Versions
NEW IN V0.9.8 (Early Access)
Hello again dear simmers I'm happy to be back with a BetterSims update. I'm coming back from a break from modding. I'm going through some big events in my life a lot of work, stress and dealing with some health issues so I've had to take it a little bit slow even after finishing school in August. For this update I focused on:
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For this update I focused on:
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Further improve Archetypes and include them in other systems.
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Added Chestnut Ridge Location preferences.
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Fixed and improved bugs related to Location Preferences.
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Fixed and renewed Kids life choices. Now they work as intended and don't trigger annoying moodlets. (I'll include more aspirations on the next update)
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Re-organized character traits. Regular personality traits will now appear just like normal.
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Fixed internal conflicts and typing errors.
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There is one Last exception showing up occasionally when the game loads, unfortunately it doesn't give me enough information to find the error. Luckily it's not a big problem but a typing error in a reference somewhere, so it's safe to play. I'll continue to look for the source of this tiny but annoying error.
NEW IN V0.9.7 (Hiatus)
Hello everyone! I hope you are all having a great beginning of spring!
After 2 months of work I'm excited to finally bring this update V0.9.7 is out on early access. For this one I included the 3 newer worlds into location preferences. But the most important thing I did was implementing internal Archetypes that will allow me to make future updates much faster and including new content easier. I already used it to improve the sort of broken aspiration life choices.
The fixes I made for this update are:
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Check and improve all aspiration life choices triggers.
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Updated Character traits.
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Check and improve Hidden Talents and weaknesses. I added a couple more and improved the existent ones.
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Added Moonwood Mill, Copperdale and San Sequoia to location preferences, and life choices system.
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Created Personality, Hobbies, Appearance and Purpose archetypes these are hidden traits that help life choices and preferences to be assigned more accurately and less frantically. Balancing and making sure the archetypes made sense and allowed for enough variety of combinations to make every sim feel unique.
- Alongside the planning of Archetypes and improvement of Talents weaknesses and Location preferences. I set up a more precise plan for future improvements and Aspirations For BetterGoals.
Some of the improvements I'll be targeting next are:
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Adding more traits to references and further polishing Archetypes. (Including other mods and content)
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Cleaning up all Life choices to make sure they all make sense and appear at the correct timing.
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Include whims to life choices for things like Jobs and relationships. In my experience sims don't get enough important whishes.
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Clean up triggers for all systems. Right now most of them depend directly on traits But this is what the Archetypes are for.
Content that I'll be continuously adding:
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Include all skills into automatic preferences.
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Include all aspirations into life choices.
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include all careers into life choices.
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Including references new traits and preferences (booth official and from other mods) so my mod recognizes them.
NEW IN V0.9.6
Hello everyone! I hope you are all having a great fall season ...almost entering winter!? (I'm from Ecuador we don't have seasons or thanksgiving 😅)
I'm finally here with V0.9.5 (early access), which is a huge one for me. I've been working really hard on fixing the very convoluted text and organizing the elements inside the mod. Something I needed to do for a long time. I know this is hard to see from the outside but it makes a big difference while working , adding more content and eventually how smooth the mod works in game. So I'm glad it's done.
Some of the small fixes I made in the way are:
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Remove unlinked text
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Remove duplicate text
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Organize all the strings of text and fix issues with them (1100 strings)
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Find and organize images for secondary aspirations and other elements.
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Remove unlinked images.​
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Separate Fashion preferences into their own module. See Addons section for more info.
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Remove annoying "New Preference" notification.
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Fix Life choices triggers. (some of them were not showing under any conditions)
Some of the bugs and fixes I'll be targeting next are:
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A LE showing when you disable occult preferences for everyone. (Thanks Sheila for the report)
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The "I'm so good at this" moodlet for activities your sim is good at always makes them confident which doesn't match all activities. I'll make variations of it and tune down the strength of the emotion. (Thanks Richvh for the report)
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Adding Moonwood Mill Preferences and references (This means reviewing most elements and adding references to the world when it makes sense)
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Adding Copperdale Preferences and references (This means reviewing most elements and adding references to the world when it makes sense)
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Fixing teen Aspiration Life Choices and secondary Aspirations. (Adding references to new aspirations that will be updated in BetterGoals)
NEW IN V0.9.4
Hi everyone. I hope you are all doing great.
For this update, again I focused on fixing the bugs reported in Discord and improving the settings Menu options. I know a lot of people have reported having to enable the systems again and again.
Fixes and Additions:
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Fixed the Annoying Life Choices notification bug. I did 3 rounds of fixes for this and checked all life choices to make sure the bug didn't show up. If you experience this after updating, please let me know.
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Fine tuned the trait limits system. I checked both the limit of preferences shown in CAS and changed the amount of traits given automatically to sims, because after playing for a while it became a bit overwhelming.
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Fixed Enabling / Disabling systems for individual sims and all sims. Your setting should now only change when you do it.
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Changed BetterSims Icons. First Round.
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Important! The next 2 BetterSims and BetterGoals updates will look small on the outside but are necessary. I'll be focusing on cleaning up text, images and organizing the elements on the inside. This is crucial to keep updating translations, add new ones and also add new content. I've been trying to do this little by little in every update but after separating aspirations from BetterSims both mods need a cleanup.
Recommended / Required Mods
Personality Overhaul
In the game we only have 3 slots for sim adults to give them a personality and we have to use them wisely. But there are some traits that seem to be not as impactful and defining as others. That’s why I decided to add a new system and separate personality from Character traits.
Personality Traits
Emotional Traits
Traits that stay the same:
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Active
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Cheerful
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Creative
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Genius
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Gloomy
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Goofball
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Hot Headed
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Romantic
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Self-Assured
Re-categorized Traits:
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Erratic
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Lazy
New Traits:
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Uncreative
These sims rarely get inspired and struggle with all creative activities.
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Unfunny
These sims have a hard time getting and landing jokes. They rarely feel playful.
Hobby Traits
Traits that stay the same:
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Art Lover
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Bookworm
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Foodie
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Geek
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Music Lover
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Perfectionist
Re-categorized Traits:
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Loves Outdoors
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Neat
Traits that stay the same:
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Ambitious
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Childish
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Clumsy
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Glutton
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Kleptomaniac
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Materialistic
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Slob
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Snob
Social Traits
Traits that stay the same
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Bro
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Evil
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Family Oriented
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Good
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Hates Children
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Jealous
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Loner
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Mean
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Outgoing
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Self-Absorbed
Lifestyle Traits
Traits that stay the same:
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Ambitious
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Childish
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Clumsy
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Glutton
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Kleptomaniac
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Materialistic
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Slob
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Snob
Re-categorized Traits:
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Noncommittal
New Traits:
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Occult Enthusiast
These sims love and believe in everything related to the Supernatural!
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Free Spirited
These sims love to go with the flow and avoid following the heards.
Skill Learning
Skills in the Sims 4 are sometimes too easy to master. So I tried to balance them out to make things more interesting. In real life everyone learns skills at a different rate and this feature of the mod was created to balance skill learning in the sims 4. as soon as your game loads your sim will be given 1 of the 4 skill learning traits:
Regular
Slow learner
Fast Learner
Prodigy
These traits are here to make every sims' experience different. Some Sims will have a harder time learning stuff than others but things like having a good childhood or loving a particular activity will make it more enjoyable for your Sim. These traits are assigned following a percentage. 65% Regular, 10%Slow Learner, 10% Prodigy and 25% Fast Learner.
Auto Assign System
Preferences
BetterSims initially had a feature that added likes and dislikes to the game.
Now the og game has its own preferences system the way that system gives likes and dislikes to your sims through gameplay only focuses on emotions so, I added my original system and adapted it to the new preferences.
Now your sim will develop preferences on their own without asking and this is based on traits, personality and other features from my mod.
Skill level and CAS story feature also affect this system.
Location Preferences:
These new preferences can appear when your sim visits a new place and are assigned based on personality. You can also choose them in CAS like any other preference. The automatic system can be disabled and Enabled in the menu but if you want to remove the preferences you have to do it manually.
These preferences influence your sims’ moods and life choices.
Fashion Preferences:
This feature has also been included in the game and I'm working on adapting it to the mod.
Fashion Preferences right now are dependent on Highschool Years but my original preferences were intended for base game so I'll be working on compatibility and a solution for that.
Hidden Talents
Life is more complex than just being a fast or slow learner so to add to that depth we have Hidden talent archetypes.
When the game loads your sim as a chance to get a new Talent or Weakness. When this happens you will get a notification about it.
You can check for it using BetterSims Menu by clicking on your sim.
These hidden traits come in pairs and will make it easier and more enjoyable or harder and less enjoyable to do cerain activities.
This feature is not yet set on stone if you have a talent archetype suggestion I would love to hear about it.
Artistic / Tasteles
Painting, Photography, Flower Arranging, Knitting and Media Production.
Social Star / Asocial
Charisma, Mischief, Comedy, and Wellness.
Poetic / Literal
Writing, Music, Singing, Comedy
Musical / Tone Deaf
Music, Singing, Dancing, and Dj Mixing.
Athletic / Sluggish
Fitness, Rock Climbing, Snowboarding, Skating, Skiing, and Bowling
Performer / Stage Fright
Comedy, Acting, Singing, and Dj Mixing.
Scientist / Unaware
Rocket Science, Logic, Fabrication, Research & Debate, Archaeology, Robotics, Handiness, and Veterinarian
Gamer / Uncompetitive
Programming, Logic, Videogames, Pingpong, and Juicepong
Outdoorsy / Homebody
Gardening, Flower Arranging, Herbalism, Fishing, Archaeology, and Local Culture
Great Cook / Desabrid@
Bartending, Cooking, Gourmet cooking, Baking, Herbalism, and Juice Fizzing.
Spiritual / Disconnected
Medium and Wellness.
Life Choices
At any point in life your sim will get a special moodlets indicating what direction they want to take in life, Things like leaving High School, changing their look, moving to their favorite neighborhood, Becoming a Bodybuilder(choosing aspirations), leaving their spouse or other life changing actions.
There are different types of chices your sim will make thoughout their life:
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Choose a life aspirations.
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Choose the place where they want to live.
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Choose a job and the branch they want to follow.
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Stay or leave school, Start University (needs work)
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Start or end a relationship.
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Chage their appearance.
Note: The last few game updates gave us a wants and feats system, which I really want to explore and using it to make life choices more meaningful and vice versa seema like the way to go. Thsi is still something I'm thinking about. I'll let you all know more about it when I get further with it.
Secondary Aspirations
After Your sim gets an aspiration related life choice the outcome is up to you, you can choose to change the aspiration and fix the aspiration bonus trait or you can use the secondary aspiration option in the BetterSims menu.
Aspiration life choices unlock special traits called Secondary aspirations that will affect whims and Autonomy. You can select one Secondary Aspiration at a time and access it through your Sim menu >BetterSims>Secondary Aspirations. If you don;t want to unlock them through gameplay you can also choose the one you want.
BetterSims Menu
I added options in your sims menu to help you manage your sims preferences and traits.
Note: if your sim has got only one aspiration choice you’ll only see the secondary aspiration option in the main bettersims menu like in the picture. This is how menus work in the game by default.
Change Aspiration Bonus
In the vanilla game, once your sim is created they get a bonus trait based on their picked aspiration. this cannot be changed even when switching aspirations, I added a fix for that in the BetterSims Menu.
Settings
This option lets you enable , disable and reset all systems separately for a single sim or all sims.
The reset option will remove assigned traits, and hidden traits. Your sim will forget all previous life choices, what activities they’ve tried (doesn’t affect skill level) and places they’ve visited.
You can select a specific system or all of them and it can’t be undone.
Choose Skill Learning Trait
This option lets you select the speed at which your sim learns all skills. If you open it and click X without selecting anything the skill learning trait will be removed and re assigned next time you load the game.
Select Secondary Aspirations
I originally intended secondary aspirations to be unlocked only through gameplay. But everyone plays in a different way so I added this cheat for anyone who wants to choose their own stories.
Remove Trait
This option lets you remove any trait from your sim. Sometimes your sim might get a preference, child phase or hidden trait that you don’t want. You can remove it with this option. I also use it to see all the traits my sim has.
Add-ons
These packages add features related to other mods please make sure to remove them if you are not using the mod it's related to.
Resident traits
You need "custom traits in club filter" by Vicky Sims / Chingyu 1023
Here I added something I always wanted in my own game, a way to filter sims by where they live in club selection.
This is intended to work with my original idea of grouping worlds depending on their environment in regions and only allowing sims to travel within those regions.
I made up that gameplay rule for myself so vacations and rentals made more sense.
Fashion Preferences
My OG fashion preferences for anyone who doesn't have Highschool Years.
I've you've been playing with BetterSims for a while you'll remember that color, fashion and activity preferences were part of this mod even before preferences were a thing in the game. So when likes and dislikes were updated I knew some of my preferences would have to be replaced and I adapted to both in game preferences to other modder's preferences. Fashion preferences on the other hand were included only in the Highschool years expansion pack so I separated this feature into it's own addon. I also kept preferences that don't overlap in the Highschool Years module like modest and childish, to make fashion prefs more complete, meaning This addon is incompatible with the DLC module.
Translations
Español
By Midiar
German
By Totuvor
Russian
By Cecil Davis
Installation
Before you install, make sure to remove previous versions of the mod completely.
Most features from the mod can be safely removed and I’ll keep improving how that works.
As the mod becomes more customizable the installation instructions become a bit more complicated so I’ll explain everything in detail.
Your download should look like this
Double click to open your .zip file
drag the folder to your Mods Folder
Your BetterSims folder should look like this
Make sure you removed the previous version before installing
Do not remove the Main Files
Go to DLC Modules and make sure you remove the files of DLC you don't have.
You will get Last exception errors if you don't do this
Go to Addons and remove the files you don't want.
More info in the Addons section
Optional: Go to Main Modules to remove any part of the mod you don't want.
You have Installed BetterSims!
Now make sure you enable script mods in your game settings
Downloads
Next update scheduled on 05/19/2023
Version 0.9.6.1 compatible with
The Sims 4 updated 1.97 on 04/26/2023
V0.1 updated on 03/12/2023
Next update scheduled on TB
Version 0.9.7 compatible with
The Sims 4 updated 1.97 on 04/26/2023
Make sure you check the Addons section and install the mods necessary for the addons.
Make sure you delete previous versions before installing.
Keep in mind that this Guide and the whole website are under construction. Feedback, as always, is appreciated.
