Show Maxis we want an official meshing and skinning program! Please join my Facebook group! http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/group.php?gid=158221390859092

Oh, they're well aware we want one. There've been desperate pleas for more modding tools since... well, The Sims - the very first one.

But why should they make us something that would let us make the things they want to sell us in expansion and stuff packs, and the store? And when the modding community already has tools to make meshes and textures and whatnot? And they would have to pay people to make it - when even a halfway decently powerful meshing program is a BIG job to create? Create a World is probably a modification of whatever they use to create worlds themelves. And the pattern tool, well, it's fun to play with, but it's not really creating any competition for EA. I just don't see a big company doing something that is not likely to increase their sales and will cost them quite a bit of time and money to produce.

HP is right. In spite of the fact that it's user-made content that really makes this game EA only saw how much money they could make selling stuff by following the example of pay sites that sprung up around the game back in S1 and persisted in S2 and S3. They then launched their "Store", in direct competition with people who want to make things for this game, so now there is no incentive for them to help the competition...either free or pay site. And that would be us...the community...we're their competition from their viewpoint.

Honestly, I'd be a lot less annoyed with EA if they had just made the game a little bit less of a modding rat-trap. It isn't that they haven't released "official" tools to mod with...it's the fact that in just about every way possible they've made the game so incredibly difficult to get a wedge into in terms of modding. Do I even need to mention Speed-Tree? It really is as if they're fighting the community at every step.

And the thing is, at least IMO, they didn't need to do that to make a profit selling their things. Downloaders are gonna download and there's no accounting for taste. EA's store would be a financial success whether or not they created a game that allowed us to add our own outside trees, love beds, spiral stairs, pose-boxes, and etc. without the massive struggle these things have now become. They just don't get it...the richer the game is the more people are gonna want to buy it. And user-made content makes the game richer. A single corporate source isn't gonna be able to meet the demand. If the demand isn't met people will wander off to some other game or stick with S2.

You've got a point....a large population of simmers in my country are still sticking to sims2...

yes tell them that

I think EA is willing to make tools; they just are in no hurry to do it. They released Create A World, about six months after the game was released and a month after the release of World of Adventures, and their pattern editor six months later, a month after Ambitions. That is, it appears they are on a schedule, much as they are with their expansion packs. It's probably all planned out.

Also, there was talk earlier this year about a stand alone version of Create A Sim. Haven't heard anymore about that. It might actually have been useful for testing out clothing, makeup, hairs and the like without loading the entire game.

In some ways, the development of programs like TSR Workshop and the CTU tool have actually reduced the pressure on EA to produce their own meshing and texturing program. It really does not make much sense for them to release something unless it is better than what is already available.


Besides, EA's whole schtick seems to be making things which are pretty user friendly and easy to use. Other programs may be more powerful and have more options, but you can be sure that an EA tool would be set up so even a 50 year old could figure it out. (I mean 12 year olds are far more comfortable with computer's aren't they?) So an EA tool is going to aim for the least common denominator.

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Sticking with the Sims 2 is not much of a threat. The Sims 2 is basically obsolete. However, it will remain in stores like Walmart and Target for as long as it is selling. Once sales at the big box stores plummet, it will vanish from the shelves, never to be seen again.

Not a frequent poster here, but I have spent a lot of time in game development. Most big producers already have the tools. If you guys think that they would use some overly complicated process and 4 converters to turn out a file that SOMETIMES works, you're mad. Look at Bethesda Softworks and their entire Elder Scrolls series. the TES construction set (renamed the GECK for fallout 3) is the same tool that was used to assemble the majority of the game. EA already has a streamlined tool to do this. It might need a facelift for the common user, but I assure you it is there. The problem is getting them to give t up and risk losing potential financial gain from their sims store.

The real overall problem is that whatever tool EA uses to create meshes is most likely not their own and so they can't redistribute it, also no matter how "streamlined" they have the process it's still challenging to mesh.

There's a difference between meshing tools, tools like Milkshape, Blender, and Maya, and modding tools, those like S3PE and TSRW. You create models with meshing tools and you put them into the game as useable items with modding tools. I didn't get the impression that the OP was asking for EA to release whatever meshing tool they're using to create models with as much as asking for what HP said...modding tools that allow you to get your items in-game with less fuss than is currently the situation.

Blender is powerful and free and Milkshape is user-friendly and fairly inexpensive. While meshing is challenging to learn there are lots of people in the Sims community (both S2 and S3) who are excellent meshers. So the overall problem isn't that there are no good meshing tools or that meshing itself is so much of a challenge that S3 modders have become discouraged. The overall problem is that EA took the Sim game concept, which in its S2 version is fairly amenable to modding, and wrapped it in layers of code and gimmickry that makes it far more hostile to mod. There are lots of examples of where creating something for S2 is fairly straightforward but has become just about impossible for most S3 creators.

The easiest illustration of this is outdoor foliage. Anyone who wants to create some for S2 can do so using the standard modding tools created by members of the community. If you want to make some for S3 you need to buy a program that has a price tag ranging in the thousands of dollars. Another illustration of this would be animated objects or objects that have animated sequences for Sims who use them. In S2, while it's definitely a learning curve, it is possible for creators to make items like this without learning to program...programmers have made tools that do the heavy lifting for you. In S3 this isn't the case, at least not so far, and not for the foreseeable future. Although tools are out there, you still need to learn programming to use them effectively. Since there aren't as many modders who know programming, meshing, *and* animating as there are who know one or the other, we don't have very many objects like this in S3 while S2 is filled with them.

Had EA made S3 as easy to mod as S2 is it should have been possible to convert a lot of those S2 trees and animated objects over to S3 so our game would be filled with them too by now. And, IMO, it's no coincidence that the playground of S3 is littered with the goodbye notes of many programmer-types who've tried to take this game on...it's a code-puzzle that seems to get worse the more you delve into it. They can't easily create tools for modders that take the coding out like the programmers for S2 were able to do.

I had heard that before S3's release EA approached prominent people in the S2 community feeling the situation out in terms of what creators/modders thought about features that made S2 moddable and features they thought could use tweaking or changing to make it easier to mod the game. As far as I can tell EA took that information and used it to create a game that is a barrier to modding instead of an invitation to mod. My guess is that this wasn't such a coincidence...more discouraged modders/creators means less user-made content to compete with the EA store.

That's the problem IMO...EA has taken an adversarial stance with its own modding community to further their new business model for the Sims franchise.

"And, IMO, it's no coincidence that the playground of S3 is littered with the goodbye notes of many programmer-types who've tried to take this game on...it's a code-puzzle that seems to get worse the more you delve into it."

I believe you may have a point orangemittens. I haven't seen any game play mods from excellent modders like Numenor, Eric (InSIMenator program from The Sims 2), Hunter240x, Ailias, Christianlov, Exnem, and many others for The Sims 3. Although, each person I've listed here has their own reasons why they haven't (at least to my knowledge) created any game play mods for The Sims 3 I can certain say, in my opinion, that their loss is very much felt.

I'd argue the opposite, at least as far as pure behavioural modding goes. Anyone who has ever done Object Oriented programming would be able to pick up TS3 modding in a very short period of time. It's even an off-the-shelf programming language! Compare that to TS2 BHAVs, which required potential modders to learn not only a new API, but a new syntax and an unusual programming paradigm. To a new modder approaching the game for the first time, programming TS3 is much simpler than programming TS2.

Of the modders you called out in your list terrie, at least four of them were well and truly gone from the community more than a year before TS3 was announced. They didn't leave because TS3 was too hard, they left before TS3 came out. There are some new TS3 modders though, some of whom are already quite notable... Kolipoki and Buzzler spring to mind, both of whom really found their element in TS3.

As for ... TS1 had, at most, two object modding tools. There was TMog, and right towards the very end of the life of the game there was Blueprint (which was ultimately discontinued). TS2 also had, at most, two object modding tools. There was SimPE, and there was DatGen (which was discontinued due to lack of interest). TS3 has... dozens of tools. There are the big two, S3PE and Workshop, both of which are still actively developed, but there are also niche tools, like Delphy's suite of specific modding tools. As far as tools go, you're more spoiled for choice as a TS3 modder than you were with either of its predecessors.

I like your enthusiasm Echo; it gives us who are limited in this area hope that we can expect many good things from the modding community. I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I have not heard of kolipoki or Buzzler and their work but I'm sure as modding expands for The Sims 3 their names will become commonplace. I still have my concerns about EA's cooperation in providing an official meshing program but, since simmers have been getting around these barriers since The Sims I've no doubt that the sims community will come up with something to make The Sims 3 more user friendly for creators and modders.

I wasn't referring to people who use the tools we have to do behavioral modding Echo...what you've said about new people in that arena is true Those people are taking good advantage of S3PE.

I'm talking about what the OP was talking about...tools that streamline the making of *meshes*. My specific examples were outdoor foliage and new animated objects. To that, at least with the tools from here, I could add beds and objects like bookcases that have geostates. These things are not easily put into the game. In the case of geostate items, beds, and outdoor foliage they cannot be put into the game and have them work right as it is right now. And, actually, when you get down to it most things aren't easily put into the game. The situation with clothes is even more acute than with objects. If you need an example of what I'm talking about try creating a new bookcase for S3 using the tool set here...see what you end up with in-game. Supposedly TSRW can make a bookcase but TSR hired themselves a programmer to create their tool...it wasn't just modders with a hobby that figured out that rat-trap.

TS1 and TS2 have/had the tools they need. With just the few tools they have people can create just about anything they want. Also, in TS3 the tools from here have been split up...instead of SimPE you have multiple stand-alone tools that do the same type of processing so the mere fact that there are more doesn't signify anything. What does signify something is that it takes a lot more effort to get a mesh of any type into the game and with the tools we have there are many types of object meshes we cannot get into the game at all. So, we may be spoiled for choice, as you say, but we aren't spoiled in terms of what we can actually do with the choices we have.

Don't get me wrong...I'm very grateful for the meshing tools we have in S3. I love the challenge of the game and I'm not looking for EA handouts But no...meshing for this game is not easier than S2 and no, the tools we have here don't allow us to put everything into the game that S2 meshers can put into S2. And I don't see that changing anytime soon. The issues the game has are very difficult and no one seems to be working on them right now.

I think its obvious that if EA had intended this game to be moddable, they would have included the tools to do it. Even if they didnt include the tools, someone could have helped out the community by posting a tutorial on how it was done. It wouldn't take very long to do and it would have saved a lot of time. Its no coincidence that every concievable moddable aspect of the game seems like layers upon layers of potential failure. I respect Echo's positive outlook and I am not aiming to rain down on anyone's parade here, but It looks like the modding community has lost support from EA.

I think the fact that we still haven't got an equivalent for either BodyShop or Homecrafter says quite a bit about EA's attitude toward modding TS3. (Unless we're counting the help that they allegedly gave to TSR in developing the Workshop?)

Also, a question, since the topic has been raised here...I'm guessing that it's not possible (or at least not feasible, for most people) to create outdoor foliage that behaves just like the foliage in the game, moving with the wind and such. What about static objects cloned from other types of items, though?

That is definitely possible. You can clone a statue, replace the mesh and the textures, and make it look like a tree, and place it in your sim's garden. But still, it won't be good as the 'real' trees provided by the game.

Ambular - The foliage in-game is created with the use of Speedtree, a program that has, iirc, a $10,000 usage license. So... no, not very likely that we'll be seeing nicely animated trees any time soon.

Oh... streak! Please don't dis us old fogies and bury us before we're dead! Some us actually know what a computer is and how to build them from scratch. Remember that the old fogy generation is the ones who basically created and marketed this industry. ;0) And besides, the huge market share - the ones who BUY Sims stuff, are old fogey women. Just ask my son. He was tech support at EA for Sims1 and the ladies would call and cry because their sims families were stuck and they hadn't saved their games. It was rather traumatic for him to have to calm them down.

I haven't delved into TS3 much because I had to rebuild my operating system and get new hardware... Yea, I'm an old fogey, IT geek but a broke, old fogey IT geek. lol.. Costs money to rebuild. lol I want to get back into creating meshes and stuff, I know how to do TS2, but now I want to work on TS3 stufz. :D

HP... Is there another product that is cheaper than speedtree.. $10,000 bucks! ONly a business can afford that.. or some random rich person with a hobby....

Ok. WHo knows a generous, random rich person?

porkypine - Speedtree is what's used for the trees for the game. There might be something similar cheaper, but, well, it's kind of irrelevant, since Speedtree is what the game actually uses.

Well darn! .......... * off to seek and befriend a random, generous, rich person..... Offering cookies and TS3 plants in exchange *

Darn is an understatement. Good luck with the cookies and plants...tell him there are random meshers all over Simland who might be willing to sweeten the deal ...snicker.

lol. This is a PG-13 site. ;0)

yes...which is why I didn't go into the details