#simpe tutorial

By popular demand (I saw two people asking) I thought I would throw together a quick guide to using the road editor tool in the newest version of SimPE! You'll see that this is a very easy tool to use, and best of all, goof-proof. If you do mess up (you probably will) it's very, very easy to correct.

Very, very, very important to make a backup of your hood before you ever do any tinkering in SimPE! I also recommend practicing on a test hood you don't actively play in to get a feel for it before you do anything to your main hoods.

We're starting with a vanilla Strangetown. I would recommend going in your game and taking a nice overhead screenshot of the hood like this first to look at for reference of where everything is situated the way that you're used to looking at it.

2. Open SimPE, go to Tools> Neighbourhood> Neighbourhood Browser and open the hood you're wanting to work on. If you're not so familiar with SimPE, opening your hood can take some time. Touch nothing until it's loaded!

3. Once it's all loaded, from the Resource Tree list pick Neighbourhood Terrain Geometry (NHTG). Then you'll see one file populate the Resource List - click that. Make sure on the bottom that you have Plugin View tab selected.

4. Now you should see this map of your hood pop up! There are different things you can toggle, I like to check the Show Lots box when I'm editing the roads. Then click the Road Editor button on the right.

5. To be able to see better, I've pulled this Plugin View window up a bit - it may rearrange the Resource List and Resource Tree windows a bit to accommodate. You can also press the Zoom 2x button to see closer, and then you'll have to use the scroll bars to move around the map and the road editor tool.

6. The road editing tools here will be placed down in the same orientation as the map. So the two parallel roads running through Strangetown from this perspective are the vertical straight road pieces (top row, second from left).

When you select a road tool, above it will indicate which tool you have selected.

Also - I recommend having Handle Stop Signs ticked.

7. Once you have the correct type of road selected for the spot you're working on, simply click on the map - it lays it down one tile at a time. If you miss a spot like shown here, just fill it in.

8. If you want to create an intersection, first delete the section of road where the intersection will go.

9. Then choose the type of junction for the intersection you're making, and add that piece in. You'll see a red circle appear (unsure if this is because it's an intersection or because you have handle stop signs selected, but I recommend you do have that selected either way).

10. Once you're done making all your changes, click Close Editor.

11. This is the part where you save your changes! First click Commit in the top right of the editor. Then, File> Save!

12. Load your game to check! Looks pretty good with all those new roads!

13. However, we have indeed made some mistakes! Which were absolutely for illustrative purposes and not truly an accident.

14. Never fear! Simply reload the hood in SimPE - I've deleted the spot where the T-junction should go and added one in, and deleted where the road just ended abruptly and added a proper end piece.

I have not experimented with what happens if you try to build a road through hood deco - if you have, please let us know in the comments how that went!

I also have barely touched the terrain editing tools, so that's outside the scope of this tutorial.

This tutorial is somewhat raw and has no pictures. I don't see myself adding them in the foreseeable future, However, at the time, I wrote it as detailed as possible, so I won't forget. Hope it'll be helpful as it is. If not, I will make a proper edit in the future. So, if anyone's interested in that kind of thing, Head This Way:

I was snooping around on MTS and found that you asked about editing fitness increase/decrease to foods. Did you ever poke around and find out how to edit that for custom foods? I'm also on the hunt for the BHAV, lol

Should be "Fitness - Inc". You can click on the small arrow beside "Op-Code" on the right side of Plugin View and it should pull up lists of commands. Search thru Globals to find Fitness related stuff

A tip for those who have difficulty taking photos of their Sims entire family or a portrait to create a character sheet.

You just need simPe (and a backup of your 'hood, just to be safe, but isn't nothing dangerous)

Family previews

For the family photo, go in Documents > The Sims 2 > Your 'hood folder > Thumbnails > Open the N00x_Family Thumbnails.package with simPe.

Once opened, a list of image will load, right-click on the image you want to extract and click "extract". You can also extract ALL the previews of all the families at once (selecting all files together and then right click and clicking "extract")

Sims Thumbnails

For sim previews, however, open simPe > load your neighborhood > search for the sim from which you want to extract the thumbnail > open their character data. A list will appear, at the bottom of this there will be two .jpg files. One is all black, the other is the picture of your sim. Right-click on the file, and click "extract"

PRO: You won't have to go crazy taking photos in game and posing all the sims, and if you forget to take a photo of a sim you don't have to reopen the game. Just simPe.

so today i was talking to a buddy and i realize this is something nobody really tells you, and i mean, it’s 2022. simpe is weird asf and its hard to find support for it. so enjoy this little post

let’s say i was trying to relink skip broke’s character file or do something else that has a table of this format. 

it seems like the labels for anything just aren’t showing up, and well, that’s because the labels are written in black and the background of the tables are also black. this has an easy fix. you’ll just want to click extra>preferences... in the top left corner

click simpe settings on the sidebar of this window that pops up

on where it says theme, go to the dropdown menu and choose a theme that is not office2003. i use everett but it’s a matter of preference. enjoy :)

Hey, yeah so its actually the InTeen Check which is required for the Driving License mod that conflicts and not any actual files from the Driving License mod itself. @picknmixsims kindly privately told me what you need to do and that is to have the InTeen Check load before Parenthood, then edit any files in the Driving License mod (or any other mod that requires the InTeen Check) which make a call to BHAV 0x0722 and change them to 0x0672. To find these files, you can use Pick N Mix's BHAV Finder tool, as shown in the image below.

So from the image you can see that there are 2 BHAVs inside WH_DrivingLicence_Core_PrivateLessons_CarMods, 1 inside WH_DrivingLicense_Option_GrandfatherRights_(whichever version of this option you have if any) and 1 inside WH_DrivingLicense_Option_RiskySneakOut_NoNPCTeenDrivers if you use that optional file which I personally don't. So you need to open the files you have out of those 3 with SimPe and then open the BHAVs listed in the 'Name' Column in the Image above and then wherever you see 0x0722, click on it and change the OpCode to 0x0672 instead, commit and save. The picture below might help explain. And that should do it!

Probably something nobody asked for, but I found myself needing to know this information for a project. So, I figured it might help someone and I’ll need to refer to this tutorial once I release my upcoming flooring conversion so you all will be free to edit the scaling for my floors to your liking.

The Sims 2 Instructions:

Find the file you’d like to change the scaling for and open it in SimPE

Once open, select the TXMT file and find the line floorMaterialScaleU

Here you will change the Value under property to whatever scaling you want. Most of the time the scale will be 1, sometimes 2 or 5, but we’re free to do what we want. The numbers represent tiles, so if you want your floor texture to scale across 4x4 tiles instead of 1x1, you will write a 4 here. Repeat the same step for the line floorMaterialScaleV 

Hit the Commit button

Save the file

The Sims 4 Instructions:

Find the file you’d like to change the scaling for and open it in Sims4Studio

Once open, select the Warehouse tab and click the Material Definition

To the right, find the MaterialBlock property and open Edit Items for a new window

Select the line DiffuseUVScale and look at the Value lines to the right

Here you will change the [0] and [1] value to whatever scaling you want. Most of the time the scale will be 1 or 0.5, but we’re free to do what we want. If you want your floor texture to scale across 4x4 tiles instead of 1x1, you will write a 0.25 here. 1x1 tiles = 1, 2x2 tiles = 0.5, 4x4 = 0.25, 5x5 = 0.20, 8x8 = 0.125, etc. Make sure both [0] and [1] values are edited

Hit save, then cancel to close this Edit Items window

Save again