About lotting (philosophically)

[Fantozzi 4,068]

Do you have time for some philosophical thoughts?

One of the big differences between classical painting and modern painting is - before there were movies and novels (prose novels became popular at the end of the 19. century) the ideal of painting was to capture the deciding moment. Paintings before 1900 capture a scene, therefore they capture time. If you look at a Cezanne or Monet - those "scenes" are always timeless, they capture light an colours, they don't freeze history or events in a "magical moment". Compare renassance artists like Michelangelo and Raffael with them and you'll see this difference.

Lotting is very similar to painting. Meanwhile batting is real and sincere architecture (except for statics perhaps), lotting is real and sincere painting. So all what you would do in painting is valid for lotting.

You have a blank linen and you'll have to choose an appropriate size. Good in lotting: you can always extend or lessen your linen during the painting process. But as a painter you have to decide what will be the main motives on the picture, what will be the backround. You'll have to think about proportions, so the background doesn't become to mighty and you don't recognize anymore the message (basic messages in sc4: civic, commercial, industry, residential). Where will I put them, how do I arrange them? Well - and as in painting you'll follow certain principles of aesthetics, You won't create an industrial lot with flowers and fountains as background.

And that's realy interesting! Because thinking so, we already think about meaning. No joke - we are thinking about metaphors and symbols and patterns. Painting becomes art. And so does lotting.

One of the secrets, what makes SC4 a special game - it deals strongly with symbols. Smoke, just for example, to express "heavy industries" and crude, hard work you'll put stacks and smoke on the lots. You can put a lot of smoke on the heavy industrie lots - and soon you'll discover: you doing expressionism! You point out something, you make something obvious - you want to tell something with lotting.

Well many simlulation have this problem - they are meaningless 3D-worlds, they look real and complex and everything, but they express the obvious. They aren't thoughtfull or funny or ambiguous or fatal or dramatic (all the things meaning owns). That's the sense of the word "meaningless" - information hasn't meaning by itself. So many information day by day will pass by, you'll notice them, shure, you might process them - but this isn't meaning. You allways make meaning by yourself, by recognizing which information is important - information is just a raw material for sense or meaning. O.k. - that's another discourse.

But therefore I would open a radical thesis: the visual restictrictions of SC4 are poetic advantages – regarding newer simulators, that are focused on information qualities (like real 3D) for example. One would never argue painting is so restricted compared to filming. If it comes to meaning - wo can say, you can't express yourself with paintings? Shure you can do. On the other hand look at all those amateur-filmmakers compiling hours of boering family scenes. This isn't what makes things interesting - it's alway meaning, that makes things interesting. Not information qualities. That's why you can't say a couloured photo is always better than black and white one. These are stylistic devices – and again, it dependends on what you want to do, what you want to express, the meaning, if and how to use them.

Lotting is art, while creating meaning, telling something, dealing with symbols and metaphors. You can do quotes - recreate movie scenes for example, you can follow styles - grunge, baroque, compressed, decorated, create empty, desolate spaces and dense, crowded spaces and you can even visualize terms: like bureaucracy, dissipation, education, civil disobedience, social classes and tension and so on.

Also many of the lots I see are "talking" about harmony and beauty and symmetry and perfection. They following an aesthetic born in italy in the late middle ages and represented by Leonard da Vinci and Leon Battista Alberti - that tries to unify mathematics and beauty. So my critics would be: sometimes, here at Simtropolis, your're going to much for perfection, for the aesthetics of geometry. But the vivid isn't a straight line. Therefore amongst creators "tree-makers" like girafe are my heroes - they have to model the randomly grown with exact geometrics - from a philosophical point of view this is a high claim. I think a pinch of imperfection here and there doesn't harm the cities of SC4. Sometimes it has a nice effect to have new classy Skyscrapers in HD and beneath them some poor, ruined residential in non-hd. Even this can be a stylistic device.

I also think, that is, why SimGoober was such a great contributor. If he made props or bats - most of the time they carried a little story, they did express something, capturing a moment like painting did in the old ages.

And that's what I try to do and what makes lotting a whale of a time to me. To tell something, to express something. When I browse through the simtrop-challenge-pictures or the city journals, I think that's all about. Telling a "magic moment" some sort of a "freeze frame of a story", what artists do with SC4. Doesn't need to be a big story or an important message. Justr something neat with a "touch".

The french filmmaker Jean Luc Goddard once said "a good story you can tell in three seconds." Not with words. But with pictures you can.

[Edvarz 1,985]

Wow, I had never thought about my lotting on such a way, which is ultra shameful because I'm actually a philosophy student , although my main focus has been on philosophy of science and logic, and while I've recently started to broaden my interests to be more eclectic, there's still a big and ugly gap on my aesthetical formation which I absolutely have to mend.

I do think the points you make can be broadened to SC4 in general. The way I see the game, there's two aspects of it, the management of an exponentially complex system (your city or region) and the functional and aesthetical design of it, both interesting in their own right; however, I've noticed the simulation mechanics are sometimes irreconciliable with the aesthetic side of the game (i.e. when you let zones freely develop and end up with an ugly and incoherent mess of different kinds of buildings.) when I get frustrated by it, I open an eye-candy city or the Lot Editor and create there what the game mechanics allows me not. And what you can do with the Lot Editor you can also do on a different level with MMP's or modular sets.

When lotting, one of the main things I try to do is express life, I think a lot can be said to have "life" when it's props and texture placement can convey a narrative or more about it's fictional occupants. If you are making an industrial warehouse, you want to place trucks, those trucks need to be placed where they can be loaded or unloaded easily and efficiently, you also want crates, forklifts, containers, etc. If you are making a government building, you want symmetry and geometric shapes, government is all about order and structure, so order and structure should be what your lot expresses. One  personal example: with my  residential estate lots I try to express activity, that's why I stopped developing them while I modd a complimentary pack of timed props and prop families, to make the parking lots look like people come and go, and to make complimentary structures vary with each lot that is placed, even if the buildings and the general layouts are exactly the same. So at the core there's always a pragmatic purpose that gives the narratives meaning, but the variety of both gives us a lot of room to play and experiment with the enormous amount of elements at our disposal.

On a deeper note, I try to make my residential estate lots, but also my public spaces and my cities in general, about cohabitation and coexistence, this has to do with my political beliefs about what democracy should be, really, let me elaborate. We live in an era of anonimity and meaningless interactions, this by all means extends beyond the realms of internet and social media, the rise of hate in the west is a prime example of how we de-personalize and therefore de-humanize the people we encounter or hear about in the news. In such a situation it has never been more important to watch the faces of your fellow neigbour or citizen, to see their daily lives and try to understand what they're going through, to exchange and debate thoughts and ideas in a peaceful and reasoned manner. This is another way in which the american suburb, with it's egotistically focused philosophy fails to make cities healthy entities. Parks and plazas have the power of bringing people closer together pulling them to a pleasant or important site. As such, they can also serve as a gathering point for celebrating something, or protesting injustice: Open, public spaces are a gift to the democracy of any city or town.

So, back to your point, I think you can also look at a good lot like a Brueghel the Elder painting, an intricately detailed scene that describes life, but that also has a deep symbolic meaning.

All of this to tell a story, like you say, to express meaning. I could elaborate a lot more on your points, but this post is already huge as it is. You have opened a very interesting discussion!.

BTW, are you a humanities person? if so, I salute you!

Spoiler

If I may stray a bit off topic, one thing that I find extremely interesting is that you have 7 zoom levels on this game (zooms 1-6 and regional view) and each of them allows you to see different amounts of detail. You can lot, say, a government house with simmetrically arranged paths and geometrical-shaped flower gardens, which you then plop at the end of a big and wide boulevard lined with even more government buildings and beautiful parks and public spaces: thus you create a government quarter. Your government quarter has to be connected with the rest of the city and fit within a surrounding context, you usually build such a space close to the commercial core of your city because you want it to be the heart, or at the heart of it: so then you have your core city, which may comprise an entire medium city tile or more. Much in the same way, you build suburbs, transit hubs, industrial estates, etc. all in a way that makes sense (i.e. tells a coherent story): then you end up with a complex and intricate design that you can call a city. I would say there is an element of fractality to it.

 

[Fantozzi 4,068]

9 hours ago, Edvarz said:

Wow, I had never thought about my lotting on such a way, which is ultra shameful because I'm actually a philosophy student , although my main focus has been on philosophy of science and logic, and while I've recently started to broaden my interests to be more eclectic, there's still a big and ugly gap on my aesthetical formation which I absolutely have to mend.

You're doing good to have a pathway, it's easy to get lost in all the yards philosophy offers. From logic to meaning Wittgenstein offers a good pathway, not the "Tractatus", but I recommend you to read his "philosophical investigations" - if your interested.

Aesthetics - as an objective science - was - how could it be any different - invented by a german, Jacob Burckhardt, who passed a great part of his life in italy studying classc art. But on all pathways to the philosophy of aesthetics you would have to pass by Hegel, who made a "system of the beauty" - and I can't recommend to do this early in studying. Hegel is a bear, slow and heavy and strong and hard to handle. When he studied as a young boy in Tubingen he noted in his diary: "All the people around me, when they drink, they laugh and get easy. Me, im getting heavy and heavier." So is his writing. The pathway of Jacob Burckhardt was from history of art to philosophy. Maybe this pathway is better, in contact with the real things - but aesthetics as theory is a swampy terrain and seldom you will find a chair for aesthetics amongst philosophers, more amongst art historians.

 

10 hours ago, Edvarz said:

The way I see the game, there's two aspects of it, the management of an exponentially complex system (your city or region) and the functional and aesthetical design of it, both interesting in their own right; however, I've noticed the simulation mechanics are sometimes irreconciliable with the aesthetic side of the game (i.e. when you let zones freely develop and end up with an ugly and incoherent mess of different kinds of buildings.) when I get frustrated by it, I open an eye-candy city or the Lot Editor and create there what the game mechanics allows me not. And what you can do with the Lot Editor you can also do on a different level with MMP's or modular sets.

Hm, function and aesthetics (or maybe, mechanics and graphics), not shure if they are counterparts.  You wrote "aspects" - and I smile and say - yes, aspects of meaning, both are parts of the many stories told in SC4. "The major and his miseries" - can be a comedy or a tragedy. And even if I like to make thoughts, I don't want to teach, how you have to take it. After all it's a game. Made for fun. To take it as a comedy or to take it as a tragedy, both can be delightful.

But this wasn't our point, I think. The point we share was, without those rudimentary stories or "telling elements"  (symbols, metaphors, iconographic elements) SC4 would be quite anoying.

I guess most of the lotters - aware or unaware - following this principle already, they make lots with "meanings". The only way we could  encourage them, was to talk about Iconography. It's simple on a certain level - trees represent nature, smoke represents industries. But the further you investigate this the more interesting it becomes. As you wrote it, f.e. how strong, clear structures can underline: this a gouvernement building. As in real life - churches become churches with their iconography, with their architecture. And exactly as you write, on the level of playing it's the same as on the level of lotting. Where to put the church? Do I put it in the middle of those banking skyscprapers, so it is almost covered by them? Or do I surround it by a park and make it an outstanding part of the city? And there you've made - aware or unaware - a statement about religion.

And even if I don't want to teach, what players should do and they should not do (as it is a game - they should do everything what is fun), but another thing, we - we philosophers - shure can do. To bring to awarness the meaning of doing this and doing that. By discussing the symbolic or iconographic meanings in sc4.

A ferris wheel or a carusell, animated balloons f.e. - classic symbols for having joy. Now I could ask are there some more? How can I make my city looking like a joyful city?

And this maybe could be linked back to philosophy. Before getting into the theory of aesthetics it may be better to have a look at arts history and see how meaning is realized in art. Otherwise - and this occours - you may get lost in brilliant thoughts without any sensuality. You know, in mathematics this is o.k. In logic this is o.k. But it's the same in aesthetics as in ethics. Ethics you can't practice are worthless. Aestetics you can't see or touch - what are they good for? The origin "Aisthesis" (greek) = sensation/perception. Making a theory of sensual experience - the risk to substitute the gathering of experience with bare thinking is high in this. Or in short words: talking about aesthetics we first have to make shure we have clear senses. And there, quite in the start, I got stuck. Still working on it.

 

[Edvarz 1,985]

I was writing a reply to this topic, and then I remembered this documentary about turn-of-the-century Vienna, I actually catched it here in Simtropolis while I was in lurking the forums, I think it fits this conversation perfectly, since it mainly deals with Vienna's history, art, politics, dreams and symbols.

I think it shows the power of meaning and art, it even mentions Wittgenstein around the 1 hour mark. When he ended the Tractatus saying "That whereof we cannot speak we must pass over in silence" it was taken to mean that we couldn't extend our understanding beyond our written language and it's formal structures, I think the sort of early neo-positivistic thought (so called "analityc philosophy") that interpreted it this way, heavily influenced by mathematical logic, can only go so far when trying to explain the wide spectrum of human experience: even in science, which methodology it tried to copy, it falls short when trying to grasp the complex realities of research. Thought becomes, as you say, useless, sterile I would also say. Meaning has so many other ways to be realised, language it's a fluid thing, that's what makes it beautiful, I agree that it's best to look at art history to fully grasp this rich panorama, I confess I've shamefully neglected this side.

In the context of this game, It is indeed interesting how we as players often unconsciously create spaces with cetain "character", this is most clearly seen, I think, in european-styled cities, with strong monumental symbols and iconographies directly inherited from monarchic values: order, structure, hierarchy;  I've even seen players use terrain differences to build a sort of Acropolis. Urban planners build and lay things out to emphazise what they care about the most, and to reflect or assert certain identity, I think we do this as players too and this offers a wide, if not infinite spectrum of possibilities to play and experiment with symbols and icons, monuments and layouts.

And like you say, it is not for anyone to teach players how to realise this designs, but it is certainly worthwhile to look at it from a philosophical perspective.

Belfastsocrates' "Viceroyalty of Perseus" comes to my mind, he mixes monumental monarchical monoliths with civic palaces for democratic institutions, and he adds technological facilities and contemporary spaces like retail parks: this is what makes his CJ so interesting. And speaking of CJ's, the best of them often feature re-lots prominently, this is part of what makes them so great, lot making allows to focus on details only surpassed by those avaliable to BAT-ing itself, making your own lots helps to personalize everything and this attention to detail allows a coherent thematic unification in all levels. It can be said that lotting contributes to make our cities rich, complex systems of meaning much like the real cities they tend to imitate. In that sense, our cities are like the Aristotelian "mymesis", the artistic imitation of an organic being, but this perspective is not enough to fully understand the subjective layers of meaning that every player can imprint on his or her creations.

You know, previously I had never thought about my city building, or cities in general on this level, thanks for waking up my mind with such an interesting topic.

[Fantozzi 4,068]

Another silly thought.

Many years ago I had the pleasure to pass a cozy afternoon with the chinese artist Qi Yang debating about philosophy and painting.

He told me, to become a master in painting in china, the first ten years you do nothing else than copying the elders. You don't do anything creative in class, you simply sit there an try to conduct the brush exactly the same way others did before you. And then, after ten years, the teacher may come to you and say: now do something own.

I'm not the one to judge if this good pedagogy or bad pedagogy - but sometimes I think, we, in the western world, are to much focused on individualism and therefore on creativitity. We tend to judge art by it's singularity ("outstanding-ness"?), by its originality.

Doing so you might miss another very interesting question: what is it exactly, what makes some lots looking better than others? Why can an extreme simple 1x1 pathway puzzle piece look better than another 1x1 pathway puzzle piece?

And the hurting one: Why do paeng parks so often look so much better than mine?

So I opened these in lot editor zoomed them as close as possible and studied them. I moved his props around on his lots, exchanged them with others and looked what happend. Boah, how the lot looked different by changing small things! You move a rosebush slightly more left and the picture looses its balance. You may jawn, but for me this was fascinating (without understanding the 'law', the principle - it remained always something of trial and error).

But wouldn't that be another evidence, that lotting is an art - because those long time lotters have found their own, unique style? 

If I'm not wrong, like one can recognize

a Fernannd Leger

or a Juan Gris

or a Pablo Picasso

not by knowing every picture but by recognizing his typical style - I have the impression this would be possible also with lots. Maybe you could guess the author of a lot by the style of lotting, the props he is using and how he's using them?

Maybe there should be a challenge or a forum game "guess the author"? To see, if this thesis is valid.

What I discovered by examination: it is much about colours - also like in painting - where and and how colours are repeading or corresponding on a lot (which is really heavy on seasonal lots where the colour composition is dynamic). Maybe colours work more on the emotional level, meanwhile symbolic forms gives meaning? Don't know. Colour composition is an own area of expertise - and I'm not the right person to enlighten it.

So, in another step, I tried to copy paengs style, how he used those yellow benches to guide the eyes, how he used different shades of green to achieve spacial depth and so on. Well, I wasn't shy to work like a copyist rather than an artist. I believe you don't always need unique idears in painting or in lotting. It's okay to simply further things, others did before. That's nothing shameful in my opinion. And I think, it isn't right to measure art only by the amount of novelty it offers. Paintings aren't newspapers.

And I really had to laugh about myself, as I realized - that I didn't do any different as the art pupils in china. I just tried to 'swing my brush' like others before me.

So in lotting, as in painting, for me it seems absolutely right, to copy those who you admire and doing so - learning from them.

[Mary Maurine Mayo 984]

since I have come back here to fix my lots on the STEX I have become more interested in realism what something in the real life would look like. Which has become my new focus. 

I am an artist and I use many different mediums.  While here my art is turning  more t words what would it look like in the real world rather than what i think it should look like. 

As I fix my lots to be functional again I am cleaning them up making them look more pleasing to the eye and less of a cluttered mess. 

 

I love your ideas above and it is def food for thought.. 

[Mandarin(a) 35]

Wow, some very nice thoughts. I too have never thought about lotting that way. You've just remembered me that after finishing reading novels by G. R. R. Martin I have to read some philosophical books.

[Fantozzi 4,068]

Can't hold it back any longer.

Have to confess something. These thoughts didn't plop out from nowhere.

It's because ...

... well, you can [EDIT: see the final result now]. Currently more a diary. Still unfinished.

One, two, maybe three weeks to go, then, hopefully, it arrives on the STEX.

EDIT:

Deleted old link to the avoid confusion with the final release.

[Fantozzi 4,068]

About the lotting after lotting.

 

With a shiver I woke up this morning. I dreamt of my mothers living room. She collects little things.

How to explan that?

Old coffee pots, damaged during a bombing in WW2, a glass reindeer, unfathomable kitschy terracotta angels from italy ( I call them porn-angels as their posture reminds me more of the Kamasutra), a small flacon with holy water from Lourdes, a tiny two tooth fork with a hand made walnut grip to pick up olives ... and so on. As a child, normally, when I opened a showcase cabinet, something got broken. And I felt guilty. Maybe that's the reason why my mothers living room still give me nightmares.

Well, in sc4 it is good to have a beatutiful landmark. It's good to have fifty beautiful landmarks - but a living room entirely full of landmarks - you begin to ask: where's the living?

And Edvardz already brought this up: it isn't bad if all the stuff isn't for watching only. Beautiness is o.k. But beautiness and functionality is even better.

And so there is a big differences between painting and lotting.

When you finished painting you finished your canvas. But, sadly, lotting isn't finished with lotting. Now you gave your lot a meaning. But then ... you'll have to give your lot a sense. And this sense you have to give it regarding the game principles.

Or in other words: your creation has to pass 'Reader'.

Give it a nice name. Make it a museum, a school, a police station etc. Give it water or current consumption, costs and fees. But there is also a challenging part in the 'lotting after lotting'. Make it something special, something more than a 'good looking'.

Regarding game mechanics it seems you're limited: there are civics, offices, industrials, residentials. And that's all. So your building has to be one of those.

 

And this logic simply isn't true.

 

Watch for example all the stuff that was done for Seaports. Many of them 'work' as park pieces, many of them 'work' as IH-M pieces, some 'work' as network pieces. You'll find them all in the seaport menu. They have different function but they are all 'seaport lots'. So there isn't really a technical determination of the meanings lots have.

Let's further this: for example all those CO$$$ offices - they don't need to be always banks. Why not making a CO$$$ office that's an Amnesty International bureau? Or maybe something funny: an opinion research center for trees? Some genetic enginerings that transform cats to dogs and viceversa?

The trick is quite simple: just link the meaning of your lot to a reasonable function.

Hospitals, another example - who says they need always to be hospitals. Not long ago Matt325 made a dental clinic working as a hospital.

Why not making an oculist the same way?

Yes! Come on. Let's make sc4 looking different than my mothers living room. This isn't really a challenge. Isn't it?

[Fantozzi 4,068]

Another accidental discovery:

The smaller a prop is, the less important its aesthetics and the more important becomes the fact, if it's recognizable for what it is. That's the reason why I lately switched to the Dutch Prop Pack when I need public wastebins or trashcans. The glass container looks like a glass container, the really tiny wastebins I recognize as wastebins and not as somethng that could be a wastebin or maybe a hydrant or a electric box or something. There are modders that made a bunch of small flowers, just a drop of paint when you put it on a lot. It's unbelievable - it seems to me prop-makers took every challenge over the years, they reached the boundaries of what is possible. And one have to agree - on the level of littleness there are boundaries. Smartphones f.e. - I think they will never make their way into SC4. So sims will never reflect modern living where everybody stands at the traffic light, the head down watching on a little display and missing when the traffic light becomes green.

Well, I think in SC4 sims allways will walk with their head up and crossing streets as soon as light switches. Neat little world. But it's evident - perceptibility has a strong influence on the aesthetics in sc4. I would even say the aesthetics of SC4 is an aesthetics of perceptibility on the level of tiny props. You know, in painting there is abstraction - this means, simplified, to rip things out of their familiar form. Well, in many cases abstraction is also needed in SC4 - to make a recognizable tiny prop, you wouldn't go for details, you would try to find a simplified form that makes clear, what its meaning.  If you can't recognize it as a table - well, than it isn't a table.  It's just a blot on your lot. And I must confess, I have some props in my plugin folder - I really don't know what they are. A dog? A bench? A cowered lama?

Wouldn't that be a funny game for the social thread - guess that prop?

 

[markussaage 762]

Well, I've got to admit, that I've never saw my "work" with this game as art, because I define myself not an artist, I am too much realist. A lot of interesting thoughts here though...

On 19.7.2016 at 7:05 AM, Mary Maurine Mayo said:

As I fix my lots to be functional again I am cleaning them up making them look more pleasing to the eye and less of a cluttered mess. 

That's what I am doing as well here... cleaning up the mess on older lots cluttered with tons of flowers and stuff to a more "realistic" look... Very interesting thoughts here, indeed...
 

Kind regards!

[Fantozzi 4,068]

I had an uncle who was painter, had several exhebitions in the outskirts of Rome. Not a famous one. His speciality was to do highly detailed pen drawings of old alleyways, fountains and plazas. And he was really good to catch the shadows of evening light with a pen (with oil yes, but with the pen, this ain't easy).

Well, but he was also a very big soccer fan. And therefore he hided everywhere little soccer players, even complete soccer scenes.

For example, in my posession is a pen drawing of the piazza navona. This is a picture of the original:

 

And if you stand before his pen drawing of this piazza - well, what you see is piazza navona. But if you aproach and beginn to study his drawing you'll notice, there aren't any  hieroglyphics on the obelisk - they are all football players. And even  the figures on the base, if you look for while, you'll see them, there is a whole football match taking place.

Philosophically - this really fascinated me.

Painting - same as lotting - at first you would say, people are doing this to show something. The first message of any lotter and painter would be: "look here!"

Who would imagine that painting (and lotting) is a perfect way to hide things?

Hiding by showing - in philosophical terms you would call this a perfekt dialectical figure.

 

One of my first experiments in lotting was to try to copy my uncles humor. To hide things on a lot.

This was on Goobers Water, a lot I dedicated to SimGoober.

I never knew him personally, so I must imagine what kind of person he was.

On the first version of this lot (never released to public) I putted an excessive amount of crime: prostitutes, drug dealers. fights ... all animations done by SimGoober that can be found in BSC Props Misc 2. Amongst the many props Sim Goober did there was also a self portrait. A "Sim Goober sim prop". Also this one I put on Goobers Water.

For the final version I removed all the crime. But SimGoober itself remained there. In the hope many people will download and use this park. So SimGoober himself always would be there, present somewhere in the game. Like a ghost in the machine. And view players knowing that SimGoober is there, in their own city.

Well that was the main idear for this park.One could really say - I builded that park around him, around this self portrait of SimGoober, as a background for a little prop.

 

 

[Fantozzi 4,068]

In austria there is an art called "miniature carving" and the artist have such calm and skilled hands, that they for example can put a whole triptych in a nutshell.

 

Well if people can do this, why not doing "miniature editing"? At least, sometimes I have the impression working with the lot editor is something similar.

[Fantozzi 4,068]

There are many different lotting techniques but we tend to get used to use only one. For exemple - we lay out the ground and overlay textures first like the network or the sketch where to place the props later. But the same you can start with a custom lot all plain ground texture and first arrange the props and then, later, adding the ground texture to fit the arrangement. The same you can start with a placeholder for the main building and make up the lot first and later place the real building. Or you doing the symmetry first or you are doing only the color part first.

There was a famous german poet in 18. century we stillhave the original hand writings. There's an empty sheet of paper - in the left upper placed the word 'heavy" in the center placed the word "sleeping land" on the right side placed the word "weather cock". One might think  a poem you have to compose from start to end, thinking of first word first and last word last, like you're used to write a post or a letter.  But this poet shows, it doesn't have to be necessary so. He first placed the key words on the sheet of paper, then added some words here and there in between and filled up the empty space. So it's not necessarily needed to start with the ground layout first, the structure. There are many different ways to start a new lot. And different 'workflows' will get you differrent looking lots. If you do it always the same - first the ground, then the building, then the props (or vice versa) - if you always do the steps of creation in the same order - your lots soon will become 'stereotypic', one looking like the other. At least this my experience.

I never was good at painting but since I started lotting - it seems slowly I get as mad as some those (Nicoals De Stael jumped from the roof of his mansion in france, when he discovered he couldn't add something new and was only repeating himself). I make three, four, five different versions of one lot, watch them, get angry and delete them all. You feel a strange load in the desire to get it better. You can obviously become obsessed by the idear to make a perfect lot - like the artist can become mad with the idear making a perfect painting.

One should warn people trying to be perfect. Watching You-Tube there are many covers of famous songs done by private people in their living rooms. Shure sound isn't perfect, shure their playing may not be perfect - but still they have soul. This is somewhat related to the rating system on the STEX. As my impression is - they are the same. Searching for perfection also raters can become obsessed.

[Fantozzi 4,068]

Lately - not in best manners, I must confess - I jumped into a conversation between @tariely and @T Wrecks you can find in lenght here.

In short it seemed to me tariely did complain about T Wrecks having used maxis car clusters on his relot which - on this most of us might agree - lack of some qualities.

But - even if there are many props better than original maxis props - as T Wrecks explained there can be several considerations why maxis props still can be used instead and even can give certain advantages. But also disadvantages if not considered.

I'd like to pick up this here , because as this is some kind of diary of what I learned/experienced on lotting, so this is something I learned from T Wrecks and not from observation - it's still something I newly learned and wasn't much thinking about before.

There is some content out there overriding other peoples custom content - but mostly overriding/replacing content is there to replace maxis content.

Now, if using certain custom props - most probably there aren't overrides out there and the lot you create most probably will look the same for all end users. You place custom palm trees and there will be palm trees in Canada and Norway and Tierra del Fuego - everywhere.

Using maxis props instead - like cars or trees - one has to consider that there are quite some override/replacement mods out there - so these might look quite different in the cities of the end user.

For example this replacement for the maxis car cluster has been downloaded from the STEX (maybe again from pegprod) more than 17.000 times, so should be present in quite some folders:

 

So using maxis car clusters on my lot, I have to consider that on many users, they will not look the same as they appear to me.

Now, considering this - to decide to use (old) maxis props instead of (new) custom props isn't the aesthetic question it may seem: to decide between old fashioned style and modern (HD) style.

Funnily enough the decission instead is similar to the question to do 'classic theater' or 'modern theater' but reciprocal in action.

In classic theater you have a fixed plot, the audience has to take it as it is. There is given a good end or a bad end, and it's only the author to decide and value the action - will the hero survive, will he fail.

Modern theater is all about to involve the audience, the spectator - you make the action open ended f.e. and now it's up to the spectator to find a moral decission about the conflict. Or you even involve the audience with the play - they become a part of the story and have to 'interact' with the 'actors (interact with the actors - that sounds funny in english: actact).

Now - on lotting to make modern theater you have to become old fashinoned - and use maxis props, so you get the end user involved (by using overrides/replacements for cars, trees).

Instead, if you want to make classical theater you have to use new props - where you have no overrides/replacers and therefore the end user it will look always the same and he can't change the story (except relotting himself).

Funny this - isn't it?

But on maxis props one has to consider that they can be something very flexible - open ended - as every override (for cars, trees, lamppost buildings etc.) may change your custom lot too.

In sum: the question 'will my lot look always the same to every user' or 'how can I create a lot that fits into different users setups and being some kind of chameleon that may change with the given environment' isn't a simple one. F.e. you may use maxis palm trees on your lots and there is a user that plays in a colder region. And he might complain: I can't make use of a lot with those palms!  But he does wrong judging the lot by what he sees now. As with the right tree replacement mod this lot can fit every climate. So what seems to be a disadvantage on first sight, on a second thought can be a pretty cool feature.

Especially when I use maxis street lamppost on my lots - I tend to forget that there are plenty of replacers for different countries out there - and on me the lot looks fine but for another user the lamp may stick into the building.

So the advanced lotter has to take this into account - the basic difference between writing a modern or a classical play. And to remember - on sc4 for a modern play you may go with the old stuff first. 

 

[Fantozzi 4,068]

Using a technique - in painting, lotting, batting and being a technician, so engineering - where is the difference? 

Rereading the comments above I became aware of @markussaage

saying

Quote

Well, I've got to admit, that I've never saw my "work" with this game as art, because I define myself not an artist, I am too much realist. 

Everywhere people are making things, are creating, art may happen. Not necessarily, but it may. Realism, beauty, handiness - those are some of the many measurements to rate, benchmark and judge what man's creating and so to classify art.

Question would be - taking measure, judging their realism, their beauty, their handiness and so on - can you define things this way? Looking, f.e.at a building, saying it is beautifull it his high and so on - did you define the meaning of the word "building" this way? As everything can be beautiful you didn't define art by calling something beautiful or well thought of or something like this,

But then - can beauty make up art? Can you define art by judging the beauty of things?

Your doing bats like a technician. You don't care for beauty. You just try to make exact copies of the real worlds buildings. Looking realistic. Nothing else.

Doesn't matter. Still you're artist creating art.

Funny thing - ancient greeks did know that. The word "tenchique" was their invention and the meaning was "creative doing". They didn't make a difference if it was painting on canvas, batting or engineering. It was equal to them. That's the point why it's often so difficult to define what is art and what not. You know those guys yelling "This ain't art, this is garbage!" Well, of course you can describe art stuff regarding  its beauty but you can't define it just by giving a description.

Techne - Wikipedia

So it's not necessary to know you're doing art while lotting and batting - may happen you do it anyway and even against your own will.