Here's my current to-do list. Feel free to comment on these ideas, or make suggestions of your own.

Current To-Do List for the LotAdjuster:

My first priority is to fix problems which prevent people from using the LotAdjuster. Bugs which have a workaround will be fixed as time permits.

Bug Fixes:

- Handle non-standard hood names, which don't use the standard <letter><3 numbers> naming convention. [Done]

- Fix a bug where a corrupt neighborhood with no name will cause problems selecting neighborhoods which are later in the list.

- Find and fix the problem with moving the rounded pool pieces from Seasons.

- Find and fix the "jump bug", where sims will jump away from their expected locations, and then jump back immediately after a change in the size of the lot.


New Functionality:

- Display lot value (and allow user to change?)

- Allow user to specify whether they want the lot furnished or not. Removing all furniture from an unoccupied lot should be as simple as setting one flag in SimPE (Lot Description U0 & 0x08).

- When updating the neighborhood terrain with the lot terrain, also update the roads, trees, and deco elevations.

- Update the terrain array in the Lot Description within the neighborhood package. This seems to fix some of the problems with placing adjusted lots.

- When an adjustment fails, do not abort the program.

- Allow manipulation of lots in the lot bin: expand, add roads, etc.
Difficulty: Easy
Note: I now have this working for several of my other programs, so this (hopefully) just grunt-work. However, it may be important to stop people from doing some adjustments, such as expand and shrink, which result in a lot imposter which does not match the actual lot size.

- Change Select Lot screen to display lot number [Not done] and family name (if occupied) [Done]. Note that you can always select a lot by lot number using the Browse button.

- Allow expansion and manipulation of Sims Stories lots.
Note: I believe that this already works for Life Stories and Pet Stories.

- Allow a house to be shifted on the lot. IE, increase one side and decrease the other. [Done]

- Allow expansion in increments of lot tiles, which are 1/10 the size of neighborhood squares. Additional tiles to make up a multiple of 10 will be added to the other side. [Done]

- Remove excess road and sidewalk tiles when lot is expanded at the front. [Done, when option is selected]

- Investigate increasing lot size above the 6x6 limit.
Difficulty: Likely impossible. Any attempt crashes the game.

- Investigate lots with sizes which are not a multiple of 10 tiles.
Difficulty: Likely impossible. Especially now that niol is gone and is no longer doing the research.

- Investigate decreasing lot size below the 1x1 limit.
Difficulty: Likely impossible. Requires lots which are not a multiple of 10 tiles.

- Make a separate folder to store the back-up files so the package files are separate from the .bkp files.
Ref: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?p=1773780

- Add the ability to restore from backup. Especially important if backups are moved out of primary folders.

One way around that last issue is to offer a "restore from backup" feature.

Yes, that is pretty obvious, now that you mention it. This is why it's great to have other people giving suggestions and advice.

Thank you.

I think if you decreased a lot BELOW a 1x1 limit, it would be a 0x0 lot, and therefore, impossible to see, click on, or move. Multiples of 10 tiles is also probably fixed into the way the game creates lots in terms of tileblocks in the mainhood as well, where a lot of fractional size would not be able to snap to the grid properly or would render improperly due to the tilesizing being integer.

Other interesting possibility, though: Can a lot be made that straddles the road, so that the building runs OVER the road?

Of course, we're discussing lots which are between 0 and 10 lot tiles (0-1 hood tiles). Not sure whether the game would consider them 1x1 or 0x0. This is pie-in-the-sky stuff. I've updated the to-do list to say that.

I agree. We've had some limited success creating lots which are not a multiple of 10 tiles, but the game will attempt to "fix" them over time, returning some of the internal sizes to multiples of 10 lot tiles.

That's what the existing "over the road" option is for.

Mootilda, I just had an idea for one of your tools. I wasn`t sure where I should post the idea, but this tool`s discussion thread seemed most appropriate, as it relates to adjusting information in lot files.

"Can the game finally detect courtyards?" by Claeric wants to know if Sims 3 can autodetect enclosed outdoor areas. Is there any known way to edit an existing Sims 2 lot [outside the game] to designate a particular area as "inside" or "outside" for weather and/or lighting? Could one of your tools be modified to make this adjustment? Such adjustments would likely need to be re-done after any walls are added or removed, though. I have a few ideas how your program could determine what should be "outside" and what should be "inside", but those can probably wait until after I have confirmation that the basic premise is even doable.

Moved topic to its own thread within MooTools.

Here: Courtyards.

Hey Mootilda, I've been designing a massive house in Sims 2 for a while now on the 6x6 lot, and have been confined by the evil perimeter of the lot several times now. It sounds like there is a possibility that you could configure the Lot Adjuster to expand the lot beyond 6x6; so I guess this message is just a little incentive for you to "investigate" that further. I would seriously appreciate your time and effort on this. BTW- you've got some fantastic uploads on the site

At this point, we have no reason to believe that it is possible to create lots which are larger than 6x6. It's very likely that EA used a constant to define the maximum lot size, which means that the maximum size is scattered throughout the code inside of the TS2 EXE and is therefore basically impossible to change. I was hopeful when I found that Sims Castaway Stories had 10x10 lots, but my guess is that they changed the maximum lot size and recompiled for that particular game; that change likely didn't make it back into the main TS2 game.

If the core game doesn't support larger lots, the LotAdjuster won't be able to change that.

I can certainly run another test for you to see whether this has changed. Give me a little while to try it and I'll let you know what happened.

[Update:]

Result: Crash

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the TS2 game will support larger lots; I'll change the original post to reflect this.

Hi again Mootilda,

Thank you for your reply and your test. The results are disappointing, but if it's not too much to ask, I have a suggestion about another way to make this work. I saw a forum discussing your Lot Adjuster that made a point of the "Over the Road" option and deleting unusable perimeter tiles.

Do you know of a possible way to connect two 6x6 lots by deleting the unusable perimeter tiles and allowing the lot borders to be placed (in the neighborhood) adjacent to one another? The borders will be flush against eachother, but the game will think they are still two (seperate) lots. Then you may build a single structure spread across both lots, half in one lot, and half in the adjacent lot.

I'm sure this has already been considered, but if not,
do you think this suggestion has any credibility?

Good idea, but it won`t work without problems, as certain things, most notably walls, are NOT ALLOWED right up to the edges of the lot. Some of those restrictions can be worked around, but only with difficulty, and even just trying can cause problems if you aren`t extremely careful.

covalette, this is already possible; see plasticbox's pseudo-rowhouse tutorial for details. Walls can be built which are perpendicular to the edge of the lot, and lots can be placed size-by-side, thus creating the illusion of one large lot rather than several smaller ones.

As GeneralOperationsDirector mentions, there are restrictions to this method. It is not safe to build a wall along the very edge of the lot because EA did not write their code with the necessary checks. So, you will unfortunately have one tile at the edge of the lot which cannot be completely enclosed. However, from neighborhood view, these two lots will appear to be one.

I hope this is relevant, considering this thread is about Lot Adjuster. But, would it be possible to place lots away from a road? This isn't a request, just curious as to whether it was possible (before I posted this I did a quick search to make sure this hadn't been asked before).

Yes, it's possible and safe. Just use the advanced "move" option to move the lot back from the road. Since you won't be able to snap the lot to the road to fix any discrepancies in the terrain, be sure to update the lot edges with the neighborhood terrain (note that this is the default).

plasticbox has a wonderful neighborhood where she has used this ability to make a roadless lot, the "House on Cod Island":
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=319898
http://www.modthesims.info/download...843#post2126843

A short tutorial:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthre...741#post3005741

From http://www.modthesims.info/showthre...129#post3008129

Updated To Do list with idea for new feature.

Any idea on how to rotate the sun/shadows within the lot and also on it's imposter?

plasticbox found something useful about the lot imposter shadows in the txt files. Unfortunately, this changes the sun direction in the neighborhood for all lots.
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=325634

If you just want to change where the front of the lot is (sun direction remains the same for the building, but the road moves), then this tutorial will help:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=255110

To change the sun direction within an individual lot, and the corresponding sun direction of the lot imposter, would require a new program which would:
- Rotate all coordinates
- Rotate all quaternions
- Rotate all 2D and 3D arrays

I have a separate thread for this suggested program:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=328167