This thread was spun off from the LotExpander thread, since this is more about modding lots than about the LotExpander tool.

Here's a link to a Table of Contents for this thread. We're trying to organize the thread so that it's easier to follow the topics that matter to you:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?p=1818481

Here are some pointers to interesting research and tutorials:

Building to the edge of a lot:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=254032

Adding and Subtracting Roads from a Lot
How to Create a Corner Lot:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showpost...52&postcount=11

Moving the Road and the Front of a Lot
How to Rotate a House on a Lot:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showpost...75&postcount=12
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=255110

Changing the Terrain for an Existing Neighborhood
Adding Roads to an Existing Neighborhood:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthre...389#post1920389

How to Remove Fence Posts from a Lot:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showpost...6&postcount=513


Here are some pointers to interesting downloads which have come out of this research thread:

HoodReplace - Replace Neighborhood Terrain:
http://www.modthesims2.com/member/s...ad.php?t=279992

Shrinking the Size of a Lot (currently in testing):
http://www.modthesims2.com/showpost...6&postcount=518

Portal Revealer:
This tool allows you to see, move and rotate portals on your lot:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=251392

Sunny mini lots:
Residential: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=251798
Community: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=251800

Row Houses (currently in testing):

Walls 1 Tile from the Edge of a Lot: (safer than walls on the edge):
plasticbox: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=281667
aelflaed: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=282179
niol: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=282280

Walls On the Edge of a Lot: (may cause crashes)
plasticbox: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=254042
aelflaed: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=254686
Inge Jones: http://simlogical.com/slforum/index.php?topic=916.0

Posts on other websites regarding our research:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...p?topic=10117.0
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...p?topic=10087.0

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Original Post:

From: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?p=1761475:


niol, thanks for your help. I'll take a look at those and see whether there's anything useful.

So far, all of the problems with the lot expander have been new record instances which aren't documented in the sims2wiki... I'm hoping to find some time to update the wiki with the information contained in the lot expander code.

I suspect that the rounded pool problem is a bit different... existing record instances that aren't quite being handled correctly...

I've never done modding before and I don't think that I have the skills down yet. I'm used to having descriptions of file formats and access to source code. Each new problem with the lot expander has required me to develop a new debugging technique (new for me, I mean). Once I determine what the problem is, the solutions tend to be pretty easy.

Thanks again. I appreciate any help that people can give.

Mootilda,

I guess the shaders cam only help gain the insight on how Maxis design the lots.
But now, there're also beach lots... just hope it only affects the vertexes and meshes...
haven't been able to get it fresh, have to wait for at least a few days.

Once you realise the challenges, you'll learn to overcome it... I see that you're planting great fruits...

Anyway, if you may tell more about how the lots can be modded more even manually, I bet you will get willing audience including me... :D


Thanks for all your wonderful efforts again...

I have revisited this thread to see if it's yet possible to make shorter beach lots I have one neighbourhood terrain where the road is very near the sea. Although I can place a beach lot, it "reclaims" too much land before it dips to the sea.

That's terrible Inge , I also have the same problem myself, I like "Veronaville", but to make a great neighboorhood, I want to try to make diverent style of rowhouses for the citycentre, but because I don't have the skills I have to wayt till the lot expander is ajusted, or a new tool is developed... It's up to me to be very pacient...

Can you explain to me what the problem is?

Is this occuring because the lot expander levels the expanded land? Is there some other problem with the lot expander that I might be able to look into?

Or, is this a different tool that you're requesting? If so, can you explain what you need the tool to do?

Mootilda,

I guess Inge might have meant to mod how a new beach lot affects the neighbourhood terrain curvature along the sealine.

Inge,
By the way,
Can the neighborhood.txt script affect that? (the txt script we use to make highly inclined lot templates etc...)

Yes it's because the beach raises a lot of the land up from the sea. This was meant to be a very narrow strip of beach along the road, just room for a fishing shack or a seafood stall. So I thought if I could have some different lengths of lots, it wouldn't happen. I don't think tinkering with the config will help, because the beach/sea portals are already placed on the lot template and they decide where the sea begins. It may be that shrinking from the road edge is what is needed.

But I remembered that MaryLou made some tiny lots after this tool was made, and I thought that was connected with it in some way?

For a lot page, it tends to start to count from the lot's left top away from the road. This is also true to floor tiles.

If I didn't misunderstand what she did, she might have used the lot expander in base game configurations to expand some empty lot templates Andi8104 released on this same thread and surely alter the lot zones for the community ones.

BTW, for lot re-zoning, there're 3 major ways to make lot templates for all EPs and the base game.
1. cheats under EP1 UNI without UNI content. (simplest & easiest)
2. mod the neighbourhood package as Andi8104 had shown. (not hard)
3. lot file replacement with a community lot of the same dimension specs. (easy)
Only the first method requires EP1 while the other two do not take any EP to switch the lot zone.

Newly created lot basically has no specific data but just the basic format and data copied from the lot template.

Well, I wish I could dig into it but my another game copy is still on the make (a new OS copy + defrag + new installation + etc)

I wonder whether someone could provide me with links to the information about the neighborhood.txt script and to Andi8104's post about how to mod the neighorhood package?

I've never tried to make a beach lot, so I don't really understand the issues involved at this time.

How to Interpret U10 and U11:

If you use SimPE to open a neighborhood and go to the Lot Description for a lot, there are two hex numbers which are of interest: U10 and U11. These two numbers are currently displayed at the top right of the Lot Description Editor Plugin View in SimPE.

U10 tells us the location of the road(s):
0x01 Left
0x02 Top
0x04 Right
0x08 Bottom

U11 tells us the orientation of the lot in the lot file, ie where the front of lot is. It also determines the location of the sun on the lot:
0x00 Left (sun at back left)
0x01 Top (sun at front left)
0x02 Right (sun at front right)
0x03 Bottom (sun at back right)

In general, you will find that these two numbers are paired as expected. To see this in action, open some lot files in SimPE and select "Texture Image" in the Resource Tree and [lot id]!terrain_txtr in the Resource List. The TXTR Editor Plugin View shows a picture of the house and road on the lot. The picture is rotated in the direction specified by U10 and U11 in the neighborhood package.

Here are some examples from Pleasantview:

Lot77: 210 Wright Way
U10 = 1 & U11 = 0
Road on left and house faces left:


Lot40: 35 Woodland Drive
U10 = 2 & U11 = 1
Road on top and house faces top:


Lot73: 250 Main Street
U10 = 4 & U11 = 2
Road on right and house faces right:


Lot79: Woodland Park
U10 = 8 & U11 = 3
Road on bottom and house faces bottom:


In order to have more than one road on a lot, you just need to add the hex numbers for the locations of the roads (U10) together, for example set U10 to:

Left and Top: 1 + 2 = 3 = 0x03
Left and Bottom: 1 + 8 = 9 = 0x09
Right and Top: 2 + 4 = 6 = 0x06
Right and Bottom: 2 + 8 = 10 = 0x0A
Roads on all sides = 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 = 15 = 0x0F

If you don't understand how to do hex arithmetic, just add the numbers together normally and then convert numbers greater than 9 using the following table. Please note that this technique for hex arithmetic doesn't work in the general case, but will work for us because the numbers involved are small:

10 = 0x0A
11 = 0x0B
12 = 0x0C
13 = 0x0D
14 = 0x0E
15 = 0x0F

As an example:

Brandi Broke's house
Lot36: 55 Woodland Drive
U10 = 3 & U11 = 0
The house is facing to the left and the road is on the left and top of the lot:


Warning about multi-road lots:

Each road will take up one full neighborhood square (which is equal to ten lot tiles). So, a lot needs to be bigger for each road which surrounds it, just to get the same buildable area. Since the maximum size of a lot is 6x6, a lot which is surrounded by roads on all sides will have a maximum buildable area of 4x4.

How to Create a Corner Lot:

First, read this post to understand the U10 and U11 fields in the neighborhood package:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showpost...32&postcount=10


Instructions for adding roads to your lot:

1) Backup your neighborhood before trying this technique.

2) Ensure that your lot has enough room for the new road: one additional square in the neighborhood view, or ten additional tiles in the lot view.

3) Open the neighborhood in SimPE.

4) Determine the orientation of the lot (U11).

5) DO NOT, under any circumstances, change U11. This is very important. If U11 doesn't actually match the data in the lot file, you can cause major problems.

6) Determine where you want the new road, based on the orientation of the lot and the current road location (U10).

Here's a trick that I use to get the values right:

First, draw a very rough sketch of your house and the current road, viewed from above, on a piece of paper.

Then, rotate the piece of paper so that the road is at the left, right, top or bottom of the page, depending upon the old U10 and U11 values.

Now, keeping the paper in the same position, mark where you want the new road(s) to go. Each new road will either be at the left, right, top or bottom of the page. From this, we can determine the new U10 value, by adding the U10 values for each road location.

7) Change the value of U10 as discussed above. SimPE works best if you leave the existing "0x0" prefix and just change the last hex number.

8) Commit the change, save the neighborhood file and exit SimPE.

9) Start the game and go into the neighborhood.

10) Use the "Move or Rotate Lot" tool in the "Lots and Houses - F2" menu to move the lot so that it "snaps" to the appropriate roads.

Voila! You now have a corner lot.

Please note, I just tried this technique on Don Lothario's house at 150 Main Street. I used the LotExpander to increase the lot size by one on the right side (as viewed from the road), then changed U10 from 0x04 to 0x06. It worked like a dream.

How to Rotate a House on a Lot:

While thinking about adding and removing roads from a lot (see post above), I realized that this technique will also work for changing the orientation of a house on a lot. There are several Strangetown lots which annoy me because the front door faces the side yard.

I used the following technique to rotate 57 Road to Nowhere in Strangetown by removing the existing road, adding a new road near the front door, and then changing the orientation of the lot and rotating it in the neighborhood.

In other words, we don't actually rotate the house on the lot. Instead, we move the road and change the orientation of the lot in the neighborhood. Because of this, the direction of the sun in relationship to the house will not change.

First, read this post to understand the U10 and U11 fields in the neighborhood package:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showpost...32&postcount=10


Instructions for rotating a lot:

1) Backup your neighborhood before trying this technique.

2) Ensure that your lot has enough room for the new road: one additional square in the neighborhood view, or ten additional tiles in the lot view.

3) Open the neighborhood in SimPE.

4) Determine the current location of the road (U10) and the current orientation of the lot (U11).

5) Determine where you want the new road, based on the current orientation of the lot and the current road location. Remember, the house will remain in the same place on the lot, but we will move the road and the orientation of the lot.

Here's a trick that I use to get the values right:

First, draw a very rough sketch of your house and the current road, viewed from above, on a piece of paper.

Then, rotate the piece of paper so that the road is at the left, right, top or bottom of the page, depending upon the old U10 and U11 values.

Now, keeping the paper in the same position, mark where you want the new road and front of house to go. This new road will either be at the left, right, top or bottom of the page. From this, we can determine the new U10 and U11 values:

U10 = 1 & U11 = 0 House faces left, road on left
U10 = 2 & U11 = 1 House faces top, road on top
U10 = 4 & U11 = 2 House faces right, road on right
U10 = 8 & U11 = 3 House faces bottom, road on bottom

6) Change the values of both U10 and U11 as discussed above. It is important that the U10 and U11 fields match: for example, if we are going to move the road to the left side, then we need to change the orientation of the house to left as well. SimPE works best if you leave the existing "0x0" prefix and just change the last hex number for both of these fields.

7) Commit the change, save the neighborhood file and exit SimPE.

8) Open the lot file in SimPE and change the portals.

See my post on moving portals:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?p=1778523

You can also check out Andi's original post on creating a 1x1 lot for information about changing the portals:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?p=1376196

9) Start the game and go into the neighborhood.

10) Use the "Move or Rotate Lot" tool in the "Lots and Houses - F2" menu to move the lot so that it "snaps" to the appropriate road. A portion of the lot may appear to be bright blue... don't worry, this is completely normal and will be fixed in the next step.

11) Go into the lot. You will need to delete the old road (just treat it as a set of floor tiles) and move the mailbox and garbage can. To do this, you will probably need to turn moveobjects on temporarily. Then, save the lot and return to the neighborhood view to ensure that everything looks right.

12) Run a quick test to ensure that the portals have moved correctly. You want to check that each of the following groups enter and leave the lot at the expected point:
- Pedestrians
- Transportation like cars, carpools, buses and taxis.
- Service vehicles like maids, gardeners and handypeople.

Mootilda, thanks for this info =) I haven't quite wrapped my head around it, but I'm very happy to see that there is a way to change the orientation of a lot! You wouldn't believe how often I've rebuilt houses because of the stupid sun ... this is quite a relief.

I'm still trying to get the tutorials "right". I have these notes in my blog on thesims2.ea.com and I'm trying to turn them into a proper tutorial with pictures. This is probably a better place for this stuff, anyway (especially because it's so much easier to add pictures).

I'll also look into changing the portals and try to write up a tutorial for that. Just give me some time to work it all out.

Sorry for the frequent changes, but I realized that it's helpful to have this information as 4 separate posts: U10 and U11, portals, adding roads, and rotating lots.

Please let me know if anything isn't clear and I'll try to fix up the tutorials. I find that it really helps to look at the texture images in SimPE... that's how I figured all of this stuff out.

Mootilda,

the wording of your posts is excellent -- the only reason i said "can't wrap my head around it" is that it's midnight here, I was in the office until 11, and I'm just .. done. Not even *trying* to think clearly anymore.

In the same spirit, a (possibly useless) followup question: what happens with the visitor portals upon lot rotation? Do they rotate with the street automatically (are they tied to the street on a technical level), or is it hit and miss? Just asking because I expanded lots to the left/right a few days ago, and the "outgoing" portal (where pedestrians leave) sometimes didn't move .. they walked to the middle of the lot and vanished.


aelflaed,

I'm not keeping any secret knowledge =) (because you say "that must be what I need to do") -- the only way I managed to make lots with different orientation was that I could use 2 different orientations to start with (Numenor's 2x2 lot is opposite to Andi's 2x1). I think Mootilda's posts above are the key to differently-orientated mini lots!


eta: oh cool, I just stumbled over this post http://www.modthesims2.com/showthre...196#post1376196 -- this might be the key to row houses? I've GOT to try this. I've built some row houses on overlapping lots on the weekend (which is really easy with the lot expander :lovestruc ), but the flickering of the overlapping part is just unbearable in-game. Pity, as they look great in neighbourhood view.

[QUOTE=plasticbox]
I'm not keeping any secret knowledge =) (because you say "that must be what I need to do") -- the only way I managed to make lots with different orientation was that I could use 2 different orientations to start with (Numenor's 2x2 lot is opposite to Andi's 2x1). I think Mootilda's posts above are the key to differently-orientated mini lots![QUOTE]

plasticbox, I realised you just started with the lots facing differently, but that info isn't any help until I can make the lot smaller than the original - which hopefully I will now be able to figure out.

How did I miss Andi's instruction Post? I went all through this thread, thinking it must be in here. And it is. Now I have to see if I can work it out - not a programmer, but fed up with sun-behind-house-syndrome.

I do look forward to Mootilda making the Expander work in minus numbers - that will be very handy!

I will fiddle with SimPE and see if I can work it out. Thanks for the pointers everyone.

I re-read your post and realized that this probably won't actually solve your sun-direction problem for existing houses. Sorry.

For aelflaed's question about empty lots, my technique should be adequate. But this only works because there's no existing house, so moving the location of the road should change whether the sun comes in at the front or at the back.

When a lot is "rotated" using my method, the house and (I assume) the sun stay in the exact same location. The only things that change are where the road and the "front" of the lot are.

I haven't looked into this sunshine problem very much, but I think that it's difficult to solve for an existing building. Within the lot file, there are lots of arrays, each with their own format. Each array would need to be rotated individually. Now, programs are usually really good at this kind of thing, but not even Andi understood the format for some of the arrays... and I can assure you that I'm still struggling with them too.

It's possible that the "difficult" arrays could be ignored, since this is what the LotExpander does (more or less) and it works. I could write a program to rotate all of the arrays that I actually understand. Who knows whether this would actually work... I'm still trying to understand what each array controls.

I will certainly put this on the to-do list, but it seems pretty difficult so I'm afraid that it won't get a high priority.

The portals are not tied to the roads, so the "rotation" technique outlined above isn't complete yet. However, it should work for an empty lot, since Andi documented how to change the Portals for an empty lot.

I'm going to look into how to move the portals for a non-empty lot to another side of the lot... should be similar to the existing LotExpander logic.

Once I've figured that out, I'll write a tutorial. I might even try to make 1x1 lots for each direction, if no one's done it yet. Then, people can expand the 1x1 lots using the LotExpander to get the sunshine where they want it.

The current LotExpander is supposed to move all of the portals. If it doesn't work on a particular lot, then please let me know. If you attach a copy of the lot, I'll try to find and fix the problem.

Oh dear, very first problem - how do I make SimPE open the Basegame Starter Proi neighbourhood? It wants to open the full game information.

I do want to make a basegame 1x1, because that's what I want to use.

I'll go check Numenor's Starter Pro thread in case I can find it there.

Instead of using:

Tools / Neighborhood / Neighborhood Browser

you need to use:

File / Open

and then open the N###_Neighborhoood.package file directly from the correct location. Unfortunately, I can't point you at the "correct" location for the Basegame Starter Pro tool.

Thankyou! SimPE is full of buttons that I don't know how to use - this process will teach me a few more things I suppose.

If you're not too familiar with SimPE, then my "rotate a house on a lot" technique is probably your best bet, since it involves the fewest changes. It looks complex, but the hardest part is just deciding which values to use for U10 and U11.

Changing the portals is pretty easy, as well. Just follow the last part of Andi's post. Most houses have the portals in XOBJ Instances 3-8 and you can verify this in the hex editor. Look for the following strings in the corresponding OBJT Instances:

Portal - Pedestrian
Portal - Car - Service Start
Portal - Car - Service Stop
Portal - Car - Start
Portal - Car - Stop

Note that there will be two different Instances for the Pedestrian Portal; you need to change both.

If you need any more help, please let me know. I'd love to see a 1x1 lot with the sunshine in the other direction.

I've never taken any notice of the sun direction. It does seem silly though that although we can now "see" the neighbouring roads and houses, the current lot is still firmly divorced from the terrain it sits on. Also annoying is that when you play a lot that is sitting near the water and is therefore on a part with sandy effect, it makes all the hood look like it is sandy (apart from the roadside verges grrr!), but when you are in a grassy lot, it makes even the waterside lots look grassy.

I have had an idea for building row houses. Could you take a 2x2 lot, build one of the row houses in the centre of that, using 10 tiles, then hack the lot to reduce the size just to where the house is? That might get round the problem of not being able to place walls on the edge of the lot.

OK, no it didn't work like that for me. I expanded some 1 tile wide lots to 2 tiles wide, and the spot where the pedestrians leave ended up in the middle of the sidewalk (not at one of the ends) .. I think I've thrown these lots away meanwhile, but I'll test this some more and get back to you. Within the next few days, or maybe on the weekend.

(Also, I seem to recall you -- or someone else looking at the lot expander -- saying they have difficulties with Andi's originally german comments in the code .. if this is still an issue, maybe i can help? Let me know? German is my first language)




I solved that -- for the LotExpander, not SimPE, but the issue is the same -- by moving the NXXX folder to FullGame/Neighbourhoods (so that the expander can find it), then fiddling with the lots, and then moving it back .. as long as you don't run the full game while it's in there, nothing can happen to it. Maybe an "Open .." feature would be nice for the LotExpander too? OTOH the clientele that uses both the base game starter *and* the lot expander is probably around 10 people on the planet .. perhaps not really worth the effort.




Yes, that's what I meant above =) -> http://www.modthesims2.com/showthre...196#post1376196 -- this might be the key to row houses?" -- this is where Andi describes how to decrease the size of a lot; it's been there for a year or so ($%§/!') but I only saw it when Mootilda linked to it somewhere. This should work, with a 3xN lot to start with and then decrease the size by 1 on both sides. I think.

Hi again

plasticbox, Mootilda showed me an easier way to find the right neighbourhood. File menu / open / browse to the correct file. Easy and obvious, proving I just have a blockage about the whole thing.

I've been trying both Andi's method and the move-the-road method. With both, I can do the first bit, then I just don't understand SimPE enough. Or else it's too many numbers, not sure which. I'm finding it very hard to follow the instructions, or to know if I'm looking at the right bit of information. A tute with screenshots of SimPE would be useful.

I did find the info about U10 etc very understandable, and had no trouble with that part of the process!

I agree that moving the road will be simpler, and that is my current aim. I had no trouble altering the road to the correct side. (Looks funny with the mail and rubbish on one side, with the roadway still on the other!)

However, I can't work out about changing the portals, which I need in order to do either method. Sigh. When hubby is available I will ask if he can help. He programs, so that may solve it.

If not, I'll be back here. Thanks for your patience.

(edit - might as well ask) I have had to replace missing portals on some of my lots in the past, using somebody's fix, so I do understand that they exist and all that. But what exactly do I have to do when I have identified the right portal info? I don't understand Andi's instructions on that at all.

(edit) Hubby has no idea either, but thinks we're looking in the wrong place for the portal information. Aaargh!

Where do I "open the lot file in SimPE?" Maybe I'm starting from the wrong place altogether.

Also, if I want to move the road on the 1x1 lot, will that work? Effectively I'm just swapping which side of the rectangle is the road, and which the building space. Or do I need to start with a 1x2 lot? But then I would have to crop it anyway. Aaargh again!

Sorry to be so dense. (Maybe someone else should do this - might be quicker, and less painful all round.)

(edit, yet again) I have successfully moved the road on MaryLou's 1x1, and the light angle is now correct. However, presumably the portals are all wrong, so the carpool will probably arrive in the middle of the house.

When I find out how to do the portals, it will be marvellous.