Creating a Mod: Memories to Memoirs

[Shrooblord]

Hello, Mod the Sims Community!

I've been playing The Sims 3 for a short while now and what has disappointed me most about it is that the ability to create storyboards like in The Sims 2 has been removed. I find this saddening especially from a personal view, because I like making stories that arc over generations, not over a single Sim's lifetime. To be more specific, I've got a whole storyline plotted out for one of my Sim Households, which is supposed to be some kind of detective/mystery thing (involving tombs inside the house itself). All cool and all that, but to achieve this, I would need some kind of documentation method so the player can actually investigate with the help of some clues I leave behind. When I learned about the Memories tab from your Simology panel, I was intrigued by a new possibility, and hence I'm going to try to achieve it:

I'm going to try to turn the Memories context menu into an actual object that you can place and leave lying around, which other Sims will then be able to look into.

What I'd eventually like to do is be able to configure loads of things in this object (which I've decided to appropriately name 'Memoirs') so you can decide its layout and which of the Sim's memories are actually contained in it. However, the first step will have to be actually getting to that point.

First of all I'd need a bit of your help. Could you guys perhaps help me locate where I should try to search for the Memories menu? If I locate its contents, perhaps I can get it to copy its data elsewhere, and if this is possible, we could use that data to fit into an object once it's interacted with.

The core use of this Memoirs object is to, well, leave some Memoirs. I expect your Memories will fade once your Sim dies, right? Now, with the Memoirs, you should be able to leave a legacy of that Sim's memories, or in my case, leave clues behind that help the player along in the story.

I intend to make this mod myself, or with some help, but I'm not asking any of you to do it for me. I'd just like to get a little help starting up. Hopefully, from there I'd be able to figure everything out myself in due time.

Thanks and I hope you can help me - I'd really like to be able to kickstart the creation of this mod.
~Shrooblord

[Srikandi]

You could start by looking at this mod by Velocitygrass: http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=446281

I believe that's a pure XML mod, so it will help with part of the project... customizing the memory scrapbook.

Accessing a sim's memory data from another sim or an object though... is another question altogether :/ No idea if it's feasible.

[Shrooblord]

Thanks, I will check that out thoroughly. It fiddles around in the same area I hope to find what I need, so it may function as a good tutor. As for the feasability of my project, I also feared it may not be possible. However, my reasoning is, that if the game remembers what the memories are (which it does), they must be saved somewhere. If they are saved, they could be copied. This copy could then be altered and hopefully the altered copy could be placed back in the game as something else (i.e. the Memoirs object).
The screenshots for the memory as well as the memory description must be stored somewhere, so hopefully I'll be able to use a copy of those to 'hardwire' them into an object, storing them with that object forever (until it is deleted, sold, etc.) so other Sims can access it.

In any case, that's my reasoning - now, to put it to the test...