hey plastic box firstly theses are fab thank you for making them, i do have WA and HELS i read the other comments and so i ran off to test theses out for you i have placed a couple of links to some screen shots for you if that's OK with the mods,
i placed your counters into a basic maxis low rent home in sunset valley here is how they placed,
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v...creenshot-3.jpg

then i recoloured them to look like this,
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v...creenshot-4.jpg

i then sent my sim to the shops and then home and they were still fine i saved the game and quit and once again reloaded and everything was still the same as in the second screen shot, i also added theses counters to a second house the first counter turned black i recolored it before placing any others and all other counters following came out the same as the recolor, three of the top cupboards came out your texture and then the fourth i placed next to one of them and both counters turned black once i had recolored them all they stayed that way even after a restart of the game,
i colored with maxis basic textures 2 of which i had altered slightly

I love these! So simple! I like that there are no thingamajigs hanging on the doors or anywhere. I've been waiting for something like this. So good that you made cabinets as well

Thank you for the detailed feedback, Gemificus – this is very helpful =). Good to hear that you can recolour them and the black seems to be only on the initial objects.

Were both of the cabinets initially black, or was one black and the other one like in your screenshot? I'm asking because that white/yellowish combo looks pretty much like the fallback textures that the cabinet has in MY game – instead of being black.


What I believe is happening here is that your game (perhaps anything post 1.8, WA or not?) doesn't use the same fallback textures as my version, but plain black instead (except for, strangely, that one cabinet). I may or may not be able to make it use a fallback texture instead (or perhaps even the texture of the actual preset), but for that I think I'd have to look at a WA version of the original (the "Real Flat" counter). Otherwise I have no way of knowing what a WA game thinks it should use.

What I could also try is upload some presets as separate packages, I'd just need to figure out how to make them useable as packages .. if that would work, then people could download them and have one fugly default thumbnail to ignore and four pretty presets to use.


What I would *still* like to know is, can you (or some other WA user) try to select a counter (or cabinet, or island) from the catalogue and then wait a moment, until the rotating preview picture appears? The one on the left hand side of the description panel? Does that have my preset, or is it black as well? And if you wait for that preview and *then* place the object, is it also black or does it have the same texture as the preview?

This kind of stuff isn't really documented anywhere, particularly not when it comes to any differences between game versions (maybe graphics cards and in-game settings also play a role, who knows).


FYI, what happens in my own game is that it'll use my preset (pine and white, like in the laerge screenshot in post #1) for the swirly preview and for objects placed AFTER that preview appears (which is why it says in post #1 to wait for it). If I place it BEFORE that preview is done, it'll use

- a yellowish-and-white combination for the cabinet (apparently a fallback)
- the default colours of the first material of the original island for the island (dark wood with a dark marble top and metal doors)
- a really fugly yellowish-and-brown wood fallback texture for the counter

All of the objects are sorta "aware" which colours they *should* have – when I place other objects next to them, or if I go to CAST them, what I get is the pine-and-white combo .. it's just not being used immediately if I don't wait for the swirly.


Technical background:

The "normal" way to make presets is edit them in the OBJD (the "fifty billion unlabeled boxes" approach mentioned further upthreads, cmomoney has a tutorial on it if anyone wants to know the gory details). What's included in these objects is a separate XML resource instead – from what I can tell, that is used (in my game at least) for the swirly preview and any instances placed *after* that preview appears, and it's also what the objects "think" they look like, but it is not used for thumbnails and for any instances placed *before* the game is done with the swirly. This is why I keep asking about that stupid swirly.


Storymode background:

I think everyone's said it before but... here is my 2 simoleons.

Thank you so much. No more fiddling trying to make my island counters fit properly. You are awesome :D

I love plain and simple kitchen cabinets. These are absolutely great. Thanks

Very nice.

Thank you. You always make some very useable and lovely things

Pbox, the swirly is almost instantaneous in my game. It appears almost immediately and is solid black. Being sure to place your counters after its appearance still results in them being solid black and as I was trying to get across in my last post, I can't even recolor them without physically changing to a different texture choice from the drop down list first.

The recolor I did last night has held and I can use that instead of your preset to recolor easily. I saw your request for a WA user to clone the objects. I don't mod and don't have the object cloner installed on my machine. If another artist with WA and/or HELS could do this for you, it would be the surest way to be positive you get exactly what you are looking for. If they are busy and unable to do so, lmk. I'll download the object cloner and see if I can figure out how to provide what you need.

I think the cabinets are great and would like to see everyone be able to easily use them now and in the future. I LOVE the fade out feature of the top cabinets! I rarely use the EA ones.

Plasticbox, I have WA and I tried what you asked earlier. Unfortunately, it's stays black right through from Preview, through placement as you can see from the three images I attach.

Thank you, dolldrms1. I think once an object has the colours you want, there's no reason to worry that it'll revert – I've never seen an object spontaneously recolour itself nor have I heard any WA users mentioning that. And any presets you make yourself are stored in a different place (Documents folder, userPresets.package), not in the object, so those should be stable too no matter how wonky the actual object is =).

The difference we're looking at here is that the XML approach seems to work in the base game, but not in WA, since WA seems to refer to materials somehow .. differently. I guess right now the best thing WA users can do is recolour it once to make a preset they like, and continue to use that preset, like you did. I'll experiment some with constructing external presets (so that I could provide mine that way), but I know of no documentation about that so it'll take some testing on my side.

Thanks for your offer to do the cloning =) it's not a matter of life and death, so I'll wait a bit, maybe someone who already has all the stuff installed would be able to do it. I'll get back to you if it looks like it won't happen otherwise.

i have also just tested this and the rotation view is black for all three counter stiles although the puzzling thing is i am finding some of the top cupboards are placing with your original colours and some of them are not as in the first screencap i placed

Gemificus, I believe the difference might be that some are regular cabinets and some are corners, maybe? The meshes are identical so the difference isn't visible, but they're still different objects as far as the game is concerned.

If you still need these, any chance you can post the resource ids from S3OC. For some reason, I have quite a few of the "Real Flat" counters.

Ceixari, you would need to clone the MDLR ones (in the "Modular" menu – are you looking at the regular objects menu?) – those are

counter: 0xFD77BBD835D51E
island: 0x21BA67B6CC8FFD93
cabinet: 0xC1E182740735360A <-- note that in my version, this is *named* "cabinetIslandModernSuite", but is actually the wall-bound (one-sided) one .. normally "island" means double sided.

Thank you =)

beyond awesome! my new favorite counters/cabinets

After a quick skim through all the posts here I'm not sure if this has been mentioned, but I DO NOT have WA and the counters are black for me (even after waiting for them to swirl in preview).

I can easily recolor them and they look fantastic... Although, when I zoom out a bit, there are dividing lines between the counters. I zoom back in again, and they become seamless. Do you know about this? Does anyone else see this? It's not a big issue at all and I still love them, but plasticbox it seems as though you really focused on fixing all the little errors like that inherent in the EA countertops.

I have no other graphics issues in my game =)

Excellent work, very nice!

Gorgeous, Thank you!!

I wonder if losing the original textures on older downloads is a WA issue. I have had to delete alot of my older downloads cause the textures are black or silver and if I try to recolor my game crashes.

I haven't tried the counters yet cause I have not opened my game since downloading. I will be playing later tonight and try them out.

EDIT: I know this is not an older download, but the installation of WA may have messed up the base textures on lots of CCs. Maybe an explanation for me.

@emmejuice - Yes, I, too, see the dividing lines between the counters when zoomed out a bit. I wasn't sure if it was caused by the problems with the counter being black or not, so just didn't mention it. It isn't a deal breaker for me as the EA counters do this to some degree as well.

Actually, I just popped back in to see if I needed to download the S3OC after all but see that Ceixari has come to the rescue. I'll just continue to keep an eye on the thread just in case the thread is updated with new files.

Re. the "dividing lines": I see them on lots of stuff; I've always attributed that to the fact I have antialiasing turned off. I believe you should be able to see them on some of my screenshots. The meshes are precisely 1.000 tiles wide, if the game renders them with space in between there's nothing I can do.

lewisb40, I believe this *is* an "older download" as far as the game is concerned =). I use 1.8.25 and won't patch until EA release a patch that does something useful, so I'm a couple versions behind.

Can you point me at some of the "older downloads" that stopped working for you? Maybe there's some useful info in those threads.

In other news, I keep discovering new ways to break stuff and confuse the game, and I've had previously unseen error messages, but nothing useful so far. I wasn't able to find a difference between base game clones and the WA ones, either (but if there is no difference that's good to know too).

These are soooo cute. I love that the simplicity of the design makes them a bit retro too, depending upon the coloring (can be used for just about any era design from the 30's on up). Good job!

yay! thanky-you! I'm so glad they don't have a backsplash. that always bothers me about the EA ones and even some other CC ones i have. Thanks thanks thanks!

The following have certain items that the textures "broke" for me.

The lamp from the Paula set that is free by Mutske.

The round coffee table from MK stuff Bedroom Set, gosh, really loved this coffee table.

The textures on the Black Bedroom Set by 5npc. I was able to save the texture in the presets, but when I updated to 1.10/2.5 for HELS, (I don't have HELS), I lost the textures.

Also had issues with Hudy's Scarlet Kitchen. Crashed everytime I tried to CAST the corner pieces, even after downloading the fixed files. This was also after the HELS update.

I did contribute this to patches, cause the issue has baffled me.

Thank you for the links.

Two of these say they're made with TSRW; I've no idea how that compares. The other two don't say what they're made with, but they're too old to have been done with the QA release of S3OC (Feb 13th) that links counters properly (which would be the corner problem that that other kitchen has) ... I dunno what other linking issues they fixed since the changelogs are rather sparse. But in those cases you're probably right, they're old as in old, not just as in old patch version.


At least I haven't crashed anyone yet, or have I?


I'll probably have to give up on the presets issue for now. Whichever way I rename or relink or refix this, it always results in the same thing – when I reference the bog standard default ObjectRGBMask it's using the defaults of that (which is utterly useless since that way it doesn't even recognise any channels at all), when I reference my XML it's using the default one instead (correct overlays but the rest is just as broken), when I completely nuke everything in the OBJD it's using my preset in my game (1.8.25) and solid black in WA or equivalent, but is recolourable and doesn't crash or anything (for all I know).

So I guess that's the best compromise for now: WA/equivalent patch users (dunno which one that is), make a preset yourself and ignore the black thumbnail. I haven't found a way to package presets yet or I would upload mine – sims3pack export from my game fails with "Export Failed" (literally), repackaging from userPresets hasn't worked out so far. This may be an OS X issue; userPresets looks very garbled to me (could be that EA don't know how to properly write stuff in non-Windows).

Theoretically I could make a custom thumbnail for aesthetic reasons, but I'm not sure if that would be a good idea .. for WA people the actual object would still be black, which I believe is a lot more irritating than a black object WITH a black thumbnail.

I'll ask in the Create forums but I'm not holding my breath .. the only reference I found so far is one sentence in the S3OC changelogs ("gives the opportunity to edit presets, for those who know how").