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101  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: How many square feet is a grid? on: 2007 November 06, 03:05:20
Uh, how many square feet in one square meter?
The tiles are one meter on a side.
102  TS2: Burnination / Peasantry / Re: Recolors of Marvine's Animated Spiral Staircase on: 2007 October 22, 03:28:08
The same animations are used on each version of the stairs. They are different from the regular stair animations in that the sims turn a bit as they step up or down. A new spiral stairs mesh that had the same footprint and stair height should be able to use these same animations. You will need to contact Marvine about cloning them, but recolors were already permissioned in her post.
103  The Bowels of Trogdor / The Small Intestines of Trogdor / Re: HOWTO: Creating non-replacement archetypes- UD 7/20/07 on: 2007 July 24, 21:14:13
I don't want to clutter up the thread, but Peter Jones (PJSE) has written a proof-of-concept SimPE plugin that you start with a single extracted ObjKey and it will hunt down all the other keys, textlists and other items needed for a new template item. This should work for either the XTOL (face templates) or XMOL (pet collar) templates and items.

If you are interested in something like this, please go to the current SimPE QA thread, review the last half-dozen or so messages, and post any feedback. Anyone that has played with these (Amber, Argon) knows how time consuming and error prone it is to make these manually.

<* Wes *>
104  The Bowels of Trogdor / The Small Intestines of Trogdor / Re: HOWTO: Creating non-replacement archetypes on: 2007 July 17, 00:58:10
Good work.
Thanks for the credit, though. At one timewe had to force the relocations (##0xnnn!) all the time.
A recent post by Numenor revisiting this subject indicates that the forced relocation on the pets collars was probably only necessary on the TXTR names.
I think the posting is worthy, although experience has shown me that it may take a while before most of the rest of the community discovers it.
Except, of course, cheesemongers.
<* Wes *>
105  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Body overlays - tattoos or anatomy bits on: 2007 July 15, 22:53:42
Edi: I just saw in your pet collar tutorial that it has a bunch of "needs research", I already know what all those lines mean except for maybe version (but oddly enough it affects young adult items).

You are welcome to use any of that material if you want, including updating the unknown fields (if they affect YA, then that is probably why they were unused in Pets).

I didn't notice you had completed a non-replacement archetype, because the thread title is different. Congratulations, we need some more discoveries like yours. C'mon, it's only been just under 3 years that the game has been out. I know that the 3 key technique goes all the way back to the base game.

<* Wes *>
106  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Body overlays - tattoos or anatomy bits on: 2007 July 15, 04:58:05
I made a coat color, but since I was lazy and only made one body size, it was unstable.
If you want to work on this, it is still a R&D technique.
However, as for the legs part, I would have to revisit my old work to be sure, but what I rememebr is that I made the texture image from a pet coat and just twiddled the color mix dials in Paint Shop Pro to get an orangey color. Had I drawn some specific stuff on just the legs or whatever, I expect that is what would have been mixed into the pet coat.
I posted my incomplete package at:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?p=1506002#post1506002
The item works, and as far as I know will break nothing, but because I only put one body size in the package, when you start changing the pet, the color gets defaulted to one of the other ones.
The 3 keys technique is documented in the Pet Collar tutorial on MTS2, and also in this message here at MATY: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,6753.0.html
It is not simple, it is like being back in "the good old days" when we had to manually link all the parts of an object together by hand.
You might want to review the whole thread, which was started by Echo. I think all that was lacking at the time was any great interest in modding pets.
<* Wes *>

107  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Body overlays - tattoos or anatomy bits on: 2007 July 15, 03:25:02
there are 3 sets of keys linking stuff together.

Morague and Paleoanth are about the only two people I know of that managed to understand the 3 keys method.
Besides linking overlays in, I am convinced, but have never proven (for lack of effort) that that is the way to add any set of objects (such as a set for all age groups or the 3 pet body sizes) to the game that doesn't fit the ordinary catalog analogy. This would include non-replacement face templates, new pet coat colors and all the rest of the stuff in CAS that does not have a direct method of adding custom content.

The tough part is all the manual linking you have to do with 3IDRs.

Anyway, Morague is to be congratulated for ingenuity and perseverance.
And for making shiny stuff.
108  The Bowels of Trogdor / The Small Intestines of Trogdor / Re: Interesting file from 1.0.0.971 patch on: 2007 June 07, 01:49:36
I have seen that text file somewhere else in the game files, but I cannot recall where. Perhaps some of the unexpurgated files in Life Stories. It appears to only have value as a part of Maxis' development system, and since we do not have any of that, it is not of much use.
109  The Bowels of Trogdor / The Small Intestines of Trogdor / Re: New DBPF library on: 2007 May 30, 23:26:52
I never modded Sims 1. But I just thought that all the strings that were pstrings were <128 bytes.
I have been looking at the ANIM files, and all the bone names in the file are cstrings, although you have a count already on hand of how many to look for.
I will pay more attention to this. Everything I have made so far, though, parses just specific RCOL files, not the packages.
<* Wes *>
110  The Bowels of Trogdor / The Small Intestines of Trogdor / Re: New DBPF library on: 2007 May 30, 19:15:47
I think I found you through a thread in ModTheSims2. How are people supposed to find you? Or aren't they? It isn't exactly obvious how to get here from the top page, unless paying the $40 actually works.

They better cut you some slack here. Mere mortals, as opposed to talented programmers such as yourself, would get laughed at for even considering paying the $40. Mr. Pescado is of a definite antipaysite and antiestablishment mindset. Once you know this, you can then appreciate the not-so-subtle lampooning of various sacred cows that goes on here.

As for the game string length, I never noticed any longer than 127 bytes, and all my code that deals with them would suffer similar problems. Is this the way they look before compression (i.e. 0x95 0x01)?

111  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Mod to fix the tuck-in on some meshes?? on: 2007 May 27, 02:07:33
Well, that package contains a single GMDC (mesh) file named:
amBodyPajamasDrawstring_tslocator_gmdc
setup as a replacement mesh (group 0x1c0532fa).
So I would presume it fixes all clothing items based on that mesh only.
112  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Combining Joint rotations on: 2007 May 23, 03:12:04
Than you for the reply. I will try your code.
That looks like multiplying two quaternions or axis/angle definitions because of the XYZW data.
I shall try a euler (XYZ) to quaternion and axis angle conversion first.
It appears I was wrong on the heirarchy, I need only reverse the immediate joint rotation. The heirarchy is in the CRES, and gets exported into MilkShape from SimPE. In MilkShape, each joint refers to it's parent by name, so walking from a joint back to the root is pretty straightforward.
In spite of my butchered attempts, as long as I have the data formatted correctly, it appears that impossible looking joint rotations are not a source of problems for the game. It merely presents strange looking animations, no crashes or odd artifacts.
On the other hand, leave one bit out of the header, and the whole game crashes.
I am persevering.
<* Wes *>
113  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Combining Joint rotations on: 2007 May 22, 04:37:28
Not being the math major sort of guy, I sometimes take a while to puzzle some of the problems involved in writing programs out.
My latest problem involves joint rotation values. That is, when you look in the CRES, some of the body (at least) joints come with a non-zero rotation value. Since the joints are linked in a heirarchy, the rotation value from one joint affects the ultimate rotation value of all joints lower down the chain.

These rotations are apllied to the joints by the game prior to any rotation values contained in an animation. Exporting an animation into the game without having the joint movements modified by these values results in things moving, but in the wrong places (the legs go up in the air and the arms come out the front and back).

My latest challenge is how to combine two (or more) Euler rotation values (Roll, Pitch, Yaw) into one. At a minimum I need to combine the joint static rotation with the animation timecode rotation. I am having some problem at the conceptual level on how to approach doing this. Even a pseudocode example may be enough to jumpstart my progress.

Oh, yes, the project I am trying to finish is an animation exporter plugin for MilkShape. Essentially, it is an attempt to allow you to take a mesh and make an animation or export an animation from SimPE (this works in MilkShape ASCII format, but IK animations aren't supported), modify it in MilkShape, and then have the appropriate ANIM file written to disk. I have this completed as far as handling the translations correctly, but the joint rotations are twisted, as described above.

While I will make the source available eventually, I don't hold out much hope that anyone else will actually do anything with it. I have learned enough in this process to do other things, but I am basically lazy, and if I can go from inside MilkShape to ANIM, for body or object meshes, then that is all I intend to produce. People that want support for other programs can learn to program the plugins themselves, I will be happy to show how.

<* Wes *>
114  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Need an algorithm to generate CRC32 hash on: 2007 May 22, 04:11:21
OK, I was unable to make the algorithm for CRC32 you posted work.

In case you, or anyone else, is in burning need of this routine, I am posting the code I found posted on the internet (as modified by me) that will calculate the CRC32 the same way that the game and SimPE calculate it. It ain't pretty, and I didn't worry about optimizing it because I use it once per bone for exporting animation data. The two lines commented out are for a bit reflection routine I didn't include, or need:

Code:
unsigned long crcbitbybitfast(unsigned char* p) {

// fast bit by bit algorithm without augmented zero bytes.
// does not use lookup table, suited for polynom orders between 1...32.

unsigned long i, j, c, bit;
unsigned long crc = 0xffffffff;
unsigned long crchighbit = 0x80000000;
unsigned long polynom = 0x04c11db7;
unsigned long crcxor = 0;
unsigned long crcmask = 0xFFFFFFFF;
unsigned long order = 32;
unsigned long len;

len=strlen(p);

for (i=0; i<len; i++) {
c = (unsigned long)*p++;
// if (refin) c = reflect(c, 8);
for (j=0x80; j; j>>=1) {
bit = crc & crchighbit;
crc<<= 1;
if (c & j) bit^= crchighbit;
if (bit) crc^= polynom;
}
}
// if (refout) crc=reflect(crc, order);
crc^= crcxor;
crc&= crcmask;
return(crc);
}
115  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Nvidia drivers under Vista not shiny on: 2007 April 30, 22:46:24
It is a program called "ATI Tray Tools". One of the many links provided by google is: http://www.guru3d.com/article/atitraytools/189/
The program has lots of cutesy extras, like on-screen frame rate that I figured out how to turn off, and many options I either didn't understand, from lack of RTFM, or find of no use, because I do not write video game engines and such.
116  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Nvidia drivers under Vista not shiny on: 2007 April 30, 18:18:01
I don't have an nvidia card, mine is an ATI.
But it suppports version 3.0 Shaders, and for some reason TS2 did not recognize that, leaving me with no bumpmaps.
There is a config option I found to make the card report version 2.0 shaders rather than 3.0, and that restored my bumpmaps. I didn't actually change anything in the game, just my video card parameters.
This is a vista-ready video card, so that might be why it has a higher shader version.
117  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Need an algorithm to generate CRC32 hash on: 2007 April 12, 02:22:15
But I USED search! Smiley

I was hoping YOU had done that before.
I have copied the routine and will work with it.
I appreciate the help.

<* Wes *>
118  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Need an algorithm to generate CRC32 hash on: 2007 April 11, 03:29:00
A long time ago, I had a copy of an algorithm to generate the CRC32 value used as the InstanceHi (or Subtype) field in the TGI. Of course, I lost it, since it was always so easy to go to SimPE and use the hash generator. Now, I have a project I am working on that needs to have this hard-coded in.

The only real meaty resource specfically related to Maxis' usage I located states it is generated using the parameters:

Resource ID: CRC-32 (Poly=0x04C11DB7, Seed=0xFFFFFFFF, reflection=false, XOR Output=0x00000000)

I found plenty of CRC32 examples using that poly value, being the algorithm used for WinZIP and others. However, they all had a reflection part in the routine that I did not see as being any kind of boolean operation.

So what I am asking for is a pointer to a working routine for this... any programming language is fine.

<* Wes *>
119  TS2: Burnination / The War Room / Re: Fix: Performance sucking on Dual Core and HT CPUs on: 2007 March 22, 02:38:39
I thank you appreciate am glad you took the time to alert us to this. I have an P4/HT computer, and while I never thought my performance was "sucky" (at least since I added RAM), I realized I don't have a good basis for comparison.

I believe I installed everything 100% to spec, and found no difference in performance. So perhaps that is why the update is not universally distributed by MS, as it must have some other factors that contribute. Since keeping up with WTF microsawft is doing is not something I regularly do, pointers like this are of value, to me at least.
120  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Do unused meshes take up memory? on: 2007 February 17, 20:30:47
From all that I have learned from my research (which is not awesome either), everything that is in your downloads folder (generally everywhere in the "The Sims 2" directory) is at least partially loaded in memory when starting up. I believe the memory usage is greatly lessened when there are no textures and catalog entries associated with that mesh.

It certainly requires additional time to read through all these mesh files at startup.
But I don't know of an automated way (or even an easy manual way) to located the unused ones. Perhaps you could make a lot and put all your keeper items on it and to then move these files out of the directory in small groups and see if you get flashing blue out of them.

If you want to even figure out which files are only meshes without a hint in the filename, you would have to look at them in SimPE and find the ones that have a GMDC in them with no TXTR.
121  The Bowels of Trogdor / The Small Intestines of Trogdor / Re: dz utils: core tools for packages on: 2007 February 16, 17:25:44
Well, I had thought about slapping the innards from those programs into a .DLL. While this doesn't directly help the non-MS people, it would allow something to be written in almost any language, including Visual Basic, by making function calls. You could then also make the command-line tools as not much more than a command-line parser and a function call.

But I am not doing that myself because I am doing other things that have sucked up all available non-RL time.
122  The Bowels of Trogdor / The Small Intestines of Trogdor / Re: dz utils: core tools for packages on: 2007 February 15, 08:42:35
SimPE didn't have compression for a long time after it came out. I don't remember exactly, but it was quite a while after we had custom meshes working. Any file parts you changed were saved uncompressed, and those you used but hadn't changed were copied to the output in their original compressed form.
<* Wes *>
123  TS2: Burnination / Oops! You Broke It! / Re: Okay, Anyone Doing the Sims/Vista Rhumba? on: 2007 February 13, 18:04:51
I have been seeing some posts in the MilkShape forums about compatibility with Vista.

No one there reported any OpenGL speed problems, but then MilkShape's not a game, except maybe when running animations.

But people have had trouble activating their key. It is believed that the issue is due to a file protection scheme like the one that protects the XP system files that appears to have been extended to program files in Vista.

If they can't patch an .exe, how would a pirate operate?

If this is true, MS has little hope of roping me into Vista even after they get it stabilized in SP2 or SP3. I don't want a Nanny.

<* Wes *>
124  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Life Stories Welcome Package? on: 2007 February 13, 14:17:25
Wes, go in and turn off that stupid dialog (and enable CC), just like you would in TS2 and then don't give it another thought.  Wink 

Actually, I thought I had it on. I think Jordi had the right answer, that is is just a stock dialog. I have seen the one that is in the game, staring with University, I think. Starting with Pets, it complains about my Moo Moo statue, which seems to work just fine in the game...

What had me puzzled was the item LS picked out as custom.

I actually hadn't played any of the stories yet, just the free play. Outside of the smaller textures and decreased mesh detail, LS seems to be the base game with some content makeovers from different EPs.

125  TS2: Burnination / The Podium / Re: Life Stories Welcome Package? on: 2007 February 13, 11:49:41
The reason there's not much widespread pillaging of LS-items may partially be attributable to the potential legal issues of enabling people who haven't bought the game to have access to its content

An odd thing happened here. I created a downloads folder and stuck some default replacement skins, a fence clone and something Crammyboy made called "textbox" which is a cube with some custom animations.

When I started LS up, it told me I had custom-content I had downloaded that I was allowed to use only with LS, and that I had custom-content disabled, and that if I changed that, it wouldn't appear until I ran the game again.

The testbox was not there, the fence and default skins were. After exiting and restarting the game, the textbox was there, and did work (it is base game compatible and was cloned from the flamingo).

I found the behavior puzzling. The fence clone has a catalog entry, of course the default skins do not. The only fundamental difference I see was that the testbox had it's own mesh in the package, while the other items use built-in meshes.

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