Hi! I hope I'm putting this in the correct place.

I've been trying (and failing) for several days to make a custom content neighborhood deco building light up at night. That's all I want to do. I'm just tired of 'city' buildings looking dead at night.

However, I've followed four different tutorials and all of them have failed. Criquettes didn't work. Charmful's video tutorial didn't work. I've genuinely been close to tears over this, wasted several days of my vacation on no results, and I have no idea what to do anymore. Is it just not possible with Legacy Sims 2?

I'm not even making my own custom content, I'm just recoloring cc buildings and wanting to make them light up. I saw a thread previous where someone was making these in batches, so it can't be that difficult? What am I missing?

Any help would be appreciated.

First of all, what do you mean by "not working"?
- Item showing up but no lights at night?
- Item not showing in catalog at all?
- Item showing but with wrong textures or mesh?
- Something else?

I doubt four tutorials "aren't working", since others have used them with success. Most likely you've skipped a step or two, or put a no-light file together with the new file, or not cloned the file properly, or some such. Possibly a setting you haven't turned on (check that other CC light-up buildings work for you).

Did you use other tutorials than these?
https://criquette-was-here.tumblr.c...up-at-night-yes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2aVHz4m5-E

Neighborhood deco has to be cloned, so make sure you're doing all of those steps (Criquette has a template file you can try, in the first link).

Uploading one of the files you're working on (preferably also knowing which file you cloned/recolored) can be of help to figure out what's wrong.

Hi!



So what I mean by 'not working' I mean by:

1 - when it has a texture, the texture won't switch or it's just the base game texture. I've tried cloning the template filing for this and it had the same effects all around. There's also the problem with - if I clone the template, it's only going to have one shape. That base building. There's no tutorial on changing the mesh/building shape/etc.

2 - When I tried to make a CC building switch textures at night (like in that youtube) it just never worked. There's some basic steps I think may have been left out of the video.

I used the scenographer to check a few times on the last one, and while it appeared exactly like in the video, it still didn't show up or switch at night.


I followed both tutorials to a 'T' - hence my frustration. I'll upload the file I've been working on so you can see. My goal is to have an array of basic buildings that light up, but not knowing what's going on, or what the actual method for making them work is, has been vexing me.


I attached the file I've been working on to hopefully give you an idea of what I might be missing. I reread old tutorials and saw people making these by the bushel, so I feel like there's some very basic small thing I'm not seeing.

Thank you for your patience!

1: Changing the mesh is similar to how you'd change a mesh for other objects, so that's likely why it's not covered in these quicker tutorials. It's "basic knowledge" you can find in other tutorials.
(The "cliff notes" - extract the GMDC as an OBJ or the full GMDC file, open it in a program that can read this filetype - Milkshape or Blender are the most common ones - and make sure the mesh subset/group names are the same, and if you useMilkshape, check that the "comments" are the same. Then export, and replace the file in SimPE. You can check out an object tutorial for details. Sometimes you can directly replace the GMDC with another, though you still have to make sure the subset/group names are the same as in the cloned file, and if not they have to be changed in the GMDC resource).

You may want to look at this tutorial/list of tips as well, if you're cloning the files (GUID info and such):
https://gardenofshadows.org.uk/gard...p?topic=19870.0
If a file isn't cloned properly and shares a GUID with another object, only one of them shows up because it overwrites the other.

---

One likely cause in your file(s?) is that the GMDC and SHPE aren't "talking".

The GMDC lists these subsets:
neighborhoodbuildingcom2_building
bneighborhoodbuildingcom2_building

The SHPE lists these subsets (which is the same subset name, and therefore overwrite each other)
neighborhoodbuildingcom2_building: [...]_day
neighborhoodbuildingcom2_building: [...]_night

Change the bottom one (night) in the SHPE to "bneighborhoodbuildingcom2_building" (as in, with a "b" in front) so it matches the GMDC, and I think it will work better.

Also click the "Fix TGI" button for the "night" textures, in the TXTR and TXMT. The instance is the same, which means they're overwriting each other/not showing properly (do the "Fix TGI" step when you clone a TXMT or TXTR, after changing the resource "filename", and make sure the "Instance" number changes, so they're standalone).

Any time you change the name of a subset or resource, or something isn't showing where it should show, you also need to check if it's written the same way wherever that name is referenced, and that you've done "Fix TGI", otherwise the game doesn't read the subset.

---

I think the tutorials assume you're already familiar with cloning meshes, editing texture resources, etc., so those steps aren't covered - Criquette's tutorial only shows what's different from making NH buildings, and assumes you've already done all the other steps and/or know how to edit them. Not sure about the video tutorial (haven't seen it).
Reading a plain from-scratch object tutorial, plus one that shows how to add subsets from scratch, would cover most of what you'd need.

Not sure which are the best object tutorials these days, but I'd assume most show how to replace the mesh.

https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=103379 (subsets, + making them recolorable, which can beskipped for hood deco)
https://hugelunatic.com/adding-recorable-subsets/ ("addon", mostly for recolorable subsets but can be useful later)

Hi again!


I took your advice and changed some things around - 'Fix TGi' seems to have been the ticket on making the scenography like it. I added a temporary 'night' texture to the file to tell them apart. I'm adding the file here for a second set of eyes, but I'll go test it in my game really quick. I hope this is what makes it stick!

(And thanks for the advice on the meshes!)

Here's hoping it works - BRB

Another tip is to check the "preview" (it's a button) in the GMDC. If everything is linked properly, the texture should show up on the object. If the object is grey or has other weird things happening, something is likely off.

UPDATE:



I owe you one, hugely. Behold my (albeit, bizarrely textured) results! Thank you so much!

Happy to help