Or if you want to for some reason you can download this specific version here
Try the web version here
Hair binner fix!
Some time ago it was reported that packages compressed by Yape don't work correctly in hairbinner. (post by @pforestsims)
Luckily, thanks to a user report this issue is now fixed, meaning you can now again use Yape in combination with hair binner without any problems.
The problem was a bad value in the compression header, meaning some programs couldn't read the compressed data correctly.
Unfortunately, this does mean that some packages are affected:
How many packages are affected?
All packages compressed through previous versions of Yape are affected.
What programs are affected?
The only known programs that use this header value are hairbinner and older versions of @picknmixsims's programs. Official Sims programs ignore this header value completely, and are not affected.
What can I do to fix the packages?
Although most packages don't need fixing as they will not be used with hairbinner, you may still want to fix the compression header for for example uploaded packages. To fix them you can simply recompress them by using a tool like the compressorizer.
Other changes:
MaterialShader editor with syntax highlighting
fixed a bug when exporting TXTR resources to .dds that have a greater than 1:2 aspect ratio
fixed UI scale and theme settings resetting when opening the program
IMG resource viewer and import
Notes on IMG: these resources are raw PNG / JP(E)G / TGA files, so export works as normal by right clicking the resource.
When importing (drag your file into the editor) Yape will also simply use the raw file contents, so if any problems arise you might need to use a different format or save your images in a different way before importing.
As mentioned in my previous post, I'm now doing my internship which means that my time is very much limited. Bugfixes like this will still come, but major updates will probably not be in the works for a while unfortunately.
That said, with Paralives coming out soon I'm sure many of you will be spending a bit less time with TS2 too, so:
With Paralives coming out soon, how much will you be playing TS2?
I'll play TS2 just as much as I always have
I'll check it out but I'll be back to TS2 soon, maybe I'll play it occasionally
I'll probably play about 50:50 of both
I'll play mostly Paralives from then on, but I'll come back to TS2 occasionally
I'll be completely done with TS2 after Paralives comes out
Hi! I was wondering if YAPE was ever going to be implemented with the ability to, essentially, view multiple packages at once such that I could, say, open an entire neighborhood and access Sims as they appear there. Additionally, I was wondering how much of SimPE’s features are planned to appear in the program, as I’ve realized that people don’t actually use SimPE only for what I do/have done. Specifically, I was wondering about the Sims Surgery capability of SimPE being implemented in the form of extracting a Sim’s appearance and exporting it into a package file, to be put into the Sim presets. Anyways, sorry if I’m bothering you, please don’t feel like you have to respond at all!
Simultaneous editing of multiple packages is something I would love to add in the future, but that won't be possible to do until after I've finished The Big Refactor, at that point I'll also be able to make editors that have better cross-resource information display (like names of BCON items, mesh display with textures, that kind of stuff).
I'm not planning on adding many of the advanced features that SimPE has, for now I'm mostly focused on the things that it doesn't do, like quick edits for stuff that people do frequently, or things like the mesh morph display. If you want an editor on Linux that is more full-featured, @catandsusim has been working on porting SimPE to modern .net versions meaning it might support Linux at some point in the future. Also, Sid on the sims hacker zone discord has been working on a rewrite that's shaping up nicely, I can confirm it runs well on Linux but there are no public releases as of yet.
Unfortunately I'll be starting an internship soon, so my time is going to be a bit more restricted the coming while, I hope that if I do finally get The Big Refactor over with it will have been worth the wait to some degree.
Questions absolutely never bother me in any way, it's just that sometimes I don't have time, can't think of a good answer, or just straight up forget. Don't be afraid to ask or send anything, even if I don't reply stuff might still make it onto my project planning board.
Lutris on Linux received a fairly major update this week. Many people have reported issues with their wine prefixes, and with their games suddenly not finding their Downloads folder file paths, and more - if you need help with any of that, my Discord can probably help.
(My Lutris updates applied without any issue to don't stress too much, it won't necessarily break everything!)
The Clean Installer script that I recently shared has also stopped working, but the amazing @chieltbest has updated it for us with a new working one!
You can download it here. Massive shoutout to Chielt for getting on that so quickly and being amazing.
hey, have you been able to make clean installer work on linux mint? if so, could you tell how you did it?
Hey Anon, sorry it took me a bit to get back to you about this but the answer is yes, I did - with a lot of help and I cannot take any credit. Hence I wanted to ask permission before I shared my answer haha.
Details under the cut.
An amazing Discord member of mine, @chieltbest, wrote us a script to get it up and running which they have graciously given me permission to share here.
Firstly you need to install Clean Installer as a program into your Sims 2 prefix. Easiest way to do this is as follows:
Head here https://modthesims.info/d/409950/sims2pack-clean-installer-v1-6-22-updated-aug-2-2014.html/ and download the "Sims2PackInstaller_NoInstall" file
Place the folder into Program Files (x86) in your Sims 2 prefix - e.g. Home/Games/the-sims-2/Drive_C/ProgramFiles(x86)
Go into Lutris, right-click The Sims 2 and select "duplicate"
Right click the new duplicate and select "configure", go to "Game Options" and change the executable path to point to Clean Installer, aka Home/Games/the-sims-2/Drive_C/ProgramFiles(x86)/Sims2Pack Clean Installer/Sims2Pack Clean Installer.exe
Once that's done you need to close Lutris, and follow these steps:
Download this file and put it anywhere on your Linux system.
Make sure the script is executable: in the directory that you downloaded the script to, right click on the script, select "properties", then under "permissions" make sure "allow executing file as a program" is ticked
(Double) click on the script to run it, you will probably get a message that says something like Do you want to run "clean-installer-install.sh" click 'run' to run it
Follow the prompts that the script gives you
Done!
For troubleshooting, detailed help and instructions, etc, please pop into my Discord and look for the running-on-linux-tech-chat channel. There is a thread on that channel called 'Clean Installer Trials' where we worked all of this out lol.
Or if you want to for some reason you can download this specific version here
Try the web version of Yape here
Download the latest Batl here
Or if you want to for some reason you can download this specific version here
Updater
Rework of the "UI Scale" thing to make it work the same in all apps
Sorting of columns in Batl
Batl will display memory size as ... kB and ... MB instead of the raw number of bytes
Batl got some small performance improvements
The SDSC editor in Yape will now remember the opened sections
Happy Christmas everybody! Now for your present, it's updates! Or an updater, to be exact. Yape & Batl can now check for updates, download, and install them, all from within the program. This was (in theory) slightly easier than I initially expected, as the packaging system I'm using (cargo-packager) has support for it natively. Of course there were still a fair share of troubles actually implementing the system in practice (it can't ever be that simple can it).
I've noticed that sometimes people aren't sure where to leave feedback or ask questions. My DMs are always open, but I'm thinking that maybe having something like a discord server might make it easier for people to get help, share suggestions and the like. That said I'm worried about two things: 1. locking useful information inside a non-google-able server and 2. having to keep track of Yet Another Server, since there are quite a few sims 2 discord servers already. That said, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Would you appreciate a dedicated discord server for my stuff?
Or if you want to for some reason you can download this specific version here
Try the web version here
You can now reorder lists by dragging the ↕ handle (such as in 3IDR)
Alpha textures can now be previewed with different base colours
SimDescription editor with ALL fields available
I have a secret list of features that I have seen people ask for, and this update I've plucked some items that I thought would be quick and easy from that list and implemented them.
Unfortunately the SimDescription editor turned out not to be so quick and easy after all. While writing the parser I found several details about the file format that even SimPe isn't parsing correctly, meaning my testing setup is working pretty well (in my opinion).
You may notice there is currently no easy way to find the name of the sim you're viewing, as this information is actually in the individual sim package files (as a CTSS resource) and there is no way for me to access these until after 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓑𝓲𝓰 𝓡𝓮𝓯𝓪𝓬𝓽𝓸𝓻™ unfortunately.
Anyways, time for the update poll: you may have noticed that there is now a web version, but there is no mac version. The reason is simple: I simply don't own any mac devices meaning even if I were to make a mac version I have no way of testing if it actually works, so if you want to see a mac version happen and you can do long-term testing then message me please.
What OS do you play The Sims on, and do you consider yourself technical?
Or if you want to for some reason you can download this specific version here
Try the web version here
New web version!
Display meshes and bounding meshes
Normal, tangent, and uv (texture) data
Wireframe mode
Performance information
Change subset names and opacity values
Test morph shapes
Export and import resources
You can export resources by right-clicking on the resource name, the same place where you open the resource by left-clicking. Importing resources works by dragging the resource file into the editor (the resource that will be replaced will show a box around it while hovering).
This update has been a long time in the making, and there is a lot of stuff that I still want to create and improve, but I have decided that the state that it is currently in is good enough to be usable for now, and that delaying the release any further would not make much sense.
GMDC display has been consistently a pain point for people playing the Sims on Linux, and with this update I hope to have improved the situation somewhat. I also made sure to add resource export and importing functions, so that those who can't get the SimPe mesh functions to work on Linux can still work with meshes.
As I said, I wanted to add a bunch more features to this update, but right now it seems that I will have to make some large refactors before I can do that, which will take some time to complete. With that I would like to ask you all: should I work on some smaller editors (sim descriptions, bhav constants, other 'smaller' resources) before starting the large refactor, or should I get it over with to work on larger features?
Should I work towards bigger updates, or do a couple of smaller updates first?
Start the large refactor for big updates (BHAV etc.) (might take 2-3+ months)
Do some smaller updates first (sim desc., BCON, etc.) (1-2 weeks per update)
If you create CC for TS2 you probably avoid using DXT1 format, because it often looks really bad, right? Well, I've got news for you😐
‣ SimPe texture viewer can't correctly decode DXT1 textures. It often displays artifacts not visible in the game.
Up until now it was not possible to extract such texture from a package without 'glitches'. @chieltbest recently shared their revolutionary YaPe package editor. It's an experimental version, for now - it's still being developed - but I've already edited 180+ CC textures with no issues. YaPe is very easy to use. It allows you to reconvert textures inside a package to different format, remove or add mipmaps with one click, replace textures with drag and drop method - supports JPEG, TIFF, DDS and more! You can get it here.
YaPe editor is also the only app I know, that allows you to extract DXT1 texture from the package file without glitches. Below the cut you'll find a little tutorial on that. I also included a detailed comparison of DXT textures built with various plugins:
*DXT1 format has gained a bad reputation amongst TS2 creators, mostly because of borked SimPe DXT1 texture preview/export.
But the fact is - DDS plugins (aside from SimPe DDS Builder) create DXT1 that looks quite similar or identical to flat DXT3 / DXT5.
Important thing about DXT1 format: file size is around half smaller than DXT3/5.
‣ What's wrong with SimPe DXT1 textures?
Nothing, really. SimPe /Nvidia tools DDS builder is using special settings for DXT1. It saves textures as DXT1a format.
Unlike ordinary DXT1 (DXT1c) that doesn't support transparency at all, DXT1a format has basic 1-bit transparency switch. DDS builder 'hides' black pixels from compression by enabling transparency - this trick is actually meant to reduce artifacts in some areas /thanks @chieltbest for explaining this/.
Transparent parts of DXT1a texture are displayed as black in the game, as long as TXMT doesn't have transparency enabled.
Below: DXT1a previewed in YaPe. Left pic features transparent pixels (hard to notice if you enable dark UI mode). Please note that, unlike SimPe, it displays colors and grays correctly.
‣ Extracting DXT1 texture without 'glitches' in YaPe:
Open package in YaPe editor. Preview TXTR resource, pick AltRGB24 (Raw24Bit) from dropdown menu.
AltRGB24 preview displays flattened version of the texture (texture background is exposed)
'Export DDS' button creates .dds file out of the previewed texture
/optional: If you save the changes, then you can reload the package and convert from Raw to DXT format/
exported DDS texture can be opened in apps with DDS plugin - GIMP, Paint.NET etc.
if you don't have apps with DDS plugin, you can use SimPe (click on texture in SimPe, pick 'import DDS..', choose dds exported in YaPe, then export as PNG.
Pic above: Yet Another Package Editor v0.4.0, light UI mode. My sample DXT1a texture in Alpha preview - transparent pixels are clearly visible.
⚠️ Editing original SimPe DXT1a texture with YaPe (removing or adding mipmaps - for example) and saving as DXT1 again, will most likely increase the number of 'false artifacts'
..however, the texture will still look fine in game. I edit CC with DXT1a for my own use that way - because reconverting to other formats doesn't improve texture quality, might even make it a little worse in some cases.
BUT if you're going to share such content, it might be best to reconvert it. Because if it looks very glitchy in SimPe, it also looks glitchy in Sims2Pack Clean Installer. And people might just delete it.
Alternatively, if you use DXT1 for your CC, you could inform people that "glitches" in SimPe / Clean Installer preview are not visible in the game.
DXT1 vs flat DXT 3/ 5:
(YaPe allowed me to extract SimPe DXT1a texture without glitches)
*Yes, flat DXT1 and DXT3 / DXT5 created in GIMP really looked exactly the same.
GIMP had 'perceptual error metric' option on, it slightly improves some details.
so, who won?
You be the judge. Overall, I think YaPe (v0.4.0) did really good in this particular case.
SimPe DTX3 shows more artifacts in the blue/ turquoise /black dots area but dark gradients are smoother than others. GIMP DXT had issues with black dots over the pink - red tones seep into black.
SimPe DXT1 is not bad, but has some issues - a few artifacts appeared over thin black & white stripes. Also, blurred colors in the middle became a bit crunchy. /Dark brown gradients are better than GIMP DXT tho/.
‣ DXT5 Alpha-channel quality
The difference between DXT3 and DXT5 lies only in the way transparency is handled. DXT5 can store more alpha-channel grayscale information and offers much smoother transparency.
Pic above: alpha-channels extracted from DXT5 (white = opaque parts, pure black = 100% transparent). These looked basically the same so I did another test using more demanding texture - darker alpha gradients plus thin lines:
YaPe has produced very nice alpha channel without much artifacts, the gradient looks almost as the source. SimPe DXT5 - also clean details, but surprisingly, darkest parts of the gradient are a little bit choppy. GIMP DXT5 and the other two show tiny pixel artifacts around light lines.
Last pic above is DXT3 alpha-channel for comparison - crisp details are clean, but gradients are very choppy. I've compared various plugins, all produced identical DXT3 alpha. DXT3 format is OK for stuff that's using alpha-test transparency (not smooth, not see-through) - leafy plants etc.
*Please note that's exactly why transparent clothing looks so bad when created with Bodyshop - it doesn't use DXT5, only DXT3.
GIMP DDS exporter allows you to improve transparent mipmaps for plant textures etc, you need to select 'Preserve alpha test coverage' and increase the threshold if required - it will make very thin details a bit more thick on zoom-out and reduce details disappearing.
YaPe editor also has an option to tune transparent mipmaps (increase the value with "preserve transparency" slider). YaPe lets you preview each mipmap, which is very convenient. Here's a detailed tutorial by Chieltbest.
‣ Color gradient: DXT3 /DXT5
Paint.NET (DDSFileTypePlus 1.12.13.0) did best, thanks to agressive error-diffusion dithering. SimPe DDS Builder DXT 3/5 did really good. Next goes YaPe editor - gradient is quite smooth, aside from the darkest tones. GIMP DXT and Intel Texture Works are so-so.
*I already posted one DXT formats test here, it features darker gradients. I still need to compare how textures look as actual SimSkin or overlays in game. The TS2 game is not great at displaying grey / dark color gradations, especially on Sims...
YaPe is a modern package editor for DBPF (.package) files
Features:
Edit any package - FAST
List and edit resources in a package
Filter resources by type
Easy editors for several resource types
Supports opening ANY DBPF-coded .package, .dat, or .sc4 file
Easily reduce texture size, add/remove/recreate mipmaps, change texture format
Import textures by dragging, export DDS
Native on Windows and Linux
Why make yet another package editor?
Simply said, because SimPe can be kind of cumbersome especially on Linux, and package editors other than SimPe (s3pe, s4pe, iLive's Reader etc.) do not support Sims 2 resources.
To illustrate, I timed someone shrinking a texture (convert RawARGB32 -> DXT1, shrink 2x) in both SimPe and YaPe:
SimPe + GIMP: 1m 30s
YaPe: 10s
Originally this started as just a way to easily test if my DBPF library was doing the correct thing, but over time it has grown to become a half-decent editor suitable for more general use.
Tutorial / usage tips
Here I will explain how to shrink and convert textures in YaPe because that's what I imagine most people will use this program for right now, but of course you can use it for other things as well.
Let's get started by getting the program to look the way you want to: use the options in the top left to change the scale of the interface and switch between dark and light mode.
Now drag a package file into the program (don't worry about closing the sims except when you save the package), a list of resources in the package will be visible. You can find out what the abbreviations mean by hovering your mouse over them; in general I try to add tooltips like this to buttons or options that are unclear.
Don't be afraid to mess around and make changes! The changes you make are never saved unless you press the save button, so if you simply drag your package file into YaPe again without saving you will get your original package back (there is currently no undo function, but it is a planned feature).
All these resources are great, but we're only interested in the textures for this tutorial so let's set a filter. Right click on a texture (TXTR) and select "Filter on type".
Great! Now you can only see the textures we're interested in. You can disable this filter by unticking the "filter" option at the top.
Now click on the "TXTR" to open the texture, it will open a new tab in the lower half of the window by default. If your window is not very big (like mine is for this tutorial) you might have trouble seeing the texture and all the options. You can drag the tab around and put it somewhere else in the program, I'm going to put it on the right and make it a little bigger so we can see what's going on.
Okay, now we can see all the options, and well... there's a bunch of them. We'll go over some of the options that you'll likely want to use but feel free to experiment of course.
First, let's have a look at the texture viewer at the bottom: you can zoom in on the texture by holding control and scrolling, and you can change which mipmap is displayed by clicking the radio buttons above the texture.
But wait, this texture does not have enough mipmaps to show up in game! (post by @pforestsims) Let's fix that right this instant by clicking the "Add missing mipmaps" button in the middle.
Okay, now the mipmaps will show up in game, which is good... except that this mipmap is really blurry. (post by me) Luckily we can fix this really easily, just click the "Recalculate all mipmaps" button.
Much better!... except that we've created a new hidden problem: the leaves will disappear when zooming out in game (blog by lisyarus) but even this problem can be fixed. We can actually preview what the texture will look like when zoomed out by switching the format to DXT1 since DXT1 has binary transparency, just like alpha tested textures like leaves and grass.
Right, so the leaves have a bunch of holes that don't look right when zooming out, let's change that. Above the "Add missing mipmaps" button there is the "Preserve transparency" slider: try changing it to something like 120-170 and click "Recalculate all mipmaps", you can see that the transparency changes, if it's still too thin/transparent set the value higher and recalculate again and so on.
Have a look at all the mipmaps (zoom levels) and once you're satisfied with the transparency change the format back to DXT5.
This texture will now look great in game! But it is also quite large, so we can reduce the size 2x smaller without sacrificing very much in terms of looks (sorry to all the cc authors who love their large textures). Click the "Remove largest texture" button, which will make it so that the first mipmap becomes the largest texture effectively reducing the size by 2x. Like mentioned it does use the first mipmap so make sure to fix any blurry mipmaps first.
You can repeat the same process for the other textures in the package, and then we're done. Save the package by clicking the save button in the top bar, and have a look in game at your beautiful textures.
Another option is to drag images/textures you've made somewhere else into the program (with special support for dds files), for a full lists of supported image formats you can look here. (image-rs documentation) The image/texture will currently go into the firsts open texture resource tab because of UI framework limitations.
Here's a look at some of the other editor currently implemented:
I just found out that pretty much all mipmaps in sims 2 cc are too blurry
While working on my package editor (which I'll make a post about later) I found out that pretty much all DXT-compressed textures in sims 2 cc have blurry mipmaps! Meaning that for most textures, if you zoom out slightly the texture will become blurry.
What, why, and how
Meepmops? What are those and why would I care?
Mipmaps are used in computer graphics to make textures look smoother when viewed at a distance. There is also some evidence that having mipmaps might help with texture memory (post by @episims). In essence, you take the original image and then combine four pixels into one to create an image that is 2x smaller in width and height than the original, then repeat this process until finally you get an image that is 1x1 pixel.
One complication is that mipmaps will not work if the smallest texture is not 1x1 (post by @pforestsims) meaning that if you don't have the maximum amount of mipmap levels possible, the game will only use the largest texture. This is a good thing, because that means the game will reject malformed textures, but it also means quite a lot of textures with mipmaps in cc don't actually work correctly.
That's also why you shouldn't make images which are not a power of two; if it's not a power of two you can't keep dividing the image by two to end up at a 1x1 pixel image, meaning you can't make proper mipmaps.
Why are the mipmaps blurry?
After some experimentation I've managed to find the cause of the blurry mipmaps:
All mipmaps made with Nvidia DDS Utilities are blurry. Yes, you read that correctly. And yes, it's exactly as bad as you're imagining.
For the uninitiated, Nvidia DDS Utilities has been the primary tool that sims 2 cc creators use when importing textures for pretty much as long as the game has been out. In SimPE you would click the texture, then select "Build DXT..." and that would open the dds utilities and allow you to import the texture.
So how many files are affected? By doing a scan of a 20GB downloads folder that was graciously donated to me I could get some raw numbers on the amount of textures that might be blurry. Let's have a look:
total textures: 107892
number of textures compressed in DXT: 98683 (91%)
number of DXT textures that have mipmaps: 69527 (70%)
DXT textures with not enough mipmaps to show up in game: 54709 (55%)
overall, 54709 out of 107892 (50%) of textures in this folder are blurry when zoomed out in game
How do I fix this?
Here's the good news: you can fix this! Kind of.
First of all for cc creators, let's take a look at how you can make good looking mipmaps.
The process is pretty simple: open the original texture is GIMP, export the texture, then select DDS as the format and use the following settings as a reference.
Now in SimPE right click the image, select "Import DDS..." and open the .dds file that you've just exported.
Now it is possible to do this process by first exporting the texture from SimPE, but the mipmaps that creates will never be as good as the ones made from original texture, along with it being an absolute massive time sink to do that on every single downloaded texture.
In a little while I'm going to officially release my package editor yape, which will hopefully make the process a little easier, and after that I'm going to look into adding an option into my texture search tool batl to recalculate the mipmaps for all the textures in a folder, but for now the GIMP export process sadly really is the easiest way.
Or if you really want you can download this specific version here
first of all, thank you for all the encouragement in the release post, and most of all thank you to the people that reported problems, asked questions, and gave suggestions, that kind of feedback is really great to help make future versions even better.
I'll try to keep it short, so without further ado here is the changelog:
changelog
bug fixes and improvements
okay maybe not that short ;)
add a 'scan again' button
prevent flashing of the texture popup; this was potentially a pretty serious accessibility concern for people with epilepsy so I've spent quite a while trying out different ways to make it work. The current system is not perfect but it works
put most crashes in the error log instead of discarding them
use the amount of mipmaps when calculating memory, which might be wrong because the game could potentially unload larger textures when zoomed out. If that's the case I'll have to change it again
reduce memory usage by a considerable amount
some small UI tweaks ect.
With that out of the way I want to introduce what I hope to make a persistent feature of my update posts: polls! I'm not too familiar yet with the sims 2 modding communities that exist here on tumblr and in general, and sometimes I want to ask what people find most important and thus what I should focus my effort on, so I'm going to add polls to most of my updates.
Anyways, here is the first poll!
Should I put these kinds of updates on a separate blog?
No, keep all updates on this blog no matter how small
Yes, but if there is a large new feature then still put it on this blog
Yes, put ALL updates on a separate blog even if they're big updates
Find any texture in The Sims 2 that is too big, or is 'awful' (suboptimal texture format)
Features:
Find textures in any folder you choose
Filter by width, height, memory size, texture format, or number of mipmap levels
Preview and show details of textures the tool found
Remember 'known good' textures, which are optionally excluded from being shown in the list
Look up the path of the package, and the group and instance of the resource
Copy texture/resource details (right click)
Open the package in the default package editor (double click)
Dark mode/light mode and UI scale adjustable
Native on both Windows and Linux
Why?
The Sims 2 has had a long-standing problem known as 'pink flashing' or 'pink soup' when using too much custom content. The Sims 2 is a 32-bit program, which means that it normally has a maximum memory limit of 2GiB (2048MiB) and by using a so-called '4GB patch' you can raise this limit to -you guessed it- 4GiB, this limit might seem pretty large, but due to how the game works you might hit this limit sooner than expected!
Let's say you have 1024x1024 textures (which is the default for Sims 4 textures, and thus also often for 4to2 cc) in RGBA format, these textures will EACH take up 4MiB of texture memory! This means you could possibly only have only a MAXIMUM of 1024 textures loaded in memory before the dreaded pink flashing occurs. In practice, this limit is lower due to other factors.
This tool will help you find textures that take up too much texture memory, and thus (hopefully) help alleviate some amount of pink flashing.
Tutorial
First, download the program from the link above and follow the instructions to open the program.
Now let's get the program looking the way you want: click on the sun/moon button on the top left of the program to switch light/dark mode and click the "UI Scale" number next to it and enter a new number to change the size of the interface.
Set the folder we want to search: at the top bar, search for the 'Downloads:' bar, then at the end click the button with the folder icon and select your folder. Once you've selected a folder the program will instantly start scanning, if you want to restart this scan then at any time you can click the text in the Downloads bar and press enter.
Currently this list will show all textures in the scan folder, which is probably not very interesting. To find some more interesting textures we can add some filters to the texture list. On the top bar, click on the 'Filter' button: this will open the filter list and it will be empty if you haven't added any filters previously.
These filters filter the texture list one by one, each filter removing more textures from the displayed list of textures. To add a filter, click the plus button, and to remove it click on the trashcan button at the start of the line.
To edit a filter, click on the first box to choose the filter type, click on the second box to choose the type of comparison, and select the number in the last box to set the number to compare with.
The comparison type can be < (smaller than), <= (smaller or equal), > (greater than), >= (greater or equal), == (equal), or != (not equal).
The Format filter is different: make a format filter, then click on the 'choose' button and choose the texture formats that you want to show in the texture list.
Let's edit some textures!
In the texture list, find a texture that you think is too big, and either double click on it to open it in the default package editor or right click on it to show a menu to copy the details of the package.
Finally, once you have the package opened in your favorite package manager, edit the texture to be smaller and/or a better texture format, save and ta-da! your game will now use less texture memory.
Heads up!! I've put the wrong download link in the post originally
I've edited the post but of course that won't show up in reblogs, so please check the original post again for the correct download link. (The program this post is about is called batl, NOT yape)
Also:
Let me be clear: I don't personally know of anyone that knows 100% for sure what the cause of pink flashing is, and that includes myself of course. To me it looks a lot like the symptoms of running out of address space, but of course I could be completely wrong.
So again: this will not be the magical cure-all for pink flashing like switching to Linux/Wine is but I hope that it might help either way, even if it (potentially) isn't with pink flashing.
Find any texture in The Sims 2 that is too big, or is 'awful' (suboptimal texture format)
Features:
Find textures in any folder you choose
Filter by width, height, memory size, texture format, or number of mipmap levels
Preview and show details of textures the tool found
Remember 'known good' textures, which are optionally excluded from being shown in the list
Look up the path of the package, and the group and instance of the resource
Copy texture/resource details (right click)
Open the package in the default package editor (double click)
Dark mode/light mode and UI scale adjustable
Native on both Windows and Linux
Why?
The Sims 2 has had a long-standing problem known as 'pink flashing' or 'pink soup' when using too much custom content. The Sims 2 is a 32-bit program, which means that it normally has a maximum memory limit of 2GiB (2048MiB) and by using a so-called '4GB patch' you can raise this limit to -you guessed it- 4GiB, this limit might seem pretty large, but due to how the game works you might hit this limit sooner than expected!
Let's say you have 1024x2048 textures (which is the default for Sims 4 textures, and thus also often for 4to2 cc) in RGBA format, these textures will EACH take up 8MiB of texture memory! This means you could possibly only have only a MAXIMUM of 512 textures loaded in memory before you run out of memory completely. In practice, this limit will probably be lower due to other factors.
This tool will help you find textures that take up too much texture memory, and thus (hopefully) help alleviate some amount of pink flashing.
Tutorial
First, download the program from the link above and follow the instructions to open the program.
Now let's get the program looking the way you want: click on the sun/moon button on the top left of the program to switch light/dark mode and click the "UI Scale" number next to it and enter a new number to change the size of the interface.
Set the folder we want to search: at the top bar, search for the 'Downloads:' bar, then at the end click the button with the folder icon and select your folder. Once you've selected a folder the program will instantly start scanning, if you want to restart this scan then at any time you can click the text in the Downloads bar and press enter.
Currently this list will show all textures in the scan folder, which is probably not very interesting. To find some more interesting textures we can add some filters to the texture list. On the top bar, click on the 'Filter' button: this will open the filter list and it will be empty if you haven't added any filters previously.
These filters filter the texture list one by one, each filter removing more textures from the displayed list of textures. To add a filter, click the plus button, and to remove it click on the trashcan button at the start of the line.
To edit a filter, click on the first box to choose the filter type, click on the second box to choose the type of comparison, and select the number in the last box to set the number to compare with.
The comparison type can be < (smaller than), <= (smaller or equal), > (greater than), >= (greater or equal), == (equal), or != (not equal).
The Format filter is different: make a format filter, then click on the 'choose' button and choose the texture formats that you want to show in the texture list.
Let's edit some textures!
In the texture list, find a texture that you think is too big, and either double click on it to open it in the default package editor or right click on it to show a menu to copy the details of the package.
Finally, once you have the package opened in your favorite package manager, edit the texture to be smaller and/or a better texture format, save and ta-da! your game will now use less texture memory.
