Recategorizing Clothing for Outerwear (the "hard" way)

[polonius]

Okay, so my medieval simmies look a bit odd frolicking in the snow in parkas and ski jackets lol.  I want to tweak some of my CC to show up as outerwear AND everyday.  Since SimPE's Folder Scanner doesn't have the Outerwear option on its clothing editor (and yes, idiot me opened the file scanner and waited 30 minutes to realize this), I had the bright idea of looking at the skins.package that came with Seasons to see what the category string is.  Eek... don't know what all those properties are OR why some are different on different outerwear skins.  Soooo... before I cause a BFBVFS by making my sims' outfits go 'splodey, I thought I would ask here.

What is the category string for enabling a skin as outerwear and also keeping it as everyday?  Are there other values under Property Set (or anywhere, actually) that I need to edit as well?  I know SOMEBODY has the answer, because both simsbaby here and fanseelamb over at MTS2 have released fixed versions of Maxis clothes.  I tried looking at those files as well as Skins.package, but alas - I am not awesome enough to figure out what I'm looking at. 

Help appreciated.

[polonius]

Excellent, thanks!  That makes me feel smart, too - That was my guess after looking at the Maxis outerwear skins. All those other values in the property set scared me though lol.  I wanted to ask people that know what they're doing before borking anything.
Has anyone written out and posted an explanation of all the strings?  I am interested in knowing what they do, even if I'm not going to attempt to mod them.  What can I say but that I'm a Knowledge Sim at heart lol.

[Berg]

Extremely helpful! I'll Ctrl+C this for future referense, thanks a lot!

[Sisaly]

I know I'm probably stating the obvious. But can't you just take the outfits you want to be Outwear and export that file out of BS and then back in and change the category to Outerwear?? I've done it and it seems to work fine. This is going on the 'fact' that there is no value to the 'warmth' of Outerwear...according to jfade, I believe. So why all the crazy numbers and SimPE?

Just delete the Clone Everyday ones after Exporting. It seems much more simple.

Just my two pence.

[polonius]

@Corky: Wow.  That's definitely a start to answering my curiosity, thanks!  I shall have to peruse this more carefully when I didn't just get home from work at 1 AM and am needing sleep.  *Ctrl-C*

@Sisaly: See, that would work, but it requires bringing up BS, which takes forever and a day on my computer.  And all that file creation and deletion... I'd much rather just change a few digits of code and be done with the whole thing.  Fewer overall keystrokes required - right, so I'm a lazy Knowledge Sim.

[maxon]

Just a couple of additional things - to add hexidecimal codes together you can use your Windows calculator in hexidecimal mode (just click the hex option).  And, I think if you want an outfit available for both sexes it's 3 - at least it is with children and toddlers.  I want to change a pile of my clothes for outerwear too (I have some nice long coats for men) but I'm even lazier than you and am waiting for SimPE.

[polonius]

Just a couple of additional things - to add hexidecimal codes together you can use your Windows calculator in hexidecimal mode (just click the hex option).

Oh, good to know, thanks.  I wouldn't have thought of that. 

And, I think if you want an outfit available for both sexes it's 3 - at least it is with children and toddlers.  I want to change a pile of my clothes for outerwear too (I have some nice long coats for men) but I'm even lazier than you and am waiting for SimPE.

LOL - the only reason I'm not being lazy about this is because I'm on spring break this week and actually have time to play the game.  Next week I'm back in classes - I wanna play NOW, dang it!

[Ambular]

Product determines what game it's from.
1 = Base game
2 = University
3 = Nightlife
4 = OFB
5 = FFS
6 = GLS
7 = Pets
8 = Seasons
0 = Custom content

Creator is the creator. 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 is essentially Maxis' creator id. If you set the creator to zeros, then identify a product number besides 0, the game will see that clothing/hair/accessory as native. I edited all my Maxis items like that so that they show up without the star and with any applicable EP.

Okay, so if you take custom content and ID it as Maxis, will randomly generated Sims then use that content like they will colorbinned custom hair?

[Sivany]

Okay, so if you take custom content and ID it as Maxis, will randomly generated Sims then use that content like they will colorbinned custom hair?

Yes it should do, according to the all the tutorials I've read on the subject anyway.

I consider myself resonably intelligent but everytime I come on these boards I feel ridiculous. I really want to change some of my clothes to the outerwear category but I have no idea where to go to change these codes or even how to access the Skins.package. I think it's time to find some tutorials.

[Sivany]

Thanks, that thread looks quite useful.

I had managed to find the skins.package but I couldn't work out how to open it, even using SimPE. I have asked about 4 questions recently and got polite and helpful answers for all of them, so I'm trying to avoid making any new threads for a while because I don't want to push my luck! Plus I'm a bit strange in that it's the simple things where I come unstuck (like opening the skins.package) once I get down to the complicated stuff I can usually work it out for myself.

[jrd]

Okay, so if you take custom content and ID it as Maxis, will randomly generated Sims then use that content like they will colorbinned custom hair?

Usually. What we need is some batch updater for clothing.

[polonius]

Usually. What we need is some batch updater for clothing.

*polonius looks at jfade*

[jfade]

Usually. What we need is some batch updater for clothing.

*polonius looks at jfade*

First I got held up cause I was sick with the flu for about a week, then Seasons arrived and I started (and still am) working on updates to my hacks, and now I'm currently awaiting some compression code that a friend of mine is working on since I tried to do it and got lost. Without it, edited resources will be saved back in an uncompressed format, which would be a waste of disk space, something I don't want. It would also cause me much grief from those obsessed with keeping all their packages compressed (although that's a truly justifiable thing to do) so I have to wait for the code. He should have the code done soon though (I'm hoping by the end of the weekend) and then I'll be able to finish the clothing editor (along with shiny updates to my other programs), which I can then add a batch outerwear function to.

I'm also still awaiting info from a contact at EA regarding thumbnail hashing stuff, but release of the program is not reliant on that, though, without it, you'll be looking at the pretty, flat images of the skin directly from the package file...

So far this has been a very annoying project to work on.

[Ambular]

Usually. What we need is some batch updater for clothing.

*polonius looks at jfade*

It would also cause me much grief from those obsessed with keeping all their packages compressed (although that's a truly justifiable thing to do) so I have to wait for the code.
...
So far this has been a very annoying project to work on.

* AmberDiceless hides.

[polonius]

First I got held up cause I was sick with the flu for about a week, then Seasons arrived and I started (and still am) working on updates to my hacks, and now I'm currently awaiting some compression code that a friend of mine is working on since I tried to do it and got lost.
So far this has been a very annoying project to work on.

  *super embarrassed* I didn't realize you were already working on it.  That look was a "I think you're the one with the skillz to do it" look, not a "when ya gonna finish it???" look.  And of course your health should come first.  Whenever you have the time and WANT to work on it will be soon enough for us. 

Right, everyone? *glares around*


*polonius tackle-hugs jfade, then gets a flu shot*

[LilAbner]

Product determines what game it's from.
1 = Base game
2 = University
3 = Nightlife
4 = OFB
5 = FFS
6 = GLS
7 = Pets
8 = Seasons
0 = Custom content

Creator is the creator. 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 is essentially Maxis' creator id. If you set the creator to zeros, then identify a product number besides 0, the game will see that clothing/hair/accessory as native. I edited all my Maxis items like that so that they show up without the star and with any applicable EP.

Okay, so if you take custom content and ID it as Maxis, will randomly generated Sims then use that content like they will colorbinned custom hair?

So am I doing something wrong? I've changed both the creator and the product number on most of my clothes. They do show up without the asterisk and so on. But my randomly generated Sims still use only the original clothes. Am I missing something?

[jrd]

Lil: Got Pets or Seasons? Pretty sure the method only works for the latest expansions.
Custom content edited this way does show up on townies for me (easily tried by using a mod to hide all Maxis outfits, and rolling up some townies).

[LilAbner]

I've got all of the expansions, and it still doesn't work for me. But maybe I should try to hide the maxis clothes and see what happens. Don't really like most of maxis clothes anyway...