I did that *before* posting yesterday. I`ll try again now.

Yeah, it does seem pretty nebulous now, but I`m about ready to start making some progress in firming it up.

Hmm, I just checked out my Lot Templates directory:

Sorry about the spaceing; vBuilliten does that. The thing I`m noting here is that there are seperate templates for residential and comunity, and that there are more community lot templates than residential. I`m going to see what happens when I add the 6x6 residential template to my Lot Catalog.

Right now, I`m waiting for SimPE to finish opening a file so I can snoop in it.

Edit: Thanks! FAMI in the neighborhood package. I`ll go investigate at the earliest opportunity.

Edit: Either it isn`t FAMI after all, or the WIKI is incorrect. I`ll have to investigate further.

Edit: Dumping the raw uncompressed data for all the FAMI records in my neighborhood package reveals NO recognizable plain text whatsoever, and the family name HAS to be plain text SOMEwhere.

Edit: FOUND `em! They`re inside STR# resources in the neighborhood package. Should I take this discussion back to my own thread?

Whatever you'd like. This thread is a good place for general discussion about modding lots and neighborhoods, but I understand if you'd prefer to have everything related to your tool in one place.

Mootilda: Hokay.

aelflaed & everyone: I copied the large residential template lot into the Lot Bin as per Mootilda`s instructions, and it worked perfectly, EXCEPT that when placing the lot, the game flattened the area instead of conforming the lot to the terrain. There MUST be something about placing a lot from the Template Bin that is different from placing one from the Lot Bin.

Now I wonder what happens if one places a built lot into the Template Bin... .

I can see you're having fun with this...

::grin::

Mootilda, and anyone else interested: I copied a Lot Template file from the Lot Template directory into the Lot Bin directory, renamed it appropriately, launched the game, had no trouble locating the Lot Template lot in the Lot Bin, and was perfectly able to place it on some mildly hilly terrain in my Testing Neighborhood.

Unfortunately, it FLATTENED the terrain when placed, instead of conforming to the terrain, as hoped. Obviously, placing a lot from the Template Bin is different from placing the SAME LOT from the Lot Bin. So much for the idea of using real lot templates in odd sizes in the Lot Bin. This was the "60x60" residential template, as updated by the installation of FreeTime. Should I try again with a different lot template?

Edit: Oops! I forgot that I`d already posted that information. ::blush::

thought it looked familiar...try reversing the process maybe?

Your test had better results than I feared (I thought that the game might crash when the grid elevation array was missing), but this is clearly not a useful technique.

I believe that the game is defaulting the ground level elevation to 0, since the grid elevation array doesn't exist in the lot template.

I agree with aelflaed; it looks like the reverse process might be more interesting.

aelflaed: At least my repost had additional relavent details than my original posting of the information. .

Moo: I agree that it stood a chance of doing dreiw gnihtemos, and that the technique is clearly not useful. Still, I had had hopes....

You`re probably right about what happened.

As do I, though I hold out little hope that the process will prove useful as anything more than a data-gathering exercise. Both: Still, will do, and report results. Quoting myself from that first posting of the results: "Now I wonder what happens if one places a built lot into the Template Bin... ."

Not sure if this is news to anyone, or indeed relevant, but I thought it might be;

I've spent the day making a CAS screen replacement. This is done by use of a 'secret' Global Lot, which is renamed, put into the Lot catalogue, edited, then renamed and put into Downloads. Works a treat, and doesn't even require SimPE.

The lot is very odd. Heaven knows why they made it like that - the bit that is used in CAS is only a tiny portion of the lot, at a very specific angle.

There is a footpath down the length of the lot, from road to road, but no doors. Good thing sims enter it by magic. The 'house' has two storeys, again for no discernible reason. It also appears to have two roads - I had to use cheats to delete the tiles on the 'extra' road at the back of the lot.

Don't know if this might give one of you clever types a hint about something that needs modding, but I thought I'd mention it just in case.

Old news to me; I`ve already read several Custom CAS Screen tutorials, and copied my standard CAS screens [plural! --there are two] into my Testing Neighborhood, and explored them, but never bothered to *edit* them, as I so seldom *use* the CAS screen. All the same, I appreciate you taking the time to report this in *this* context.

You`re right, though, that the standard CAS lots are very strange in several ways. I`ll bet that if we examine the unedited CAS lots outside the game, we will discover that the "front" road doesn`t even exist until we attempt to place the lot.

I thought it might have some bearing on lot modding questions. Don't know if it is of any use, posted it anyway!

It might. Ya never know.

I've been working on some major changes to the LotAdjuster, including using lot-sized tiles rather than neighborhood-sized tiles, and allowing the buildings to be shifted on the lot (expand one side, shrink the other).

Would anyone be interested in helping me to test this before I release it? I'm particularly interested in whether the UI needs to be fixed, since lots must still be a multiple of 10 lot-sized tiles, even though you can specify less. Other than that, just general testing of all of the functionality, to ensure that it still works as expected.

If you think that's useful, I'll happily test the UI for you (in mono or in XP), but I don't have TS2 installed anymore so I won't be able to test the results.

This really needs to be tested with the game. Thanks anyway.

FYI: So far, I've gone the minimalist approach: unless the new width and depth are multiples of 10, the "Finish" button is disabled. As well, the invalid width or depth are highlighted in red.

Things that I'm considering:
- Put an obvious break between the numeric up-down controls for Left and Right, and those for Front and Back.
- Print a text error message in the space; something like "The width / depth must be a multiple of 10"
- Make the normal up-down control move 10 tiles at a time; user must choose an advanced option to use other amounts.

I can do some testing for you - I've been helping with Chris hatch's hospital mod, so I'm in testing mode anyway.

What's the point of measuring in lot-size incrememnts if we still have to use them in multiples of ten? Or are you hoping to eventually change that?

Anyway, post the file and I can have a go with it.

You may remember that the game has problems with lots which are not in neighborhood-sized tiles. This means that all lots must be in multiples of 10 lot-sized tiles. There's really no way around this restriction.

Why is it useful? Let me tell you what got me working on this. I downloaded a bunch of Sleepycat's occupied lots to populate a new neighborhood of mine. Every one of his / her houses has a huge front yard and a non-existent back yard; I prefer a small front yard and a larger back yard. Unfortunately, most of the lots have 7 or 8 tiles excess at the front... not enough for the existing LotAdjuster to shrink. But, if I can specify adjustments in lot-sized tiles, then I can take 6 tiles off the front and add them on to the back.

I have also had people say that they want to expand a lot by 1 neighborhood tile, but they want their existing house centered on the new lot; this will allow them to expand by 5 lot-tiles at the front and 5 at the back. Basically, this just gives people a finer level of control.

Thanks for the offer to do some testing; I'll feel a lot more confident about this large change with someone else looking at it. I found another bug in tonight's testing, so I'm going to fix that bug before I upload the test version. Depending upon how hard it is to fix the bug, I may not be able to upload until tomorrow morning (for me).

Okay, that makes some sense. Less rebuilding.

I'll check back tomorrow sometime - it's bedtime here now.

LA 2.6.5 has been uploaded to the private testing forum:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=381154

aelflaed, I assume that you still have access. Thanks for any testing that you can do on this.

plasticbox, I really would appreciate feedback about the UI, even if you can't really test the functionality. Thanks.

If anyone else is interested in helping me to test this, please let me know. This is a major code change, so I'd appreciate the help; handling for almost every record type has been modified.

I thought I`d give your new version at least a quick look-see, but I don`t have access to the page you link to. Who "owns" that forum?

It's a private forum. I'll have to ask Delphy to add you (what a bother). Alternatively, I suppose that I could create a private social group for testing and then I'd have control over membership.

... OK, you've convinced me I love social groups.

Give me a couple of minutes to set it up and copy the LotAdjuster there.

plasticbox, am I right that it would be difficult to just move the two recent LotAdjuster threads from the private testing group to a private social group?

[Update:]
Created private MooTest group and sent invitations to:
GeneralOperationsDirector
aelflaed
plasticbox

Got it! Thanks.

Social groups are technically different from forums, so yes, it would be difficult (Delphy would need to manually twiddle the database). Not impossible, but as far as I can see the topic (the actual upload) is already in the social group – so I believe the simpler way of acheiving the same thing would be if aelflaed and I would just re-post our comments in that thread. So that you have all the feedback in one place, and no duplicate 2.7.1 thread in the social group, and we just continue to use the social group in the future.

That's what I thought. Definitely not worth doing if it's hard, but I wanted to make sure.

If you'd like to repost, that's fine. Otherwise, I can easily look at both forums while programming. All new comments can go in the social group.