bit of coding that can be placed on a single XML that then prevents autonomous, meaningless, random chit chat coming their way while engaged in an activity such as bowling, hot tub and so on.

Currently, the only way to do it with the XML coding Maxis do provide, is to blacklist the "is in hot tub" or "is bowling" hidden buffs on all the hundreds of chat interaction XMLs. What I call the arse-backwards way. I method I've used myself to stop romance sims forcing their partners who are eating to stop, get up and kiss them or some such. By blacklisting all the "is eating" and "is drinking" hidden buffs in all autonomous romance interactions. It works a treat, and as there were only 7 or 8 romance XMLs to work on for the mod it was tolerable to make the mod.

However for hot tubs, bowling, or so many other object interactions, you'd need to fetch out the hundreds of chit chat interaction XMLs to add in the blacklisted hidden buffs on each. That's a lot of work for a modder to do, hence Maxis need to make a new bit of coding and put it directly on the hot tub, bowling XMLs.

When it comes to modding bowling, I would concentrate on making it more seamless and smooth, much better transitions between sims promptly taking their turns. I have done a mod to make sims take their turns more quickly, and it helps to some degree. But there is also the general, widespread simulation lag that gets involved and scuppers just about everything, especially turn-based group activities. It would be more about taking things out to make it run smoother and transition better between each bowler taking their turn, than adding more new features such as extra cheering or booing. Given the Sims 4 engine and the simulation lag element, the "nice ideas" you want to implement to make it all go with a bang, a much more meaningful experience, never quite work out as imagined. The sims will end up taking even longer to take their turns, the simulation lag in between each step, each animation sequence, will ruin the effect every time.

Nice ideas. Wrong game to try them on. But I do wish you luck on trying to implement them and finding a good workaround for the inevitable simulation lag that will get involved in the equation.

Helpful description of the problem, and for some reason I never noticed it was about a Sim two floors down who wanted to talk to the hot tub Sim. But one thing I have noticed is that the onsen is almost the opposite. The onsen seems very tightly controlled: shower, get in, get out, shower again, and so on. Not too bad as that's kind of what it's really like, except for the bathing suits part. But heaven help you if you want your Sim to talk to his/her friend that he/she came to the onsen with, because said friend happened to go sit on the other side of the bath and cannot even see your Sim, much less hear him/her. Good luck also if you'd like your Sim to go get something to eat from the vending machine now, as opposed to in two Sim hours or whenever the game says he/she can get out of the bath.

Thank you for your comments.
My idea is they go sitting and talking while they're waiting their turn to bowl.
For example, if you are bowling with 4 Sims, while one of them is bowling, the other 3 will sit and talk until their turn to bowl.
As you can see in my poor test video below, if a Sim (the child in the left) is playing alone they will not sit (because it not make sense).

The bowling XMLs are quite messy, but I found a way to make Sims sitting while waiting to bowl (maybe by messing the bowling XMLs much more :D).


Yeah. My initial idea to start modding bowling is because that problem.


There is another way.
For example, sims cannot chat with other (random) sims while playing video games.
It is because the video game XMLs interactions have a command to not permit sims chatting while it is running.
I applied the same command in the bowling interaction and, now, chatting is no more permitted while bowling. Other non-stop autonomous activities like knitting are also prohibited.
I believe the game devs did not forbid chatting during bowling to make it possible they chat during a bowling game, which is quite realistic. The problem is they chat forever and forget to bowl.
Because that, like video game interaction, I forbid them to do the chatting interaction while bowling. Moreover, I include “fake” chatting animations in the bowling interaction to make it more realistic.
As you can see in the video in the post above, It is not perfect, but it is better than the original.