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[UPDATE: Jan-3-17] Apartments & Roommates Fix [New features!]

SCREENSHOTS
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Uploaded: 3rd May 2015 at 3:31 PM
Updated: 4th Jan 2017 at 2:44 AM - new features!
UPDATE on Jan. 3rd, 2017: : Fixed an issue where apartment lots not owned by another Sim that were not accepting roommates would not be billed for rent, nor would bills show up in the mailbox. They now do -- hooray!

UPDATE on 8/15/16

Change Log
  • Added "Dispatch Repair Technician and Charge Occupant" interaction to all Occupants - for instances where you, as the Landlord, do not want to pay for the repair of the broken object (example: Maybe you only want to repair basic items like kitchen and/or plumbing, but a TV or laptop breaks - you can click on the Occupant, choose "Dispatch Repair Tech and Charge Occupant" and you will take $50 from the Occupant to cover the cost of the repair)
  • Attempt to stop the new interactions from appearing on the same sim or object repeatedly.

UPDATE on 8/13/16: NEW FEATURES! Landlords must now fix broken objects!

  • Your Landlord sim will now be notified if an object breaks on any of your tenants' properties. Your occupant will withhold all rent payments until you fix the item
  • If playing as the occupant of a rented property, when an object breaks, you will withhold your rent payment from your landlord until the object is repaired
  • All sims in a Landlord's house will now automatically become Acquaintances of all occupants of a rented home, and vice versa, if they do not currently know each other.
  • Minor text fixes

New pictures have been added showing the new interactions and status messages - scroll to the end of the photo gallery!

INSTRUCTIONS: Playing as Occupant

If you are playing as the occupant and an object breaks, you will receive a notification in red telling you that you will withhold your rent payment. If your Sim is handy, they can repair the object themselves, or call the Repair Technician, like usual. However, I like the aspect that the Landlord must pay for the repair cost. So, a new immediate interaction has been added to any Sim who lives in the Landlord's household: Ask to Call Repair Technician. When clicked, a Repair Technician will be dispatched to your Sim's home. You will also receive a payment from the Landlord to cover the cost of the repair. The Repair Tech will come to your home, fix the item like usual, and leave! Your rent payments will then be reinstated. [Note: the "Ask to Call Repair Technician" option may appear more than once; it's a bug that I am working on, however, clicking either one will do the same thing.] Once the item is repaired, the interaction will disappear from the Landlord sims.

NOTE: An item that is scratched or charred is considered to be "broken." Obviously, these items cannot be repaired by the repair tech and you must choose "replace" to replace the item and make the message stop appearing (and reinstate the rent payment). It's my opinion that if this is the case, the occupant should be responsible for the cost, anyway, so I did not include an option for the Landlord to cover this cost. I might add this in the future.

INSTRUCTIONS: Playing as Landlord

If you are playing as the Landlord, a new notification will appear (in red) when an object breaks in an owned house. This will occur at 7 AM daily, and the message will re-appear at 9 AM (and whenever the active household changes). You will be responsible for all repair costs. You have 3 options: (1) visit the lot and repair the object yourself, (2) call to dispatch a Repair Technician, or (3) replace the item and charge the occupant. (a 4th option, if the item is scratched/charred: replace and cover the cost, not charged to occupant).

Since you should be Acquaintances with all of your tenants, you can visit the lot, greet a sim, then go inside to find the broken item. Click Repair to fix yourself, or choose the usual Call Repair Technician option to dispatch the tech. They will arrive at the owned property to fix the item, and you (the landlord) will be charged the $50. To replace the item, choose "Replace and Charge Occupant $$$$". The item will be replaced on the spot, and the charge will be sent to the occupant. (Again, note, if the item is scratched or charred, you also have the option to replace it yourself and not charge the occupant. It's up to you, really, depending on the situation). This new interaction may also appear more than once, but they will each do the same thing and will disappear when the object is repaired. (If you are lazy like me, instead of having your Sim visit the household, you can also use Master Controller > Open to open the house, then just click on the object like you normally would.)

Once the item is fixed, you'll stop getting the notifications and any rent payments will be reinstated.


*I really like this aspect of owning properties, and I hope you do too!


Update on 7/27/16: It's been a long time coming, but NEW FEATURES have been added!

NEW FEATURES: LANDLORD MODE! [***Nraas StoryProgression Money required for landlord services to function]

This major update adds to the overhaul of the Real Estate system done by the NRaas StoryProgression Money module, which allows you to purchase rental properties. Your sim can now act as a landlord, provided you have this module installed. PLEASE READ the below notes to understand how it works.

NOTE: When you start up your game for the first time, it will work best if you click on City Hall, NRaas, Story Progression, then change the Rent Multiple to 0 (the default is 2). This will stop SP-Money from collecting Rent the way that Twallan had programmed. If you don't change this, my method will still work, but your renters will pay twice.

What makes it different than the NRaas version of owning properties?

Without NRass SP-Money, you cannot purchase rental properties, so that is necessary for this to function properly. However, I did not like the way the rent was collected, so I updated it to make more sense with my mod.

Basically, this new update provides the "other side" of the mod, as you would see when playing in an Apartment lot. Previously, when it was time for your rent payment, the rent was added to your biweekly bills. Now, the rent payment is automatically deducted from your household funds and sent to the owner of the house electronically -- and the owner's bank account actually increases!

How does it work?

To become a "landlord", use the "Purchase Rental Lot" option from the Real Estate menu of a phone or computer (this only shows up if you have NRass SP Money installed, as noted). You will then choose a property to purchase. You may choose either an empty lot, or a lot already owned by another sim.

If the lot is owned by another sim, the purchase price will be sent to that sim electronically (more on that later). Daily at 7AM, a status message will show explaining which properties your sim owns, how many occupants (including pets!) are living at the lot, the rent amount (including a new $50 fee for each pet!), and any NPC roommates that may be present. On Tuesdays and Fridays, you will receive a rent payment via Direct Deposit at 9 AM, along with a status message saying that the rent was successfully collected.

For each NPC roommate on a lot, you will receive: rent and pet fees from the occupants of the lot, plus an equivalent rent payment for each NPC roommate. This could let you simulate owning a large apartment complex and collecting rent per separate apartment, etc.

NOTE: If your Sim owns a lot of the Apartment type, on Fridays the rent payment will be a bit different. When you are playing as the renter, you collect rent from any NPC roommates you may have in your house, on Friday, thus offsetting your rent cost. This same concept is true as the landlord - so on Fridays, your rent collection will be offset by the amount that your occupants' NPC roommates would be contributing. Again, a status message will explain this, but just wanted to make it clear.

How do I move Sims into a rental lot owned by another Sim?

There are 2 ways to accomplish this, and both have their quirks (just based on the nature of the Real Estate system).

1. Move your Sim using either Edit Town or the move option from a phone/computer, the same way you normally would. Then, play the household of the Landlord, and have them purchase the house. This is probably the easiest way. HOWEVER, your renter will be given the purchase price of the house. I don't like this, but there isn't an easy way to change this without rewriting NRaas. So, my suggestion, if you do this, is to mark down the purchase cost, then use Master Controller to remove that amount of money from the renters' household.

2. Move your Sims into a rental lot using Master Controller > Add Sim. Quirky, but it'll eliminate the problem of them being given the purchase cost of the house.

If I find a better way to do this, I'll try to.

NOTE: Your Sims can still live in an Apartment, where they are charged rent, that is not owned by anyone. That process is not changed and is the same as it was with previous versions of my mod. My main motivation for this in the first place, is because I didn't like that newly-made or moved-out Sims had to be in a such a lousy, cheap house. The original purpose of the mod was to able to set a lot as Apartment, then live there by paying rent and not having to purchase it. The horrible EA feature of controllable roommates being added every day is stopped (in case you are new to this mod for the first time!).

tl;dr: Apartments function the same way they did according to my mode before this update. And a Regular Residential lot that gets purchased by a landlord, basically functions as an Apartment after the update. Difference: how rent is collected from any NPC roommates (fixed per roommate or proportional).

What if I don't have NRaas Story Progression?


You can still download and use the mod, but your Sims can't act as a landlord, mainly because you won't be able to purchase a rental lot. However, all other features will still function.

Please make comments if you don't understand how something works, I tried to explain the basics but if you have a specific question or issue, I can go into much more detail.

I hope you enjoy this, as much as I did writing it!

OLD UPDATES:


Major Changes: (this was new in as of 8/21/15, but leaving here in case someone is downloading for the first time

1. Roommate status & number of roommates is now saved for each lot individually, and not just in the neighborhood "as a whole". What does that mean? Now, you can have combinations of enabled and disabled roommates on various apartment lots, and then have them "stick" when you switch active households! This was a huge pet peeve of mine about the original EA roommates system. Now, each lot can have its own roommates status and different numbers of roommates, and this info will be retrieved when you switch households (via both Edit Town and NRaas' Master Controller)
--> NOTE: When switching households, the status of the roommates services & number of roommates will be remembered, but not necessarily the same roommates. So, if you switch away and come back, and notice that you have different roommates than were originally there, that is supposed to happen. I might try to figure out a way to change this, but in my testing it didn't turn out too well so I decided to forgo that feature for now. The exciting thing is that you can finally have more than one lot accept roommates, and it won't "mess up" any other lots that you switch to, as it did previously.

2. Bills now come in the mail box, and they come twice a week, like they are "supposed" to. Bills are currently generating on Tuesday & Fridays. In my testing, in different neighborhoods this seemed to behave differently. Depending on what time the mail carrier comes, they may or may not be delivered on the same day. In some lots, they come on Tuesday & Friday; others, Wednesday & Saturday. So, don't be confused if you don't see a bill in the mailbox on Tuesday, it will definitely be there on Wednesday.

3. Rent & bills are separate transactions now, since the bills now come in the mail. A status message will show on Fridays at 9AM, which will also collect rent from the roommates via "Direct Deposit" and will be added to your funds automatically.

4. Status messages have been improved & updated. 3 messages should appear when switching households, and at 7AM daily: If the lot is accepting roommates, the number of current roommates in the house, and a status summarizing this information, including how much will be collected if it is Friday. When first enabling or disabling roommates, messages will show stating that the lot has been added to/removed from the Roommates List. These will also appear on Regular residential lots, so, sorry if you don't like them, but I tried to make them not intrusive. The game needs to check non-Apartment lots when switch to them, as well, in order to remember the settings.

5. Sometimes, when you start a brand new game, the Fix doesn't take effect. I recommended, if you want to play with Apartment lots in a new game right away, to start the new game, save, go back to the Main Menu, and then load the game again. Working on figuring out how to fix this!

What's to Come?

I'd like to apply the new settings to regular residential lots and rename them as "Tenant Services" - that way you can play as a "landlord". For example, your household can look -- and act -- like a real apartment building where you collect the rent from tenants and then manage them. It would be nice for this to apply to other lots (IE, you could purchase a second lot and control tenants on that lot), but not sure how feasible that is.

Also, I was thinking about a new interface for dealing with roommates, and also might incorporate the "Sim Finder" app from the smart phone to actually choose a roommate you might have common interests with instead of just some random Townies from the pool. But we'll see.

Old updates:



How Rent Works:

1. Lots of improvements to Rent
a. Rent will now actually be collected!
b. If you have roommates disabled, Rent will cost what it says on the Edit Town screen.
c. If you have roommates enabled, Rent will be collected from each roommate on a proportional basis, the way roommates in real life share expenses
i. Sims you control are counted as one “group”
ii. Each additional roommate is counted as its own “group”
iii. The total rent is divided by the number of “groups” and each “group” pays this amount
d. Upon enabling roommates and/or changing the number of roommates, the total amount of rent that will be collected from all roommates is displayed in the notification window.
e. Rent will be collected at 9AM every Friday.
f. Custom notifications have been written to display this information when bills are being paid; however, it is hard-coded and will only appear in English (translations welcome!)
2. “Apartment Status” message will display every day at 7AM to remind you of the current status of your roommates and your Rent/Bills.
3. Fixed an EA “feature” (aka bug) where if you switch households with roommates enabled to a household with roommates disabled, roommates will remain enabled and roommates will show up. There are still some issues with this that I am trying to fix – playing more than one household with roommates right now is not ideal --- and never was with EA’s version, either!



Original Description:

As we're all well aware, the Apartments function created by EA is less than ideal, since it adds randomly-generated roommates to your lot that are controllable. I did not want to have to control these Sims, but didn't like ignoring them either. This is actually a function of EA's Story Progression.

This script mod alters the way an "Apartment" lot works by stopping EA Story Progression from adding random roommates. It also allows you to access the "Roommate Services" menu from any phone in the game while on an Apartment lot, something that is previously disallowed by EA. All of the normal functions are there, so you are able to add the usual type of roommates without them becoming a part of the household.

I had a lot of help from several people, including icarus_allsorts, in figuring out how to do this.

This will also allow you, if you so choose, to make any lot an Apartment lot, and then just treat it like a rental house. So, if you are creating a new sim, you can change a house to "Apartment" to be able to afford a nicer house at the start of the game. This was my main motivation for doing this.

ENJOY, and please comment in the discussion of what you think and if you find any errors!

Additional Credits:
S3PE, ILSpy, Microsoft (VS 2013)
icarus_allsorts