Drive-By Hydrant

A fire-hydrant for spawning vehicle drive-bys. Found in Misc/Misc for $100.

This mod is a complete re-write of Shaklin's original car spawning fire hydrant (re-uploaded by iCad here and re-coloured by atomtanned here), based on ideas in the Sims 2 Shenanigans discord.

Can be placed on locked tiles (so the verge between the road and the path without cheats).

Can be hidden in Live Mode. Picking the hydrant up in Buy/Build Mode and moving it (even back to the same tile) will make it visible again.

Has menu options to change the frequency of the drive-bys.

Completely configurable.

Recolourable, but I've not included any as it's easy enough to use atomtanned's (and I'm expecting most players to have it hidden in Live Mode anyway).

Configuration

Configuration is via BCONs. It is assumed you know how to open the .package file with SimPE and make these kind of changes.

BCON 0x1000 "Tuning - General"

  • 0x00: 'Min minutes between vehicles on same side' is the number of minutes between vehicles on the same side of the road. The default value of 5 is a compromise between too few vehicles at higher frequency levels and too many despawns due to blocked exits.
  • 0x01: 'Default frequency' is the default frequency, see BCON 0x1002. Default value is 3 - "Sleepy Suburbs".
  • 0x02: 'Police Sirens' is used to enable/disable sirens on police cars. (Note, siren effects are finicky and seem not to work reliably, if at all!)
  • 0x03: 'Police Car Index' is the index in BCON 0x1003 of the police car.

BCON 0x1001 "Tuning - %Chance At Hour"

The original mod was set up such that between midnight and 6:59am the chance of a drive-by was 1 in 60, while during the day it was 1 in 30 - both the hour calculation and the chances were broken, such that the actual chance was 1 in 48 regardless of the hour of the day.

The chance for each hour of the day is configurable, allowing for less traffic at night, and heavier traffic during rush-hours.

Default values are 1 in 60 between midnight and 6:59am, and 1 in 30 between 7am and 11:59pm.

BCON 0x1002 "Tuning - Frequency Modifiers"

The original mod had a fixed 1 in X chance of spawning a vehicle every minute.

There is now a configurable chance of spawing a vehicle.

  • 0x00: 'Number of entries, see also STR# 0x012E' is the number of entries in this BCON and STR# 0x012E.
  • 0x01 onwards: is the chance of spawning a vehicle at this setting, 1 in X, 2 in X, 4 in X, etc.

BCON 0x1003 "Tuning - Vehicle GUIDs"

The original mod hard-coded the vehicles to spawn in three BHAVs (which had the odd side effect of making six of them have a 1 in 9 chance of being picked to spawn and the other four a 1 in 12 chance!)

Each vehicle GUID has an equal chance of being spawned, by default 1 in 10.

Vehicle GUIDs are now configurable; don't want ambulances, remove its GUID from this table; want more Soccer Moms, give the Minivan GUIDs multiple entries (add one more entry and its chance of spawning will become 2 in 11, add another and it becomes 3 in 12, etc). Only career or service vehicles, ownable vehicles won't work.

  • 0x00: 'Vehicle Count' is the number of GUID pairs in this BCON.
  • 0x01 onwards: are the vehicle GUID pairs (lo followed by hi).

Conflicts

Has its own GUID from my block so does not conflict directly with any other mod, but replicates the functionality of several other mods - see above.

Simblr Links

Credits

  • Shaklin for the original mod.
  • iCad, atomtanned, et al for the variations.
  • The peeps at Sims 2 Shenanigans for the ideas.
  • The developers of SimPE.

Files