Lot Expander

[nectere]

Wouldn't this discussion be more useful in the creator's thread at MTS2 so they can get the benefit of these comments and probably be able to answer questions with more inside knowledge too?

Yeah except that we would have to follow someone elses rules which we all know stifles free thought, expression and creative input...not to mention if you dare go off topic your post gets deleted and the thread locked. pfft.

I am sure if anyone actually wanted to go there and ask questions they would...

[Magicmoon]

Also, it appears that English isn't the creator's first language, which makes it a little more difficult to communicate.

I tried the expander on a lot that I didn't care about that was in an uninhabited part of the neighborhood, just in case of problems. I expanded a 4x3 lot to a 6x6.

When I went into the game, I could clearly see the lot because it was so large and bright green, looking empty (which they said was normal). I tried to move the lot, and could not find a place in the neighborhood that would take it, even though I have a large portion of the neighborhood still empty.

Also, it appeared that it was going across the street, which I thought that they fixed. Plus, I didn't expand the front, according to the UI. There was another post about going into SimPe and checking for direction of the lot. Do we need to do that? The interface calls front 'looking from the street' so I didn't think we needed to do the SimPe thing. Plus it kinda confused me.

Can the lot be expanded in front and therefore move the house back away from the street more? Or does it actually make the lot cross the street with the street in the middle?

I got scared and didn't go into the lot I expanded, but just deleted it. I wanted to try to understand what I am doing a little bit more before trying again.

[Elven Ranger]

basically the concept is pretty simple, you need a floor between each stage however you acheive that is up to you, but the fastest way to get there is having walls the same height as the stages so you can put a floor in between. I use the unlevel wall because I am kinda lazy like that. You could at that point stack regular walls on top of the mini walls. I was also considering that an internal staircase (*not touching any walls) could certainly be doable...but work calls.

In the picture I removed a all the walls inbetween the stages.

Seeing as im rather stuped about these thing's, could you give a few more detail's please?

[Inge]

Can the lot be expanded in front and therefore move the house back away from the street more? Or does it actually make the lot cross the street with the street in the middle?

Well my experience has been that if you expand the front, the lot crosses the road but takes its share of the road with it, which doesn't look good.  If it crosses the road and leaves the road where it was, I feel it would be more useful to my purposes.

If you're nervous about wrecking things, can I recommend you start a new neighbourhood (not a linked neighbourhood to your existing one) specially for trying out the more adventurous hacks?  Then if it all goes horribly wrong it won't have affected your serious game.

[Magicmoon]

So am I to assume that the front of the lot is correct in the user interface and I can ignore what it said in that one post about using SimPe to determine the 'front' of the lot?

I am going to do the work on a discardable neighborhood. I just want to understand a little first so I don't spend all my time doing reloads.

[lovemysims]

Inge, I noticed that he/she posted the smaller lots as a download. Do I put the file in my lots folder?

Thanks

[Inge]

Inge, I noticed that he/she posted the smaller lots as a download. Do I put the file in my lots folder?

Thanks

Yes once you have undone the download and got .package files in front of you, put them in your LotCatalog folder.

[Inge]

So am I to assume that the front of the lot is correct in the user interface and I can ignore what it said in that one post about using SimPe to determine the 'front' of the lot?

Well I didn't use simpe at all.   In version 1, I went by which side was facing my in the neigbourhood view.  In the latest version, front is the real front of the lot - ie where the bus comes.

[dizzy]

Okay. I tried out the 1x1 lot (and did a little building on the 1x2 lot), and they both seem to work fine. On the 1x1 lot, the carpool simply appears and there's barely enough room for it to appear to move a little before it vanishes. Very cramped. I'd hate to see what would happen if you had a gardener, a maid, a repairman and a fire all break out at once. 

The 1x2 lot leaves just enough room for a small but nice one-room house with a driveway. Perfect for a downtown/shopping-type lot.

[Ellatrue]

Do those work with just the base game? Maybe I can use them in a challenge...

[Magicmoon]

Has anyone tried expanding a lot that already has sims living on it? I want to expand a legacy lot but fear repercussions.