Last night I dug out my old Body Shop demo disk to see if there were any remnants from The Sims 2's development on it. While rummaging through the files I noticed that all of the material shaders for the game dated April 2004 were included on it. I compared them with the ones in the retail release, and most of them are quite different. I even experimented with replacing the existing ones with these older ones just as a quick test. The results were...interesting (and rather buggy, as expected). Floors and Sims didn't seem to work properly, but that might just be the result of my kludgy method of testing resulting in missing shaders.



There are a couple of interesting things in here. It seems to have the full coding for floor reflections, which was mostly stripped out of the retail version. It doesn't appear to display properly in its current state, though an early screenshot shows how it should look. Also a neat thing I noticed during my in-game test is that the terrain grid only appears around the cursor, SimCity 4-style, with the full grid only appearing when selecting a terrain tool. Pretty neat.

Unfortunately I don't have much knowledge about material shaders, or lighting, or how they interact at all. I figure I'll upload the .matshad files for anyone who might be interested to work with them. I wanted to test them out with just the base game, but I couldn't get AnyGameStarter to work. If anyone wants to give that a whirl, let me know how it goes.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/m73l3uu1q...terials.7z?dl=0

This is interesting, I will try this out. I'm in the process on imitating the look of TS2 beta:
http://prntscr.com/irc5vf

Though with shaders on (retail) you don't have the specular highlights that you have without.

I will look in to this! Thanks.

Edit: Reflection shaders do work without turning on shaders(?), so that way I have (high) specular highlights. But I want to have them with shaders on.
So I will try these files so maybe they have proper specular highlights and maybe the reflection shader is less laggy.

Do you have the full demo somewhere? I'm interested if the lighting files are there as well.

God bless you for doing this! I had seen these files in one of the demo versions but thought nothing of it... I'd love to have the old April 2004 lighting... It's more refined than the BG/EP lighting if you had to ask me...

@Bananensap

http://largedownloads.ea.com/pub/demos/Sims2/

More content and documentation here too:
http://largedownloads.ea.com/pub/misc/Sims2BodyShop/

Thank you @simsample !

Hmm, it seems that the lighting files themselves are not apparent in the body shop unfortunately.

EDIT:
I got my Sims 2 BG and it was scratched, luckily I fixed it with the toothpaste trick lol.
Anyhow, I get the same results with vanilla base game. Shaders for Sims isn't compatible with the basegame engine(or clothes?).

Though I find that the shininess of objects is really apparent with these shaders.
I'm going to test the lighting shaders on my UC game to see if it has any effect.

I modified the Materials.package file for the BG with all the shaders from Bodyshop. I could upload that for those who are interested.

how would I go about using this? I'd love to see the shininess for myself.

Place this in your EA Games\The Sims 2\Base\TSData\Res\Materials folder, make a backup of the original one.
https://ufile.io/nyl24

I got to add, this affects the lighting in a way but doesn't revert it to what it was in the beta (this is because they are shaders, no lighting files). It seems that the lighting is multiplied, so the lighting files (retail) has too high values.

I am totally interested in this topic - I loved how the TS2 beta looked; it would be awesome to have that replicated in our games now.... I won't be able to test this for myself (having serious laptop issues; I so need a new desktop), but am most definitely keeping an eye on this thread. Thank you Dorsal Axe for posting about your findings

I'm glad that this has proved of interest to people. Hopefully we might be able to integrate some aspects of these shaders into the other ones in the future. I guess a lot more investigation and experimentation will have to be done first.

Yes, I kinda of already some working shaders in my UC game, runs even smoother than with the newer shaders.

Normal shaders (unlit room):
http://prntscr.com/isz7ba

Beta shaders (unlit room):
http://prntscr.com/isz7zq

Don't mind the street, it's just that the beta shader reacts differently to light intensity. And that also explains the unlit room being more brighter.
Personally, I don't know which one I like more. I do like it that the unlit room has more natural light going in (beta shader), but I also like the more moody room (more shadowish) in the normal shader.

Note: For some reason one picture is more blurry than the other, nothing to do with shaders.
I'm using the radiance lighting mod as well, keep that in mind.

Edit:
Testing with more beta-yellowish lights:
http://prntscr.com/it080k

They modified the shaders a lot I think to fix this:
http://prntscr.com/itg7dw

That's why the shininess is gone at night in retail when any light casts on it, but it is shiny at any other time of the day.

https://prnt.sc/itznat

Got the shininess in my UC game with everything working! Phew! Lot's of trial and error with this one, kept me busy for a couple of days with my focus completely on this alone haha. Spent so many hours researching.
Eventually result tho! Happy

Edit: got the wall/floor lighting in as well (Floor reflection is from a external mod, still figuring out how to make the Maxis one work).

Hi all, good evening to you simmers

I've been tinkering all day with the .matshader files and I can safely say I got them to work! Unfortunately, they're obviously still very buggy, but I can't thank Dorsal enough for those files! Anyway, I wanted to report some of my observations using these shaders, but it may be biased because I am also using Gunmod's radiance lighting system. Let's get to it!

First off, a clear sign of error were the neighbourhood effects. I think it makes sense the only graphical problems were the effects because, the shaders being from a Body Shop demo disk, probably didn't have much except for sim related shaders. I know nothing about the workings of the shaders, so I could be spouting nonesense. I know a lot of people like pictures, so I'll warn you guys this'll be picture-heavy. I'll try to organise it as best as I can.



The neighbourhood was interesting. Strange glitches or bugs where the water ends and meets the terrain, and when I was watching cars drive around, the (what I believe to be the sky) was moving with the cars and creating a strange effect only in the water. The sky, however, is a dark grey.

CAS was also interesting. The lighting in the cas room had way too much exposure. I also had a run-in with a real error, which prompted me to reset the actor/sim, which repositioned the sim to the back of the wall. A bit funny, but a weird response. I don't know why it happened. It may or may not be because of the graphical issue with the torso, but when the sim was brought into the family section, the face glitched out as well. Weird!

So, as the sims and effects were the only real issues I was having with the matshaders, I ignored them as much as I could, and decided to test out lighting using windows, arches, doors, and lights. I noticed first off a very extreme problem with the overexposure of the floor tiles, road, and grass during daylight only. The same occurs if placing tiles on roof.



A corner tile of the lot never went away, either. I'm not sure why it's there. Here are a few interiors, unlit:



and a few interiors lit with different intensities and colours. My favourite thing about this is the clarity of dynamic lighting as seen by the couch (spoilers below). Generally these shaders are very reminiscent of The Sims 1 or The Sims: Bustin' Out for console. Of course, I assume these particular files aren't complete and are certainly not functional (or favourable during normal gameplay due to the effects and sim graphical errors).

Lit interiors:


Sim and floor errors:


I'm going to check this thread lots because it's such a cool idea, and honestly, I've been waiting impatiently for a Sims 2 alpha revival project or something like it, even if it is just the shaders and lighting system. I'm going to go play around some more with them and see if taking some of the files out will fix the errors...

cheers!

@kara which EP's etc are you running? I see you have a different version number. The graphical bugs on the floor and neighborhood are non existent in my game!

I have the same problem as @kara. I have All stuff and expansions. I putted material shaders files in The Sims Mansion and Garden stuff and game is really buggy.@Bananensap

Well I meant the purple things in neighbour and the weird grey stuff on the floor haha. The other ones are apparent in my game too. It's just that the floors are more light sensitive, it's not a bug

The light files we got with retail are meant to work with the shaders we got obviously, if we would have gotten the old light files from the beta, it would show properly. For the Sims themselfs, it's a more complicated story. These shader files are so different from the basegame, that it's just not compatible with the engine/meshes. And I'm not talking about 1 shader file, there are like 13 connected to eachother. Though I want to add, I lean more towards the meshes side. Since some clothes do show properly

Same goes for the shadows outside, it's just incompatible. It has nothing to do with missing shader files, maybe unfinished or bugged because it was still in development. But I think the engine we got is just more updated.

The only way you would have all shaders show properly is to merge them with the updated ones which is a hard task. Especially for the sims themselfs, I tried, a lot. I will continue researching though. Since although unfinished, I just like the lighting better as shown in mine and @kara 's picture.

Have a good day y'all! :D

This is creepy :D

Cool! You got the beta hair?

They are mine creations I mean conversions, you have link to my tumblr in my profile. I am amazed by the beta stuff and I would like to recreate it. Shame these are default replacments of some hairs that I found on internet because I don't know about The Sims 2 hairs. If you need hairs I have .obj files and textures that I used. I really would like if we recreate some parts of Beta game.

For now these are beta hairs that I replaced with some hairs. As I said I don't know with making hairs for The Sims 2. I tried one time and I needed to reinstall all game. Need to do all colors for all hairs.

@Bananensap How to merge it?

Lot's of research
You can't expect to just replace files and expect them to communicate properly with eachother, some things go missing or are named differently which make it not work at all. So, if you're a experienced coder with shaders it might go easier. Although with just some logical thinking we might be able to replace some shader files with not affecting anything, like the shininess that I did. Which took me hours upon hours... upon hours to figure out haha

Haahah soo nothing, I will wait I don't want to mess my game for second time :D

Good afternoon everyone :p

Hey Bananensap! I'm running version v1.8.0.80 with The Sims 2 Double Deluxe and the University EP, nothing else. That's super strange it's working totally fine for you. You're on UC? Do you have certain settings turned down? It could also be my laptop, but without these shaders, there are no graphical buggies in my game.

I should also note I placed the materials file uploaded by Bananensap in my University EP, and in the EP and SP in Double Deluxe (including the BG). I also placed the shaders uploaded by @Dorsal_Axe in every folder as well.