Issue with custom BV secret vacation lots catalogue placement

[Ghanima Atreides]

Hi all,

Longtime lurker, occasional poster here, I hope I did this right. However I figured you guys are most likely to know what the problem is with my custom BV lots, since I have tried everything. I'll explain: I have made my own island vacation destination and wanted a secret lot for it too. I followed the tutorial to build one, so far so good. Then, when time comes to move it to the lot bin and replace it so that it becomes invisible, it simply never shows up in the bin! It is not gone however, because it does show up in the college nhood of all places, where it is, of course, useless.

I have searched for a solution and apparently I'm not the only one, because Knukleur seems to be having the same issue, but never got a reply, so here I am. 

This brings me to my other question: do custom secret lots still work if they're visible? For example if I save mine and re-zone it an just leave it there? If it's just a matter of invisibility I could live with it and just move it to the other side of the island and surround it with trees or something. When testing yesterday, I had a sim dig for maps and he found the three ones corresponding to the maxis vacation destinations even though I don't have them added and none for my own lot (if a map is even generated for it).


Thank you for any help.

[Blizzaird]

I'm pretty sure the maps work fine for custom vacation destinations. Just typical EAxis laziness that they didn't bother to make the map's text change for custom hoods.

[Gwill]

I'm in the process of building my own custom vacation hoods too, and I had some difficulties with the secret lots.
I swear the process I used last time didn't work.  In the end I plopped them down in the neighbourhood as community lots (or is it residential?) and re-zoned afterward.  I seem to remember that it used to be possible to pick up the lot after re-zoning and placing it again to make it disappear from the map, but that might be secret societies.
I haven't had a chance to see if it works yet.

Anyway, hiding a lot in SimPE is quick and easy.

[Ghanima Atreides]

Blizzaird - Heh, typical indeed. I might just rename my lots to match them instead, or it's a little weird.

Gwill - It definitely used to be possible to pick them up and plop them again to make them invisible, at least according to the tutorial I've read which explains the process of building them. It's my first time trying though. Might I ask what is that quick, easy way of hiding a lot with SimPE?

Thank you both for your replies. I think I'll just do a test with them as they are if I can't get them to vanish on the map, and hope no borkage ensues.

[Gwill]

Sorry, I would have linked to instructions, but I was in a hurry and had to run.
Open the subhood in SimPE (it's in your Neighborhoods/N00x folder, called N00x_Vacation00x.package, you'll be able to identify the correct one by lot the descriptions), go to the Lot Description (LTXT) of the secret lot and add 10 (0x00000010 actually, it's hex, but unless you encounter letters it doesn't matter) to the number in the U0 field (23+10=33, not 2310 btw).
Commit, save, woosh!

[Ghanima Atreides]

Ahh great, thank you! 

[delariean]

Sorry, I would have linked to instructions, but I was in a hurry and had to run.
Open the subhood in SimPE (it's in your Neighborhoods/N00x folder, called N00x_Vacation00x.package, you'll be able to identify the correct one by lot the descriptions), go to the Lot Description (LTXT) of the secret lot and add 10 (0x00000010 actually, it's hex, but unless you encounter letters it doesn't matter) to the number in the U0 field (23+10=33, not 2310 btw).
Commit, save, woosh!

I have been looking for a way to do this.  Thanks!  Can you provide a link to your instructions as well?