About creating or editing a sims3 C# mod

[simion512]

So I am a bit(really just a bit) tempted to try to make a mod or try to extend some existing mod. But from my reading I found that you need to do it in C#(I done some C# before ) and then package your mod. This would imply that  after spending a lot of time setting up  a working dev environment  I would waste a lot of time compiling, and building the mod package and restarting the game to test the effects, is this correct? do the original sims devs and other modders have to suffer  restarting the game for each small change? The game starts super slow on my machine.

[Brisbane Australia]

On 12/13/2021 at 2:50 AM, simion512 said:

So I am a bit(really just a bit) tempted to try to make a mod or try to extend some existing mod. But from my reading I found that you need to do it in C#(I done some C# before ) and then package your mod. This would imply that  after spending a lot of time setting up  a working dev environment  I would waste a lot of time compiling, and building the mod package and restarting the game to test the effects, is this correct? do the original sims devs and other modders have to suffer  restarting the game for each small change? The game starts super slow on my machine.

 

Hey welcome to the forum!

 

Yeah, depending what sort of mod you are doing, obviously an extensive project like writing Kinky World will take some time to write and test out, but many people also do mod's of replacement items or color changes etc which don't take as much time, it all depends on what you want to make.  I like making animations and poses for my sims and when I test things out I run and restart the game like anyone else.  Originally on my machine TS3 would take 7 mins from Windows to the Sims ready to go, because I know I'd be restarting the game a lot I bought and installed a SSD drive to see if that would help with load times, it did and I'd highly recommend one before you get into modding, my SSD is only used for TS3's installation and on my machine the same loading takes 2 mins now.

 

CC and expansion packs slow load times a lot, if you can do a fresh install without them that will also save time too.  Also turning off the initial introduction movie which should be disabled anyway when enabling mods on your TS3 will help.

 

[Denton47]

On 12/12/2021 at 5:50 PM, simion512 said:

So I am a bit(really just a bit) tempted to try to make a mod or try to extend some existing mod. But from my reading I found that you need to do it in C#(I done some C# before ) and then package your mod. This would imply that  after spending a lot of time setting up  a working dev environment  I would waste a lot of time compiling, and building the mod package and restarting the game to test the effects, is this correct? do the original sims devs and other modders have to suffer  restarting the game for each small change? The game starts super slow on my machine.

It doesn't matter what type of mod you modify, you will need to restart the game every time you change something.

 

Setting up VS is fairly simple, get the unprotected dlls from Nraas, start a new project and set target framework to .NET 2.0, save/close the project, edit the .csproj manually and replace the assembly references with the Nraas dlls and you are good to go.

 

Compiling/building the project, packaging the dll and copying it to your mods folder takes like 20s, starting the game and loading a save does take a lot longer depending on your PC specs.

[Guest]

On 12/12/2021 at 11:50 AM, simion512 said:

So I am a bit(really just a bit) tempted to try to make a mod or try to extend some existing mod. But from my reading I found that you need to do it in C#(I done some C# before ) and then package your mod. This would imply that  after spending a lot of time setting up  a working dev environment  I would waste a lot of time compiling, and building the mod package and restarting the game to test the effects, is this correct? do the original sims devs and other modders have to suffer  restarting the game for each small change? The game starts super slow on my machine.

Restarting is possibly the most frustrating part of making anything. I imagine code, just as garments may look great in the program you made them in, and once you see them in the game, (for me) vertices crossing, parts clipping... for script type mods, whatever those problems may be, and back to the creation program also. ((( Adjust, tweak, clear cahes and restart... again and again and again..... Go cross eyed, grab a bottle of vodka, and try again tomorrow! )))))

 

Many will suggest to simply have a "test world". As few other mods as possible, perhaps "no intro" and a few other Nraas mods. Should load faster.