OFB 4 TS3 - Updated 21st Jul 2012 by Inge
Overview (ok to patch 1.38)
This is based on the TS2 Open For Business ticket machine. It may be used on any type of lot, including your Sims's home. Brings paying customers to the lot!
Thank you to Orangemittens and Bloom for help with mapping, baking and sunshadows respectively, and for all the guys in chat for suggestions and feedback!
Instructions
General:
Ticket machine is in Electronic Misc, priced $500. Buy and place on any lot, residential or community. Please note that only sims actually summoned by the machine will be listed or controlled as customers - sims invited or showing up in other ways will not be affected by opening or closing of the ticket machine.
It is best to place the machine in a location accessible to the public, rather than inside the home or inside the garden fence.
Sim types: Choose what type of sims you want the machine to advertise to and bring to the lot.
Ticket price: Your household or "starter" sim (see later about community lots) will get this amount per customer per hour. There is a setting in the tuning file that allows you to decide whether the customers' households actually get the price deducted. False by default. Ticket price will also be used when deciding if Sim feels it is too expensive. Price is divided into customer's household funds to make this decision. Multiplier is settable in the tuning XML.
Set maximum customers: This is on the menu rather than tuning so that you can set each lot to be different. Maybe on one lot you only want to use the ticket machine to bring a client at a time to your stylist or tattoo artist.
Opening time, Closing time: Used when machine is in Auto mode. Customers will be brought while machine is open, and sent home at closing time.
Modes: Set to Auto, Set to Closed, Set to Open:
*Open means the business will remain open 24 hours a day
*Closed means it won't open at all. Customers already on lot will be sent home.
*Auto means it opens itself at your set opening time and closes itself at your set closing time.
Switch on/Switch off: When machine is on, it is looping around obeying your settings as above. When you turn it off, it completely stops operating. Any customers already on the lot at this time will not be sent home, they will be allowed to stay until they decide to leave.
My customers, My tunings: Options helpful to debugging
Operation on home lots versus community lots:
On a home lot, the ticket machine continues operating to its schedule regardless of where the family happen to be. If you change active household, after a little while the machine will notice and turn itself off. This is to stop it "fighting for trade" with any other home business you may wish to play on another lot.
On a community lot, the sim who is active (has the plumbob) when you turn it on will earn the ticket sales. When that sim leaves the lot, after a little while the machine will turn itself off - for the same reasons.
Please note: On community lots, for some reason, the machine often doesn't turn on when you first do it. Just do it again. You will know it is on because the screen will no longer be black.
Download:
http://www.simlogical.com/ContentUploadsRemote/uploads/1078/ij_TicketMachine02.rar