The Sims 4 - Weight Reactions mod (WIP)

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One of the (many) things which has always bugged me about The Sims 4 is how my Sims seem to be completely oblivious to their weight changing. I have a Sim in my current save that has put on nearly 80 points of weight due to the stresses of university - and yet they seem to have no opinion whatsoever on this, good or bad. Whether you’re coming at it from a storytelling perspective or a kink perspective, it’s underwhelming!

I’ve spent some time playing around with Mod Constructor this week, and I think I’ve found a pretty neat way to improve this :slight_smile:

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The mod tracks changes to Sims’ weight over time, and can trigger off a variety of events/buffs in response to them gaining or losing weight (as well as just existing at a certain size).

Technical Details For Nerds

The way this works under the hood is via a trait action that checks the Sim’s weight every 10 minutes. Based on what size band they’re in (skinny, chubby, overweight, very overweight), a hidden buff is added to the Sim that lasts for 24 hours (e.g. ‘Was Recently Skinny’). Then, the idle actions for the trait can use these to figure out if the Sim has crossed over into another band (e.g. if the Sim is chubby but has the ‘Was Recently Skinny’ buff, we know they’ve gained weight).

I’ve tried various approaches for tracking weight changes over time, but this is the first one I’ve found that seems to work consistently without slowing the game down :slight_smile:

The only problem now is: thinking up a load of different interactions/buffs to add! If anyone has any suggestions, I would very much appreciate the help :slight_smile:

Currently, I’m focusing on ‘realistic’ reactions (i.e. most people in the real world feel positively about being skinny and negatively about being fat, as much as I wish that weren’t the case) - that being said, I think this could easily be extended to allow for body-positive (or even feedist) Sims in the future.

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Excellent idea! I haven’t done anything in the sims in a while but this may bring me back for a bit.

Other potential reactions sims could have off the top of my head:

  • Embarrassed from being largest among the sims around them/larger than who they are talking to (difficult to implement, I imagine)
  • Anger at being hungry because they are overweight
  • uncomfortable when clothes are too small? could do the same weight-band tracking thing you did under the tech details, but have the uncomfortable mood only leave when new clothes are bought.
  • If in a relationship, tense about partner’s thoughts about the SIM gaining weight
  • Related, happy or maybe confidant if partner does not react negatively (maybe getting a little too big scope here with other sim reactions)
  • Happy when eating and having recently gained weight and/or angry/embarrassed after eating and recently gained weight
  • sad if not in a relationship and gained weight, body image issues

Not thinking about ease of implementation, just putting out ideas.

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Ideas are welcome regardless of feasibility, it’s all good inspiration :slight_smile:

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This mod looks great, I think the feedist traits should be added asap though and I think many here would agree haha.

Easy ones such as getting horny by increased weight, or getting horny by seeing others gain weight could be faily straightworward to implement given how it works? Scaling effects based on the speed?

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an alternative/addition for the embarrassed buff suggested by @burntmagic: when the Sim is dressed in more revealing clothes (such as sleepwear/swimwear/hot weather)

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I had a thought of buffs tailored to specific body parts that have grown from gaining weight, like how a pair of pants feels tighter around a sim’s butt, or this shirt doesn’t cover the sim’s belly very well type of buffs. Randomize them so different clothes/outfits or even the whole outfit pulls up several buffs. Idk if that’s doable or not haha.

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I think (assume) it would be easy to make more neutral or positive reactions appear based on what traits the sims have, like if they were Self Assured, a Foodie, Glutton, Shameless, Carefree, &c.

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I agree with others that you could link sentiments on weight gain to personality, whether or not the sim has the feedist trait, or you could create a separate system that implements this. IMO the last option provides the most room for creativity gameplay wise but is also the most difficult the implement.

Some ideas I had for buffs:
Happy/Flirty “My butt/boobs got bigger!” buff after gaining weight (could be tied to romantic)
Sad “This used to fit…” buff when putting on a different outfit after gaining weight
Tense/Embarrassed/Uncomfortable “They’re looking at me!” buff when in a highly-populated space and overweight (could be tied to Paranaoid and Socially Awkward trait)
Uncomfortable “*Huff*” buff when exercising while overweight
Angry “This used to be so easy!” buff when exercising after gaining weight (could be tied to Active, Hot-Headed, and Adventurous sims)
Happy “So soft…” moodlet when extremely overweight (could tie to Glutton, Lazy, Slob, and Foodie)
Sad “I’m such a pig” moodlet when extremely overweight (could tie to Gloomy, Active, Adventurous)
Ask for reassurance interaction after recently gaining weight

And I do think that other sims should have reactions to the weight gain of other sims based on their relationship with that sim (sims with higher relationships are more likely to be supportive/indifferent) and the sims’ traits. Mean, evil, and snob sims will make fun of the sim, whereas foodie, glutton, lazy, slob, and feedist will praise the sim. Good, cheerful, generous, loyal, outgoing, and bro sims won’t praise the sim but will respond positively to the ask for reassurance interaction, but ambitious, active, adventurous, neat, overachiever, non-committal, and proper sims will respond negatively.

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Thanks everyone for the ideas!

I definitely agree with all of the suggestions to tie things to specific interactions/traits. My original plan was to just randomly pick from a list of reaction buffs every time the Sim’s weight changed, but this felt really unsatisfying in practice, as the flavour text didn’t really feel connected to what was going on in the game (e.g. I had an ‘angry at scale’ one, but that felt weird when it popped up while they were outside!)

It also occurred to me that there’s a lot of other fun ways the weight tracking buffs could be used, e.g:

  • Making it easier to gain weight if a Sim has been fat before (or increasing their appetite)
  • Reducing a Sim’s stamina based on their weight (maybe only if they’re below a certain fitness level?)

IDK - at this point I think I just need to make my mind up and start implementing something :sweat_smile:

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I think making the moods apply on a system level to all sims and then have them reversed if a sim has a “feedist” trait or cancel out completely with certain traits like self-assured would be the simplest.

A menu for toggling all the features you are brainstorming would also be cool for customization. You could probably toggle on a per-sim basis and enable different reactions that way too with some tinkering. I’ve seen several mods make use of menus when clicking on sims themselves, like MCC.

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I think that there should be different emotions depending on gaining and losing: For example, Sims who want to get fat become happy or aroused when gaining weight and they become sad or frustrated when losing weight (as if they’re begrudgingly dieting against their will). The opposite can be said for any Sim that refuses to get fat.

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You could even extend it to interactions as well - compliment weight gain/loss, “Tell them they’re too skinny” or “Make a fat joke” as a mischief interaction. Every time they make a fat joke, however, an RNG decides whether or not they get an “eat your words” buff which either makes them gain a certain amount of weight or maxes out their weight entirely, with an embarrassed buff to go along with it.

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Definitely feel like “Move first” is the right move. Coming from someone who’s done loads of writing, getting started is half the battle. My thoughts on the matter are like you’ve said - focus on reactions the way the statistical average of people would react, and later on you can do the bodyposi stuff.

Some interactions that would fit this come to mind! For instance, after a sim changes a size band, another sim can “Mention Weight Changes.” At its simplest, have this be a semi-risky interaction that is likely to decrease friendship/relationship if the two aren’t friends or if the other one’s in a tense/angry/sad mood, which gives the one whose weight has been commented on an angry/tense/sad moodlet, and a sad moodlet to the one who mentioned it, and if it succeeds, it increases relationship but has a chance to give a sad moodlet to the sim whose weight has changed. If you wanna get really into it, maybe have it give a happy moodlet to someone who’s lost weight and is trying to do so.

Sims could also probably volunteer information about their weight to other sims - “worry about weight gain” if they moved up a band, “boast about weight loss” if they moved down a band. Also, I think a self-interaction would be right - “Plan to lose weight” or something along those lines, where your sim gets some kind of tracker noting that they’re trying to lose weight, which could interact with other weight-based interactions. This could allow for them to “Announce weight-loss journey” to other sims, and for those sims to “Check in on weight loss” or “Make diet suggestion.” These generally might be helpful interactions, but also give them the chance to give the sim in question a tense moodlet, or for this tense moodlet to just occur if their weight-loss plan isn’t making any progress. I also see the potential for a “Complain about diet” interaction to try to relieve stress for other people!

An interaction for if someone has the “health food nut” trait might be to give them the ability to “Worry About Gains” to someone who has gone up a weight band recently, with this being similar to Mention Weight Changes, but with the change that if successful, it has the chance to add an Energized buff to the person in question that increases their chance of autonomously working out, but the relationship decrease from being not close enough or not in the right mood being more severe.

And it goes without saying - mean and evil sims would RELISH the opportunity to fat shame people with this mod. A “Shame for weight” interaction would fit right in, with the moodlet changing slightly on if the sim is thin or not - basically with the flavor that thin sims are being ridiculed for being “too skinny/eat a sandwich/etc” and anyone over that is being called fat. You COULD open this interaction up for all sims, but I feel like it would be more flavorful for this to be a mean/evil sim thing, with most other “fat shaming” falling under unsuccessful Weight Mention/Worry About Weight interactions.

Sorry if this is so long. Can’t wait to see the progress on this mod!

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