Based on what I learned from the blue tear issue, I decided to try another test:
- Create 4 walls enclosing a space in the middle of the lot.
- Modify the level of the walls by subtracting 1.
- Add a new layer to the front of the 3D Array instance 1, with elevation of the previous first layer (ground level) - 3.

Result:
- Looks like a basement, but the area is filled with water. (Sorry, I forgot to take a picture.)

Modified the 2D Array instance (hex) 3B76 to reduce the water level by 3 as well.

Result:
- Wall is sunk into the ground, but there is no way to see it. Used frillen's transparent tile on the ground, so that I could see underneath. See picture.
- Shadow for the room remains on the ground level. As before, removed by creating an enclosed room around the shadow, then removing the walls again.

There are a couple of obvious problems: floor of the basement, seeing through the ground, stairs or other access, ... Still, an interesting experiment. Obviously, I need to do more research.

Note, the easiest way to get the additional layer added to the 3D Array is to add a swimming pool to the lot, then remove it. The below-ground layer remains in 3D Array instance 1... I'd like to investigate what else is changed in the lot file during this procedure.

Cool! new basements.

I already have Niol's lot, so I can check it in my fullgame, but I think Plasticbox is probably right.

That's already a great experiment , and it shows why the previous one kinda couldn't archive the wanted.

Lol, to get floor tiles in the basement, modifications on string map and 3D array instance 0x00 may be necessary.

I'd just make a lot of the same fundamental specs from the template.
Then, make a swim-pool of the same size, and import the 3D array stances 0x00 and 0x01 and the string map from the swim-pool lot to the basement lot as a starter.
But before importing the stringmaps into the basement lot, may alter the floor tile and wallpaper IDs to the desired ones. So, the wall and floor will have those selected wrapped and covered.



So, which or both game version(s) crashed desktop on loading?

guess, I'll need some lots from CS to see them myself... Any shared lots from CS?


aelflaed,

Thanks...

I have FT and it was a CTD on loading the lot for the first time after expanding.

I've been playing Niol's lot and I conclude it IS the use of attic walls letting in the temperatures. I'll make a fuller report on the lot thread.

Yes I agree. For example, when you have a steep angle gable roof, the wall pieces stretch higher than a normal room height. If you delete them and replace with normal walls, the room becomes indoor temperature even if you leave the gap at the top!

Mootilda, thanks for the update on your basement progress! Your screenshot would be a great basis for a Restaurant-at-the-end-of-the-Universe lot ..

Another pool glitch discovered - posted on the LA 1003 thread. Mootilda, you can shift the info over here if you feel that's better.

Current short-term priorities:
- New pool bug. It would help if I had an idea when the bug first appears.
- Jumping couch animation. At the moment, I suspect the additional coordinate in the COBJT cAnimatable structure; so I want to at least verify whether this is another symptom of the same (known) bug. Result: couch does not have the additional coordinate, so this cannot explain the broken couch animation.

Anything else that needs to be looked right away at for 1.0.0.3? I'd like to incorporate the "blue tear with swimming pool" fix into a release version as soon as we can verify that it A) works and B) doesn't break anything.

I was sitting here racking my brain about why you would care about lots from Celebration! Stuff... then I realized that CS means Castaway Stories.

As far as I know, lots from Castaway Stories are not usable in TS2. I haven't seen any attempts to port (although, I must admit that I haven't been looking).

The question which concerns me is whether the LA has actually changed to make 10x10 lots less likely to work than before.

I hate to suggest that anyone actually buy Castaway Stories, since I hate to encourage EA to make severely crippled games. Castaway Stories is the most interesting of the three Sims Stories games, but it is so crippled that it's almost unplayable.

Well, I've learned a bit about the bug which causes some part of the Mausoleum swimming pool to appear offset (and off the lot), but haven't figured out what's causing it yet:

- Problem occurs when lot is shrunk to the right; no obvious problem if lot is shrunk to the left.

- Problem occurs with LA 1.0 (and likely all pre-release shrinking versions of the LE / LA), so it's not caused by my fix for the blue tear. (Whew!)

- Slightly different symptom occurs when enlarging this lot using Andi's LE 1.2.1 (the earliest version that I have access to): I cannot see any odd glitches while editing the lot, but the swimming pool appears to be in the wrong place in the neighborhood view.

BTW: if anyone has an earlier version of Andi's LE (and especially the source code), I would really appreciate a copy.

Conclusions:

- There is a good chance that this is a bug which has been in the LE from the beginning, similar to the fence post bug.

Does anyone have a clue as to which record type within the package file might be at fault?

Do you still want it tried with 1001?

For those without access to the private discussion: The actual pool looks and functions normally, with a wierd animated pool 'surface' visible off the edge of the lot. Pic attached.

I already did, thanks.

You're doing an excellent job of testing. Finding these bugs which have been in the program for ages is really great.

Something entirely different: Wasn't there a version of the LE once that (unintentionally?) changed the shape of the lot edge when expanding? Or shrinking? Or am I wishful thinking?

There is a post in the Build mode forum right now that I'd like to answer:

Any way to help this person?

Not yet, although I've been considering adding an option to the LA to flatten the edges. It should be an easy addition. My plan was to set the ground to 0 and the water to -.5. The alternative is to determine the elevation of the road and use that; however, I believe that the game already defaults to a road level of 0.

Update:

OK, the feature is in (although it's kind of rough... I haven't added the hint yet). If someone wants to beta test this, please let me know. Otherwise, I'll polish the feature a bit first, then add it to the private forum.

I'm not completely happy with the interface. Right now, I have two separate mutually-exclusive checkboxes:
- Keep lot edges
- Flatten lot edges

Seems like this would be better as a set of radio buttons:
Lot Edges:
- Smooth (default)
- Flatten (to a relative elevation of 0)
- Get from neighborhood (not yet implemented)
- Leave alone (aka Keep)

What do people think?

What would happen to the steep-edge lot in question (assuming it's a big one) if it was shrunk? If there's space, you could shrink the (flattened) middle of the lot, then expand it again on a flat area to get flatter edges. Maybe. If the house is in a good place.

Smoothing is what we already have, yes? 'Keeping' the edges sounds like a recipe for a lot of blue tears.

Would getting the terrain from the hood replace the flattening option? I suppose flattening is simpler to implement. Actually, I can see reasons for wanting both. Might be good if you want to add a road or building on one side, where the current terrain of hood or lot is not flat. However, the current expand-and-smooth feature might be enough for that.

I can do some testing of bumpy lot edges if you like. I don't seem to be in the mood for the other jobs I ought to do this week.

sorry, I was busy and trying to test more on the walls...



Cool, so for every time, only one of the options can be a choice. It doesn't make sense to LA to do more than 1 of the options.

Flattening the lot in the game, shrinking and then expanding should produce flat edges. However, you need to have at least 11 extra spaces on every side of the lot for this to work.

Expanding, flattening the lot in the game, and then shrinking should also produce flat edges. However, you need to have a small enough lot to expand the lot in all directions for this to work.

People who have large fully-built lots would not be able to use either method.

Yes, the existing default is to smooth the minor vertices between the existing major vertices (every 10th vertex is a major vertex). Keeping the existing vertices isn't a problem when expanding, since the vertices should already be smooth. However, keeping the existing vertices when shrinking a bumpy lot is a recipe for blue tears. If I remember correctly, Inge specifically asked for this option because she was concerned about the edges changing when creating rowhouses.

No. When a lot is added to a neighborhood, it deforms the neighborhood terrain. In this particular case, the neighborhood terrain will now have huge ridges at the edge. So, if the lot took on the neighborhood terrain (without expanding or shrinking the lot), then the terrain of the lot would remain exactly the same.

However, if the lot edges are flattened, then the lot is re-placed in the neighborhood, the neighborhood terrain will be re-flattened in it's attempt to conform to the lot edges.

The option to take on the neighborhood terrain is most useful when expanding a lot. Right now, the lot terrain is just expanded outwards. However, with a hilly neighborhood terrain, this is rarely the correct thing to do.

Since I coded and tested it in less than an hour, I suppose that you could say that...

Exactly. That's why the checkboxes seemed wrong...

I think that I've got an interface that I'm reasonably happy with. I'm using a drop-down combobox with three options: Smooth, Flatten, Maintain. Not completely sure what that last option should be called: Leave alone? Keep? Maintain? Ignore? Don't touch?

When / if I ever get the neighborhood terrain working, I'll just add a new option: Neighborhood.

Oops, found a small bug... fixed. This version is now available for testing in the private forum.

First of all, this type of problem is linked to the wall partitions probably just attic walls? or the game engine rather than LA itself. Any discussion about it will be done in that thread.
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?p=1932980
Thanks.



Just a supposition:

1. move the lot to expand to somewhere first, build a copy of the template lot of the desired size at the matching desired place. (To "harvest" the neighbourhood terrain "major vertex" points as well as those devised by Maxis in-lot translator.)

2. Enter that lot copy and save and probably exit that lot. (To make the lot package file have the data added in.)

3. Swap the ground level of vertexes in the 3D array instance 0x01 from the template copy to the desired. Surely, make an addition of that ground level of vertexes with the values in the 2D array instance 3B76 and other appropriate related files accordingly for all known to us. I assume the swim-pool level has been taken care.

If such strategy is working:
1. users have to make such lot copy from the template only.
2. LA may need some new logics to cut-and-paste for all 4 lot orientations, replace values and compute addition for new values. Also, a new interface or a a sector for a "browse... to the template copy" in LA.

Anyway, I personally think that's a nice-to-have feature only if it can work out. It may become unworthy when other issues or features are more appealing and important.



As for the basement, modular stairs may be capable of connecting to the basement with the "moveobject on" cheat.

If the proposed works, then it's about objects to be solved?

"Maintain", sadly, is very misleading for folks who don't have a *very* good grasp of English -- I'm sure it will be misunderstood.

How about "Copy from lot"? That's what it does, right? Then you could add "Copy from neighbourhood" once that's implemented, and the difference should be very obvious.

Plasticbox's suggestion sounds good to me.

Hmmm... I don't really like "copy from lot"; I can't understand what it means, and it doesn't describe what the LA actually does.

However, I don't really like "maintain" either. What I really want to say is: leave edges alone, don't fix edges, keep edges as they are, use existing terrain, ... allow blue tears, ...

Sigh. I'm not getting any inspirations, here.

Just out of curiousity, could you explain what "maintain" might mean to a person for whom english is not their first language? I'd like to understand the difficulty.

niol,

Your technique seems much more complicated than necessary. I was thinking about the following algorithm:

- LA gets the appropriate major vertices from the neighborhood package
- LA changes major vertices on edge of lot to match neighborhood (above)
- LA uses existing smoothing algorithm between major vertices at the edge of the lot

Then I probably misunderstood -- i thought what it does in the "leave alone" case is put the new lot edges at the same height the old lot edges were at (i.e. copy them; when expanding), or use the present shape of the lot terrain (in the case of shrinking). Oh, but you're right, "copy" only works for expanding .. it's not copying anything when shrinking.

"Keep edges as they are" -- again, perhaps I just don't get it =), but this doesn't sound right to me: if I make new edges (by means of expanding or shrinking), then there is no "as they are" state, because there aren't any edges there yet. Not where I'm going to move them.

Maybe "Use lot terrain"? ("Existing terrain" could also mean the neighbourhood terrain)


The first assoociation that springs to mind is "maintenance" -- taking care of something, as in "motorcycle maintenance". To me that suggests that the LA would automagically "take care" of things .. smooth the vertices, for instance. The full meaning of "maintain" as in "keep things in their present state" isn't common knowledge I'm afraid.

The primary thing is: I want to actively discourage people from choosing the "Keep lot edges" option, no matter what we call it. It's the only one which can create the blue tears, unless you know what you're doing.

The more that I think about it, the less I understand why we even have this option...