Converting Pre-BV Accessories to fit in new BV Accessory Section

[jfade]

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...

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 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.

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!

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

[Assmitten]

You sexy bitch.

I mean, thanks, this is great. Braaaains.

[Angie]

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.

[Skadi]

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

[syberspunk]

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

[ZephyrZodiac]

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?

[jfade]

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.)

[ZephyrZodiac]

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....

[BastDawn]

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.)

[Zazazu]

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

[ZephyrZodiac]

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

[Zazazu]

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.

[ZephyrZodiac]

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!

[BastDawn]

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.)

[pioupiou]

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....

[jfade]

Hrm...

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

[Solowren]

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.

[Captain Swooptie]

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.

[Zazazu]

I tried to test this further by rebinning one of the Maxis noserings, but the behavior was a bit odd.

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.

[Captain Swooptie]

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 

[jfade]

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. 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.

[Captain Swooptie]

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

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!

[jfade]

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!

[pioupiou]

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...

[Captain Swooptie]

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.