Buff

A buff (TDESC name: Buff) is a game resource that adds temporary effects on Sims. Buffs are usually added through a loot action. Other ways to add buffs are adding another buff on removal of the previous buff, adding core buffs to traits, or through the basic extras of an interaction.

Purpose
A buff can be used to add a temporary effects to sims. Buffs can be visible or invisible. A visible buff typically contributes to a mood, such as a playful buff. Additionally, invisible buffs can be used to add temporary effects or used as a timer (e.g. as a cooldown for an interaction).

Moodlets
Moodlets are visible buffs that contribute to a Sim's mood. These are the buffs that are immediately visible to players and effect much of the game. Such buffs require a weight and emotion. Other core components are the buff name, buff description and icon. The duration of the moodlet can be set by adding a "temporary_commodity_info" setting.

Trait Buffs
Trait buffs are buffs that are given to a Sim once a trait has been added. This buffs never expires. It is responsible for most of the effects of the trait. Any social interactions available from a trait are typically made available through this buff. The same is true for any skill modifiers, motive modifiers, walkstyles, and autonomy scores.

Autonomy Modifiers
There are two ways to modify the autonomy of Sims with a certain buff: adding static_commodities or using the game effect modifiers. When done, these buffs will change how a Sim behaves with autonomy on.

Appearance and Special Effects
Buffs can be used to modify a Sim's appearance. This is called a Appearance Modifier. One such buff is the trait buff assigned to the trait "Curse of Repulsiveness", which makes the Sim's skin green and their body covered in warts.

The same is true for VFX and Voice Pitch modifiers. Sims with certain buffs can display sparkles around their head or have their voice pitch changed. Buffs associated with the Bubble Blower from City Living have the latter effect; when using the "Deepest Plum" cartridge, Sims may have their voice deepend.

Buffs can also give a Sim a walkstyle. A notable example are the walkstyles in Create-a-Sim. Each walkstyle grants the Sim a trait representing that walkstyle. This trait has a trait buff, which is where the walkstyle actually takes effect.

Buffs as Timers
Buffs can be used as timers for another buff to appear. Such buffs are called cooldowns and are usually set to be invisible. The setting temporary_commodity_info controls the duration of the buff. Such buffs are typically applied through a loot action that comes from an interaction, event, or elsewise. Buffs such as these can do many things; they can blacklist an interaction for a Sim or give a wait time for another buff to appear, such as the Bored moodlet from not having a Club Gathering.

Interactions
Buffs can have three types of interactions: actor_mixers, super affordances and target_super_affordances. The most notable example are Trait buffs, which allow Sims with a certain trait to perform interactions. "Share Melancholy Thoughts", a social interaction, is one such example.

Coding
Buffs must have matching SimData to display correctly—this is especially true for visible buffs, such as moodlets. In addition, the content inside the SimInfo data must be in-sync with the Buff data, otherwise the buff will not function correctly. Within the Buff Tuning file, users can denote the name of the buff, the length of it, the reason it appeared, and more.

Game Effect Modifiers
The following descriptions have been taken from TDESC:

Affordance Filters
Modifier on a Sim that prevents interactions that can be run on them or run by them.

Affordance Modifiers
Game effect modification that provides bonus when scoring and running interactions.

Autonomy Modifier
An encapsulation of a modification to Sim behavior. These objects are passed to the autonomy system to affect things like scoring, which SI's are available, etc.

Continuous Statistic Modifier
The modifier to add to the current statistic modifier of this continuous statistic, resulting in it's increase or decrease over time. Adding this modifier to something by default doesn't change, i.e. a skill, will start that skill to be added to over time.

Effective Skill Modifier
The modifier to change the effective skill or skill_tag tuned in the modifier key The value of the modifier can be negative.

Mood Effect Modifier
This modifies the effective weight of each buff in the category. For example, if the Buff_Angry category is tuned to be 0.5, all weights which contribute to the angry buff is halved.

Pie Menu Modifier
A game effect modifier that affects pie menu generation. Currently only supports suppressing affordances.

Relationship Track Decay Locker
A modifier for locking the decay of a relationship track.

Relationship Track Decay Modifier
A modifier for modifying the relationship track decay for all relationships for a Sim.

Satisfaction Point Gain
A modifier that awards Satisfaction Points at a periodic interval.

Satisfaction Point Multiplier
A modifier that applies a multiplier to a Sim's gained Satisfaction Points.

Statistic Static Modifier
The modifier to statically modify the value of a statistic. e.g. if a delta modifier of +2, the statistic will report a value 2 greater than the "actual" value, regardless of what the value is set to.