To avoid issues with CC I tested the lot playing the game on a different user on my computer (which means virtually empty "Downloads" and "Saved Sims" folders).
I couldn't see anything wrong so far, I played three different new families, one of them for more than 10 sim-days, they had a baby that grew up to child. Carpools and school bus were normal, as well as going and coming back from community lots. However I noticed this few little things:
- The new family shows up by the the door, they are not brought to their new home by the usual taxi (probably due to placement of mailbox?).
- The grocery delivery doesn't ring the door bell and can't be clicked on, but leaves the basket on the sidewalk opposite the street, where the Sim can pick it up, haven't tested the pizza guy, though.
- Only one visitor Sim shows up to greet the new neighbors.
- And when there is snow on the ground there's a funny graphic thing going on, only on the one tile inside the house closest to the edge on le LEFT side (looking from the street), as you can see here on the second story of the house, here on the first story (ground floor), and here on a community lot... yes, one of those pretty houses has become an H&M store...
When you zoom out you can see that the leftmost part of the roof of the neighboring houses also "tinkers" in a funny way. I tried changing the graphic settings but it was still happening.
I'll keep reporting if anything new happens...

Forgot to say: as one can see I've been rebuilding the lots a little (mainly filling in the basement), but of course most of it (except deleting some pieces of wall or foundation) had to be done 2 tiles away from the edge. As far as I can think of the foundation on the left side was left untouched...

alexpilgrim, thanks for the screenshots! =)


So, were you able to reproduce your changing-clothes issues in that environment?



Maybe .. I never watch the movies, so I couldn't tell. All I know is that the taxi in the movie will be misplaced when the mailbox is moved.



This has come up before, as you've probably seen, with the pizza dude .. it looks like it's a routing issue (my personal theory is that the dude thinks the back door is the front door, and drops his delivery on the floor since he can't get to that door). If that's the case, then it wouldn't be directly related to the shrinking but rather a side effect of it.



What neighbourhood is this -- Maxis or custom? How many other sims live there?



I have seen this before on *non*-shrunk lots where I put floortiles on the second-to-last tile from the edge -- specifically in 2 Main Street in my Middleground neighbourhood (the snow was funky in exactly the same way on the roof of the porch (I find it a bit scary that I actually still remember this)). Maybe this is even visible on one of the screenshots I posted .. hang on .. yeah, there it is. And there too (the floor of the porch). With "porch" I mean the little thing on the side, what's around the kitchen door, bottom left of the pic. The snow thing is not very visible, I guess I picked the nicest-looking (least glitchy) screenshots for the upload .. good thing that I never retouch my screenshots.

Anyhow -- the Middleground lot is not shrunk, it's a plain old mini lot, so it looks like the game just simply doesn't like snowy floortiles near the lot edge. Even though it doesn't require any cheats to put them there. I wonder if this happens on normal-sized lots too?

I notice this happens on the left side in the Backdoor Lane lot, seen from the street, and on the right side (from the street) in the Middleground lot -- in both cases it's the shadowy side; the sun direction on those lots is exacly opposite.



You mean, it looks funky when there's snow on it? Or do you mean it kind of flickers -- as if the game couldn't decide whether or not to display it? Or something else?

* Tested in brand new Pleasantview, never been played before
* Tested without any CC (except frillen's driveway and the lot, of course)
* Tested with brand new CAS sims
* Tested with all EPs/SPs except H&M stuff
* Tested for one sim day (I'm lazy)

* when placing lot in neighborhood view, lot was allowed to overlap with previously placed backdoor lot, it should have gone red, but didn't

* during move in movie, taxi drives in the air and sims don't walk in, appear in house, but that's been explained by the moved mailbox (could the portal points be moved to fix this???)

* 3 visitors arrive to greet family, as normal

* newspaper delivered fine

* car in back works fine, even though I had no street back there

* objects placed near left/right walls work fine (fridge, counter, toilet, tub, beds, desk, computer), sim animations are fine

* pizza guy doesn't go to door, drops box, leaves, as reported previously (I wish Maxis let us designate a "front door")

* all stairs work fine

Overlap? You mean .. you were actually able to *place* it in the exact same spot where there already was another lot? Or did it just not go visibly red? (I'm asking because there was an issue with an older LE version in the Base Game -- purely a visual issue -- that could be kind of similar: it didn't display the bright green border that designates an affordable lot for sims to move in)



I don't think so -- the movie taxi doesn't use the car portals, if that's what you mean, it uses the mailbox as its waypoint. I still move my mailboxes because people will only watch the movie once but see the mailbox all the time .. i find the latter (realistic/useful placement) more important.



Somewhere in my hacks folder I have stuff that resolves this .. my sims always seem to know where "front" is (in my regular game I mean). Probably a MATY fix?

Thank you for the report =)

I'll check whether I can place two lots in the same place or not and report back... I just moved them around, didn't actually place it on top of the other lot, wasn't sure what that would do to the game, probably bad stuff?

The red/green move in affordability coloring DOES work, just not the red/green placement coloring.

I agree about the mailbox, it is much nicer when moved and the movie doesn't really bother me much.

You're welcome!



Changing-clothes was normal now, so it probably has to do with the many downloads in my regular game. I don't remember that it happened on my normal lots but I'll look out for it next time.



Well, as you say final placement of mailbox is more important... btw I was thinking: wouldn't it be great if someone made a mailbox that could go on the wall? (something like Inge's community phone?)



Yeah, stupid delivery guy...



Duh, a new neighborhood with only four families living in it, silly me! I see CatOfEvilGenius gets the normal visitors so my problem was obviously an underpopulated neighborhood.



I was wondering why only on the left side! I'll try on a normal lot, I suspect it might happen too (some maxis coding that needs a fix!)



It just flickers a little, probably as you said about the roof in your Middleground lot, because it was the last portion on the left side that did that... I forgot to look at what heppened to the roof of the house I was playing.

Sorry if some of my reports are obvious issues, I actually hardly play with a family for so long (I mean, order groceries!)... I'm more of a builder, but I have to carry on this experiment until Charlotte goes to college I will!
:p

It's from MATY, frontdoorfix.

I have also gotten the odd snow effect on shrunken lots on just one edge (mine don't have the "party wall"). It's not that annoying as long as you aren't moving the camera around a lot. I don't...I pick one spot where I can see the whole lot at once and rarely zoom in. I haven't looked at unshrunken lots with floor tiles one space from the edge before. Easy to do, my whole 'hood is currently on the cusp between winter and spring and most lots have thick snow.

That's the one I think -- thanks for the pointer. "Deliverypersons should no longer be irresistably drawn to the inaccessible door of the mausoleum in the backyard" (from the rtfm).

Hi Plasticbox,

I DL the lot and have installed it. I moved a new family in, it loaded fine, and have played for a short while. Everything seems ok so far. We've had day and night, changing weather, moving on and off lot, car pool, maid and so on. But I've only played for a day or so. I'll post back again when I've moved the lot through a season or two to confirm it's working ok.

PS I'll check out that double placement of the lot. Anything else you want me to try?

I'm wrecking my brain but can't think of anything really specifically important to test .. nightfall works, the stairs work, it doesn't spontaneuo spontanuoue suddenly catch fire .. nobody crashes .. it seems to Just Work?

I have a handful of other fake row houses too, and didn't crash with any of them so far. I mean, not that I'd want to spread premature optimism here =) but the lack of side walls seems to make it considerably easier for the game to cope ..

Yeah, so far so good here. Testing it with five clones of existing sims I needed to photograph through two days played on double speed. Nothing funny. No crashes. No odd pauses, even. Only modification I made was to add two single beds into the open bedroom.

OK - update time. I've played the lot through all seasons. Lots of stuff happening, sims, NPCs, vehicles coming and going and so on. Everything seems to be working fine. The only protest I have is things got a bit cramped when I got up to five family members and a dog! I checked out the double-placement thing but it seems to be working normally in my game.

Thanks maxon! Yeah it's a small house .. it's bound to get cramped with too many sims. This is about as much as you can get out of two floors on a 2x1 lot, I would think =).

Do you mean it did not let you double place? Did it change color from green to red when trying to double place? For me it didn't change color, haven't had time yet to test if it would actually allow double placement, but plan to get to that...

Just a thought, this would be SWEET for Victorian sims, and lots of them did live in cramped quarters, so that works out. Except maybe for sims getting in each others way? Hmm, requires further playing.

I mean exactly that - it wouldn't let me place the lot within the bounds of another lot. I'm not sure it would be a good thing. For one thing, you can see the walls of neighbouring lots when you play and this might mean your view gets obscured. You also won't be able to see the sims in the other lot if that's what you're thinking.

I just wanted to thank everyone who tested this lot. LotAdjuster 1.1, which allows the creation of this style of house, is now available for public use.

Hooray! =)

Tutorial is up now, too: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=286909

Thank you for all your great lots. For weeks now, I have been using only your creations for residential lots of my Sims, and done A LOT of building modifications, such as adding basements, etc., with no problem. I should add that I play only with your rowhouses built on modified lots (shrunken). It is amazing how much you can actually do with them, like swimming pools, vegetable gardens and fruit trees, and the visible improvement in performance due to the small size of the buildings. I would like to add some feedback, which you probably know: Sometimes, especially with the smallest lots and more specifically with Backdoor Lane 49, there seems to be a problem when the Sims own a car; the pool car will not show up and they are also unable to use their car to go to work, they just get frozen (not the game, the Sim). It is easily fixed however, by simply deleting the car using "moveObjects". Maybe the placement of the car track? Anyway, as far as i am concerned they live in a city and they can use taxis. Also, and this is not a real problem either, the gardener and the maid, or any other service NPC cannot be at the same time in the house because there is not enough space in front of the building. One has to leave for the other to appear. Finally, I have downloaded Backdoor Lane 46 three different times and when I want to load it, the game crashes. What makes it odd is that I have absolutely no problem with the rest of your lots. Once more thank you.

Do those other "smallest lots" have rotated driveways as well, by any chance? I'm not aware of any issues with rotated driveways I must say .. but that doesn't have to mean that none exist.

Other than that .. are you using the same kind of car on all lots? Is it a Maxis car or custom? Which game configuration is this? Are you using any sort of traffic-related hacks, such as the Community Time Project or that .. other one .. can't remember the name right now, a hack that lets you choose who goes to a comm lot .. ? Do you use custom carreers? Have you placed anything in front of the house that could be blocking access to the car? Sure you haven't moved the driveway (by accident perhaps, seeing as it's invisible)?

The only unuseable cars I've had myself were due to Community Time glitches (alpha software), one other hack (the who-goes-to-comm-lot one) being borky or incompatible or something, and a custom carreer from very long ago. And inaccessible driveways. I've no idea whether or not custom cars can be broken, just guessing =).



That's a known issue with all 1-tile wide lots. As you say, there isn't enough space for two vehicles at once.



There is a difference between #46 and the other row houses -- #46 is shrunk with a pre-release version of the LA (1.0.0.13). However, 1.600 others have tested it (or at least, downloaded it and didn't complain), so, er, I can only agree that it's odd.

One stupid question, just to make sure: with "downloaded", you do mean downloaded from this site, yes? Not "installed"? I'm not trying to insult your intelligence here =) -- I'm just asking because apparently not everyone has a clear idea what the difference is, and as long as people have the required EPs and custom content, the solution is often "redownload". But if you've done that already, then I don't know .. Voodoo approach perhaps: try installing with CleanInstaller? (Or the Maxis installer if CI is what you normally use)

Thank you for your quick answer. About the Backdoor Lane 49, I might have moved the driveway inadvertently, but as i said before, it is not an issue because my Sims now must get used to city life and use taxis. But I in fact tried with different cars, custom and original with the same result, and no, I do not have any hacks that might alter the behavior. There is something, when the sideways driveway is placed at the back (I think Backdoor Lane 50) there is no problem at all. About Backdoor Lane 46, I did download from the site every time I tired again because there is always the chance that it might be corrupted along the way. It must be, from what you say, that it is due to the previous version used and somehow my computer or my game does not like it (my version is in Spanish, by the way, which should not mean anything, but yet...). But no problem; I'll just keep on waiting for your new uploads.

thank you