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Theorist
Original Poster
#1 Old 4th Jun 2016 at 7:09 PM Last edited by DJ. : 19th Jul 2017 at 4:37 PM. Reason: fix pic links
Default Making coastal elevation changes stick when moving/packaging BV beach lots
This is a work in progress.

By default, editing the beach of a beach lot is very limited; only a handful of objects are allowed to be placed there, and terrain morphing and other modifications are out of question.

It is possible to bypass those restrictions, one way or another: to place objects, use moveObjects on code; to morph the beach terrain, use the boolProp constrainFloorElevation false code; to build foundation and rooms on the beach area, refer to this tutorial.

However, the last two of the above make a huge nuisance; the coves and other terrain shapes only stick if the lot is never moved. This means that moving a lot across the same neighborhood, binning the lot, or packaging it for sharing, reverts all changes made to the beach part of the beach lot (terrain changes made to the regular part of the lot do stick when moving).

Two things have caught my eye in SimPE that might hold a key to transferring the coves and other beach shapes along with the beach lot to a new location, i.e. to "fix" the beach which reverted back to stock straight shore line upon moving.

The first one of those things is the Lot Description (LTXT) data in the neighborhood package. It has a special box which contains elevation offset data:



The second thing includes Lot Geometry Data (LOTG) found in the lot package itself. My testing lot had 12 of those.

(1) Here's what the lot looked like after it's been edited, but before it's been moved to a new location in the same neighborhood:



(2) When it's moved to a new location, its shore line reverted back to default, while the hill on the regular part of the road remained there:



(3) This is what I did: after I edited the terrain in (1), I saved the lot and quit the game. I opened SimPE, opened the neighborhood package and extracted the LTXT for that lot. I then opened the lot package (from Neighborhood\Nxxx\Lots), and extracted all 12 LOTG nodes.

Then I booted the game back up and moved the lot to a new location within the same neighborhood. I loaded the lot, and that's when (2) occured. I saved the lot, and quit the game once again.

I opened SimPE again, and loaded the neighborhood package. I opened the LTXT of my test lot, and took note of the Top, Left, Z, and U11:Rotation values. Then I deleted the LTXT, and added the LTXT I extracted in (3). At last, I replaced the Top, Left, Z, and U11:Rotation values with the values that were in the now deleted LTXT node.

I saved the neighborhood package, closed it, and opened the lot package. I deleted all 12 LOTG nodes it had, and then added the LOTG nodes I extracted in (3).

When I opened the lot again in game, this is what appeared:



It's see-through, shaped exactly like the cove that was actually on the terrain in (1), but it pops/disappears as soon as it's acted upon using terrain tools:



Right now, I have little time on my hands to toy around with this. I may add additional info that I perhaps stumble across, but if anyone decides to experiment with this on their own, their findings are very welcome.
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Theorist
Original Poster
#2 Old 5th Jun 2016 at 2:19 PM Last edited by DJ. : 19th Jul 2017 at 4:54 PM. Reason: fix pic links
Default Method 1: Transferring LTXT data and the entire lot package
Since extracting only the LOTG nodes from a lot did not do the trick, I tried moving the entire lot package; the result was successful. This means that the game definitely does store coastal elevation data in the lot package, but decides to wipe it as soon as the lot is transferred somewhere else. (Moving solely LTXT nodes (and leaving LOTGs behind) doesn't do anything; there is no visual change.)

This tutorial can be followed by anyone who wishes to keep their fancy shore lines fancy even after sharing the lot with others. However, I'm curious to know where exactly are the coastal elevation values stored, so I'll be posting to this thread if I find any additional info.

In this tutorial, I'll be transferring a beach lot from Bluewater Village (neighborhood N001) to Riverblossom Hills' Downtown (subhood of neighborhood N002).

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