[FIXED] [GF] Celebrity autographed photo with distorted black overlay [ Edited ]

[simvasion]

Product: The Sims 4
Platform:PC
Which language are you playing the game in? English
How often does the bug occur? Every time (100%)
What is your current game version number? 1.48.94.1020
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? All packs released up to Get Famous (Nov 2018)
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? It's hard to reproduce because there are 20 different signature variations assigned at random to your sims. I just happened to have a celebrity with one that appears to be bugged/corrupted?
What happens when the bug occurs? When you ask this specific celebrity for an autograph, they are always covered with a huge black pixellated overlay obscuring most of the image. It's like the signature overlay is distorted or being applied wrong.
What do you expect to see? I expect to see a normal looking signed autograph for my sims to keep and put on their walls.
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Not now. I've removed them.
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? No

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At the moment, it's just this one particular celebrity in my game that has this issue. Every time any sim (I've tried switching multiple households) asks him for an autograph, he always hands them the same looking distorted images.

All the other celebrities seem to be using a different signature and don't have this issue, but I don't really have that many in my game for a large enough sample to know if this can affect others too. It seems like once a sim gets an autograph signature style saved to them, they use the same one consistently, so when one sim gets a bugged autograph like this, it seems like it's reproducible every time you ask that sim for an autograph.

I tested modding the object file for autographs to find a workaround, and found that when I removed the reference to this signature style:

"InGame\Objects\Buy\AutographWall\autographWall_EP06GENsignature_set1.tga" (2f7d0006:00000000:5d7bf89334ed33b8)"

Then his autographs started working (or at least he switched to using a new autograph style that wasn't bugged).

When I removed all mods and tested the game without changes again, his autographs reverted to being bugged.

So the game must have assigned him "Signature_set1" which doesn't work. Hopefully the SimGurus can take a look at that TGA file in the game's files and see if it is corrupted or being scaled wrong when applied to autographed photos?

If you need to test my save to see if you can reproduce it, here is a copy. The celebrity that has the bugged signature is called Kenji Hatanaka, and he's an NPC DJ. The save file was saved with my sim at a dance party at the Ancient Ruins standing next to him so that she can ask for an autograph easily.

[SimQARobo · Accepted solution]

Apparently a fix for this was made for the November 2019 patch.  However, the fix only affects new photos made after that November patch, and will not fix existing photos that were broken before that November patch..

[crinrict]

Added

[CatMommy]

Any way you could send me the file you modded? This is driving me nuts and who knows how long it will be before EA gets around to fixing it.

[allykatz77]

@CatMommy This is happening to me now, I have actually tried 5 times back to back with 2 different sims ( both 5 times each) and each one was like that , but then other ones do not always do that. I am not sure why it does this, but am still trying to get the other ones autographs for my living off the grid teenage sim, even tho this game is new it has happened in many older games too.

[simvasion]

Investigating the cause of this for a mod fix (which is available on my WordPress blog - Google search for "simvasion sims 4 mods"), I discovered that the PNG image file for signature set 1 has an opaque black background, but it should be transparent like all the others.

I hope that discovery helps with creating an official patch fix.

[SimQARobo · Accepted solution]

Apparently a fix for this was made for the November 2019 patch.  However, the fix only affects new photos made after that November patch, and will not fix existing photos that were broken before that November patch..