Hello. I'm trying to build an apartment building. When changing the lot type to apartments, the game told me I'd done something wrong (the apartments were accessible through more than one door). Stupid me, I moved a sim in anyway to see if it worked. Of course it didn't. So I moved the sim out and wanted to change the lot type back to residental in order to change the building but the game kept telling me that there was a cheat error:

ERROR IN CHEAT: Bad lot type!
in command 'changeLotZoning residental'. OnErrorClearParserTempState called.
with command changeLotZoning residental
.\source\TSCheatSystem.cpp(68)

I tried various spellings (with and without capitals), without CC and the game is patched. What I can't do is try without user files because with my Sims 2 folder being renamed to blahblah for the game to ignore it, the game crashes when starting.

The real reason I ask is that you have to furnish and style the lot when it's residental, right? There's a cheat that let's you change stuff while the game considers the lot an apartment building but once you move a sim in, all the changes, like furniture and so, disappear.
So what's wrong with my lot? Why can't it be changed?
Thanks in advance for any help.

(The game help section is very helpful, by the way. I had a glitch a couple days ago which a hack was responsible for. It was very easy to find, so thanks for this great walkthrough .)

It's "residential", not "residental". You're missing an i.

Hmm, I think that part of your problem is that you are trying to rezone as Residential a lot that is already Residential. If it failed to convert from Residential to Apartmentbase, then it failed to convert and is still Residential. If this is NOT the case, then additional information will be required.

Edit: I see we cross-posted, ginrouken and I, and what I posted is still relavent, even if you did misspell Residential in the cheat console.

ginrouken: Good catch; I missed that one entirely. ::blush::

That's it! Thank you guys very much.

You`re welcome.

Just curious, but *which* did it turn out to be, or was it both?

This is a bit embarrassing. I'm a spelling doofus and forgot the i.

That`s easily-enough rectified:Of course, you may want to change the names or descriptions for your own use. I haven`t had to rezone lots much, myself, so this stuff isn`t actually in my UserStartup.Cheat file.

Thanks for the advice. The cheat shortcuts are essential. I'm so lazy that I use single letters, like m is moveobjects on and m- is moveobjects off.
As for my problem, I really didn't know what to think of the error message because usually, the game says "Unknown command" when you misspell a cheat, which is a little more descriptive.

"Thanks for the advice."
You`re welcome.

"As for my problem, I really didn't know what to think of the error message because usually, the game says "Unknown command" when you misspell a cheat, which is a little more descriptive."
Ah, but this time the *command* was known, and the *parameter* that was unknown. As a result, it tried to tell you that the parameter was bad, by saying "Bad lot type". Error messages are designed to be helpful, but sometimes they can be very cryptic, and if they`re *too* cryptic, they fail to help. On the other hand, long-and-wordy error messages can become annoying after a while as well. Perhaps EAxis should have added a "why" cheat-command that would give a more-detailed explanation of the preceeding error, but they didn`t.

::chuckle:: Can you imagine someone entering the WHY command at the start of a session?

> why
Error: No error.
> why
The "why" command explains error messages in greater detail. You entered the "why" command when there was no error condition to explain.
>

Great tips on the Cheats aliases, general, bailey.
As issue is now resolved, locking...