Insimenator.org

This is directed at all those who are smarter than I (and the list seams to grow with each passing day). I have read several tutorials on changing the age value for clothing outfits through the use of Simpe and have some unanswered questions that I need help with. First; It is my understanding that prior to changing the file you must first clone the outfit through bodyshop. Why can't the value be changed of the original file? Second; It is my understanding that if you change the age value to 0x00000058 it enables the outfit for all 3 (y/a, af, ef) or am I mistaken?

You can change the value for CC outfits with SimPE. Just open the package file (recolor file) and edit them. No cloning required.

If you're editing anything you've cloned, make sure you do "import to game" and edit the file that shows up in SavedSims (the files found in the "Projects" folder are templates and don't show up ingame, so there's no point in editing those).

For EAxis (ingame) outfits it requires more work and is a different process (requires extracting and editing of the PropertySet resources if you want to make "direct" edits). You can clone them in Bodyshop, but this makes a copy of the file.

Only A: 0x00000008
Only YA: 0x00000040
Only E: 0x00000010

All of the above: 0x00000058

A+YA: 0x00000048
A+E: 0x00000018 (only useful if you don't want YA or don't have Uni)
YA+E: 0x00000050 (there's really no reason why you'd just want YA+E, but if you find one it's this)

These numbers are the same for male sims too.

Just a FYI: Tops/bottoms with the elder bodyshape can get waist gaps if paired with adult bodyshape tops/bottoms. Adult clothes will look adult-shaped on elders, and elder-shaped clothes will look elder-shaped on adults and YA.

And because it may come up - clothes can be gender-swapped from child and down (1=girl, 2=boy, 3=both), but not from teen and up because it requires different meshes (neck and waist gaps).

I think it depends on whether or not the outfit is an original EA/Maxis item or not. I don't know for certain about those game outfits as I've never tried changing them but I would think that you would have to clone them first before making any changes to them. Otherwise, you risk changing game files which might corrupt your game. But that's just my guess.

For custom clothing though, yes, you can change the category on any of those without issues and without needing to clone them first. I've done that sort of thing frequently as I use custom elder meshes which match the meshes for adult/young adult. And x'58' does indeed change the clothing to be wearable by those three ages. The hex values for ages are as follows:
Age Value in Property Set
0x01 - Toddler
0x02 - Child
0x04 - Teen
0x08 - Adult
0x10 - Elder
0x20 - Baby
0x40 - Young Adult

Changing the age setting on clothing means that the clothing will be using the same mesh for all the ages you select. It will not, for example, make the clothing "fit" an elder mesh which is different from the Adult/YA mesh. The elder version will take on the same shape as the Adult/YA while wearing that outfit.

AH HA! Two of the the smartest people I know still into the game (and the most helpful). Ok, to dumb this down, I can change any custom outfit (mesh and texture) in my downloads (not just the saved sims file) to show up for Y/A, Adults and Elders by changing the value to 58? By doing this, won't change how much memory the game uses, right? However, it would if I created (cloned) outfits through bodyshop using individual values, correct?

Any custom outfit that's already for either A/YA/E, yes.
(Gender-swapping or converting to teen or below requires making a new mesh/recolor combo).

As long as you're just recategorizing to similar ages (A/YA/E) or same gender (child and below have gender neutral meshes), you don't have to do anything to the mesh files.

It shouldn't affect game memory (the game loads in the outfit anyway, doesn't matter much if it's set for one or more ages). If you cloned the outfit, the game would have to load in two outfits, and that would probably affect loading time and memory (at least with multiple outfits like that).

That's what I thought. It appears I have a crap load of work to do now (crap). Everyone might want to re-download my stuff when I'm done, though. A huge thanks to the both of you for your help and assistance.