
About
----------------------------------------------------------
Codex v0.6, by K

July 2004


General
----------------------------------------------------------
The most obvious difference between Codex and other object editing utilities is its BHAV editor, which presents SimAntics scripts in the visual flowchart style in which the language was meant to be coded.

For a guide to coding in this style, seek out the online course material for the computer game design class Ken Forbus  taught at Northwestern University, which is still on the Web somewhere. It comes with a tutorial on Edith, Maxis' internal development tool. Codex is not Edith, but the BHAV editor is modeled on what's presented in this tutorial, and on a video of Edith in action that Sims programmer Don Hopkins made available online.

SimAntics flowcharts are described by TREE resources. Most of the standard Sims objects' IFF files have been stripped of their TREE resources (The NPCs are an exception, and they're fun to read.) So when you first open one of these scripts in Codex, the program will automatically generate a crude flowchart layout. The results can  be jumbled, especially in a large script.

Before you do anything with such a script, you may have to tidy it up by rearranging  the boxes. You can use gotos and labels to break the script down into manageable pieces. You can also add comments. All this will be preserved in a new TREE resource when you save the file. 

To resize a code box, click and hold on the lower-right corner. To move it, drag it by the "handle" at the right side of the box. Click anywhere else on the box to edit it, if it's a primitive, or to follow it, if it's a subroutine call.

To change the true or false branches, right-click anywhere on the box.  Click and hold outside of the box, i.e., on the white background, to move around within the script.

About ten of the primitives have custom editing forms in Codex. The rest have a hex editor type form, and a hastily-written decoder based on a (doubtless flawed) reading of  the IFFPencil 2 SimAntics Translation File written by trailblazing Sims hacker Tom van Dijk and "Shy."

Codex also includes custom forms for editing BCON, TTAB, FWAV, TTAs, OBJf and STR# resources, allows you to label your constants, and permits easy cutting/copying and pasting of resources within and between files.


Newbies
----------------------------------------------------------- 
With a little Googling, you can find many websites that offer object-making tools and tutorials you'll find invaluable.

Before you do anything else, get Don Hopkins' Transmogrifier, which lets you clone Sims objects and change their visual appearance, name, price and description. You should probably only modify cloned objects, or objects you've downloaded off the Internet. 

If you have sims who are leading ongoing, productive lives that you wish to preserve, you might want to back up your game environment before playing around with this program.


Useful websites 
----------------------------------------------------------- 
Don Hopkins' Transmogrifier,
www.thesimstransmogrifier.com

The Sims Workshop
www.thesimsworkshop.com

Edith tutorial
www.cs.northwestern.edu/~forbus/c95-gd/ 

Sims Hackers Resource
www.hackersresource.info

Bil Simser's Sims Tools
www.simstools.com 

Feedback
----------------------------------------------------------- 
Please send feedback and bug reports to me at k200406@hushmail.com. If you're filing a bug report, please include details on how to reproduce the bug, and I'll try to fix it in a future release.

For updates, visit www.geocities.com/k200406




