I've removed the sim picture restriction; test it on your system and see if it works.

ETA: Updated OP.

Try using the attached file and see if it fixes anything.

Edit: Obsoleted test version; new version at http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,3563.msg562404.html#msg562404

*tumbleweed*

How exactly is it not working? Is the 'Alt. Sims Surgery' item not in the Neighborhood menu, does it fail to start when clicked, or is it failing to do its purpose?

I could at least make it show up in the menu by installing SimPe, doing the manual update for M&G, and finally copying the plugin dll into the Plugins folder.

En biljett till Kofistan, tack.

Don't worry, there's no contradiction there. When I mentioned directory junctions, I was not referring to mklink's general capabilities, but to the example you shown previously:

Yes and no. Symbolic links are supported on the NTFS version shipped with *gasp* Vista. However, the special kind of symlink shown by CtDs - a NTFS directory junction - is supported since Windows 2000, and can only be used to link directories.

The registry REG_LINK keys are not at all related to the file system, and allow you to use HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT as an alias for HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes in windows registry, for example.

I don't need to do anything; the game will usually run after the second or third attempt.

All the game files (except for the executables) can be copied over from the installation disc.

For those who can't access the original installation files, here are the localized resources found in the /Game/Bin/bin folder...

There's a wiki page with the sound and video filetypes; look for these resources in FullBuild1.package and extract them.

After extracting the resources you'll need to convert them into a more conventional audio format.

Assuming we're dealing with the run o' the mill EA formats, you can try using the tools posted here. Sound eXchange in particular seems to be suited to perform the audio conversion.

Good luck!

Pudding plays the slide guitar:


After aging up, and still enjoying the arm extension

This might be unrelated, but before I installed AL, I used to get a lot of kid outings; that is, a sim kid (child or toddler) would phone a playable asking for an outing. Upon arrival to the community lot, the kids would still stick around even into late hours of the night.

Sometimes, even a baby would be in the guest list, promptly erroring out of the cab.

In this state of grace, I could also invite teens into community lots (or spawn them directly), and they would also ignore their curfews, but only until 2am.

Undoubtedly caused by tight pants, this ability disappeared after installing AL and updating/cleaning my hacks folder. Now, I still have the occasional kid outing invite, but the little maggots immediately leave the outings at 7pm.

Open the sim's character file, go to the 3IDR instance #1.

Find the entries for the overlays (named for example, afhairbald_vampire, and afbodynaked_vampire), and set the File Type, Group and Instance all to zero. That should take care of the head and body overlays.


Removing the face overlay is trickier, since it's applied as a face paint, which means you'll have to fiddle with the material definitions:

Open the TXMT that has a property named baseTexture0.

Delete the baseTexture with the value affacevampire-pale, and re-number the other baseTextures.

Edit the compositeBaseTextureName property, and remove '_affacevampire_pale' from the string. On the File List tab, remove '_affacevampire_pale' from the filename string.


However, the vampire face paint will reappear when the sim changes appearance, so you have to plan its appearance in advance; If you just want to fix the sim's icon, use the batbox's 'Regenerate portrait'.

Let's suppose for a moment that we could extract all of Mrs.C's resources - the ones scattered among the core files - and put them all together in a package that we could drop into the Characters folder.

Would it then be possible to make changes to Mrs.C - such as change appearance, move in, etc - that would apply only to our overriding package?

Ah yes, I forgot my previous statement:
is not entirely correct, since it turns out that these two are unrelated to each other. The XHTN may still be needed, if you're using custom hairtone guids, while at the same time, you can use a custom COLL resource instead of the 'magic COLLs'.

I made a small diagram of the resource linking here: http://theos.chewbakkas.net/files/hair-problem.svg
See also if you agree with my proposal: http://theos.chewbakkas.net/files/hair-solution.svg

Regarding base game compatibility, I believe this referencing scheme is compatible, but it's just a matter of testing it with the base game starter, if you want to be sure.

That's correct, for example if you look at the interim packages that are created by BodyShop (the ones in the \Projects folder ), you'll find that these are the same as the final packages, except that they lack the BINX resources, and thus cannot be displayed anywhere but the Create Content section of BodyShop.

Period.

What really matters here are the main resources (BINX, GZPS, XTOL, etc...), that sometimes need to reference other resources.
They may do it directly, as seen in this example taken from BINX group 0x7F5AC619, instance 0x0CDF5EF4 (in \The Sims 2\TSData\Res\Catalog\Bins\globalcatbin.bundle.package):

Or, they can store those references on another resource (3IDR), and just use the list index:

How can you find a 3IDR that belongs to a given resource? Just match its group and instance numbers.



If total extirpation is not possible, then that may be considered a reasonable stump, yes. 

The genetic binding is done by setting the hairtone guid in the property set to the value of the family guid in the XHTN.

The default XHTN's - which can be found in \TSData\Res\Catalog\Skins\Skins.package - have these 'genetic' values:
Black = 1
Brown = 1
Blond = 2
Red = 2
Grey = 0
Other = 0

Since hair binning binds your property sets to the default XHTN's, the custom XHTN seldom has any value of its own, except when custom hairtone guids are involved.

Yes, that's more or less how my tool worked, but since then I realized that the TXMT's were addressed according to this procedure:
7)
  a) Open GZPS; Fetch the values of all the 'overrideNresourcekeyidx';
  c) Open 3IDR with same instance as GZPS; Use the previously fetched indices against the resource list, to find the affected TXMT's.
Pseudocode:


The problem is that some hairs don't work like that.
For example, look at this hair package. The elder/grey GZPS has instance=5; so you open 3IDR #5, to find this:
The addressing scheme here is indices 00-04 used by GZPS #5, and 05-08 by BINX #5 that links to GZPS #4(!)

If you delete 3IDR #5, not only will you break the link to GZPS #4, but also this hair will stop working in game (or at least it did when I tried).

So my advice is to tread carefully around these resources. Besides that, the quick and dirty way to remove the extra grey hairs is to set the 'hide' flag on the property sets.

It will fall back to the default text (en-US).

I gave that hint because once I had installed a few expansion packs with different languages among them, making it a bit difficult to know what was the default language. To make matters more confusing, whenever I installed SimPe anew, it defaulted to the language defined in Windows' regional settings, which is different from the language installed with the expansion packs.

In that situation it's better to use "Default lang only".

When you edited the family's name in the STR, did you remember in which language it was being edited? It's quite possible that you changed the text of a different language than the one you use on your game.

I'm not really sure about this. Backup, delete, then tell us how it went.

My idea for now would consist of a converter to this packaging method; it would accept a normal [hair|clothing|makeup] package, and then split and rearrange the 3 object types.

But I think you should finish the TXTR cleaner as a standalone tool first; It's a lot of work as it is now, and the more you add features, the more it becomes easy to miss the point, very much like what happened with the - now obsolete - binning tool. Also, because I need the TXTR cleaner NAO!

You'll have to open the FAMI resource 0x7FF4 and remove those sims from the list. Then, you must open the target FAMI 0x7FE5, and add those sims in.

For example, take a look at any of the packages in "Fixed TS2 Store Hairs.zip", linked here. You'll find a number of differences:

• The XHTN resource has been replaced by a clothing-type COLL.
• The property sets no longer share their 3IDR's with the BINX. In fact, there are now twice as many 3IDR's (plus one for the COLL). But this is not a problem, since they're small in size.
• The property set references are no longer offset by 1. In the old packaging, PSET #1 was referenced by 3IDR #2, and so forth. (*)

(*) This explanation may have left you even more bamboozled, but in a nutshell, there are three types of resources involved, and each one has its own 3IDR resource (associated by Group and Instance).
It runs more or less like this:
— Begin with a BINX; find a 3IDR with the same id.

— On the BINX, get the 'binidx' value; this is the index of the line within the 3IDR that points to the COLL.
— The COLL (plus its own 3IDR) is used for cataloging purposes. You don't want to mess with, or delete this resource; leave it alone.

— On the BINX, get the 'objectidx' value; this is the index of the line within the 3IDR that points to the property set (GZPS).
— Get the GZPS; find a 3IDR with the same id. This is the object in hand.

Having understood that, we can now start with a property set we wish to delete, and work our way back to the resources that are referencing it, and delete them too. Easy, huh?

The old packaging (alas, the most common), combines a non-straightforward association of objects, with the requirement of 3IDR editing - in the event you'd wish to delete a resource.

You may have noticed that hairs in some stuff packs postedlinked in MATY were packaged using the 3 keys method. This makes 3IDR/BINX identification a lot easier, as well as making the XHTN obsolete. Old custom hairs may also be repackaged using this method.

Theo's tool does the same thing that SimPe's original deleter tool does, except that it asks before deleting the associated SDNA's (deleting DNA can be a VBT, if you care about the surviving sim's genetics).

The remaining code is essentially the same, and there's the possibility of it being incomplete, as it knows nothing about the resources created by newer expansions. Since there's no guarantee that the game can remove these un-referenced resources on its own, I actually prefer using the batbox method instead.