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Seasonal Lot Marker: friend or foe
24-02-2013, 03:46 PM
Post: #1
Seasonal Lot Marker: friend or foe
Over the last two weekends I have been building a Sims house and playing with the Seasonal Lot Marker. Here is my report!

My SLM experiment

I took a tonne of pictures, as always, but I'll spare your eyes and just post here the necessary ones to show the seasonal changes.

First up, here's the house as originally constructed. This is essentially the house in Common mode (everything placed in Common mode will always be there, no matter what the season). There's a big garden at the back.

I decided that seeing as season-specific items would be appearing automatically (with the potential to reset your sim if they are in the way), that I would engineer a couple of big spaces for their placement. Indoors I left some space at the far side of the living room (where sims are unlikely to venture unless they need more dancing room) and a big space in the centre of the garden. This should avoid too many resets (I hope).

[Image: 01_Overview.jpg]


Here is the SLM, which I placed in the bushes at the front of the house. It can go anywhere on the lot. The SLM is a base-game object that came with the Seasons patch. To find it you need to enter buydebug and it's under miscellaneous. It's so shiny.

[Image: 35_SLM.jpg]


To interact with it you need to do ctrl-shift and click. You can ignore 'construction' mode if you are making a residential lot. If you have pre-built everything you want in Common mode then you can immediately start to add seasonal changes. You set each season, make the necessary season-specific alterations and then move to the next season. It's best to obsessively use the "lock common objects" option after making changes and that is also the last thing you must do before exiting from Buy/Build mode - otherwise you may end up in quite a pickle.

Also watch what you are doing when you have set the SLM to a particular season. All Common mode items turn transparent when you are in a set season, but it's all too easy to click on something accidentally and that then drags it out of Common and into the selected season (it then does not exist in the other seasons, which would be a bloody nuisance if it was something like the fridge or your bed). You can however use the eyedropper and the CAS tools on Common items and then apply them to season-specific items. You just can't go in there clicking about wildly. Smile

So what sorts of changes did I make?

Summer

In summer I made one little change in the kitchen. Kitchen in Common mode:

[Image: 19_Kitchen_B.jpg]


I always like to use this lemonade jug as decor, but now it only appears in summer. Before I decided where to set down the lemonade, I had my sim cook things in the kitchen - then I placed the lemonade on a counter she seemed not to use - to avoid resetsim problems if the lemonade jug appears at the same time as a sim is cooking.

[Image: 25_SLM_SummerLemonade.jpg]


In the garden there are more dramatic changes, with two sets of tables, chairs and parasols appearing in the middle of the garden, for all that nice summer al-fresco dining. A picnic hamper also materialises on the bench.

Garden in Common mode:

[Image: 23_Produce.jpg]


Extra furniture in Summer mode:

[Image: 26_SLM_SummerTablesAndPicnic.jpg]


Autumn/Fall

In Autumn I made no seasonal amendments but the garden furniture will magically tidy itself away and the household will become a lemonade-free zone (I did initially try to add something but see my mistake number 3 below). The changing colours of the trees etc were sufficiently autumnal for my liking.

[Image: 27_SLM_AutumnRake.jpg]


Winter

The biggest changes indoors happen in Winter, when the house will decorate itself for Christmas. Smile

Wreaths will appear either side of the front door but you still have to click on the door and select your own holiday lights (they cannot be put up via the SLM, unfortunately):

[Image: 28_SLM_WinterDoor.jpg]


In the nursery you can have the kids' stockings appear on the walls.

Common:

[Image: 12_Nursery_A.jpg]


Festive:

[Image: 29_SLM_WinterStockings.jpg]


On the landing there is normally some activity going on because I stuck a bunch of hobby items up there. Common mode:

[Image: 04_Landing.jpg]


But in Winter you need to watch who you meet on the landing, as there is a dangerous proliferation of mistletoe, which will appear without warning!

[Image: 30_SLM_WinterMistletoe.jpg]


And after considerable searching (I spent ages lost in miscellaneous decor, not the smallest of files) for the Christmas tree (it's a floor lamp don't you know), I was finally able to transform the living room.

Common mode living room:

[Image: 17_TVroom.jpg]


Christmas! A tree appears along with some garlands on the wall and some baskets (which I imagine can be useful for collecting presents in):

[Image: 31_SLM_WinterTree.jpg]


Also plenty of snacks will appear including a box of candy on the coffee table:

[Image: 32_SLM_WinterTree2.jpg]


Strange how Caspin always appears when snacks are mentioned. Moving on.

The big space in the back garden that is free from tables and chairs can be used for festive activities including making snowmen (yay, love the snowmen!):

[Image: 34_SLM_WinterSnowmanArea.jpg]


House in blizzard (just for fun):

[Image: 33_SLM_WinterDoYourOwnLights.jpg]


Spring

At the beginning of Spring the Christmas stuff will put itself away and the living room will return to normal. A couple of baseballs and footballs will appear in the garden to entice your sims outside as the weather warms up and some additional spawners (beetles, butterflies and wildflowers) were also added so that the garden is full of life. Sounds lovely doesn't it but I can't find the pictures of Spring at the moment. Dunno

Learn from my mistakes

1. Where is my SLM?
The SLM turns invisible after you save and exit. This freaked me out for a while because I couldn't find it when I went back in. You have to not only remember to have the buydebug cheat entered but you also need to toggle between Buy/Build modes to make it reappear. This seems weird to me - after all you can still see other things placed with buydebug (spawners for example), also you can't accidentally delete the SLM, so why make it invisible? Anyhoo, if you clickity click on Buy to Build a few times, it will return.

2. Be gone SLM!
You can't click on the SLM in the normal way - you have to hold ctrl and shift to be able to interact with it. This is also how you delete it - you can't just select and delete, nor can you sledgehammer it. Watch out if you do decide to make the bold move to delete it, though, as all seasonal items will then try to appear on your lot simultaneously - which can make quite a mess, especially if you have some that will try to occupy the same location.

3. I want a seasonal fire pit - but can't have one.
Be aware that you cannot have seasonal changes to Build items, which will all count as Common mode. So you can't go changing walls or terrain, for example, in a seasonal manner. It's best to stick to Buy mode items, don't change too much and be aware that not everything works as expected. Having said that, I fancied having a fire pit in the garden in autumn, but you cannot have seasonal fire pits even though they are in Buy mode. Boo to that.

4. My Common mode items can no longer be common.
There were a few things that I originally thought would be Common that ended up being Seasonal. For example in the living room I thought I'd left enough room for the Christmas tree but actually I hadn't so in Winter I needed to delete a sofa, a potted palm and a ceiling light to make room. This meant that this sofa, palm and light were no longer Common - they are absent in Winter and had to be placed again as Seasonal in Summer, Spring and Autumn.

SLM: friend or foe?

Having spent quite a lot of time setting up the SLM and play-testing the house, I have come to the conclusion that I don't think the SLM is really worth using on a residential lot. The SLMs are essential to make the festival grounds work and I can see how they might be useful on other community lots where it might be fun to see seasonal changes occurring - for example it might be fun to have football nets appear in the parks during the summer or something of that sort. Or maybe you could have a Christmas tree appear in a town square during winter, that would be nice.

For residential lots to avoid incurring a lot of lag (and to avoid falling into complete confusion if you mess around in Buy/Build mode and accidentally disrupt some seasonal items' placement) you don't really want too much to be changing each season. I think the most I would ever do is to have Christmas decorations appear in winter and garden furniture be put outside in summer - which I can do manually in about 15 seconds if the relevant items are stored in the family inventory, so it's not worth mucking about with the SLM.

So I would say the SLM is a potential friend on a community lot and not so much a foe as a faff on a residential lot.

I shall be quiet again now, for a little while anyway. Yes
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27-02-2013, 11:29 AM
Post: #2
RE: Seasonal Lot Marker: friend or foe
Awesome looking house Caspin! Big Grin
I don't think I'll really bother playing with the SLM on residential houses even if it was worth it.

[Image: od8QQA8.png]

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27-02-2013, 11:54 AM
Post: #3
RE: Seasonal Lot Marker: friend or foe
Aw thanks Ollie. Yeah, I would avoid the SLM unless you particularly want to make life needlessly complicated!

Smile
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