As promised, here are some instructions and a set of helper files for making your own set of pollination technicians with SimPE. The instructions break down into two parts - making your custom PT and modifying the hack to use your PT. It is very helpful to be familiar with SimPE's basic functions. Try to read and understand these instructions ahead of time to minimize the chance of errors.

Part 1: Making your own pollination technician

1. Download the .zip file (Multi-PT_kit.zip) that's attached to this post. It has some resources your pollination technician needs. Create a folder in a convenient place to be your workspace and unzip the zip file there.

2. Create your template sim in Body Shop. I've only done this with TS2U bodyshop, so I can't guarantee that templates made in other ways will work.

3. Move the sim you just created out of your "SavedSims" folder into your workspace folder. Give the file a useful name instead of the weird numbers that Body Shop gives it.

4. Open that .package file in SimPE. You'll see it has a bunch of stuff in it. We can leave all that alone.

5. Go to "File -> Add". Select the 6 .xml files you unziped in step 1. There should be two "BHAV" files, a "Catalog Description", "Global Data", "Object Data" and "Object Functions".

6. You'll now need to make a few changes to a couple of the things you just added. Scroll down the list to select the one marked "Catalog Description". Click on the "Plugin view" tab.

7. You need to fill in the name of your polli tech here. There are three strings listed on the left hand side labeled 0x0, 0x1 and 0x2. You can ignore 0x1. Click on 0x0 and type in the first name you want to show up in the family tree in the "Value" box (I've got "First Name" in there for you as a guide). While your cursor is there, click "change in all" so it fills it in for all the languages. They won't be in the right language, but at least they'll say the right thing. If you're multilingual, feel free to fill those in. Repeat this step for the last name (0x2).

8. Click "commit" so the changes here stick. Then scroll to and select the "Object Data" item. Getting the changes here correct is very important, so be careful.

9. In the filename box, put in the name you want for your PT. For example, one of mine is "Multi-PT - Birth Queen 44". When you've got the name you want, copy it to the clipboard.

10. Now we must get a unique GUID for your PT. The 0xFFFFFFFF value that's in there won't work. Click "get GUID". If you've made custom or cloned objects in SimPE before, you probably know this routine. If not, put in a username and password you want for registering with the GUID database and click "Register New User".

11. Paste the name you copied in step 9 in the box labeled "Object Name" and click "Register Object". You will get a unique GUID and it should show up now in your GUID box. Write this number down. If you lose it, you can come back here and look at your "Existing Objects" to find it again.

12. Check the box that says "update all MMATs" then click the "Update" link.

13. Go to "File -> Save". Your Pollination Technician is now trained for all his anal probing duties. If you have more than one you'd like to use, go ahead and repeat these steps for them now. Remember that they need their own unique name and GUID.

Part 2: Modifying the global hack to use your new PT

This is a bit trickier and will require you to modify the code for the BHAV function that is the core of the hack. Be careful. You may want to back up the "Multi_Pollination_Technician.package" file beforehand so you can go back and start from scratch if you screw up.

1. If you haven't converted a hexadecimal number to "little-endian" before (e.g. reverse the byte order), or that sounds like gibberish to you, you'll want to do a little excercise before you get started with this part. If that did make sense to you, skip to step 3.

2. The GUID you gave your sim (it will be something like 0x000B4A09) needs to be entered in a different way in the steps above. Ignoring the "0x" part, it needs to be broken down into pairs of digits, then reversed. For example, the number "0x12345678" would turn into into the sequence "78 56 34 12". Got that? Try it on your GUID now and write it down. The one I gave above would be "09 4A 0B 00".

3. Open up the file "Multi_Pollination_Technician.package" in SimPE. There should be exactly one item in it - a Behavior Function. This is where the magic happens and your game decides who gets to probe your simmies. Select the BHAV function and click on "Plugin View". You'll see a bunch of weird looking code and green and red arrows going everywhere. If you look closely, after the first 4 lines (a "Stack Object..." line and three "Coin Flips"), you'll see a pattern. There are four lines that are repeated almost verbatim four times. Each of those represents one of the four pollination possibilites.

4. Click on the first line in one of those groups of four (it will say "Set to Next..."). You'll see a bunch of numbers on the right hand side. The line that says "Operands" is the key. You'll see something like "FC B9 17 2E 87 0A 00 00". The first four of those are a GUID in that backwards little-endian order I talked about in step 2. In this case, it's 0x2E17B9FC - the original Pollination Technician. Mine are 0x000B4412 (the Vulcan), 0x000B4413 (the Birth Queen) and 0x000B4414 (PT #9 1/2).

5. Figure out which group has the one you want to replace with your guy. Click on the first "Set to Next" line in that group. It comes right after a "Set to Next" line from the previous group, so be sure you've got the right one. Change the first four operands to the numbers for your PT. If you had GUID 0x000B4A09, you'd need to fill in "09 4A 0B 00". Make sure you do all four and double check your work. Do not change any other boxes.

6. You'll need to repeat step 5 for the next line "Create New Object Instance", and then you'll skip down a line to the last in the group, another "Set to Next" line. Do the same thing here.

7. If you've got other PTs you want to use, fill those in in the other groups. If you want to just test just this one (a good idea if you feel comfortable with the editing you've been doing), you can fill it in each of the four groups so that it will always come up during abductions. When you're satisifed that it works, you can do the same for each of your others and test them as well. Once you're satisifed they all work, you can make the four groups different again, so the results will be random.

8. Click "Commit", then "File -> Save". Your hack is ready to go. Copy it into your downloads folder and give it a spin in a test neighborhood to make sure everything goes as expected.

Be sure that you remove the original Multi-PT hack package - they won't work together. You don't need to remove the custom PT files from that if you don't want to, because they will have different GUIDs from yours, and won't conflict.

If these instructions look scary to you, or make you light-headed, you may want to get some practice with SimPE on simpler tasks first and upload your sims to my request thread instead. If you've never really programmed before, editing BHAVs can be a lobotomizing.