Cloning an object resulting in an OBJD that breaks footprints O.o

[plasticbox]

There is something going awry when cloning the EA "Quaint" chair that makes the footprint load? init? update? incorrectly on in-world objects (but not newly bought ones) when the lot loads. I tested a bit and it seems to be something to do with the OBJD. Happens with a chair that is just cloned, not edited in any way.

Description and pics are in this thread: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=391675

I was using s3oc_0912-13-1531.

Related question: is there any way to splice the material presets out of that OBJD and into a working one?

[pljones]

Please retest with the latest QA. Library changes may have caused many "strange" problems to go away. (He says, hopefully...)

[pljones]

Oh and on the latter point -- no but it's not impossible that I could add it at some point.

Note to self:
For all sub-classes, provide a Stream resource (this immediately gets export/import for the object)
Then enhance the export/import panel to allow Copy/Paste via clipboard (this will use a single MIME type with a suffix for the class name to ensure it's pasted back to the right kind of object).

[plasticbox]

Are the "stable" releases still considered up to date? I was under the impression that that's what people are supposed to use, not the QA ones.

I can't retest, because I only have this one OBJD with the presets and it's already broken. Would there be any point in opening it with the QA version and .. re-saving, or exporting and reimporting, or somehting?


For completeness' sake: the only difference I found between the OBJDs apart from materials and TGI blocks was that index 1 in "Unknown 15" was 2 in the broken and 1 in the sane one. Changing that didn't help though.

[Inge Jones]

Well the stable ones are up to date as far as they went when they were released. So no. They're the "safest". THey're meant for use by people for whom non-hazardous content is more important than features.

[pljones]

Not sure it helps but the latest QA lets you create different types of list element (e.g. different TypeCodes in material blocks, etc).

[HugeLunatic]

I've tried cloning all the dining chairs with the latest QA version, and in my game every single one is reverting to a two tile footprint like pbox linked to.

I don't see how it could be my game, but I have a fresh install of a few days ago with patch 1.6. The only cc in it is default skins by HP, the no intro mod . I have not put my cc in yet, but I will get those in and test to make sure that my Jules cloned chair still functions as it should.

[Inge Jones]

I will try making a chair.

[plasticbox]

From what Inge says it doesn't sound like it's a good idea to share anything made with a QA version, so I won't do anything more with this until the next release. Thanks for the info though.


e: this wasn't in reply to your last 2 posts, I only didn't refresh before posting ..

[HugeLunatic]

Is it possible it is a patch issue? Say a specific one is needed? Because my Jules chair is behaving the same way. And it did not do this before. I didn't list what patch I used when making this but I would guess something less than 1.7.

[Inge Jones]

I am a bit confused, one of you says it's only the one chair, the other says it is all dining chairs...

[plasticbox]

I'm on 1.8.25, and I'm pretty sure I installed that before I ever got s3oc or s3pe. So that would mean all of my objects are 1.8.25.

e: just to confirm, yes they are: my backup of the 1.7.11 game has a timestamp of november last year, and I got s3oc/s3pe in January.

I tested clones from two chairs: the Quaint chair, and the PatioPlastics one. The Quaint one had the weirdo footprint, the PatioPlastics did not. I don't know how clones from other chairs would behave in my game; I also never used a custom chair.

I can't test with different patches, since OS X users can only have either 1.0 or the latest patch.

[Inge Jones]

Mine is doubling too. The unrenumbered override did not, while the renumbered one did.

[Inge Jones]

I cloned the office chair. There are two footprint files in the package - there always are. I wonder if what is happening is they are both registering as green squares.

I am gonna take them into TSRW and see what that makes of them.

Edit: they look normal in there...

The only thing I can think of is that ISTR one of those footprints is actually shared between dining chairs. Now, supposing EA code specifically tests for that TGI and treats it differently...

[plasticbox]

Which one did you clone, Inge?

And .. has anyone ever seen any way in that an objd would influence footprints?

And are newly-bought chairs also one-tile for you, and only pre-existing ones not?

[plasticbox]

I'm not sure if it can possibly have anything to do with the ftpts, that's why I find this so puzzling – at least two of my twotile chairs are referencing the in-game EA footprints; they don't have any FTPT resources themselves. The "untouched" clone does, though. Unless my logic is really backwards, it has to be something in the OBJD.

[Raven Shadow]

I'm gonna pipe up and speak from my experience with make a rug act like a rabbit hole.
If an object has 2 (or more) ftpt's, 1 is for the footprint and the additional ones
control the Approach/Routing slots, Container slots, enter/exit slots, etc.
I don't know why EA used multiple files instead of just 1 ftpt containing multiple
slot types.

If an objects footprint (or footprints) overlap into a 2nd square the usually,
but not always, increases the foorptint to 2 full squares, even if it's declared as 1.1 squares.

If an object has multiple bounding boxes, the game will create addition foorprints, even if none are declared.(This fact doesn't relate to your problem, just mentioning it)


I've examined several dining chairs in TSRW and they all seem to have 1 thing in
common, thier footprint is a little larger than it's bounding box.

The Quaint Dining Chair is larger on both the +z and -z axis'.
Try changing the footprint to match the lower coords of the bounding box (in the VPXY)
and see if that helps.

[HugeLunatic]

The use of a single ftp for all dining chairs, and other similar resources, I think is good. Why have duplicates?

In the case of these dining chairs, the footprint was never changed. In fact in some of them they didn't include the ftpt resource at all. The issue in this case isn't altered resources.

The chairs will revert to one tile after a sims uses them, but then on game load again they become two tile.

I've attached a pic of the chairDinning_ftp, which is the footprint used by the game for all dining chairs. This one does not contain the routing positions, that is another ftpt resource that is specific for each dining chair.

What the game appears to be doing with custom dining chairs is taking the center, feet, and back and creating one giant footprint instead of letting it only use the center for the footprint and the other two for the routing.

[Inge Jones]

Having done several tests now, I don't think this is cloner's "fault" as such. I am guessing EA had to put in a kludge of some sort to suppress this behaviour in their own chairs - probably comparing against a list of known objects and if it is one of these (known object list), reset the footprint. They used that sort of thing for sectionals in Sims2, which is why I had to write that patch. There was a far better way to do it, lol!

So I think for now this has to be regarded as unfixable from our point of view. Workarounds required.

We are, however, working on a Exclude Common Resources option to keep out things like the Burnt Objects image and this spare footprint for dining chairs.

[plasticbox]

I am guessing EA had to put in a kludge of some sort to suppress this behaviour in their own chairs - probably comparing against a list of known objects and if it is one of these (known object list), reset the footprint.
Thank you. Well that certainly sucks .. no custom chairs (without wonky footprints)!? Bleh. But at least we found out there's nothing we can do. (It's not possible to open store chairs to look at them, right? If it were maybe that would provide some insight .. since they probably don't release a patch every time they sell a new chair in the store)

Workarounds required.
What kind of workaround are you thinking of? The only thing I can imagine is ask the author of your favourite core mod to include an EA-like kludge in his thing .. if it were known how that works, which it probably isn't.

On the other hand, since we've had custom chairs for quite a while now and nobody ever complained, maybe it isn't all that important after all.



We are, however, working on a Exclude Common Resources option to keep out things like the Burnt Objects image and this spare footprint for dining chairs. That sounds great! =) Those duplicate resources make a huge difference in file size – I didn't even remove everything from mine, only the images, but even so it was about 80k at the end .. and the only other custom chair I looked at (HL's "Jules") is more than one MB.

I believe you can safely remove LITE resources too. I don't think anyone edits them at this point.

[Inge Jones]

The workaround I had in mind was get your sim to sit in the chair before trying to move it back against a wall. It's not like one often changes furniture position after purchase. The other idea would be a real fix lol, but not something for s3oc to implement.

Like you say, it's not really causing a problem for many people, but I needed to investigate anyway, because if it was a bug in s3oc it could have had more harmful ramifications.

[plasticbox]

The workaround I had in mind was get your sim to sit in the chair before trying to move it back against a wall.
That or just use moveobjects on?

Also, looking at HL's screenshot again (what she posted in chat yesterday), the footprint mainly gets in the way when putting the chair with its *front* side against something .. which makes it inaccessible anyway, except when "something" = a table, and in that case I believe the table slots come into play.

[Inge Jones]

I am closing this thread to prevent piggybacking. I don't think anyone has anything to add at this point.