I agree some tapes for sadness/boredom would be cool. Would also love a tape to learn aiming and reloading since those first levels are crucial for using guns at all and hard to train. Beating a dead horse, but any way to make the tapes spawning on bodies optional would be so much appreciated. perhaps there could be a separate mod that is identical except for no tapes on zombies?

Watching the existing shows reduces stress/boredom already.

I don't plan to add more tapes currently, I'd much rather make the integration smoother. E.g. integrate the VCR player into the "Device Options" window.

hi just an idea.... is there a way to add 1 new recipe, so that after we watch a tape (and get some xp), we can also use a Screwdriver to get 2 screws?

in hydrocraft (and some other mods) screws are really useful, and could be a handy thing?

I can make it so you can disassemble the tapes. Scrap Electronics would have come to mind first, though - I think screws don't really make much sense.

ah that's ok, yeah scrap electronics would still be cool, thanks

I remember that when I was a kid there were VHS cassette rentals in my city, I think it would be a good idea to introduce VHS cassettes and DVDs to the libraries in the game, the character could listen to a CD on a Walkman or watch a movie on a TV that would decrease to sadness or add experience to craft skills.

Add VCRs + wires to connect to a TV or other video player. At the time, TVs with built-in video players were quite rare and expensive items.
It would also be great to reduce the spawning of cassettes ... in half an hour I collected 8 cassettes and pumped up cooking + fishing.
It would also be just wonderful to make a recording from the TV (while the broadcast is in progress) + the ability to copy (rewrite) cassettes - having two VCRs.
The sound of loading and taking out a video cassette now does not correspond at all to the real one.

Movies can be added? For fun. Just text - Piu-Piu ... all sorts of phrases from films of those times ...
Terminator / Alien / Porn, etc. :)

Those are all great suggestions, but many of those are far beyond of where I want to take this.

One could probably make this into an elaborate hi-fi mod, but that's simply not what I intended: I wanted a simple mod to allow access to the shows giving XP later in the game, in case you missed them or chose to not prioritise that.

A lot of the design decisions were to simplify stuff: TVs have integrated VCRs (with the exception of the Antique Television), which is obviously far from realistic. There's no rewinding on tapes, only one show "fits" on a tape, while in reality tapes easily hold over an hour of footage. Hell, the whole "play tape" feature is just creating a clone of the original channel on another frequency in the background, switches the TV to it and plays that segment again. It works but it's nothing like "playing a tape", really.

As for the tapes giving electric scrap you mentioned in the other topic: of course they're analog tapes, but it's the only thing the game offers that makes any sense right now. There's no "mechanical parts" in the game, currently - remember that it also uses electric scrap to fix an engine (generator), so it's a bit of a compromise.

Please also keep in mind that the developers will probably implement VHS stuff into the base game, eventually, making all this obsolete.

I'll try to externalize the loot chances into a config file in a future release, so they're easier to change in the future. Zomboid's loot tables are pretty limited and work in mysterious ways though, so be warned that you'll venture into deep RNGsus territory...

Can you add sorting component in your mod? Just like in "An Exhilaratingly Organized Literature Mod" where you mark book that you read already?

Compile a list of a few hundred of the most sold VHS Movies as of 1993 and throw them into the world. Make them a reusable item that gives like -5 stress -5 boredom -5 unhappiness and take a few hours to "watch" if you have a tv with power. I guess the stats could depend on the movie, maybe a horror movie gives stress. I had a whole idea for this type of mod but don't have the code know how. Do it!

Change the cassette loading sound. He is different in reality. It will be more realistic and atmospheric.

If I may suggest an "Unwatched" and "Already Watched" to the tooltip of the item? I'm very bad at remembering if I need episode 8 or 7 and having a tooltip would save my time looting and my encumbrance

Would love to add that, not currently possible though :(

I may however be able to add it to the item's right click menu, as a workaround, until possible.

I was using your mod and I think it would be feasible with the way you implemented it in the TV as a "special station" for the AV1 "input" on the TV to have the same trick but for the music Radio station and with CDs ... Popping a CD could enable listening to a random music radio broadcast in the game's scripted material from 89.4 MHz Hitz FM like you do with the VHS tape. Thx again for the mod :)

Yup, that's as easy as adding more items+mappings in the code.

I personally won't add more items, right now, until they add a way to make loot tables more "groupable". There's currently no way to add more items and not absolutely swamp the player with it (unless you do silly workarounds like finding "generator"-items that turn into a random tape when used).