Hello everyone!

Recently over on MissyHissy's Job Centre discord some simmers have been brainstorming ways to improve the younger life stages in the game via mods, and someone mentioned the praise/scorn system used for pets. I was thinking that this system could be useful in making something similar for children and teens and @zoe22 suggested that I start a thread here to get some thoughts on it from people who know the code way better than I do.

Essentially, I'd like to replicate the character values system from the Sims 4: Parenthood and so far I have two different ways of approaching this:

Option 1: Replicating the praise/scold system for pets to work for children and teens, replace pet traits with corresponding sim traits, directly involves parent/guardian sims. The praise/scold code (PetReinforcementManager) references the PetManager several times, would I need to replace this manager with a custom one to make this system work? Same question for the PetReinforcementManager. [This is my preferred option.]

Option 2: Building off of the punishment system from Generations, link the positive behaviors associated with getting out of punishment to an event listener (I think), and then have the event listener apply the corresponding trait as a hidden trait when they age up to young adults. Ideally, I'd like to duplicate traits and change their names and icons, then flag them as hidden so they won't take up a trait slot. Is this possible?

Sorry if this post is a bit all over the place. These are just rough ideas at the moment, but I want to make sure they're doable before I get too far in.

I'd love a 4t3 Parenthood mod! Subscribing to this thread for support + science.

It would indeed be great to have a whole punishment overhaul in the game! I think the way how TS4 approaches it really makes you aware of "X punishment has Y result" which I love about it!  

I'd honestly make it even easier; make the 'tantrum' interactions that toddlers do are automatic (or something triggers that interaction ) and with the 'test' function you check if the adult sim should have the 'punishment' interactions to show up. And of course the same for Praise.

So there are quite a few different approaches! It really just epends if everything needs to 'randomly' happen or if a certain object/social interaction makes the toddler to be punished/praised

So essentially whether parents/guardians can punish toddler, children, and teens without a reason or if it's triggered just by certain objects/interactions? I think icarus_allsorts mod does that. I'll have to look into that too. Upon further reflection, I think I over complicated how to carry out the first option. The reason I liked the praise/scold system from Pets is specifically because I liked the headline effects and wanted the traits to be added at a certain threshold of points. But that can probably be done with way less headache if I stick to event listeners (hopefully).

Based on the punishment code from Generations, there is a threshold for negative behaviors, but I don't know if there's a threshold above zero for absolving behaviors. I either need to find it, or figure out how to create one myself. I also need to figure out how to get the headline effects to work for sims. If anyone has an idea on how to do that let me know.

The basics of what I need to do are as follows:
1) Connect a high threshold of negative behaviors to an event listener
2) Connect a high threshold of positive behaviors to another event listener
3) Create an event listener that will add a specific trait to a sim that meets the threshold of negative/positive behaviors
4) Possibly have a mechanic where sims can lose the added trait (back at zero?)
5) Add the corresponding headline effects
6) Make sure the headline effects show up when a sim is completing a specific actions
7)???
8) Profit

Edit: Also, is there a tutorial for event listeners and how to use them?