As soon as you buy it, all the portals will become visible and movable. When you sell it, they will become invisible and unmovable again.

If you have an inhabited lot, you may also use the flamingo's menu to choose which portals to show. I can add other types of invisible lot object on request.

Wow! This is simply brilliant!

So much easier than guessing about the values, especailly if you're like me and NOT a numbers person.

Fascinatingly, the markers are not where I thought they were, even on lots that were working. One lot had all the markers in the middle of the buildable area, even though the portals had tested okay in play.

I'm attaching a few pictures. The last one is a standard lot, not messed with by me. The other two are before-and-after pics of a 1x1 community lot I rotated today. Shifting the position and direction of each marker is very easy (needs Moveobjects cheat), and now my cars will travel in the correct places.

One of my community lots seems to be totally without portals. Don't know what happened there - may have to start that one again.

Thanks for making this tool usable for me, Inge, it's fantastic.

Lol! No wonder your pizza man was having conniptions!

A few more bits before I go to bed...

Pretty much all the lots I have rotated had the portal markers on the buildable area - obviously this isn't impossible to play, since some of those lots have been functioning fine except for the car directions. Sometimes, two or more of the markers were piled on top of each other in the back left corner of the lot.

I looked at one or two un-altered Andi lots - the portals were on the road or footpath as expected, but often WAY off the edge of the property.

I've shifted a lot of portals in the last hour or so, and will do more testing tomorrow. (have to look with SimPE to see what the values are now...)

For tonight, I'm attaching the blue house again, its portals altered with Inge's flamingo. Will someone please test it for me again? The cars will hopefully be right, and everything else as well. No flamingo included - I'm sure you've all got it by now.

Pics attached show the position of the portals in the old version and now.

Mootilda, I've remembered where you got a 1x1 lot I'd been working on. That house is even tinier than the blue one here. (But cute)

We're really getting there at last - many thanks as always.

still couldn't get the portal revealer work in my base game copy.

it just override the statue flamingo with the same bhav and menu and that's all.

still trying more...

no it doesn't work and still the same.
I've already removed all other mods or downloads leaving just the reflection mod and my pool surface tiles.

aelflaed, did you use the BGS-based base game?

My base game copy is still pretty clean and new.

gonna delete the thumbnails to see if that helps.

No, it is not a typo. I downloaded your 1x1 rotated lot from your LotExpander bug post.

I knew that the portals were more broken in the 1x1 lot than in the 2x1 lot, so I wanted to see whether Inge's portal revealer could be used to lend insight into the portal problem. Although I knew that you didn't want to release the lot under Bon Voyage, I thought that the research into the portal problems could be done with any EP.

I need to determine how to set up the portals correctly using a hex editor if I'm ever going to get the LotExpander's portals right. I'm trying to figure out where the direction of the portals is stored, since it seems to be different than the X and Y that we've been using to position them.

So, as far as I can tell, there's only one more thing that needs to be tested with your 2x1 lot before it's ready: whether the LotExpander works on it. I'll try that today.

You missed my post a few back where Aelflaed was saying the same thing and I realised I had not changed the group number on the OBJD. I fixed it and uploaded it again. Remember I couldn't test it myself in the basegame.

oops, sorry.
I didn't realised that there were a few posts new to me posted in-between the last post I saw and my old post.

gonna test it right now...

ya, it's working and it can show all known portals...

Thanks... Inge...

Maybe, you can release it a s build mod for lot-builders who are concerned about the portal positions...

Go check more thing now, me...

I have thought of another reason why shrunk lots will be much better for row houses than overlapping ones. With overlapping ones you have place the lot first, then expand it before you can build. You won't be able to just make the house one time then place several of them in a row.

Yes, I agree. Overlapping lots really aren't shareable or moveable, which makes them much less interesting.

I tested expanding your new rotated 2x1 lot. As expected, the lot expanded just fine, but the portals were not moved correctly. I'm going to point people at Inge's flamingo until I can get the movement of the portals fixed properly within the LotExpander.

aelflaed, I think you have a "go". This lot looks great!

Now, would you like to think about making a tutorial for people, or shall I?

Should I make my flamingo have its own thread now?

Not necessarily true for overlapping lots, this kinda lot can still be shared and made multiple copies at once by file replacement at lot folder.

As long as the dummy replaced lot fits in the original lot specs of the expanded lot, just copy the lot for multiple duplications and rename them accordingly. I don't see that a hard job to do so.

Yet, for further convenience, shrunk stable lots should be the best choice.

A lot file seems to record the fence posts to record where the walls and fences are at. What do you think?
How to fool the game to recognise the walls as fences while avoiding the gridline atop of the walls to cause crashes?

As previously suggested, I surely back that Inge's portal revealer to post out the wonderful mod.

Yes, please. It's such a wonderful tool that I'd really like more people to see it. Let me know and I'll link to your new thread in my original post.

Bleagh - it's gone in the moderation queue. Could be there for... some time.

This is a technique that I've used from the beginning, but I'm not sure whether some people would find it too difficult. I suppose that someone could try writing a tutorial about overlapping lots... The technique is very do-able once you understand the orientation issues.


I'll really have to do some research into this... I just don't have any idea how these record types work. Certainly, the wall graph (WGRA), wall layer (WLAY) and fence post layer (FPST) might be good places to start the research.

For now, I'm pointing people at your version on this thread. Perhaps you'd like to write something about the tool here, for now. You could always delete your post here once your other thread is accepted.

Well wouldn't it be easier for you to temporarily add it to your lot expander thread? That's where the people will already be, anyway.

I'm sorry, I'm not quite sure what you're asking. I've been going back and putting some pointers to your tool in various posts that require manipulation of the portals. If you'd like me to do something else, please let me know.

I was just thinking that it would be really helpful to have a quick "tutorial" on using your tool. Specifically, how to install and use the flamingo, a picture of a lot with the portals in the "correct" location, and an explanation of what the different portals do.

If you'd like, I could certainly try to write such a tutorial...

I was suggesting you upload it as an attachment to the first post of your Expander download thread until it's own thread gets approved. After that, delete the upload and replace it with a pointer to the new thread.

I am not sure it's ready for a tutorial. I feel as if it's still in development really. There may be other things we can add to it. Actually it happens to be a belief of mine that the tutorials should not be written by the toolmakers, but by helpful experienced users of the tool. That way the writing is more empathetic and it leaves the toolmakers more time to continue development. You're too valuable working on the Lot expander/shrinker to be spared for tutorial writing :D

I already put how to use it in the thread I created, and I can answer questions there.

Sure. I can do that. However, it will show up as my upload, rather than yours. Is that OK with you?

aelflaed is eager to do it, aren't you aelflaed? There is not a lot to say about the flamingo in particular, perhaps more to say about portals in general.

Yes Mootilda it's fine by me I wouldn't have even made it if it wasn't to help your project.

Mootilda,

Thanks for your further suggestion on a way to use the lot expander.
The 10x20 lot seems to be fixed now... The unbuildable stripes are gone after tile removal but I still have to use moveobjects on cheat to get rid of the edge tiles. Then, I saved the lot and exit back to the neighbourhood.and voila the graphics and others are fixed... The previously unbuildable became buildable ever since.

Actually, the confusion I had was about if I had to use a freeware hex editor to trim the arrays one by one... You can imagine why I felt dense...

I've added back the mailbox and garbage can.

Now, I'm gonna have to check or even fiddle it with the portal modding... :D

... after my nap...

Thanks Mootilda, Inge, aelflaed, and etc... nice good job you all have done...

I'm glad that the LotExpander was able to fix these problems. I definitely need to add this step to the "Rotate a Lot" tutorial, and possibly other places as well.


So, did you have to trim the arrays to get this to work? It certainly is a much easier procedure if you only have to change the height and width, without having to delete a bunch of stuff.

Does this mean that you now know how to decrease the size of an empty lot by hand? Is there anything that you want to add to Andi's instructions? Or perhaps to my interpretation of Andi's instructions?

niol, do you remember this lot?

Could you attach that lot here? I'm going to try to get the portals working properly and your lot looks like an ideal test case. Thanks!