Frequently Asked Questions

To start with, I have said many times and we have it documented in several places, I do not support pirated versions of Sims 4. Almost every time that we get a request for an older version of Sims 4, it’s for a pirated version someone has downloaded. We do not support versions of MCCC for those pirated games. We expect that people have purchased Sims 4 legally for MCCC to run with it.

Sometimes, people are running older versions for valid reasons, such as very poor internet connections. Even so, we can only go back so far with the versions we support. This is for several reasons:

1. EA fixes issues with each update they do (although it can be argued they also add a lot of issues as well). We want those fixes to be in the player’s games. Often, those fix problems that people are having that they think is mod-related and it is not. Sometimes, they fix issues that were breaking MCCC functionality in some way. All of those add-up to us wanting the players to update as often as they can. It makes the player’s and our lives easier.
2. To actually be able to support something, we have to have someone playing the same version or there is no way to support it. All of our support team are using the most up-to-date version of MCCC and we all have limited ability to go back and play older versions.

I try to keep a minimum of three versions available at any time. Sometimes, if there has been a hotfix for an EA update, there will be four. Sometimes a player may not be sure which version of MCCC is right for the version they are using. I’ll try to break this down as simply as I can. I always include a Compatibility section in each of my release posts, and it is also on my Releases page on my website. Sometimes a players version may not be specifically mentioned in those. One version of MCCC may support multiple versions of Sims 4. We don’t list them all in Compatibility.

So if you have a version that is not listed in compatibility, the way to tell which version of MCCC goes with that is by comparing what is there. If, for example, a player has version 1.58 of Sims 4 and I have a version of MCCC that supports 1.56 and another that supports 1.59, then the player should be using the version of MCCC that supports 1.59. If a version of MCCC says it is compatible with a version SMALLER than the player’s version of Sims 4, that version of MCCC will have issues (or not work) with their Sims 4. If it has a version that is LARGER than their version of Sims 4, then that is fine. That version of MCCC will work with their version of Sims 4 unless documented elsewhere.

And finally, when in doubt, feel free to go to our Discord server and ask someone in support there. Asking in comments on Patreon or in PM's to me, will just get directed to this FAQ.

There are quite a few reasons for this, but they all boil down to this. I do not have time to research every problem that anyone claims is a problem with MCCC. Very, very often, it is not a problem with MCCC, at all, and comes from some other issue like other mods/cc that are out of date, or configuration/setup issues for that specific user. For me to spend my time looking into all of these issues trying to resolve them for each person would prevent me having any time to create new content for all players just to try to help an individual with their specific non-MCCC issue. This is not an efficient use of my time. The many players out there gain more value, as do I, for me to use my time working on known MCCC issues and adding new features.

To most players, there is no clear way for them to know for sure whether a problem they’re having is actually from MCCC or from another source. The support team provides this analysis. They look at reported issues and ensure that it is not from some other source before it is escalated for me to look into further. At that point, I often need specific things from the player to try to analyze it more. I have to be able to reproduce any issue to be able to fix it. I usually need setting files, sometimes I need save files, I usually need descriptions of what was happening in the game and what steps I need to follow to make it happen in that player's game. None of this is something that I can easily obtain on Patreon or in PM’s somewhere. It is easy for me or the support team to ask for it on Discord and get the things we need uploaded.

The bottom-line is that I will not look at an issue that someone just posts a comment or PM saying they’re having an issue as it is not an efficient way of spending my time. There are teams of people that do this all day long so one person expecting me to do something just for them that I don’t do for anyone else is pretty unreasonable, in my opinion. We have procedures. They’re there for a reason. Please follow them and, if it is a problem with MCCC, I’ll get the details I need to reproduce it on Discord and get it fixed!

To prevent chat-bots from spamming the Discord chat channels, it is pretty common to have a manual validation method for users for them to acknowledge reading the rules of the server and saying they are human. That is the case with our Discord server as well. When a new user first joins our server, they see a very limited list of channels.

There is a lot of information in the channels available, and it is recommended to read through what is there. But to get access to post a message and to be able to join other channels where people are available, you first need to read through the #server_info and then the #verify_for_support channels. If you're still not sure what to do after reading through those, there is a video showing the steps necessary for validation, here. Following those steps will tell the server that you are a real person and not a bot and will grant you access to the support team. Finally, you can DM the server admin, “egwarhammer”, if all else fails.

If you were banned from the Discord server, for whatever reason, you have to talk to one of the admin team on the Discord server to appeal or ask for more details. Asking me to do anything is a waste of time as I am just a creator on the server. I am not an admin and have nothing to do with the rules of the server, or banning or restoring access. For more information, you can read this post.

If you leave the mc_settings.cfg file in your mod folder when you upgrade to a new version of the mod, it will upgrade your current settings to the new version automatically and all of your settings will carry-over to the new version without having to be re-entered. This applies to all settings file used by MCCC: mc_settings.cfg, mc_dresser.cfg and mc_tuner.cfg. All of these files are meant to be left between upgrades. Not doing so will cause previous preferences to be deleted and they will have to be reconfigured

Patreon has information on how to link your Patreon account to your Discord account here. If you're a subscriber, linking your accounts will give you access to the Patron-only support channels, which don't require authentication like the standard channels. Once the accounts are linked, there are some Discord bots that Patreon runs regularly that add the roles for user accounts based on subscriptions.

Any menu activated through shift-clicking a Sim is not my menu. It is either the “Testing Cheats”/“Debug” menu from EA, or it is another mod that uses Shift-Click to activate their menu options. All of my mod’s menu options are in the “MC Command Center” or “MC Cheats” menus. I can’t fix problems with the shift-click menus because they are not mine.

The Sim menu changes based on the Sim. For example, active Sims will have some options that NPC Sims will not. The reverse is also true. Adult Sims may have options that children Sims do not, etc.

The filters that EA uses to generate roles for NPC Sims and to fill NPC careers can take an NPC Sim and give them a new role or job they did not currently fill. It can do this at any point with no consideration to what they may have done before. When it does so, it can also change the skills to fit the new job or role. As a result, I do not have any options to give an NPC Sim a career. You can set skills levels on NPC Sims but, even so, doing so may not be permanent if EA reassigns that Sim to another career at some point.

As of 3.5.x, a new feature was added into the core MCCC functionality so that replaces core EA code dealing with deaths. In the core EA processes, when a Sim dies, it checks the household to see if there are any Sims left in the household that are at least Teens. If not, it deletes any babies, toddlers and children in the household. The functionality that I added will, instead, have those babies/toddlers/children adopted by another family so they will not be lost to the game forever. There will also be a log file message when this happens, if logging is enabled, letting the player know what happened.

This is very easy to do. You want to flag the Sims in your family tree with the “Never Cull” flag. Then, you can enable the MC Cleaner “Clean Ghosts” setting which will delete ghosts around town on a scheduled basis. It will not, however, delete any of the ghosts you flag for “Never Cull” and neither will EA’s culling, so it will always keep your family tree intact. If you can’t click on a ghost in the Relationship Panel to flag them, you can run the “mccc” or “flag_sim” console commands to do it. Those are documented further in the MC Command Center module documentation.

The relationships on family trees are built from Sim genealogy. They are not built from relationship bits. As a result, any family added through relationship bits will not affect the family tree, and are not intended to. As I detail in the dialog for adding relationship bits, they should mostly be used for story-telling purposes as they often do not have gameplay effects.

Some relationship bits are built dynamically from combinations of different relationship levels or interactions that Sims have had together. In those cases, the relationship bits will not be available in MCCC. Also, some of the relationship bits I have (espcially friendship and romance bits) can be dropped dynamically by the Sims 4 as gameplay progresses if the conditions for a Sim to have those relationship bits are not true.

No. There is no way to separate the two timings from Sims 4 in script. There is a single variable that Sims 4 uses for all timing mechanisms, including Game Time Speed and the duration of interactions. They can't be separated because there is only one in the core EA code. The only alternative is to individually change the duration for any interactions that a different duration is desired through a tuning mod. This would require changes to hundreds of interactions. It is not a script mod change, and not an easy tuning mod change for that matter either, due to the large number of files that must be modified. This is why there hasn't ever been a “Game Time Speed” mod for Sims 4 that doesn’t affect both the length of the day and the length of interaction durations.

When Game Time Speed is changed, all of the running internal alarms that EA creates for daily events are automatically reset to be at the correct time/day (like career start/end). However, holidays are already scheduled and in the save file so they are not adjusted like the other alarms. This will make them show-up at the wrong time on the calendar. The holidays can be deleted from the calendar and then set-back to the right day and time and they will be correct going forward, until Game Time Speed is changed again.

Sims 4 has a standard in place for any console command using Sim names that are contain multiple parts like this. MCCC uses the same implementation that Sims 4 uses. Quotes must be used on the last parts of the Sim's name to group them togeother. Like: George “Van Winkle”

You cannot use the standard Sims 4 methods for adding Sims to households if you have households of more than 8 Sims. It is hard-coded in the Sims 4 UI code for Manage Households and CAS to only allow 8 Sims. In the same way that you can't use the "Edit Households" option of CAS with large households, you also can't add/remove Sims in the normal Sims 4 manner. Adding Sims to households can either be done using the Testing Cheats method (if Testing Cheats are enabled) of shift-clicking on a Sim and adding them to your family, or by using the “sim_move” command as documented in the MC Command Center module's documentation. “sim_move” can be used for moving between different households or adding them to the active household. Also, as of MCCC 5.0.0, there is a Sim Command in the Sim MCCC menu under “Maintain Sim” to move Sims between different households. This works with no problems with households of more than 8 maximum Sims.

EA changed the behavior of cheat commands with the Seasons expansion in June 2018. Basically, they decided to make some of their debug cheat-commands only available to their internal users and to block access to them from existing mod users. This was an intentional change on their part, not a bug. A detailed explanation of this as well as a mod to work around it is available from TwistedMexi here.

Short answer, NO.

Longer answer, the MCCC files can never contain a virus within them because they are not executable files. The zips for the mod contain ts4script files, which are Python script used by the Sims 4 and not executable of themselves, so can’t contain a virus within them. The zips also contain package files. These are standard compressed files storing tuning file changes to the Sims 4 and translation files. Again, not executable...not able to have a virus within them. Any virus scanning software that is returning a virus result within these zip files would have to be using some questionable algorithms.

Most file serving sites, like Mediafire which I’m currently using, have virus scanning that is run on anything uploaded to them. So there can’t be a virus on the files because they're already scanned as they’re uploaded for users to download.

So why the false warnings? Some software, rather than testing the files themselves to see if they contain a virus, have a list of websites that they determine are trusted. If something is downloaded from a site not on their list, they decide that the file can have a virus on them, even if the file scans say that isn’t so. To me, this is like saying, “She’s a witch! She didn't live through being burned alive so she must be!” Bad conclusion from a faulty test.

Still not convinced? You can always use the Patreon download link for MCCC. MC Woohoo will not be available there for reasons already detailed in the FAQ here. The Patreon downloads never return these false positives. The files are the same in all locations so this, again, points to the virus scanning software being the problem and not the actual files. The files, including MC Woohoo, can also be downloaded from the Support Discord server here each time I do a public release. This channel does not require authentication or any special roles to access. You just click the link and log onto Discord and it takes you right to the files. Finally, the MCCC releases can be downloaded from CurseForge a week or so after public release. Multiple options available so please do whatever you feel comfortable with!

There may or may not be a lot you can do about this error. The error happens because the DNS server used by your internet connection does not correctly find the matching IP for the host-name used to store the version information. Some countries are going to have country-wide internet filters in place. In those countries, there may not be access to the server I store the current version information within. Some users may have firewalls in use that also prevent FTP ports to be used and may block the version check. There may be other network connectivity issues as well that prevent this connection from working correctly. As a result, it may not be possible for MCCC to connect to the server to retrieve what version is the current version so this feature will do nothing. In these cases, if the user can't figure-out if there is a work-around for their network to make the connection, then the setting should just be disabled as it will not work anyway.

When EA releases new things, there are often bugs in the new content. There are also things that may not work quite right when it first comes out. Also, not all players have bought the new content so any new features are really only going to be of benefit to a subset of the mod user-base. And finally, there are often things that people haven't figured-out how it works within the game because it's all new. For those reasons, I NEVER add new features to MCCC for new EA content for at least a MCCC version or two after it comes out.
I always update MCCC so the existing functionality that was already there works with no glitches, but new things have a much lower priority. I get asked this a lot and it's really just that simple. A lot of the features people already want are already available through MCCC with testing/debug cheats enabled so that makes it even less of a priority for me than getting things fixed and continuing to add new features that add value to all players and not just those that have bought the new expansion. After a version or two of MCCC, I always start including some features for all players and for the new content as well.

EA stopped development for Sims 4 Legacy Edition, which is the 32-bit version of Sims 4, when MCCC 6.6.0 was the current version of the mod. So going forward, as they're no longer providing any other updates for Legacy Edition, MCCC 6.6.0 will be the version of MCCC to use for that version of Sims 4. If you cannot find MCCC 6.6.0 in other places, we will be keeping it available on our Discord server in the legacy support channel. Once it is no longer available from my other download pages, that is where it will be found.

I have a TO DO on my list to add Trait management to MC CAS. That would include things like Blacklists/Whitelists/Editing existing traits on a Sim, etc. This is NOT something I currently have because the EA UI doesn’t have anything available in dialogs to show a Traits drop-down. The only Trait selection dialog EA has built-into the game is the one in Age-up and that’s not something that be called to do other things, like editing Sims or selecting a Trait for a blacklist trait and such. It would not be management to have a drop-down with every single trait in it as it would take forever to load and to scroll through. As such, I am not putting a lot of time or effort into this until some new UI element is implement that allows me to do this efficiently.

Short answer, “no”.

Long answer: I don’t fight the core game when it comes to homeless generation. To do so, many filters, situation roles and jobs and other files have to be changed. The code that EA added to ensure that there are vampires for particular situations will generate more and more homeless Sims if a mod just “blocks” a vampire from being created. The only “Anti-vampire” mod I have seen does exactly this. It does prevent vampires from being generated, but it will create homeless over-and-over-and-over again because the files EA uses that are expecting vampires are never finding them so it keeps running the process to generate a homeless vampire. I have no plans to try to track-down and modify all the files necessary to prevent that process from happening.

The short answer is no. The Sims 4 generates homeless Sims when it needs them to fill a role in the particular zone. If there is no Sim already that matches the filter the game uses for that role, then a new Sim is generated. If the Sim that matches the role is already in the zone and the role comes-up as being needed again, it will generate another Sim to fill the role, even though there is a Sim in the zone that matches it. Just the way the base game works.

“Maximum Homeless Sims” has nothing to do with Sims needed to fill a role. This setting is used for two things:

1. Limiting the homeless family households that EA will generate. By default, EA will ensure that if there are not already this number of homeless households when you first load-up the game, it will generate some family households usually with one or two parents and one or two children. The default that EA uses for this is 5. If there are already this number of homeless Sims in the world, then the families will not be generated. So setting the value to zero in settings will just ensure that no homeless FAMILY Sims are ever generated.
2. Limiting how many homeless Sims are left after the weekly move-in of MC Population occurs. If the setting is set to zero, all of the homeless households currently available will attempt to move into homes if they are available. If the number is set to the default of “5”, then 5 homeless households will remain in the world, even if there are houses for them to move into.

All of the core game’s “Edit in CAS” basic functions have household size hard-coded to 8. So no modder can prevent those functions from deleting extra Sims. However, there is a different “CAS Edit” that allows editing those large household sizes without losing extra family members. You would use that CAS edit rather than “Manage Household” or a dresser or a closet or a mirror or anything else. The safest thing to do is just use MCCC to edit the Sim rather than a Sims 4 method. The option for editing a single Sim in MCCC is "Modify in CAS". It is available in the initial MCCC Sims menu when clicking on a Sim in a household that has more than 8 Sims in it. It can also be found in the “MCCC > Sim Commands > Modify in CAS” path for any Sim.

Several different things you can do, depending on how much control you want.

1. If you want homeless Sims to leave certain houses always open, you can edit the houses in build/buy mode and set the number of beds under lot info to zero. Sims will not move into houses that the bed-count is set to zero.
2. If you want no homeless Sims to move into houses, you can edit the “Allow Homeless Move-in” setting in MC Population in the “Population Settings” section. Disabling this setting will result in no homeless Sims moving into houses.

In the MC Pregnancy Settings for “Pregnant Sim Selection”, there is a setting for “Pregnancy Percentage” for the different Sim age groups. The higher this number is, the greater a chance you’ll have Sims getting pregnant. The lower the setting is, the less chance you’ll have for Sims getting pregnant. If you set it to the lowest value, “0”, then pregnant Sims will not be generated by MC Pregnancy.

There are rules for Sims becoming pregnant. They vary some depending on the situation. If it’s an active Sim with Try for Baby or Risky Woohoo, then the documentation for the MC Woohoo module has the rules to determine when a Sim can become pregnant. If it’s an NPC using the random scheduled pregnancies, then the rules for that are in MC Pregnancy. If it’s a Sim getting abducted, then the rules for that are in MC Occult. If the Sims don’t pass all the rules, they can’t become pregnant. The percentage only applies if the other rules pass.

The only reason that Start Pregnancy would not show-up when a Sim is clicked within the MC Pregnancy Sim menu is because pregnancy is not valid for that Sim based on the pregnancy settings in MC Pregnancy.

Yes, that is the way it works. As part of the many changes I had to make to various places to get nudity in the Hot Tub to work correctly for Woohoo, the “Get In” interaction got lost. I consider it something not worth investing the amount of time I would have to invest to try to get that and Nudity in the Hot Tub both working. I don’t know if I could get them working together at all and it is really a player choice sort of thing. A player can choose to allow nudity for Hot Tub woohoo, or they can choose to allow the “Get In” interaction.

Clothing showing on Sims when they are supposed to be naked in bathing outfits is caused by bad CC. The clothing causing the problem is set as “Valid for Bathing Outfits” by the CC creators. It needs to be removed or repaired to prevent it being equipped on any Sim that gets a bathing outfit generated by the base game. Sims 4 Studio has an option to repair CC that is setup incorrectly like this. Once the clothing has been removed or repaired, a Sim’s bathing outfit can be reset by running the “Clean Outfits” MC Dresser command on the Sim when they are in their bathing outfit.

NOTE: You cannot run a bathing outfit clean on Toddlers. If their bathing outfit has invalid items on it, you should remove that item from your mods folder, reload your game (which should remove the item from all outfits on all toddlers, including the bathing outfit), save your game so the outfit is updated, and then you can add the item back (assuming you have fixed it so it is no longer valid for bathing outfits).

Only commands show-up on the Sim menu, so MC Woohoo would not show-up on the Sim menu because there are no MC Woohoo commands. There are only MC Woohoo settings, so MC Woohoo only shows-up on the computer menu. MC Cheats, as another example, only has commands. It has no settings. So it will never be found on the computer menu. It will only be found on Sims/Mailbox menus.

This is standard behavior for the woohoo skill. Reading the documentation for MC Woohoo (specifically the section about the Woohoo skill) it is described how the skill just doesn't go-up everytime Sims woohoo. They have to woohoo well! Everytime Sims woohoo, each participant receives a score for their performance. This isn't related in anyway to the "Great Woohoo" buff or anything. That buff is a personal indicator of whether the Sim liked the woohoo themselves. It is not an indicator of their performance, which is what the score indicates. Once they perform well enough, their skill will increase.

Additionally, at lower levels, as the documentation says, Sims are more likely to receive relationship DECREASES if their score is low enough.

As of MCCC 2022.5.0, the download for MC Woohoo is not available on Patreon. Below is an explanation of why from the patch notes for 2022.5.0.

With the changes EA made for HSY, the Teen age group is now much more defined than it was previously. As a result, I will be making some changes to when some settings show-up. I've intended to try to separate the functionality between MCCC and MC Woohoo more, previously, but this seems to be the time to get moving on it. The overall goal will be that the main MC Command Center modules will be PG and "Family Friendly". The settings that are more adult or used more for non-PG specific story telling playthroughs will require deploying the MC Woohoo module. All of the settings are exactly where they were in the configuration menus and all function exactly like they did previously, they just need the MC Woohoo module deployed to access them and for their functionality to happen.

Due to the fact that MC Woohoo is going to contain more controversial content, it will be moved off of Patreon, since other developers have had their content suddenly locked by Patreon with no warning when it was deemed that their mods had something that was not fitting within the content rules for Patreon. I don't want this to happen to MCCC so I'm moving the download links to places that it will not face any such judgements. MC Woohoo will still be available for download from my website and the Tumblr release posts, as it always has been. It will also be available for download from the support Discord server, if users can't get to the other links for whatever reasons.

As to how they can be stopped or fixed, there are multiple steps detailed in the Troubleshooting documentation in the Last Exceptions section.

As to can it be turned off, the answer is “no”. Through the first two years of supporting MCCC, not only myself but also all of the people trying to help me support the mod spent countless hours often trying to help players reporting issues “with MCCC”. Far too many times, after going through many steps to try to help players determine why their game was having problems, we would find that the player was getting LastExceptions and had not reported it or just flat-out didn’t know because they didn’t know how to check. All of those hours spent on issues that weren’t even MCCC-related are the primary reason it was decided to add this notification when a LastException happens. There is no excuse at this point for someone having a LE and not STARTING the support session saying that this is the case. That allows us to offset the support from MCCC support to just general, not MCCC, support.

What would happen if we had a setting to allow this to be bypassed is that everyone would just lazily turn the setting off rather than fix their content. As a result, we’d go right back to getting reports all the time from people having MCCC issues that are, in fact, from their LastExceptions, but since they turned those notifications off, they are again unaware of it. It negates the whole purpose for doing it. So that won’t be happening. LE’s can be fixed either by content creators (if it’s mods/cc) or by EA (if it’s EA’s code). I often do work-arounds for some of EA’s more glaring coding issues that cause errors. In the cases that I cannot do that for EA’s code, it is usually for a specific part of the game that can be avoided or removed until EA fixes the problem.

As a result of this notification, players now get rid of all mods/cc that are out-of-date and causing issues. The number of times that we have heard, “My game is working fine, I don’t need to know about these” cannot be counted. But, if someone is getting an exception, the game is NOT working fine. Whether or not the player would notice what was happening as a result of the error doesn’t mean that the game is working as intended. Often, the errors cause unintended side-effects like menus not working or interactions glitching.

The most valuable result from having notifications about LastExceptions is that when players get them all resolved, their game works better and runs cleaner and often performs better as well (exceptions are not currently being logged to the LastExceptions.txt file which costs performance). It’s always a pain for players to have to figure these things out, but the end result is a better game experience and we’ve had many people post in support that they are very happy when they get the issues resolved with the way their game plays afterwards

Mod Conflict Detectors have NOTHING to do with Last Exception errors. Last Exception errors come from mods or CC that are out-of-date. EA has made changes to the core requirements for particular tuning files or CC and the mods/cc in use are not following those requirements. This causes a Last Exception. Mod Conflict Detectors check all CC and Tuning mods to ensure that the resource ID being used in one is not used in another. It detects CONFLICTS, not Out-of-Date errors. Apples and Oranges so it should NOT be expected that one has anything to do with another.

There are additional details about Last Exceptions and how to deal with them in the Troubleshooting documentation.

Furthermore, Mod Conflict Detectors have nothing to do with script mods like MCCC. Mod Conflict Detectors, like said previously, are for finding conflicts between resource ID's in CC and tuning mods. They do not evaluate script mods and cannot evaluate them. There is no way for them to try to determine if one script mod conflicts with another. If someone tries to run a Mod Conflict Detector on a script mod, it will not be able to evaluate it at all and will just give a message like "wrong content" or something, because that is the wrong type of content for the Mod Conflict Detector to be run against.