Changing Lot Size (tutorial, kinda)

[Danv]

long story short, after getting absolutely frustrated of not being able to fit my mansion on Summer House lot, i decided to seek help of mods to make lot bigger, but quick google tells what it's not possible... well, further searching and some messing around showed what it's not true, it's actually quite easy, just with some caveats

so, i decided to make tutorial how to do it for people not very familiar with S4 modding and dummies like me, because it took me some time to piece every tiny bits of available information together and make it work

 

Spoiler

 

caveats - it seems you can't make it work as a mod (game ignores it), you have to mod game files directly, so any game update will overwrite your changes and on most sites it's forbidden to share game files

also - to make things pretty and working - there are some trial and error involved

 

to start modding you will need Sims 4 Studio, i'm using version 3.1.3.6 (Wishes) from "Open Beta Version" thread

decide which lot and on which map you will be changing, i will be using Summer House on Windenburg as example

 

you will need to find two region map files with your lot:

"game folder"\Delta\"package code"\World\Areas\"region with you lot".world

"game folder"\"package code"\World\Areas\"region with your lot".world

 

to help find in which package/expansion you world is - use wiki, to help find region in which your lot is - use this guide

 

for Windenburg wiki says package code is "EP02", for region - guide says "Countryside" and in game files we see "Rural" - eh, close enough, so we have two files:

\Delta\EP02\Worlds\Areas\EP02_Rural_01.world

\EP02\Worlds\Areas\EP02_Rural_01.world

 

important! make backups and put them somewhere safe, since those files have same name - keep them in different folders, we will be modding original files directly

 

now run Sims4Studio, if it ask for a game path - ignore it, if it set path to a game automatically - remove it

it won't allow you to change game files, but since it doesn't know where game is... it's not safe way of doing things, but it saves a lot of time later, and since we made backups - whatever

 

click big "My Projects" button, change filter to a "Sims 4 World (*.world)" and open first region file, in our case it's

\Delta\EP02\Worlds\Areas\EP02_Rural_01.world

 

sort by type and scroll down to a "World Data" position, select it, click "Edit Items..." button on the right side

now you see all lots in this region ("ObjectManager" list on the left), if there are more than one lot in your region - first you will have to find which is yours, usually you do it by lot size and some trial and error (see below)

 

select first "ObjectManager", click "Edit Items...", select "ObjectManagerLotData", "Edit Items..." again

here we see this lot's X/Z size (Y reserved for a height), rotation and position in region, by looking at size you can find your lot, in there are more than one lot with same size - you will have to change each one by one and see which is affected

 

important! size variable is in HEX, not decimal, maximum size of 64x64 tiles will be 40x40 here, our Summer House 40x30 - 1E x 28

 

in our case there are two lot with same size, but luckily this first one is ours, so we leave X same and change Z of 1E (default 30 tiles) to 28 (modded 40 tiles), out final size will be 28x28 in hex or 40x40 in game

after changes are made - click "save" on bottom right, save again, and again, and last time save for the world file itself

 

repeat same process for other .world file (you will need to make same changes in both files), in our case it's

\EP02\Worlds\Areas\EP02_Rural_01.world

 

now you can run game and see if everything working, world map screen always stays the same, but actual lot should be bigger

...but as you can probably see - increasing size messing position of a lot a bit and to fix it - you will have to tweak lot position too and move it back into place

here is where "trial and error" and "saving time" come into play - you will need to tweak position of a lot, save changes, launch a game, see how it changes, exit, change again, save, launch, repeat... it took me few dozen runs to fix Summer House position

note - position consist of three numbers - first and last is X/Z you will be changing, middle is Y used for height - better to leave it alone

 

for modded 40x40 Summer House new position is 431.1359,146.001,244.2887 - it fits very nicely in available clear space

 

i hope it will be of help to someone and sorry for bad english