#ts2 modding

[fireflowersims]

Because my PC is currently out of commission thanks to filesystem and probably hard drive issues and to keep myself sane, I should probably just write out some random things about Sims 2 modding, eh?

If you're wondering about how to do anything Sims 2 modding, the answer will probably be found in an old MTS thread from 2008

If it can't be found on MTS, find a modder to ask. We're around and know stuff

Take naps, get some food. Modding is brain work, let it recover.

Most zoomed in thumbnails in deco are from people cloning the fruit bowl and it's easy to fix. Just go into the CRES, go to ThumbnailExtension and delete that entry you see in there. Commit, fix integrity, save and recompressorize

When modifying the footprint, you can also go up instead of just on the x and y axis.

You can make columns higher than 3 stories. I did it twice, then somehow forgot how. Anyways, just clone the ones from my Prince of Persia conversions if you want 4 or 5 story columns. They work as intended and all.

Just clone your NH deco from custom. Everybody does it bc NH deco is unfindable via Object Workshop

Don't give your NH deco a long name when cloning because it gets added in front of the name of the one you cloned it from. It can get out of control very fast.

NH deco doesn't usually need its GUID changed when you clone it

You can fiddle around with where your NH deco can and cannot be placed and how it behaves on/in water

The real description of NH deco is in the text lists

You can texture reference basically anything with a TXMT including objects and NH deco. You can even combine it with repository for Ultimate Space Savings

If your object texture is white and covered in text, your texture name in your TXMT is misspelled or your TXTR has gone missing.

The Sims 2 sometimes handles 3D coordinates reversed. (-1 is 1, 2 is -2). It's relevant for slots, bones and TXMT's

Pixelhate's wonderful TXMT pdf's are wrong about one thing and that is texture animations. It's all about the UV maps

Some BHAVs primitives are 0-indexed, some aren't. 0 is either treated as the first number or non-existent oopsie error

Just screenshot your BHAV and annotate every node if you're not sure how it works

You can label your locals and params. There's a button in the BHAV editor to make labels. Use it to keep track of things

Don't check "university ready" when fixing integrity. It breaks custom animations for one.

Some of these deserve more explanation, but that requires energy and a file system that isn't malfunctioning. Enjoy!

EDIT: Bonus tip: don't be me. Make a regular backup. Once a month or smth. File systems can get messed up which will make things disappear including my Homecrafter

[heathensimmer]

Sims 2 Modding - Custom Socials

This is a custom social mod and a template for custom social interactions. It adds the interaction "Ask about Work" under the Ask menu. The mod is a simple interaction that provides two results and two dialogs based on the Sim you are asking's Job performance.

In order to make custom social interactions that don't conflict with major mods, we use what is called a "Social Plug-in". It consists of a controller file and an interaction file, two invisible objects that get spawned on your Sim's lot and commands the Sims to do the interaction.

This will be a brief tutorial that assumes you already know a good bit about SimPe and BHAV editing. I will post a PDF of a more in-depth tutorial.

First, give your interaction and the controller new GUIDs using the Hash Generator under Tools.

Controller

CT - Object Menu acts as the Guardian for the interaction. It determines whether or not it is appropriate for the pie menu interaction to show up

CT- Object Menu Command is what spawns the interaction object and actually pushes the Social interaction. The interaction object's GUID must be plugged in to Node 5.

Action Strings is where you plug in the actual text for what you see in-game. Notice the three dots and the slash mark. This is how actions can be placed into Submenus such as "Ask" or "Talk". In order to put an interaction into the Ask submenu, you just write "Ask.../(your interaction)".

Interaction

Interaction - Person A codes for what the initiating Sim does. Animations, facial expressions, etc. Animations can be plugged into the Animate Sim primitive using text found in game files. They are found by the Animate Sim primitive in a text list. Here is a tutorial about how to find in-game animations: Mod The Sims - Tutorial: Making Your First Custom BHAV . If your anim name starts with "soc" then you must use the Anims-Social text list, 0x0083. If your anim name starts with "a", you must use Anims- Adult text list 0x0081. In my template, you can ignore "Anims-Social" unless your anims start with “soc”.

Interaction - Person B codes for what the receiving Sim does, and here, you can add dialogs if necessary. When using a dialog, you may want to play around with the Stack Object ID but if you get any errors, it's likely because the Stack Object ID gets lost. In order to make sure the Stack Object ID is set to the invisible social object, use "Stack Object ID := My Current Interaction Object ID." You can see how this works in the template.

Set Result is the trickiest but it's very important. It actually codes for whether or not the Sim rejects or accepts the social. I suggest looking at other "Set Result" BHAVS in objects.package to see what is going on, because mine is very simple. It simply checks the Sim's job performance. Other Set Result BHAVs check for mood and relationship levels. Pay special attention to how the invisible object has attributes. For example, Person A is an attribute of the social object and it stands for the Sim initiating. Person B stands for the Sim receiving. Once again, when playing around with the Stack Object (you can see where I did this when I check job performance), it can lose the invisible object so once again, I used Stack Object ID := My Current Interaction Object ID.

Social and Relationship Change codes for the numerical amount that is added or subtracted from the two Sim's relationship, and Social drain/gain if any. It uses Locals to shift around numbers for use in the final BHAV which adjusts the Sim's relationship accordingly using the values that are set in the Locals.

TTAB Just make sure Interaction A is Line 0 and Interaction B is Line 1, and set up the TTAS accordingly

Dialogs (if you want to use them)

BCONS are there for use in Social and Relationship Change and Set Result if you need them. Do not mess with “Interaction Results”! (unless you want to add more than two results)

DOWNLOAD THE TEMPLATE HERE

Sim File Share - Filehosting for Simmers

[equinoxts2]

I picked up a nasty cold yesterday and I haven't been able to sleep at all. It is now five minutes away from 6am in my timezone and I am exhausted. On the other hand, I have (hopefully) made a bit of progress optimising my downloads folder - has anyone else ever tried texture referencing recolours of road overlays to the actual lot skirt roads? I haven't tested it in game yet, but if it works, I've saved a whole pile of duplicate textures. :)

[asimplevampire]

Is there a reason why everyone makes their custom eyemasks/nosemasks/wrinkles/skin details as either blushes or full-face makeup?

As a medieval simmer, I'm getting kinda crabby with having to scroll through 70000 things in the 'blush' menu to get to the skin detail I want, and would love to spread them out some.

[davinaojeda]

Quick GUID Checker for Sims 2

This is an expansion on @picknmixsims Microsoft Excel sheet available here. It is a table I made that is incredibly lazy but effective and quick at searching for searching for Maxis GUID conflicts when you create new GUIDs. It's a little easier to use since the GUID Database has been down for a long time and you can add your own GUIDs onto the list and update the formula if you're savvy enough in Excel.

DOWNLOAD SFS

DOWNLOAD MEGA

[omsimblractually]

TS2/SimPE Modding Help/Need Advice

So y’all I need help.

I want to do something ambitious and make a mod that effectively- when a baby is born in a active household (playable sims), you get the option to name your sim’s baby like normal OR you can choose to randomize the baby’s name via the NPC name list.

Id call it “RandomNameOnBirth” mod

I don’t know what resources in SimPE I need to make a mod like this happen.

I think a random name mod would be so cool but I feel like I’m stuck after doing so much research on where to begin. Does any modders have any advice? (I should mention I’m new to modding and I think doing this will be very rewarding for me if I could figure it out)

Am I looking for BHAVs, primitives, BCONs? Object.package? My head is spinning.

[sunmoon-starfactory]

Hello! Thank you for all your hard work. I was wondering if there are any resources for learning about how to make custom crafting stations in general, and I was also wondering how difficult it is in terms of modding abilities. Have my own sci fi setup that I wanna build crafting stations for, and I wan a know where to start learning. Thanks!

Hey there, long answer here, so I've divided it up into sub-sections. See below the cut

How to make crafting stations, a long explanation

Learning the basics

There are no tutorials for making crafting stations specifically. Honestly, the difficulty depends on your experience making custom objects, modding BHAV's, testing and the complexity of what you want to make.

The first thing you will want to start with is learning basic object creation, there are plenty of tutorials on every aspect of this. Remember: object creation is not just about SimPE! It also involves meshing and creating textures.

Then once you have a handle on that, you will want to learn BHAV modding. Resources for this type of modding are rarer, documentation can be spotty, but good places to start are Echo's BHAV tutorial @midgethetree's Resources page and @picknmixsims' Primitives page on his site.

Another good way to learn BHAV modding is to look at other people's code. See if others have made code that might be useful to you. Look at how they did it and try to understand why it was made this way. Screenshot a BHAV, label every node with what it does.

Seeing as you're interested in crafting stations in particular, you can take a look at custom crafting stations. A few you could look at are Nadira's Sculpture Manufactory at MTS or anything "descended" from Beck's crafting stations like @deedee-sims' Woodworking station, @nixedsims' Blacksmith Crafting station or @fireflowersims' Candle Crafting station. You could also look at our code for insights, though we do not support straight-up cloning.

The process

But, before you can get to actually making a station, it's important to get a good idea of what you intend to make. The planning stage is as important as the development. What will the station make? Will it require resources a la Sun&Moon? Money a la EAxis OFB stations? Or perhaps the only investment is time and motives? Each of these options are different in coding. And if it needs resources, you'll have to create those resources too. Can the action be interrupted? That'll add some complexity. Autonomy and/or trait options are other things to consider. We like to have the basics planned out before we begin coding in earnest. This gives us a good idea of whether we can do this with our current arsenal or if we need to develop some more parts.

What I've found useful in this stage is reducing the station down to its basic steps: sim goes to the station, does animation, x things get removed from their inventory, then y other thing gets added. This is a very basic example, most stations are more complex than that, but it can help you get a general idea of how to structure your code.

It's also good to remember that crafting stations are not just code... We put a significant amount of time into the visuals. Sourcing meshes and textures or creating them from scratch, mapping said meshes to look good with the textures, optimizing them so they perform well without sacrificing quality. It's an entire development process that takes time.

Testing is another important aspect. We test when developing new code, we test before we duplicate code, we test after we duplicated code. We have some amazing beta testers that help out a lot with this, but even then, things will probably slip past that'll require fixing later on. I cannot understate how important testing is.

Community aspects

When learning how to do any modding, especially BHAV modding, It's a good idea to find a Discord server with experienced modders to join up. @gayars' Sims Crafters is an excellent place for this, as is the PBK Discord. I have also heard good things about @lazyduchess' server.

The important thing is that you have a place where you can ask people for help; both with testing your stuff and figuring out how to resolve that stubborn bug. There is no shame in it, we've all been there. Do not expect people to fix all your issues for you - you'll still have to do the majority of the heavy lifting yourself - but they may just point you in the right direction. Just stay polite and be willing to learn.

So well, Crafting Stations involve quite a bit, but I highly encourage you to dive in and see what you can achieve. Remember: it's not a race, it's a journey. Enjoy the process, errors are your friends. Don't be discouraged if it takes months, so do some of our projects. Laundry took 1.5 years.

The best of luck!

[fwaysims]

Strange Quirk with The Automated Music Chooser

So it appears that whenever I set the Neighbor ID (either through stack object’s or my) using either Set to Next and Easy Inventory Check or defining it some way so that it’s defined the game throws out  an “Illegal owner field in data reference.” error for My Person Data or (and I’m paraphrasing) “Object referred to must be a person” for Stack Object’s Person Data when a lot loads. What happens after this is the Sim continues to dance, and the music stops working. However, the Sim can choose their “Favorite” music after the lot loads. The issue is that error/music stoppage when the lot loads. Would anyone be privy to tell me how I can get that error to stop showing up? Attached is a screenshot of the new code for “Stereo - Music Start/Stop.” The GUIDs are the new “Music Favorites” 

Error Log Here: SFS