FAQ: Tip on making custom content

[BeosBoxBoy]

Purpose: clarify conventions of nomenclature and naming conventions for novice makers of custom content.

Editor: Beosboxboy

Last edited: 5 March 2007

[BeosBoxBoy]

Q: What is an ASCII character?

A: An ASCII character or American Standard Code for Information Interexchange data symbol is part of a standarised set for the transfer of data across the widest number of systems possible.  ASCII is an industry standard, which assigns letters, numbers and other characters within the 256 slots available in the 8-bit code.  Standard ASCII consists of 128 characters you might find on any US keyboard, while the Extended ASCII consists of accented letters and ligatures used in many Western languages.  Only the standard characters should ever be used in naming your files.





Although ASCII has been largely displaced by UniCode, any information that is meant to be shared between different computers in different nations should be named using standard ASCII.

[BeosBoxBoy]

Q: What is Unicode?

A: Unicode is a worldwide character standard that is capable of having a unique number between U+0000 to U+10FFFF, which means a Unicode may be 8-bit, 16-bit, or 32-bit.  Each character is assigned a code point, for example, U+0041 is the English letter A. Below is an example of how "Computer Hope" would be written in English Unicode.

   U+0043 U+006F U+006D U+0070 U+0075 U+0074 U+0065 U+0072 U+00A0 U+0048 U+006F U+0070 U+0065

The official Unicode page can be found here (link), this page contains complete information about the Unicode standards as well as a listing of each of the code points. Microsoft Windows users can also find Unicode code points by running the character map utility.

[BeosBoxBoy]

Q: Can I use spaces in the names of my files?

A: A better question would be should I use spaces in the name of my files? You should never use spaces in the names of your files since the space character is handled differently by the utility software available to simmers.

Files extracted from a Sims2Pack by Delphy's Multi-Sims2Pack Installer for instance will truncate the name of any file with a space at the first space, so that my new dress.package becomes my with no file extension.  Similarly, Sims2Pack Clean Installer will alter the name of files by replacing non-Latin characters with junk code.

And on the Mac platform we meet with a sort of armageddon as a result of very long file names or names with spaces, extended ASCII or Unicode characters in the file names.

[BeosBoxBoy]

Q: Can I take the weird number off the front of my finished Body Shop project?

A: Yes, but it will make life more difficult for the guy on the other end trying to locate a bad file.  Whereas SKINTONE_beosboxboy-darkfyre_safe.package looks better than 5ffadc4f_beosboxboy-darkfyre_safe.package, when you are looking for a bad file by using boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true, the absence of 5ffadc4f in the file name makes it nearly impossible to find.

It is always best to retain the junk code at the front of the name, although nowadays most people ignore this wisdom.

[BeosBoxBoy]

Q: Can I take the weird number off the end of my finished Home Crafter Plus project?

A: Yes, but it will make life more difficult for the guy on the other end trying to locate a bad file.  Whereas my wooden floor.package looks better than floor_2ef02998.package, when you are looking for a bad file by using boolProp testingCheatsEnabled true, the absence of 2ef02998 in the file name makes it difficult to find.

It is always best to retain the junk code at the end of the name, although nowadays most people ignore this wisdom.

[BeosBoxBoy]

Q: Where is the finished project I just made in Body Shop?

A: The file you just completed is stored in the SavedSims folder this is usually located:

Windows 2000, XP, & Vista:
   C:\Documents and Settings\*Your Windows Log-in Name*\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\SavedSims

Windows 98 & ME:
   C:\My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2\SavedSims

MacOS X
   /Home/EA Games/The Sims 2/SavedSims

But what about the files in the Projects folder?

Those files are useless to anything but to Body Shop, they are a sort of scratch pad for Body Shop to keep notes in.  They will NEVER work in game.

[BeosBoxBoy]

Q: Where is the finished project I just made in Home Crafer Plus?

A: Unlike Body Shop, when Home Crafer Plus is finished with projects, it deletes the temporary files and saves the finished project in the Downloads folder. Usually if you sort the Downloads folder by clicking the Date Modified bar in Details view, it will place the newest items at the top and you can grab them there, or while still in Home Crafter Plus save the files to the desktop as Sims2Packs.