For if we have to trim the array, no, we haven't to as we use the lot expander as you suggested to remainthe same H and W values (no change) and let the lot expander to "unlock the tiles" and this may be a sense different from using the cheat "moveobjects on".
My assumption on that they had the same sense of meaning while that's quite likely my own error!
"just using the cheat" couldn't help in that case for at least some reasons (I might make mistakes on something I failed to remember or recognise). Yet, I'll need further confirmation to be completely certain coz I still don't understand the whole thing completely...

So now I tend to believe Andi was actually trying to describe what it's happening when we alter the H and W values in the 2D and 3D arrays but not to tell us to trim the arrays one by one... Thanks goodness.

So, actually decreasing the lot size is much easier than I thought. But surely, the portal technique is important to fix such lots.


As for the 2-sided lot, it's really not too much special, the road portals still remain the same old ones on the first road. coz I didn't really move the portals and the mailbox only affect how the graphics presents when a family moves into a lot. Somehow, the cinematic camera renders things (including the in-game settings) differently from the general camera. But it seems my base game copy tends to take the additional mailbox (not the default one) as the first stop for pedestrian sims. So they have to bend their pathways before reaching to the exit portal.

Note, I've checked that lot with the portal revealer, and there's only one set of portals
But now with portal revealer, and if we can duplicate the necessary portals to the additional road side. Then, we're up to experiment to test how 2 or more sets of portals may work with the present game settings. If good, one more feature. If failed, we need find a pathway or alter it or omit it if we don't want that option that much (so, it's more like it's good to have but not miserable not to have).

Anyway, it's attached here



Oh yeah, you've got at least 1 audience here... :D

Input from Numenor:

@ Aelflaed - I don't know the internal structure and functions of the LotExpander. However, if it currently doesn't read the mini-game neighborhoods, it's very unlikely that the BGS can cause or fix the problem that you mention.

I can only you give a hint that can help you use the LotExpander (or the Clean Installer, or any tool that reads the save-game folder).
Let's say that you want to modify a lot that is in your "Up2Seasons" mini-game; open your AppFiles folder, and you will see many ".reg" files: choose the one named "Sims2_Up2SSN.reg" (each possible mini-game has its own .reg file). Double-click on it and then confirm the modification in the registry.

Then start the Lot Expander, and you should be able to operate on the Up2SS mini-game.

When finished, it's VITAL that you double-click on the file "Sims2_Full.reg", so to restore the Registry to its normal values!

from aelflaed ... Maybe this is of some interest to Mootilda.

I've got a few things to add about the portals (and the flamingo) after using them all afternoon today...once the kids are in bed I'll put it into writing. Now its dinnertime, so I gotta go.

Bon Appetit!

Back again...brain dump starting now...


Aelflaed's Notes regarding portals and spotted flamingoes

portals are usually at values of something-point-five. Whole values are
possible, don't know if it makes any difference. Not that I can see.
Inge's Flamingo shows the position of portal markers, but moving a marker doesn't seem to move the actual portal consistently.

Most / all of my original rotated lots came out with the markers in the
buildable area of the lot, not on the roadway or path. Some of these lots
appeared to be functioning perfectly, except for the service vehicles using the carpool lane and vice versa. After moving the markers into the right places, the lots still function.

Andi's lots had the markers in the right positions parallel to the road, but
some were a long way off the edge of the lot. Don't know why. Maybe so the cars didn't fade out in that ugly way at the edge of the lot? I don't think they do that on Maxis lots, but it's a long time since I used one!

Andi had negative values in some places - one on the RL lots, and two on some of the community lots (by MaryLou?). When I left negative values in my portals, those portals failed to appear on the comm. lot (1x3 vertical) at all.
Andi may have altered the instances (is that possible?) so that 1 - 6 are the
portals, since he stated that 3 - 8 were normally used by Maxis portals, but
none of the Andi/Marylou lots I have been using reflect that. All have the
portals in 1 - 6.

When markers were re-instated on the lots where they were missing, they tended to appear piled up on each other in the back left corner of the lot.

Vehicles don't halt in a consistent spot relative to the appropriate marker. On
different lots, the taxi stops with the rear wheel on the marker (3x1), the
front wheel on the marker (2x1), with the whole car well behind (1x1), or
centred on the marker (2x1). This may be affected by the size of the lot in
question - the lot where the car stops before reaching the marker is a 1x1. Why the middle-sized lot should allow the car to centre on the marker, I dunno. On each single lot, the stopping place is consistent.

I have had pedestrian portals functioning ten squares into the building area,
because that's where the SimPE value was set, although the marker was in the correct place on the footpath.

Moving the markers in-game did alter the SimPE values on the lots, although not always as in the lot just mentioned.

Vehicle portals need to be set right next to the median line on the appropriate side of the street.

Moving the portal markers DID fix the lane chosen by the vehicles to match the Maxis standard. Changing the values alone in SimPE did not.

I haven't yet modded a fresh lot with my latest experiences in mind, but I will. I'm thinking to move the road in SimPE, use the flamingo and moveobjects cheat in-game to fix things up, then go into SimPE again to see what happens to the values. At this stage, Inge's flamingo is VERY helpful in checking the portal placement and getting the cars onto the correct lanes, but you'd still probably need to use SimPE to tweak things.


Following are the values for different-sized lots in the orientation

U10 = 04, U11 = 02,

as correct as I can make them. I'm hoping both values and markers in my rotated lots reflect these numbers! Horizontal means the lot is wide along the road frontage, Vertical means the width is towards the back of the lot. (I think this is the same as Marylou's method).

1x1

1 Service Start (1.5, 15.5)
2 Service Stop (6.5, 15.5)
3 Car Start (8.5, 14.5)
4 Car Stop (2.5, 14.5)
5 Pedestrian 1 (8.5, 10.5)
6 Pedestrian 2 (1.5, 10.5)

1x2 (Vertical)

1 Service Start (1.5, 25.5)
2 Service Stop (6.5, 25.5)
3 Car Start (8.5, 24.5)
4 Car Stop (2.5, 24.5)
5 Pedestrian 1 (8.5, 20.5)
6 Pedestrian 2 (1.5, 20.5)

1x3 (Vertical)

1 Service Start (1.5, 35.5)
2 Service Stop (6.5, 35.5)
3 Car Start (8.5, 34.5)
4 Car Stop (2.5, 34.5)
5 Pedestrian 1 (8.5, 30.5)
6 Pedestrian 2 (1.5, 30.5)

2x1 (Horizontal)

1 Service Start (1.5, 15.5)
2 Service Stop (14, 15.5)
3 Car Start (18.5, 14.5)
4 Car Stop (7.5, 14.5)
5 Pedestrian 1 (18.5, 10.5)
6 Pedestrian 2 (1.5, 10.5)

3x1 (Horizontal)

1 Service Start (2.5, 15.5)
2 Service Stop (16.5, 15.5)
3 Car Start (27.5, 14.5)
4 Car Stop (11.5, 14.5)
5 Pedestrian 1 (28.5, 10.5)
6 Pedestrian 2 (1.5, 10.5)

This is doubtless disorganised and incomplete, but maybe it's helpful in some way.

Excellent - thanks for testing. Check my notes about possible lack of consistency, though, when using the flamingo - SimPE may still be required, as far as I can tell.

I'm a bit nervous about trying to make a tutorial - I'll probably get all the figures wrong! I'd like to finish the set of lots first, in any case, now that I'm so close.

Ditto, tutorial for Inge's flamingo. I'm sure I'd need a lot more help with SimPE and all - I'm using it, but that doesn't mean I'm understanding it!



No, because there was that time I put the mailbox down the side of a lot, and the paper boy appeared in the middle of the street and walked to the mailbox to put down his paper. Can't remember what he did after that.

That will be because the whole numbers signify where the grid intersects. To get them to be centred on the centre of a square, you need to have them moved by .5 of a square.



Can you explain this in more detail? What did you see that made you say to yourself "oh this is inconsistent" and what had you expected instead? Can you give a concrete example?

Re: tutorial - maybe it's just too early yet? We're still coming up with theories only to discard them a day later.

After all, we may help one another out to check tutorials for accuracy, right?
Yet an another worried wondering here...

BTW, from the numbers for the portals, it seems that the number count is also done from the top left corner when the road is at the bottom. This is the same as floor-tiling as well.

Out of all those listed instances, I believe that as long as 1.5 is left from both ends of a road is already a safe approach.
For exactly where the vehicles can be placed properly, this probably depends on the vehicle body length (from the fore/front/head/start/beginning to the "-hind"/"hint-"/back/tail/end). So, just prepare for the longest, the limo or the helicopter or even the UFO... ? Then, that will leave some ranges of locations for custom likes.



Erm.. I was talking about the cinematic scene for a family move-in but not a normal scene for a pedestrian pass-by. This I'm pretty sure the mailbox can't affect the portal for anything.
It's just that I suspect the mailbox is the first location for pedestrians (NPCs entering the lots on feet, neighbours, called friends...). Then, they start to search for an entry point of a room (for a closed room, then it's the doors or garages; for an open room, it's the gaps, and in this case they even enter it and seemingly getting lost. )


link here
Omg... So 64x64 won't be the largest...? 64x64 may just be for the graphical limits for a lot page?

Somehow, I wonder a lot file can call to another lot file for extra info storage while fooling the game to read the extra set of data anew in terms of process.. But then, the game is forced to run a lot as if it's running >1 lot. just a short-minded wonder...

BTW, I've answered your post in another thread you pm-ed me for. Thanks for reminding me of such

Ok, I was speaking loosely, which seemed appropriate for the context of that thread. The lot expander currently allows only multiples of 10 so that is all I could test it for. Maybe you can get those 4 extra lot tiles in.

That makes sense! Obvious, really, but I have trouble getting my head around the grid for some reason.



I tried to already, maybe not very well. I'll try to explain clearer tomorrow - I've had to do some judging this evening, and I really have to get some sleep before I think any more.



Yes, even though I have to keep recounting anyway. It's those numbers, which is why I'm not a natural modder.



Sorry, misunderstood.

Good night, all.

10x20lot.jpg
To show you the fixed 10x20 lot.

avant-apres.jpg
Here're my moving the portals around in the parallel 2-sided lot.
The upper is the "before" while the lower is the "after".

pedestrian1.jpg
To show the first group of guests called by a residential sims. They show up from the moved pedestrian portal properly.. yay...

pedestrian2.jpg
To show the second group of guests called by a residential sims. They show up from unmoved pedestrian portal.

runover.jpg
Probably, service vehicles just run over one another when crowed or suddenly appear in the gap available...

cab.jpg
Finally, the cab comes... It appears the portal position I did is a bit off. So, for the directions, it's still spirally/rotationally symmetric for the angle at 180*. We'll see if that remains true in corner 2-sided lots.

Note this parallel 2-sided lot is made from a 30x30 lot.




Lol, it can take times to get used to it....

Very helpful information here. I love the name "Brain dump". Some of my "tutorials" are obviously more in the line of "brain dumps".

My investigation yesterday leads me to believe that the hex value at 0x96 may be the direction of the portals (subject to the U11 value, of course). Pedestrian portals are always 0x00. Values for vehicle portals appear to be 0x00, 0x02, 0x04, 0x06 for the four different directions. Today, I'll see whether I can correlate these values with the U11 values, to give them an absolute direction: portal pointing Left, Top, Right, Bottom.

This information is exactly what I need to get the portals working in the LotExpander. Andi's logic attempts to move a generic portal based on it's previous position and the new width and height; this logic really doesn't work. So, I'm going to try setting each portal position based on the type of portal and the size and rotation of the lot.

Still very useful, even if is it disorganised and incomplete.

Anything which requires me to play the game a lot (such as verifying portal behaviour) really seems to slow me down. Having these values (along with the portal direction) should allow me to come up with a reasonable algorithm for setting up the portals on an expanded lot.

Yes, that's why I actually play-tested your lot before and after expansion. The LotExpander portal logic definitely needs to be fixed, expecially for the smaller lots and lots expanded at the front.

That's fine. It may be too early to think about tutorials yet. I'm very happy to update my tutorials with everything that you've learned... I enjoy writing tutorials. Just thought that you might actually want to do it.

You must remember: we don't have to worry about most of the information which is stored in the arrays, because the lots are empty. Decreasing the size of an existing (built) lot will require those arrays to be trimmed correctly.

I believe that Andi might have been trying to explain how to decrease the size of the arrays in general, and then noting where the process is made easier by the fact that the lot is empty.

Which brings up an interesting question:

After building on the lot, does the game trim the (un-trimmed) arrays correctly? One way to check is to see whether the size of the arrays decreases to match Andi's calculations:

- 2D Array should have a size of:

height X width X number of bytes per objects

- 3D Array should have a size of:

height X width X depth X number of bytes per objects

Note that the height, width, and depth indicated here are the dimensions of the arrays, which are sometimes 1 more than expected (possibly because the array holds vertices, rather than tiles), or which are a multiple of the expected value (possibly because a tile can hold mulltiple objects).

You should also test expanding these lots, to ensure that the LotExpander is not confused by the additional (un-trimmed) data.

I'm so glad that the arrays don't have to be trimmed for an empty lot. Makes this technique much more do-able.

As for the portals, I'm hoping that Inge's tool will help people who are using a manual technique and aelflaed's research will help the LotExpander to move the portals correctly.

I wanted to try moving the service portals to the back of the lot, both for my own interest and to ensure that the LotExpander can handle odd cases. I hate to have the LotExpander crash on people who may not even realize that their lot has some oddity.

Perhaps the maximum number of pedestrian / car / service portals really is 6. I know that Andi coded with this maximum, but I want to make sure that the LotExpander doesn't crash if it's possible to have more.

I feel sure the game will be very happy with extra portals. They're just objects. Whether sensible use would be made of them is another matter. But usually the code just says "set to next object of type" and the sim looks for *a* portal of that type. When it finds the first one it is happy. It doesn't care that there were 20 more it could have used.

From: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=251381
And from here:I'd just like to point out that we haven't "proven" anything. All that I did was disable the size checks in the LotExpander. I didn't try to ensure that the LotExpander properly created larger lots. I'm just not familiar enough with the LotExpander code to be sure that this is a fair test of the issue.

I'm willing to put this research onto my To-Do list, but at a pretty low priority. I think that shrinking lots is a much more important ability than making them huge.

Agreed.

Yes, this might be helpful, when I get a chance to look at this issue. For now, this has been moved lower in priority because the simple changes that I made (to the directory and registry logic) didn't fix the problems. I thought that I might be able to give you a quick fix, but I was wrong.

I believe that the only way to solve this problem is to install the BGS and see what the issues are. At this point, I don't even know whether this is an easy problem or a hard one.

In general, the smaller a problem is, the more likely I am to try to fix it. The idea in software development is to aim for the "low-hanging fruit" first. Often 90% of the problems can be solved very quickly - with less than 10% of the work. The final 10% of the problems take much more time that the first 90% altogether.

This is why I haven't tackled the "decreasing the size of a lot" issue yet. I know that this is a hard problem, so I want to get some of the smaller stuff off of my list first.

When I first took over the LotExpander, I was just looking for problems which prevented people from using the program. Now, I'm trying to fix the "bugs" which don't crash the program, but which make it less useful.

Using the neighborhood terrain has also turned out to be a harder problem than I was hoping, so it has also been moved down in priority.

lol, just a quick request. Inge,
Can you make the portals into a collection file, then one can duplicate it and make it available to different lot types. So, oine cn easily add the portals whether to add back the missing ones or add additional ones to some unsuspected locations :D

Yes they need to be made buyable. I'll just do a pack of modified OBJDs but it might be better if everyone makes their own collections because I don't think they are cross-compatible across EPs

ermmm... I thought the portals are only referenced to be called in lot files. and the defaults obj guid ID won't change across EPs?

Anyway, if that doesn't work, I'll have to try that out at a later time.

I can tell I've already forgotten how a collection file looks. gonna have to re-dig it.

It's the collection packages that are not compatible. The buyable portals will be fine. I can stick them in the same place as the revealer.

I got the missing markers back just by altering the values in SimPE. In case that wasn't obvious.



Maybe this is where the value is a whole number, rather than a .5? Actually, no, looking at the values I posted, there's only one whole number remaining, and it isn't a taxi portal. Mootilda, I would suggest changing that whole value just so it matches everything else.



Inge, this is one instance that made me think the flamingo wasn't giving a consistent result. On this particular lot, I had moved the road successfully and changed the portal values in SimPE (getting the numbers wrong of course). When I looked at it with your flamingo, I then moved the markers into the correct positions. The values in SimPE did change, although I'm confused about the maths now and can't say if they were right or not. When I played the lot, the pedestrians still appeared in the wrong places - where I had put the value, not where the marker was. Looking in SimPE again, the values reflected my observed pedestrians, not the marker. Now that it all matches, everything works.

This lot also had two minus values, which I left in to see what would happen. Those two markers (Serv Start and Car Start) didn't appear at all, although the taxi still arrived (in the middle of the park). When I changed the neg values in SimPE, the missing markers appeared at the back of the lot and could then be placed correctly.

I'll try a fresh lot after this - that may make the functioning clearer. Didn't mean to complain, just reporting.

Mootilda, I can probably be convinced to do a tutorial once the lots are released. I think I understand the process well enough now, but I want to experiment with the flamingo and SimPE combinations some more too. And you're all seconded as tutorial-checkers.

I'm happy to have my LotExpander error on the backburner for now - I am able to use the old one for current needs. Obviously I'd like it fixed eventually, so I can enjoy your updates.

Going off to try a fresh lot rotation - report back later.

Now it's later...

I've done a completely fresh 1x3 residential lot, and taken pics of the whole process. It was quite smooth, although I haven't tested it in play yet.

(EDIT - the lot tested just fine)

I moved the road first, recorded the portal values but didn't alter them. Went in - see first pic - most markers missing. Then I picked up the lot and let it snap to the right side of the street - most of the markers appeared. Removed the road and shifted the markers etc, then went into SimPE to see what happened.

All the values now matched the markers, and also my previous values for the same-sized lot, except for the one marker that was missing, which hadn't changed (and was a negative value). I altered the values for that portal to match my other lot. In-game, the missing marker appeared at the back of the lot. I moved it to the correct spot. No change in SimPE from that.

Then I unlocked the tiles with LotExpander, and moved the lot again to re-lock the normal edges and so on. It all seems to be good. And I have a lot of notes and photos for a tutorial. The flamingo worked pretty well, so the earlier inconsistency was probably just because I had already mucked around with those lots. Thanks Inge!

Now to go play...

(EDIT - I think that's enough testing. I'm submitting the set now.)

Yes I was confused, because the flamingo only changes the portal's appearance from invisible to visible. The portals appear where you or SimPE decided to put them - that's not the flamingo's call lol.