Design Tool question re. custom object COBJ/OBJD IDs

@pbox - I'd never seen that error before, so tried it in game with your notebook. At first glance that doesn't look like something generated by the Python scripting. It's not throwing an exception at all, so I'm not sure where exactly to look in the scripts to see what is going on. My guess is that it's being generated in the UI code, either the C code or the AS - I think probably this happens before it ever gets to Python, or possibly the UI is only throwing a 32-bit value to the Python and so it's forced to return an error back to the UI.

In short, I'm just not sure where to look, and it's quite possible the bug is in C where it's completely inaccessible to us, or the AS which is only slightly more accessible.

Hey guys, yes confirmed there is a problem here - I did not verify that it used to work but regardless it should be fixed. It's likely a problem on the C++ side. Will take a look as soon as I can, will keep you posted.

The design tool did not work with custom objects until Sims 4 Studio started to make clones that use the same group number and 32 bit instance numbers for the item's Object Definition and Object Catalog fields that EA objects have. Now that the mystery of why the design tool doesn't work for CC items is solved we're at your door asking for a better solution.

Ack! Sorry I totally forgot about this one, thanks for the reminder. I have determined the problem - should be relatively straightforward fix, although slightly more complicated that some of the other ones of this nature we've fixed. So may take a bit longer to get to you guys, will let you know when the fix is released.

For my testing I just used this object, chosen somewhat randomly from MTS. If you have any specific content you'd like me to test with, feel free to point me at it.

Thanks,
SGMS

This may be related or may be more of a feature suggestion: it would be very cool if the design tool would work independently of how items are sorted in the catalogue.

Right now it apparently goes by catalog thumbnail ID (and/or colour swatch entries as SGEugi states here), but that is sometimes a bit impractical: the catalogue would be a lot easier to manage if it were possible to give similar items the same ID and have them grouped together that way (like those four different wall-mounted wardrobe racks, or the oodles of collectibles that make debug mode a scrolling exercise), without getting Script Call Failed errors when the game attempts to design-tool between them even when they only have one material variant each (so there's nothing to design actually).

Would it be possible to make this work like:

- In the catalogue, show everything in the same thumb that has the same thumbnail ID and let the user select by clicking on the colour swatch (i.e. like it is now)

- On an object in world, only activate the design tool when *this MODL* has more than one material variant, and have it switch between the variants regardless of what thumb ID they have -- when there is only one variant, show the "Design Tool Cannot be used on this object" hovertip instead

?

Unless I'm overlooking something, that would seem quite logical .. and offer a lot more flexibility for CC creators and modders in regards to sorting stuff in the catalogue. The catalogue is already large by default, and when people download CC by the gigabyte on top of that, you can imagine that catalogue management becomes a bit of a concern .. right now the trend seems to be to give everything a separate thumb ID for no other reason than to avoid those Script Call Failed errors.

(Maybe the above would be possible by way of a script mod? Not sure ..)

Hi guys, as of today's patch (v1.10.57) the design tool will work with CC that use the entire 64 bits of the instance. Hoping you guys can now move back to using the full instance as that is much safer long term to avoid collisions. lmk if it gives you any problems.

@pbox - regarding your suggestion about changing the way the design tool determines how to populate itself. I'll take a look - if you have an example mod the exhibits the bad behavior that would help me more quickly identify what needs to change. Thanks.

@Number08, prior to the community's ability to make custom objects that worked with the design tool, and prior to Studio's ability to add swatches to an object recolor, many creators were making multiple object .packages and merging them into a single catalog entry by changing all the .package prototype ID's so they were the same.

Although it is nice to reduce catalog clutter by merging multiple similar items into the same catalog entry it also has the effect of making it so that the in-game design tool does not function correctly. Because no one could make CC that utilized the design tool anyway no one realized this so there is some amount of older CC, like this painting collection, out there that will not work correctly with the design tool.

Probably the easiest way to fix it for your own game would be to clone the first .package as custom content, export the images out of all the other .packages, add swatches to the new clone, and import the images in on the new swatches. Unless you renumbered each swatch with the original instance number in the object catalog and object definition fields any instance of the original paintings you had in your game would be removed when you removed the original painting .packages and you would need to replace them with the new painting clone. Optimally, you would let the creator of this cute collection know there's a problem and that it isn't difficult to fix it...especially if you don't mind a compulsory replacement of missing paintings when the original set is removed from the Mods folder. :)

@_orangemittens_ thank you for your help :smile:

Thanks for chiming in =) -- the last time I looked into the design tool stuff is quite a while ago, so my memory is kind of fuzzy, but I do remember I thought I was able to track down the colour variant switching to something in /tuning, which prompted this post over at mts Create (I wasnt able to get that decompiled, and somebody uploaded it then and explained how they got it to work). This was prompted by having made catalogue objects like the "No-Drop" cabinets in this upload post which only consist of a custom COBJ and OBJD, everything else is Maxis, and they were still throwing those Script Failed errors when attempting to design tool them. I also got exceptions left and right when I broke those catalogue objects in various ways (mostly to do with the group and instance I think, since that also plays a role in getting the module selection to work), most or all involving /tuning/instance_manager.py.

This was all in a much older game version though, I dont know whether that code is still the same and/or whether I'm even right about instance_manager.py having anything at all to do with the design tool. Just thought since you're a lot more Python literate, maybe you have poked at that issue before and would know more about it.

I don't think it's ever worked.