Posts Tagged ‘mail’

Hi guys,

Okay, so maybe I’m just being annoying now but I’m really pumped about the new SimExplorer. I have a couple of things to do tonight but will be sending it out to the test group later (thanks to everyone who donated their time). Things have been going swimmingly and I think I’m over my Sims slump. Writing tools for the game is fun again.

First off, this is a rewrite (using snippets of code) from the previous version. All memory bugs and whatnot are gone and performance has been increased quite a bit. There are also a lot of new features like integration with the Windows menu (right click on a file and you can do whatever you would normally do with Windows Explorer to that file, send to a mail recipient, copy/cut/paste, etc.). Also some more resources support has been added and the ability to browse any directory is there now.

Basically it should have all the features people have been wanting for sometime. Yeah, I know it’s been like a coons age (whatever that amounts to) getting this stuff done but you get what you pay for right?

Now it’s off to the other 10,000 things I have on my Sims TODO list as well as cracking into the new Sims 2 file formats. Seeya.

Some weeks ago someone named Lynn Drescher asked me by mail how to enable an object to be placed on water. After receiving a link to the website of Simophor I downloaded some objects that can be placed on water and started experimenting. As I didn’t remember to have seen something like water-placement in the Object Definition (OBJD) resource, I started the search using Script Station.

It turned out that the “init tree” subroutine is the most important piece in the puzzle. Whenever someone wants to use a certain object, this subroutine is called. It initialises some variables in the object, including some flag fields and placement flags. I compared several of these subroutines and came to some conclusions.

Using primitive 2, the “expression” primitive, the subroutine alters these things. The first parameter equals 42 decimal, the second is the flag index number, the third 2304 decimal (set flag or 0900 hex) or 2560 decimal (clear flag or 0A00 hex) and the fourth equals 1795 decimal. By setting or clearing this flags the properties of the objects are set. It seems that by default all flags are cleared.

For Placement, flag 1 indicates that an object can be placed on the floor and flag 2 that it can be placed on terrain (grass and such). When flag 3 is set the object can be placed on water. Then there are some unknowns. When flag 12 is set that means the object can be placed on a pool and flag 13 means it can only be placed on a pool tile. Of course, only setting flag 13 doesn’t mean you can place it on a pool tile: you need a combination of flags for that.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to determine the meaning of the other flags at this moment. It is possible that I find it later, but you’ll notice when I do. Of course any help from your side to determine these flags or the flags from flag fields 1 and 2 are appreciated very much.

Of course you’d like to know how to add these things to your favourite home-made object… what you need is Script Station, to which you can find a download link on the forums of Fusion Creations. You should then locate the “init tree” subroutine. Usually this is also the name of that subroutine. Alternative names are “init common” and such for multi-object IFF files. It goes beyond this document to find the exact subroutine, but usually it isn’t that tough to localize it. When you’ve opened the subroutine in Script Station you need to optimize the code (by pressing “Optimize”) and find the last line where it says “return TRUE” and “return FALSE” or “return ERROR“. Note the line number. Click “add line”. Double-click the new line. Click “Expert Edit”. Change “Function” to 2. Change “parameter 1” to 42 (decimal) in the SECOND edit box (which was “0” before changing). Change “parameter 2” to the flag number. Change “parameter 3” to 0900 (hexadecimal) for setting or 0A00 (hexadecimal) for clearing in the FIRST edit box (which was “0000” before changing). Change “parameter 4” to 1795 (decimal) in the second box. Finally, set “true” to the line number you noted and “false” to “FE”. Click OK to continue. When you press the optimisation button again you should see the new line just above the last line. If all goes right the translation will be something like “My placement Set Flag XX” or “My placement Clear Flags XX” with “XX” being the flag number. Well done, your object’s placement flags are now changed. Don’t forget to press OK some times and save the files manually (Script Station won’t warn you if you forget that).

Tom.

Hi folks.

Well this will be my first post at this blog…. I’m SO excited :-) lol….. well that’s not exactly true, I’ve done this before, but that was at bluetest. News today is that I’ve updated Animation Alchemist. First, I’ve copied the tutorial in the file. Second, the window can now resize. I hope you like it.

Some time ago, someone reported animations were missing in the long list. I’ve had a crash and lost my mail. Maybe that person can resend it? Thanks.

Well, that’s it for the post. Have some nice days with it. I’m working hard on IFF Pencil 2. Can’t give you a date, but it will be this year.

Tom.

Egads! Sorry about the delay in getting the news post to you. Somehow I pulled a Rip Van Winkle and ended up sleeping most of the night. Go figure. Normally I only sleep a few hours each night (sleep is an inconvenience and there’s no way to code when I’m in la la land) but for some reason I spent most of the night doing zzzzzzzz’s. Oh well.

@home is officially dead. I can’t retrieve anything now from it (I was going in through a backdoor that my ISP had not posted publically) but now it’s gone too. My personal website is toasted so @home really is gone (instead of the gone it claimed a few months ago). All the servers are shut off and there’s nobody home @home now. I need to update a few more pages here and a few others (like the TSR Family Album site) to reflect this so your mail to me may bounce.

Also a bunch of people emailed me yesterday saying that the news posts coming to their mailboxes was looking fine. I think it’s just my email client (Outlook Express, I know, the evil Microsoft Empire rides again) that’s doing all the nasties. Stupid program but it’s the only email client that lets me read newsgroups without having to launch another program. Laziness reigns supreme. If you’re not subscribed to get my boring news delivered to your email everyday, then fill out the form below and leave a pint of blood for DNA reference. Thanks!

I really hate Windows. I’ve been chugging along with my 98 box to handle my mail and HTML for quite some time now. Never had a problem. Until today. After seeing the dreaded blue screen of death, I rebooted into safe mode (didn’t have much choice). I was about to partition the machine up to use Linux. Something went wrong. Terribly wrong. Windows actually shut my machine down on boot. Turned the bloody thing right off! Never seen that before. Then of course the wonderful ‘emergency disk’ came out (hey, I deem an OS controlling electrical appliances an emergency) which showed me the true nature of my hard drive, describing it ways I’ve never seen before.

So that’s it for Mr. Gates and his evil machevellian (sp) software. I’m
now back up and running Linux quite nicely. So I’ve lost a few things in the transition (deep breath). I’ve basicallly lost my mail from the past couple of years so any knowledge you think I should have, isn’t there. My large collection of ‘todos’ for the various projects I’m working on are gone the way of the dodo. My phone numbers of people that enjoy talking to me is gone. ICQ is gone. etc, etc. I’ve also lost all my HTML pages from the half-dozen or so sites I maintain so updates on those is going to take a bit to get back and running.

On the happier side I did NOT loose my source code to any projects
(luckily I keep that on a laptop and backed up on CD-ROM) nor did I
loose the contents of my book, only a few chapters that are fresh in my head.

Sorry to ramble on but in case you think I’m having a bad day, I also
lost my mail file at work from the evil Lotus Notes demons. I tell ya,
Lucifer himself is behind all this and wants me to start fresh.