I feel kinda weird posting so much… but I really would like to know if this is a bug.
Anyways, I was playing a character that has been practicing guitar but I noticed it barely ever rises. I monitored it closer and realized that about every 2 days her % goes back down. Is this supposed to happen? I was watching it go from 38% to 42% and then it drops back to 38% if I skip any days. Mind you these percentages fluctuate depending on how much I practice but that usually about how much it drops.
it is supposed to drop over time, that’s why you need to keep practising to keep the skills up. You might be finding it drops a bit too fast, that’s something that can be modded, and I’ll take a look at maybe making it drop a bit slower.
Yeah but Guitar goes down crazy. It goes up by 2% a day and then goes down by 1% a day.
Regression needs to change…somehow. I mean I can only play soccer because that sport is free whereas videogames, tennis, golf, etc. are not. And then when soccer goes out of season I lose too much skill and my friends beat me. Isn’t it enough to constantly be dealing with regression on the right side?
I know I personally don’t forget skills like that for real. However I can see why you did it. But I do think it is too fast. It could easily kill jobs for you if you aren’t careful. I actually almost found it impossible to keep up with guitar due to the fact I have needy friends in my game who call me every other day and then get mad at me if I have to practice. Friends are so mean. 
So, where are the parameters for guitar and other instruments skill degradation? I have search in config.txt and the data folder at large, but have not found anything that looks like it so far.
I agree with others that the degredation rate is too high, especially given the 90+ skill requirements for the high-end jobs.
I was also surprised to see that once you get a musician job, reporting for work does NOT count as practice. It should count as practice every day you work.
I presume some folks have built up to the high-level music jobs. Does one simply ignore friends and other priorities entirely?
Thanks for any info,
Underhill
Ok, I found the answer to where the parameters are in the Modding Forum. Excerpt is below.
I still think going to work as a musician should cound as a practice, though.
There is no musicskill_degrade value in the game. However, if you go into the solo_activities.csv file, you will see lines that start:
Towards the end of these lines are the following values:
music_bass,0.05,0.96
music_drums,0.05,0.96
music_guitar,0.025,0.96
music_piano,0.0125,0.96
music_saxophone,0.025,0.96
The guitar goes up 2.5% each practice session, but you only keep 96% of your skills from one day to the next. If you want them to decay at a slower rate, change the 0.96 a higher number. Setting that value to 1.0 means they will never degrade.
Howdy Underhill!
My mod addresses this issue. It adds a _musical_degrade at 0.98, which should be sufficient. And if I remember correctly I think I changed the job scripts to force “practice” during work hours, so as long as you’re in a band and working you’ll be gaining skill 
I’ve also added several new music and music-related jobs and changed all the salary / tip rates for musicians to make it more attractive.
Also I’m all ears if you’ve got any suggestions for additions to the game (jobs/activities/etc); just remember I can’t change core game dynamics (I’m not making Kudos Rock Legend 2 here :p)
Mod can be found here:
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4556
SomeGuyInABikini, will (hopefully) be doing some more work on zee mod over zee long vveekend
Hi There SomeGuy,
Thanks for the mod, I was probably installing and running it while you were writing the reply. :-)
Lots of good additions, thank you. I noticed the extra money for music careers.
I'm afraid I still had steady degradation of my bass guitar skill, even using your mod and setting _MUSICAL_DEGRADE to 1.0, it still declined about 1% every second day.
The music jobs scripts increase “xp_music_bass”, but not the “music_bass” skill. music_bass is a qualifier for all 3 levels of bass player, so if one starts out in an entry level musician job, he may find it hard to stay ahead of the degradation to qualify for the 2nd or 3rd level job.
However, I found a second set of skills parameters in data\simulation\skills.csv. All of the games and music skills are in there, plus esperanto. Once I adjusted those to 1.0, I found skill degredation ceased completely. So I think both the parameters in skills.csv and config.txt affect daily degradation. I might set the skills.csv values back to .999 some day, just so one does have to practice once in awhile to keep up their skills.
I'm still trying to figure out how confidence degration works. I've tried values of 1.0, 0.99, and 0.1 for _CONFIDENCE_DEGRADE in config.txt, but confidence still sims to degrade a minimum of 1% no matter what, even when the current value is in the 30-40% range.
Cheers,
Underhill
Mornin’!
Had a look through the code and I can (and have) only set _musical_degrade to apply only to the active ‘practice’ of an instrument (i.e. respective solo event). You are indeed correct in that if you want to stop the degrade entirely you need to also change the skills.csv value to 1.0. I didn’t want to stop the degradation entirely as I had included ‘practice at work’.
or so I thought
I’ve made the amendments to the job scripts now to ACTUALLY include music skill, not just XP, and remembered I was stuck on exactly what a “balanced” daily gain would be. I’ve set it to a (somewhat) arbitrary value (0.008). Don’t want people becoming Jimmie Hendix after 6 weeks of playing, but don’t want them to stay at my level for the rest of their lives either 
If you want to play around with the figure it’s in Config.txt (MUSICAL_JOB_SKILL_GAIN) and let me know of any other changes/problem/awesome that you come up with then I’ll take it on board.
I’m hosting a LAN and there’s zombie-a-killin’ so I’ll ‘release’ the mod later
1.01 Beta
db.tt/i2GxSG
Cheers!
SomeGuyInABikini, just had breakfast ribs 
P.S. I’ve still yet to actually play the mod, aside from crash testing, so it’s nice to actually get some feedback. Megacheers!
Hi Again SomeGuy,
Your 1.01 sounds very promising, thanks for the speedy feedback.
Could you please provide your 1.01 as a zip file as well as a .exe? I’ve been tweaking some data files myself, and I would feel safer working with a zip rather than an executable, to avoid overwriting my own files.
Thanks,
Underhill
P.S. Just curious, how did you come to use “Danny Boy” as the music for the Australian restaurant? Have you heard more than enough of Rolf Harris tunes?
G’day G’day,
Sorry about the slow uptake. The EXE is a zip with a wrapper, so you can open it using any ZIP program and grab the files out of it.
On the other hand here’s a ZIP
db.tt/GEjFv0
I’m busy with work etc. right now, but (hopefully, and with any luck) I’ll get this whole thing out this weekend. Fingers crossed.
SomeGuyInABikini, looking for a rabbit’s-foot-holding horseshoe, resting on an elephant’s upright trunk
P.S. Parsec wrote the Australian Restaurant mod. Being an Australian but having no knowledge of folkish music I have NO idea what possessed them to use ‘Danny Boy’. At least they avoided the old Aussie clichés