@SIMGURUMODSQUAD : Converting pyo files to py

I just read it before coming to read this thread. That is my thread too. I plan to try his version of unpyc3 today.

Anyone interested should reference that discussion linked by MyreMylar above. We're getting it done man.

.pyo files skip the interpreter's translation step.

We have a modified version of unpyc3 that is decompiling most of the pyo files in the simulation.zip file. Not sure how accurate they are. But it displays most if not all of the script. So now we can wait for the documentation on how they would like us to do it. Hopefully it means that we can use their methods on more data than just what they would like us to be able to play with. And since I have no plans to try to replace a game pyo file, complete accuracy might not be necessary... At least not initially. :)

Good news!

I saw there was even some talk in the other thread of being able to 'hot load' some scripts while the game was running which sounds promising for tweaking and debugging scripting. Can @SimGuruModSquad confirm whether any of that is at all possible? Do scripting modders need to take down and reload the game each time we we change a script or is there some clever way to force a script reload ingame?

As a programmer myself, I love seeing that I'm not the only one who subconsciously lowballs expectations.

Boss: "Can you do X?"
Me: "No, that's physically impossible."
Boss: "I'll ask again in an hour."
Me: "But it's literally impossible. Can't be done. The very laws of computers, programming, and even physics disallow it. We'll have to do something else."
Boss: "Un-hunh".

*one hour later*

Boss: "Can you do X?"
Me: "I thought about it, and figured out a way to do it. I'll have it done today."
Boss: "You do this every plumming time."

"Spiceweasel;12543934" wrote:
But truthfully, I consider giving accurate estimates an important skill as a developer. It takes experience, but too many people just shrug it off, saying "I suck at estimates" without ever trying.

Fair point! It's something I'm working on. ;)

"Maclimes;12543983" wrote:

"Spiceweasel;12543934" wrote:
But truthfully, I consider giving accurate estimates an important skill as a developer. It takes experience, but too many people just shrug it off, saying "I suck at estimates" without ever trying.

Fair point! It's something I'm working on. ;)

In many shops, giving an overly low estimate or an overly high estimate can really slow down the process :smile:

In our shop, we have one guy who always answers "30 to 60 days" for a new feature, no matter how trivial. We have another that says "Give me an afternoon and I'll have it ready." Neither of them get asked for estimates much anymore.

Update my script posted in the ModTheSims thread probably for last time as game is close to release. I've been able to use it fairly well with a properly configured Intellij for browsing the source. I suspect that is enough for most modders to get by for a while. Surprisingly only had to create about a dozen stubs that are probably the C++ classes in the engine to load the code in python which means that they skewed toward a lot of the source in python files rather than just exposing wrappers which is likely good for modders.

Regarding time estimates, I only expect someone to give a reasonably accurate estimate if its an activity they have done before. Too often I'm asked to estimate something like "How long will it take to create a dashboard for tracking convoluted company metric x?" but without any of the useful stuff like what visualization tool do you want it in and where is the data and what is x anyway?

Edit: Doesn't seem like the most popular thread but some findings on the hot reloader (maybe this should be its own thread). Looks like it will not be enabled by default event if __debug__ is True as we are loading from zip files which sets SCRIPT_ROOT to None where that variable controls the root folder for reloading. I suspect some monkey patchable may be sufficient to troubleshoot stuff in the future but not out of the box. Some interesting files for those that are interested: core.zip\paths.py, core.zip\sims4\core_services.py, core.zip\sims4\core_services.py. Looks like user script mods will load from either zip or as loose py files though only the later are reloadable.

I actually cannot determine how user scripts are loaded at the moment as it looks like it uses USER_SCRIPT_ROOTS which currently is pointed squarely at core.zip. Some other zip files that are of interest are the tests.zip, debug.zip, lib.zip, build.zip which might be usable to bootstrap loading custom scripts since they do not exist in the deployed game. Hopefully I'm just overlooking something obvious but looks like they expect either all source files or all zip files and not a mixture. That might be reasonable for the developers but my not be so good for us. I'm sure that they will help out when we starting hitting these blocks.

User scripts go into Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\Mods\Scripts as zip files. No clue to structure.