Ta daaa! Yes, it now works, and thank you so much for figuring this out and messing with it! It's great to be able to finally use it.
Recolors: not a big problem, really. The icons in the catalog are of the Maxis game (as you'd expect with a true DR), but the recolors of the ball return (packing crates) actually do work. The only missing recolors are of the lane itself, and to be honest, the one I was really hoping for wasn't present in the original anyway: an invisible lane, so that no matter what surface you placed it on, it would blend in. Pretty sure Mortia said there was an invisible one, but no. There happened to be one that matched my DR grass texture, though. Anyhow... thanks again, Lunie.

Do Ctrl+right click on each of the thumbnails. This resets them.

There seems to only be one grass texture included in HL's DR. Maybe you want the grass to be invisible instead?

(Removed the file)

Yeah, that's the part I'm talking about. Having the lane boundaries invisible would be cool too, but it's the middle part that I was hoping would be transparent. The original had a couple wood ones, a dirt one maybe, and several grass colors, one of which just happened to be the same as my grass texture, which comes from some sort of global medieval DR package. Looking back at the original upload, I may have been mistaken about there being an invisible one... mortia merely said that it was envisioned as being placed outdoors. One of the screenshots shows a version where the lane very nearly matches the surrounding grass, unless you look very closely. I suppose I may have interpreted that as an invisible lane where the turf underneath showed through.

So... yours is a recolor, or should it replace Lunie's? (I replaced it)

Well, it's more like it vaporized the ground underneath.

Glad that works! I'm guessing it was originally cloned in SimPE with an EPs ticked that Mac doesn't have.

I'll poke at it a bit more to see about other ways to make the bowling lane have options to be invisible or remove mesh parts to work with more terrains.


And you can't just make it be invisible or remove the mesh, these things have floor cutouts so you see a void. So please don't make random edits and post without actually testing. Unsure why it has a cutout right now, but will research it further.

Okay I think I sorted everything out and have uploaded.

Wellp... there's still something a bit odd happening. I see all the different lane colors on the download page, but in my game there are now just two lane-floor recolors: a bright yellowish green, and a sort of putty color. Neither is transparent; however, the lane edging does now have an invisible option (at right in screenshot). The main thing is that it works; it's just a different color grass in the lane. I re-downloaded it just to make sure, and I have the same 4 files that are supposed to be in the download.

Not sure what the deal is... it looks fine in your screenshots.

I'm not sure if you have it loading after the cep, because yours shows grass and it should just show the terrain under it. That bright green could also be the outdoors shadows not working right, because this needs to load after the cep.

You're most likely right on the loading order. Although, I did put the "_EnableColorOptionsGMND.package" into a folder named "1aaa-LOAD_FIRST". When I arrange my downloads folder alphabetically, I notice that files starting with "-" appear first, followed by names in brackets, then numbers, all before letters, hence my adding a 1 before the aaa. But even if I left off the number 1, the aaa would still come before the skittles folder, whose name starts with "MTS"... right?

I will rename the "Load First" folder with a dash at the beginning, to see if that does the trick. If not, then perhaps on Macs, the load order is slightly different? I dunno. I have heard that Mac OS treats folders differently than Windows does... Should I just add a dash to the beginning of the file itself? We'll see what happens...

Never mind; the file itself already has _ at the beginning, which appears before - (being the capitalized version of - I guess). The folder is now named "_LOAD FIRST". Fingers and toes crossed...

Unless I'm completely mistaken, it's a standard setting for computers to autosort "aa" that way. The "aa" (or multiple "aaaa") gets treated as if they're after Z, because "aa" is the English way to spell ä or å (common around Northern Europe), and those come after Z in the alphabet.

Not entirely sure if the game does this, but I have noticed when file sorting that there's no point in hoping that "aa" and "aaa" will sort alongside "a" because they sort after Z. Best to stick to one "a" if you want it at the top.

Okayyy...
After re-naming the folder containing the CEP so it would load first (if that's all it takes on a Mac), it's still the same: a neon-green grass lane, and a grayish one. As you see in the screenshots, it's that way even on top of asphalt.
Another odd thing that I just noticed... there seems to be a bowling ball floating above the "king pin", that moves up and down with the invisible reset machinery. This only appears when in play mode, and it definitely wasn't there in Mortia's original. Not that it likely has anything to do with the recolor thing; just thought I'd point it out.

I completely missed the floating ball!? I'll poke at that to see what I did. lol

But could you test without the CEP in the folder? I'm wondering if the bhav edit to remove floor cutout is misbehaving for you. If it is I can just remove it for you and you'll have to use turf recolors. Also, you did remove all other bowling defaults right? The original one and the edited one simmer posted before?

Yours is the only one in there. I'll take out CEP to see what happens. But first I'll check around to make sure all the PARTS of CEP are where they should be... just a shot in the dark. I can't imagine going around and deleting those; my cc purges have been limited to the actual downloads folder. But I think a whole bunch of other stuff would be screwed up if those weren't in place. I've been having a few issues with Vovillia cars not having their wheels, but that's probably down to something else.

Sorry, I got distracted. This is with CEP removed, and I put it on top of various flooring/terrain just to be sure I wasn't seeing things.

PS - Ignore the patterns that make the gray lanes look like cobblestones... that's just the competing resolutions of my laptop screen and my phone camera. They're really just flat gray.

Okay so perhaps the game doesn't like the bhav edit. Fingers crossed this works? This is default turf, but if it works I can just easily add all the recolors as an option. It just means you won't be able to have an invisible floor.

Don't worry about being sidetracked...I've been so sidetracked with Minecraft anyway.

So... to me this looks the same as before, but... that's the default turf, eh? I've used the darker grass replacement for so long that everything else looks odd. There's one light green grass and one matte gray, with a whole bunch of wood-parts recolors, including an invisible edger, which is awesome, BTW. The update is that I did ctrl-rt-click on the the floor recolor options, and they switched from looking like invisible ones, to grassy. So at least that's not adding to the confusion. The bowling part works fine, and the eerily floating ball is now gone. Should I look up what grass DR I'm using so you can include that texture as a recolor option?

Actually, pretty sure the one I use was amongst Mortia's original recolors. But look - I've uploaded something, from my laptop! Bizarre. I think this must be the hood grass DR that I use, because... it's the only one I could find in my downloads. It looks like it's bundled together with the DR stone road? I don't know how these things work. But if you can pull it from there, somehow, I think that's the one. Like I said, Mortia included a couple Sunni recolors with the original, and I think it's probably the same one Sunni used for the terrain DR.

@chitownriverscum, can I ask what your settings are for "sim/object detail" and "texture detail" under graphics? If you use CC, it's best to have both set to "high". These can influence how CC shows up (wrong texture/mesh, or lower quality, depending on how the item was made). Could be it's messing with your textures.

It's a bit difficult to see from screenshots taken of the actual computer screen, because there are a lot of artefacts (Not sure about your version, but for newer Macs, it seems "Command + Shift + 3" takes a screenshot and saves it to the desktop)

The very bright green could potentially be caused by a TXMT setting?
The grass has "reflectionkitchenhighcontrast-envcube" which can cause a bit of shine, especially outside (but reflection and envcube is at 0 and it's not added in the file list, so it doesn't seem to be active).

Both those settings are on high.

As to screenshots, I can take them; I just can't upload them to MTS. Used to be able to, maybe a year ago. Whatever slight infrastructure upgrades Tashiketh was able to accomplish (on a site this old and complex) bumped the technology just high enough so that my browser - while fortunately still being able to connect to the site - can no longer utilize all of the features, and uploading images is one of them. So, rather than sending the images from computer to iPhone (via a convoluted process involving SFS - the two devices' Blueteeth aren't speaking to each other), I just take shots with my phone in portrait mode, which seems to give the truest color output. And then blur/sharpen/descreen/hike exposure as needed, to replicate what I'm seeing on my laptop. Still a process; still easier (for me) than shunting files back and forth. And the resulting images aren't bad. If I didn't think they communicated the necessary details, I wouldn't upload them.

Re; screenshot - Wow, that's totally weird. Maybe Tashiketh, in the upgrade process, fixed whatever was causing me issues with file uploads. I take it all back. Huzzah, I HATE posting from my phone. And, any photo editing that I need to do, it's ten times faster to do it on my laptop. I have an app called ArtStudio on my iPhone that sort of approximates Photoshop capabilities from twenty years ago or so. The filters aren't really there: the only one dealing with "noise" is to let you add it. Who's gonna want that, who's working with photos on their phone, for crying out loud?! Okay, enough of a sidetrack. I'm happy I can upload again. :D

Yea I didn't fix any of mortia's recolors since it can be made invisible, at least on windows. But it seems Mac doesn't like that bhav edited. So as long as you have the ugly green terrain and no gray floor anymore I think this is a success. I will make those terrain recolors too, so any other Mac users will have some options.

Well, the gray floor is still one of the colors, actually, in case that means something. But I'm not too bothered by it, and I can't begin to tell you how much I appreciate everything you've done here. Basically I just wanted to get it to where it looked like the Sims were bowling right on the grass, with no lane markers or anything - lawn bowling, essentially (although I realize that's not what lawn bowling actually looks like). If it could have been completely see-through, that would have been amazing, but I've learned to accept that the Mac game has a few limitations. The invisible edge is great; if that darker grass of Sunni's was there, it'd be super. There's one "indoor" recolor I'd like, if I could ask for it... it's a "weathered" wood look that I often use in medieval hoods. Smitty's distressed floorboards? Either that, or the Maxis default flagstone; I use that in castle settings. Although I expect most bowling-type games probably took place outdoors, back in the day. Whatever you feel like doing, I'll be happy with it. You rock.

The gray floor option is actually the invisible recolor. xD Keep it or not I guess? But I'll get those other recolors done in the next day or two.

So I think I got it sorted, give the Mac edit version a try and let me know how it goes. I didn't include the invisible bowling lane recolor. I recommend deleting anything you currently have, or at least moving it out of your downloads. I know the terrains aren't exactly matching with the bumpers invisible, but I can't find the right resource ( if it exists) to try to match it.

DING DING DING! We have a winner! On grass, I could place either of the two shown. In a medieval setting, there wouldn't likely be more than one on a lot (no 40-lane bowling alleys back then, I think), so I could place it alongside a fence, or building, and put a few shrubs around or what have you. With the wooden edges in place, the slightly brownish tinge on the one that most closely matches my grass DR could be seen as worn-down turf from heavy use. Who knows - Mortia may have even intended it as such. In any event, THANK YOU Lunie, for doing this. Maybe the PBK people would want this fix posted over there as well? - I can't be the ONLY Mac player out there. Or can I?