I am looking for help with a few basic things.

[Claeric]

Mod The Sims 2, despite its name, is apparently worthless. 3000 new users today alone, 40,000 individuals signed on today alone, and I've got 44 views on my topic and no response.

These are basic things. I was told to post here with thick skin because its likely you'll call me an idiot before helping.

I'm only just starting to try and "mod" or just play with basic meshing, but I've come across 3 things that I absolutely cannot find any tutorials or info about.

1. I'm trying to change constant motives for items that raise them during use. I want to, for example, change a bed to also increase your social as well as energy and comfort. Is there a tutorial for this anywhere? Because I cannot find one. The closest thing I can find is someone saying "BCONs do nothing if there's no BHAV to use them" which, frankly, doesn't help for shit.

2. I'm trying to figure out how to replace object meshes/textures with those of another object. I started by attempting to replacethe Instant Meal drink with something else, like a wine glass or baby bottle or just a glass.

I managed to do it, but only partially. I opened one of these up and extracted the GDC file. Then I replaced the Instant Milk drink with it. It did not replace the texture, though, and when I look in game all I have is something invisible. I tried exporting and replacing the texture(same as the mesh, but with the texture) but that did not work either.

So I'm clearly missing a step here, but I'm having trouble finding what exactly it is I'm missing. I can't find anything about this, either. I'm assuming it's possible to just swap meshes of unanimated objects somehow. But I cannot get it to work. I don't know what I'm missing.

3. In regards to 2, I've tried exporting BOTH meshes, going to the mesh for the object I want to change, importing the new one, either replacing the old one or making the old one invisible or just deleting it, and saving it. But when I import it says it has too many faces or vertices, and won't let me import it. Yet again, I can find nothing about this.





I'm prepared to be berated for being an idiot. But I'm just starting and I absolutely cannot find information on these things. They're basic and all I want to do, so knowing how to do them would be great.

[J. M. Pescado]

Mod The Sims 2, despite its name, is apparently worthless. 40,000 new users today alone, 40,000 individuals signed o
1. I'm trying to change constant motives for items that raise them during use. I want to, for example, change a bed to also increase your social as well as energy and comfort. Is there a tutorial for this anywhere? Because I cannot find one. The closest thing I can find is someone saying "BCONs do nothing if there's no BHAV to use them" which, frankly, doesn't help for shit.

The reason there is no generalized tutorial is that every object type is unique and there is no standardization for how they affect a sim's motives. While the motive rates are often controlled by a BCON, many of these BCONs are unlabeled and you will only see an indexed table of numbers, none of which you will likely understand. To understand which table entry does what, you have to read the corresponding BHAVs to see where it is modifying a sim's motives or motive deltas, and which table entries it is using. The alternative is to edit the table entries at random by putting in extreme values and seeing how the game freaks out.

2. I'm trying to figure out how to replace object meshes/textures with those of another object. I started by attempting to replacethe Instant Meal drink with something else, like a wine glass or baby bottle or just a glass.

I managed to do it, but only partially. I opened one of these up and extracted the GDC file. Then I replaced the Instant Milk drink with it. It did not replace the texture, though, and when I look in game all I have is something invisible. I tried exporting and replacing the texture(same as the mesh, but with the texture) but that did not work either.

Invisible object tends to mean you incorrectly replaced the GMDC in some way: Either it is missing critical structural components, or some other aspect is faulty. Without more information, it is impossible to know what you did wrong.

[Claeric]

Holy hell a response. More information in 10 minutes than I've gotten in 48 hours.

As for the BCONs and BHAVs, I tried looking at the BHAVs to see where it edits motives, but the BHAVs for something like a bed are "INIT" and "MAIN", neither of which have obvious things like "Expression: Comfort", and instead only have 3 strings each. Other objects, like a crib, DO list constants in their BHAVs and I could probably simply add another one and it'd work. This isn't true for beds, though.

ALthough I THINK that if I click one one of their strings, it lets you click the "View BHAV" thing, and it shows a big string(Probably the wrong term, I mean the sequence of true/false/if x then go to y things), and that information might be in there. I'll have to check and try again...

I dont really know what more ifnormation I can give. The methods I've tried are as follows, assuming I am trying to use the mesh for "Object X" with "Object Y".

-Export the mesh for object X and import it in to replace the mesh for object Y. This is what gave me an invisible object.

-Export the mesh for object X AND object Y. Load up both in blender, delete object Y, and save the file, importing it for object Y. This usually gives the faces/vertices problem that I don't know anything about.

-Export the WHOLE GMDC file for object X, and replace the GMDC for object Y with it.

I figured there'd be some sort of tutorial out there for replacing meshes with others, but all I can find is stuff for making a mesh entirely from scratch and simply importing it. I don't really understand how that's any different from taking an existing mesh and importing it, though. So this one is confusing me pretty badly.








Edit: Looking at the bed BHAVs, INIT has, under "Function Init", "My Attribute 0x0006 := Const" and the same but with a 3 instead of 6. These are clearly what I'm looking for! I "import to file" 'd it, added a new line, and then checked out the BCON. I didnt really understand it, but I noticed teh 0x000A from this list matched the 0x000A from the bhavs, and added a new one to match my new one. I don't expect this to work because I was quite frankly pulling htis out of my ass, but we'll see.

[Claeric]

Ugh. Nevermind. I thought I managed it but it was just a coincidence that "Fun" started raising while he was sleeping. =/

frankly, changing the meshes is something I care more about.

[Claeric]

Nothing more yet?




Well I played with meshes some more, making one from scratch, and now I get a "Index was out of range" error.

I, like, literally have no idea what is going on. I followed a damn tutorial for this and did it absolutely step by step.

[J. M. Pescado]

I really don't know that much about the intrinicacies of meshing. This is really more of a script hacking site. If there's anything to know about script and BHAV hacking, we know it here. For everything else, there's MasterCard.

[Claeric]

Guh. I can't believe the trouble I'm having finding answers. I'm baffled that MTS2 is so useless, I'm baffled that there's no tutorials out there for replacing meshes, I don't understand these errors I'm getting and I CAN'T FIND ANYWHERE THAT CAN HELP.

.____.

[J. M. Pescado]

As for the BCONs and BHAVs, I tried looking at the BHAVs to see where it edits motives, but the BHAVs for something like a bed are "INIT" and "MAIN", neither of which have obvious things like "Expression: Comfort", and instead only have 3 strings each. Other objects, like a crib, DO list constants in their BHAVs and I could probably simply add another one and it'd work. This isn't true for beds, though.

One thing to note about beds and other objects is that some objects are "Semiglobalized", meaning they have a SemiGlobal group where all their code tends to reside, occasionally referencing "Local" BCONs to get object-specific tuning.

As for your mesh issues, the only thing I can recommend is trying to tackle one obstacle at a time, rather than changing everything at once and wondering why your game blows up.

[Claeric]

I'm not doing anything extensive with the meshes, though. I'm not taking on anything complicated whatsoever, and I'm still getting errors. I don't get it.

[devilsrope]

You mentioned you were testing with the instant meal meshes, which made me think of this tutorial. I haven't ever made a food (or any mesh) myself, but the tutorial says that all replacement bits of food must have the same number of polys & verts as whatever it replaces. I can't remember if instant meals have multiple morphs, but the same principle may apply to them anyway. You might want to try replacing something else, to see if you can get your mesh to show up.

Also, when I extracted some objects from Castaway Stories, I had problems with invisible objects. I (much) later found that a SimPE reinstall fixed the issue.