I have two people using the pointed ear sliders mod on Vista, both having the same problem: the sliders show up in CAS but don't change the ear shape. I think both of them are running the game in windowed mode. For one of them, the sliders worked in CAS at first but the changed ears reverted to normal in the game, and after he/she made some attempts to fix the problem now they don't work in CAS either.

I thought it might be a lod problem since I only did morphs for lod0 and lod1, but I made a test package with lod2 and lod3 morphs and it didn't seem to help so far - only one person has tried it at this time.

My only other idea is that my Bblend file is incorrect - I see others that are constructed differently. I'll put together a test package for that too.

Any other ideas? Other people using this mod on Vista?

I run TS3 in Windowed mode on Vista and I've seen a similar issue with my test sliders - they'll work in CAS but sometimes wont work in game. Usually, however, changing the active household and back again does the trick. I don't think it's specifically a Vista issue though.

I run TS3 on Vista (Business edition, 32 bit on an HP Microtower 2420) and have no problem with the sliders - I have three elves in my game and their ears all look as they should at all times. Am running in fullscreen, not windowed mode.

I have Vista x64, run the game in Full Screen Mode, and do not have any issues.

So - three cases with this issue including Delphy, all on Vista in windowed mode. One of them says he tried running fullscreen and it made no difference. One more person said the sliders didn't show up in CAS at all, also on Vista.

Drat, I had a Vista laptop and gave it away because I hated the OS. Could use it for testing now, although this seems like an intermittent thing since several Vista people have said they have no problem. (Thanks!)

Thanks for the suggestion of changing households, Delphy.

It was intermittent for me too. Sometimes my height sliders would work fine, but other times they wouldn't - I never did pin it down.

Hello. I am one of the ones having problems with the sliders. I see them in the ears and head section and at one point even had them work, but I didn't even get to save my sim before they reverted back to normal. I did play on windowed and when I went to full screen it worked. But I haven't been able to get them to work since. I'm testing out the package that was made by Cmar who has been nice enough to answer my questions about her mod.

This is what it looks like in fullscreen mode and I am using the sliders. I am also using the test pack that Cmar has just made. I have cleared the caches and everything. Am I still doing something wrong? The breast sliders in the mouth cas are working fine as well as my other mods.

VERY odd - have you tried Delphy's solution, of switching to another household and then back?

Yes I have. I managed to get them to work by lowering my full screen, but they still will not appear in-game. I am currently doing so in right now.

Alright now here are the ears actually working in the cas sliders finally. I put it up on full screen and then windowed it because my screen keeps getting too dark for me to see.


Now this after I have loaded him into the game and switched house six times still no change...-_- I'm really starting to think this game doesn't like me...

It is hard to tell from other people's compressed .jpg screenshots, but when I reduce quality here (and I run Vista 64 windowed mode) I have always noted that CAS uses LOD0, but the game does not always.

Could this be related to the bone assignments in the LOD1 mesh? Because it is very possible that game play here is using a lower detail than CAS is.

This isn't a bone morph, it's all mesh and I haven't done anything to bone assignments in any lod. Do you think bones could affect some lods and not others?

I saw the same thing as you: CAS seems to always use lod0 but in game with Sim detail set to low lod1 is used in closeup and I could see the ears disappear when I zoomed out to lod2. (I'm planning to spend this weekend doing lod2 for all the age/gender morphs, for people running at low res/low Sim detail. Maybe lod3 too - but that's extremely low res for heads and I think only used in town view, plus the vertex numbering starts over again from 0. Just when I think I have this stuff figured out...)

Lady Kyuubi - is that an adult Sim in your screenshot? The test I did by adding lod2 and lod3 only affects full adults. Hopefully by the end of the week I'll have revised packages for all ages.

And you got the sliders working in CAS by lowering your full screen? You mean lowering the resolution? That's not what I would have expected, to say the least.

Cmar: Try doing a version that basically uses the LOD0 mesh for LOD1, 2 and 3 (ie identical meshes).

Cmar:

I am sorry I cannot help chase this down for you. But every non-morph LOD is a free-standing mesh in its own right. Changing LODs would give you a new set of VertexIDs and Assignment/Weight values... the skeleton should be the same, although it probably has it's own .skcon file with the same values as every other adult.

But I think that the difference is likely related to LOD changes and not Vista... looking for the problem as an issue in Vista is probably a red herring. You are seeing it on Vista because all the graphics drivers for are different from those on XP, and the game is sensing or using different values to decide when to downgrade the image detail.

At least that's my theory...

Well let me see if I can explain....
I'll start the game up in fullscreen for when I want to create a sim and then lower the entire full screen after setting the ears on their highest point. after the model of the sim loads back in from bringing back up the screen, the ears are there.

The screen shot was made using the regular sliders because I was trying random things to see what was going on. I still haven't figured it out why it does that and I don't know enough about modding to be of anymore help...-_-;; Sometimes they appear in game and then just vanish after about ten minutes...

I have to agree with Wes here - it's more likely a LOD/mesh/graphic detail issue

I agree it looks like a lod problem - but the test package I gave out had all 4 lods morphed for the adults, and it doesn't seem to have helped. I'll do lods 3 and 4, modify my Bblend file, retest and update the package and maybe something will work.

Delphy: Using lod0 morphs for all the lods would mean doing a default replacement of all the base head meshes, probably resulting in the other mesh-based adjustments not working right in the other lods. (Interesting thought, though - I have visions of that fiery explosion visible from space that Pescado's always talking about.)

Lady Kyuubi: The ears appear when you minimize the fullscreen and then bring it up again, and then disappear after a while? The only thing that occurs to me is that your graphics card is automatically lowering the detail as it heats up during play.

Huh....That would make sense...I'll try another method and see how that goes okay? I feel like I'm causing trouble...-_- Thank you again for taking the time to help.

Here's an updated version of the ear sliders, with lod 2 added for all ages except toddlers and with a new version of the Bblend.

Bblend: I used a different game Bblend file as a base, one with all the genders/ages listed in the index. That index most likely doesn't actually do anything, but who knows.

Lods - Wes in particular may find this interesting: While flailing away I discovered that the lod3 faces are format 6 meshes, with no vertex IDs. (So they don't start over from vertex 0 after all.) I further discovered that the lod2 toddler (pu) face mesh is a different type from any described in the wiki - it has 7 format items but instead of a vertex ID it has a Tagval. I have named this format 7x. Without vertex IDs I suspect none of these meshes can be morphed, since the BGEO files need the morph data pointers listed in order by vertex ID.

If the people having problems with the ears could try this version and let me know, I'd appreciate it. If it doesn't help - I'm out of ideas for now!

Cmar: Theres no such thing as a "format 7" item - the items are actually read depending on the FVF setup just prior to the vertex list. So it's entirely possible for a vertex to have only, say, tagval, and nothign else. You'd never see it in game, but it's certainly possible.

The C# code at the bottom of the GEOM page lists the correct way to read in the vertex entries.

Hey Cmar,

After all your effort to help us, sorry it took so long to get back in touch with you. Life came down hard for me and I haven't been in much of a gaming mood. I remembered last night when I couldn't sleep that you said you were going to try something else. I tried the new version without any success. Thanks for trying anyway. I have NO idea what could be the problem, and I don't think it's your mod. There just isn't any reason why it would work on one of our computers and not the other. Anyway, thanks for trying.

Metrophanes: No problem at all, and sorry to hear Real Life has been hard for you lately.

I really think it's something that happens only in some installations of Vista, and may never be figured out. Hopefully Win 7 will do better.

Faces and hair both use the TagVals, what for I am not quite sure except they do affect the darkness.

The format 7 business was from before all of the vertex formatting was decoded. You can (and I do) read files using a 'state' machine based on the FVF layout described in the file. As best I can tell, you could hand them back to the game reordered, but there are a finite number of export patterns that are needed.

There is a comment you can place in the MilkShape file, "HasTagVal: 1" that will make a type 7 output a TagVal and no VertexID. So while I could design an exporter that allowed infinite combinations to be built, few would understand it and no one would want to be bothered using all that detail. The way it is, you can get all the GEOM constructs that I know of, as they are used by the game, with the comments that are in there (yeah, like Ragu, it's in there).

And it is very possible that the lod3 files do not always morph. At some level of reduced detail, much of the morph changes would not be visible anyway.

Yes, I figure the game uses a limited set of formats, and it's useful to categorize them.

For the faces it does make sense that the lod3 is not meant to morph. Relatively big changes like pointed ears weren't intended, after all.