Hat Plays Sims

So I have this massive (forty-three pages in 10-point font) document I use to plan out things like class restrictions and cheats allowed and what trees I can put in which neighborhoods and the bones of a criminal justice system and... basically it's my worldbuilding cheat sheet.

After talking about the G-Rated Religion Mod with Morgaine, I said to myself, "Man, my Religion section sure is... thin. What can I do to get more information in there? Religion and culture inform each other."

So I rummaged around for some writing guides (for both fantasy writing and gaming writing; the gaming guides were more useful) about making up religions. And I built myself a questionnaire.

Because Veetie wanted to see the questionnaire, I cleaned it up, made the language as neutral as I could (hopefully they'll help as much for Medieval Fantasy religions as High Fantasy or Contemporary Alternate Universe), and crammed it behind the cut at the end of this paragraph. This isn't a Mary Sue Litmus Test, feel free to skip any questions that don't apply to your particular playable Religion-- but you might want to give them all a read-through anyway. Most of the questions are aimed at fleshing out a made-up religion, but there's a bit at the end about real-world people and the implications a fictional religion can make, by accident or by design. Also, I'm not a religious studies expert, I'm just a nerd who reads a lot and knows when something feels fake or under-done, and like a lot of people I'm constantly learning what's actually accidentally gross (or accidentally-on-purpose gross. I was in the Aladdin fandom in early 2002, you would not believe some people's nonsense). ( On to the questionnaire-- this is not short. )

Trying to get myself back into Sims by messing around on the play end of things-- catching up on downloads, sorting things to my finicky liking (I actually kind of enjoy that), testing new stuff, updating to-do lists, lurking and trying to get caught up with assorted boards as a reader before I start posting again-- and I discovered a piece of information that revolutionized my Buy and Build catalogs, and I felt a need to share.

So, have a mini-tutorial!

If you have Apartment Life, Mansion & Garden, Sims 2 Store Edition, or any of the recent bundle packs (Fun with Pets, Best of Business, and I think University Life), you have a category called Architectural in your Build mode. Of course that would be the best place to sort things like decorative columns and ruins and beams and basically all that stuff that makes your houses look awesome but doesn't actually do anything... but SimPE has no ticky-box based way to get anything into that category.

But it DOES have a way to get things in there. And it's super simple!

You need to be on the Apartment Life game engine to do this. You need AL, M&G, Store Edition, or one of the above mentioned bundle packs. Otherwise I don't know if this will crash your game, but you won't be able to find your objects.

Look at Object Data for the doodad you'd like to move (I suggest starting with Kativip's Legend Series Breath of Time and City collections). You'll see the usual handy-dandy tickyboxes under Catalog Sort-- untick all of them, as though you were making a hider, then hit commit. (If you WERE making a hider, you'd just save here. That's how easy hiders are to make.) Then click the Raw Data tab right next to where it says Catalog Sort. Over on the right, you should have three radio buttons (ticky boxes are square and let you click many; radio buttons are round and let you click one) offering you a choice between Binary, Decimal, and Hexadecimal. Tick Decimal.

Now actually look at the Raw Data. You've got your OBJd file stuff, I don't know what that does. You've got your Catalog Price stuff, and if you want to fiddle with that, feel free. Heaven knows a surprising number of creators price their lavish sofas at $0 or their single palm frond in a white plastic vase for $3000.

But the important bit is the third section-- Catalog Sorting. Most of that, I don't know what it does. I know the Room Sort and Function Sort flags should be a string of zeroes if you un-ticked your ticky boxes. There are only three values you want to fiddle with:

0x0045: Build Mode Type
0x004A: Build Mode Subsort
0x005E: Function Sub-Sort

These all have numbers you can edit. The numbers may vary, but it doesn't matter. You'll be changing things. You want it to look like this:

0x0045: Build Mode Type = 1
0x004A: Build Mode Subsort = 4096
0x005E: Function Sub-Sort = 1

Hit Commit. Hit Save. Lather, rinse, and repeat for every architectural gizmo you want to get out of your Deco Sculptures or Deco Misc category. I just moved all my columns, ruins, custom fireplaces, deco chimneys, decorative balconies, thatched roofs, gypsy wagon roofs and wheels, beams, roof spires, and other such doodads, and now my Deco Misc category... well, it's still got a lot in it, but the slider is no longer a tiny, tiny dot.

Like the other two things I do to keep my Deco Misc category under control, this totally isn't something I'd even hope for any creators to do to their own content-- for one thing, it requires specific expansions-- but if you ever find yourself wishing this architectural stuff were in the architectural section in Build Mode, well! Now you know how to do it.

( I re-categorize pretty much everything I download. If you want to see the system that saves my sanity and keeps my Deco Misc section reasonable to click through, click the cut. )

My next goal, when I get my catalog all fixed properly (and maybe try to winnow my downloads folder back under seven gigs) will be to catch up on comments. I just felt that a mini-tutorial on how to get things into Build Architecture was in order.

There will be a hider coming for the Build Architecture section, and possibly all of Build Mode. And eventually I'm going to release a Director's Cut of hiders, but it probably won't be of much interest to anyone who doesn't play Medieval/Fantasy/Period themes (because as a Director's Cut, it will be the hiders I use personally).

(Things in progress at this very moment: Have tested text and image replacements for my first Medieval default career (athletic as Knighthood, which will probably need variations (egalitarian (male and female chance cards identical) vs sexist (every time a female knight loses her job, it's because she got outed pulling an Eowyn/Fa Mulan/Sweet Polly Oliver) and some title variations). Going well! Need to do a little research about which careers use the helicopter at the higher levels and figure out which car to replace them with and how. Also suspect that one can use the same method to use the Captain-Hero-Flying-Carpool for any level of a given career. Have updated Hair List with more hairs I want to do. Got a couple more to add to said list, actually, but I have to find where I wrote them down. Installed SC4 on the laptop (because the laptop won't handle Sims 2 and needs moar games) in order to build own kingdom terrains. I want to use adjacent SC4 terrains for noble estates, so I tested how many OFB shopping districts you can add to a neighborhood. I got tired of testing when I hit seventy-four, not counting the one Downtown and three Vacation 'hoods I added first, to make sure I wouldn't hit some invisible limit.)