SC4 Devotion Forum Archives

Indeed, the game lacks low/mid-rises (useful for the early/md growth stages, or if you want to make such areas). The game has a fair collection of lots, but the number of buildings is really small, with some building families consisting only of two bouldings. Eg for Chicago style, stage-6 CO$$$ 2x3 you only have Bunch Enginnering and Ferrara Inc. Also for 1x3 lots, there is only one building, the well known Freytag building (very convenient, but it often becomes very repetitive). Many building families (incl highrises) comprise only one building. As a result, you get the same buildings again and again.

Of course, one could say dl some custom content and you will be OK. Well, both yes and no! Often custom BATs/Lots don't blend very well with the ingame sets, and you end up with an odd mix of ingame and custom stuff. Not to mention that the lots are often quite weird, too many flora and planters, improper use of parked cars props, the building placed very close to the road (protruding into the sidewalk) or instead deep back into the lot ie in either case "not in line with the other building lots", peculiar sizes and layout (often requiring special zoning) etc etc. There's a mod that blocks the maxis stuff (so that only custom constent lots are developing) but then the mix becomes... even more odd, as nearly every developer has his/her own style.

So my proposal is to make no lots, but instead only buildings (the model plus the building exemplar) - of course the building should be inluded into the proper building family or families, so that it can grow into the Maxis lots. I think you have to agree that Maxis has actually done an EXCELLENT job as far as lots are concerned. There is quite a variety, and props, buildings, stats etc are all correctly applied. And as all buildings are made as families (and used in the lots as such) you get many combinations of lot/building. The only problem is that the building collection is rather limited. That's why I suggest expanding the Maxis families, instead of making new building/lot combinations (in a 1:1 setting). Of course, the buildings should be roughly of the same layout and size as the Maxis ones, so that they fit nicely into Maxis lots.

Basically I suggest separating the building and lot development (except of course for the cases that custom lots are required, eg custom civic building/lots, special ploppables, real world re-creations etc). There's another reason for this, many developers specialize into only one field of custom content development. For example, BarbyW is an excellent lotter, but she doens't BAT. And many excellent BATters make just moderate lots. In order to achieve the best possible cusotm content quality, I strongly suggest that the two development areas are separated. And as I have explained above, I think the problem is the variety of buildings, that's what I stress more. Now, if someone wishes to make additional lots (using the ingame/extended families), that's OK too, but they should live up to the Maxis standards.