UI:


That's too ambiguous I think. No, I know. It's too close to "maintenance" = "take care of" = "move". Keep in mind that the user may be a 15 year old in France who's just started to learn English in school.




OK, good point. Actually, what *does* the user gain .. why would anyone want to not move the portals? I must admit that's not really clear to me.

Yes, this is helpful information. It verifies that, at minimum, the game may have problems with objects which straddle the lot edge.

I believe that the compiler implements this feature, based on messages received from the operating system. However, I'm a bit fuzzy on the mechanics.

Hang on while I check with my compiler friend. Perhaps a bit too early for me to bother him right now... just be patient and I'll try to get an answer for you.

As I've mentioned before: I believe that our (purchasers of the Sims 2 games) agreement with EA specifically forbids us from reverse-engineering the game. What you are suggesting may be illegal and could certainly force me into court in a foreign country. Not something that I relish.

I know that EA has done something to make it difficult to open the executable in a debugger, but that it is possible to attach a debugger to a running executable. However, even that would only get me access to the machine level hex code, which a disassembler can convert into potential assembly code. If EA provided symbols (which I'm sure that they share internally), then that would still only get me assembly (machine) level code - more readable than without symbols, but still very low-level code.

I've programmed and debugged assembly code before and I can tell you that it's time-consuming and difficult. NO ONE wants to do this, unless it's absolutely necessary. Most people (including professional programmers) don't even know how.

Something to remember: EA wants to protect their intellectual property. There may be ways of getting around this, but that doesn't make it legal.

[Update:] Of course, the fact that EA says that something is illegal, doesn't actually make it illegal; that's for the courts and lawmakers to decide. Still, I'd prefer to avoid being the one who's challenging this in court.

Well I wouldn't have said anything, only he's posted as much in open forums himself in the past. It's not something I would do myself, of course.

This won't be available until I implement the config file logic. So, it can't be 1.2.7.8 and it may not even be the next version. However, I certainly intend to look into adding this when possible.

In general, I don't like to leave features unfinished. Since I'm in the middle of the UI changes, I'd like to finish those before I focus on anything else.

Good question. I think that the download thread for the test version is the appropriate place. What do you think?

Inge, I think that this is your question to answer, since you asked for the feature.

Hey, I caught up!

Just so everyone knows, I'm doing some hardware stuff on my internet machine this weekend. So, there will be periods when I'm not around. If I'm really unlucky and something gets fried, then I won't be on again until I get a new machine. I had my machine in pieces yesterday and expect to do more of the same today.

Actually... it's pretty quick for a user to delete or move unwanted portals if they didn't want them where the LA put them. I don't think it would be a great loss to lose this tickbox *unless* the user had carefully arranged them before shrinking. But if they know the LA will be moving them, then they won't complete that step before shrinking if they have any sense.



Gulp! Did I? If I did it was probably as a means to an end. Maybe I hadn't made the flamingo at the time. Oh - or maybe in case there was a use for an off-lot portal, I seem to remember we were speculating what might happen with a portal located beyond the lot boundaries.

Why don't you think about this a while and decide whether it's still a useful feature? If not, I'm glad to remove it. If it is useful, maybe you can explain why, then we can all brainstorm on wording.

Just for reference -- I know you said you'd take a break from the shrinking code: a couple of posts up, I asked whether there's any difference between roof code and roof wall code (regarding my corrupt roof lot), and now I've just seen that you already answered this, in the context of using the auto roof tool on a shrunk lot:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthre...117#post1802117

So .. maybe it's not the roof that's the problem, but the roof walls.

I think this just means it's acting like any other wall in build mode, refusing to be built on the edge tile of the lot.

Ok, someplace else I see info missing: No one has stated whether or not they have applied wall paper to their pre-shurnken lot: If the LE/LA is truncating objects at the edge, re the apple tree, then it might be truncating wallpaper data of lots with walls built at the edges, the paper on the outer side of the wall--the part that gets 'shrunk'?


When the LE first came about, everyone was aware that it might cause their lots to crash/corrupt. We ate the LE up anyway, we so wanted this ability. In particular, I wanted the small lots, the 1x1 and all the !x? series of lot sizes. I keep the series in my bin and go first for them over Maxis lots. (I have tons of little lots, love them, can't wait for the little beaches.) I have never had a crash, not once in any of them. Big crowded lots and DL lots, yes, they crash for me.

I have burned up one hood--I'm fairly sure that was the result of too many buildings on the terrain (a custom terrain with roads to the very edges, and I was trying to fill it up ). When it started to corrupt it was expressed in lots failing to open and doing so randomly, not opening today, opening fine tomorrow kind of thing. I finally started bulldozing--and lots started opening normally again. I also had over 1300 character files. The point: it wasn't Andi's small lots that corrupted my hood--it was EA's/my input combination that did it. EA and I am responsible for it, not Andi or any other creator of CC that was kind enough to share with me.

So: mootilda, I think almost everyone but the newest of 12 year olds is going to be aware that any download might give them problems, any lot they download might hurt their hood, any lot they expand might hurt their hood and it is only keeping with the tradition: any lot they shrink might hurt their hood. Stop feeling responsible for the possiblity of it happening, not your bad. You are doing a marvelous and much wanted thing here. We, the people, accept as we hit the DL button to willingly suffer a few bad crashes and hood replacement days for the abilities you are giving us. Sleep better!

And yes, mootilda, I plan on trying the LE/LA reaching over the network asap, but that may be several days from now.

Although I intend to avoid making any code changes to the shrinking feature for a while, I think that it's very reasonable for us to continue to discuss the feature here. After all, it's a good thing to get our ideas out on the table whenever we think of them.

With my lots, which are apparently non-crashing, I have not tried changing their external decor after shrinking.

So you DO place wallpaper before shrinking?

EDIT: Mootilda: reaching thru the network is great! I'm gonna start with an empty beach 4x5 and shrink it, see what I get....yea!

Thank you for the kind words. However, I think that I will always feel responsible for software that I write. The various posts between Oct 24th and 28th helped me to understand that people may want these advanced features, even if they are known to have problems. This is why I've been trying to come up with a way to give people access to those features, while making it a bit harder for people to accidently use them without understanding the risks.

Since you weren't able to test this right away, I tried it on my machines. No problems with LE on Windows XP accessing the neighborhood and lot files on another machine. So, it looks like there's a good chance that this will work for you, too.

Yes, I get the houses fully built and decorated externally before shrinking. Mainly in case I can't do it after shrinking, rather than anything more meaningful. I think I had already decided not to touch the actual "party" walls (walls intended for being on the boundary of another lot) at all after the shrink, because I could see graphical artefacts on them after shrinking (stripes and stuff) which made me feel uneasy. But of course the front walls in some cases players would want to change them to make the row look realistic and lived in.

The less tech support ends up in the tutorial, the better. Still, it should mention something like "get version 1.2.3.4 and edit the config file to enable shrinking (see instructions in the download thread)", because that's a required step.

Also, it should have up-to-date pointers (or non-pointers for that matter) .. do I get this right:

* right now there's no version available that does shrinking
* it will be added back into a future version as a disabled option (to be enabled via editing a config file)

?

Let me know. Actually, this is exactly why I was thinking it might be good if others could edit the tutorial as well .. if you update/change/remove a required tool, you could just go and change the links/notes on your own then.

I have definitely placed wallpaper on the outside walls before shrinking. I've never had a crash with shrunken lots, although I haven't shared them so testing has been limited.

I have had some issues with furniture placed against the outside wall, but I haven't verified that these problems are specifically related to the shrinking code... could just be the normal game issues with small rooms and lots of people.

At one time I was thinking we might have to build the beween-lot dividing wall one tile in from the new edge and only use the front and back walls to give the impression of the houses adjoining - ie leaving some blank space between the living spaces. I was very surprised a) that the walls right on the edge stayed standing and b) that they could be decorated and c) there was no graphical fighting with the lot imposter's boundary wall.

Both are correct. I believe that I have removed all test versions which have the shrinking feature, and I intend to release a new test version with the shrinking feature - hopefully with the config file logic. I did this because people were continuing to download the test version and I wanted to restrict access for a while (until everything calms down a bit).

I'm very willing to be a member of a group with the ability to update your tutorial.

I just want you to be aware that I won't be monitoring the tutorial thread as carefully as I try to monitor this research thread. More like what I was doing with MATY - try to sign on once a day or so, skim over the posts without reading carefully, respond infequently.

On this thread, I try to read everything that everyone says and to respond to every post if I believe that I have something to add. It takes a lot of time, but I feel that I've received so much from everyone's participation that it's been well worth my time.

HP's bringing it back for you. To modding discussion

While the reaching across the network is good, the LA doesn't work for actual lot editing. I checked sharing and permissions, etc. But it won't work. I think maybe it's the difference between the LA on an XP 32 bit system trying to change lots on a Vista 64 bit system--but what do I know? So I tried pulling the folder over to the XP desktop--still won't work. SimPE 63 in place, Net 2 in place, what could be wrong?

[LA/LE - UI & versions tests]



I guess aelflaed might mean "portals unmoved". Lol, please keep this feature, I'm one of those who bother to re-arrange the portals manually... even before shrinking. I see there're still some experiments for this.


[Modding tricks]

BTW, to keep the neighbourhood package not to be over-written, open it in SimPE or simply make it read-on while starting the game and work on the potentially corrupted lots without moving them. I did that when I made highly risky modifications on the lot files for testings. The lot files and the neighbourhood files are backed up before.


[chit-chat]

Now, I've deleted most of the crashing shrunken lots by LE 1277. And start to do more exp. with LE/LA 127B in a new neighbourhood. So far, so good relatively. Probably, that little fixes did magics...

But, I'm gonna test the roofs since all my wall-at-the-edge lots didn't cause any crash.

I know there are some people made funny crashes.
It's great that these some of the people didn't follow the suggestions as mentioned in the Row house tutorial carefully and messed up their lots, so they'll learn it from the hard ways. These distractions we've to remember clearly. After all, there may be some other unexpected problems uncovered like that.


Thread Splitting Organisation

A numeric list of suggestions for easy checking?

Are you getting any error messages? How far do you get in the process before things start to go wrong?