Zerbu's Mod Constructor V4 is a powerful tool for Sims 4 that can be used to create custom traits for Sims in CAS, lot traits, aspirations and more. In this video tutorial, I'll be walking you through very basic trait creation for Sims (or cats, or dogs - you have the power!) with step-by-step instructions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwyzFW6Z13Y
All credit goes to Zerbu for creating the tool. It can be downloaded here:
https://zerbu.tumblr.com/post/181782526135/the-sims-4-mod-constructor-v4
Advanced MC4 questions should be routed through Zerbu's Discord in the mod-support channel.
Comments
Er... that’s a lot to take in at once.
As a suggestion, I know you see an end goal of the traits you want to make but you say yourself that you don’t know what you’re really doing. While everything you want may not be possible (mind control and repair might be good examples, at least the way you describe them) a lot of how I learned MC4 was through practice and trial and error. So I honestly suggest you start small and work your way up in complexity. This gives you the chance to work with the program as you go and learn what you can do, can’t do and potential workarounds to get close to your goals, even if you can’t do them exactly the way you first thought.
You asked at the beginning of the post about how to give your Sim an emotion after sleeping. That is a good, and basic, starting point and is covered by the tutorial with Continuous Loots. There are several test conditions you can add - multiple ways to test for sleep - either with running interactions or buff checks, for example.
Once you get that working, I would focus on other aspects of the trait that are not so heavily reliant on a second trait on another Sim because if you’ll notice, there isn’t a lot of trait interaction in the base game really, beyond evil/good. That’s because you can’t assume the second Sim with the other trait will always be around and the trait should have compelling gameplay in and of itself. What makes AI #1 unique? Does it learn faster or slower? What does it learn faster or slower? What will make it happy? What will make it sad or angry? As a robot, will it need to eat? These are all things you can change/modify/make moodlets for as you go along. Writing a good AI trait should be the first goal. Then, once that’s been fleshed out, you’d work on creating AI trait #2 - which should be different from AI #1. Only then, when they are complete but separate entities should you begin to worry about how they interact with one another.
maby if you have a new idea to suggest me please could you tell me it ? thank you very much
You'd want to run a buff test as part of your Test Conditions. The one you're looking for is:
MoodBuff_Hidden_Asleep
In setting up the moodlet itself, set the emotion weight and duration. Check the "Ignore if the Sim Already Has the Buff" (or you can uncheck it, it probably doesn't matter, although this will likely cause the moodlet itself to blink a bit). As a continuous loot, the trait will be checking every 10 in-game minutes to see if the Sim still has the buff (in this case, whether or not the sim is sleeping), and will stop "refreshing" itself once the Sim wakes up, but the moodlet itself will remain for whatever extra duration there is after the Sim no longer meets the test condition.
One thing is definitely not working for me. I can't figure out how to change the trait icon that appears in CAS. What my program shows is a llama-like image (called Missing Image) and a string of text marked as "Default Image". I click on that icon, and it opens up the icon file. I find the icon I want, I double-click on that, but nothing changes. I've even tested it out by quickly exporting the package and going into CAS to see if my trait appears. It does, but with the llama-like icon.
Am I doing something wrong? Am I missing a step somewhere? This is my very first attempt at doing any modding for Sims 4, so I'll take all the advice I can get.
One more question. Is it easier to create traits with Sims 4 Studio? Or do you prefer using Zerbu's mod? I guess what I'm asking is which program would be best for a total noob. Thanks!
ETA: I'm resolving some of my issues by going back and downloading an older version that matches my tutorial. Wish me luck.
Update: I figured out the issue.
Both the package and the ts4 file must be in the mods folder directly, and not a subfolder.
For some reason, every single one of my "Proximity Buffs" doesn't display a "reason" in game, although I wrote the reason for each of them.
Sorry if this is a silly question, any help is very appreciated. :)
According to Zerbu, all that needs to be done is for creators to re-export their custom traits through Mod Constructor. I am trying to update another creator's traits (for personal use), and maybe even make my own tweaks.
The only tutorials I have found are for making traits from scratch, or fixing them for the Cats and Dogs patch.
So, yeah. Any tips or tutorials for how to update and edit traits made by other people?
Because my program looks different I can't follow your tutorial. Please help. What I really want to do is make aspirations, but I've gotten no where. I thought if I could learn how to make a trait I could figure out aspirations. I did lot traits and holiday traditions super duper easy peasy lemon squeasy.
by the way, I have a question. I'm trying to make some kind of trait like "obsessed lover" and want to add a buff that makes my sim sad when he hasn't interacted with his soulmate for a while. Does anybody know how I can set the condition for that? Thanks in advance! :)
Its windows only
And from someone who has an extremely high learning curve for figuring things out, that's saying a lot.
Where? The website has nothing. Just a download. No tutorials. Nothing. At this point I don't even want to use the program, it hasn't been updated in WELL over a year. It MUST be severely out of date.
And I really don't care for talking to creators. Ask a question about their program and they take it like a personal insult and either start spewing insults or deleting everything you post.
He does not have tutorials, other people do. The career tutorial is here.
Some, not all. Also, he doesn't answer questions on how to make anything. It's done by other people in the server (Kuttoe is one, I'm sure you've heard of them) who are well aware that the program has issues and limitations.
Appreciate the link. Tried it out and made a "P*rn Star" career. Just to test it out. Worked like a charm. Tool has a few bugs, and as stated, the tutorial is a little out of date, some things listed in it don't work at all, but I was able to figure it out. It works fairly well.
Still have some things to figure out. The "Promotion Gift" thing wasn't in there but I was able to figure it out. The promotion bonus they documented in the tutorial works, but doesn't show it on the promotion notification. Still need to figure that out. The promotion text messages they list don't work at ALL. So, I just removed all the messages.
It's given me a good base for building things. Just want to figure out how to do the "work-at-home" tasks, if the tool even supports that.