Hi everyone. I've been trying to respond to some of these posts, but ModTheSims2 keeps going away, so I've lost a bunch of what I typed.

I investigated the portals yesterday and started work on a tutorial with pictures. However, I understand that the LotExpander logic doesn't always work. Here's my suggestion:

Let me work on a tutorial to describe what I know. Then someone else can see whether they can actually get it working for the 1x1 rotated lot. While they are doing that, I'll look into why the LotExpander fails to move the portals correctly (sometimes? all the time?).

As for the Row Houses... I have some ideas on how to approach this. I think that it might be testable with a good hex editor (one that allows deletion). Try a base game lot with walls but nothing else. This should reduce the amount of work which needs to be done, but still be able to prove or disprove the whole concept.

[Update:]
Inge Jones has created a tool which allows you to see, move and rotate the portals on a lot. This is much easier than changing the portals in SimPE. Get the tool here: http://www.modthesims2.com/member/s...ad.php?t=251392
[End Update]


First, you need to determine filename of your lot. Here's the method that I use:

In SimPE, open the neighborhood and select the Lot Description for your lot. In the plugin view on the left-hand side, you will see the Instance underneath the Version. For example, in Pleasantview the Broke family house, 55 Woodland Drive, has an Instance of 0x00000024.

To convert the Instance from hex to decimal, just bring up the Windows Calculator and choose Scientific from the View Menu. Now, click on the Hex radio button and type in the Instance. You don't need to type in the leading 0x or the leading zeros. For the Broke family house, I type in 24. Now, click the Decimal radio button and the number will be converted. The Broke house is stored in lot 36.

In SimPE, select Open from the File menu and navigate to the Lots subdirectory of your neighborhood. Open the file Lot###.package, where ### is the decimal instance number that you calculated above. You can verify that you have the right lot by selecting jpg/tga/png Image in the Resource Tree and browsing through the pictures. (I thought that the house name was there somewhere, but I can't seem to find it right now).


Yes, just use the existing lot. There is no need to expand it. A 1x1 lot is really a 1x2 lot, with one of the tiles taken up with the road. You want to move the road to the other tile and the house will be built where the road used to be.


"Teach a person to fish"... and maybe I'll get a chance to play the game again!


Almost there...


Here's the quick version:

How to Move a Portal:

1) First, backup what you've done, in case this doesn't work.

2) Open the lot file in SimPE (see above).

3) Although the Portals are usually stored in XOBJ Instances 3-8, it is wise to check this before making any changes.

3.A) In the Resource Tree, select the Object (OBJT) which has the larger number of entries.

3.B) Sort the Resource List by Instance by clicking on the word "Instance" in the Resource List title:

Name Type Group Instance (high) Instance <- Click here!

3.C) The OBJT Instances should now be sorted numerically from 1. If they seem to be in reverse order, just click on "Instance" again to sort them in the other direction.

3.D) Look through the OBJT entries to find the 6 Portal Instances. See the following two posts for additional information:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?p=1778248

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?p=1780690

4) Select Object XML (XOBJ) in the Resource Tree and sort the Resource List by Instance.

5) You will want to change the Portal coordinates in the Instances that were found in step 3.D. Select one of the XOBJ Instances that you want to change. Choose Hex at the bottom of the screen to go into the hex editor.

6) You need to change the two 4-byte floating point numbers (AKA "Single"s) at bytes 80 and 84. Since SimPE displays the byte numbers in hex, you need to look at the Single value stored at 0x50 and the Single stored at 0x54. (You can confirm this using the Windows Calculator to convert from Decimal 80 to Hex 0x50).

Click the mouse on the byte at 0x50 and drag to select the four bytes from 0x50 and 0x53. Now, look under the array. You will see the bytes that you selected displayed in various formats:

Byte: Int:
Short: Long:
Single: Double:
Binary:

You want to change the "Single" value. Just type the number that you want and then press the Enter key; the value in the array will change to reflect what you typed. Don't be worried if the four hex bytes look odd to you... floating point numbers are not stored in an obvious format.

You will need to change two Singles per Instance at 0x50-0x53 (X) and 0x54-0x57 (Y). See the following post for additional information:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?p=1780690

7) Now, the only problem left is deciding where to move the Portal. Your lot is 1x2, so one corner of your lot is at coordinates 0,0 and the other is at either 10,20 or 20,10 (depending upon the U11 value).

This means that the values of the portals should be between 0 and 20. Since I haven't gotten that far in my investigation, you could just try experimenting. I'd look at the current values in these two Singles, to see whether you can determine what they should be changed to. See below for an example.

8) After changing both Singles for this XOBJ Instance, then commit and repeat for the rest of the Portals. Finally, save and exit and test the lot in your game.

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As an example, let me show you what the portals for the Broke house look like. The Broke house is a 3x3 lot, facing left (U11=0), with a road at the left and another road at the top (U10=3).

From the string values in OBJT Instances 3-8, we find the type of portal:

Instance 3 = Pedestrian
Instance 4 = Pedestrian
Instance 5 = Car Start
Instance 6 = Car Stop
Instance 7 = Service Start
Instance 8 = Service Stop

From the floating-point values in XOBJ Instances 3-8, we can determine that the current portals have the following coordinates:

3 Pedestrian X=1.5 Y=9.5
4 Pedestrian X=28.5 Y=9.5
5 Car Start X=1.5 Y=5.5
6 Car Stop X=20.5 Y=5.5
7 Service Start X=28.5 Y=4.5
8 Service Stop X=12.5 Y=4.5

Here's what I can deduce from these numbers:

- The bottom left corner of the lot is at X=0 Y=0.
- The top left corner of the lot is at X=30 Y=0.
- The top right corner of the lot is at X=30 Y=30.
- The bottom right corner of the X=0 Y=30.
- The game likes the portals to be at least 1.5 in from the edge of the lot. Because your lot is so small (only 10 wide), I might try 1.0 or even .5 in from the edge, instead (just to see what happens).
- The sidewalk closest to the house is at Y=9.5
- The side of the road closest to the house is at Y=5.5
- The side of the road farthest from the house is at Y=4.5
- The Car Stop and Service Stop portals are not at the edges of the lot. Instead, they seem to be closer to the mailbox. So, this probably indicates where we want them to stop while at the house. Fooling around with these values may allow us to have more cars on the road.

How do I know this?

The transportation objects, like carpools, buses, and taxis (Portal - Car) start at X=1.5 and stop at X=20.5. We know that these objects come onto the lot from the right side of the house and leave from the left side (when viewed from the front). Because of the U11 rotation, this puts the car start at the bottom left of the lot and the car stop closer to the top left.

The service objects, like maids, gardeners and handypeople (Portal - Car - Service) start at X=28.5 and stop at X=12.5. We know that these objects come onto the lot from the left side of the house and leave from the right side (when viewed from the front). Because of the U11 rotation, this puts the service start at the top left of the lot and the car stop closer to the bottom left.

Pedestrians come onto the lot at the front of the house, from both directions. Thus, there are two Pedestrian portals at X=1.5 and X=28.5.

Cars always travel on the side of the road closest to the house, thus Y=5.5, just slightly to the house-side of the first 10 tiles, which contain the road.

Service cars always travel on the side of the road furthest from the house, thus Y=4.5, which is within the first 10 tiles and thus on the road, but slightly to the side which is away from the house.

Pedestrians always travel on the sidewalk closest to the house. Thus, Y=9.5, which is just within the first 10 tiles (which contain the road and two sidewalks).

I hope that it's obvious from this how I derived the coordinate system. Now that we understand the coordinate system, it should be easy to decide where to move the portals, based on the new location of the road.

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Aha I found an interesting picture in one of Andi's posts:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?p=1376989

Here's my version (I just find it easier to think about things this way around):

They should be identical... it's just a question of which picture works for you.

Do you have the link to the Portal fix? I'd be very curious to see this. Thanks!

Yes, that is unfortunate. I can't think of any way that we can fix this... have you complained to EA?


This is an ongoing discussion. See post #385 and replies:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?p=1767050

I'd love to see someone test this and see whether the concept is fundamentally sound.

If this is a common problem, then I ought to be able to reproduce it fairly easily. I'm still pretty new at this and I appreciate all bug reports. Because of what happened with Andi, I feel a strong need to document all bugs, suggestions, techniques, etc.

Does this problem with the portals occur all of the time, or only when expanding 1x1 lots to make them wider?

The logic for the portals is pretty complex, but I'm wading through it. I'm sure that this is fixable. I've put it on my to-do list.


Thanks. I especially had problems when I first took over the project, since I didn't have a clue what the program was doing and the language barrier didn't help. Since I've been working on it, I've been converting the variable and function names to English, as I figure out what they are for. For the moment, I think that I have things under control. However, I might ask you for translation help in the future.


Yes, this is something that I've wanted as well. Another item for the to-do list.

I'll spend a bit of time playing (testing?) this when I have finished these wretched sunbathing towels that have already taken four times as long as they should :D

Yes, your husband was right. When I pointed you to Andi's post, I accidently confused OBJT (which has the "portal -" strings) and XOBJ (which contains the actual portal coordinates).

I suggested that you look at the OBJT Instances to ensure that the portals are actually stored in Instances 3-8. However, it is the corresponding XOBJ Instances which need to be changed.

I'm really sorry about that. I can see that this might have been confusing. I've fixed it in my original post, so hopefully no one else will have a problem with this.

I have enlarged the 1x1 lots, and the pedestrian portals were off. Can't remember about the others.



Here's a link...
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=83684

There was actually another thread related to this, about the millions of nannies/pizza boys accumulating on the lot (which was what I had noticed). At the time I only had basegame, but the fix worked anyway.



Thanks for your tutorial post above. I will try again and let you know how I go. By the way, the lot I have half done is pretty weird - I suppose the game thinks there is road on both halves, and won't build or place items on either side without the cheat. And the carpool didn't come at all, although the mailman and visitors did alright. Anyway, I'll go see if I can finish the job now.

I did just fine up to this point, and now I'm lost again:

I will try to post a shot of the screen I'm looking at, in case that helps you point me in the right direction.

We do seem to be getting there. In very small increments.

OK... I think that I can see the LotExpander code which is causing this problem. It really doesn't look like it will work properly when expanding 1x1 lots. I'll have to think about what the "correct" solution is, but I should be able to fix this fairly easily.

The "small increments" are because I'm figuring things out as we go. Once we get this working, I should have enough information to write a proper tutorial (unless you'd like to do it).

OK, you seem to be in the right place. However, you haven't selected the 4-byte floating point number at 0x50 and your screen is too small to see the display of the number at the bottom of the screen. Once you've selected the 4 bytes, you'll need to scroll the bottom part of the window down until you can see the "Single:" number.

I've attached two screenshots. One is the OBJT Instance 3, to show where it says that Instance 3 is the Pedestrian Portal (I believe you've already seen this).

The other is the XOBJ Instance 3. I have selected the 4-bytes starting at 0x50 and highlighted where the floating-point number (single) is displayed.

You will type in the new number beside the word "Single:" and press the enter key. Then, select the next 4 bytes in the array and continue.

Would you mind typing in the X and Y values for the 6 portals, and what you've decided to change them to?

Lol, problably list out all the 16 possibility and link changes in the portal placement to the estimated outcomes for a change for lot expanding instances.

If the beginning origin of a lot is the top left corner end, the answer may be there. This's at least true to how flopor tile is mapped.

The portal is nornmally moved by moving the mailbox which is associated with it, and that's how I switch the portal direction on the broke corner lot. To change the portal direction is to change the mailbox's direction with the moveobject cheat in-game.


Mootilda
,
:dances for you:
Thanks for all the great details and infos...

Actually, from what I know about Andi's 1x1 lot, I'm going to guess what the values are:

Pedestrian X=1.5 Y=9.5
Pedestrian X=8.5 Y=9.5
Car Start X=1.5 Y=5.5
Car Stop X=5.5 Y=5.5 (not so sure about this X value)
Service Start X=8.5 Y=4.5
Service Stop X=4.5 Y=4.5 (not so sure about this X value, either)

Assuming that I'm right about the values above, and since we're rotating the lot 180 degrees so that it now faces to the right, I'd suggest the following new values:

The pedestrian portals are still in the same X position, but are now 9.5 from the right side, rather than 9.5 from the left side:
Pedestrian X=1.5 Y=10.5 (20-9.5)
Pedestrian X=8.5 Y=10.5 (20-9.5)

The cars now come in from the top right, rather than from the bottom left, but still stop near the mailbox:
Car Start X=8.5 (10-1.5) Y=14.5 (20-5.5)
Car Stop X=4.5 (10-5.5) Y=14.5 (20-5.5)

The services now come in from the bottom right, rather than from the top left, but still stop near the mailbox:
Service Start X=1.5 Y=15.5 (20-4.5)
Service Stop X=3.5 (10-6.5) Y=15.5 (20-4.5)

Perhaps this picture will help.

Now, just rotate the picture based on the value of U11. The bottom left corner is always X=0 Y=0. The top left corner has coordinates X=lot size (ie, 10,20,30...) Y=0. The bottom right corner has coordinates X=0 Y=lot size.

Really? I didn't know this. So, is this only for the pedestrian portals? If so, it's definitely an easier way of changing those two portals, anyway. It sure would be nice if this would work for all of the portals... much easier than using SimPE.

We'll see how frustrated I am by the finish...

That post helped me understand which things to highlight, and I went into the OBJT thing to see what portals were which - and it seems that 7 and 8 in my lot are actually the mail and rubbish, while 1 and 2 are the other two portals. Good thing I looked.

the current values seem to be
01 service start 50 = 8.5, 54 = 4.5
02 service stop 50 = -9.5, 54 = 4.5
03 car start 50 = 1.5, 54 = 5.5
04 car stop 50 = 0.5, 54 = 5.5
05 pedestrian 50 = 8.5, 54 = 9.5
06 pedestrian 50 = 1.5, 54 = 9.5

I haven't changed the values yet - have to go out, so I will fiddle some more later - I think I know WHAT to change now, just not what to change it TO. I'll read your instructions some more and try to get my head around it.



If and when I work it out, sure! Thanks for your continued patience.

(edit) have just seen the newest posts above, so will compare that info later too. Thanks everyone.

Yes. I'm surprised, since the information about the portal instances being 3-8 came from Andi's post about creating the 1x1 lot - the very lot that you're trying to change!

Anyway, I changed my post above to reflect this... no more assuming where the portals are.


Wow! A negative number for the service stop? I wonder what that means?

The other numbers look similar to my guesses...

I think that the 1x1 lots are a bit odd, since they have so little space for vehicles at the front of the house. I wonder whether Andi fooled around with these a bit to find values that actually worked?

Breaking news...

I changed the values,and all the portals now appear, although somewhat oddly. The cars and services have swapped sides of the road (and directions - the driver is still to the centre of the roadway). All vehicles halt about level with the middle of the house/mailbox. The pedestrian and paperboy enter the lot at about the right point, but slightly off the path.

Still can't build without the moveobjects cheat. Any idea what is causing that?

The values I currently have are
car start X 8.5, Y 14.5
car stop X 9.5, Y 14.5
service start X 1.5, Y 15.5
service stop X 19.5, Y 15.5

I haven't altered the pedestrian portals from what I said earlier.

How would I alter what side of the road the cars are linked to?

Edit - I tried putting the mailbox down the side of the lot, and the paperboy appeared in the middle of the road and then walked over to put his paper beside the mailbox as usual. So I moved it back again. Proves that shifting the mailbox alters the pedestrian portals.

just a fast guess, the negative value may be directionally relative to the mailbox-linked portal.

Just incase,
the lot description Ltxt instance number may be related to the lot file name number

Ltxt instance number : lot file name number : in-game lot name
0x00000010 : N001_Lot16.package : 150 Main Street
0x00000012 : N001_Lot18.package : 170 Main Street
0x00000024 : N001_Lot36.package : 55 Woodland Drive (Broke corner lot)

I've been fiddling with the portals, and this is my latest setup:

Service start 9.5, 14
Service Stop 3.5, 14
Car Start 2.5, 15.5
Car Stop 9.5, 15.5
Pedestrian 9.5, 10.5
Pedestrian 1, 10.5

This seems to work fine, but the vehicles are still on the wrong sides of the street (actually, since I'm Australian, it's the correct side, but not the Maxis side). I vaguely remember seeing a mod somewhere that changed the side cars drove on - maybe that's the clue (or maybe they were moving the road, just like this.)

The cars and people all line up properly on their pathways now.

My next big question is, how do I enable the building/placing again? Currently, none of this can be done anywhere on the lot without the moveobjects cheat. I was wondering if this is one of the other things Andi was changing when he reduced the lot size...cleverer heads than mine will have to think that one out.

If the building problem can be fixed, the lot is ready. I'm quite proud of having got the numbers to perform in the end. I may even do a couple more lots, just for practice.

I will be away now until Tuesday, so I'm hoping someone will tell me how to enable the building when I next look. Thanks again for everyone's help so far.

To swap the side of the road used, we just need to swap the Y values between the Car Portals and the Service Portals:

Service start 9.5, 15.5
Service Stop 3.5, 15.5
Car Start 2.5, 14
Car Stop 9.5, 14
Pedestrian 9.5, 10.5
Pedestrian 1, 10.5

This makes sense... the service start and stop should be at the far side of the lot (closest to the lot height of 20), whereas the car start and stop should be closer to the house (ie, closer to the edge between the two tiles at Y=10). The pedestrian portal is even closer to the house than the cars, since pedestrians use the sidewalk on the house-side of the road.

Note that this will not change the direction that the cars are travelling. If that's wrong, too, then we'll need to change the X values as well.

I will try to create a picture to illustrate this and attach it here.


This is a potentially more disturbing problem.

My initial suggestion is to run the LotExpander, but don't expand the lot (ie, leave Front, Back, Left and Right as 0 in step 4, then click on Next). You will get a warning message:

"No Value Changed

"You didn't change any of this Lot's Values. So the only effect is unlocking all tiles of the lot. Tiles will only remain unlocked until you replace the lot the next time. Is this your intention?"

Click on the "Yes" button. The LotExpander will unlock all of the tiles on the lot and you should get a final screen to that effect.

Unfortunately, there's a possibility that this will only fix the lot temporarily. If you run the game and move the lot in the neighborhood again, the game will relock anything that it believes to be a road tile. If you find that this relocks both tiles, then we have a more difficult problem on our hands; let me know and I'll do some investigation.


I also want to thank you for the work that you're doing.

You are not just creating a 1x1 "south" facing lot, which will be something that other people can use.

You're also helping to develop a procedure which other people can use to rotate their own lots. I'm really hoping that (at the end of this all), all of this information that we're generating can be pulled into a great tutorial, or even notes for a new "LotRotater" program.

I tested the principle of the row houses and I believe it would work. It didn't go quite right because I found it impossible to accurately edit the huge rows of hex where I should have deleted two chunks of bytes on every line over several files. It's not realistic to do that manually, so I hope shrinking will be included in the lot expander.

Anyway I got a lot 11 lot-tiles wide (I meant to make it 10) and unfortunately I deleted the left hand 19 rather than the left 10 and the right 10 as I had intended. Again something including it in the program would easily help with.

I started by building a simple square building on the centre 10 tiles of a 3x2 lot. The walls remained standing on the edge of the lot and therefore could be used as the party walls of a row house.

Initially, I assumed that the portals had to be on the lot itself, which meant that one value had to be between 0 and the lot height, and the other value had to be between 0 and the lot width.

But, I realized that this may not actually be true.

We've all seen how sims and cars "magically" appear out of thin air near the edges of the lot.

If you zoom out from the house, so that you can see the lots on either side, a portal value which is outside of the expected range could mean that the pedestrian or vehicle will appear within the road or sidewalk of the next lot over.

If this actually works, it's a really nice feature.

Not only could we see our visitors coming sooner, but it might solve the problem that small lots can't handle too many vehicles!


Yes, this is the method that I use to determine the filename of a lot. Too bad that SimPE doesn't display the lot numbers in decimal, as well as hex.

This is excellent as a "proof of concept".

I agree with you that this is much better suited to a program... I wish that I had more time to devote to the LotExpander, or that there were other people to help with the programming. However, I've got this pretty high on my to-do list; your work will encourage me to work on the issue of decreasing the lot sizes.

If you clone this lot and put three of them side-by-side in the neighborhood, do you still see the flickering at the edges of the lots?

I didn't think that a lot size of 11 would even work. Well, another assumption bites the dust.

Ok, well I put three in a row, and there was no flickering at the edges of the main part of the lot. But there was some on the left-hand column from the pavement and across the road. I think that might be explained by the lot might have been confused about what size it was. For example, as I started with a 30 tile wide lot, which is 0x1D, I changed that to 0x0A. But in some places it said 0x1E or 1F, and then I changed it to 0B or 0C respectively. But maybe that was not right. I believe that if the lot had been a safe and sound 10 tiles all the way back, the flickering would not have happened. Or if it had been 11 all the way, or anything consistent for that matter lol :D

Sounds like you made the correct changes. Each of the arrays in the Lot file store their information in a different format. If the original size seems to be 1 tile too large or small, then you need to have the new size for that array be 1 tile too large or small. If you don't, then the game could crash when it tries to access the array.

It seems more likely to me that the flickering was caused by having a lot which was 11 tiles wide. I suspect that the game wouldn't like that very much, although it's handling the oddly-sized lot better than I thought that it would.

Would you say that this is an improvement on the "overlapping lots solution", even if we can't remove the flickering near the road? Sounds like these lots might be sharable, since you are able to move them around.