In regards to my post in your TS2GridAdjuster thread, would it be possible (outside of GridAdjuster perhaps and without the CFE cheat) to shift the elevation of tiles on a particular level?

As I mentioned in the thread, a downward split level could be possible with the OFB stage tool (which is not affected by the CFE cheat from what I can tell). Something like how this surface is shifted downward into the cube:



I don't know if it would be possible to treat each grid intersection for a particular floor as a node or point on a coordinate system to be edited. I know you said you haven't looked much into it, I'm just being curious.

I'm not 100% sure what you're asking.

The height of a wall is completely determined by the elevation of the floor tiles above it. Basically, there is only one piece of data per vertex on the lot (the grid elevation), which determines where one wall ends and the next begins. That grid elevation also determines the placement of the floor tile. So, in your picture, there is no way to produce the result without reducing the elevation of the first level and adding a second level above the floor tiles.

The OFB stage is completely different, since it doesn't use the grid elevation to determine it's height. It looks like a wall, but it's clearly very different since it doesn't follow the rules that all other walls follow. I'll have to do some research to determine whether the height of the OFB stage is fixed by the game, or whether there is some data inside of the lot package which can change its height. I don't know of any research that's been done in this area. If you have seen anything, a link would be helpful. The fact that no one has modded the stage to make different sizes is discouraging... but it may be something which can only be changed after the stage is placed. I'm definitely willing to look into this.

Ah, okay. I know a few things about the grid system, but I haven't really looked into the guts of its technical aspects. (Honestly, I probably wouldn't even know what I'm looking at with most of it. ) I haven't seen any research into the stage, however you, niol, and Numenor are the few that I know right off the top of my head who has looked into this sort of thing in depth. If it's hard-coded, so be it. Doesn't hurt to ask, right?

Just from my building experience and playing with the free mode camera, I know that floortiles (on the same level) get removed when covered by the stage. The outer "wall" that can be wallpapered stays separate from the inner wall (i.e. the stage "walls" visible inside the stage keep the default texture regardless of what the normally visible, outer stage "walls" are wallpapered). I don't know if the inner "walls" can be wallpapered since I could only see them after hitting the "Tab" key which removes the build mode interface. Also, if a stage is present, the alignment with the mouse/cursor position often gets thrown off, making it difficult to grab/place objects or use certain build tools. Removing all stages from the lot seems to correct the issue, so it is reasonable to assume it is doing something to the grid to make it a little wonky.

Thanks for the response.

Once I finish this no-slope basement thing, I'll look into the stages and see whether I can figure out how to do anything with them. It may actually be simple, I just don't know until I understand more about how they're stored internally. Thanks for the suggestion; I know that there are lots of people who would find this useful.

No rush. Thanks again.

As far as I can tell, stages are stored like normal walls, except that they ignore the grid elevation data. I can't find anywhere in the lot package where the size is stored. This implies that the size is fixed and cannot be changed.

Oh, that's unfortunate. Thanks again for looking into it.

maybesomethingdunno,

The stage graphic layer is higher than the "floor" of the storey, so even if it's invisible or "without graphic", it cuts and replace the lower layers for the "floor" of the storey.

As for the interior side for stage wall to alter its wallpaper to full manipulation. I'm afraid one has to find out which wallpaper reference in lot package file coresponds to which piece of the stage internal wall unit.
In tihs strategy, one has simply to mod the related data files in a lot package file.

Yet, one may try the following unexperimented possibility with a light flaw. Build any partition (wall, fence, halfwall, etc... fence is the best in my opinion) before building the stage. There delete that parition piece (like fence in my personal preference), use the shift key with "left-mouse-click" to alter all wallpaper at once. Add in a stage block and remove it at the opened line for the stage "would-be-room". The imperfection is that the closing stage wall interior may not be re-wallpapered but the others. This may be a simpler but imperfect approach.

As for the stage height size, honestly I don't know where it may be found coz I've not researched it and my PC is down now.

I think you'd get a "Cannot intersect fence or half wall" message. I appreciate the response though.

Well, by means of the undo-delete trick.

Simply pretend you delete the desired stage, release the mouse click, and then add an extra left-mouse click to undo the pretended "deletion".