Posts Tagged ‘flags’

Well it seems to a bit of bruhaha in the Sims community tonight, and perhaps I’m partially to blame.

For SimDay this week, Maxis released a patch for Hot Date. The patch, among other things, removes the ability to have visitor-enabled objects in the downtown section. Okay, take a step back. Awhile ago (pre-Hot Date) I released a program called MenuEditor that I thought was a nice addition to your Sims toolset. This was an enhancement over the “official” Maxis menu editor as it supported the various languages, advertisement values for objects (how loud an object asked Sims to come do something with it) and extra flags. Among these flags was the ability to enable visitors to interact with the object. At the time, nobody from Maxis said anything (and hasn’t yet to me) about it so who am I to know what was to come?

Skip ahead to the release of Hot Date. Most user created objects don’t show up in the downtown area (or more specifically they can’t be used by your Sims). Someone (not me) comes up with the idea to use the visitor flag on the objects and voila, objects work downtown. Of course with the release of Hot Date, Maxis made a slight adjustment to their file formats and the saving of objects through the menu editor didn’t always work and could potentially lead to errors in the game. At the time I had two options. First I could remove the functionality and put the new version up on the site but the damage would be done and people could get the old version from other sites or users. Second I could get more information about what changes happened and update the program so objects edited with it could be more “safe” for the game. Basically I did neither because the program was already out there and I couldn’t find out what changes were made to the file formats and didn’t have time to walk through them byte by byte and figure it out (call me lazy if you want).

So now the lastest patch from Maxis removes this functionality completely. Apparently (and this is second or third hand info so take it as you will) Maxis removed the ability for several reasons. The next expansion pack, The Sims Vacation, will allow most of this and they believe enabling it now will cause problems when folks go to install and run the pack. They also said that visitor enabled objects might cause runtime errors so removing it should solve most problems.

What this means. It means anything you downloaded or cloned previously that was visitor-enable will a) not show up at all or b) it will be there but you can’t do anything with it, you can’t even “View” the object. This includes Toliets, sinks, flowers, chairs, tables, beds, showers, etc.

According to some posts on the forums, you have a few options:

1. Don’t install the patch

2. Install the patch and do without custom objects downtown

3. Install the patch but remove from your downloads all clones of the pool cabana, eating booths and tables, clothing racks, food carts, Hot Date windows (like the bay window, that some had prior to this patch)

Feel free to vent your anger towards me if you choose. Originally the menu editor was never meant for what people were using it for (enabling objects downtown) because there was no downtown area when I created it. However it would be nice to update it to be compatible with Hot Date so I’ll see if I have time for this. With the patch I’m not sure if it’s worth the time and effort. Also please note, the Maxis object organizer lets you make objects available for purchase in the downtown area, but doesn’t enable the visitor flag so your cloned objects still cannot be used.

In any case, a bit of a mess and some people are screaming about it (rightly so if you spent hours and hours editing objects only to have all that wiped away). Well, I’ll leave it at that and let you be the judge.

Hey guys. It’s update day today. I’ve uploaded the new ObjectEditor program for you to use. It’s a stand-alone version of the ObjectEditor that will come with blueprint 2 (and basically the same as the one from blueprint 1). This gives you a preview of the object while you’re editing it and lets you edit most properties of an object. Remember the object must be a writable IFF file on your hard drive. It cannot edit files that are embedded in Far files. Use Far Edit to extract them first. The program will support loading and saving Hot Date objects but does not edit the categories or downtown flags. I’m still testing that part (and there are other programs out there to do that). I’ll be updating some other programs today if I get a chance to be HD compatible, like the cloner and viewer.

Please note that when you install this program it defaults to a new directory (not the blueprint one). These programs need to be installed to a separate directory as they’re all using various versions of the same DLL files. Welcome to DLL hell. At some point they’ll all be the same version and there won’t be any issues, but for now just install them to their own directories. Thanks.

Enjoy!

Everyone seems to be jumping on the bandwagon with getting tools out to support Hot Date so why would I be any exception. Below is a preview of my ObjectFiler program. Supports putting objects into the various category and sub-categories, making them available for the downtown and, as usual it’s multi-lingual and supports all the languages The Sims does. Sorry for the long loading times. Those dang animated GIF files just gobble up bandwidth don’t they?

PS If someone wants to provide me with the translations for the labels below, I’ll incorporate it into the release. The lists are loaded from the Sims files so they’re already translated, but the other ones are not so I can make those change with the language as well. Just send me an email with the English->[Your Language] translation as it’s listed below (Object List, Room Flags, etc.). Thanks!