i have made a gamecube but it still shows the maxis console in the catalogue could someone help me

If you buy your Gamecube, is it your new object?

What I am asking, is it only the catalog pic that is incorrect?
Or is your new object not going into the game at all?

it is only the catalogue pic. while you are here could you tell me why it replaces the maxis console even with it's own guid

ok,
I found this and another unanswered thread on the subject
and I'm trying to figure out how this catalog icon thing works
one of my meshes refuses to change to the right icon

here's what I do,
I tend to try my meshes, before I finish them, especially with doors and things,
to see if they work before I start fixing wallmasks and textures and things,
and usually, the icon 'adapts' while I'm working on the mesh
not in this particular case though
my door works fine, it's diagonal works fine, textured and everything,
has it's own guid, overwrites nothing
but the icon is still the ugly cheap white door
anyone know how to fix this?

The icons get confusing, because they are NOT in your .package file at all.

They are stored by the game in completely separate files - this overcomes a very big problem that happened in Sims1.

In Sims1, the game had to actually load into memory EVERY object that was in your game, just to have the icons available in the catalog.

This lead to some extremely long game laoding times if you had a lot of objects - I have seen people claim that it took their Sims1 game over 1/2 hour to load...

So Maxis fixed this in Sims2 - only the small catalog icon pictures are loaded when the game starts - the real object itself loads only when it is needed - saves a lot of memeory, and a lot of loading time.

It works like this:
When a new object is placed into the game, the first time the game finds it a new catalog icon is created and added to the file. Did you ever notice that when you add new downloads, sometime the game is slow to "flip" the pages in the catalog? This is because it must first create the new icons of the objects.

When you quit your game, the whole catalog icon file is saved to disk for use next time.

And, that is where your problem comes in. You see, if the game already HAS made a catalog icon for your object, it will not make a new one the next time (because that would waste a lot of time), it will still show the old one even if you have changed your object. If the first one was "bad" because of a mistake in your object editing, the game doesn't know and it will still keep showing that bad icon even if you have corrected the mistake in the object itself.

So, to "fix" bad icons you need to force the game to create new icons for everything.

Here is how:

In the folder ...My Documents\EA Games\Thes Sims 2\ is a "Thumbnails\" folder.

In it are these files:

BuildModeThumbnails.package - icons for trees, walls, etc.
CANHObjectsThumbnails.package - icons for decorative neighborhood screen objects
CASThumbnails.package - icons for Sims and Clothing, Hair (shared by BodyShop)
DesignModeThumbnails.package - small "color options" icons
ObjectThumbnails.package - the thumbnails of buyable objects

To force the game to create new icons, just delete the files with "bad" icons in them.

For an object, you would delete both:
DesignModeThumbnails.package
ObjectThumbnails.package

For a skin or hair mesh icon problem, delete:
CASThumbnails.package

The game will then create new icons next time you look through that section of your catalog in the game.

Obviously you don't want to do this until you have completed your new object and it is working correctly in the game, or you would have to keep doing it every time.

Once the thumbnails are "cleared", in the way explained by Dr Pixel, the game will build a new thumbnail (I'm talking about custom objects) by reading the mesh from the GMDC and the default material from the Shape (the Material Definitions in the "Parts" tab).

But some objects (for instance, the table phone), Maxis has pre-determined the thumbnail to be associated to the object. If you open the Resource Node, the second block of the blocklist is "thumbnailExtension"; usually this block is empty, but sometimes it contains a thumbnail reference. The existence of a reference like this in your custom object may lead either to a completely wrong thumbnail for your object, or a correct thumbnail shape, but misplaced (i.e. the image of the object is not centered withing the thumbnail borders). In this cases, it is safe to delete the entry from the thumbnailExtension block (NOT the block itself!)

The videogame is even more difficult, because it has two alternative shapes (with or without controllers) and two resource nodes. You can try deleting the entries in each thumbnailExtension block, and see if this fix the problem.

As for the new console overriding the original, beside an error in assigning the GUID, I don't know what to think...

Dr Pixel and Numenor,
thank you both for that very clear explanation, I'll try deleting the thumbnail packages
but (uh oh)
what it doesn't explain is why, most of the time, my icon does 'adapt', without me having to do anything about it

I'll give an example
the door i'm having trouble with, I made last week
but yesterday, I made a window. I took the 'deluxe' window and only made and imported the mesh for the n-frame, to check if it would fit under roofs etc.
this gives a weird mesh, with one side my mesh, and the other side the normal mesh, with glass all over the place,
anyway, the icon displayed that mesh,
then I went back, fixed the window, linked it to another window, checked again,
and found the icon displaying the 'new', fixed mesh
in all this time, my door icon hasn't budged
at first I thought that fixing integrity made the icon change (I'm a firm believer in fixing integrity )
but that's not it, maybe it's because of the recolours?
I suppose it would make sense for the catalog thumbnails to be reloaded for recolours?
that's when I get the 'lag' as well
I'm going to try this, and I'll get back to you

You are right, in some cases the game does make new icons on it's own.

I am not sure what causes it to do this, maybe it was the adding of a new recolor, or the linking to the other object.

But in the cases where the bad icon gets stuck, this method will fix it for you.

well, the recolor didn't do it
at least not in this case, although I think it worked for me in some other meshes
it was worth a try

Edit: ok, that's weird,
I changed the price, and the catalog description, and voilà, correct icon
I guess, if you're averse to deleting things ( I really don't like deleting things), you just have to nudge the catalog to reload

That's interesting - I will have to try that the next time.

But you don't need to worry about deleting the thumbnails .packages if it becomes necessary..

The game keeps a "default" set of thumbnails (with just the original Maxis game objects in it) in a different folder inside the EA Games\ folder. It will substitute that one if the one in "...My Documents" is missing, then it will make new icons of all your non-maxis objects.

I have done this with almost every object I have made, since when I look in the game I always see something I want to change.

Yes, I continously restore the "default" set of thumbnails, too (though this way SimPE will not show correctly all the thumbnails).

Anyway, what Lethe said about the price lets me think that somehow the game understands when the Object Data has changed, and updates the thumbnail.