Idiots

An "Idiot's Guide" to Sim file management

This is a brief version of something I've been writing for a friend who keeps forgetting what to do with the many things she downloads for the Sims - the result often being that she makes her game crash.

TO BEGIN WITH:

NOTHING ON THIS SITE WILL WORK WITH SIMS 2. IT NEVER WILL. So if you're trying to use anything you downloaded from this site in Sims 2, take it out of your game. It will not work. As I do not like Sims 2, I will never make content for it, nor will I convert my already existing items for it. If you want to do so for your own private use, fine, but this is an exception to my policies concerning cloning of my work. I do not want it remade for use with Sims 2.

Onward....

The Anatomy of a Sim:

There are three basic file types that make up the visible Sim:

.skn: The invisible wireframe 3D mesh skeleton that defines the shape and size of the Sim bodies, heads, and other accessories.

.bmp: A graphic image, commonly called a "skin," that gives the color and texture to those bodies, heads, and accessories. Without a skin, the mesh would be completely invisible.

.cmx: The "roadmap" that acts as a pointer between the game, the meshes, and ultimately the skins. Without a cmx to tell the game "look here and use this to do that," meshes and their related skins can't be seen and used. They'll just sit in the game, take up space, and slow down the game.

A typical Sim has six files determining their appearance, one each of the three file types for the body, and another three for the head. Some Sims have accessories that are three-dimensional and not simply drawn on; they will have extra skns and bmps for those accessories. Many of the Sims I design are of this type, to accommodate both my shortcomings as a meshmaker and the fact that the characters I design would typically have accessories (such as a crown or staff) that I do not want them to wear or carry at all times. Designing those things as accessories rather than drawing them onto the head or body or incorporating them into the main head or body mesh allows them to "take them off" or "put them aside" when they change clothing to go to bed or go swimming, without requiring them to change their normal everyday daytime clothes.

What To Do with the downloaded files:

Since the Sims I create are specific characters from various genres, there aren't going to be groups of light, dark, medium or fit, fat, skinny versions to choose from, which makes the installation process quite easy. First, note that all of the downloads are Zip files. These are compressed files and require a program such as WinZip to be decompressed (chances are, your computer already has some compression utility on it. If it doesn't, there are many freeware programs available on nonags and tucows that will get the job done). To get my characters into your game, follow these steps:

1. Download the file.

2. Unzip the file.

3. Read the "read me" txt file. In general, these usually contain copyright or credit information, but sometimes there are additional instructions that you should know about. And it's polite to take a few seconds to acknowledge the hard work of the people who made the skins and meshes.

4. Select all the other files (the skn, cmx, and bmps) and copy them into the Maxis/The Sims/GameData/Skins file of your game, UNLESS this is a buyable skin for use with later expansion packs (Hot Date and after). Those should be copied to the Maxis/The Sims/ExpansionShared/SkinsBuy folder of your game (at present, I have only two of these, Doc's and Clara's nightclothes).

It's always a good idea to copy rather than move new things when you put them into the game; that way, if something should go wrong or you don't like the way it looks, you can refer to the original download folder to see which files you should remove. In my own game, after I'm certain the skins or objects work and I want to keep then, I move the original download folders onto a CD for backup. You never know when a drive is going to fail or your system is going to crash and burn, and without backups, you may lose things you like. Sim sites come and go, and a lot of the objects and skins I enjoy most come from sources that no longer exist on the internet. Keeping backups of things you don't want to lose is a good computing practice in general, and the Sims is no exception.

Something to Note about Skins
or: "I tried to install or remove a skin, and now my game keeps crashing. What happened?"

One of several things:

1. You removed the bmp and the skn, but not the cmx. You can leave unused bmps and skns in your game without doing worse than slowing it down, but if you want to get a particular body or head type that you installed out of the game, you MUST make sure the corresponding cmx is removed. Whenever the game reads a cmx file, it's looking for something (most commonly body and head meshes, or animation files). If the something it's looking for isn't there when the game tries to look for it, the game will crash (or, in the case of animation files, give you the "no animations available" song and dance). If you have a multipart mesh and forgot to remove the skn and/or bmp for an accessory or two, that's okay, it's just unseen clutter without the cmx. Your game would run better if you DID remove those items, but they won't cause a crash.

2. The meshmaker made a mistake in constructing the cmx. I haven't done this myself, but I've downloaded meshes that did. If that should be the case, you can try to fix it yourself if you know your way around the inside of a cmx file, but if you don't, contact the person who made the mesh. Even if you do know how to fix it yourself, contacting them might bring a problem they didn't know about to their attention, so they can correct it.

3. You removed a Maxis game-installed skin. YOU may not like that skin and never use it, but the game does, and as far as I know, you just have to live with it. Many of these skins are in a different kind of file (a .far file, another kind of compressed file that the game uses), but some are not, and if you remove them and the game goes looking for them, it will crash. I've discovered through the misadventures of friends that this will happen if you only remove the offending bmp file. They're merrily going along, trying to make a Sim to put into the game, the game comes to the point in the rotation where that skin should have showed up, and crash city. It recently occurred to me that the solution to this problem is to make new bmp skins compatible with the body mesh and rename them to overwrite the ugly Maxis one; that way, when the game goes looking for a skin with that specific file name, there'll be something with the exact same name for it to find, but it won't look the way it did. That's another kettle of fish, though.

Another question: "Why does this head/body/accessory show up all pinkish?"

Answer: The person who made the bmps forgot to save them correctly. All bmp skin files must be set to a color depth of 256 colors. Most skinners design them at a 16 million color depth, to help get details more nicely, but sometimes forget to make the necessary changes before the final save. If you have an art program and know how to do it, you can fix this yourself by opening such files in it and resaving them. With certain exceptions, body skins should be 256x256 pixels at a 256 color depth; head skins should be 128x128 pixels at a 256 color depth. Accessories can be in different sizes, but they also need to be at a 256 color depth.

What Do I Do with These Things?

You just downloaded a mess of walls, floors, roofs, and objects. Where do you put them?

Wall (.wll) files go to Maxis/The Sims/GameData/Walls. You can make one extra level of directory folders inside the Walls folder, and the game will read them. It'll still sort them after its own byzantine fashion, but it will see them.

Floor (.flr) files go to Maxis/The Sims/GameData/Floors. You can make one extra level of directory folders here, too.

Roof (tiny bmp) files go to Maxis/The Sims/GameData/Roofs. I haven't ever tried to make subdirectories here.

Object (.iff) files can go to one of several places: Maxis/The Sims/Downloads (this will accept a level of subdirectories). Maxis/The Sims/GameData/Objects (I don't know if this will accept subdirectories; everything else in the GameData folder seems to, but...), or Maxis/The Sims/GameData/User Objects. My preference is to use the last one. Why? It not only allows a level of subdirectory folders so you can sort your files into different types, but the game doesn't put anything there. It DOES put things in the Downloads and Objects folders, and if you download a lot of objects, you might accidentally wind up deleting something the game needs to work properly while doing housekeeping on your own objects.

Question: "This hacked object I just downloaded has a LOT more files than the .iff. What do I do with them?"

Answer: Generally speaking, it's a good idea to read the Read Me file for hacked objects; most creators will have instructions there for how to install them in your game. If the hacker didn't include instructions for an object with many different files (iff, cmx, bcf, cfp, etc.), I would be leery of using it. To me, it's an indication of sloppiness that might very well be reflected in the object. However, if you really want to use it anyway, the basic rule of thumb is that all iff files go to whatever directory you're using for objects, and all the others (which are usually animation or behavior files) go into the Skins folder. Some behavior patches need to be elsewhere; refer to their instructions or the site you got it from for more information.

General Tip:

Keep the original downloads for all objects in a backup, just as I recommended for skins. Objects, especially hacked ones, are some of the most problematic additions to the game, either because they looked better on the download site than they do in the game, or because the hack somehow messes up the rest of the game. When it comes time to remove hacked items that include animation or behavior files, it'll be easier to know what you're looking for if you have the original reference, isolated in its own folder and intact.

That's it for now. Probably more in the future. Happy Simming!

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