Glass Rail Stairs (modular) - an Extravagation of steps and rails

I'm very excited to share these staircases with you, because I realize now that Build mode stuff is why I really wanted to learn to mod the Sims 2 game. Also, I'm kinda giddy with exhilaration from how challenging yet seemingly easy this project was for me.



I kinda told the story of the making with the screenshot captions, so I wouldn't have to type too much here and bore you with details nobody cares about. Some things that need mentioning:
1. These are MODULAR staircases, and since they are custom, they need to be put into the game's script files to be recognized and enabled to work. With each stair file, I've included a text file designed to work with Numenor's Scriptorium to do just that. If you don't have the Scriptorium installed, I highly, highly recommend that you grab it and get it installed right away. If you still insist on doing it the old-fashioned way, there should be instructions on the download page. With the Scriptorium , all you have to do is click the Modular Stairs shortcut inside your Downloads folder and copy the text file into the folder that opens.
2. Since this whole extravagation of stairs is about variety of color and not clever step design, one thing I wanted to do was get a large variety of color combos with very few files. I'm proud that I was able to do this with only 3 files per stair style. I have Stonetower's Fallingwater Collection in my game, plus quite a few recolors of the stairs and fences, and they take up a HUGE chunk of my catalog space. It just doesn't make sense to me to have to create a whole new version of a staircase just to change one thing; there has to be a better way. I didn't want to make 10-20 stairs just to have lots of colors, so I tried something that I don't think has been done before. - to put all the recolors in the main stair package. Instead of making 10-20 stair packages, I made 156 MMATs. I eventually compromised and split them up to have two recolor packages, because trying to edit 156 MMAT files in one package was pretty hard on my eyes (and brain). Then I did the whole thing three more times, just to prove that yes, I am borderline insane with compulsion.


3. Each object can only have two recolorable subsets in the Sims 2, and I have FOUR subsets here that I wanted to recolor, so I had to fudge a little to get all the color combos I wanted. Basically, I gave up all hope of recoloring the steps and made four separate textures for each rail color to have multiple mixes of rail and piston colors. (The word "piston" I use arbitrarily, because that is what the pieces holding the glass in place look like to me. I've forgotten what they're really called.)
4. These stairs are recolorable and Open Underneath. Thanks to the method shared by Lord Darcy here , the bridge section can be walked under or have objects placed under it.
5. Steps are to be recolored using the Design Tool after placing them in your game and adding the rails. There are no color options when picking the stairs in catalog, but plenty with the Design Tool.

Some Technical info:
All textures are from Eaxis, manipulated in GIMP, EXCEPT for the metal textures for the pistons:
Brushed Copper by manoluv
Great circular brushed gold texture
Brushed Dark Steel
Brushed spin aluminum

In-game price - 51
Catalog Placement - Staircases>Connecting Stairs
Known issues:
When using the Design Tool to recolor the rails and glass in the Light, Dark, and Red stairs, there is no visual cue to what colors you are picking, since the default popup icon is of the steps and not the rails.

The only workaround I can offer at this time is to use the [boolprop testingcheatsenabled true] cheat to invoke debug mode. Then, when your mouse cursor hovers over the choices in the design tool, you can see the names of each file with the colors indicated more or less clearly.
I'm tryin to replace the step in the icon with the rail, but so far have just discovered new ways to crash the game. Any gurus out there who have suggestions oor solutions for this annoyance, I would love to hear from you.




Polygon Counts:
no railing - 88 (step-86, glass-2)
left railing - 370 (step-86, glass-48, rail-236)
left railing end - 386 (step-86, glass-298, rail-2)
left railing top -
right railing - 370 (step-86, glass-48, rail-236)
right railing end - 386 (step-86, glass-298, rail-2)
right railing top -294 (step-86, glass-2, rail-206)
railing - 654 (step-86, glass-96, rail-452)
railing end - 684 (step-86, glass-2, rail-596)
railing top - 500 v (step-86, glass-2, rail-412)

Additional Credits: SimPE - thanks to Quaxi and his minions
Tashiketh - for this great repository of information and kind souls that is MTS
Numenor - the CEP, the Scriptorium, scattered bits of help in various stair-related threads
Cyclonesue - stairtutorial
HugeLunatic- this helpful tutorial
Margierytka - gorgeous wallpapers in my screenshots