Post by andrew on May 27, 2024 4:19:46 GMT -5
The "For Rent" patch included a new head mesh for toddlers, which broke custom face presets for toddlers, causing major face distortions. Before this patch, toddlers had a head mesh that was compatible with all older age groups, so many face presets were enabled for toddler through adult. After the patch, toddlers will need their own separate face presets. Unfortunately, even after creating a fixed toddler-specific preset, affected toddlers in existing save games will continue using the incompatible adult version.
The best fix in terms of quality and stability will be for the creators to make a toddler version of the presets and for players to re-download and start a new game. However, the loss of a save game to many players is catastrophic. Also, creators re-creating all face presets and players re-downloading them all is not only tedious, but also potentially impossible if the creator is no-longer active or doesn't wish to update them.
For these reasons, the latest version of Sims 4 Studio includes some experimental batch fixes that attempt to fix these problems. These batch fixes are experimental, and may not produce acceptable results in all cases, so make sure to keep your backups!
The batch fixes can be found by clicking the menu option Content Management > Batch Fixes > CAS > Toddler Preset Patch Bugs
1. Fixing the presets
Content Management > Batch Fixes > CAS > Toddler Preset Patch Bugs > Fix Toddler-Enabled Presets (*) - There is a batch fix for each face region. Run these one at a time and test the results of the fixed ones in CAS. If anything that S4S mentioned was fixed, but has an unacceptable result in game, restore the backup of that package and report it here and/or to the creator. The reason these options are here is because the fix may have more acceptable results for one face region than another and this makes it easier to fix/rollback similar presets in a controlled way.
Content Management > Batch Fixes > CAS > Toddler Preset Patch Bugs > Fix ALL Presets Types - This is does the same as above, but for all face regions in one run. Test the results of the fixed ones in CAS. If anything that S4S mentioned was fixed, but has an unacceptable result in game, restore the backup of that package and report it here and/or to the creator.
Content Management > Batch Fixes > CAS > Toddler Preset Patch Bugs > Disable all unfixed - This simply prevents toddlers from using incompatible presets. If you already fixed a preset, this will not touch it. So if you ran the fix for ears followed by this fix, the ears you fixed will remain fixed, but any non-ear custom preset that hasn't been fixed would be disabled for toddlers. If you don't care about toddlers using custom face presets, but want to prevent them from getting face distortions, you can run this and not run any of the others that fix the preset for toddlers.
Tools > Modding > Fix Toddler-enabled preset - If you are a creator updating your own preset or a player that would prefer to update one at a time, this option will update a single package opened with "My Projects". Since this option is not a batch fix, Studio does not make a backup. Please make sure you back up the package before trying this option.
2. Fixing save games
Content Management > Batch Fixes > CAS > Toddler Preset Patch Bugs > Update Save Games for Fixed Toddler-Enabled Face Presets - After fixing the presets and confirming that they work in game, you can run this to update your save games. This will replace the incompatible presets with the fixed ones and remove presets that were disabled by the batch fix. S4S does make a backup of the save game before updating it, but I would strongly recommend that you also make your own backups.
Notes for preset creators
Thanks to laplume37 and amethystlilac for reporting and providing some example packages.
The best fix in terms of quality and stability will be for the creators to make a toddler version of the presets and for players to re-download and start a new game. However, the loss of a save game to many players is catastrophic. Also, creators re-creating all face presets and players re-downloading them all is not only tedious, but also potentially impossible if the creator is no-longer active or doesn't wish to update them.
For these reasons, the latest version of Sims 4 Studio includes some experimental batch fixes that attempt to fix these problems. These batch fixes are experimental, and may not produce acceptable results in all cases, so make sure to keep your backups!
The batch fixes can be found by clicking the menu option Content Management > Batch Fixes > CAS > Toddler Preset Patch Bugs
1. Fixing the presets
Content Management > Batch Fixes > CAS > Toddler Preset Patch Bugs > Fix Toddler-Enabled Presets (*) - There is a batch fix for each face region. Run these one at a time and test the results of the fixed ones in CAS. If anything that S4S mentioned was fixed, but has an unacceptable result in game, restore the backup of that package and report it here and/or to the creator. The reason these options are here is because the fix may have more acceptable results for one face region than another and this makes it easier to fix/rollback similar presets in a controlled way.
Content Management > Batch Fixes > CAS > Toddler Preset Patch Bugs > Fix ALL Presets Types - This is does the same as above, but for all face regions in one run. Test the results of the fixed ones in CAS. If anything that S4S mentioned was fixed, but has an unacceptable result in game, restore the backup of that package and report it here and/or to the creator.
Content Management > Batch Fixes > CAS > Toddler Preset Patch Bugs > Disable all unfixed - This simply prevents toddlers from using incompatible presets. If you already fixed a preset, this will not touch it. So if you ran the fix for ears followed by this fix, the ears you fixed will remain fixed, but any non-ear custom preset that hasn't been fixed would be disabled for toddlers. If you don't care about toddlers using custom face presets, but want to prevent them from getting face distortions, you can run this and not run any of the others that fix the preset for toddlers.
Tools > Modding > Fix Toddler-enabled preset - If you are a creator updating your own preset or a player that would prefer to update one at a time, this option will update a single package opened with "My Projects". Since this option is not a batch fix, Studio does not make a backup. Please make sure you back up the package before trying this option.
2. Fixing save games
Content Management > Batch Fixes > CAS > Toddler Preset Patch Bugs > Update Save Games for Fixed Toddler-Enabled Face Presets - After fixing the presets and confirming that they work in game, you can run this to update your save games. This will replace the incompatible presets with the fixed ones and remove presets that were disabled by the batch fix. S4S does make a backup of the save game before updating it, but I would strongly recommend that you also make your own backups.
Notes for preset creators
- The fix options in Studio disable the original preset for toddlers and create a copy for toddlers in the same package.
- The new resources will have "_Toddler" added to the resource name if your package had a name map.
- The new presets will have new sculpts, modifiers, and blend geometry created for toddlers. A side effect of this is they are not linked to the adult version and will not persist through age transitions. The only fix for this is to override the mapping in the "AgeGenderMap" resource which is not a good solution since there can only be one override.
- The fixes add a package-level AgeGenderMap resource. These unfortunately are not read by the game, but they are used by Studio when finding the fixed version to fix toddlers in a save game. If you fix the presets yourself, consider adding this so players can fix the toddlers using your preset in their save games. In the future, maybe we could use these in conjunction with an option in S4S to combine them from all presets in the mods folder with the EA list from the game files rather than having to maintain a list of everyone's presets in one giant override.
Thanks to laplume37 and amethystlilac for reporting and providing some example packages.