how?

[Mr.President 0]

how do u make all those ST EXchange things?

[lobsterav 91]

You have to use the Building Architect Tool (BAT) for short. It's available on Sim City Devotion, but you need an acount there first. Sim City Devotion

Once you get an account click on the EA Support on the menue in the bottom left hand corner on the front page, and agree to the terms of use.

If you do download it and make something, get someone to look at it first to make sure there aren't any glitches.

Hope this helps!

[jacksunny 741]

The other types of plugins are maps and mods. Maps are usually made with SC4Terraformer and mods are made with iLive's Reader.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Partial answers will only confuse people.

First of all, you must be sure your program is updated to at least build level 1,1,640.

Now, custom content can be made in several ways depending on what you want to do.

You can easily overhaul an existing lot using the Lot Editor. This is learning curve No. 1. You cannot make your own content here, but can combine existing content.

To make new content, you do indeed need the Building Architect Tool (BAT). If you download the BAT, you should also download the associated Lot Editor which is different from the original. In order to activate the BAT, you need to get gmax from the Turbo Squid site, and activate it, first. The BAT is a gmax game pack and cannot run without the underlying application.

I strongly suggest that if you begin using the BAT, you run the tutorial called BAT Essentials which is on the Omnibus. It covers all of the necessary technical detail. In addition to being something of an artist, you also need to be pragmatic about setting up the parameters of your building and lot. It is necessary to understand the Lot Editor thoroughly.

The use of ilive's reader is entirely optional unless you want to do some rather advanced things.

Some computer programming experience would be helpful but not necessary.

Publishing your new lots to the STEX has a set of rules and they must be followed.

The upload file must be a .zip.

The folder you zip up should contain only the lot, the readme file, and the necessary in-game pictures as .jpg files. Nothing else. With a BAT, the lot consists of the .sc4model, the .sc4desc, and the .sc4lot files. These can be compressed into a .dat file using ilive's files2dat which saves much confusion for the end users.

The creator is responsible for testing the lot to make sure it is innocuous. Toxic lots will be denigrated.

Maps can be created using the Terraformer, the Landscape Designer, or by hand. While the terraformer is easier to use, it requires outside software to render it.

Maps generated by the Landscape Designer, which can be hand customized, require only the in-game renderer as do the hand made maps, if you are feeling masochistic. I think you have to have considerable artistic talent, which I certainly lack, to construct a map by hand in reverse black and white.

In all cases, the city layout must be defined by a properly scaled config.bmp file accompanying the map. This whole works should be zipped in the normal manner. The zip must contain the map, the config.bmp file, an in-game picture, a possible readme and nothing else.

There are separate forums for both BAT and mapping. Look around.

[Jack³ 291]

In addition to what was said above, there is a tutorial here explaining how to make a lot. That is pretty much the first step into making your own custom content.