[TS3] Lot Population Mod

Update 2: Fixed yet another problem that made the tuning XML not take effect.

Update 1: Fixed problems with the tuning XML, Sims will no longer hang out outside if they have to go to work/school soon (Tunable feature).

Hi lovely patrons :) Here's a mod release I'm very excited about.

Overview

This mod is an experiment that's been in my head for a while now - That is, teleporting Sims into community lots as you send your Sims to them, or focus the camera on the lot, etc. Making the town feel more alive, and making it so that community lots are always populated. This makes it work more like a traditional open world game, in which characters are spawned based on camera distance and such.

Not only that, it also adds walkbys, much like TS2 or TS4. These are Sims that every once in a while spawn on a sidewalk, out of view, and walk across the screen.

Now community lots will be filled with people, especially hot spots!

Hope you enjoy :)

Installation

2 flavors are available:

• "ld_LotPopulation.package" - Default tuning, should make worlds very populated.
• "ld_LotPopulation_Reduced.package" - Reduced tuning, should make worlds more lightly populated.

Simply drop the package of your choosing into your "Documents/Sims 3/Mods/Packages" folder.

All tunable values are documented in the XML. There are quite a few of them, but the most important one is probably the "kDemographicsMultiply" value.

More Technical Overview

In case you're curious about how it works more in depth, community lots have a population quota now. This quota depends on a ton of factors, such as time of day, weather, day of the week, demographics, etc. And is different across different lot types. For example, beaches will be booming during hot summer weekends, not so much if it's winter and snowing.

The amount of Sims that are teleported into lots tries to fill this quota. On top of that, Sims will also get pushed to visit lots to fill the quota, so if for example the camera is permanently facing a lot in a way that doesn't allow for Sims to subtly teleport to it without it being super obvious, the mod will push Sims to visit instead.

Sims are also chosen depending on a range of factors such as personality, age, occult status, etc. And they're placed on a "low priority" list for a while upon teleport. This way you won't see the same Sims everywhere.

Teleported and visiting Sims will also get appropriate outfits, needs and will immediately pick something to do, in order to make it more believable.

Walkbys use lot corners as reference when looking for sidewalks. So this feature is most effective with a decent amount of lots on the world.

There might be some lag every once in a while unfortunately. This is kind of necessary, as it tries to find spots that are actually routable to teleport Sims to, so that they're not stuck. If you find it particularly bad, you can try the reduced tuning version.

Screenshots

A hotspot:

At the gym:

Walkbys:

People hanging out at the park: