replacing currently used skins with edited ones

[huffy15]

meh, so i got sick of certain skins that i mostly liked, but that were missing features on one sex since they were only made for the other, or other various things like skin eyebrows that i wanted erased, and i cloned them with bodyshop and edited them myself. what i want to know is if theres a way i can replace the originals that are being used by my various sims with the new versions i edited for my own use so taht those sims using teh old versions will then have my new versions and so i can then delete the old versions. i was worried about changing the names of the new files to overwrite the old, will that work right? also some of the skins i edited are showerproof mesh skins and im not sure if that will also complicate matters. im aware that once simpe eventually is bv compatible i can simsurgery all the sims to have my edited skins instead of teh old ones, and after spending hours doing taht i can delete the old ones, but would like to be able to avoid that long process of mass simsurgery if i can simply replace the old ones with the new edited versions i made without resulting in mass corruption since everytime i screw around with things first i usually learn my lessons the hard way heh.

[BeosBoxBoy]

huffy - this is where we move into that grey area that makes most people uncomfortable

there are two ways you can achieve this, neither one of them particularly easy.

method 1.
The pain-staking process of firing up SimPE to extract the textures from your modified skin tones and then build DXT the extracted textures over the corresponding ones in the original skin tone file. This will make the change rather effectively, but leaves you in a situation where you dare not share any Sims you make since you will be breaking just about every forum rule and maybe over-writing the files that other people like.

method 2.
The pain-staking process of using Sims Surgery in SimPE to extract the Sims for editing, then editing the Sims in body shop, then adding the Sims into the neighbourhood, then using Sims Surgery again to replace the genetics of the Sims you want to alter. You are still not precisely in the best moral hygiene, but you aren't running the risk of pissing off the original artist quite so much.

neither method will be "easy" or all that much fun

[huffy15]

hmm, well i guess ill have to wait for simpe either way and will opt for option 1since i dont upload my sims anyway and i am aware that those sims that were effected wouldnt be uploadable since i know i cant upload content that is someone elses work that i slightly edited. most people wouldnt want to download most of my sims anyway since i usually make them comical rather than pretty and have to surgery their children to fix the dissociation that results. thanks for the input.

[Wednesday17]

I've one more idea: you could find (or make) yourself a set of default skin replacements you'd like your sims to wear and then simply delete the skintones you can't stand anymore. The sim should adopt a default skin which you can change by different default replacements whenever you get weary of them.

I know, it's not exactely what you want, but since Christianlov's skintone changer seems to have vanished off the face of the earth (I regret not having grabbed it while it was there, too), that might be an acceptable compromise for the time being.

[huffy15]

noooooo they dont adopt the default skin dont ever do that. hahaha i did that once a long time ago to get rid of a skin half my sims were using thinking that theyd adopt the default skin since i had dled a default skin i wanted them all to use instead of the one they had on, and ALL the sims that were using the deleted skin not only did NOT adopt default skins they also had NO skins...they became invisible if nude and their faces didnt match the default-ish skin that "appeared" with the clothes. Also the passed on teh code for the deleted skin to any offspring so their babbies ended up being nothing but faces; they had a face but their head was gone, and at the changing table theyd totally dissapear. That's one mistake i wont make twice. Although i greatly reduced my sim population and deleted my of the ruined sim families i still had a massive volume of sims i wanted to keep that i had to fix with surgery, which took forever and i was trying to avoid dealing with this time around. Trust me, they don't adopt default skins if you delete their skin, at least not in my game...

[Wednesday17]

Huh. This game really works differently for everyone *wonder*.
I didn't experience those problems, but of course I withdraw that suggestion and try and remember it in case anyone asks again! Sorry.

[BeosBoxBoy]

Wednesday, I have experienced this bug myself; not every time - but on two different occasions I changed or deleted my default skin tones and suddenly I had crashes and missing texture issues.

I can't say what caused it, but it took dumping the neighbourhoods completely re-installing the game to resolve the issue.  I think that sometimes the DNA data just gets buggy and that's what controls this sort of issue.