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Phaenoh
Doing all the things, and *mostly* not failing.
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Original Poster
#1 Old 26th Jun 2010 at 5:31 AM Last edited by Phaenoh : 18th Oct 2011 at 11:33 PM.
Default Playground Mishaps
I just can't seem to win with this project. Every piece of it is having issues. I'm working on a playground set based on the wooden SSN swing, with that being the texture repository.

I took the ssn mesh and put it into a swing template Echo made for me so that it doesn't overwrite the basegame swing. I tried just making the ssn swing itself recolorable, but I couldn't get that to work. I have the swing functional, and recolorable, but when they get connected with another of itself, they revert back to the mesh package texture and are not recolorable when they are connected. What have I missed?

The next thing I was working on was monkey bars. When they overwrite the AL ones they work fine, but after giving them a new GUID they don't work. I figured that meant that it was a self-referencing item so I imported the playground globals and found some GUIDs in it. Looks like I'm going to have trouble with the 'Play on Playground' interaction. If that has to go to get the monkey bars to work I can accept that, but it would be nice if I could get all of the new things to 'play nice' with each other, if not, no big loss, I just want my thing to work and not overwrite. Another oddity with this one, (that I should be able to fix but just must be missing something simple right now) is making it designable. I got it repo'ed to the swings, but it lost its color enabled status, what did I screw up?

The slide barely got off the ground before it ran into problems. When I Fix Integrity, the slide no longer shows up in the catalog. When I change the GUID, it crashes my game. The slide is based off Jasana's slides so I really don't know what's going on inside it since I'm just remeshing it. I've never run into a situation where an object doesn't even show up in the catalog. Any suggestions?

I've got more for this set and I'm sure I'm going to run into more issues with it, so any and all help is greatly appreciated. My goal is starting to become 'create at least one thing in this set that I don't need help with' but it sadly isn't looking likely...
Attached files:
File Type: rar  Phaenoh_WoodenSwing.rar (509.8 KB, 14 downloads) - View custom content
File Type: rar  Phaenoh_WoodenMonkeyBars.rar (17.6 KB, 13 downloads) - View custom content
File Type: rar  Phaenoh_WoodenSlideShort.rar (140.6 KB, 15 downloads) - View custom content
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Echo
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#2 Old 26th Jun 2010 at 11:32 AM
Certainly sounds troublesome!

The swing recolourability was a problem even with the base-game swing. It actually *was* recolourable, but any time you attached another piece to it, it would revert. The guilty code is in a couple of places, the "Set Model" BHAV, and the "Connect Magic" BHAV. In both cases you're looking for the "Change Material" line therein. I don't know why they did it that way. EA developers are odd critters.

For the monkey bars, I don't have AL so I can't see that particular BHAV, but I think I can probably guess at the pattern. You can probably make it (and all AL clones) compatible with one another using a single BHAV global-override technique like the "dorm cook" one described in posts six and seven of this thread:
http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=396565

As for the slide, I notice that the thumbnail CRES seems to have some sort of corrupted practical node in it. I compared it to Jasana's, and where hers has a global reference in it pointing to the "phonewall_thumbnailShape_cres", yours is pointing to itself (apparently recursively?) at "Phaenoh.woodenslideshort_thumbnailshape_cres". Not quite sure what's going on there... But one way to preserve whatever-it-is would be to take your integrity-fixed model and import the original thumbnail CRES in over the top. Then just change its name back to "Phaenoh.woodenslideshort_thumbnailshape_cres" by hand and hit the "fix TGI" link from within the CRES view (to update the TGI only on that one file).
Phaenoh
Doing all the things, and *mostly* not failing.
retired moderator
Original Poster
#3 Old 26th Jun 2010 at 7:03 PM
Echo, I think you give me way too much credit. I found everything you are talking about, but I don't know how to fix any of it. What do I do with those slide BHAVs? I tried just skipping over those lines and bad stuff happens, so I figured that wasn't right. Am I to edit them somehow? BHAVs are still such a mystery to me, I just don't get them.

For the monkey bars, are you suggesting that I make a global-overide for the 'Play on Playground' interaction to include all of my new GUIDs? I think I could manage that. I've included a screenshot of what the playground imported globals look like. The one I've highlighted specifically searches for the GUIDs of all the playground objects. The others in the list search just for the original monkeybar GUID. I'm thinking I need to add my GUIDs to that list?

The slide I'm made a little progress on. I've managed to change the GUID without it crashing my game, so I think that's good. Then I tried doing a normal Fix Integrity and it crashed. Then I replaced the Cres like you said and it still crashed. That's the package I've included. Why is it crashing? I'm thinking something aside from that weird cres node is to blame at this point.
Screenshots
Attached files:
File Type: rar  Phaenoh_WoodenSlideShort.rar (140.2 KB, 9 downloads) - View custom content
Echo
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#4 Old 27th Jun 2010 at 4:17 AM
Could you perhaps be a little more specific about the "bad stuff" which happens in the swings?

For the monkey bars, basically yes. I was actually suggesting though, that rather than just adding your GUIDs into the global, you make the code check the fallback GUIDs. That way, anyone who clones the monkey bars (or otherwise sets the fallback GUID to the monkey bars GUID) would have their objects picked up correctly.

As for the slide... It's a strange one certainly. Nine and a half times out of ten, actual game crashes caused by object clones are due to either broken CRES or broken SHPE files. Most other things will just result in an invisible object. I'll have a bit of a poke around with it now.
Echo
Retired Duck
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#5 Old 27th Jun 2010 at 4:25 AM
Oh! Here we go...

Open up the Phaenoh.woodenslideshort_cres file.
In the blocklist dropdown, select the "thumbnailExtension" block

Click on the first (only) item in the items list. It currently says:
##0x1C050000!slidehill-playground-height1-Jasana-07.19.2008_thumbnailShape

You can edit that text in the "Name" text box on the right. Change it to
##0x1C050000!Phaenoh.woodenslideshort_thumbnailshape

Then try again.
Phaenoh
Doing all the things, and *mostly* not failing.
retired moderator
Original Poster
#6 Old 27th Jun 2010 at 7:48 AM
When I skipped over those lines in the swings the model didn't always change or update correctly, and they all still reverted back to the original package color. Tried a few different variations on that and it all ended with them reverting and still not being recolorable while connected.

As for the monkey bars, I hacked and slashed at anything that might be referencing the Playground Controller and managed to make all the CC disappear from my game. I'll try that trick again a bit more carefully later.

The slide is still crashing. I've fixed that cres thing you found, crashed the game, fixed integrity, crashed the game. Crashy crashy crashy. I really hope we can figure out what is wrong with this, I had plans to make at least 6 slides. Maybe the issue is just with the short slide, I'll try the other two lengths tomorrow and see how that goes.

My Look-out tower is coming along, though I'm having trouble removing the bathtub water from it, maybe I should give one of my simmies a bucket and have them start bailing.
Attached files:
File Type: rar  Phaenoh_WoodenSlideShort.rar (140.2 KB, 8 downloads) - View custom content
Echo
Retired Duck
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#7 Old 27th Jun 2010 at 11:18 AM
Well the good news is I've attached a working slide clone.

The bad news is, I have no idea why yours isn't working.

I took Jasana's original and did a rename/fix integrity by hand rather than with the automatic tool. I switched it across to your GUIDs, mesh and textures, and it shows up fine in game.

Is attached. Enjoy!
Attached files:
File Type: zip  Phaenoh_WoodenSlideShort_fixed.zip (145.3 KB, 15 downloads) - View custom content
Phaenoh
Doing all the things, and *mostly* not failing.
retired moderator
Original Poster
#8 Old 28th Jun 2010 at 2:43 AM
Well, I figured out why all my CC disappeared, somehow the 'Disable all CC' button got switched at startup. Lame.

Downloaded your slide version and you are right, it works brilliantly. I did notice that two of the GUIDs were the same so I switched the unimportant one. I'll try cloning this one to see if it will work for the short tube slide. This would be a pain if none of the six slides clones correctly (metal and tube, short, medium and long) .... Hurray! I now have 9 slides in my game all working, Jasana's 3 and my 6 new ones. I'll play with their meshes later, it's just good to know that I've got them and they are off the list.

Chainlink climbing ladder is progressing. Need to do some more mesh and texture tweaks to it, but that's pretty much the story of all my stuff so far. Right now I'm really just trying to get the coding working as it should. Rockwall ladder is working as well, both of them are disappearing as I zoom in, need to disable that feature. The rock wall animations work going up, but coming back down they are backwards, maybe there is a way to make stairs one-way?

Working on the climbing tower, it's looking good. Need to remove some of the rocks from the wall, shrink the metal on the squiggle, and fix the transparency issue with the chain ladder. This thing is super high poly, removing rocks and reworking that squiggle will help though. Very pleased with how this one is looking. Also, this object worked instantly whereas the monkey bars threw a fit. Maybe just yanking out all the 'play nice together playground' code will work for the monkey bars and won't be that terrible to be missing. Maybe we can completely break the bad code and rebuild a new controller? I can dream...

Most of the objects need to have their UV maps reworked but I'm waiting on that till the swing issue gets solved as that's planned to be my repo master. I'm thinking I'll need to redraw the textures as separate individual ones. Some bits need a slightly larger colored in area than one swing seat. Attached are my swings. If you can fix them to stop reverting and be recolorable while connected, that would be super awesome. Lee caught me earlier today and said that you had said that it was some EAxian fail and not my fault. Is this fixable?

This week I'm either going to tackle some stairs and fences or finish up the meshes for those slides. Would be awesome if I got both done before the weekend. Who knows, I don't have much time in the evenings to work, really need to start going to bed before midnight or 1, having a real job isn't fun in that respect. Anyways, progress pic ->
http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/...pg?t=1277689326
Attached files:
File Type: rar  Phaenoh_WoodPlayground-Swing-MASTER.rar (251.3 KB, 8 downloads) - View custom content
Echo
Retired Duck
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#9 Old 28th Jun 2010 at 1:00 PM Last edited by Echo : 28th Jun 2010 at 1:37 PM.
I would like to officially say that the swingset object is one of the oddest scenegraphs I've ever dealt with.

I haven't completely fixed it, but I've made a fair amount of headway. I'm attaching the latest in case you want to continue work on it.

It will still reset its colours when you join up two pieces of swing set, but you can now use the design tool on them again after they have been joined up. So you can still have joined swing sets with non-default textures.

I also made it base game compatible, it was going to require at least one (any) EP as it was.

I'll try and fix the last issue (the colours resetting) tomorrow, but it's my bed time now. (I have an idea of what to try next, but it'll take me a while to get through. I'm also a bit too tired to explain what I changed this evening, so that'll have to wait until tomorrow too.

The rest of the set looks brilliant! Can they slide down the pole?
Attached files:
File Type: zip  Phaenoh_WoodPlayground-Swing-MASTER-partialfix.zip (372.5 KB, 11 downloads) - View custom content
Phaenoh
Doing all the things, and *mostly* not failing.
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Original Poster
#10 Old 28th Jun 2010 at 11:30 PM
zomg i luv u. I could never do the things you do.

As for the climbing thing, yeah they can slide down the pole, that's standard from AL. I just remeshed the tower to be all nice and wood. The original one is some hideous brightly colored metal thing. I also added the cargo net, rock wall, and squiggle.
Echo
Retired Duck
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#11 Old 29th Jun 2010 at 10:50 AM
Alas, I give up. I have been defeated. I can't stop it from doing that thing where it resets the texture every time you put another piece next to it. Hopefully using the design tool after joining up the pieces will be enough.
Phaenoh
Doing all the things, and *mostly* not failing.
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Original Poster
#12 Old 29th Jun 2010 at 1:07 PM
Oh noes! A project that has defeated the great Echo?!?! The reset is slightly annoying, but if you've at least got the design tool working on it again, I can live with it and hopefully so can the downloaders.

I tried last night to get my slides working and I was running into that crash again. I stopped using Fix Integrity, but then my mesh doesn't show up. I was trying to add another subset to it, but now thinking on it, I can probably live with just one. The problem is that I want it to be repo'd to the swings, I don't think I can do that without doing a Fix Integrity. The metal slide is supposed to have the wood subset design enabled and the colors one would be nice, but doesn't need to be designable. The tube slides only need the colors subset linked and designable. What are my options? Is doing Fix Integrity by hand hard, and if not, how?
Echo
Retired Duck
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#13 Old 29th Jun 2010 at 2:46 PM
I know! Shocking! :O

It's objects like this which make me wish Numenor or Jasana were still around. They would have made it work.

A fix integrity by hand isn't hard, just tedious.

Whenever you add a new file, use the "Fix TGI" link inside the file to update the type/group/instance based on the filenames. Then once all your files are in place you just need to link them up like so:
http://modthesims.info/wiki.php?tit...he%20Scenegraph

If that's too much reading, then just make the changes up to the point where you would normally run a "Fix Integrity", and I can join them up for you.
Phaenoh
Doing all the things, and *mostly* not failing.
retired moderator
Original Poster
#14 Old 29th Jun 2010 at 6:04 PM
Well snap, that looks simple enough, I can do that. I've been able to fix a scenegraph for a while now, I can totally handle this.

Jasana is gone too? I didn't know she had left. I did notice that she hasn't uploaded anything in a while and I hadn't seen her posting, but I guess I just didn't put two and two together. That's sad. I wish they were still around too, without the super modders filling the top tier, the community feels like it has a hole in it to me. Btw, you are top tier in my book

Could I entice you into making a replacement Playground controller? I can supply you with the BHAVs/files/GUIDs and be your eyes/ears/hands/whatev if you need. Can't be that hard to break the LUA scripts and create a BHAV version, can it?
Phaenoh
Doing all the things, and *mostly* not failing.
retired moderator
Original Poster
#15 Old 30th Jun 2010 at 3:58 AM
zomg, so cool. I figured out how to finish off the metal slides. They all now have two subsets, only one of them being recolorable, linked to the swings, thumbnails are being generated correctly, and the meshes show up in game. I love it when stuff works.

On another productive note I have gone through and done the catalog names and descriptions for all the packages and I registered all the GUIDs with the SimPE site. For some reason my SimPE doesn't automatically pull my account so I have to do that stuff by hand now, kinda suck, is that easy to fix?
Phaenoh
Doing all the things, and *mostly* not failing.
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Original Poster
#16 Old 3rd Jul 2010 at 10:57 PM
Ok, I can not figure out why the climbing tower is flashing blue in the neighborhood but is fine in the lot, and why my monkey bars are still not designable. What have I missed?

Meanwhile I have gotten the tube slides finished off. That whole hassle was much easier the second time around.
Attached files:
File Type: rar  Phaenoh_WoodPlayground-ClimbTower.rar (65.4 KB, 11 downloads) - View custom content
File Type: rar  Phaenoh_WoodPlayground-MonkeyBars.rar (17.4 KB, 12 downloads) - View custom content
Echo
Retired Duck
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#17 Old 4th Jul 2010 at 3:47 AM
The problem with the tower is, I suspect, that your SHPE specifies that you have a LOD90, but the GMND doesn't list it.
There's a mini-tutorial for neighbourhood view here: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=195136
I can't really do much to test it though, because I don't have AL, but if you could post an unmodified clone of the tower I might be able to find what's gone wonky.

The monkeybars are missing the tsMaterialsMeshName in the GMND.
Phaenoh
Doing all the things, and *mostly* not failing.
retired moderator
Original Poster
#18 Old 5th Jul 2010 at 10:24 PM
Yeah for recolorable monkey bars! Can't believe I missed something that simple... :facepalm: The climbing tower fix wasn't hard either, the tutorial helped me figure out where the one wrong file name was, now it shows up nicely again.

I've been working on some modular stairs now and after downloading a couple of examples, I still can't figure out what I'm missing. I've made my neat little text file and the GUIDs are correctly placed between the two and lots of good stuff. Is there some magic with the package talking to the text file I don't have? I keep crashing my game on lot load. Not cool. HL, you about?

The other thing that is starting to creep up is animation. I've found a lovely little base object to start from, but I'd like to slow down the sim animation, is that possible? It also has another animation where a toddler is stepping on a step stool, can I tweak that animation to keep the kid on the floor?
Attached files:
File Type: rar  Phaenoh_WoodPlayground-WoodenSteps.rar (40.7 KB, 11 downloads) - View custom content
HugeLunatic
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#19 Old 5th Jul 2010 at 11:24 PM
Your stairs didn't crash my game at all, although I don't have your text file and created my own. I changed nothing in the package itself except I added a resource so your text/price shows in the catalog now. I tried the stairs with and without the railings. I also attached the text file I created. Maybe it was simply your text file. Not really sure.
Attached files:
File Type: rar  Stairs.rar (40.7 KB, 9 downloads) - View custom content
Phaenoh
Doing all the things, and *mostly* not failing.
retired moderator
Original Poster
#20 Old 6th Jul 2010 at 12:12 AM
GUID conflict for the lose... >.<

Also, productive happy day -> http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/...pg?t=1278370800
Echo
Retired Duck
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#21 Old 6th Jul 2010 at 10:07 AM
Very cool. Your sand pit needs sand in it.
Phaenoh
Doing all the things, and *mostly* not failing.
retired moderator
Original Poster
#22 Old 14th Jul 2010 at 5:24 AM
Ok, this is the craziest thing I've ever seen. I can not seem to get my object to keep the new GUID I'm assigning to it. I paste in the number, check update all, click update, click commit, and hit save and then I open a new resource and then come back to it and the number has reverted. How/why is this going on? I've tried not checking the box, I've tried not clicking update, I've tried all the combination I can think of and I can't get my number to stick. I had recloned the merry-go-round after the one I almost finished wouldn't show up in the catalog right after I gave it new GUID. That one managed to retain my numbers, but won't appear in the catalog. Is either one fixable?

Oh, and Echo, your sandbox thread will totally be linked to in my post, along with heavy credits for you in general. I couldn't do this without you.
Attached files:
File Type: rar  Phaenoh_WoodPlayground-GoRound-noGUID.rar (190.3 KB, 8 downloads) - View custom content
File Type: rar  Phaenoh_WoodPlayground-GoRound-notCatalog.rar (39.0 KB, 8 downloads) - View custom content
mustluvcatz
Former Hamster
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#23 Old 14th Jul 2010 at 6:28 AM
I copy/pasta'ed your GUIDs from the one that wouldn't show up in the catalog. They stuck. I even opened other files and went back to the "noGUID" .package to check. It showed up in the catalog in my game and didn't replace the game object.

I didn't change the name of your .rar, but this one does have GUIDs now.
Attached files:
File Type: rar  Phaenoh_WoodPlayground-GoRound-noGUID.rar (190.3 KB, 9 downloads) - View custom content
Description: GUIDs "stuck" on this one :)
Phaenoh
Doing all the things, and *mostly* not failing.
retired moderator
Original Poster
#24 Old 18th Jul 2010 at 5:52 AM
One day left! I might make it!

Currently I'm having trouble getting a cloned column to even show up in game. It was working until I changed the GUID, then it vanished. I've tried recloning it a couple of times and using different GUIDs but nothing works. I was thinking it would be a simple GUID conflict because with this huge set I've been running into them often enough, but no, that's not it.

Also having trouble figuring out why this animated flag sometimes is allowed to be placed on fence posts and sometimes not. Move_objects lets me do it, but I'd rather just have the thing always working in the first place.

Thirdly, I can't seem to get these two ladders to stop fading out when I zoom in. I looked around and found a couple of posts talking about that problem with BHAVS and I tried them, but they didn't work for me.
Attached files:
File Type: rar  Phaenoh_WoodPlayground-Column.rar (22.0 KB, 11 downloads) - View custom content
File Type: rar  Phaenoh_WoodPlayground-Flag.rar (64.9 KB, 9 downloads) - View custom content
File Type: rar  Phaenoh_WoodPlayground-Ladders.rar (488.0 KB, 9 downloads) - View custom content
Echo
Retired Duck
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#25 Old 18th Jul 2010 at 8:59 AM
The ladders are fading out because of line 6 in "Init - Common":
[prim 0x0002] Expression (My 0x0028 (flag field 2) Set Flag flag# Literal 0x0004 (Obstructs View))
You need to import this and all the other Init BHAVs which call it, then skip this line.

For the fence post thing, I'm not sure. You could try removing "allow object intersection" (it shouldn't be on for objects which go into slots) and adding "Set My allowed height flags (non standard)", but that's more speculation than anything.

I haven't got my game available to test at the moment, so I can't see if the column is showing up for me. I take it you mean vanished as in "not in the catalogue", rather than vanished "invisible when you place it"?
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