#shader

bstu:

Howdy! I thought this might be a fun little thing to do, both for my own desire to document, and for anyone who wants to tune in.

I’m counting on this to be a lax “series”(?) which serves as a catalog of minor experiments, mod progress, and bloopers that occured during a set period of recreational modding.

And maybe it is also a little bit self-indulgent - but gosh darnit, I will be enthusiastic about my dorky hobby! :p

Item 1: Tests and Tribulations

Question: What happens when a Sim dies on a lot on which there is no physical place for a tombstone to spawn?

Answer: A tombstone… is not spawned! Verified by forcing an error and scouring the lot dump. This may lead to a Sim being in a “dead, linked, but no tombstone” state, without any mods (although the set up is a bit tedious - fill every tile with a diagonal wall or impassable object). Kinda neat!

Also, I made a statue out of Grim Reapers, pictured above.

Question: hey build/buy thumbnails are tiny can we like enlarge those

Answer: Yes!…ish.

Unfortunately I was unable to find the parameter (singular? ) that influence/s the grid layout within the UIScripts, meaning that (a) I just can’t see (b) It’s multiple variables making it more difficult to narrow down [c] This behaviour (that is, the automatic management of the geometry and populating of the grid) is exclusively executable-based so because of this all items overlap. :/

Pretty cool though how the actual thumbnails themselves adjust automagically to increased… ‘thumbnail… holder’… size. Also, I think the black transparency issue could be resolved with a properly sized UI images of the border to match. don’t mind the blue tearing that’s just me being silly

Item 2: Modunkles Spelunkles

This mod… is actually almost fully functional! Here is a video of it in action. Permitting your one-household Sims have a pool, they should no longer be doomed to a Death By Fire if noone extinguishes them… assuming they get there in time, and they’re happy with the risk of spreading the fire as they go :p

It’s not released yet, though, as I would like to add showers to the mix also, but that’s… tricky and likely to conflict with other mods out there. I also need to add compatibility for custom pool portals, and I still haven’t figured out the non-Destination version of this mod.

By the way - it seems to be impossible to add new functioning destination objects - I had to override a Maxis one! >:( (though this also seems like an excellent candidate for a plug-in framework to allow for multiple user mods. along with maybe showers).

Check out these bloopers though lol.

And dang, look at this Actual Flowchart I Made to try and figure out the code beforehand. It looks better than my thumbnails fafasfafsa

Speaking of a Plug-In Framework - I am working on one, at least for the mailbox, to make it easier for modders to do cool cross-compatible stuff with it. Planning to make something pretty in-depth with it!…eventually. Sims getting actually paid by the hour was a good start, but before I knew it I was rewriting half of CareerGlobals

so uh that’s on the backburner ._.;;

Did you know that there is a lot of redunancy concerning road textures in the game? It seems as though Maxis had more ambitious plans than what we received, likely due to being rushed [speculation]. With this we have quackery such as separate road textures/overlays being possible for different weather conditions, such as snow and hail, but in the full game this only being applied on road corners, but also almost none of the special textures are used.

With some tweaking of the shader, though, I manage to make it possible to have separate road textures for light snow/heavy snow weather [pictured heavy snow overlay below]:

This is not a road texture default - well, actually, for private testing purposes, I used textures from this creator’s defaults - but I have Voille’s True Neighbourhood Grass installed in the above screenshots, which comes with a road default. I also increased the fidelity of the appearance of the snow on the roads because it looks blurry af (no idea who thought 4 was a good value for number of passes over a cumulative <200 tiles in the unmodded game).

It is not yet released, though, because I want to (a) ensure compatibility with other popular shader mods and (b) create my own textures to redistribute. (although if anybody wants to create textures, feel free?? ) and [c] ‘c’ what can I do to make the neighbourhood coordinated with this system.

Really cool how this stub of a feature was just… there, though!

Oh, and a blooper from this set of tests.

Nothing more Christmassy than a blood-red sky. Then again, I suppose it is October :p

Item 3: Fin

At the end of this draft now, and dang, this was really fun to put together actually! Even if this documentation is largely insignificant in the grand scheme of things I might do more of these in the future. Would be fun if other creators tried it too, I think!

If you want to filter this tag, I will be using ‘bstu mod log’ for these sorts of post. Maybe I’ll make a dedicated page to these and post future ones privately? 

Happy Simming! <>

I’ll be enthusiastic to keep an eye on updates for the new snow-friendly road replacement! Just want to add that unfinished by Maxis road shader had discovered previously and have edited by @criquette-was-here​ in the Rural Charm set (crqtt_RuralCharm_WinterLotSkirtRoadDR_WIN.package fixes seasoning of lot skirt roads (corner and dead end pieces)). I hope this info is still usefull for your current work.