You are the wind beneath my wings.

@Chris Hatch,
Thank you for taking this on. I look forward to checking out the update. If you are still making changes, is it possible to fix this issue in the SimPE UI? I think it's not responsive to changes in font size in the OS, so unless I use the smallest possible font in Win 7, it cuts off words throughout like this... I know others have said they see this as well.

http://www.dee.email/OPEN/SimPics/SimPEwordscutoff.jpg



Not sure if this is the place to ask, but since we are mentioning this... I remember one tutorial that says "none" is best, but I have never seen any documentation that tells what the rest of them do or when you might want them. With all the changes in graphics in all these years, I'd like to check it out in more detail. Can someone point me toward more info on it or is the testing yet to be done?

Hi @Chris_Hatch,

Thank you for taking on support for SimPE. I downloaded your updated version 0.75.68 and overwrote the files in my Program Files directory.

Is it possible to fix the issue with 5 unknown Sim Descriptions appearing in the Resource List?

I mentioned it when Quaxi appeared to the forum at one point that there were always these 5 objects being counted in the list of Neighborhood characters. Your version omitted the fix Quaxi did back then here.

Their GUIDs are:

0x2C996F9C
Group 7F4C057E: [Object Data guid: 0x2C996F9C] NPC - Remote Control Car (0x0080) (C:\Program Files (x86)\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Mansion and Garden Stuff\TSData\Res\Objects\objects.package)

0x31946C3B
Group 7FAFAB15: [Object Data guid: 0x31946C3B] NPC - Bird (0x0080) (C:\Program Files (x86)\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Mansion and Garden Stuff\TSData\Res\Objects\objects.package)

0x50596292
Group 7F743D18: [Object Data guid: 0x50596292] NPC - Robot (0x0080) (C:\Program Files (x86)\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Mansion and Garden Stuff\TSData\Res\Objects\objects.package)

0x71B85E0D
Group 7F948CC3: [Object Data guid: 0x71B85E0D] NPCSkunkSkin (0x0080) (C:\Program Files (x86)\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Mansion and Garden Stuff\TSData\Res\Objects\objects.package)

0x7250E297
Group 7FD8E563: [Object Data guid: 0x7250E297] NPC - Penguin (0x0080) (C:\Program Files (x86)\EA GAMES\The Sims 2 Mansion and Garden Stuff\TSData\Res\Objects\objects.package)

I noticed your version has the same issue as the recent by Quaxi, copy/paste does not work fully for resource names. Selecting all text in a line (like the shpe) does not work.

d_dgjdhh
It's proving very difficult because even if I use Quaxi's recent version those NPCs do show up in my neighbourhood because in A&N they do have character descriptions so don't show as 'Unknown', in fact in A&N the NPCSkunkSkin which was never used is replaced with a Debbie Harry (Blondie) NPC so I wouldn't want her to not show up. I found out today (the hard way) that I have to configure SimPE not to recognise A&N to test it.

HugeLunatic
I have no idea, that's not a problem that I have ever experienced in any version of SimPe. I believe for the most part it's an action of Windows clipboard since you can copy and paste to and from a file outside of SimPe. Just what SimPE does with the pasted data and how it applies it to the file is part of SimPe's internal workings though. It is somewhere between difficult and impossible to diagnose a problem that I don't have, all I can do is examine the code to see if I notice something odd.

I understand not being able to fix issues you can't replicate. Just a quirk that doesn't exist in the old QA version I use.

Oh that's okay, what I mean is give those Unknown character files a name rather than just being listed as Unknown. I wasn't asking if you can remove them, just that they should be listed with something so that the user doesn't get alarmed they have those objects loaded (because those 5 unknowns came shipped with the game).

What I've seen from players is that if a character file is unknown, it could mean the user did something they were no supposed to a Sim in the game that caused the file to be shredded (such as deleting the Sims).

Or, it could also mean they player added custom content that has an NPC in it.

So if there were any unknowns, those unknowns should related to custom content NPCs or broken files. Not GUIDs related to shipped EA items.

That's a typical non-standard DPI scaling issue with Windows Forms-based UIs like SimPEs, on Windows 10 you can actually use virtual scaling in the compatibility properties to prevent such issues. There are also some other UI nastilities like black text colors used for panel backgrounds making actual _black_ text on them unreadable.

I fixed the latter for me some time ago based on the Sourceforge code (0.73 which I had to fix itself as it wasn't even compiling or running correctly, and missing PJSE stuff too), and I'd like to port that to the current source, but I cannot find it anywhere, did I miss a link in this thread?

I'd also try to spend some time to fix the DPI issues, adding a DPI awareness-declaring manifest may be enough, otherwise I'd edit especially broken dialogs manually if they're not too borked layout-wise (I remember someone layered panels over panels in 0.73, making them absolutely horrible to edit and I quickly lost interest in fixing that by hand).

Here's a dumb question. Would it possible to add keyboard shortcuts to SimPE so that ctrl+n creates a new file? And maybe something like F12 to bring up the Save As dialogue? I like using keyboard shortcuts and it annoys me that SimPE doesn't have ones for those two functions.

Yes, very easily, will already be in any future update. Some seemingly simple things take forever to get right but this just took two minutes to do and test.

I'm so glad you guys are doing this I sure thought SimPE was abandoned
Now my questions/ideas (hope I'm not offtopic)
Can something be done about the "window layout" I mean the resource list, wrapper, plugin view and all that in those little windows attached to the main program. I don't know about you but whenever I click on the little "pin" to dock/undock them they just disappear and can't be gotten back by just choosing them from the window menu. Trying to move them around (rearrange them) sometimes makes them disappear too. I know there's a "reset layout" button but maybe you could also add a "save/load layout" button so if a window dissappears again I could get back to a previous layout version instead of having to start all over again with not only windows but toolbars settings as well.

Could you add some batch editing options (if at all possible?) I would love an option to assign a specific build/buy category to more than one package at once (recategorizing) or clear all categories (for hiding them in the catalog). Also maybe something to batch-change/switch the GUID of MMATs in packages in case you wanna assign them too a different (similar) mesh or just fix a mistake where they were assigned wrongly.

What about a forum/section devoted only to SimPe, it looks like the original is down. It would be nice to have one also one that allows tutorials in other languages than english. You think MTS has a place for that?

Also I have SimPE set to german but a lot of it is still english, is there a way I can help with translating the rest of it?
Thank you all for all your work on this!

I know there is a very simple "Save / Load Profile" in the menues which basically copies settings files (including the layout) to a named folder and allows to restore them. It won't help you if your layout got borked (as in "empty / white panes") though.

And yeah, I cannot even move any tool window by dragging it s title bar with the mouse, it only works at rare random times. Something seems wrong with how the tool window library is used as I don't have such issues in a new dummy application using it.

A forum or section for SimPE would be awesome!

Not everything can be translated but a lot more than what has been can be, although German has more translations than any other language. If you can give me translations and if they can be included I'll include them.

I think the window layout, dockable tools is the worst and the best thing about SimPe. The versatility of being able to have the tools laid out where you want them versus the impossibility of actually getting them to be where you want them. You grab a tool and several arrows appear with no clue as to which arrow plops it where and usually it don't go where you expect. Once you do finally get it laid out the way you want save the profile as something like 'reset', then to fix the layout later you can just use that profile to start SimPe.
To use a profile save the profile with a relevant name like reset and create a new shortcut to SimPe.exe and add the switch -profile reset, rename the shortcut to include the profile name so you know what it is later. I love SimPe's profiles and have 16 profiles for different purposes.

It did some experimenting and the problem Sunrader pointed out of 'words being cut off' seems to be unique to version 75F which had a horrible UI, I tested with both 73 and 75.68 and there seems to be no problem.
I struck a problem with the new OFB job assignments today so I'll probably be updating the files after a bit more testing, tomorrow or the next day.

So there's not like a template or something where I could just see which translations are missing? I wouldn't see it as a priority since like you said most of it is translated already just thought to mention while here.


I thought the arrows are pretty self-explanatory and working fine for me IF they showed up and not just having the window dissappear completely. I agree it's generally a good feature. I use another program that uses arrows like that so I'm kinda used to them


I actually made a profile I just didn't figure out how to use it *lol* thanks for this explanation I will try it next time!

Thank you for taking this on you are awesome!

Bless you, Chris. It goes beyond my wildest hopes when starting this thread that someone, anyone would be able (willing!) to extract the complete source code...much less (I'm still pinching myself!) restart development/support for the program.

I'm amazed and grateful...as well as relieved, since I suspect that this means a lot of what I was going to try to do/archive is now not really necessary. (Or at worst, is no longer necessary in an urgent way.) Since---as I've been saying---these technical details are not my forte, I'm very personally appreciative of you taking this on, Chris, beyond how much I appreciate it as a member of the community! (Also if you were even the tiniest bit motivated by recognition that I was really wading here and hoping not to drown, thank you, lol.)

A question on behalf of anyone who might be installing version .68 or .69 on a fresh Windows machine: are DirectX 9, a current version of the .NET framework, and the NVIDIA DDS utilities still needed already installed on the system to install your versions? Or are they perhaps included in the installers for those versions? I can update the OP with that information, as well as adding links to your newly released versions.

Finally, I saw also that Chris and others in the thread have called for someplace where SimPE support can be provided. So I'll PM Chris directly and have that discussion with him!

This thread has been moved to Sims 2 Tools rather discussion, as this is the proper place for a collective list of a tool. Any discussion regarding it can be posted here. Anything asking for help with SimPE in either Help or Wcif will be moved here in the future. I've added categories to this forum so when posting users can specifically tag SimPE and you can filter by that category as well.

Thanks for the move, HugeLunatic, and the sticky, which makes the most sense now that it doesn't seem necessary to update the wiki with the info, since all of it's here, really!

For now, the SimPE category seems a bit incomplete in this forum---there are a number of threads with "SimPE" in their titles that don't have the category. But perhaps that's being worked on.

As far as DirectX 9, .NET and the NVIDIA DDS utilities it is the same as any other version of SimPE and those things are still required although NVIDIA DDS utilities aren't mandatory. Newer version of Windows, those after XP should already have the required DirectX and .NET but for XP it is only with service pack two that .NET can be download and installed on, there is no .NET available for the basic Windows XP and service pack two is no longer available.

When NVIDIA DDS utilities is not installed SimPE will show a link to it in the Extra -> Preferences.. -> System Folders, I just checked and that link is still valid.

I've seen those 'annoyances' suggestions and can only say that 'smoothing' one is ultimately DDS tools fault while Scripting Editor is, well.. something I would like to see improve in terms of accessibility and overall readability but it probably won't ever.
Overall I'm ok with what the program is (it's not completely creator friendly) but it lets you do almost anything you can with the game files, which is def better than programs of this caliber associated with later games.

Just my two cents.

I missed this comment until now, sorry. I really don't think this is the case, at least not for me, @Chris Hatch. I've had this problem for years now, not just since the new version. I understand if you can't duplicate it, but I have seen others comment that they had it before 75f as well. The one I still have on my computer that I know had it is marked 0_73_44.

Another thing I'd love to suggest (if it wasn't already) is a plugin for easier skin corelation and family-linking, as well as deleting duplicate entries after linking them.

I know there is a template for this but seeing how it's default skins and only 4 of them, and how the whole process of making a set of skins properly corelated requires changing two thousand values manually after also exporting and reimporting stuff in bodyshop, which is a really slow process in itself... creators that want more freedom to make truly amazing and diverse skins, while also being genetically functional would really appreciate this.

Ofc this probably isn't something easy to just code out of nowhere, but it def shouldn't be hard given that it's changing just two values in property set resources and one value in skin xml.

That probably can be done, the CPF Wrapper is very simple. It just reads those files as Key Value Pairs so it's a case getting it to go through all of loaded property sets and set the value of a particular named key. The skin tone xml has a different name (family) to the property set (skintone) for the skin GUID so it would have to be able to only do one type at a time.

If by skin correlation you mean skins with genetic hair, A&N has over 580 built in that I made so I know what a tedious task it can be. I use a hex editor on mine, that way I can use 'find and replace' to set all of the GUID values in the skintone keys, once set up it just takes seconds to do.

@Chris Hatch, @PacMani, SimPE is GPL, right? We should be able to see source code along with derivations? Can you point us to the source code, please? My daughter is a coder and we'd like to take a look at a few things.

All SimPE's source is for Microsoft VisualStudio 2005.
I added the source code for version 75.68.8 to the folder (http://simfileshare.net/folder/77372/) which is the non-T&A version of the source code that I currently have (version 75.68.7 was the last uploaded version).