MenuEditor

Introduction

MenuEditor is part of the blueprint suite of tools and provided as a handy way of quickly editing menu options along with their scores. With the MenuEditor application, you can edit these values (along with other attributes about the menu items) and increase, decrease or completely remove the scores they affect in the game and make your object more appealing to certain Sims. This is different from the catalog values which are displayed when you purchase an item. There the values are single digits. In the MenuEditor, they’re presented as ranges that might be altered based on the personality of the Sim.

Features

Documentation

Some objects have interactive menus that can be accessed by clicking on them. These menus are hooked to various trees that will in turn execute a behavior of an object (like watering a plant) which will then carry out the instructions for that action (play animation, play sound, etc.) Part of the appeal of an object to a Sim is how appealing that object might be, not only to the Sim but the Sims house, neighbors, and other objects. These values are advertised to the Sim characters and (when not being invoked directly by you) will take part in how a Sim might interact with an object. Sims (not under direct player control) choose what to do by selecting, from all of the possible behaviors in all of the objects, the behavior that maximizes their current happiness.

With the MenuEditor application, you can edit these values (along with other attributes about the menu items) and increase, decrease or completely remove the scores they affect in the game and make your object more appealing to certain Sims. This is different from the catalog values which are displayed when you purchase an item. There the values are single digits. In the MenuEditor, they’re presented as ranges that might be altered based on the personality of the Sim.

The MenuEditor is simple to use. To edit an objects menu, just pass the fully qualified filename on the command line to the program and start editing. You can also drag an IFF file onto the MenuEditor icon on your desktop to launch the program. The program will also prompt you for an object to work with if you don’t pass it one. The object you wish to edit must have at least one menu entry in order to be editable. Editing is broken down by 3 major areas of the dialog box.

Menu Items
This is a scrollable list of all the menu entries found for the object. Just click on one or scroll through the list with the keyboard to change the current entry. All other fields are updated based on the values for that item.

Interaction Data
This section lets you change values for the current menu item.

Menu Name
The current menu name will be displayed here. This is the actual text that will be displayed in the pie menu when a Sim interacts with an object. Just type and change the text to whatever you want. When you move off that field the changes will be applied to the dialog. To permanently make a change to the object file, click on the Apply or OK button.

Attenuation Value
Attenuation sets how quickly the advertisement fades. A setting of none makes the strength of the advertisement independent of distance. In addition to the preset values (high, moderate, low), one can set a custom value.

Attenuation Threshold
This is a percentage of how the attenuation value will be used. A value of 100 means it will use and apply the attenuation at full strength.

Flags
This series of checkboxes lets you alter the menu item.

Available to [Children | Adults | Visitors]
These flags toggle the availability of the menu option. If you wish to restrict it (for example, do not allow visitors to make drinks) then set the flag here. Be careful with this setting. For example, you cannot simply make an option available to children and have it work. If there is no child animation for that object/action, the game might crash. It is however, always safe to remove an option.

Allow Consecutive
Setting this flags toggles whether or not the user is able to queue up several in a row.

Auto First Select
This flag toggles whether or not a menu option should always be chosen autonomously.

Motives
This section lets you alter the advertised scores that the object has and lets you create your own. A list of all motives are presented (Energy, Comfort, Hygiene, Bladder, Room, Social, Fun, Mood) with each one of them having a min, a max and a personality value. Motive scores should not exceed 100 in either direction (-100 – 100). Anything beyond these values are ignored.

When you highlight a motive in the list, the min, max and personality values are updated to reflect the current selection. You can alter these values just by typing in the boxes or changing the personality value in the dropdown list. The main list is updated when you change the values. The max score is always calculated to be the current difference between the min score and itself so if you change the min, the max is updated. The max score is never set below the min score.

You can also create your own scores just by changing the min or max score on any motive to a value other than 0. Any score can be altered by a personality trait by selecting one from the pulldown list. A Sim with this personality who selects this option will be affected by the score, but the value will be diminished towards the min value. If “None” is selected in the Vary by Personality pulldown, then the max value is used.

Note that motive scores also affect other scores, without any settings from you. They’re built into the game. For example, the difference between you hunger scores from one hour to the next might impact your bladder and energy scores. The key here is that not everything is as crystal clear when it comes to motives. The Sims is a complex set of dynamics, always changing based on the game, the objects and your Sims. Experiment, keep backups and of course, have fun!