I like having mountainous areas in my cities / regions, but have noticed the lack of slope conformity with many default Maxis lots.
I'm currently using PEG's 5-tile deep MTP $, $$ and $$$ cabins to help with residential zoning, but what else is available - especially for commercial? (I'm not so bothered about industrial as farm fields are naturally slope conforming, but you rarely see heavy industry on hillsides - especially as the buildings usually have a large floorplan). I know the MTP is currently being developed as a complete conversion, but it would be nice to have different styles for the downtown and hilly areas of the same city, rather than the blunt approach of the same style applied everywhere.
I made some x5 slope conforming lot with some of Colyn's houses and will package have packaged them and released on the LEX. Jen_p has some SF houses that are due to be released too. These are different sizes and wealth levels.
I rather think that the MTP has been abandoned as a complete conversion as nothing has been done with it for over a year.
One of the big problems with SF is the need to BAT foundations to accompany the buildings and not all can do that. Large BATs, too, do not lend themselves to SF. This is also being addressed as part of the BSC revision of the farming EP so watch out for that.
Aha - so the mysterious SF acronym stands for "Slope Friendly"! There seems to be a range of SF residential lots on the LEX, which should make my hillsides look more varied than just the MTP styles. Most of the park path/grass lots are also slope friendly, which is useful (hillside too steep to develop on, but not quite a cliff? Plop some grass, and make it "pretty" and useful!)
How about commercial? It would be nice to have a hilly High Street that didn't need to rely on ugly concrete above-ground foundations or retaining walls (not quite as ugly, but must make the buildings quite dark inside...handy if the company employs vampires, not quite so handy for other breeds of Sim...)