Sims 4 Modding Debugging Tips

So, this, originally, was going to be part of the Social Bunny Tweaks tutorial, but it was too long already, and I thought having an entirely separate section would be better.

Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions, or if there's something that's unclear.

Keep in mind I'm still learning myself, and there's probably a lot of things here that more experienced modders can do faster, or have better methods. I'm always open to learning! So this page might be updated often.

Tools I use

Whether it's to test my mods or just to find where certain things are, I use the following:

Better Exceptions by TwistedMexi

Sometimes, you might break stuff. Better Exceptions makes it easy to see what might've been causing issues.

Sim Info Manager by Lumpinou

It has a lot of different functionalities! I primarly use it to view my Sims' buffs, both visible and hidden. You can also see traits, commodities, command them to do something (even if they're not active), etc.

There was one time Lumpinou made a quick update so I could check the cooldown on dramanodes, which is extra useful. Please go and support him if you can!

S4TK Package Viewer by Frankk

Want to see quickly if there's a problem with your .package? Or maybe you don't remember how many modules and/or buffs you put in a single .package? The S4TK Package Viewer has you covered! While I was working on Social Bunny Tweaks, I somehow managed to break... something. Waffle suggested it might've been broken Sim Data. And S4TK confirmed that, indeed, I broke the SimData. It also told me where I broke it, so it was easy to fix!

UI Cheats Extension by Weebersu

I use it to remove visible moodlets with a single click. I sometimes need to remove them and put them back again to see if a loot is working. I put them back with Sim Info Manager.

How to know if a Social Bunny Post is working

You might think you need to go through the lenghtly process of killing a Sim and wait for their loved ones to get the right moodlet. But there's no need for waiting!

For this, I'm going to assume you already made the necessary buff to make the post appear.If you haven't done that yet, please check out Social Bunny Tweaks: Making the necessary buffs.

First, we click in our guinea pig beloved Sim who offered themselves for this experiment. Then we go through the Sim Info Manager to "Add Buff/Moodlet (Via Search)."

Something important of adding buffs and moodlets through this method: The search doesn't look through the strings or the content. It looks through the name of the tuning. So, if you look for moodlets with your creator name in its titles, you'll see your own stuff!

From here, all you have to do is give your Sim the buff you made by pressing the checkmark, get out of the Sim Info Manager and go directly to your Social Bunny App. If everything is done correctly, you should be able to see your post there.

Things don't appear or work as they should? Ask yourself these questions!

In the case of Social Bunny Posts:

Is your new post set correctly inside social_media.social_media_tuning?

Remember it needs to have content, context_post, loots_on_post, narrative and polarity. Is it missing any of those?

Check for typos

Whether there's typos in the comments is not as important as the number that's in the XML itself. Make sure you copied and pasted them in the correct places.

Does S4TK Package Viewer shows you any errors?

If so, what does it say? Is something you can fix by yourself or by reading documentation?

Are you getting an LE or a BE report?

Read the report! You might be able to pinpoint where the problem is!

Broken SimData?

I'm not sure what SimData is, but I know I broke it somewhere when working on the Social Bunny Posts. And I know exactly why I broke it.

You see, TDESC Builder doesn't save changes in the browser. Everything is lost when you reset the tab. And it can get pretty overwhelming if you're modifying many modules at once, since you might accidentally not export everything you need for your mod to work.

So, what I did was to download everything together in the same .package, I just downloaded the tuning and put it all together with Sims 4 Studio. However, I forgot to do the same with the SimData that's required for some modules.

I fixed this by simply opening the module that was giving me problems (social_media.social_media_tuning), clicking "Download SimData", importing it onto S4S and saving the package again.

Still unable to fix or figure out why it isn't working? Ask others for help or feedback!

I understand that finding up-to-date documentation on how to mod the game is HARD. But you can find tutorials, resources and actual help in the Creator Musings discord server. The server is active and the community is always ready to help! Not to mention that a group within that server is working on compiling all good documentation in a single website.

You can visit that website now! Welcome to The Sims 4 Modders Reference! The website is updated often, so check it out!