More Awesome Than You!

So... This is mostly still theory yet, but I'm pretty dang sure it'll work as advertised. I don't have time to test this myself tonight, otherwise I would. So if anyone wants to take this for a spin... :P

Upon opening the item in SimPE, open the Mesh Overlay XML or the Texture Overlay XML.

Accessories made pre Bon Voyage were set to the 0x05 Subtype (http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?title=2C1FD8A1#Subtype) so they'd show up in the Glasses section of Bodyshop/CAS. To make things show up in the new section of Bodyshop/CAS for accessories, simply change the Subtype to 0x08.

Now, as for the bins, you'll want to make sure that, if you're changing a custom accessory, it's bin number isn't set to an existing Maxis Bin Number (http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?title=2C1FD8A1#bin).

For example, if you have a custom purse set to 0x32 (which is Left Earring according to the new Maxis bins) you'll want to change that bin number to something else. However, if you have a necklace you can simply change the bin number from whatever it is to 0x34 and it will show up in the new necklaces area.

Creators got into a very bad habit of inventing their own freaking bin numbers which resulted in strange layering problems and collisions with Maxis numbers as they create new bin types with new Expansions. When changing your custom accessory, use one of the existing Maxis bin numbers ONLY if it's appropriate.

Now, in the event that you use a random bin number because of an accessory being something unique and not categorized with any of the new sections, it will, in theory, show up under Miscellaneous. I'll be interested in trying this myself when I get the chance, but if anyone's feeling adventurous, you can try it. :)

My current plan is to add this ability to the Wardrobe Wrangler so that it's nice and streamlined and then release a public beta of it, but the problem is that it still likely won't have preview pictures before I've got this new functionality incorporated. But with the filters, tooltips, etc, you should be able to find and bin things appropriately I'd think... What do you all think?

Anyhow, I hope someone else gets a chance to try this before I do, because it'll probably be late Wednesday or later before I can try any of this myself. Hopefully it'll be just as simple as changing these two numbers, but we'll figure out what else to do if it isn't! :P

EDIT: See instructions further down the page for the final information about how to do this!

You sexy bitch.

I mean, thanks, this is great. Braaaains.

Wow, thanks jfade.

I remember reading that the new accessories that come with BV have to be bought at one of those little accessory stands.  I really like that my old custom accessories don't have to be bought, and can be applied by clicking on the mirror just like glasses and hats.  It seems like it will be a pain to send a sim to a community lot just to buy a pair of earrings, you know?

So while I don't want my purses showing up as necklaces (boy, would that create some weird-looking glitches), I kinda like the option of leaving my accessories in the custom bin.  Will your Wardrobe Wrangler have an option to scan for the purse/necklace-type conflicts and reassign the offending accessory to a non-Maxis "safe", i.e., non-conflicting, bin?

I hope this makes sense.

You can add them in CAS, not sure about change appearance. The ones you buy can't be found in CAS as they are from holiday destinations. For example sea shell earrings from Twikkii Island.

I might even download some custom accessories just to try this.

-Skadi

Can we move this to War Room or the Peasantry?  I think informative threads like these should be moved so they don't die and/or get lost in the Podium. :)


Ste

Before this is moved, can I just make sure I understand this - if you have custom accessories as of now (ie glasses) will these become unusable after BV unless you do something about them?  Or will they continue to work as glasses with no problems?

Custom glasses (or any custom accessory really) need not be converted to the new Bon Voyage accessory section to continue working, it's just for sanities sake that they be moved if necessary. In reality, you could leave all the things exactly where they are and they'd continue to function. It just makes sense though to move most things to the new area. :) (Having accessories of any sort in the glasses section always drove me nuts.)

Well, it does me too, in a way, but it means you can have glasses as a turn-on without wearing glasses!  However, I don't use that many at present, so I shall just wait for you to finish work on your new program....

Will this finally fix the flashing blue issue, or will the original meshes for the old accessories need to be changed as well?  (I'm particularly interested about Dr. Pixel's alpha editable stuff, as I collected a ton of recolors of those meshes.)

BastDawn, lot debugger has options for fixing flashy blueness now. It's only a temp fix, but it's a fix.

Ok, I'm going to be an annoying idiot. I do not like the majority of the Maxis accessories and want to default replace them now (as in, this weekend) but I've no idea how to make default replacements from scratch, and of course SimPE is not updated for BV and won't be for quite some time. I can clone them in BodyShop, play with the textures, test to make sure they don't look like the flatcrap they are now. This is no issue. I don't know how to actually make the default replacement files to apply the textures to--I've always copied over others when I do them. Does anyone know of a good tutorial? Google is failing me. The tutorials on MTS2 are about skins and eyes. Should I just look through the packages under Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2\TS Data\Res\Sims3D\, or a different path, or does anyone know where it is already?

I'll totally kick myself if they are in Sims8.package

Why not just make a hack to hide them and then make some new ones?

Because this would be shinier and maybe others would want them  ;) Plus I already started doing the textures.

I have less of an idea how to make a hack to hide them. They're fine, they're just flat-looking, and not at all metallic.

I just wish EAxis would come up with an in-game way of hiding clothing, accessories etc., that you never use, it's just so annoying going through them all.  But if you could do it in CAS, just hide the stuff you don't want.....Great, especially for a themed neighbourhood where your Victorian sims are never ever going to wear ruffles round the calves and a thigh-high miniskirt!

The process for making any default replacement texture is the same.  Just poke around in the package files until you find it, extract it (the "txtr" file), make a new package from the extracted texture (txtr), and change the png image inside with your own thing.  Easy.   :)   I'd look in Sims07.package; I think that's where the accessories should be.

(And thanks for the debugger tip.)

It doesn't seem to work : I took a pair of earrings and made the changes(subtype set to 8, and I try different bins (32, doesn"t work, a custom one, doesn"t work).... The earrings do not appear in game.... I think there's something more to change, but I'm not awesome enough to go further....

Hrm...

I'll have some time to experiment tomorrow, I'll try and see if I can get something worked out. :)

Ooh. This looks interesting.

I'm definitely going to give this a few tries when I get the game. That'll be tomorrow evening at best, otherwise Wednesday afternoon.

I've spent too long looking into this and have reached a dead end, but I've learned some things that hopefully might help you waste less time in your own research.

I started working with the kids' snorkel/mask from Family Fun Stuff. I was hoping I could reap the benefit of the jewelry's nice per-outfit system so the snorkel could be set to only be worn with swimwear. Basically, changing the subtype and bin number (more on that later) seems to be only half of the solution. As it's an accessory for a child, binning it as a nose piercing would put it in the Misc. section of jewelry, which is normally unavailable to children because they didn't get any face piercings. When I went to CAS to test, I found that I could now click on the Misc. section for a child. There was nothing to click on within that section, but clearly the game recognized that there was some Misc. child jewelry somewhere and it just couldn't display it for whatever reason, and I'm thinking it has to do with the way that certain jewelry is only available under certain conditions.

Based on the lists in globalcatbin, it looks to me like there are basically 5 "types" of jewelry: Non-Vacation (i.e. available in CAS and buyable in normal 'hoods), Far East, Mountain, and Tropical. It looks like changing a pre-BV accessory to jewelry defaults it to type 5, None, meaning the piece exists, and is recognized as existing, but isn't actually obtainable. (Note: there may actually be a 6th type, Collectible, that can be gotten from combing for shells, but I didn't look into it enough to see if it contained any unique jewelry, or if it's just more of a subtype) If I'm right about that, then there must be some way to flag an accessory as a particular type, but for the life of me I cannot find it. The XML for a Far East earring is basically the same as a Non-Vacation earring, aside from the stuff that pertains to the materials. Same flags, same subtypes, same bins, same category, and so on. The only other explanation I can think of is that there's something else ruling over all the jewelry and telling it where to be, and I don't like that idea because it would probably make making new jewelry annoying and difficult.

Regarding bin numbers:
It looks like jewelry is a bit pickier about bin numbers than glasses are. When I tried to give the snorkel a bin number different from any of the pre-determined jewelry bin numbers, I no longer had the ability to click on the child's Misc. category, so my guess is that numbers outside the range don't default to Misc., but I don't know if they go somewhere else instead. I tried to test this further by rebinning one of the Maxis noserings, but the behavior was a bit odd. Setting it to a random number made it disappear completely, but so did setting it as an earring, ring, or necklace. Setting it as a lipring, however, had the predictable behavior of making it stackable with other noserings (Incidentally, I just double-checked, and while I was at it binned the snorkel as a ring, which is also unavailable to children. It had the same effect of making the ring category accessible, albeit empty). The point is, I couldn't figure out where out-of-range binned items go because customs don't show up at all, and the Maxis ones apparently don't like to switch categories.

So that's that. I hit a wall. It took forever to keep testing these little things, having to wait for the game to load, then the neighborhood, then CAS. Hopefully that'll give you some idea of what to look for so you don't have to test all those things.

Fake edit: I forgot to mention that I also took a sim to all 3 destinations to make sure the snorkel wasn't defaulting to one of those types. If "Collectible" is its own type, it's possible the jewelry defaulted there, but I'd rather slam my head in a door than try to test that by hand.

Captain Swooptie, can you tell me which .package file you found the noserings in? I've located all the necklaces, bracelets, and fancy earrings in Sims07.package, but can't seem to find the noserings, face piercings, and simple stud earrings.

Got another half answer for you  :-\

I took a look at the Material Definitions in Sims02, and it appears that all the solid-color jewelry pulls from some other pool of textures. They're named things like reflectionsilver_envcube or reflectionkitchengold_envcube, and some of the rings have colors like "jade" and "blue." I took a look through all of the packages that I know to contain txtr files and didn't see anything. I'm not sure if these things are procedural textures or what. Someone else might see the texture name and recognize it immediately, but this is out of my arena here. The reference section of the Material Definition does have the little "<filename> xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx" section, so someone who knows what any of it means can probably track it down. I feel like I read about all of this stuff a year ago and what it all means, but I just can't remember.

This jewelry has absolutely stumped me  ???

I noticed something else today, there was a "parts" and "outfit" section in the jewelery, both set to 0x00000020... I'm trying out some conversions now, will be back with results/observations.

EDIT: STILL FAIL.

There's also a priority number. I added that. I even tried changing the version and product to match and it didn't help either. Also changed the creator. I'm really confused at this point. I wonder if the game is hard coded to only accept things in the Maxis core game folders, or only accept Maxis items, pure and simple... If anyone else wants to try that moving the things into the core game folders, they can feel free, but at this point I've booted up the game enough times tonight. :P Although where you would place them precisely in the folders I can't remember, I seem to recall it being something like TSData/Res/Catalogs/ or something like that for making things show up as Maxis items rather than having the custom content star, but of course, now I can't find that information either, LOL.

I bet there's something really simple that's behind this we're just not seeing. :P

SO TRUE!

Tutorial: Converting Pre-BV Accessories to Jewelry

Part 1: Mesh Overlay XML (XMOL)

Change subtype to 0x00000008
Change category to 0x0000137F
Change bin to one of the following:

0x00000032: Left Earring
0x00000033: Right Earring
0x00000034: Necklace
0x00000035: Left Bracelet
0x00000036: Right Bracelet
0x00000037: Nose Ring
0x00000038: Lip Ring
0x00000039: Eyebrow Ring
0x0000003A: Left Index Finger Ring
0x0000003B: Right Index Finger Ring
0x0000003C: Alternate Right Index Finger Ring
0x0000003D: Left Pinky Ring
0x0000003E: Right Pinky Ring
0x0000003F: Left Thumb Ring
0x00000040: Right Thumb Ring

Add parts (dtUInteger) = 0x00000020
Add outfit (dtUInteger) = 0x00000020

Part 2: 3D ID Referencing File (3IDR)

Find all the 3DIRs with these entries:

UI Data, Text Lists, Collection, and Mesh Overlay XML

Edit the collection field, changing Group to 0x4F184AA9
Change Instance to one of the following:

0xD327EED9: Non-Vacation
0xD327EED8: Tropical
0xD327EED7: Far East
0xD327EED6: Mountain
0xB343967F: Collectible

Part 3: Notes

Non-Vacation jewelry shows up in CAS and is buyable at any jewelry stand, be it in a normal hood or of the vacation destinations, whereas Tropical, Far East, and Mountain are only obtainable in their respective areas. Some jewelry appears to be Collectible-only, but I don't know if NV jewelry can be dug up as well.

I've noticed some odd behavior with custom jewelry. Custom pieces appear to be stackable with some Maxis pieces, despite occupying the same bin. For example, I binned a pair of glasses as a necklace, and both the glasses and the Maxis necklaces could be worn at once. I did the same thing for a number of different bins, and the results seemed to vary.

Another odd behavior is that the custom things seem to get "stuck" under certain circumstances. For example, leaving the "outfit" button defaulted to "all," then equipping a nosering-binned pair of glasses, then clicking the button to "choose by outfit" made it so that the glasses would automatically re-appear under everyday, even if I took them off. I couldn't find a single way to get rid of them that worked everytime. Best bet is to click "choose by outfit" first, and then start adding jewelry.

RE: adding the "parts" and "outfit" fields - Adding these is what makes the jewelry buyable, for a reason I don't understand. If you leave these out, it will only show up in CAS (if NV-flagged). Adding one or the other actually seems to work OK, but to be on the safe side, I'd add both, if only for the sake of sticking to Maxian standards.

Edit: Holy bold tags, Batman!

Geeze... that's all we were missing? Good grief.

As far as the stackableness of it, I wonder if the priority tag that the BV accessories have has any affect on that?

Now to update the wrangler. Yay. Thanks for figuring this out, I never even would've looked in that 3IDR anymore and never noticed, heh.

ETA: I've followed the process you said and still no worky. Could you post an example file that you converted so I can see what I'm missing with mine? Thanks! :)

I have just done it on a necklace and it works perfectly, following Captain Swooptie's instructions. I'm going to try on more of my accessories. How does it handle the right left thing with earrings that are bilateral, as far as I can tell ??
Nevermind I will try and see what happens...

Theoretically, it should display it as a pair, while only taking up 1 ear slot. Now, though, I'm not sure how anything is going to work. I took out my test conversions, but I'm still getting the sticking/stacking issues with the Maxis jewelry. I think my brain turned off more than a few times trying to figure that stuff out, so I wouldn't be surprised if I damaged some game file in my haze. Anyone else having those problems with jewelry? I'd love to not reinstall BV right now.

I have tested some earrings and they do display as the pair, taking only one ear slot (for the moment I put everything custom on the left ear), therefore being stackable with a right ear slot earring.
I have some sticking problem with maxis jewelery before messing with custom accessories. The first time I trashed completly the sim I was making in CAS, thinking something bad happened (I managed to put 2 watches on him, on the same arm). But further playing in CAS (with maxis jewelery, not custom ones) seems to indicate it is a problem of CAS display not refreshing correctly (doing something else like changing the sim's clothes, then going back to the jewelery tab seems to fix it).

Hmm... Well, clearly I have failed myself. You must not. :P I'll have to download some more accessories tomorrow and then play around with them. Of course, if I just streamline it in the WW, that'll make things much easier anyhow.

Shoot, I'm so sorry, jfade, I completely missed your edit. Here's a really quick-and-dirty conversion of the horn-rimmed glasses that I spit out of BodyShop.

pioupiou, thanks for the info. I had managed to get nearly every piece of jewelry on a sim and had to trash her before I went crazy. Good to know it's the game's fault.

*Headdesk*

Thanks, I found out the original problem I was having... Some old, borked versions of the files from earlier experiments were still sitting in another folder and loading before the fixed versions. Doh. Works now. :)

This is an excellent tutorial, except for one thing; I can't get the damn thing to work for me.  :'(  Things seem to be going great until I get to step two. When I try to change the Group and the Instance values, SimPe throws an error. As soon as I delete the orginal number to edit it, a popup says it can't set value.

First, I'm not an expert at playing around in Simpe, though I have binned hundreds of hair files, changed clothing categories, etc. So maybe I'm failing just because I suck...lol.  I do know I've given myself a headache trying to figure out what the hell I could be doing wrong. Any ideas?

SimPE is annoying with throwing that error, yes. From what you said, it looks like you're highlighting the whole number and then hitting backspace, throwing the error. Just click "ok" in the error text box (or whatever the button says) and continue typing. It's more of a warning than an error, to ensure you don't put in an unsupported value. To avoid the warning completely, you can just highlight the entry and start typing (or paste the new number in), but if you're more comfortable with the first way and don't mind the warning, you can just hit "ok" and go about your business.

Hey thanks for the reply, Captain Swooptie. Well actually I have been just ignoring the error and continuing, but when it's all done and I go to into the game to see if it worked, the item (it's a necklace) does not show up in cas. I made sure to follow each direction step by step at least five times. I guess I do suck and am doing something wrong. *sigh*

I'm going to roll my sleeves up and go back in, trying it the way you suggested. Hopefully I'll get it right if I don't give up.  ;)

Darn it, I was hoping it was something simple!

If you keep having trouble, go ahead and upload the file you've been working on and I'll take a look at it to see if I see anything.

Problem solved!  ;D Actually it was something rather simple (and stupid). For some reason, a couple of the numbers were not staying changed. I went back in, changed them again and... it works!  I was really tired last night when I was working on it, so it was most likely something dumb I was doing. The tutorial is AWESOME.

*presses thanks button repeatedly*

All you awesome ppl! If you did some rebinning successfully, could a non-awesome peasant be lucky to use it too? *Begs shamelessly for downloadable rebinned custom jewellery. :D

Joining Shameless begging!

Maxis taste in jewelry is on par with their taste in everything else.   ::) 

Thanks so much for the tutorial. I've re-binned some of my stuff, but I still have a long way to go. If only it wasn't so time-consuming to go through and edit all of those numbers.

Perhaps a plugin is in order....? Maybe....? ;)

I'll tell you what... I've done so much damned re-binning now that I have the numbers memorized!  :D  It is definately easier for me now than it started out being. It is most definately worth every grueling minute though.

I'm working on re-binning most of aikea-guinea's stuff and I'll upload them if people want them.
I don't know how long it will take to do them all though, I'm kind of swamped in college at the moment.

The Wardrobe Wrangler is actually really close to being ready for public consumption, so if you give me a bit more time I should have that for you to use. :)

If there's an easier method in the works then I'll be glad to wait. Thanks for letting me know before I spent hours re-binning crap  ;)

*Waits patiently for the Wrangler, drooling :P (and worships jfade)

WAIT NO MORE!

http://forum.djssims.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=303 - Download, test, and enjoy!

:)

Score!  :D *downloads*

Oooh.. it looks so pretty. I am at work so I cant start my big, long overdue, wardrobe cleanout at this minute, which I sooo want to.. I'd better cancel all other social stuff this week, hehe.. maybe call in sick? :P
TY!!!

jfade, will be paying a visit to your place later, haven't been for a while - sheer laziness - but am so looking forward the the Wardobe Wrangler. Choice one dude!

Beta 2 is up, fixed all those freaking nasty errors with previews. Stupid thing worked fine in my environment and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why it was erroring till I moved it to a completely different situation and it started erroring. Still have no idea WHY, but it's fixed now. :)

I really like this tutorial, I hardly ever work with SimPe, but even I understand it! I do have a question though, is it possible to enable miscellaneous (for example) for toddlers so that you can decide when they have to wear a pacifier/soother/binkie?

Never tested it with toddlerz, but it won't hurt anything if you try. Just categorize the pacifier as a nosering or something and it should show up under misc.

I've binned them as lip rings.  They work fine.
The category will be automatically enabled when there is something in it.

Thank you both for the reply, I will try it out!

EDIT:
This is probably considered a stupid question, but I'm still gonna ask: I have a few EarNeckset, which include earrings and a necklace. I want to bin them correctly; the earrings in the earringsection and the necklace in the necklacesection, but how do I know which is which? Yes, I am blond and have never worked with SimPe before, because I always have trouble finding good tuts (unlike this one ;D)

Are we talking about earrings and necklaces together in one mesh, such as Dr. Pixel's mesh?  You can't separate those into different bins, you'll just have to pick one.

Okay, thank you.
It seems like it worked, my first succes while working with SimPe! ;D I think I forgot to put the meshes in the folder, because I only had blank ears/necks. But now that I know it works, I'm gonna convert my dozens of jewelry! Oh, and is there a way of enabling the jewelry for tods while using the mirror? In CAS I put a(n invisible, because I forgot the mesh :-[) pacifier on the todds, but when I wanted to check if the accessories would show using the mirror, the jewelry-thingy wasn't enabled for the toddler. That means I can only put pacifiers on the toddlers I make in CAS and not on the already 'living' todds, when I would buy new jewelry. Or is there a way (anyone knows of) to enable it after all? ;)

Have you bought the pacifiers?

No, I haven't, but the todd was already wearing one (the invisible/meshless one :-[) and I still couldn't click on the jewelry-thingy using the mirror->change appearence...

You have to buy converted jewelry again from jewelry rack, even if Sims already have been wearing them.

Edited for typo.

Aah, okay... thank you :D

EDIT:

Is it allright if I translate and simplify (with pictures ;)) this tutorial in Dutch and post it with a link to this page and give you guys credit?

Can't speak for anyone else, but I certainly don't mind.

Hell, just go ahead and do it. It's not like anyone can stop you anyway.

If you wanted, I can send you the original manual in a word document and you can translate from there. There's an Italian translation I meant to upload with the previous release but forgot about, so if you want to translate it I can give you the file and then can host it if you don't mind. :)

Couldn't you just use jfade's Wardrobe Wrangler at DJS Sims (http://forum.djssims.com/index.php)? It has a tab for binning accessories.