Ring Up Customers at Register
Compatible with Snowy Escape Patch 1.68.154.1020
Do you like running after your customers all over your store ? Then this mod is not for you.
This mod brings all the “Ring me Up” customers in one spot… the cash register. And they wait for you there, in line. And even better, you can actually ring them up using the cash register instead of the tablet.
Introduction
Like a lot of simmers, I really enjoyed the Sims 2 Open for Business. And I missed the customers waiting in line in both Sims 3 and Sims 4. But the Sims 4 retail system was still a lot of fun for me. And the “tablet Ring Up” does make sense in art galleries or museums and such. Then a few months ago I made the convenient store in the pictures. And because it felt so weird to ring up customers using a tablet in a convenient store, I got motivated to make this mod.
Mod description details
Customers
Customers arriving on the lot will behave normally as they have in the past. But when they are “Ready to Buy” and the little notification pops up, the mod kicks in.
- By default, this mod will make customers wait in line at the register. If you sim suddenly wants to do some leg work, this mod can be disabled/enabled at any time by clicking on the register. And customers will start to wait near the object they want to buy (EA’s default). The change will affect the new “Ring Up” customers. The customers already waiting somewhere won’t move.
- “Ready to Buy” customers will actually look for the register until they find it. Which means that, even if a customer gets interrupted, or stuck somewhere, or you move the register while he was waiting in line, or you reset the sim or anything that makes them not “wait in line at the register”… That customer will keep looking for that register until he finds it.
- As they are walking toward the register, the option to “Ring Up” customers is disabled. This is mainly to prevent overzealous employees from leaving the register and trying to ring them up halfway (and you know how well EA handles “try talking to moving sim”).
- I also froze the timer for the check out as they are walking to the register. That way, if you have a 64×64 mall, the customers won’t rage quit before reaching the register (or if you would like to build a maze-like shop, that works too). The timer will start counting down when they are waiting in line at the register.
- Waiting in line. Yes. The customers won’t clutter around the register, they will wait in a realistic not-perfectly-straight line while complaining and getting angrier with time. I also decided to create a way for customers to walk forward. Long story short, I added a frequent check for customers to see if there is space for them to walk forward or not. So as to not destroy everybody’s CPU, I set that check to every 3 to 5 sim-minutes. So some customers will react faster than others. And if you look closely, you might see some impatient sims cut in line, feigning indifference to the annoyed stares of those with manners .
- If the customer is buying something in the world (so not from the big fridges with inventories), once they have been successfully rung up, they will give you the money and go straight home from the register (more info about animations below).
- If the customer is buying clothes from the mannequins, I thought it would have been quite strange for him to change and wear his new outfit at the register. So after paying, he will leave the register, go back to the mannequin, change his outfit and then leave the lot.
- If the customer is buying from the big fridges with inventories (“Lice Cold Retail Freezer” and “Cat Loves Food Inc. Professional Grade Warming Rack”), I let them do what EA has always made them do : they help themselves to the fridges, pay you with a notification and leave without being rung up.
- If you use the default “Ring Up” interaction with the tablet, customers will always go back to the object first before leaving.
Cash Register
This mod considers an object to be a register if it has the object_StoreRegister’s ID (105696). So it will work with any EA or CC registers. When customers are “Ready to Buy” they will look for the closest register. So you can have multiple functional registers. But my recommendation would be to have only one register, because multiple “Ring me Up” locations kind of defeats the purpose of bringing all the customers in one spot… But if you’re going for the “multiple stores on the same lot” type of game, then go ahead, it works
If you are going to use multiple register, make sure you put them at least 10 “spaces/squares/slots” away from each other, or in different rooms. For more detailed explanations as to why that is, please read the following.
The customer is in fact not linked to the register, he doesn’t “own” it. Though he is linked to the object he wants to buy, he “owns” it. He is merely standing by a register. Which means “ringing up the customer” and “using the register” have absolutely nothing to do with one another (from the game’s perspective). So how does an owner/employee choose the right register ?
What I did at first, was to force the owner to be within a small radius of the customer and then pick the closest register. I had a lot of trouble with that, because of EA’s routing system. For the same reasons sims wash dishes or prep food in the bathroom on the wrong floor, they didn’t always choose the closest register.
But even after that was fixed, there was another problem when a second customer was being rung up at the register. Because only one person can use the register at the same time. So the “closest register” was not the one the customer was waiting behind but another one faraway. So I tried to force the sim to follow both constrains at the same time “stand within customer’s radius” and “stand behind register”. But EA has this “choose the happiest place within radius” and apparently standing close to the register was always “way too cramped” and standing close to the customer was “so much nicer”. So the sim kept switching places between every animations. Not cool.
So then I removed that “customer’s radius” and opted for a “customer’s line of sight”. Because even if the customer is not linked to the register, he is always looking at it. So the happiest place now became “somewhere behind the register”. And in case there would be another register in this line of sight, I put an arbitrary limit to it. I made it rather large (the 10 empty “slots” between each register) just in case. If it works well for everyone I might make it smaller.
For now, I think it didn’t turn out so bad.
Employees
Employees, just like owners can “Ring Up” and “Ring Up at Register”. I didn’t specifically set a preference, so they might do both. I thought about making them only use “Ring Up at Register”, but I liked the variety in interactions. I did notice them going for the register more often but that’s EA’s default “do the less time-consuming / most rewarding thing”.
If the mod is disabled/enabled they will act accordingly.
Owners
Owners have a couple of interactions added to the customer’s and register’s pie menu.
- Like stated earlier, from the register, you can disable or enable the mod. This might seem like a silly option, but it’s not. This information will be tied to the lot. If you own multiple retail lots, you can set different values for each one. If ringing up with a tablet feels weird in a convenient store, ringing up at the register at an art gallery is even weirder. That way I don’t have to install/uninstall my mod everytime I play a different type of retail.
- Owners can now “Ring Up at the Register”. Which does exactly that. Instead of going to the customer, they will look for the register closest to the customer and actually use it. The normal “Ring Up” can last up to 10 sim-minutes (it depends on your retail skill). But this new interaction will last as long as the animations I chose (more details about animations below). That’s why the “Ring Up at the Register” interaction will always be around 6 sim-minutes. No matter how low/high the retail skill is. And no matter what store perks you buy (they will still affect the normal “Ring Up” though).
- I tried my best to explain to the player when and why the interactions don’t work. For example, if a customer is already being “Rung Up at the Register”, the interaction is disabled until you finish/cancel it. If you see that message but nobody’s at the register, that could be because an employee is still walking to the register from who knows where, just wait a bit. And if an owner/employee can’t reach the register because it is currently in use, I added animations (more info below) with my own Thought Balloon, so that players could still understand what the employee was trying but failing to do.
- If the store is open, owners can “Call Ready Customers to Register”. While creating this mod, I added this interaction before making customers come on their own. I then upgraded this mod so that I wouldn’t have to call them each time. So this is not very useful anymore. But I guess for now I will leave it in, in case you feel a customer is taking too long to find the register on their own.
- This one is really just for fun. And I had a lot of it. At any time, you can call at the register everyone on the lot… for no reason.
Animations
I really tried to make my own animations, but I quickly realised that I wasn’t any good at it. So I decided to frankenstein EA’s existing ones.
- For the one that illustrates “can’t reach the register”, I really wanted to remove all the sims screaming the generic “routing failure” when the register was already in use. So I used 6 different animations (some head shaking, shoulder shrugging, head scratching, arms crossing, etc.) to replace that. I don’t know if any of them are restricted to certain packs or not, but they looked pretty generic. So I used all 6 of them, that way it would look more natural and less repetitive/annoying.
- For the animations happening at the register I went with a short “convenient store” kind of conversation. Which is “Hello. that’ll be $$. Thank you. Have a nice day.” For that I used 2 different hello/goodbye animations (with all the emotion variations), the default “grab” animation and duplicated the one for the register (for some reason the default one was extremely restricted). And those animations put together will be the duration of a “Ring Up at Register”.
a_enterGroup_wave_small_angry_x
a_enterGroup_wave_small_bored_x
a_enterGroup_wave_small_confident_x
a_enterGroup_wave_small_embarrassed_x
a_enterGroup_wave_small_flirty_f_x
a_enterGroup_wave_small_flirty_m_x
a_enterGroup_wave_small_happy_x
a_enterGroup_wave_small_sad_x
a_enterGroup_wave_small_uncomfortable_x
a_enterGroup_wave_small_x
a_react_angry_annoyedSigh_x
a_react_angry_shakeHead_x
a_react_annoyed_harrumph_male_x
a_react_confused1_7frame_x
a_react_confused2_7frame_x
a2a_friendly_NT_wave_succeed_x
a2a_NT_askQuestion_answer_annoyedSigh_x
a2o_retail_register_use_x
a2a_romantic_NT_harrumph_M_x
a2a_romantic_NT_harrumph_M_y
Installation
Un-zip (extract) the downloaded file and install both the .package file and the .ts4script file in your mods folder.
Don’t forget to enable script mods in the options menu of the game.
Make sure only one copy/version of the mod is in your mods folder.
If you don’t see the new “Customers…” options appear on the register, then the script was not properly installed.
Compatibility and requirements
You obviously need Sims 4 Get To Work for this mod to have any effect.
This mod should be pretty compatible with most mods even some who alter retail. This mod has its own resources and doesn’t use any default EA tuning files. Though, through script, I do change the “outcome” of the WaitToPurchase (000000000001B5EA) interaction. So to be on the safe side, try it without any other retail mods first. If it works, try adding others one by one.
Credits and Thanks
Thanks
Lots of thanks to the creators of these modding tools which helped me understand Sims 4 :
TS4 Tuning Description Browser – scumbumbo
XML Extractor for The Sims 4 – scumbumbo
Tuning Inspector – MAL22
Script Reloading – fetusdip & scumbumbo
Credits
-VS Code
-S4S
-Blender
-Photoshop
