Changing Comfort and Energy settings?

[Kittylynn]

Could anyone tell me, or point me to a tutorial that can show me, how to change the Comfort, Energy, Environment settings on a piece of furniture?  and/or change the price of the item?

I have found some really nice beds and a few chairs that I like the look of, but the settings have been enhanced on them to make them the highest level of comfort, energy and environment while at the same time making it one of the cheapest priced pieces of furniture in it's category.  I don't mind in my normal Sim houses, but if I'm playing a challenge of some sort I can't use them.  I guess I'm too honest for my own good!    It would be nice to be able to change the stats on those items back to where it's supposed to be for it's price level.

[Gwill]

There was a thread about this not too long ago.  The energy and comfort values are stored in the Behavious Constants (BCON) parts of a package.  The easiest way to change them is by just copying the values from a similar piece of furniture that has the desired stats.
The price is in the Object Data (OBJD); click on the raw data tab and scroll until you find the price field.  Switch to decimal to get a better grasp of what you're doing.

I do believe there is a simpler editing program around for updating basic stuff like price and catalouge description, but I haven't tried it myself.  You'll need SimPE to change the actual object functions anyway.

[Hegelian]

To me, it's easier to just open the object in SimPE and change the values in the Object Data section. Properties like Energy are in the Motives section, and cost in in the Money(?) section.Be sure to change the value display to decimal before changing any numbers. Make your changes, Commit, Save, and you're done.

The screen capture looks like crap because Photobucket resizes images, but you can see what you need.

[TaWanda]

I have found some really nice beds and a few chairs that I like the look of, but the settings have been enhanced on them to make them the highest level of comfort, energy and environment while at the same time making it one of the cheapest priced pieces of furniture in it's category.

Would you be willing to share where you got them from? I seem to have the opposite problem in that everything I find and like usually has a comfort value of 5 or less.
I like having cheaty things in my game. 

[Hegelian]

You can start with the Grand Trianon set at MTS2. Everything seems maxed out, at bargain-basement prices.

[Kittylynn]

Thanks Gwill and Hegelian!

The SimPE way does look easier, but I also want to learn more about BCON and OBJD and how they work.  I'm mostly just a recolorer right now and all self taught, but I want to learn to Mesh and Hack, cause it seems fun!

The Grand Trianon Set is one of the ones I want to make more fair for personal use in my Legacy!  It's tempting to just use them but I'm really trying to play it by the strict rules.  I had gotten so lazy about playing my game and using cheats that I needed to try things the hard way for a while.  Normally and in my ordinary Sim houses there are lots of "Cheaty Things"  !

[Gwill]

Changing the motive ratings in the Object data does not actually change the properties of the item, it just changes what's displayed in the catalouge description box.

[Marhis]

I second Gwill: values in Object Data are only descriptive, not effective.

[Kittylynn]

Oh Darn!  Figures it couldn't be that easy!  It's still a SimPE operation though isn't it?  Forgive my slowness, but like I said I'm a major noob at this type of thing.

[Gwill]

I had a project where I updated all the crappy maxis beds a little while ago: http://www.modthesims2.com/member/showthread.php?t=244279
I extracted the Energy, Comfort and Environment BCONs from the "Maturely Medieval Single Bed" and "Colonial Ironwood Bed" and just the values in the cloned beds with those from the good beds.  I have done the same on all beds I've downloaded.  Other furniture doesn't bother me as much.
I'll upload just the BCONs as a template.

[Kittylynn]

Those help so much!  Thanks! 

I was in the right area after all, I just didn't realize what I was looking at!

[Gwill]

The actual values doesn't make much sense when looking at them.  That's why I just copy them from somewhere I know works.
I tried modifying motives for a bathtub manually once, and it does sort of work, but I could never get it to do exactly what I wanted.  I need to study this closer too.

[Hegelian]

I second Gwill: values in Object Data are only descriptive, not effective.

WAH!   

Last night I spent several hours "fixing" a large number of custom beds, chairs, and sofas.   

[akatonbo]

Well, you'll want the catalog values to be changed too, so you've done half the work already.

[Hegelian]

 

Perhaps this is not the most efficient way to do this (shhh - don't tell Reggikko!), but this afternoon I cloned all the Maxis beds with the Object Workshop, then extracted all the BCONs for each bed (how convenient that when you extract them as a group, Object Workshop places them in their own folder, which can be renamed to indicate the bed—I named mine according to size and cost). I then opened each custom object I wanted to modify and replaced the BCONs one by one. I don't know if you can replace them all at once the way you can extract them, but I didn't want to take the risk. This should work, right??

It would probably be faster to edit the values directly, but I am not confident I know the values to insert to get the result I want. However, importing the BCONs from the Maxis objects limits the variety I can have in the custom objects, for which in some cases I would like to have values slightly different from the Maxis values for that particular price level. I did try getting individual replacement BCONs from Maxis beds in a different price category, but it seems that at best this would affect the environment score (assuming this is related to Room Impact) since energy and comfort are both in the Sleep BCON. Then there is the separate Environment BCON that some beds have, for which I could not find any explanation. I tried adding this to a couple of the custom beds, but was wary of the -10 decimal value (I don't want to have a lower score!) so I ended up deleting that entry. 

Thanks to the automatic backup feature in SimPE, it was easy to locate all the files that needed to be changed by searching my Downloads folder for *.bak files, copying them to a central location, and giving them back their .package extension en masse from the command line.   

UPDATE:

I finished updating all the chairs and sofas I wanted to change. In the process I noticed a spelling error in the Tuning - Lounge BCON for the Studio Bakonmi Deluxe Loveseat (Sofa - Modern - Loft):  Lounge is spelled Lounte. I don't know how the game references these BCONs internally, but if it does so using the text string that appears in SimPE, I imagine this error could cause a problem. However, I'm guessing that the game references BCON values in some other manner.   

[J. M. Pescado]

BCONs are referenced by number. The name is purely cosmetic and has no perceived effect. BHAVs are also USUALLY referenced by number, but can occasionally be run by name.