Can I alter my custom fridges?

[Sivany]

Since installing Season my custom fridges don't have all the relevant options in their pie menus (Stock, Get Leftovers) and it's really annoying me. I doubt the creators of these fridges are going to do anything about it so I was wondering if there is anything I could do?
I'm not too bothered about the Stock option, but I'd like the Get Leftovers option to be there so my kids can actually eat without the adult having to serve food all the time. I've noticed that if you put leftovers in a custom fridge, then delete the fridge and replace it with a Maxis one the leftovers actually show up so I'm assuming it's not the actual fridge object which holds the data about leftovers. Can I therefore create an option on the custom fridge pie menu to point to the code for getting out leftovers or is this too complicated? I'm good at following instructions and working things out once I know the basics so any help would be appreciated!

On a similar note I have a very nice sculpture which was obviously cloned from a bookcase. The creator didn't take away any of the bookcase features and my sims always pull books out of the sculpture, plus all the pie menu options for a bookcase show up when I click on it. Is there anyway I can get rid of this?

[jrd]

Are you familiar with SimPE? If so, just add the attached package's content to the custom fridge, overriding the existing pie menus.

Should work for all custom fridges, as long as they do not have modified pie menus.

[pamysue]

Should I wait to do this until SimPE has been updated for Seasons?  I have not used SimPE for anything but hair binning, but I would give this a try to have my custom fridges work properly.

[Qwiggles]

Are you familiar with SimPE? If so, just add the attached package's content to the custom fridge, overriding the existing pie menus.

Should work for all custom fridges, as long as they do not have modified pie menus.

Okay, I'm the stupid one who's gonna speak up.  How do I add this package?  I'm familiar with simpe but not overly so.  I'm not afraid to mess with it so please hit me with the instructions.  Thanks.

[Hitch]

Are you familiar with SimPE? If so, just add the attached package's content to the custom fridge, overriding the existing pie menus.

Should work for all custom fridges, as long as they do not have modified pie menus.

Okay, I'm the stupid one who's gonna speak up.  How do I add this package?  I'm familiar with simpe but not overly so.  I'm not afraid to mess with it so please hit me with the instructions.  Thanks.

Here's how to do what I did. I think it worked.

1) Open the package that was attached earlier in this thread. You'll see two resources.

2) Right click on each of those resources and choose "extract..." to put them on your desktop.

3) Open a pre-Seasons custom fridge package and find the corresponding resources in that package.

4) Right click on each of them and choose "replace..." selecting the corresponding resource from your desktop.

5) Save the new custom fridge. et Voila!*



* In this case, that means "and Pray."

[Qwiggles]

Thank you very much, Jordi & Hitch!!!  I pushed that thank you button, didn't I, and got an earful.  Well, now all my fridges are OFB- and Season-compliant.  I didn't even realize I didn't have "Make many..." on some of them.

[Sivany]

Thanks, I'm fairly familiar with SimPE so this sounds simple enough. It'll be nice to have my fridges working again! I think the hardest part is going to be finding the custom fridge packages in my downloads folder. It's not the most organised of download folders.

Anyone got any suggestions about what to do with the bookcase/sculpture problem?

[Gwill]

The easiest way I can think of to find speciffic packages in a messy downloads folder is to create a small empty lot in game, add the fridges to the lot, then package the lot to a file.  Open the sim2pack with clean installer and check the name of the packages, then do a simple windows search for the file names.

[Inge]

I thought the files packaged with a lot all got given stupid names?

[Jade]

If you use Paladin's object categorizer, and you select the fridge it will tell you the name of the mesh file.  That might help with the tracking problem

[pamysue]

3) Open a pre-Seasons custom fridge package and find the corresponding resources in that package.

I'm really a bit lost in SimPE, and this is where I found the fork in my road.  I have the four extracted files on my desktop.  I found the fridge mesh and opened it fine.  But what are the corresponding resources and how do I decide which of the four files to replace them with?

Sorry to be an idiot, but I'd rather ask than fubar my stuff.  Thanks for any help.

[angelyne]

Once you open the fridge you want to update, just locate the lines that have the exact same name that you exported in your earlier step, and right click on replace.  Select the SimPE extension not the XML.

If you can't find a Pie Menu Functions and Pie Menu Strings listed under "ressource tree" of the fridge you want to update, then I don't know what to say.  I had one fridge I wanted to update and the Pie Menu Strings was missing.  Not sure what was up with that.

[miros]

I thought the files packaged with a lot all got given stupid names?

The stupid names happen when you install a lot with the Maxis installer.  If you use Clean Installer, you get the original file names.  Still looking for the equivalent for Sims2Skin files!

[pamysue]

Once you open the fridge you want to update, just locate the lines that have the exact same name that you exported in your earlier step, and right click on replace.  Select the SimPE extension not the XML.

If you can't find a Pie Menu Functions and Pie Menu Strings listed under "ressource tree" of the fridge you want to update, then I don't know what to say.  I had one fridge I wanted to update and the Pie Menu Strings was missing.  Not sure what was up with that.

OK, I think I understand that and will give it a shot this weekend.  Thanks for your response.  More questions may follow...

[pamysue]

Task completed.  Not as hard as I thought, the errors told me when I had screwed it up.  So happy to have all my fridges available again!

[CandyToast]

Thank you very much, Jordi and Hitch. I am a complete idiot and am totally unfamiliar with SimPE beyond memory editing and I think I managed to figure it out. With any luck, I will now have an updated copy of Targa's super fridge. If it is of intrest to anyone here...provided it actually works; I can post the end result here for the community's playing pleasure.

[miros]

Wow! I can not thank you enough for explaining how to do this. I've checked TSR, MTS2, and the SimPE site and no one had an answer for this. I'm guessing that I can also apply the same technique to the baths to update for pets and computers to update for Uni.

This does not work on bathtubs.  There's an extra "joint" in the mesh, which is not replaced by this process (naturally).

[Gwill]

There are ways, but I assume it's harder than the fridges.

[miros]

It's best to ask the original creator to fix the bathtubs for you (and other downloaders). 

It's something like this: extract mesh and write down GUID from custom object; clone Maxis object using GUID from existing custom object; import mesh.  Basically, you're remaking the custom object...

[akatonbo]

Can I use this method to make pretty custom beds with energy 1 (I'm looking at YOU, Sunair and Simplan-X) into pretty custom beds with actual decent energy scores, or do they need the same method as the bathtubs? I think I might actually be up to learning this now that I've learned to recolor objects (mainly just a matter of finding the right tutorial to walk me through the first time), though I'd still like something a little more step-by-step for my initial stab at it, if anyone's feeling generous or knows where a tutorial is.

[unicorngurl]

Fixing the stats on an object, like the amount of energy a bed replenishes, is even easier than fixing the fridge.  Just download the Sims 2 Categorizer at Paladin's Place.  Use it to open the folder where the beds are and click on their thumbnail.  It has a handy edit object button, where you can change the energy and comfort and such, as well as where it is found in the catalog. 

[akatonbo]

I was assuming that, like similar programs for Sims 1, that only edits the CATALOG values, and maybe the values that the object advertises to Sims, but not the actual values used for need replenishment. If anyone can confirm (through testing in-game and/or examination of files with SimPE) that the actual behavior of the object is changed by using the Categorizer, I will happily fix all my beds with it, but I don't think it really does work that way.

[noname]

I was assuming that, like similar programs for Sims 1, that only edits the CATALOG values, and maybe the values that the object advertises to Sims, but not the actual values used for need replenishment. If anyone can confirm (through testing in-game and/or examination of files with SimPE) that the actual behavior of the object is changed by using the Categorizer, I will happily fix all my beds with it, but I don't think it really does work that way.

I used to edit all my custom beds before I eradicated all my custom content, so I can confirm in my experience that it changed the behavior of the object. I had the beds match an excellent mod that I can no longer find that changed all the values for the Maxis beds as well.

[akatonbo]

I'll have to try it out, then. Should be easy enough to tell whether a bed that was originally energy 1 has actually had the need satisfaction increased or not.

[akatonbo]

The results of my testing: the Categorizer has zero effect on actual bed performance, exactly as I expected.

I used Sunair's Candy Glass single bed for my test object. It has energy 2, just like the cheapest Maxis bed. I opened the package in the Categorizer and changed the energy value to 6 instead.

Then I created a family of 3 Sims in my test neighborhood, and gave them all identical personalities, since I know Active/Lazy affects Energy DECAY but wasn't sure if it would affect the need satisfaction from the bed.

Then I put down a test lot, and placed one original Maxis cheap bed with Energy 2, one altered Candy Glass bed that now claimed to have Energy 6, and one Maxis bed that actually had energy 6. I dragged down the energy bars of all 3 Sims and sent them to bed.

I thought I'd even things up by pausing the game after everyone was sawing logs and dragging their bars ALL the way down. This actually turned out to wake them up again, bizarrely. However, with energy totally sapped and a bed right there, they went immediately BACK to bed.

I let them sleep until the Sim in the real Energy 6 bed was almost full, then checked the other two. Both of them were nowhere near full (about 2/3) and at pretty much exactly the same level as each other, one in the Maxis Energy 2 bed and one in the not-actually-altered Sunair Energy 2 bed.

So no, you can't change a bed's performance with the SimWardrobe Categorizer. It requires more sophisticated editing than that, which is why I asked which of the two methods already discussed in this thread is the right one.