can riv get gen 4 out by christmas?

Hello!! Sorry I've gone a couple of weeks without posting an update - I really thought I'd manage it earlier, but job searching and actually learning Python with advent of code really slowed things down. I also spent way too long trying to resolve the issue with parents not being added to the .json file when a sim is born. I tried a variety of different functions but nothing's worked yet, so unless something clicks I'm going to release with the caveat that babies' parents won't be added immediately. I managed to identify and fix a few other issues though (sims with siblings and no parents would not be recognised as siblings if you're using .json files, some sims were being mistakenly marked as culled in the .json files, and the list of sim mini-infos would persist in memory if you switched saves without quitting the game).

I realised there's another issue with auto updating - if for some reason you quit without saving (crash, power loss, your favourite sim died) then your .json files might be out of sync with your save and have sims from an alternate future! This just takes up extra space and means that some sims will show up as having kids when they actually don't, so I overhauled the system - the idea is now that your game will use temporary files within the current session. The information in these temporary files will be copied to the main files on game save, and temporary files will be deleted on game load. Since this has now got a bit more advanced, I need to thoroughly test it, because the last thing I want to do is break saving the game! I'm injecting to functions instead of overwriting, so I highly doubt there will be any compatibility issues with other script mods.

I'm also working on an optional package to add a help/info menu to the computer (under an extra pie menu called 'Research on riv-rel.sim...') - this will have a string table so if your game isn't in English, this might be full of blank strings. This add-on will require XML Injector (though I reckon most mod users will have this anyway).

Thank you all for your patience! I'm really, really hoping I'll get gen 4 out within the next few days, and if not then I'll have it out before the new year. I'll make it public since these are now core features I'm fixing, but any donations are really appreciated and will go directly to essentials!