creature overlay test

A Tale Of Two Darwins

Or

My Test To Fix My Creature Skin Overlay IssueBy PetTech

Once upon a time a sim writer while try to create a very special Black Sheep for her legacy family/story encountered a problem. You see her favorite sim warlock managed to be bitten by a vampire then nibbled by the Leader of the Pack and then inhale a large amount of bug spray. Making him into a half alien warlock with a severe sun allergy, a near constant case of bed head (all over his body) and a desire to roll around in the flowers.

Everything was hunky dory until dawn came around and the writer was quite dismayed to discover that her beloved Darwin was suffering from a serious skin overlay disorder. He looked silly in the pale morning light and she set out to do something about it. A quick check with other writers showed that this was not an isolated issue and from that discussion this test has evolved.

This will be as scientific as I can make it. Two clones of an unaltered Darwin were placed on a lot. They don’t quite have the same personality but they look just like him.

Darwin A shown here in the black shirt will undergo the transformations in the same order as the original Darwin: Good Warlock, Vampire, Werewolf then Plantsim.

Darwin B in the red shirt will undergo his transformations in this order. Plantsim, Vampire, Good Warlock, Werewolf.

Ideally we should also have a control Darwin to whom nothing is done but I’m sure we can all guess what the result of that test would be so let’s just skip that.

Both Darwins were placed on an empty lot and given a few necessities to make it through the test. No the jump ropes are not necessities.

For this test the transformations will be done using the FFS Lot Debugger (or Batbox) from MATY and some hacked potions from Parsimonious. The Freeze clock will be used as needed so that none of the subjects die of sunburn.

I have a special vampire overlay and a modified werewolf skin along with creaturefixes from MATY. These could be part of the problem and I hope that this test will sort that out.

The first transformation is for Darwin A to change into a good warlock. Lets get rid of the dorkey clothes…

Yes, much better. Once of the suppositions that I am operating this test under is that the order in which the different skin overlays happen is what is making the difference.

Darwin B is changed to a plantsim via the Batbox. So far so good in both cases. Since it is still day time the next step will have to be postponed till after dark.

Nice legs!

Once the Welcome wagon had been fed their obligatory lunch meat sandwiches and shooed off the lot all that was left was to wait until the sun went down.

Darwin A undergoing his transformation…

And Darwin B gets his.

Both transformed with out any problems other than a mild case of visible neck line for Darwin B which I believe is due to the plantsim overlay.

Next for Darwin A is werewolf. No problem.

Next for Darwin B was good warlock. A slight lack of forethought here. I suppose I should have made them be knowledge sims. They would have been platinum by the end of this if I had. Still… no problems with the skins.

Once the Sim Shrink was done a quick change of clothes and a test of the “fix flashing blue” on the Batbox gave Darwin B back his clothes and his normal hair. This also works for werewolves but only lasts till the next 8pm transformation.

An autonomous howl from Darwin A…

And Darwin B is down in the weeds behind the outhouse.

This isn’t boding very well for Darwin B’s mental health status. Ironic given the nature of my story.

Next for Darwin A was plantsim which forced him back into the warlock robes and hat. I’ll fix that once the shrink is done with visit number three.

Here you can that Darwin A has his normal hair in wolfman mode. The flashing blue button really does work. You can also see that Darwin B did not take become a werewolf very well either. The real Darwin has never had a fear of the supernatural and is perma-platinum in game so this has not happened to him.

The Shrink is back to fix things up while Darwin A displays his vampire-ness.

Time for the real test. Will Darwin A display a green face and pale body? Will Darwin B break down again?

Huh? This left me scratching my head. Why isn’t doesn’t he looked diseased? If nothing else it bodes well for undoing and redoing the real Darwin in game. Since I have photo documentation of each original event no one should mind. See the neck line thing? I hate that.

Darwin B too looks just fine. The only thing that is different with these Darwins and the original is the blue good witch glow. Since I want to be complete I stuffed these two into coffins and waited for the next night fall.

Sometime during the day someone kicked over the trash can and they ended up with roaches. Then they both got the flu from Darwin A stomping on them.

To get rid of the blue glow both boys were set in front of their spell books and told to study the dark path until the glow went away.

There was of course a short break to wolf up then a little time under the sun lamp to recharge. All that was left to do is wait for dawn.

Apparently there is a “pollen cloud” prank that plantsims can do. I’ve never seen it before- because I don’t play plantsims very much. They’re kind of boring. But three nice point plantsims are fun! The real Darwin has currently has eight nice points- once the werewolf mean kicks in I might get him to start doing this!

Not to be outdone, Darwin A goes for the joy buzzer. This is what I have to look forward to folks; a 10 playful, 0 nice point, 10 body vampire werewolf zombie with a plant fetish and spells!

Two more simultaneous autonomous howls and… Who will it be this time?

Opps.

Darwin B is down again!

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

And because no night is complete until a wolf pees on you…

One more time.

Darwin B looks okay.

And Darwin A looks just like he did before minus the blue sparkles.

So, it appears that the order of change is not the cause of the abnormal skin issues with Black Sheep when done using the hack items I did. I suppose there may be something different in the coding for the real events that leads to the flawed overlays but I have no way of testing that.

Obviously, I did not test out the zombie transformation because I haven’t had an issue with that yet but that could cause another overlay defect. And I didn’t do all possible order combinations but I don’t feel that those results will tell me anything given that both of these worked.

Solution: undo and then redo all the transformations using the batbox and potions, and it’s probably best to start with plantsim since it seems to be the biggest culprit.

Oh! And don’t do this test on newly made family sims unless you are in need of some giggles!