Different coloured ceiling tiles in set.

[Twinmum]

Anyone else noted this? I found this really annoying the other day while trying to make a floor mat. I used ceiling tiles to create a floor rug in my home (the August building contest home actually) I didn't notice when I first laid them, as I was colouring the tiles as I placed them, but when I had finished, the side pieces didn't match the rest. I thought I had just made a mistake with the recolour and tried again. But the problem seems to be with the tiles themselves, the only way I could explain it would be to say that the odd ones must have a different behaviour attached to them or are missing a behaviour the others have. It's on all three colours so no matter which ones you use, even customizing the colours will not fix the problem.
Here are three mats using all the tiles in each set - you can see the ones that don't match.



When you place them, there is one or two angles to look at them and they look the same colour, but most of the time they look odd. In the end, I got fed up and made the rug using different tiles.

Norma

[MasterSiwel]

I just saw them while testing a pattern.

[Swede1992]

You can't go in to Create a Style and change the colour tone of it, can you?

[Twinmum]

No you can't. Well you can change the colour in create a style, but it still shows up as a different colour in game, yet when you check the hex codes, they are the same for each tile. It's as if the offending tile has an attribute associated with it to maybe react to light differently - to shine even.

Norma

[Swede1992]

Yes, I've checked it in my game and I have it as well. Hey, you can't even make the weird tile completely black either!

[Happytime]

Norma,

I suspect the ceiling tiles have a different "reflectivity / specular value" than "normal" floor tiles, which is why they exhibiting this behavior.

The materials are designed to handle light differently than other materials. Without going into the code, I've no idea what's different, but I suspect all the "ceiling tiles" are going (to some degree or another) display this behavior.

  -- Happytime

[Twinmum]

Yes I understand the idea of them having a reflective value, but what I'm getting at is that you would think that all tiles in the set would have that same value. These are sets of three different tiles (one corner piece and two different edge pieces) but one of the edge pieces obviously is either lacking that value or has it while the others do not. The result is it almost always looks different to the other set pieces in game which is unsatisfactory if you want to go for aesthetics.

[Happytime]

Norma,

Yeah, but I suspect the code is using the entire "tile area" as a value and then attaching a specific "reflective bounce-back this percent of light and this amount of highlight over this 32by32 pixel block" (or whatever the rendering size is), and then moving on to the adjacent portion of the screen to render.

But about a bazillion times faster, over the entire screen / display area, several times a second. Even with the camera dead-still, the virtual sun'll be moving and all those calculations will have to take place repeatedly.

As robustly as the Sims handles the display, I'm not surprised one bit some of the materials might really behave in strange fashion (especially something they may have "tweaked" for use on the ceiling, I'm sure they have a lot more "reflectivity / specularity" than other materials). It's also very possible the core values (some of the stuff we can't access even in the "Create a Style") are messed up for that particular tile. Do you see the lines when they are on the ceiling?

  -- Happytime

[Twinmum]

 Do you see the lines when they are on the ceiling?

Lol, I've never used them as ceiling tiles. I'll have to check them out when used as intended. I can't at the moment though (we are having solar panels installed and they will be turning the power off shortly, so I can't start up Sims as it takes a while to shut down)

Norma

[Twinmum]

Oh my lord, those tiles are a nightmare to use! As I said, I've never used them as ceiling tiles before, so it was all new to me. First I placed them how I thought they would be placed - that is I went up a level and placed them like floor tiles, but when I came down to view them they were all the same colour with no lines or corner patterns. So it seems you have to place them from the floor below looking up at the ceiling which is really hard to get the correct angle (the tab button does not work in build mode) Plus, you can only place them if there is already a floor above, so if this is the top level of a house and you want the ceiling tiles, you need to add flooring under the roof!
One thing I did notice though, they seem to look all the same colour when on the ceiling - not like when they are upside down on the floor 
So in answer to your question Happytime, yes, you can see the lines when they are on the ceiling. But I don't think I'm going to worry about ceiling tiles any time soon.

Norma