Natural Growth Philosophies / Mindsets

[Kloudkicker 4,565]

"Sorry" to bump an "old" tread but, I came across this person @Mary Maurine Mayo and they have a lot of farm stuff. Might be worth checking out. Here's link to page  one of their files.

[CorinaMarie 29,891]

3 minutes ago, Kloudkicker said:

"Sorry" to bump an "old" thread ...

No need to apologize.

CB and I abolished that inconvenient old rule. The only part that applies now is the bumping post is on topic and yours certainly is.

[Kloudkicker 4,565]

1 minute ago, CorinaMarie said:

No need to apologize.

CB and I abolished that inconvenient old rule. The only part that applies now is the bumping post is on topic and yours certainly is.

LOL I thought the quotes would of said it all. I was joking about bumping and old. LMAO

[Kloudkicker 4,565]

@CorinaMarie, here is an example of the SAM Flex transitions pieces in use. You might think about upgrading to NAM 38, at least. That's when they were introduced. The SAM transitions are a pretty nice addition. They can really help with a natural look.

Like here, going from a maxis street, and plopping a few SAM transitions...

 

... to this. Going up the mountain transitioning from black asphalt street to maxis street to gravel to dirt.  When done right they are seamless(Like below where it all worked correctly and first try). Just use your imagination and picture the homes there. Now it really looks good.??? LOL

[The British Sausage 5,449]

On 12/1/2020 at 4:17 PM, Daeris said:

Just wanted to share a few screenshots of how much I'm improving (at least I think I am, lol).

 

^This is the north/south STR railway interchanging with the DTR east/west line (interchange out of frame to the east).

 

^This is Sweetheart, a little fair town.

Spent the last thirty minutes going through your thread and I can see you're quickly developing a style of your own. It's nice to the NAM 39 being pushed as I see wide curve SAM streets? I'm still using NAM 38 so as to not mess up the city tiles I'm working on. Good to see the PEG / SPAM agriculture being used, it's way better than the vanilla stuff and there's even diagonal crop filler tiles to create diagonal scenes!

I also see that you are dipping your toes into the deep pool that is MMPing. I also see you've found girafe's useful flora MMPs but there are other ones far more suitable for rural and agricultural areas. Did you know you can create agricultural areas purely with MMPs? I would not recommend this approach because there's so much more you can squeeze out by zoning and/or plopping in fields, crops, farms and agricultural scenes.

The picture is flipped but the road is orthogonal and the railway is diagonal. You may find SFBT's diagonal fillers userful as well as chrisadams3997's RRP fences useful too, these can be found on the LEX.

Diagonal fillers- https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1197

RRP fences- https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1888

And some of chrisdams3997's football fields too because why not- https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1721

 

I choose to create fields with MMPs because the repetition of crop zoning tiles can get... How should I say this? Repetitive only in the sense of seeing the same 1x1 tile repeated dozens of times! There's the classic Maxis ploughed field tile which NEVER gets old and never gets repetitive, some of SPAM's crop tiles and FrankU's Dutch Fields can have some pleasing patterns.

 

Take my words with a pinch of salt- I must say my style is the complete and utter opposite of natural growth philosophy, I go through each and every tile plopping, adding MMPs or checking it over- something I adopted from an SC4 master called Paeng. My cities do work but nearly everything is plopped but the appearance gives an impression of natural growth and the various transitions: from urban to suburban, to suburban to agricultural, to agricultural to wilderness, etc.

But if you ever want some useful woodland fillers, diagonal fillers, fences, stones, flora or crops just ask!

Good luck! Keeping building and have a great Christmas!

[Naomi57 2,985]

On 18/12/2020 at 3:33 PM, Kloudkicker said:

I came across this person @Mary Maurine Mayo and they have a lot of farm stuff. Might be worth checking out. Here's link to page  one of their files.

Thanks!  Here's a few of her mods I shortlisted to try one day.

• https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/31160-mikes-tree-farm/
• https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/15624-sym-productions-lnx-macs-mushroom-farm/
• https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/15663-sym-productions-lnx-simnation-rabbit-farm/
• https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/4007-bio-dome-main-complex/

[Daeris 1,116]

On 26/12/2020 at 12:25 AM, The British Sausage said:

Good luck! Keeping building and have a great Christmas!

Thanks so much @The British Sausage! Your stuff looks spectacular. I'll take a look at the stuff you linked, and I'm sure it will come in handy. I may reach out to you for some particulars.

Here's a little glimpse of some of my improvements and creating some industrial ports surrounded by farms:

 

Other improvements in trying to create little towns:

 

I definitely like the look of your trees/bushes/ploppables surrounding your farms; it looks hyper realistic. So if I can perhaps blend some of that in with my natural growth, I'd be very pleased. I think I like the idea of natural growth at first, and then I want to basically go through after stuff has already grown, and touch it up like you do!

I am also planning to add more to this post in regards to railway lines (both some pics and questions), but I've been feeling a bit down after Christmas and so hopefully I'll just get around to it soon.

[The British Sausage 5,449]

13 minutes ago, Daeris said:

Thanks so much @The British Sausage! Your stuff looks spectacular. I'll take a look at the stuff you linked, and I'm sure it will come in handy. I may reach out to you for some particulars.

Here's a little glimpse of some of my improvements and creating some industrial ports surrounded by farms:

 

Other improvements in trying to create little towns:

 

 

I definitely like the look of your trees/bushes/ploppables surrounding your farms; it looks hyper realistic. So if I can perhaps blend some of that in with my natural growth, I'd be very pleased. I think I like the idea of natural growth at first, and then I want to basically go through after stuff has already grown, and touch it up like you do!

Looks like you downloaded T Wrecks Industrial Revolution Mod! Check out his expansion packs where he has car park fillers for dirty, manfacturing and hi-tech industry!

[CorinaMarie 29,891]

@Daeris

Very nice! I like what you've created with the ports being at the lower elevation and a natural terrain change to get down to them. Your farms are conforming to the landscape as well as the rail lines and those tree breaks around them look good. Ofc, the randomized small towns fit so well into what you are making too.

[Daeris 1,116]

16 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Your farms are conforming to the landscape as well as the rail lines and those tree breaks around them look good.

Thank you Cori, still of course a work in progress, but I wouldn't even be close to where I am not if not for all of you helpful peeps. Ty. Right now with rail lines and farm fields, I feel like I'm mentally struggling with, should I zone all available flatland and place farms next to all rail lines - OR - should I be leaving big swaths of just open land with trees (and rail lines just running through those trees). I'm struggling with making decisions on when to utilize all flatland, and when to leave it open. I think my brain basically says, if it is flat and fertile land, it would absolutely be in use for farms, and even if next to rail lines. I leave the hilly land covered in trees and maybe run a road through those areas, but pretty much don't add much in the hilly or mountainous areas. Thoughts on these strugglings?

[CorinaMarie 29,891]

51 minutes ago, Daeris said:

Thoughts on these strugglings?

Yep. Either one is fine. I feel it really depends on what era of land colonization you are modeling. There would be a time when your coastal towns of 500, 1000, 2500, 5000, or such population would be the biggest urban locations and would likely have farms all around for several miles. Then there would be the rail lines connecting other towns quite some distance away. Those would have their surrounding farms with the distance out from them for said farms being in proportion to town sizes. The areas in between civilization would still be the original forests.

Based on your more natural natural growth philosophy (my interpretation thereof), I believe you'd be happy with about 42% coverage of the tillable land within your entire region. (I, too, leave the hillier mountains alone as those logically are not good for farming.) So, depending on the size of the region itself, you might like a dozen larger small cities in the 5k pop range, about 3 or 4 dozen big towns of 1k to 2.5k, and then oodles of the tiny towns where the pop is 50 to 100.

Let the tiny towns be surrounded by farms out to about 10 to 20 cells, the bigger small towns out twice as much, and the the small cities out about 100 cells from them. About half of these might have the end of their agriculture bump up to the end of the other little town's farm fields. Then as you continue to play, you'd have the small cities and bigger towns slowly expand by converting some of the farm land at the town's edge to new urban development such as industry and residential. Add a wee bit of commercial along the main routes thru them as needed. As the nearby land is converted you'd also extend the outer farm perimeter by about twice the amount of land taken over in the towns.

If you do this growth a wee little bit in each city tile at about the same rate of expansion, you'll have each of the population centers growing in reasonable harmony with all the others and the farms spreading in a realistic way.

My own play style is a bit different and is the second option you mentioned. I fill up all of the flatter ground with farms (and the corresponding towns and small cities), but I'm modeling later in time such that Sims have already utilized as much of the land as is logically useful for farming. While I'm considered a Rural Architect, that doesn't mean I'm opposed to some larger cities in the 50k to 100k size just like was true in the late 1800s. (Even then there were some way bigger cities in the eastern portions of the country, but I've not made any huge ones like that yet.)

All in all, it'll really come down to what pleases you the most when seeing it all from the region level.

[Daeris 1,116]

20 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

There would be a time when your coastal towns of 500, 1000, 2500, 5000, or such population would be the biggest urban locations and would likely have farms all around for several miles.

I should probably know this, but when you say several miles, how does that translate into a large city-tile? How big is each city-tile (I'll start to look this up now as I'm sure it's all over and something I should know).
 

22 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Based on your more natural natural growth philosophy (my interpretation thereof), I believe you'd be happy with about 42% coverage of the tillable land within your entire region.

I feel like you do interpret my nat growth philosophy well, and yeah I can't say that's a figure that I would be opposed to. I know you've done tons of research in this area (and I think you also have worked or do work in rural city development, is that correct?), but how did you come up with said estimation? You seem to really know your stuff regarding rural development, and I'm so thankful you share your expertise. I think having something like this in mind while developing future regions will help me have a better idea of how far out to sprawl my farms, and when to leave some forest sprawling.

 

27 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

So, depending on the size of the region itself, you might like a dozen larger small cities in the 5k pop range, about 3 or 4 dozen big towns of 1k to 2.5k, and then oodles of the tiny towns where the pop is 50 to 100.

Yeah this does sound great! Perhaps a good goal for me to work towards on my next region (I think a part of me might be itching to end this region early and start up fresh).

 

29 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

As the nearby land is converted you'd also extend the outer farm perimeter by about twice the amount of land taken over in the towns.

Super interesting idea! Does this also conform to reality in your opinion? I think this would be a great helpful approach to letting towns expand, while simultaneously expanding the surrounding farmland even further. Pretty cool idea.

 

32 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

While I'm considered a Rural Architect, that doesn't mean I'm opposed to some larger cities in the 50k to 100k size just like was true in the late 1800s. (Even then there were some way bigger cities in the eastern portions of the country, but I've not made any huge ones like that yet.)

Yeah, this fascinates me. I'm not opposed to them either, but don't of course want to force a big 50k/100k city in before it doesn't make sense. But, that said, yeah I do find it so cool to look at what the US's big cities of today looked like in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I mean, New York was already a giant grid by prior to 1900 I believe. It's mindboggling to think about the state of rural America and urban America that was happening around the turn of the 20th century.

 

Thanks again for your useful tips! Super helpful as ush.

[CorinaMarie 29,891]

3 minutes ago, Daeris said:

I should probably know this, but when you say several miles, how does that translate into a large city-tile? How big is each city-tile?

Ok, this one is complex. The technical answer based on in game mechanics is that each cell is 16 meters by 16 meters (which is 52.4934 feet).

From that we get:

• 0.64 miles across a small city tile (1.024 kilometers)
• 1.27 miles across a medium (2.048 km)
• 2.55 miles across a large (4.096 km)

The trouble is this doesn't scale well to an entire country without needing the map so large as to be unplayable.

I personally use the philosophy of 10 cells being one mile and that any given farm is really 10 times larger than it appears in the game. Or that it's 10 farms represented by the one we see. Same for housing density. Any give house you actually see in the game represents a cluster of 10 homes. With this idea, a large city tile becomes about 25½ miles across.

 

12 minutes ago, Daeris said:

I know you've done tons of research in this area (and I think you also have worked or do work in rural city development, is that correct?), but how did you come up with said estimation?

Sort of. I work as an assistant to a residential appraiser (not a real estate agent who sells homes, but the guy that estimates the market value of the home, its land, and all other outbuildings it has). As such, part of what I do involves viewing bird's eye views of the site and all the surrounding areas in regular satellite views as well as plat, zoning, and flood maps for the area. He has also specialized in retrospective  appraisals in which the mortgage lender or insurance company needs to know the value as of some time in the past. So, for the mapping part this includes aerial views from the past too.

Then it also helps that I'm fascinated by mapping and land development and so I've read numerous books on the subject. As part of that CB and I gathered all the maps from 1876 for every county in Indiana (the state where I live) and then did a lot of comparisons to modern imagery. We even created an overlay of one of the old maps to the modern one from some site I forget now, but that too shows how things have changed over the years. The interesting part is so many of those tiny towns haven't changed since ye olden days.

For my own estimation of sizes in the game, I just work with what I feel gives the right proportion rather than what that in game math shows.

 

22 minutes ago, Daeris said:

(I think a part of me might be itching to end this region early and start up fresh).

(I did that a lot early on. I terraformed a map by hand and played it for a couple of weeks. After I learned more, I restored it to empty and played again. I did that like 4 times before moving on to different map making methods and then playing those creations for a few months each. For my last region, I've been playing it about 3 years.)

 

24 minutes ago, Daeris said:

Does this also conform to reality in your opinion?

I believe it really does. Let's say we have a small town that starts out with a few families and they each have a farm. That soon attracts someone who'll build a grist mill and someone who will build a general store. Add in a church and a little schoolhouse and you have a small town. Let's have this be at a crossroad with towns in each of the 4 directions, but quite distant from ours. Hucksters traveling thru might need to spend the night and so a little Inn will get built. As the town grows, they'll need some more food which attracts other families to have farms that'll go on the outskirts. Then more families in the area means there's more need for things in town.

So as the town grows, the farms grow and as the farms grow, the town grows.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

15 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

more families in the area means there's more need for things in town.

And in one of those towns, a little rural river port will be plopped, opening distant markets to more farm produce and early industry...

[Daeris 1,116]

On 12/25/2020 at 7:25 PM, The British Sausage said:

You may find SFBT's diagonal fillers useful

Hi @The British Sausage

I think I'm going to install the SFBT diagonal fillers! One of the dependencies is the SFBT Street Tree Mod, and I was just wondering if you have any advice on that? Such as, what install options you might recommend? For example, I can install the street trees on rural areas if I want (I think I'll skip on this for now as I'll want to paint my own trees around my farms). However, for other side streets, there are options to go with Cycledogg's deciduous trees and Maxis deciduous trees if you want (thinking I may try both just for some slight diversity).

 

EDIT: Also, do you know if this will react negatively with the Maxis Tree HD Replacement mod?

EDITx2: Thinking it may not because I think the Maxis Tree HD Replacement mod just replaces default Maxis trees on actual lots. Will update if I bonk anything up.

EDITx3: Oh oh nm! I think there is a SFBT plugin with the MTHDR mod!

EDITx4: Lol sorry I keep finding new interesting stuff. Has anyone tried this newer mod yet (below)? Looks grand; I might give it a shot.

 

  Edited January 1, 2021 by Daeris  
Questions and then I found something cool. =p

[rsc204 21,866]

On 26/12/2020 at 1:25 AM, The British Sausage said:

It's nice to the NAM 39 being pushed as I see wide curve SAM streets? I'm still using NAM 38 so as to not mess up the city tiles I'm working on.

This was a NAM 36 feature, so you already have them, just draw the same patterns as for streets .

6 hours ago, Daeris said:

EDIT: Also, do you know if this will react negatively with the Maxis Tree HD Replacement mod?

EDITx2: Thinking it may not because I think the Maxis Tree HD Replacement mod just replaces default Maxis trees on actual lots. Will update if I bonk anything up.

EDITx3: Oh oh nm! I think there is a SFBT plugin with the MTHDR mod!

The first thing you need to understand, is the special way in which SFBT put together their "tree options" for use with a number of mods.

This part is essentially all to do with T21s, that is "lots" that are attached to networks. Whenever you see a prop/model etc on a functioning network, a T21 put it there. Try MMPing on a network, even a blank spot, the entire area is reserved, i.e. you can't.

Do you really want to add such a mod?, that's up to you, but none of these parts are necessary to use the Diagonal Fillers. The part it needs are the trees:

The idea here, you can customise which trees will be used with compatible SFBT lots/mods. You configure the trees once, then your choices get propagated automatically to all compatible mods. I believe too you can change your choices dynamically. Frankly I'm too spoiled with HD Seasonal Trees so I never got more into it myself, but the readme should make these options somewhat clear. If you just select the Maxis trees, you won't need any extra dependencies.

There are at least two IDs associated with every object, the model itself has an ID, but the "properties" or Exemplar that links to the model has one too. So if a mod alters which model is linked (like the HD Tree Replacement Mod does), any other mod using the same Exemplar will be affected by it. However, to make the special system SFBT used, it would have required a new set of Exemplars, unless the HD Tree Replacement mod was also designed to override those, it won't affect them. Essentially the trees used are grouped into Prop Families.

Whatever you do, nothing is likely to get damaged or broken here, you just might need to mess with things to get them right. Overrides are complex enough, but cascading overrides of overrides can challenge the best of us to get things to play nice. It should be very easy to customise this with a little modding too, should you not find an option that works for you.

[The British Sausage 5,449]

10 hours ago, Daeris said:

Hi @The British Sausage

I think I'm going to install the SFBT diagonal fillers! One of the dependencies is the SFBT Street Tree Mod, and I was just wondering if you have any advice on that? Such as, what install options you might recommend? For example, I can install the street trees on rural areas if I want (I think I'll skip on this for now as I'll want to paint my own trees around my farms). However, for other side streets, there are options to go with Cycledogg's deciduous trees and Maxis deciduous trees if you want (thinking I may try both just for some slight diversity).

 

EDIT: Also, do you know if this will react negatively with the Maxis Tree HD Replacement mod?

EDITx2: Thinking it may not because I think the Maxis Tree HD Replacement mod just replaces default Maxis trees on actual lots. Will update if I bonk anything up.

EDITx3: Oh oh nm! I think there is a SFBT plugin with the MTHDR mod!

EDITx4: Lol sorry I keep finding new interesting stuff. Has anyone tried this newer mod yet (below)? Looks grand; I might give it a shot.

 

My advice with the installation is to select all of Cycledogg's trees and also select the PEG pines. If you select all the tree options it doesn't come out as good because Maxis trees are not very pleasing to the eye. I find that Cycledogg's and PEG's trees combined provide the best flora visuals. As for Scoty's field paths and hedges, I would highly recommend this for those getting to grips with agriculture. It provides a useful means of dividing up fields and the diagonal pieces with natural looking trails and has some useful fillers to connect fields to tracks and tracks to roads.

[Daeris 1,116]

9 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Do you really want to add such a mod?, that's up to you, but none of these parts are necessary to use the Diagonal Fillers. The part it needs are the trees:

Thanks, yeah my main priority is that actual diagonal fillers, so I may not necessarily want the trees on the side streets and other lots. Part of this might just be me needing to test it out in game and decide what I like the look of more.

 

6 hours ago, The British Sausage said:

Maxis trees are not very pleasing to the eye

Are you using the SFBT HD Maxis tree override with the Maxis HD Tree Replacement mod (Bonus Pack 1)? I think I'm going to test that out and see if I like the look of those visuals. Thanks for giving input on your best visuals; I'll test out the PEG Pines and Cycledogg deciduous as well!

 

6 hours ago, The British Sausage said:

As for Scoty's field paths and hedges, I would highly recommend this for those getting to grips with agriculture

Awesome, thanks! Yeah I reached out to the creator to see about designing a custom terrain texture for the terrain mod I prefer (so far Runamuck's HD terrain). He mentioned he was willing to expand the terrain options on request, so I hope it's not too much hassle for him.

[Matrim Cauthon 344]

The street tree mod is pretty sweet, but be warned if you're using something like the seasonal maxis re-lot, which adds seasonal tree's most of the maxis RES lots it can get a bit too... tree-y for my tastes.

I ended up removing SFBT streets so I could actually see my streets again.

[Daeris 1,116]

On 11/28/2020 at 11:05 AM, CorinaMarie said:

Yeah, the Maxis one is way, way too modern for my tastes. CB and I have plans to someday relot DEDWD Aussie Windmill to produce power instead of water and prolly reduce the number of deps to zero.

 

@CorinaMarie Hey Cori, just found these files and was going to test them out:

 

They are Dutch in design (not rustic/western like I might prefer), but I still think it's pretty cool they offer power! I might start using these in place of just plopping Maxis wind turbines. Just thought I'd ping ya' in case you hadn't seen these.

[The British Sausage 5,449]

On 1/1/2021 at 8:16 PM, Daeris said:

Thanks, yeah my main priority is that actual diagonal fillers, so I may not necessarily want the trees on the side streets and other lots. Part of this might just be me needing to test it out in game and decide what I like the look of more.

 

Are you using the SFBT HD Maxis tree override with the Maxis HD Tree Replacement mod (Bonus Pack 1)? I think I'm going to test that out and see if I like the look of those visuals. Thanks for giving input on your best visuals; I'll test out the PEG Pines and Cycledogg deciduous as well!

 

Awesome, thanks! Yeah I reached out to the creator to see about designing a custom terrain texture for the terrain mod I prefer (so far Runamuck's HD terrain). He mentioned he was willing to expand the terrain options on request, so I hope it's not too much hassle for him.

Yes, I am using the SFBT Maxis tree override mod combined with the SFBT street mod as they utilise Cycledogg's trees and a lot of custom buildings (and lots) use Cycledogg's trees. This ensures more continuity of trees and flora.

[CorinaMarie 29,891]

6 minutes ago, Daeris said:

Just thought I'd ping ya' in case you hadn't seen these.

I have seen them and they look very nice. (But, don't fit my old time Indiana-ish look of my regions.)

I did find the one CB and I like already has a power version: Aussie Windmill - Power (v1.0)

[Daeris 1,116]

15 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

I did find the one CB and I like already has a power version: Aussie Windmill - Power (v1.0)

Haha, again why you two are the best. Here I come thinking I am going to do something nice for ya' and you end up finding something I hadn't seen yet! Haha. 

[CorinaMarie 29,891]

2 minutes ago, Daeris said:

Here I come thinking I am going to do something nice for ya' ...

You did indeed.   (It's me who's too picky about how those just happen to be a style I'm not fond of.)

[Daeris 1,116]

@The British Sausage (or anyone else who knows!) Hey hey, one more question (for now hehe) about the SFBT diagonal fillers. I noticed that after I select one and plop it, unfortunately it deselects and I need to select the plop I want in the menu again. Is that how it's supposed to work? I'm hoping there is a way I can just keep the ploppable selected so I can quickly place a bunch of the desired ones around whatever farm-field I'm working on. Or, in your experience do you need to reselect the desired ploppable every time you place one? Hoping this makes sense.

Oh oh, also (guess this is 2 questions, hehe), I noticed you have to place the 1x1 SFBT lot in order for the SFBT diagonal lots to become available in the menus. Do you just prefer to plop this somewhere hidden and then let it be, or do you place one each and every time you re-enter the city-tile you're working on. I suppose if I have to keep it plopped somewhere, I can hide it in a forest or corner somewhere, or tuck it next to a port or something. I'll find a spot to hide it if I must.

Danke in advance!

[CorinaMarie 29,891]

@Daeris

While I don't use those myself, I can tell from what you've asked those are using a Menu Management Lot and they are located in the Rewards menu. An apparently hard coded caveat of said menu is the requirement to re-select every single time to plop another. Maybe check if there is a non-MML version that puts them in the Parks (or another menu) so that re-selecting isn't needed.

[Daeris 1,116]

1 minute ago, CorinaMarie said:

While I don't use those myself

Yeah I like them to some degree, but perhaps now can see why @The British Sausage was saying he meticulously plops and designs his farmlands (which perhaps is getting away from the natural growth method), especially if you need to do so 1 plop at a time and reselect! =p Wow, even more amazing at what he creates then as it certainly takes some patience! =p

More tinkering and searching needed on my end. Thanks Cori.

[CorinaMarie 29,891]

Aplopping those can still fit perfectly fine with your natural growth philosophy. In this case you are just beautifying places the original game leaves all jaggy.

Btw, how many lots are there? This could be a good time for you to learn a few simple, but repetitive, tricks in Reader to move them to another menu.

[Daeris 1,116]

1 minute ago, CorinaMarie said:

Btw, how many lots are there? This could be a good time for you to learn a few simple, but repetitive, tricks in Reader to move them to another menu.

Not in the game atm, but I think there were perhaps 2 dozen or so. Not too many. That's a good idea!

[CorinaMarie 29,891]

1 minute ago, Daeris said:

That's a good idea!

So, to make sure this will look the same for you, I'll need the files as installed. You can zip those up and send via PM. Then the walk thru (with pics) will be here in your thread so anyone else reading can follow the concepts too. (This'll be a much better staring place for getting your feet wet in Reader than those tree elevations.)