| This page is intended as just additional info to the Another #%*& Sims Site. I am not going to repeat any of the tutorial matter here or explain it for you. I assume you have successfully added tiles to an object and have come across the problem laid out in this page. So now you have an object completed as per instructions on Another #%*& Sims Site. For purposes of explanation I am going to use a 3x3 Tile Rug Base. This is how I discovered the problem while making the bridges. You should have successfully assembled the new object and it looks similar to this.  The colourful numbers indicate the new tiles that were added to the base. In two of the views, the object looks fine as the above image. Once you rotate the object, it starts mirroring and rotating the sprites however and the images are swapped around! I then used T-mog to move the sprites around so that they were in the correct position, i.e. 1 was in the 1 position and the 3 was correct as well. No problem I thought! All FIXED! NOT! While the rug looked correct, the Z Buffers were a mess. I hear you say, still no problem?! Think again. Huge problem! Since the sprites are mirrored the Z Buffers are shared so you CANNOT fix just the one view! So I decided to make a new hacked rug in case I had accidentally made an error. Still no go but I did realise that there was a simple solution. When the rug as a whole was made by Maxis all the sprites move around and the correct one is inserted in the right tile. Due to the fact that we have now upset the balance and only added three new tiles the rotation of the three new tiles do not correspond! I discovered that the reason why the z buffers were all screwy was because I was forcing the sprites to exist in another position (i.e. moving them in T-mog) contrary to the position the object was instructing it to be. I had a thought that if I used Iff Pencil to tell the object to display a different sprite then I wouldn't have to move the sprites with T-mog. This worked and led to this mini tutorial. Please bear in mind that you MUST be methodical and as is stated on Another #%*& Sims Site, you must use names and numbers that you will be able to remember easily. My method is to use very different numbers to the original object. If the draw groups are 1201, 1301 then I use 2101 or 2901 (2902 and 2903 for the three tiles indicated above). Trust me on this! It will make your life MUCH easier. So this is what the object looks like when you rotate it.  Again I am assuming you understand Iff Pencil since you got to this point of a hacked object :) Go to the draw groups section of your object  Notice how I named my new tiles. 901, 902 and 903! Easy to remember and manipulate. At this point it may help to have T-mog open in conjunction with Iff Pencil. Note: You CANNOT save your object while T-mog is open! You will also get error messages on Iff Pencil side if T-mog is opened first. So I open up the object with Iff Pencil first AND THEN open up T-mog. You will need to close T-mog to save in Iff Pencil. The reason for T-mog is just so you can actually see the sprite in the T-mog window that you need to modify. It makes it a good reference if you get confused. Now you need to be very methodical and careful. The middle tile is fine because it mirrors in the same tile position so don't worry about it. Select one of the new outer tiles. I'm very systematic so I would first do dgrp 901 first. If you double click on it, a new window pops open showing you the actual sprites like this.  Remember that you need to change the view for all three zooms. So if you edit the North-East sprite then you need to do it for zoom 1 through 3. Click on the Properties Button and this window pops up.  In my object, 901 and 903 are the outer tiles and 902 is the middle tile, which we are leaving alone. What we are going to do is swap the sprites, which are mixed up. In the SPRITE ID section switch the 901 for the 903 (Numbers will be different according to what you called your new tiles). Do this for all three zooms and then select the 903 draw group and do the same procedure except you switch 903 with 901!. That's it! A hint at this point is that you will modify the SAME view for both draw groups! So if you change the North-East in draw group 901, then you will edit the same view in draw group 903. When you next view it in T-mog the two troublesome views are correct and all you need are minor adjustments to align the object. Remember to keep a back up of your object AT EACH successful modification! If you accidentally edit the wrong sprites it is easy to either revert to a previous back up or just change it back using the same method as above. When I did the bridge I accidentally made one sprite in the the last small zoom view a large sprite. I just went back and selected the correct small zoom in Iff Pencil. I hope this helps when you next encounter this problem when modifying objects. |
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