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Scholar
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#1 Old 4th Jan 2017 at 6:33 AM Last edited by Voeille : 8th Jan 2017 at 6:16 PM.
Default [Solved] The Mac version – materials.package
Some Mac users mentioned in the comments that my water mod doesn’t work properly for them. I’d attempt to fix that, but I need Maxis shaders for the Mac version to do that, so I’m asking someone with the Mac version to send me the file materials.package from the Mansions and Gardens folder/TSData/Res/Materials

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#2 Old 4th Jan 2017 at 6:59 AM
Mac users don't have M&G since they never made the EPs up past BV.

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#3 Old 4th Jan 2017 at 8:50 AM
Voeille, Joandsarah77 is right. We don't have M&G, but here is BV shaders (SFS).
Though I do think that the problem is not the shaders, but graphic rules.
I'm not good (like at all) at editing shaders, but I do know that nhood water has three variations of 'quality' for different graphic card groups.
First (the best, the common for windows users) consists of three layers, second has two (plain mirror reflection without clipping at water level) – the one that mac users have. And third one for poor graphics without reflection at all.
I tried to force the proper reflection by replacing the second workaround with the first, but it doesn't work (flashing pink water).
Scholar
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#4 Old 4th Jan 2017 at 12:04 PM
Thanks for the info and the link, I’ll look at those files. I won’t be able to test anything myself on the windows version, so when I do something with those shaders I’ll post the results here, I’m counting for someone with the Mac version to test them

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#5 Old 4th Jan 2017 at 2:20 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Voeille
Thanks for the info and the link, I’ll look at those files. I won’t be able to test anything myself on the windows version, so when I do something with those shaders I’ll post the results here, I’m counting for someone with the Mac version to test them


I'll test them with pleasure!
Scholar
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#6 Old 4th Jan 2017 at 4:49 PM
Thanks Here is my attempt to make the pond water to work properly, and I’d like to know if it’s fine before trying to do something about sea

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#7 Old 4th Jan 2017 at 6:51 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Voeille
Thanks Here is my attempt to make the pond water to work properly, and I’d like to know if it’s fine before trying to do something about sea


Thanks, Voeille!
So I have some brief test pics to show. At the moment, there's no difference between vanilla pool/pond and overhaul version.
I do have some stuff in downloads folder (no shader replacements though at the moment) and I'll try to test it with no CC installed
Screenshots
Scholar
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#8 Old 5th Jan 2017 at 4:20 AM
Of course it’s the same because I was stupid and forgot to commit the changes to the shader :/ Now I checked twice for sure, so this is the proper version to test Sorry for making you test an unnecessary thing.

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#9 Old 5th Jan 2017 at 3:43 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Voeille
Of course it’s the same because I was stupid and forgot to commit the changes to the shader :/ Now I checked twice for sure, so this is the proper version to test Sorry for making you test an unnecessary thing.

Oh, that's okay Voeille!
I've tried to run the game with updated shader. It does affect the pond, but the result is negative. Pink flashing material is on whenever I put or remove the pool squares. I've also tried to remove old pond and make a new one, no luck.
The pool looks okay though. I've tried it with and without other CC. Same thing both ways.

Still thinking that the cause of this is the way the mac version of the game interacts with graphic card. I'm terribly bad at graphic rules editing (even worse than with shaders, huh).
So I'm like trying to solve this eternally. I did managed to get myself almost proper graphics on Parallels with virtual machine running Windows XP and the hood water looks okay (standard TS2 water with slightly blurred reflection with subtle ripple effect), so the hardware can handle it. Mac nhood water reflection is so bad that it even can't clip the reflection above the water level. And there's no any ripples at all (see the second attached image).

Hope this could help to understand where is the problem.

Upd:
Hey, I just thought may be the shaders from the castaway stories for mac would help?
I'll check if this game has a proper nhood water/pond reflection and get back to the thread.
Screenshots
Scholar
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#10 Old 5th Jan 2017 at 5:39 PM
Yeah the Castaway shaders would definitely help, initially I assumed that the default TS2 shaders must’ve been different and contain something important that my replacement didn’t include and hence the pink water, but I compared the pond shaders line by line with the Windows version and they’re exactly the same, so the problem must be somewhere else (either in the Castaway shaders I used, which could be solved by comparing them to the Mac version and applying necessary changes, or it could be a thing unrelated to shaders).
As for GraphicRules.sgr, here is mine – not sure how it’d work for the Mac version, but maybe it’s worth giving it a go? (With a backup of your original one of course.)

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#11 Old 6th Jan 2017 at 5:51 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Voeille
Yeah the Castaway shaders would definitely help, initially I assumed that the default TS2 shaders must’ve been different and contain something important that my replacement didn’t include and hence the pink water, but I compared the pond shaders line by line with the Windows version and they’re exactly the same, so the problem must be somewhere else (either in the Castaway shaders I used, which could be solved by comparing them to the Mac version and applying necessary changes, or it could be a thing unrelated to shaders).
As for GraphicRules.sgr, here is mine – not sure how it’d work for the Mac version, but maybe it’s worth giving it a go? (With a backup of your original one of course.)


Hey Voeille! I'm back with some news on Castaway for mac.
I've attached some screenshots from this game. As you can see, the neighborhood water reflection is the same as in TS2 super collection (for mac): plain mirror with some weird issues on flora (must be layers). It reflects all the trees no matter how visible they actually are.
Lot mode water looks good though and might help at least with lot mode reflection.
So here is Castaway for mac shaders file.

And thanks for the graphic rules! I'll give it a go!
Screenshots
Scholar
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#12 Old 7th Jan 2017 at 9:53 AM
Well, the CS shaders for Mac aren’t much different to the Windows version, but here is another version to test. If it does/doesn’t work, does the new GraphicRules.sgr have any effect on it?

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#13 Old 7th Jan 2017 at 7:44 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Voeille
Well, the CS shaders for Mac aren’t much different to the Windows version, but here is another version to test. If it does/doesn’t work, does the new GraphicRules.sgr have any effect on it?


I'm happy to say that latest version based on castaway shaders for mac works perfectly well:



I've tested it without replacing graphic rules file and it worked fine.

As for the graphic rules file you've shared, it took no any noticeable effect in my game after i replaced it.
Neighborhood water is the same, reflection clipping issues are the same, so I think we can leave it as it is for now.
Pond water reflection works fine so if you could proceed with sea water and neighborhood water, that would be awesome and I would love to test it!
Scholar
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#14 Old 8th Jan 2017 at 6:49 AM
It’s great to see that it works, I was worried that the problem might have been located outside the shaders I made a really small change to the pond water, the new shader is here, I don’t think it could stop working properly, but it’s better to check than not And here is the shader for the sea water all over the place (i.e. neighbourhood, non-beach lots and beach lots), hopefully it’ll also work.

I also have a question – how does the pond water look from the neighbourhood view? Someone in the comments mentioned that it’s invisible, but for me it works fine, as long as the pools are placed. This is water on a lot that was saved after placing the pools, this is without the pools (clearly wrong), and this is after placing the pools on that lot and saving again. Is it similar for you?

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#15 Old 8th Jan 2017 at 5:35 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Voeille
It’s great to see that it works, I was worried that the problem might have been located outside the shaders I made a really small change to the pond water, the new shader is here, I don’t think it could stop working properly, but it’s better to check than not And here is the shader for the sea water all over the place (i.e. neighbourhood, non-beach lots and beach lots), hopefully it’ll also work.


It works! The newer pond water shader works fine (see enclosed screenshots).
All types of water seem to work as properly as possible. There are some issues with floating reflection on sea water for non-beach lots, but as far as I know this issue is known on original PC version of the mod. And of course mac water still has its charm with clipping issue.

When I looked through the game shaders (in search for some other things, irrelevant to water mod), i've seen somewhere a line about water reflection camera settings. There was something about reflection camera that should be the same as main camera only with z axis flipped. I have no idea how to do that, but maybe there is some way to add reflection camera settings to the mod, so it could get rid of pool dependency.

I tried non-beach, beach, neighborhood mode, beach with pond+pool with no any flashing pink issues.

Quote: Originally posted by Voeille
I also have a question – how does the pond water look from the neighbourhood view? Someone in the comments mentioned that it’s invisible, but for me it works fine, as long as the pools are placed. This is water on a lot that was saved after placing the pools, this is without the pools (clearly wrong), and this is after placing the pools on that lot and saving again. Is it similar for you?


As for the neighborhood appearance, I see no issues there with pool placed. Water looks totally okay (there's a screenshot of the lot imposter attached too).
Screenshots
Scholar
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#16 Old 8th Jan 2017 at 6:15 PM
I’ll add the Mac version to the mod attachments then, thank you so much for all the testing

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#17 Old 8th Jan 2017 at 6:38 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Voeille
I’ll add the Mac version to the mod attachments then, thank you so much for all the testing


You're welcome, Voeille! I happy to help on behalf of mac users
I also wanted to ask something about shaders but since it's off topic, could we proceed with it in private? I've sent a PM to you few days ago but this thing doesn't seem to work properly I guess.
Scholar
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#18 Old 8th Jan 2017 at 7:26 PM
Yes I haven’t received anything, I’ll send a test message to you, maybe I’ll work this time.

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#19 Old 8th Jan 2017 at 10:20 PM Last edited by ajaysims : 8th Jan 2017 at 10:25 PM. Reason: added pictures
Hey guys, thanks for your work on this - I've tried out the mac versions and while the sea is working great (it looks awesome!!), I'm just getting black ponds even with the pools in place. I tried saving the lot, exiting to hood and coming back in, but still black.. and the sea looks black from the lot too. Any ideas? =(
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#20 Old 8th Jan 2017 at 11:12 PM
Does the pool water in the pool itself have reflections?

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#21 Old 8th Jan 2017 at 11:47 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Voeille
Does the pool water in the pool itself have reflections?


The swimming pool water? No it doesn't.

(and I do have my reflections turned on in the settings =) )
Scholar
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#22 Old 9th Jan 2017 at 12:06 AM
If the swimming pool doesn’t have reflections, then the pond and sea water won’t have them either because they depend on the pool. I uploaded my GraphicRules.sgr file in one of my previous posts, maybe it’ll work on the Mac version (it worked for someone with the Windows version of the game with the same problem), just remember to make a backup of your original file.

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#23 Old 9th Jan 2017 at 12:25 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Voeille
If the swimming pool doesn’t have reflections, then the pond and sea water won’t have them either because they depend on the pool. I uploaded my GraphicRules.sgr file in one of my previous posts, maybe it’ll work on the Mac version (it worked for someone with the Windows version of the game with the same problem), just remember to make a backup of your original file.


I'd already tried that and it doesn't make any difference sadly
Scholar
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#24 Old 9th Jan 2017 at 9:06 AM
Could you upload your original file?

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#25 Old 9th Jan 2017 at 1:11 PM
Yep, here we go =)
Attached files:
File Type: zip  Graphic Rules.zip (7.3 KB, 40 downloads) - View custom content
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