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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 29th Jul 2014 at 12:41 PM
Default Making Some Build Mode Objects Change With Seasons?
Okay, so I've played the sims games for well over a decade now, and I've only in the last 3-4 months started to get into some VERY lightweight modding (some "no-autonomous" mods, changing a few .xml values here and there, and making some things shift-able on walls, etc.). Because, all of the sudden, everything about this game I love is driving me crazy! Up to this point, some things I've done work, some things don't, some things work part of the time, and some things I've managed to do halfway but I can't figure out how to finish. Which is why I'm here, of course...

I'm not sure if this has been done, tried or asked about before, but I have searched over the past week, and I can't find anything with Google or on this site, so I'm going to ask here: Is it possible to make build mode objects like flowers, shrubs and trees, that will change with the seasons via the seasonal lot marker?

My specific reason for asking is that I would like to make a park or town square that has a large Christmas tree set up during the winter season, but not visible the rest of the year. But it has also occurred to me that I might like to use certain flowers or shrubs to decorate in spring/summer, but not in autumn/winter, and so on.

I thought that if I made the tree available in buy mode that it might work, so I managed to clone the tree I wanted and changed a few flags, and was thrilled to see it pop up in buy mode. (Yay! My first non-default-replacement cloned object!) BUT... when I placed this tree on an existing festival lot in the game, during winter mode, it didn't disappear/fade with all the other winter objects when I changed the season with the marker. So, there is obviously something that tells it, "You are a tree, and you don't disappear when the seasons change." (By the way, I already selected "false" for "tree" under buildcategoryflags, so I guess that's not the problem...?)

I am clearly missing something here, and it's probably something stupid-simple, like some other flag I haven't seen yet that needs to be set differently. At least that's what I'm hoping... Although Murphy's Law would dictate it's probably something waaaaaay beyond my extremely limited modding skills and level of understanding... But I've managed to tinker my way to this point, and I'm finding the process to be rather fun, so why turn back now, right?

Anyway, thank you to anyone who's taken the time to read this! If you have any answers, ideas or suggestions for me, or can point me in the direction of something, like a tutorial specific to this subject, that I might have overlooked, I would appreciate any help I can get!
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Instructor
#2 Old 3rd Aug 2014 at 4:19 AM
Hi, I have a small suggestion. But it might not help as this is only an idea.

Try changing your cloned shrubbery's OBJK in S3PE. Use "Edit OBJK" when you right-click the OBJK file inside the package of the cloned object. A popup window will show the script class of your cloned shrubbery. Change it to the script class of a decor object. To find one, you can clone a decor object (eg the magazine clutter) with S3OC, and then use "Edit OBJK" on that decor object and use its script class to replace that of the cloned shrubbery.

Good luck
Test Subject
Original Poster
#3 Old 8th Aug 2014 at 9:07 AM
Hi there!

Sorry I haven't gotten back to this thread in a couple days... I was having some unrelated problems with my computer; got that taken care of, and since then I've been working on a couple other different mods that are driving me crazy...

I did try your idea of replacing the tree's script class with that of a décor item. The first time I just added that to what I'd already done to the clone (I'd changed a whole bunch of flags), but had all sorts of crashing problems in buy mode- I couldn't even get through the catalog to the tree I'd modified. So, I got rid of that package, cloned the tree again, and ONLY changed the script class, nothing else. So the tree is still in the build mode catalog, right next to the original tree.

My initial finding is that it works! Placing the tree on a seasonal/festival lot during winter, then changing the season made the tree "disappear", which was my main goal. YAY! It still fades out when you bring the camera in close, so I'll have to do something about that so that the decorations I place on it don't look like they're floating when zoomed in, and I'm also trying to decide whether I want to put it in the buy catalog or just leave it where it is now. But those things should be pretty simple to figure out...

I'm still having a crashing issue, but now it's only when I try to go back to live mode after deleting a bunch of dead/barren plants in buy/build mode (as opposed to making my farmer run back and forth all day with the trash!). I've removed the "seasonal tree" from the mods folder and deleted caches and it's still crashing, so I don't think that's it. My other suspicion was a mod I'm working on to make all harvestable plants live longer, but I've removed that as well and cleared caches, and my game still crashes...

So I have a lot of testing and investigating and tweaking to do before these mods are ready, but I figured I would update my post anyway, just so you would know I read your post, and that your idea worked and was very helpful to me! I would never have guessed to replace the script class, and even if I had, I wouldn't have known how, so thank you very much! I can never find answers to specific questions about modding by searching; I just can't get the phrasing right or something! I wish I could find a tutorial (for dummies, written in layman terms) that explains what all of the different flags and entry boxes in S3PE and S3OC do.

I'll update this thread with my findings, if anyone is interested in how things go...
Instructor
#4 Old 8th Aug 2014 at 2:18 PM
Great to hear the news!
Well, as a general help on crashing, you may try renaming your current The Sims 3 folder to something else, and then load up the game to create a clean, all new folder for testing your mod package to see if it's the culprit, or to find out what's actually bugging your game.

Personally, I don't really mind objects fading out. I believe there's a flag in S3OC that controls whether an object fades but I'm not so sure. Good luck on your try!

There are never tutorials for everything. The blunt truth is that if people had made tutorials, they'd also have done the actual product, and then there's no point.

From your findings, it doesn't seem that it is possible to recategorize the working cloned trees into Buy Mode. I wouldn't mind them in Build Mode. It's probably better if you can rename the tree to differentiate it from normal trees.

One concern I now have is that I don't know if the trees will change according to the seasons (ie red leaves in Autumn, barren in Winter). If you're using trees for Christmas though, they're supposed to be evergreen, so it shouldn't matter. Again, you'll have to test it for yourself.

Good luck on your work!
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