A couple technical questions about house models in game

[Inge Jones]

1. Sometimes a house we have made for the game will have to be placed on a slope, I assume. This means the foundation will be exposed one side and the ground will perhaps come part way up the wall the other. Is there a way of the creator to define a point that must be level with the ground, for example the front door, so that Cims can apparently get into the house? Is the "pivot point" we have heard about used by the game to indicate this point?

2. When a house is placed by the game, will it cut the terrain, or will the terrain pass straight through it? I am asking so that we can have an idea whether or not its worth making sunken external basement access etc, or whether it would just look like it's full up with grass.

 

[Klinn]

An additional question:

3) How does the game know which side of an auto-placed building should face the street? Is it based on the orientation as created in the 3D modeling app, or indicated with a special entity in the model, or specified within an associated building characteristics file, or ???

Sometimes we might want to have a house with the front door actually facing towards a laneway running along the side of the house, not towards the street.

 

[cRAGGLE]

And another:

4) If that house is deleted and dezoned does the terrain return to its normal position?

 

[BStyles]

According to Quill's video, it looked as if when you rezoned an area from commercial/residential/industrial to any of the opposite, the buildings deconstructed themselves and started new development based on the new zone. Not sure about dezoning yet, though.

 

[tetrismaster]

Going off that question, can we change which road the zone is coming off from? For example, if there's a right angle road, the zone can come from either road right at the corner, can we pick which one it uses?

 

[Inge Jones]

Going off that question

Hijacker!!!

 

[charlesnew]

And another:

4) If that house is deleted and dezoned does the terrain return to its normal position?

Actually, that makes me think of something else. If you de-zone an area, do the zoned building get demolished? This is good, because it can kinda work like the SC4 historical option. If the building doesn't upgrade or change because it's not in a zoned area, than we can keep it. Some people did this technique in SC5 to keep buildings they wanted.