How to Make Your Pets Bodyshop Creations Work for All EPs

[beosboxboy]

Bodyshop Patch is now released: http://thesims2.ea.com/help/index.php?pid=Help Get the patch! Then you won't have to do the procedure below anymore!

NOTA BENE: the Body Shop patch is for Pets EP installations ONLY. It will not correct anything for persons without Pets EP. It is also to be understood that the patch will not correct existing files. Those must be manually corrected as detailed below -OR- remade by the creator with a patched version of the Pets EP Body Shop -- in this latter case, a NEW project must be started or the missing values will continue to be missing since they will not be present in the old project file. Related, but not germane to this, even after the patch, the Pets EP Body Shop continues to include meshes in violation of the policies of many creators, please be thoughtful and use Sims2Pack Clean Installer (http://sims2pack.modthesims2.com/) to remove meshes to conserve on bandwidth usage AND as a courtesy to those creators that do not wish their meshes to be distributed in this manner.

Originally posted by Marvine on InSIMenator - posted here with additions by me

Permission is granted to copy and translate this on any site.

See this tutorial in Italian by Sims2Cri here (http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=28468). Leggere questa tutorial in italiano: Qui (http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=28468).
See this tutorial in German by Engelchen here (http://foxtrot502.server4you.de/sims2/wbb2/thread.php?threadid=4794). Diesen Tutorial auf Deutsch lesen: Hier (http://foxtrot502.server4you.de/sims2/wbb2/thread.php?threadid=4794).
Read this tuorial in French by Marvine: here (http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=28655). Lire ce tutoriel en français: ici (http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=28655)
See the (above) tutorial (Solución para los problemas de compatibilidad con LS2 Mascotas) in Spanish by FJPerez here (http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=29827) (hosted by InSIMenator)

Edit 4 December 2006: In reviewing Sims created with Body Shop from The Sims 2: Pets Expansion Pack it has been demonstrated that the customised face mesh of the character file (i.e., ########_########.package) suffers the same error as clothing and other items made with Body Shop. In those instances as this error has occured the Maxis default (un-customised) face is used. To restore the customised face mesh use the method described in the first post of this thread to restore the customised face to the downloaded Sim.

Edit 11 November 2006: Beards & moustaches, stubble, lipsticks, and other make-up items have been shown to not require this fix. Some recolours of accessories made with the Pets EP Body Shop cannot be repaired with the current tools. Skin Tones, Hair, Clothing, Eye colours made with the Pets EP Body Shop require this fix to work properly in non-Pets versions of The Sims™ 2.


Tiggerypum adds:

Bodyshop content made with pets (clothing, hair, and possibly other content) will not show up for users without the Pets EP. You can fix your bodyshop files using these directions below.

This fix is useful for already made content, but Numenor added a "Legacy Bodyshop" option to his BaseGameStarter here (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=107015), that allows to use the base game Bodyshop to create fully compatible clothing no matter which EPs are installed. :)

Other people and myself have spent the last two days trying to figure out a fix for the thumbnails issue with Pets made clothing for people not having the EP installed.

After fruitless attempts on my own and testing different workable but not so easy fixes by other people, it finally clicked in when sharing thoughts with Yakov (beosboxboy) and I found a quick a easy method, even if you don't have much experience of SimPE:

- Open your recolour in SimPE
- select the property set line in the top right panel

http://thumbs.modthesims2.com/getimage.php?file=405341

- select the "parts = ........" line in the bottom left panel

http://thumbs.modthesims2.com/getimage.php?file=405340

- click "add" in the bottom right panel, this will duplicate the line to the bottom of the list

http://thumbs.modthesims2.com/getimage.php?file=405339

- this last line being selected

http://thumbs.modthesims2.com/getimage.php?file=405338

- type "outfit" instead of "parts" in the right panel - no other edit needed, the number is the right one

http://thumbs.modthesims2.com/getimage.php?file=405337

- click "commit" and save.

http://thumbs.modthesims2.com/getimage.php?file=405336

You'll have to delete your thumbnails before starting the game so the changes can properly apply to the items that were already installed.

NOTA BENE: you may also correct the thumbnail by CTRL+Right-clicking the problem thumbnail - this does work to correct the primary thumbnail preview - but will not work for recolours of objects etc. If you have many bad files that you are correcting, the best method is still that shown below.

http://thumbs.modthesims2.com/getimage.php?file=405335

Note: The thumbnails are the files located in one of the following directories
C:\Documents and Settings\YourWindowsScreenNameHere\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Thumbnails - *Windows 2000 & Windows XP

or

C:\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\Thumbnails - *Windows 98 & Windows ME

or

Home/EA Games/The Sims 2/Thumbnails - MacOS X

* or what ever hard drive is your main Windows drive

This fixed all the files I tested, tops and full body outfits by Innocent, JayAngel, Engelchen and Cocosims (yay!!)

Now I didn't get to test this with the EP, there shouldn't be any issue but better safe than sorry... So it would be great if anybody with the EP installed gave it a try :)

EDIT: This fix has been shown to work with clothing, hair, and skin tones in installs of The Sims 2 with combinations of University EP, Nightlife EP, Open for Business EP, Holiday Fun Stuff, Family Fun Stuff, and Glamour Life Stuff installed.

NOTA BENE: A skintone has 59 or 60 Property Sets - these must all be changed; a hair recolour package has 6 or 7 Property Sets - these must all be changed. I have not tried working with accessories or make-up yet, but I suspect the same proceedure will be required.

EDIT: doing the above process with misbehaving genetic eye colours only in the Texture Overlay XML instead of the Property Set corrected missing/misbehaving eye colours.

This fix is useful for already made content, but Numenor added a "Legacy Bodyshop" option to his BaseGameStarter here (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=107015), that allows to use the base game Bodyshop to create fully compatible clothing no matter which EPs are installed. :)

[Suza]

Thank you for the tutorial. I fixed yesterday my last Halloween update, where I knew they were created with pets. I fixed all what I could, the hair, the costumes....but it seems I can´t fix masks and accessoires. The accessoires what I have for this update is the had mesh for toddlers, created by Boblishman. I know that he has only the game Sims2 installed and no ep. There was no property set in for this files and the masks. So I hope that this files without property set don´t need to be fixed.

Suza

[squall117]

Thanks a lot for this great tutorial, Just a little question.. Every kind of content must say "outfit" or hair for hairs, skin for skins, top for tops, etc?
I know it's kinda silly question but doing this process twice to my skintones would be really painfull :)

[squall117]

Ok I was asking a pretty lame question so I thought I better investigated by myself, I compared content made with Pets EP with content made before Pets EP and I realized that when it comes to clothing the "outfit" string must be added with the same value of the "parts" string. But when it comes to hair and skin tones the "parts" string may be renamed to "outfit" (without creting a new string).
Anyway I hope some time-saving freak like me finds this info useful, I already tested with a female and a mail hair recolor (both in all ages) and a tattoo skin I made recently (also tested in all ages of both genders) and they work perfectly for me (Using All EPs until Glamour Life Stuff with Numenor's "Base Game Starter PRO"

[Hairfish]

Thank you so much for this information. I really hate EA right now...

[miros1]

This has to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard of Maxis doing, and that includes ignoring the visitor-enabled flag for community lots in the first Hot Date patch.

[alkaloid]

Thank you very much for posting this fix.

[beosboxboy]

Ok I was asking a pretty lame question so I thought I better investigated by myself, I compared content made with Pets EP with content made before Pets EP and I realized that when it comes to clothing the "outfit" string must be added with the same value of the "parts" string. But when it comes to hair and skin tones the "parts" string may be renamed to "outfit" (without creting a new string).
Anyway I hope some time-saving freak like me finds this info useful, I already tested with a female and a mail hair recolor (both in all ages) and a tattoo skin I made recently (also tested in all ages of both genders) and they work perfectly for me (Using All EPs until Glamour Life Stuff with Numenor's "Base Game Starter PRO"
I think the issue is that they may not work with future EPs without that parts= and priority= part Squall, and I could not get these items to work consistently with just a changed tag. It would work, then wouldn't. I can't explain why.

[Briher]

Thank you very much. This was very usefull for me.
I spend the day testing about 70 items with the BaseGameStarter. 43 clothes or hair files needed to be fixed and now they work just fine.
The rest of them were masks and jewelry (using jewelry mesh by DrPixel or Simchic). All of them workes just fine without any fix.

[beosboxboy]

I have noticed that some accessories work fine without the fix - but others don't. I don't know why this is. Perhaps Electronic Arts will be able to correct this in the future patch.

[bluemoon11]

Hi everyone,
We wanted to let you know that we are working on two patches for the Pets Expansion Pack. The first patch will address the backward compatibility problems that occurred when creating Sims using the version of BodyShop that was included in Pets. This patch is close to being finished and we hope to have it released before the end of the year.

The second patch will address many of the reported game play issues that have been found in Pets and we plan to have this delivered early in the new year.

Stay tuned for more information on these patches, and thank you for alerting us on these issues.

-The Sims Team
-from www.thesims2.com

Thank god. No more problems, and no more creators having to de-pets their uploads!

[yuichen]

I made some skins a couple days ago with the pets bs unaware until this afternoon that people have been having issues with it, so I copied the files to my laptop where only the base game is installed. Of course, it was messed up :/

I followed this tutorial and while the skin is now appearing correctly on the sim, the thumbnails are still the nude body (not to mention also in random areas like hair) even though I've deleted the thumbnails on both systems before starting the game. I don't know what I'm doing wrong :(

[The T]

Thanks for tutorial.

I have fixed a lot of my clothes with this method and it work like a charm.

Ps. I am waiting for the patch now.

Hug

Tae

[albmont]

It didn't work for me. I have EP1 (Uni), but no other EP.

[tiggerypum]

albmont, _what exactly_ didn't work for you. If you have Uni, you should not need to repair any recolors you make. You must be far more explicit about exactly what you did and why, and with what files.

[albmont]

albmont, _what exactly_ didn't work for you. If you have Uni, you should not need to repair any recolors you make. You must be far more explicit about exactly what you did and why, and with what files.

I used this method to fix four different files (*.package) that I downloads, and that were made with BodyShop + Pets by other people. After the fix (parts duplicated, then one copy changed to outfit, etc) they didn't show up neither in BodyShop nor in the game itself. Maybe they use meshes that are unavailable for EP1, but I think something else is missing.

Maybe I shoud post "before and after" files...

[tiggerypum]

If you can point to the downloads you tried to fix, that would help. Did they have custom meshes, or were they simply recolors?

[albmont]

If you can point to the downloads you tried to fix, that would help. Did they have custom meshes, or were they simply recolors?

Two were from the Insimadult site, one from peggysims, and one was this: http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=30791, a Christmas outfit that uses a mesh from Chriko for which I already have other working outfits.

I guess I will try to change some recolour from MTS2 and post here the pseudo-fixed version, to avoid any violation of copyright.

[tiggerypum]

What version of simpe did you use? I've used this method with the most recent simpe and then taken the files over to my base game only machine, and they were fine.

Also, I suggest you contact each of the creators and ask _them_ for globally accessible downloads, because certainly not everyone owns pets, and many of them are still not aware of this issue apparently :(

[albmont]

What version of simpe did you use? I've used this method with the most recent simpe and then taken the files over to my base game only machine, and they were fine.

Also, I suggest you contact each of the creators and ask _them_ for globally accessible downloads, because certainly not everyone owns pets, and many of them are still not aware of this issue apparently :(

It's not the most recent version of SimPE; last time I tried to run the most recent version, it had a severe bug that crashed whenever I tried to change the skincolor. But unless SimPE crashed the file, there would be no reason not to work.

Since this Pets stuff is a _bug_, then there's no logic in asking the recolor creators to change their ways to compensate for the bug.

[tiggerypum]

Albmont, I disagree with your thinking regarding contacting the creators, if _they_ want their things to be accessible by everyone, then _they_ will want to publish the files to be in the corrected format. One wouldn't expect every user who doesn't have pets to go themselves modifying the files. Matter of fact, I wouldn't _want_ individuals going in and attempting to modify the files that I created, I would much rather fix it myself!

Whether or not Maxis changed bodyshop and created this situation is beside the point. On this site, our creators (who own pets, not EVERYONE owns pets ;) ) make attempts to 'de-petsify' their downloads before offering them, and they post that they've done so, so that people will know that it is compatible for all versions of the game.

[albmont]

What I noticed is that, before making the changes, some of the Pets-recolors appear anywhere else except as clothes. Body-full clothes appear as tops, bottoms or even as hairs (!!!). Changing the package does not affect this, I guess there may be something else I need to clear (besides the Thumbnails) to make them work.

[tiggerypum]

Hmm, maybe look for accessories.cache and groups.cache - Wes reported in the meshing area that he sometimes had to delete them and apparently that won't cause harm to your game. I did change my pets file _before_ taking it over to my base game to test, maybe that's why I didn't have any problems.

[albmont]

Deleting groups.cache worked.

[Rainncandy]

For skins, do we ACTUALLY have to change 59 or 60 Property sets to be able to use skins that require the Pets expansion pack? That is a lot of work!!

[tiggerypum]

Rainncandy did you read the VERY top. Go get the patch. Go remake your recolor. Problem solved.

[Rainncandy]

I downloaded the Patch, but it said you have to have Pets for it to work, and I don't have Pets. So exactly what patch am I supposed to download that will make me be able to use skins that were made with the Pets Bodyshop? I didn't see anything like that on that site.

Plus, I'm not trying to recolor anything. I just want to be able to use skins that were made with the Pets bodyshop.

[tiggerypum]

So in answer to your first question, the answer is yes, you'd have to fix all those spots. The real solution is to get the person who _made_ the content you have to fix it. It's far more reliable for hair or skins, which have a lot of things to change to use the fixed bodyshop to make the item than to try and go and hand-edit all those locations. They should still have their source pics, making a new recolor will take them a matter of minutes.

[beosboxboy]

Rainncandy: The patch for the Pets EP version of Body Shop will not correct existing files, to change those one will have to manually alter every file with SimPE as detailed in the first post of this thread. The experience I have had in downloading files has been greatly aided by using version 0,58 (no letter) of SimPE and doing a folder scan of all the new downloads. Version 0,58 has fewer bugs than 0,58b, so you should use it. Version 0,58 does not recognise Pets EP made files and tags them as "Unknown Version" - this will help identify the problem files, so you can correct them with SimPE at your leisure.

In every area that I have looked and compared files made prior to the release of Pets and after, the parts= and priority= tags seem to show up. It harms nothing to add the outfit= tag to anything, whereas removing or renaming the parts= and priority= tags seems to either render files useless or causes them to no longer to be compatible with Pets EP and future releases. Granted, I have not tested every file released since Pets EP came out, but I have tested the method exhaustively on various versions of the game on both PCs and Macs - so I am confident that this is the safe and prudent means to correct any misbehaving file. Other people have had success with renaming the parts= tag, but I have not been able to duplicate their success consistently with every version of the game.

Of especial note (but off topic to this thread) people without Pets EP should be especially wary of downloading any beds, sofas, chairs, garden items, curtains, etc released in the community after the release of Pets EP. Many of this new custom content contains strings (interactions) for pets that flat screw up your game's world if you do not have Pets EP installed. Many custom content creators are not particularly meticulous in making it clear that their item is Pets EP Only.

[Rainncandy]

Ok, thanks.

[hopawaay109]

can you make actual pets in bodyshop? cause i just installed the program, and i can't make pets in bodyshop...i don't want to seem like a noob, but i want to know if something is wrong with my game...

[tiggerypum]

Try reading the manual that came with your game. Pets are created in Create a Family/Sim only. And obviously a pet cannot work in games without the EP. This thread is for discussing making _clothing recolors _ that already should be compatible with other eps (like stuff that came with the base game) be that way.

[hopawaay109]

hee, i know the pets game can't work with out the EP, i'm not that much of a noob, it's just after i installed pets, bodyshop wouldn't work, so i downloaded a patch, and i was just double checking. thanks! and sorry for posting in the wrong spot.

[gilysse]

My value is "0x00000008"! Is it okay? Or do I have to change it to "0x00000004"?

[tiggerypum]

Use the value that your particular recolor uses. Just duplicate the 'parts' thing and change the copy to 'outfit' (so that you have both parts and outfit with the same value)
If you're making new recolors, patch your pets bodyshop and you won't have to do this anymore.

[gilysse]

I tried to patch the Pet Bodyshop but it says "At least 200Mb of hard drive space is require", I have like 2GB free space! Why?

[tiggerypum]

Well 2gb is more than 200 mb. SO you should be fine, but I expect you haven't defragmented your computer lately, if your system is actually complaining, so your 2 gb is in little pieces. Look for a defrag utility on your system if that's the case.

[beosboxboy]

added additions and commentary to the first post to clarify the limits of the patch for Pets EP Body Shop and added information for an alternate means to correcting thumbnails for those persons with few problem files.

[gilysse]

Well 2gb is more than 200 mb. SO you should be fine, but I expect you haven't defragmented your computer lately, if your system is actually complaining, so your 2 gb is in little pieces. Look for a drag utility on your system if that's the case.

Thanks tiggerypum, you're right, I haven't defragmented my computer lately. I will defragment it soon and see if it works this time :D this is really useful for me!!

[albmont]

I wrote a script in R that can detect which packages were created with the old (and wrong) version of the Pets EP Body Shop.

Thanks to Delphy (that guided me in the labirinth of the DBPF format) and dmchess (for his perl code).

The source code can be found in the Sims2 Wiki project, at http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?title=Detect_Pets_Body_Shop_bug/Source_Code

[unskilled_operator]

Thank you very much for this! I was trying to make it a long time ago. Never would imagine it wasn't that difficult. Thanks for making it easier!

[psikfreak]

I wrote a script in R that can detect which packages were created with the old (and wrong) version of the Pets EP Body Shop.

Thanks to Delphy (that guided me in the labirinth of the DBPF format) and dmchess (for his perl code).

The source code can be found in the Sims2 Wiki project, at http://www.sims2wiki.info/wiki.php?t...ug/Source_Code

Relp! :cry:
i followed the link to get your code and it said there was nothing on the page. Has it been moved?!?!
Thankx

[albmont]

Relp! :cry:
i followed the link to get your code and it said there was nothing on the page. Has it been moved?!?!
Thankx

Somehow, the link became broken. I fixed it - until it breaks again.

[Alasdair]

I just wanted to Thank You for posting this tutorial. I had downloaded an outfit and was trying to find it in Bodyshop so that I could put it on a Sim. I was unable to locate the outfit in Bodyshop anywhere, when I looked for it in the game I saw it as a Nude body, I followed your steps and now it shows up like it is supposed to so Thank You.

Alasdair

[kontgat]

is this too for accesoire? becuz at the ''parts'' part does it has to be naked clothes or something else like glasses?

[kontgat]

is this also for accesoire because i see at PARTS that there stands CLOTHES so does it work for accessories ?

[Sadi Kalen]

thanks so much for this tutorial! worked a charm for some peggyzone hairs i was trying to recolour. can now see them in my bodyshop. thanks again.