Posts Tagged ‘tmog’

Man, some of you guys are pretty damn harsh and pretty damn cowardly. You sit behind the veil of secrecy with fake emails and nowhere websites spouting off how much I get off on playing with peoples emotions, getting hopes up and knocking them down. Too bad nobody really knows me (and I prefer to keep it that way with the number of whack jobs out there) because that’s just not me. Using the same logic you attack me with, I really have to wonder what you may (or may not) say about Don Hopkins. Don writes a great program that’s used by everyone and his brother to create new objects. Don goes stealth for over 3 years with Tmog and then shows up with a new version (not out yet, but it’s going through the EA grind) yet nobody is sending him hate letters or leaving comments on his website about it. Maybe that’s the style I should do. Lay quiet until it’s ready then *poof*, hope people come banging down my door.

I freely admit I don’t keep things up to date as much as I want to. That’s what happens with what I consider mature software. You get it, install it and use it and it works. The author spends what time he can adding new features and whatnot and releasing it. Having said that, I also admit that I haven’t spent the time I wanted in the last month or so getting the updates out there I wanted, but they’re coming. If that’s affecting someones schedule and they feel I’m stringing them along, grow up and stop coming here. Yes, there are updates to get the silly stuff working smoothly with the latest (and upcoming) expansion packs. Yes, blueprint was not the success or easy-to-use program I had hoped it to be. I’ve submitted that I failed on that front more times than I want to remember, but while I’m not proud of it I’m certainly not hiding behind it and making promises I don’t fufil.

Hey, I’m not going to snow anyone about how much time I put into writing The Sims tools. If you want regular updates, this isn’t the place. Check out The Sims Workshop as those guys are the true champions, who are putting their blood, sweat and tears into things on a daily basis. As well as all the other sites going strong over these years. I’ve already paid my dues and have the battle scars to show for it. A website that I pay for out of my own pocket with no funds coming from anyone for software that I don’t charge, a book that I’m not allowed to release to try to recoup any cost because of a machevellian legal entity of a mega-corporation, and a hobby (yes, hobby not business) that I try to find time to dedicate some hours to and keep things up to date.

Sometimes you guys make me want to pack up and stop wasting my time in this space. Well screw you. I’m here to stay, right or wrong, and it’s my right to have my soap box (unless you want to pay the bills around here, in which case I’ll dance to anyones tune if the price is right). For those of you that continue to amuse yourself (and trust me, you don’t amuse or intimidate me) by berating me, as I’ve said before, stop wasting peoples time with your comments and stop coming here.

Hi folks,

Just a quick update… I’ve fixed the color problems in Vacation. I hope it works. NOTE: it is still a beta, but it has been tested by some people with positive results. Since this many people are asking for it I decided to upload it anyway. Have fun!

Tom.

Note from Bil: The program is called “TransPatch” and can be found in the Other Software section of our programs. You apply it against a IFF file you clone using Tmog or ObjectCloner. Let Tom know how it works and if you find any problems.

Hi guys. Looks like things are falling into place here. Tom made his first (and hopefully not last) news post. All the tools are online (that are completed) and the magic elves are hard at work on all the others (if a page says the download is coming soon then it means just that, emailing me asking where you can download it gets you a heartfelt empty response but nothing more). So we’re settling in pretty good.

I mentioned that I got Vacation on the weekend (did a Toys’R'Us run looking for Buffy figures and ended up grabbing Vacation on the way) and I’ve been taking a look at the changes Maxis has made. It seems with each expansion pack since Living Large, the rules get tossed out the window with regards to standards in how objects and graphics work. If you take a peek at some of the floors and walls with SimExplorer, the whole idea of Far, Medium and Near is kind of bass ackward. Also there are some resources that just don’t make sense. In addition, the graphics fall into various catagories when trying to display them (and I suppose clone them). I guess I wouldn’t mind if it was consistant, but take a look at some of the vehicles from Vacation in SimExplorer (or Tmog) and you’ll see 6 tiles that are screwed up and 2 tiles that are perfectly fine. Huh? So various things to pour through there. I do want to get an update to some tools out as quickly as possible to correct some of these problems (like a new cloner program) so hang in there. Of course this is delaying my blueprint work and some other tools again. Juggling is so much fun. Seeya!

Hi guys. Thought I would just mention a couple things about cloning Vacation objects. I still haven’t got my hands on a copy of the new expansion pack (or any objects from it) so this is somewhat speculative at this point, but most people confirm it in the forums. It looks like Maxis might have changed some of the limitations there were in object files. Previously, up until Vacation, all sprite channels had to be 8bit (i.e. 256 colours). When you clone this, you basically copy the bytes (knowing that they’re a fixed size). So as long as the sprite channel doesn’t change size and you can handle any colour depth, all is good in Whoville. It looks like they’ve changed that with Vacation as some objects seem to have 32bit (16 million colours) in them. At the very least, some people are having some cloning problems with the tools out there. The images come out grainy or messed up. This might be the colour depth or perhaps some palette problems. In any case, I don’t see any updates for Tmog anytime soon on this. As soon as I can get my hands on an original Vacation object however, I’ll update my own cloning routines and put out a new stand-alone version of my ObjectCloner. This will support Vacation objects as well as adding multi-tile objects (I only put support for single tile objects in since the tool was meant to be used by blueprint which is single tile only). So watch for that soon as it’s on my short list now. I think this has some priority if people have to jump through hoops to clone some objects.

Greets! A couple of things to take care of today.

First off, I know the texture support in blueprint sucks (especially with imported 3D files, with blueprint primitives it’s not so bad) and even the texture packs available here sometimes don’t load. Trust me. I know! :) So the one thing that is highest priority on my list was to get textures of any shape, size and format working. This is done for the next release. So that, combined with the powerful 3D editing capabilities should make blueprint a well rounded tool.

There are still (and will continue to be) people that just scratch their heads at blueprint and claim Tmog is much easier to use. Well sure. What do you have to do in Tmog? Not much. Press a few buttons and import bitmaps. Besides going into the editor and shifting the tiles around to make sure they match, there’s really nothing much to do. I’m not knocking Tmog. It’s a great program and does what it was meant to. However, when you start mentioning zbuffers and editing palettes, people get the same deer-in-the-headlights look as they do with blueprint. And if you don’t edit your bitmaps with anything but Microsoft Paint (and who does that really?) then where is the simplicity in this? I’m just trying to debunk the idea that blueprint is complicated. Yes, it’s a 3D editor and you have to deal with 3 axes, fractional numbers and all that jazz but compared to any alternative, I think it’s pretty good. I’m still waiting for someone to show me a powerful 3D editor with all the bells and whistles which is easy to use. Sorry, I don’t mean to rant but my emails fill up daily with messages like “I ran blueprint and don’t know what to do”. I can’t help you there. There is no special “Create me a fantastic object” button that you can press and get art. I am lacking on tutorials and for that I’m guilty. There are a few around the net but they seem to be a little thin. Claw made an excellent tutorial for Tmog which weighed in a 20 pages or something (but that covered everything!) so something like that is needed for blueprint.

I’m just in the midst of changing the layout to the site. I’m bored with it and wanted to jazz it up a bit. I know, why mess with a good thing (is it a good thing?). Anyways, when I get time I’ll be doing that but in the meantime I have three goals to get completed with the site. First, a new Edith section. This will be a fairly full featured section that has screenshots and descriptions of the various things you can do in Edith. Second, blueprint tutorials. I keep putting these off until I get to the new version, but that’s still a ways off so I’ll probably hunker down and get the tutorials done toot sweet. I think this would be a good thing. Third is to beef up the developer section. Some new formats need to be discussed so I’ll be filling this area in with stuff I know and can expose. I think with the book coming, which will basically expose almost everything, I should be safe to start dumping out information. And don’t go jumping on my throat by holding all this stuff back. I spent months of working with Maxis and signing NDAs to get where I was. I wasn’t being selfish (or at least I hope I wasn’t), I just simply couldn’t say too much since I was learning all of that stuff myself. Before you get all giddy though, I won’t be dumping out the source code to blueprint or something. There is still a lot of things that I had to do to make things work. Anyways, I’ll update things as I go along and try to get you whatever information you need.

That’s about it. Off to work-by-day land. Seeya soon!