Posts Tagged ‘rumours’

Hi ho. Sorry I’ve been offline for a few days. ISP issues, playing catch-up with everything that’s going on and various other Life 1.0 issues got in the way. My apologies.

There has been quite a bit going on. So much so that I’m still sifting through it all. As most of you know, The Sims Vacation, the latest expansion pack, is now out and about. I have yet to get my hands on a copy and didn’t even know it was coming out so soon (I thought it was slated for May). So there are tons of things going on with that. I keep hearing rumours about various changes they’ve made and how the objects are different but like I said, I’m not sure what’s real and what’s not. We’ll see what happens and what changes were made. In the meantime, basically consider nothing SV compatible for now. I’ll see about unofficially “certifying” various programs and making sure they work with the latest pack and let you know about it. For the most part, things don’t change that much and I have heard people using the menu editor with SV objects but again, there are things that Maxis might have changed that I don’t know about yet without spending some time in investigation land. I’ll let you know.

Also another issue came up with blueprint that was typical of mob mentality. Basically someone ran some spyware detection software and claims blueprint (or the blueprint installer) says there is a trojan horse in it. Obviously this is completely false. All of my software has been out there for months and if anything like this was true, the world would have known about it long before this. The person also didn’t really have any hard evidence to prove their claim so it basically boiled down to a witchunt, with yours truely ready to be tied to the stake. For the love of all that is binary, please make sure you check all the facts before you go blurting them out to the world to see. The masses generally accept whatever you dish out to them, sight unseen and it can be damaging to someone. In my case, its water off a duck. It doesn’t bother me and even though there were various threads flying around, I know my software to be solid and true so I have nothing to worry about. However we tend to live in a “guilty until proven innocent” mode on the net, so you have to do some firefighting. In any case, if something like this comes up (not necessarily with me or my software) try to resolve the issue privately and make sure you have the full story before you go flying off the handle. It’s common sense, but more often than not people open their mouths without knowing everything. And yes, I’ll admit I can be that way too however we’re all growing and changing. Just be sensible and play nice.

Okay, I find this whole issue of cloning objects for use in the downtown section for Hot Date a little confusing so maybe this will clear things up.

1. If you clone an object, after installing Hot Date, that was part of the original Sims game (The Sims, Living Large, House Party or Hot Date) then the clone can show up in the downtown area. There are still some restrictions like beds and such, but cloned objects can be used downtown, given the right conditions. I’ve cloned the aquarium and it’s there. There have been a couple of reports of other objects that people cloned but they do not show up in the downtown area so if you come across one, please let me know via email as I’m trying to piece together what makes an object available for downtown.

2. Objects that were cloned prior to you installing Hot Date or objects cloned from objects downloaded from the web will not appear downtown. In other words, Hot Date doesn’t convert any existing objects except those shipped with the original game and/or expansion packs. It does convert/update the objects that are already installed if they’re part of the original game. That’s why Hot Date replaces and/or updates the ExpansionPakX.far files during the installation process.

At least that’s what I figure so far. So my two projects this weekend are:

1. Build a tool to allow pre-HD objects and user made objects from the web to be allowed downtown. Maxis says this can’t be done at this time but I think that’s just because you don’t have a tool to do it. There have been some rumours that they are making a tool or a means to do this, but I don’t know the specifics. The question would be, if they knew this was a problem, why didn’t they release the tool with the game (at least as a SimDay download).

2. Allow you to alter existing objects so they can be placed into the various new sub-catagories Hot Date offers. Still trying to figure out what governs the sub-catagories Hot Date offers but this will allow you to put your objects in groups instead of the “All” catagory, which isn’t very useful for object organization.

Hope that helps. Off to watch the meteor shower, away from the city.

As you may (or may not) know, Maxis is looking into a public release of Edith, their internal tool for editing objects in The Sims. Rumours abound about what Edith can and can’t do and what people want out of it. I’ve started a thread in the Edith forum here and in the General forum on TSR. Feel free to contribute and participate as you see fit.

What I want to know is what you expect it to do for you? What are you plans with it and how do you think you’ll use it. Please be as descriptive as possible in answering but you don’t have to give all your secrets away if you don’t want to. Also remember that you cannot create new animations, sounds, graphical states (drawgroups) with Edith. You can only edit and create behaviors that make use of existing ones as well as change values and create new functionality in objects (for example, restricting the use of an object by sex can be added to an object by creating some new behavior). Your answers, concerns and questions will help shape what comes out of Maxis.