Changing a sim's species (a.k.a. The Dr. Moreau Complex)

[kingtorrid]

I hope I'm posting this message to the right place. If this is the wrong place, I won't feel bad if this post is deleted or moved. I apologize in advance if I'm doing something wrong.

I have been playing with SimPE for a few months, and noticed that there is a 'Species' option in the overview. Being my inquisitive self, I decided to experiment with it. I made some interesting discoveries:

1.) The affected sims were moved to the pet column, and could no longer be controlled (boolprop ControlPets on remedies control issues)

2.) The affected sims started acting like cats and had some human animations. They eventually quit using human animations altogether. The cat animations were severely flawed (I can only assume that the animation nodes are oriented differently)

3.) Other sims still have the interactions list for dealing with human sims, but the affected sims have menus appropriate for pets. The affected sims could still beg for treats. Any time a human sim tried to interact with the affected sims (as humans), the action would cancel (I assume because of missing animations) Also, the only way affected sims could recover was if they used items available to all sim types (namely the beds)

4.) After a while, the game kept halting because of the missing animation numbers. This increased in frequency until I was forced to either delete the affected sims, or leave the house.

5.) The first time I tried to use SimPE to do plastic surgery to replace the human models with cat models, I got twisted cats as a result. The second time I tried, I reduced the StretchSkeleton variable, and got better results: perfect cat models, albeit a frozen world from missing animations.


I have (attempted to) attatched an image of the "affected sim" (I couldn't figure out how to put it into the message body)


Here are my questions regarding this post:
1.) Is there a way to replace a sim's animations on a single-sim level, like replacing references so the sim's object looks to different animations? (I know creating animations from scratch or by modification is a nightmare, and I probably won't need to go that far. I'm assuming that you could probably copy the anims/ references from a pet and insert them into the target sim)

2.) If it is possible to to get everything to work, is there a way to make a batch file plug-in for SimPE to automate it (or at least speed things up)? (similar to the plastic surgery system for changing a sim's appearance)

3.) If any of this is remotely possible, can someone point me to some information that would tell me where to look in a sim .package file for the animation data? I don't think I'm at risk of damaging my high-value sims (I made a separate Windows User Account on my computer to separate and protect them)

4.) Is there any way to make it so other sims will have proper pet interactions with the affected sims?

(If any of this would take too long to explain, I'll accept the abreviated version or "That would take an overhaul of the entire engine")

Any help in this area would be greatly appreciated :D

(Skippable story from here down)
The Pyromaniac Sim
(A reason for something this strange)

Once upon a time, there was a sim who was disaster-prone. Everything she touched that could catch on fire did catch on fire. The stove was easy, but one day she decided to challenge herself, so she set her favorite hot tob on fire. Amazingly enough, water is flammable, (all you have to do is separate the oxygen atom from hydrogen atoms, then superheat the hydrogen until the hydrogen atoms fuse together into helium atoms, -physics 101)
The Player noticed this ability and decided that no sim should be allowed to perform alchemic transmutations of this kind. Instead of allowing the sim's fires to kill her, the player turned her into a cat so she couldn't set things on fire anymore.

The End.

[WesHowe]

That is a very interesting experiment you did.

I cannot answer all your questions, but I understand some of what happened.
Pet skeletons have 75 bones, regular sim body meshes have 65.
There are a number of bones that have the same names between them, and a bunch that do not. Among the names I remember are head and neck... I seem to remember that some other pet bones had the more human name to the similar function.

At any rate, you can see these in SimPE by locating any mesh (GMDC) in the character file and looking in the joints tab in "plugin view".

The game engine uses the joint names, and most of the animation for characters (sims and pets) consist of values to rotate the joint by (for example, bend the knee by 10 degrees on the X axis).

I do not know of any way to direct an animation at a specific sim except as an interaction with an object, which is what happens. What happens in the Dance Animation example is an animation is added that is available for all adult sims, and it works when you select the menu item.

I am not going to throw Di-HydroOxide on your efforts (as that might cause a solar flare here on earth), but I don't know of any real shortcuts to doing this. I can tell you that you may find the "displayAnimBillboard on" cheat of interest, as you can see the animation name in game when it is used (consult the readme for the exact syntax on using this).

Those animation names can then be located in the game program directory in either objects00.package or sims00.package with SimPE. However, editing them is not for the faint of heart, and you absolutely need to make a backup copy of the game directory, because you can easily hose the game enough to require a reinstallation.

Enjoyed your revelations.

<* Wes *>

[kingtorrid]

UPDATE!!
Looks like there are refferences to pre-existing refference tables. Looking back on my database classes, it would be redundant to put a full animation list into each character file. It is a lot easier to place a refference ID to an interaction table (a variable named "Interaction Table ID").

Unfortunately, Interaction Table ID isn't the only problem left :(

ORIGINAL POST
I looked through a couple of the Sims00.Package files (there's one for the core Sims 2, and one for each expansion) and found tons of animation files. This reinforces my belief that there is some kind of array that has indexed strings. They may resemble something like this:


ID___EP_anim
001 - 4 - pet_walk
002 - 4 - pet_run
003 - 4 - pet_idle
004 - 4 - <NULL>
005 - 4 - pet_eat

(this list is deliberately over-simplified)

I don't think there should be any need to alter the Sims00.Package files, but looking at them is a big help in understanding how the array works. If the array looks like I think it does, it should manually editable, or it is possible that the entire array can be swapped with the target species as a single action

From the messages the engine gave me, I'm certain it's a well-organized, readable indexed string array.

Sometimes it complained about empty strings(null), and sometimes about out of range (over the maximum index ID). However, after I applied the plastic surgery, I couldn't get a broad enough sample to determine whether or not the array had been expanded. I'll do more testing on this to be sure.

I also think that the plastic surgery may have added bones to the model.
It seems to remove clothing joints, so it probably adds the special pet joints as well.

I'll have to play with this more and see what I can find.

btw, thanks for the info on displayAnimBillboard on and Sims00.Package, Wes. :D Being able to observe sim animations on-the-fly really helps.

[kingtorrid]

(THIS IS NOT A BUMP!)

I've been messing around a LOT in SimPE, and I stumbled across the answer to this old thread.

Apparently, when you change a sim's species, it also has to be changed in the Age Data file of that sim. I now have abomination unto simanity running around the neighborhood :cool:

I have a few bugs to work out (the other sims see the pet sim as still being a human sim, but S2 doesn't seem to be crashing, and the subject is able to be picked up, held, and tossed in the air, as well as have full use of pet items.

As for results: The new sim moves perfectly, (and has a patch of fur on its head the same color as the sim's original hair, go figure.)

I'll post some pics and more accurate notes this week, I'd do it now, but I'm about to pass out at the keyboard :anime:

If anyone needs more info, contact me, or reply here.

-Later

[Pixelhate]

I would love to see pics or movie from this !!

[WesHowe]

I would also like to know more detail.
I was fascinated by his original report, although obviously not enough to try doing it myself. We need more explorers like this.

<* Wes *>

[rebecah]

I would very much like to know more about this project.

[maybesomethingdunno]

I do not care about the technical details as much I want to see a human Sim chase its non-existent tail or something....or a cat/dog using human Sim objects. :P

[kingtorrid]

I Should have my observations, details, and a mock tutorial posted by this Saturday (2-9-2008)

As for seeing a human sim "chase its non-existent tail", all that has to be changed is its species in plugin view (SimPE); where its days remaining, gender, and age are also displayed.

Remember to turn that sim back (unless you have done a complete transformation), or they could starve, and slow down the game to a crawl. It's a (very) good idea to back up your sim's character file when you tamper with species alterations.

If you can't quite figure that out, you'll have to wait for the full report ;)
(frankly, I'd wait for the report)