Modding robot crafting station and its robots

[Darkitow]

Hi there! This is my first post, and I come here after a long amount of downloads from this site to start trying something more advanced... So let's go with it.

I love Robotics talent badges, but I'm a little dissapointed on the way some robots work (as many people do), so I did a little research myself. I found a really cool custom robot, this one:

http://208.109.175.73/images/robots/sani-bot-5000-action-450x450.png

which is, basically, a flying cleanBot that also clean stuff that is on other surfaces, very cool (you can find it here: Simwardrobe.com (http://simwardrobe.com/), going to Sims 2/Objects/Robots/Sani-Bot 5000).

The thing is that this item is placed under the buy mode, and you can't build it like a normal robot. My question would be if it would be possible to mod the robot crafting station to make it able to buld this as a normal robot, but making it more "real". For example, adding talent points as another hoverBot, being able to break, being able to build it only after you reach silver badge...

I'm not trying to get the work done for free, but it'd help if someone points me to the right direction so I can do it myself, as I've never done any mod.

thanks in advance!

[MogHughson]

The robots that the crafting station produces will be objects in their own right with their own GUIDs but simply not marked as buyable in the catalog. There will be some code in the crafting station that will make a call to an instruction called "Create New Object Instance" 0x002A and will pass it the GUID of these objects. So to allow the crafting station to produce a different object that code would need to be replicated to use a different GUID (the one of the object you picture) and I guess some pie-menus updated to allow the selection of this new choice when using the crafting station.

I haven't researched this directly, so this is just what I expect you need to change in order to get it going. I suspect if you have never done any modding then perhaps you should start by following a tutorial or two to try out modding first, there is one to teach you how to update pie-menus, which you will need for this mod too. You can find it here.

I don't know if I'm giving you too much or too little information here, so come back with more questions if you want more detailed pointers.

Cheers
Mog :Pint:

[Darkitow]

I've noticed that the crafting station now has two "make munchieBot" options, but I had all the robots I wanted in my lot and I didn't want to get my people busy crafting them, but I'll test it soon. In any case, I dunno if this was an attemp from the person making the original robot craftable, or something I messed up when cloning the crafting station to peek at its codes.

Now with the link you posted I feel more confident about this, so I'll try again this time using that as a reference. I don't know, however, if there's something special about the robots, because they're "two" objects, the base and the little dude. For the custom robot, the original way to get it is to buy the base in buy mode and use a new option from that base that says "create Sani-bot...", so I think I'd go with replacing the base with one of a notmal hoverBot (in my game, I deleted a munchieBot, and used its base for the new cleanBot, and deleted the custom base, but it still works fine).

Another thing I saw when I looked at the station codes, is that it had only one instance of the "make one" and "make many" (apart from the "TEST" ones that I guess Maxis uses for testers), but now that I have more information, I guess I'll take another look.

I know I've started a bit to much into the "hardcore" modding, but the fact is that I don't really have the intention to mod too much. I start university in a week and I'll have enough mindsucking with the game, I don't wanna think how would I be with also getting obsessed with modding, and I don't have any other special request or need to mod, everything else in the game is just fine to me... All I'd do for now is modding the station and if needed, mod the robot to be more alike to a normal crafted item. So I'm sorry if I ask too many questions and I look too moddish, I won't brag too much about this.

Thanks for your answer, I got so many views and no comments that I was starting to believe I posted in the wrong way or I offended someone/broke the rules.

[Echo]

I think the crafting tables are a bit more complicated, unfortunately.

There's a big discussion about crafting selectors here: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?p=3137299
but that was about creating a new table. Adding an object to an existing table should be a bit easier. Try this:
- In your new robot, set the Selector Sub-Category to 0x2
- Copy the CT functions from an existing craftable robot into the new robot, and fix any GUID references
- In the table, import the BCON "Craft Obj - GUIDs" from "CraftingGlobals"
- Add the GUID halves for the new robot into the BCON you just imported

There may be some more steps though, it's been a really long while since I looked into these. :)

Regarding the "base" objects, that is because most of the robots are actually little NPCs that wander around the lot for a short time then return back to their base station and . The base station *isn't* an NPC, it's just the part of the object which is responsible for creating the NPC on demand.

Don't worry about getting lots of views and no comments - that just means you asked a difficult or specialist question. Easy, obvious or incorrectly posted questions get fast responses. ;)

[Darkitow]

Unfortunately the new robot is complicated too. It was something I found somewhere in Youtube, and looking for it I managed to find the download.

If you see the attachments I posted in your other thread, it has four files and I don't know exactly why is done that way. I'd ask the creator but the site seems to be abandoned. The item has some things that I don't like (it cleans too fast and also cleans living roaches. I want something useful, but not a hax). The speed probably is due to the animation so I need further research (I guess doubleing the animation and adding the "clean" effect at the end would do it), the later, I guess I just need to findd the BHAV about cleaning roaches and tweak it to clean only dead ones (are dead roaches considered any special type of trash?)

To put some story behind this mody first idea was to make "hoverBots" as an update of all robots, not only the two new that you get with the silver badge. So, you get bronze badge and the ability to craft roverBots, which are cleanBot and hydroBot. till there, as usually. When you get the silver badge, you get hoverBots, but now they wouldn't be bound to munchieBot and SentryBot, but would be an update of the other two, being able to make flying cleanBots and hydroBots (but unfortunately I don't know how to mesh and much less to animate, so for me to create a hover hydroBot will take a while).

I guess the opposite wouldn't be too useful (rover munchieBot and sentryBot), although a rover SentryBot could still have some use guarding a certain floor).

I'll take a look at what you told me, but would that do all the work? no pie-menu edits or anything similar? in case this works I guess i can start thinking about modding the meshes a bit to make the cleanBot a bit different from munchieBot (and maybe changing the name of the original one).

Thanks for the help! I'll post what results I get. I'm still a bit worried about the workbench having two munchieBot pie menus, but I guess I'll deal with it later.

EDIT:

I looked into the files again and fortunately everything got clear about what was each .package for the custom robot. One is the robot, other is the base and the other two are the laser beam it uses (lol). so I guess what I'd have to mod is the first one, as the base wouldn't be needed anymore (and I prefer the original one).

Other than that I didn't have time to check it further, but I got a little confused because I wasn't able to find what you said... I guess tomorrow I'll look again.