I'm confused on how to use it. Should be easy peasy, no?

I made a lot in base game. Since the smallest lot size given is a 3x2. I have some backyard area that I want to get rid of, bring the size down to maybe a 2x2, only it won't let me. Says that it needs to be in multiples of 10 and if I do that it runs into the house. How can I shrink my lot without needin to change the house? Am I just SOL?

You can do 4 + 6 or 3+7 - it is still multiples of 10, if that helps. It is actually better to start on a bigger lot if you want a smaller lot (does it makes sense?) because it is easier to shrink.

Personally, I would want the backyard, because I always seem to need more yard for my Sims

I'm still confused. What numbers do I put where?


But if I leave it as is I don't think it would pass MTS's required standards for upload. They don't like open spaces with nothing on them.

Lot adjustor size is not the same as in-game size. The lot adjustor counts the 10 tiles that make the road in front of the house, the maxis sizes don't. That's number one. Secondly, when the game says 2x2, it means 20 tiles times 20 tiles. The lot adjustor can not make a lot be anything other than an even number (always multiples of ten). The lot space you want to remove has to be at least 10 tiles total, or it can't be done. The lot adjustor also can't delete objects, so the tiles you want to remove have to be completely empty.

What Justpetro is trying to say is that you don't have to remove 10 from one side. For example, if your house is placed three tiles from the sidewalk, you could remove 2 tiles from the front and 8 from the back, because that would remove a total of 10 tiles.

If you are still confused, I suggest you show a birds-view picture of the lot you want to adjust, and what you're setting the lot adjustor to, so that we can see what's going on.

Ok, so if I understand correctly ... I can tell it to take off some of the road tiles as well as the back titles to get my 10 tiles? This will allow for the backyard to shrink and not loose any house structure.

(I didn't mean for the LA to delete parts of the house, I meant for me not wantin to change the design any :D)

You can only shrink if there are 10 free squares at the edges. The programme won't shrink the lot if there's anything - anything at all - on those squares. And especially won't do it if it means cutting off a wall.

The Lot Adjuster is a compromise about what is possible with the game settings. Moo did an excellent job (I use the programme myself a lot) but there are certain limits. One of those limits is that you have to set the lot up properly so that it can be shrunk because the programme is not able to adapt the lot for you if it runs into something that shouldn't be there.

Edit - no the 10 tiles for the road have to be there and are included, by default, in the lot size. There always have to be 10 extra tiles at the front.

No, you can't remove road tiles. The road is added automatically to a lot when it's placed in game, it has to be there. I just wanted to clarify that the size you see in Lot Adjustor is always ten tiles longer than the in-game value, because the program counts the road as part of the lot whereas the game does not. However, lot adjustor does not require two tiles of space between the edge of the lot and the wall, like in-game building does. It only requires one tile.

Your house has to fit within multiples of ten, not counting the road. If it doesn't, you'll either have to modify the house to clear up enough tiles, or figure out something to do with that space. Again, it'll be easier to tell you if lot adjustor can be used if you show us what it actually looks like. It sounds to me like you need to remove an uneven number of tiles, and that can't be done.

Sorry to double-post, but I realized I hadn't said something and it's important enough to merit being a post of it's own.

If you are at all uncertain about the lot adjustor, ALWAYS backup your lot before attempting to modify it. It is a great tool, but you could ruin your lot with it if you don't know what you are doing. Either move it to the lot bin and place a copy to modify, or package the lot to a file before attempting to modify it.

Thanks, yeah I already packed it for a 'just in case'. After my other lot fiasco I'm a bit more cautious atm now :p

Sorry, I was interrupted here for a while - Gummilutt has explained exactly what I meant

There has to be something you could do with the backyard - if it cannot be shrunk, it cannot be shrunk. It might be hard if you are aiming to build the lot for a maximum price, but sometimes one has to compromise. Although a starter with base game costs 20 000, remember starter families with later expansion packs start with more money (two Sims have 25 000, 3 Sims have 30 000, I believe).

If you like the house enough not to change it, and you cannot shrink the lot, my honest feeling is that it should then be kept that way, even though doing something in the yard would mean it will cost more.

I believe there are smaller lots here on MTS if you want to download and use them in future. MaryLou?

like others seem to tell, the numbers in the Lot Adjuster reflect the lot's grid.
and like others told, the amount added both horizontally & vertically will need to be a multiple of 10.
values up to 10 that would work for opposite sides either horizontal or vertical::
0,10
1,9
2,8
3,7
4,6
5,5
or if you enable shrinking (advanced options), these combinations would work::
0,-0
1,-1
2,-2
3,-3
4,-4
5,-5
6,-6
7,-7
8,-8
9,-9
10,-10

If you do shrinking, probably first clear the planned area of objects/sims/etc.

Thanks for all ya'lls help. It came down to either leavin the lot as is or redoin the house. I'm fiddlin w/ the house to see if I can make some minor adjustments without doin to much overall change.

I quickly created a house on a 3x3 lot in base game to demonstrate this. Then I used Lot Adjuster to reduce the lot size to 2x2. This is what it looks like in Lot Adjuster:


"Lot to Shrink" was just my unimaginative name for the lot. As long as the Left Side and Right Side figures together, and the Front Yard and Back Yard figures together both add up to multiples of 10 (or are zero if you not adjusting it that way) it will work. In this case there was plenty of room on both sides of the house, so I just took 5 tiles off each side (set both Left Side and Right Side to -5. Before I shrunk the lot, the front steps were 4 tiles back from the sidewalk, and the rear wall of the house was 9 tiles from the rear of the lot. So I set the Front Yard to -3 and the Rear Yard to -7. (-3 plus -7 equals -10 so it works.) Then I clicked "Finish and it shrank the lot.

Mootilda gave the following instructions on what to do next:

The lot was changed. Complete the following steps to finish the process:

1) Start the game and load the neighbourhood. The lot may appear to be empty.

2) Load the lot and make at least one structural change. Save and return to the neighbourhood.

3) To regenerate the road, pick up the lot in the neighborhood view and move it until it "snaps" to the road.

4) You may need to edit the lot one more time: to delete excess road tiles and sidewalks, and to move the mailbox and garbage can.

The lot adjustment is complete and your modified lot is available for use.

I carried out 1 to 3 (4 wasn't necessary). It worked. This is what the house looks like now:


The front steps are now 1 tile from the sidewalk and the rear wall of the house is now 2 tiles from the rear of the lot. I have left the grid showing to make it easier to see. The house is really just an empty shell knocked together in under 10 minutes to demonstrate this to you.

The whole process only took a matter of minutes. It took me far longer to write this post than it did to adjust the lot! It really is quite easy, but I backed up the whole neighbourhood first -- just in case. I did this in an AGS base game 'hood and I used the same method to build the house on a 1x2 lot I've uploaded here. Don't be too scared of the Lot Adjuster -- it's a wonderful tool!

Thanks for that mini tut AndrewGloria.

You're right, the LA is easy. I just didn't know what my problem was, but had it explained to me. As I mentioned above that it all came down to me needin to decide if I wanted to leave the backyard alone or to redesign the house some as I didn't have a total of 10 spots available to take away .. no matter what number combination used. :/

i couldn't ev en get it to load

Emma, what happens when you try to start the Lot Adjuster? I usually just start it by double-clicking on the LotAdjuster.exe file in Windows Explorer. I then get a Windows dialogue box where I have to click on "Run". Then it starts no bother. (I have Windows 7.)

So the short form is that a 2x3 lot is actually 20x30 (tiles), according to Lot Adjuster. Is that about right?

The idea which I had for leveling the "bumpy" edges of my Fruityboo Farms Dormitory would be expanding the lot's size by ten tiles left and right, opening the lot in-game, using the Level Terrain tool to flatten the offending patch of earth all the way out to the new boundaries, then opening Lot Adjuster again and shrinking the lot back to its original size. I'm expecting that approach to work. Maybe then Fruityboo Farms will be fit for uploading and downloading.

And what would be a good lot size if I wanted to take my terrain tools and make an actual Simmy-scaled mountain on the lot? 12x12, perhaps?

Yes, 2x3 means 20x30. But like I pointed out in an earlier post, the lot adjustor counts the road and the depth will be 10 tiles longer than what you have to work with. As you can see in the picture Andrew attached, the lot adjustor says depth is 30, but if you count the tiles in the picture it's 20. In game measurements describe the tiles of the actual lot, lot adjustor also counts road.

You can't make a lot that's 12x12. The maximum size you can set it to is 6x6.

Your flattening-approach is unnecessarily long and complicated, as the lot adjustor can directly flatten lot edges. Looking at Andrew's picture, you can see the third option from the bottom says "Lot Edges", and there's a drop down menu. Neighbourhood means it matches the neighbourhood terrain. In the drop down menu you have the option to flatten, which will make lot edges perfectly flat. You can then use the in-game flattening to make the rest of the lot flat as well.

Be careful about using the option above that adjusts the neighbourhood terrain to your new flat edges, as that could cause rifts in the terrain.

I have 8.1 it hates me I just get a strange error message (I'll have to redownload and try again)


which stinks because if I could increase a few lots I know of I could do more of what I want with them.


P.S. thanks for the house It's a hit! XD

All right. So if a lot size is 3x2, that's 30 tiles wide and 20 tiles deep. But Lot Adjuster is going to add the road's ten tiles of depth and thus list the dimensions as 30x30, not 30x20. I think I've got it now.


Aww. Well, my mountain and I shall have to make the most of a 6x6 lot, I suppose.


Okay, that's simple enough. Danke.


So it would probably be better if I only used Lot Adjuster on lots without any bordering neighbors; by my understanding, unclaimed "wilderness" terrain is a bit more malleable and less likely to glitch out and cause rifts than the terrain claimed by neighboring lots is. Does that seem wise enough?

Yes, exactly



It depends, really. Adjusting the lot edges won't affect neighbours, or the terrain, unless you check the option above to adapt neighbourhood terrain as well. The problem with that approach is that using the lot adjustor detaches the lot from the terrain, and if there are neighbour lots with edges that aren't flat, your lot will refuse to be placed in the same location. When placing a lot free terrain is more likely to be malleable, I'm not sure how it feels about lot adjustor edits. My hood terrain is specifically made to be flat, so when lots of mine aren't flat it's the kind of not flat that's not visible to the eye, and that makes it hard to tell how the terrain reacts. Perhaps someone else has more experience of adjusting lots placed in very un-flat areas?

What I did when I went over my entire hood to make the terrain and every lot perfectly flat was to only use the lot edge function in Lot Adjustor. Then I used the in-game cheat that lets you level out terrain to the same level of where you first clicked. You have to do it in segments, moving the now-flat lots to free areas that you made flat, so that you can flatten the terrain where the lot is supposed to be before moving the lot back to their original section. Tedious, but it means your terrain and all lots are totally flat, and there's no risk of terrain rifts.

If you don't want to have flat areas, I would back up the hood and try it. Go in and use camera man mode to inspect the terrain closely, to make sure there aren't tiny rifts.

Is there any knowledge if this will be updated for the legacy rerelease? I just tried it out in and it corrupted my entire neighborhood. Not just the lot, but the neighborhood itself was no longer readable to the game. Idek how that would happen unless is alters the files in such a way that says UC.

Seeing as Mootilda passed away in 2014 , I seriously doubt it.

Oh boy, seems that they would have been close to you. Sorry for your loss. Hopefully someone can respectfully remake this program with respect to them.

Mootilda always released her source code, so it's very possible!
https://modthesims.info/d/384656/lo...ay-23-2013.html