SimPE 0.64 installer released 24th Dec 2007

[J. M. Pescado]

Not a clue, but I have a log of someone by that name dating back to Nov, where they clearly reveal themselves as a filthy paysite dog. I can attach this if you wish to see, but clearly, Quaxi has failed us. You must not!

[jolrei]

She appears to be credited with co-creating a bunch of stuff available at TSR and has participated in forums at MTS2.

Her profile at SimPE (amberton.de) is quite boring - she looks like a non-entity there (member since April, only 13 posts, not bugfixer).  I suppose if the forums have been down, the profile might be a bit out of date.

[Inge]

So how did she get to be admin, and why doesn't Quaxi let people know who the staff are and we could have let her know days earlier that there was a problem at the site!  I mean it's all very well everyone saying how Quaxi would have said this and would have told us that, but the reality is he's really not very communicative at all.

Pete's got several days off work over the xmas period, so if there are any requests for stuff that needs fixing in the SimPE core (I have already requested better refreshing of the resource list) now is the time to start thinking about it.

[phyllis_p]

Do the admins have special special designations there?  I know at a small forum I run with some friends, people who have admin powers are automatically labeled as "administrator."  Stormwench's member status is "Regular."

It's just a thought.

[Inge]

Well apparently they don't, or Stormwench would be wearing her admin label.

[neriana]

Second-guessing what's going on behind the scenes gets no one anywhere. What we know is that Quaxi is not working on SimPE at the moment, that you and Peter seem to be the natural ones to take over, and that if you're willing to do it we'll all be very grateful.

I didn't know Quaxi was so loathe to communicate. That's seriously messed up for the maker of the most important tool in a large modding community. It's all very well to say, "it's free, shut up," but that doesn't negate personal responsibility, community spirit and common decency .

[phyllis_p]

Well apparently they don't, or Stormwench would be wearing her admin label.

Oh, sorry.  I didn't see where she was doing that.  I thought it was something she had just communicated to you, and you know, people can say anything.  Apologies.

[J. M. Pescado]

So how did she get to be admin, and why doesn't Quaxi let people know who the staff are and we could have let her know days earlier that there was a problem at the site!

Clearly, Quaxi has failed us. You must not!

[Inge]

I recommend that for Sims 3 (if it's possible to mod it at all) we go for the model of several smaller simpler tools for specific jobs.  It's more likely that way that people will write overlapping "rivals" so we won't be so vulnerable to the eggs in one basket syndrome.

Phyllis, she PMd me that she can ensure the site including the GUID database is maintained.   That either means she can do it personally (which gives her pretty much rights on the server - ie equal status with Quaxi (which is one reason I thought she might be a sockpuppet) or she has a great deal more influence over him than she is letting on.  And if he *is* logging on long enough to fix the forums then I think it would not have cost him a great deal more inconvenience to post while he's at it.   So that leaves us either with a rather less friendly Quaxi than we thought we had, or a Stormwench who has privileges well beyond her 13 posts.  The community is definitely more of a challenge than the game...

Every time I try to post this blasted post, someone has just posted another one and it stops me!!  Yes yes yes Pescado I heard you :rolleyes:

[J. M. Pescado]

I recommend that for Sims 3 (if it's possible to mod it at all) we go for the model of several smaller simpler tools for specific jobs.

It's more likely that way that people will write overlapping "rivals" so we won't be so vulnerable to the eggs in one basket syndrome.

Clearly, Quaxi has failed us! You must not!

[dizzy]

I recommend that for Sims 3 (if it's possible to mod it at all) we go for the model of several smaller simpler tools for specific jobs.  It's more likely that way that people will write overlapping "rivals" so we won't be so vulnerable to the eggs in one basket syndrome.

Let's not have another GUID database next time, either. That was frankly a REALLY stupid idea. Whatever we do, it needs to be a lot more scalable.

[J. M. Pescado]

I don't see anything inherently WRONG with the GUID database, but the alternatives would either inefficient allocate GUIDspace or simply not have a GUID database at all. However, there *ARE* about 4 billion available GUIDs in GUIDspace, so the odds of collision would be rather low even if GUIDs were randomly allocated. However, it is clear from what is going on at SimPE that the GUID database has been hijacked by paysite interests and can therefore no longer be relied upon. Clearly, Quaxi has failed us. You must not! SimPE is dead. Long live IngePE!

[dizzy]

The mere fact that it *can* be hijacked (or someone could spill beer on the server) proves that it's inherently wrong. That gives a single choke point of failure, which is always a VBT. He who can destroy a thing controls a thing, etc.

Inefficient allocations are the fault of EA for not providing enough bits, and this once again goes back to the limitations of their shitty Simantics (which only provides 32 bits for a GUID). If their programmers working on TS3 have an ounce of common sense, they will more likely be using 128 or 256 bit GUIDs.

[J. M. Pescado]

Actually, Simantics is not what limits GUIDs. Simantics is a 16-bit language, so they're already using two words for GUIDs. There is no reason why they could not use 4 or 8. In fact, there is no reason why they should *NEED* to use 4 or 8. There are *4 BILLION* possible GUIDs. Any reasonable person would believe this to be enough. Increasing the number of GUIDs would merely create a bigger sink for the inefficiency of wasteful allocations. The fact of the matter is, even with randomly allocated GUIDs chosen out of the asses of someone creating an object, you would need about 60K objects in your game before a collision would likely occur. At 60000 objects in your game, each consuming an average of 640K of space per GUID, you would need 3.75 GBs of RAM to load all of the objects, which exceeds the legal maximum RAM usage for a single program under XP32. Therefore, your game would fail to load anyway, rendering the collision issue moot.

[dizzy]

There is really no efficiency issue with the size of GUIDs. You can make them 128000 bits if you wanted without any performance penalty (with proper tables and separate hashing).

Given that The Sims sells in the millions and each customer is a potential creator, it's obvious that you need at least a 64-bit GUID. However, the smaller the GUID, the greater the likelihood of GUID collisions.

The real problem isn't how many GUIDs could be used on one computer, but how many unique GUIDs the entire world could use. Any collision anywhere (among published objects) would still conflict if you use those two or more colliding objects with the same GUID.

[J. M. Pescado]

There is really no efficiency issue with the size of GUIDs. You can make them 128000 bits if you wanted without any performance penalty (with proper tables and separate hashing).

Other than that you're chewing up 128000 bits of memory for a stupid GUID. What, do you need to address every single individual polygon of every object? Clearly this *IS* an efficiency hit: Computers function best when chewing on data of a certain size. A 32-bit processor chews on things 32 bits at a time. Hence, 32-bit GUID.

Given that The Sims sells in the millions and each customer is a potential creator, it's obvious that you need at least a 64-bit GUID. However, the smaller the GUID, the greater the likelihood of GUID collisions.

Each customer is NOT a potential creator of things that consume GUIDs. It is only through decidedly non-authorized 3rd-party tools that it is possible to use GUIDs at all. Customers can NORMALLY only create things that do not consume GUIDs: Clothes, hair recolors, wallpapers, none of which consume GUIDspace.

The real problem isn't how many GUIDs could be used on one computer, but how many unique GUIDs the entire world could use. Any collision anywhere (among published objects) would still conflict if you use those two or more colliding objects with the same GUID.

A spurious analysis: Why would anyone really care if Worthless Object A conflicts with Worthless Object B somewhere out there, when a given user is supremely unlikely to have both, and the penalties of such a conflict are minor? It is like the birthday collision problem. It does not matter how many people in the world share a birthday. All that matters is our collision set. After all, there are an infinite number of objects out there in worldspace. Every object, even with a database, collides with some other object, but does anyone care? NO! Nobody would ever USE most of that crap, and even if you tried, it would be impossible, because such an attempt would exceed the amount of RAM physically available to the computer. What's more, collision odds fall somewhat when you consider that the most noteworthy creators, the ones people will actually download from, are likely to make some amount of effort to deliberately avoid collision. There is simply no reason WHY we need to worry about collision space, when we could just deal with it by collision avoidance.

[daisylee]

Inge and Peter  - - - - thank you , thank you and bless you both. I just downloaded the .64 version and have just done some recolors for TSS, BV, and celebration. It looks like they will be just fine.

You both are true heroes for doing this for all of us Simmers who would still be in SimPe withdrawal without you.

Ignore the small-minded idiot critics! They are petty pieces of u-know-what!

What you have done is fantastic and very appreciated .... as well as all the many things done that I have downloaded from Simlogical that I use all the time.

Thank you for all your excellent hard work and for doing this for us!

[Inge]

Daisylee, thank you!  While the great minds were debating the enormity of life, the universe and GUIDs, I was just waiting for one more person to confirm we had it set up correctly for Teen stuff

[J. M. Pescado]

There's some evidence to suggest Teen Stuff isn't even setup to work with ITSELF, so I wouldn't stress too hard over it.

[LIUBluejeans]

Daisylee, thank you!  While the great minds were debating the enormity of life, the universe and GUIDs, I was just waiting for one more person to confirm we had it set up correctly for Teen stuff

Okay...I'm a little late to the party (way late, apparently) and I just read through all this to get caught up.  That said, I have Teen stuff (and all the Crap packs) and I will be happy to test it for you if you still need it.  I've not done much with SimPE other than some recolors for myself, and a few personality changes, but if that is sufficient, then just point me where to download...

[Inge]

Thank you, http://www.fffss.org/SimPE/SimPE_0_64_0_TestDist.rar

I am not that desperately worried about bandwidth to be honest - it's on the disgraced FFSS site, and it's not the end of the world if it's suspended for a while lol   Not like anything else is taking up bandwidth there, we only get about 3 visits a week.

[LIUBluejeans]

Got it...opened it without issue, and promptly open a couple of Teen Style objects.  I can see them in both the Object Workshop and the SimPE Wizards (which is what I normally use).  I have no problems with either method finding the Teen stuff.

In the FWIW category, I have all stuff packs, all expansion packs, and I run Vista.

[dragonfly]

For my little knowledge of SimPE, it seems to be working great for what I use it for.. Thanks Inge! Can I post a link on my site to this so that members on my site can also get this and use it?

[Inge]

Give them a link to this thread here, then they can do all of: see the link, post any problem reports, and/or see the news if I have moved it elsewhere.

[dragonfly]

Okay Thanks...