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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 23rd Oct 2006 at 7:23 AM

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 2, University, Nightlife, Open for Business, Pets, Seasons, Bon Voyage, Free Time, Apartment Life
Default Ground coverings look HORRIBLE in my game!
I hope this isn't already answered somewhere else, I looked and couldn't find it!

I made a custom ground covering using the HomeCrafter, and in the program it looks great! In the Sims 2 game itself, the graphics don't look right. Instead of the image scaling multiple times over the terrain, it just draws from the same image while enlarging the source image. The result I'm getting is a pixelated, grass-like mess. The same is happening with all of my ground coverings for that matter.

Could someone help me please? Thank you so much!
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retired moderator
#2 Old 23rd Oct 2006 at 7:47 AM
Well, ground cover is limited to a single tile. It will stretch whatever your texture is over a single game tile. So whatever image size you use will be stretched over what is, in game terms, about 3 feet/a meter square. Now, if you're using a 256x256 texture image for a ground cover, stretching that little pic over 3 feet square is gonna look bad - if you tried to make that same image into a 3 foot poster for your bedroom, it'd look pretty bad too.

You can, however, use larger images if you want more detail in your own creations. Try a 512x512 texture (or, well, any size as long as it's a square). You'll probably get a lot more detail that way. You do need to keep in mind that the larger the texture, the more strain on the game, so you don't want to bigger than 512... won't really add much detail and isn't needed. If you distribute your Homecrafter creations and they're not the standard template size though, please make sure to put a big, prominent notice that they won't work for Mac users. Same with any Homecrafter content - you can use a different size for more detail, but if it's not one of the template sizes, it won't work at all for Macs.

Now, if this is EVERYTHING in your game, not just ground cover, that's not a problem with the textures but your settings. Change your texture detail to high in your game's graphics settings.

Also, if you're getting it mainly on ground cover but -not- on other textures and floor coverings (floors are fine, even Maxis grass is a blurry mess) try shutting down all your other running programs and stuff before you run the game. I have an integrated Intel graphics chip with delusions that it's a card, and if I leave SimPE and/or Milkshape running when I load the game, my Maxis grass looks like someone applied a gaussian blur at an extremely high setting. Load with everything shut down and it's fine.

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Test Subject
Original Poster
#3 Old 23rd Oct 2006 at 7:51 AM
I see...thank you so much! I'm running the bare minimum graphics card, Nvidia GEForce 2 something, so it's probably time for a better one anyway. Thank you so much for the help!
Locked thread | Locked by: julianarosalia Reason: Solved
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