I am actually sorta available at the moment =)

I haven't read up at all and am not up to date with the progress on this; if you want me to build a 1-tile-from-the-edge shrunk lot i'll happily do that (i finally dug up my game again last weekend, yay!). However i don't think i'll be able to to the same amount of maintenance/research/etc as last time -- or at least I can't promise that. But then, now we know who the good testers are and problems will not be as unexpected as they were the first time around.

I'll read up a bit now; if there's anything specific you'd want me to do/avoid on a test lot (roofs, fences, stairs .. anything that has come up in the meantime), let me know?

Cheers, and thanks for your continuous efforts everyone =)

Let me make you a version which enforces the 1-tile limit - should be available soon.

Then, if you could make a shrunken house with this version and upload it, that would be wonderful. We just want the standard warnings about the lot being shrunken and possibly corrupt.

Any reports of crashes would be enough to let us know that the 1-tile limit isn't sufficient, so (hopefully) you wouldn't have to do too much error-tracking.

Why don't we wait to see the results of plasticbox's submission? I think that this is our best chance of reproducing the original crashes (or, hopefully, NOT reproducing them).

Back in a flash with a new version...

Update: OK, version 1.3.0.6 with a 1-tile limit is available for testing. I'm testing this with the (incredibly dirty and crash-prone) EA/Maxis-made lots, without any problems.

As to what to put on the lot, it would be nice if you could try to duplicate the features that were in your original crashing lot. I know that it could be difficult with 2 less tiles available for building, but do your best.

Sure. Since plasticbox is available to do it, I'll sit back and see what happens!

hopefully nothing.

Have you seen that apartment buildings are slated for the next EP? Interesting.

Hopefully, lots of downloads and no complaints.

I really wonder how they'll do this, and what it will mean for the lot definitions.

I'm glad to see that the Sims 2 is still alive and kicking. Sims 3 doesn't sound very interesting to me.

If people want to start creating their own test lots for upload using 1.3.0.6, please feel free. If plasticbox's upload goes as well as my shrinking of the Maxis-made lots, then we might want to try a number of 1-tile from the edge lot uploads. Just hold off actually uploading them until we get some feedback.

OK, done =) and I'm happy to report that I had no crashes during playtesting. Doesn't mean much, since I didn't always crash with the other ones either, but still.

Screenshots below. This is going to be Backdoor Lane 44 (I'll upload #43 first since I've already built and packaged it, but that's just a regular old 1x1 mini lot). Would it make sense to put it here first for a nonpublic round of beta testing, or shall I go right ahead? I'll put the package in the private discussion forum in any case.

I had one hiccup with the basement stairs in this one, not sure if it's related to the shrinking or not: I had built and furnished almost everything, including the stairs, before shrinking, and when I moved in my first tester family they couldn't use those stairs at all. Only when I tore down the stairs and all inside walls around them, and re-built everything in *exactly* the same way (during playtesting I mean, on the inhabited lot), then it finally worked. So I put down another copy of the lot, tore down+rebuilt the stairs of that one, and ran another playtest (with a fresh family) -- this time it worked right from the start. (That is the one that I packaged, of course)

Maybe there is something about those stairs that gets messed up by the shrinking? Or maybe it was just a meaningless glitch .. ?

In any case, and I know how I'm preaching to the choir here =); I guess good rules of thumb for building shrunk lots would be

1. build as much as you can after the shrinking, and not before;
2. playtest.

The shrinking itself worked without a hitch -- only one thing confused me for a second: at first I had a fence right at the edge of the shrunk part, and it complained about *walls* (not fences) at the edge .. I don't know if that's technically possible, but if it is it would be good to make a distinction there.

Ok, thanks everyone =) I would be very happy should it turn out that the 1-tile limit at least is safe. 'Course it's still not *real* row houses, but it certainly offers a lot more options for small lots .. and I'm quite into these, as you probably know. And they do look a lot more like townhouses to me with less space in between.

(Built in Base+NL like the other one; playtested in Base+NL with no hacks or CC, and in Base+NL+OfB+Seasons+FTp0 with my regular gameplay hacks. I didn't quite succeed to make it like the other one and still be a useful house -- there wouldn't have been a double bedroom, for instance -- but I hope I included some important features .. halfwalls, modular stairs, the fact that it has a basement)

I don't know who's available for testing today. I've downloaded and will start testing immediately. Let's see how testing goes today (for anyone who's available to test) and then make a decision about uploading the lot.

The stairs are odd... this isn't the only lot with something odd about the stairs. Do you still have the original unshrunken lot, or even the shrunken lot where the sims won't use the stairs? If so, I'd like to download it and see whether I can figure out what's happening.

I probably still have that, yes. Will try and dig it up! I'll post it in the private forum then.

ETA: Aw shoot, now it works. Chalk it up to that other sim being stubborn, then .. I just plunked down another copy of the original house, moved in yet another new tester, and he could walk down to the basement just fine. Should have doublechecked that before, I guess.

That's fine. I'm not going to worry about it, then. Looks like I'm the only one testing right now. So...

I'd say that it's worth uploading now. Thanks for taking the time to do this.

Hey there! looks like I missed the boat yesterday, but never mind. I'll get it anyway!

It's technically possible, but more work than it's worth to code and maintain: I would have to keep a list of all possible types of walls: fences, roofs, foundations, etc. and then check to see which wall is the problem. Since EA adds news fences, roofs, foundations, etc with new EPs, this list would have to be updated for every EP. It just doesn't seem worth the effort.

However, it would be easy to change the error message: "Invalid WGRA: Wall, fence, roof, foundation, etc. is not on the lot." Would that help, or would that just be more confusing? How about "Invalid WGRA: something is still on the area to be trimmed."? Is that too generic?

I was thinking about this last night and realized that we may be able to remove one more restriction: I think that it might be OK to have walls which are perpendicular to the lot edge, just so long as there are no walls along the lot edge.

Just for future reference: would people find it helpful to allow walls which touch the edge, but do not run along it?

I think everyone missed the boat yesterday. I suppose that's what happens when you have an unscheduled departure...

Well, I have no idea what a WGRA is -- yes it would be helpful to explain it a bit, like "Invalid WGRA: this means that a wall, fence, or foundation is outside or at the new lot edge" (I seem to recall that roofs had their own special error mesage). This would give people a better idea what to look for. Also, in my case the offending fence was not *on* the area to be trimmed, it was right at the edge (or edge-to-be) .. that possibility should also be taken into account I believe. Otherwise people may search in vain for anything actually *off* the area (fences in particular seem "harmless" since you can normally put them on the edge).



Oh that would be great! I actually tried that yesterday =) .. do you think it would also be possible to allow floortiles (on upper levels) right up to the edge? I'm thinking it might, because on an unmodded maxis lot we can put floortiles up to 1 tile from the lot edge (not 2). That would make it possible to build fake rowhouses with flat roofs at least (i.e. floortile roofs). See below for a screenshot of what I tried to do -- didn't work because of the roof (I got an "Invalid ROOF" error (or something like that)), but with a flat roof it might be feasible? With a fence-pediment around the roof edges, this kind of thing could look quite nice I believe.

I am really glad I kept the old versions from before xmas! I want to be able to go on making proper row houses with proper roofs right up to the edge, for my own game. Don't worry I won't share them.

I've tried to keep several versions available in the private forum. If you know of a version which is particularly useful, but no longer available, just let me know. I should still have all of the zip files and can re-upload any version that people want.

On the other hand, it just seems like a waste of space to keep every single test version on MTS2, since some of the versions aren't *very* different from each other. I appreciate MTS2 hosting these files, but I don't want to abuse that by keeping redundant stuff.

So, I'm hoping that a reasonable (temporary) compromise is to release a version which will shrink up to the last tile, while continuing to work on a private version which will shrink up to the edge. This gives us a substantially increased test base for the shrinking code in general, while restricting access to the most dangerous stuff.

Totally back to try that.
diagonal walls or perpendicular walls are often allowed to be built further to the internal grid points of the last grid row at any border or edge.
it's the parallel ones that get more restricted normally.


all,
as for fences, they can always be built and added after lot-shrinking... so I don't see any big deal to just include them in the precaution when the effort to exclude it is not worthy enough.




Maybe, using 7-zip or rar to compress all the uncompressed older versions to optimise the space used.
I personally compressed all the present versions I've got with 7-zip and uha. 2 full back-ups. So, the extra size for the extra is just minimal.





Lol, Inge, we should dance for that...


OT:

The preview for TS3 doesn't look that much better for the graphics to my eyes. It looks like an improved version of TS2 series to me. I really dislike the scene when s sims is playing sims in a computer. That sims looks like on drugs or cracks or something alike shaking his body while playing the sims game Is that a tease on simmers? Both can be addicts?

From the recolour screen-shots, I assume EA Maxis might have made some graphical filters like negative filter, Hue filter, and maybe etc to alter the coloration presentation of a texture for the recolours. Or, they made redundant textures with different colours as recolours?
Or, other means?

I somehow really suspect there may be several inherited legacy.

Well I remember saying right at the start of the shrinking development that it may turn out to be the case that we can't have a wall sitting *along* the border - but walls running perpendicular up to and stopping on the border will at least preserve the outside appearance of a row house. But it rather depends on also having the roof running up to the border too - I mean so the gable is on the border, not the eaves. Without that, you can't make proper British terraced housing.

The error message that is displayed for a roof depends upon whether it is the ROOF part of the roof structure which is at fault, or the WGRA (wall graph) part. Anyway, your point is well taken. I'll take a look at the error messages and see what I can do to make them better.

Good point. The error messages make less sense when shrinking is restricted to 1 tile from the edge - but, after all, I made the change in a matter of minutes...

Perhaps the amount of effort required to determine exactly what kind of WGRA it is (wall, fence, roof, foundation, ...) *is* worth it - it's true that (most) fences *should* be OK at the very edge... Unfortunately, it will be impossible for the LE to list all custom content walls, fences, roofs, foundations, etc. Sigh. Clearly, this is not going to be the final release...

Floor tiles along the very edge at any level should already work. However, I wonder whether there is a chance of conflict in-game if the lot next door has floor tiles at a different height?

Probably no more so than if one of those hood plonkable office blocks has its floor at a different height. When you're playing one lot it has no idea the pixels being displayed next to it were supposed to be from a playable lot.

Hey, but you don't need to do that! All it takes, in my eyes, is to *not* say "a wall is off", like it does now, but instead something like "this could be either a wall, or a fence, or a foundation, or a roof gable .." depending on what the possibilities actually are. The former will make people think the LE is broken when they don't find a wall at the edge (but a fence instead, like in my case) -- the latter tells them it could be either this or that or something else, please find out what it is and try again.

I mean, this is for advanced users anyway, I don't think you need to babysit them and tell them "it's the suchandsuch custom fence by nancy1984 in medium olive green at exactly this x,y coordinate that I'm choking on" -- just try to not display something that's misleading, and it'll be fine =).

So, here's my current (very tentative) plan:

1) See how it goes with public testing of plasticbox's new shrunken lot.

2) Meanwhile, I'll fix some of the known problems with 1.3.0.6. The 1-tile limit was put in quickly and obviously needs some additional work. Specifically, better error messages, and the 1-tile limit should be disabled when expanding.

3) If testing of Backdoor Lane 44 goes well, and if anyone else has new shrunken lots (1-tile limit) which they want to share, let's get those publicly tested.

4) Depending upon the results of the testing above, public release of LotExpander Version 2 with shrinking within 1-tile limit. If the testing above fails, then a public release of LotExpander Version 2 without any shrinking feature. I really want to stop supporting two code bases before the next EP comes out, although the next SP shouldn't be a problem.

5) Try allowing walls perpendicular to the edge. If private and public testing goes well, release feature to public. Releasing the shrinking feature in small stages seems preferable to not releasing it at all.

6) Continue to work on shrinking to the edge.

Just lost my message due to FF bug or its plugin bug?



Wall/roof-at-the-border/edge lots can be placed side-by-side well in the neighbourhood without any problem in my base game copy.

and even MutantBunny's shrunk beach lots and "new" beach lots from Maxis template section can have mis-aligned ground grid points while they're side-by-side.
May check out the pix iof this post
http://www.modthesims2.com/showpost...&postcount=1516

Can that explain why EP6-BV seems to be more stable with shrunk lots at that time?



The overall idea is great, but maybe we can add "etc.." after listing the common "walls" like fences, walls, foundations walls, swim-pool walls, attic or roof walls...

"Wall, fence, roof, attic wall, foundation, swimming pool, or other vertical surface."?

Roof gable or roof wall, no? Not the roof per se .. but yeah, the "vertical surface" provides a good lead =).

Perhaps "attic wall" is sufficient? (ie, just remove the word "roof")

Now, for the wording of the actual error. Right now, they all say "X is not on lot". How about "X is too close to the edge of the lot"?

Attic wall actually works. Think it was the roof that threw me off.

"X is too close to the edge of the lot"

Too close to the edge or off the lot. (When it's 30 tiles away, far out of range, it can't be called "too close" .. )

This is getting to be a pretty complicated error message... I hate having yet another "or"... how about: "X is in an invalid location"? Or, perhaps: "X is too close to the area being removed."? "X is too close to the area being trimmed."?