How to make farms/fields

[xxdita]

Whenever you're using buildings as props, or multiple building models on the same lot, you need to make a building desc for each building, then basically add up all of the relevant stats, using these numbers for the actual building desc used for the lot.

But it is much easier to use a real model as a building, and then adjust the filling degree accordingly, to account for other buildings on the lot.

[thingfishs]

Thanks for that  .

But it is much easier to use a real model as a building, and then adjust the filling degree accordingly, to account for other buildings on the lot.

The main building is no longer a prop (now an agricultural industry building via SC4PIM). When you say "account for other buildings", how do I do that? Is there a method, or is it educated guesswork?



Secondly, I have an extra farm/field lot without a building (lotted with an invisible building). I put a sign next to it, as often happens in RL - but I can't figure out why that lot's orientation is random (sometimes the sign is on the road, other times in the middle of the fields), whereas the two lots with buildings always grow in the same direction relative to the road...?

Thirdly (I don't ask for much do I? ), something weird is going on with my lots. I am basically finished and was making sure all the names of buildings in game were right - and noticed when I change the name in the building exemplar of my stage 3 lot, the name change occurs on my stage 1 lot - while my stage 3 lot remains unchanged...??
There has been quite a bit of copy/paste-ing in this projects as exemplars mysteriously vanished from files and had to be replaced by earlier working/existent versions, so who knows what I've ended up doing exactly.

I will post a copy of the file here in case someone can be bothered working out what's going on here - it would be greatly appreciated. (This is just my 3 farm lots - a stage 1, 3 and a field only stage 1 plus the field itself and the main building).

Thank you.

[xxdita]

Ok, so the desc you've called test b is used for 2 lots, the ones named no building and stage 1. The lot named stage 3 is using the only desc with a filling degree.

The desc TF Macadamia Farm - S1 is not used at all.

When you're creating a megalot, or any lot with multiple buildings, then you want to have each building adding more capacity (jobs/housing). You can do this by multiplying the filling degree by the number of buildings used, provided the models are roughly the same dimensions. You can fine tune this a bit up or down, to provide the stats you're comfortable with.

[thingfishs]

Ok, so the desc you've called test b is used for 2 lots, the ones named no building and stage 1. The lot named stage 3 is using the only desc with a filling degree.

The desc TF Macadamia Farm - S1 is not used at all.

Thanks a lot for taking a look xxdita 
It sounds like a bit of a mess (and yet functions as expected - if it weren't for the naming issue I probably wouldn't have noticed). How do I get from where it is now to having a releasable product?

I'm not shure what you mean. The farm lot grows but the area where the farm field should be stays empty? First I would check if I misspelled the field-ID when editing the "Field Lots" property in the desc-file of the lot. Best practice to work with copy and paste - so to copy the field-ID and paste it into the "Field Lot" property instead of typing. But even then – forgetting to mark the first or last digit – happens to me.

Thanks fantozzi, sorry I forgot to respond to this. It turns out it wasn't a data entry error, but there were additional field lots in one of my exemplars (from memory, I think that was the situation), so your advice led me to the solution, cheers.

[thingfishs]

Well I burnt out on this one for a bit, but with a fresh perspective have been able to rectify the issues in short order (sometimes you just become too close to a project - plus I have a newborn, my concentration isn't at it's sharpest...). I still have a couple of questions though:

1: I've noticed that the light for my sign only mostly works. In this test there are two identical lots across the road from each other, one working, one not. I have run the simulation at length, tried swapping in and out of night mode etc to no avail. I haven't had much experience with "night time SC4" and may be observing a well known glitch - I don't know...





2: What can I do slope tolerance-wise to minimise foundations showing on steep slopes like in the picture?



Thanks in advance