Welcome to Nikolai_Bukav’s Comprehensive LotPack Guide: Creation, Uploading, and Even More Made Simple!

In this guide, I will be focusing on teaching you how to add custom lots that can be marked as either Residential, Office, Industry, Fortification, Decoration, Ruins, Bandit Bases, and/or Commerce; alongside explanations of commands that are used in order to make these lots, as well as internal “flags” or “strings” used to help define these lots to include spawners to give them that piece of originality and life! At various points in this guide, I might make offhand references to commands previously discussed in earlier sections.

Beginning from creation to uploading might at first appear to be a daunting task, but with time, practice, patience, and perseverance; even you too can upload lots! The only time I’ll actually diverge from the focus of this Guide, is right here in which I will tell you that it took me over two weeks when I first tried to learn how to upload with the first lot I did, Voxel Winery. However, SnapperTheTwig (“The Developer”) assisted me at every bump of my trials, and eventually I was able to finally upload Voxel Winery. Since then, I’ve learned how to upload multiple lots at once, change lot designations to functional commercial buildings, change modifiers for buying and income prices, add basements, add lots not requiring roads, add lots functioning as roads, create massive skyscrapers through simple command structures, and even access hidden items from the Buy menu to assist in the creation of Bandit Bases!

Hopefully through this guide, I can impart my learning experiences to help you as you build and contribute to the community every step of the way!

Also, please do not worry for the fact that at first glance this looks like an obnoxiously large Guide. I just like to be very, very thorough. As such, a lot of preliminary information, such as the basic navigation through your computer’s files might already be second nature to you, since you’ve made it this far to want to begin modding, but this length, again, is just my style. I’m also generally a talker, so I apologize for the informality and wordiness of this Guide, it definitely could be made a lot simpler and straight-forward; but at least when structured like this it should even be able to reach and help even first-time modders!

With that being said, let’s get started, and have a “LOT” of fun! (Ok, that was just objectively bad, and way too corny even for me)

LotPacks are groups of individual lots that are compiled by the game into a “pack” or group of lots. The purpose of a LotPack is to add these lots, which are typically individual buildings, to the base game so that they can be built by players, raided, used, or just added for aesthetic use.

By default, there is one building based LotPack called “vanilla” – located on windows at:
OS(C:)/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/Voxel Turf/lots/packs/vanilla.


The LotPack consists of two parts within the aforementioned directory: a .txt (notepad) file, and a same-named folder containing the actual lots. These will form the basic foundation of any LotPack used in Voxel Turf, and will be the primary reference point used in this Guide.

Other Lots do exist in the game, under the same directory, aforementioned, under /packs, you will find a large array of lots dedicated to roads, special, misc, and suspension bridge. These lots create the basics for the Roads used, both lit and unlit; the Special lots like the Cemetery, City Hall, and Space Program; the canals and roundabout tiles occasionally seen; and even the tiles used as bridges when selected from the build menu.

However, these types of lots are specially hardcoded into the game, and thus will not be discussed in this Guide.

At the beginning of every great LotPack, there are, of course, the lots. So, let’s begin by building a simple lot with no basement and start experimenting with basic commands. For simplicity, I will do this in Build Mode, with cheats enabled alongside being able to build anywhere!

One other preliminary but VERY, VERY important point. If you want to eventually build advanced lots, then for sake of simplicity, always build with North/Top of the Map as the direction you want to place the entrance. The game uses this for determination of lot coordinates which will be discussed in depth infra (below in) § 4.2.

Here you can see I built a Modern Style Mansion. This lot is built on the ground level with no subterranean features, and thus is perfect for basic lot saving. For the discussion on basements and other subterranean features, see § 4.2(b), upon completion of finishing up until the conversion of the lot to a Mod later in this section.


But here’s the problem: The lots have not been merged and are still marked as vacant:


To fix this problem, we can either buy the land from the build menu, or we can experiment with some commands!

So, now we want to merge this lot. This command will actually be quite useful for combining buildings, or other lots that have already been marked separate. To do this on this building, we first must go to the southwest corner of what we want to merge. This is important because the game treats the Southwestern (bottom left) most corner as the 0,0,0 target corner when translated onto an X,Y,Z axis common with Voxel based games. The same essentially applies for the larger lots, except it gets more complicated with a central axis. But no matter where you are, just make sure you are standing somewhere in the Bottom left corner as you can see myself doing in the above image. We will have to type this command, by pressing the Chat button (default “T”):

/lot merge 3 2


This command functions by merging the lot 3 blocks North (up) and 2 blocks East (right)


So now we just need to buy it since it is vacant.

After buying, you’ll notice the screen’s menu options change to include “Convert to Custom Building” and “Insure lot”.


What we want to do is now click “Convert to Custom Building” (the third option)


Once you put in the parameters, choosing between Fortification, Basic Industry, Office, or Residential; you can then place custom numbers for Population and Road facing. Since this is an example, I will turn this into a Fortification lot to have 0 people, and I will choose for it to face North.


Now we click “Convert”


Ah! Look at that, even more options now. Here, we can now either “Convert from Custom Building,” “Save Lot as Template,” “Insure,” or “Reinsure.”

Since it’s not damaged, and looks exactly how I want, we next need to Click “Save Lot as Template” (the third option), and I will name it “Mansion Fortification” with “mansionfortification” as the file name and click “Save”. Remember these names, as now they have been converted into actual files and we will have to find them!


So, now we are going to have to exit the game. Upon exiting the game, you will have to open your “File Explorer.” You can access either from your task bar at the bottom of your desktop, or if you hit the “Windows” key on your keyboard, you can type “File Explorer” and then hit “Enter.” The following is what should appear, or be very similar:


Above and in Blue, I’ve highlighted what I recommend you should enable. This is the Preview Pane. This will create a window on the right-hand side of your screen that will allow you to preview contents of either images, text documents, or word documents without having to click in to access them. This will be useful later on for when I explain the mod structure, as the preview pane works differently than an open document and can let you “see” things for how they appear as actual text. I know this may sound confusing now, but just as an example, things written in Notepad++ and then converted to just generic Notepad will normally read as gibberish should you try to open the file. Using the Preview Pane, things can start to be made clear!

In Red, I have marked where to begin clicking to find the files, the next image will show you the chain structure of files you have to enter. Just note that the last file will not read exactly like the name that appears in the image, but rather should just be “player” followed by a random string of numbers. If you see two or more player names, then know that your files are somewhere within them, and you will likely have to check all “player” files until you find them. Whichever file contains them, that tells you your Player ID number, and future lots you save can be found under that file.

The actual files we saved can be found by following a chain of folders:


So, marked by the Red Box, I followed the chain of folders starting at “Program Files (x86)” in order to navigate to this folder within Voxel Turf. There will be other folders that you will pass along the way, but for now we want to focus our concentration on the “Voxel Turf” folder that led to this section.

Marked by the Blue Box, are the two files that we just saved. These are the important files that we will need to proceed with in the next section.

The two files, will be identified by .lot and .txt extensions, if you do not have these indentifiers visible as .lot or .txt, I strongly encourage you enable the following:


In File explorer, go to View --> Options --> View (inside Folder Options) --> uncheck “Hide extensions for known file types” --> click apply

In addition, I encourage that for the small amounts of editing we will do later on, you use an unmodified version of notepad. This is because there is a bug that can occur where files during an upload process might be treated as Macintosh should Notepad++ be used. As such, the steps you will see in this guide will be done using the default Windows version of Notepad.

At this point, I would encourage Copying, rather than moving, these files to the location I’m about to describe. Because once you modify them, they will be different from the files stored under your player[number] folder.

Next take these two files (as copies) to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Voxel Turf\mods

Again, following that same navigational structure used earlier.


Now, for simplicity, just temporarily place the .lot and .txt files inside this folder as is. They will be moved further down, because they have to be placed and tweaked in just the right ways. But notice in the following image, I right-clicked to create a new folder, and I named it “Mansion Fortification.” This file will be the basic folder designation for your mod, it can honestly be named something random like “Red Hot Chimichangas.” The only actual purpose of this will be to store the internal mod’s folders, but later on, should you decide to fully upload this to the workshop, it will only be used as a designator for where the actual files of this mod are located, and later drop out as the label altogether. As such, this file should be treated as a Mod Location Indicator.

The title of this subsection speaks volumes, pay very close attention as to how this is structured, because simple changes in naming might be the difference between a working mod, and an annoying glitchy bug you have to figure out for why it’s not working/loading in! Again, for what I said at the beginning, this looks complicated, but only at a glance. In reality it only actually features around 12 small steps, in which I mean a “step” as in creating and naming a folder, or adding lines of text that feature single words. I just have structured this Guide, again, to make sure readers of all levels can try and understand this.

Next, we have to go inside of the “Mansion Fortification” file and create two sub folders called “lots” and “packs”

The structure will look like the following:


Note, in the above image I used the Blue line to separate individual images, so the blue line is just snapshots to the interior. The focus should be on the Green to show how this was created, along with the Red, showing what was done.

So now I will reference this file structure as being:

/mods/Mansion Fortification/lots/packs/Mansion Fortification

Now, we take the two files, the .lot and the .txt that we had pasted in the “mods” folder and move them down to this specific subfolder. So now it will look like this:


Next, we want to create a new text document. Right-click --> new --> text document.

Label this new document EXACTLY for how the folder appears. So, if your innermost folder is named “Super Awesome Fun Fun Time” then your text document MUST read “Super Awesome Fun Fun Time”

Additionally, go ahead and move the .lot file (click and drag) to the interior of the sub-Mansion Fortification folder, or in the previous example, what could be the “Super Awesome Fun Fun Time” folder.

I have highlighted both of the previous steps below:


Next, we get to the tricky part. Inside the mansionfortification.txt file – not the one we just created but the old one that reads:


Copy the last line of text and close the mansionfortification.txt document. Now, open the Mansion Fortification.txt document (the one we created) and paste in the line.


Now prepare for the complexity, so first I will give some background. And for what you are about to see, relax and do not be scared. Our lotpack will NOT have to look like the following, but the following is a great explanation at this step.

Up until now, what we have been doing is copying the file structure that appears in the base vanilla LotPack. For instance, see how it reads like /lots/packs/ and then has the “vanilla” folder and the “vanilla.txt” file? These are analogous to our own /lots/packs and “Mansion Fortification” folder and “Mansion Fortification.txt” file. In creating the vanilla.txt file, the Developer had created a series of “tools” or hints in what I will describe as what the computer reads as “ignore this line of text.” He created these # marks to explain exactly how to structure the file. So, I will leave this here as a generic example. I would encourage you to go and look through these hints to have an understanding of what it means, but I will do my best to try and translate it out here so it does not seem as jumbled. Should you wish to open this document, however, I would encourage opening it with Notepad++ or similar coding program, as the default Notepad will read it as a convoluted mess of randomness.


So, anyway let’s go back to our mods/Mansion Fortification/lots/packs folder:

What I’m going to do now, is essentially copy over the spaces in between the #s that you saw in the previous example. So, at its essence the final Mansion Fortification.txt file will look like:

Notice how there are 6 individual lines reading in order:

LOTPACK
Mansion Fortification
0
1
LessThan16symbls
0 ; mansionfortification ; Mansion Fortification ; FORTIFICATION ; 0; 1.0 ; 1.0 ; ; ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav

Line № 1, reading “LOTPACK” must be kept this way. The purpose of this line is to tell the computer what kind of mod this is. It’s a LotPack mod. You will see these appear as you load into the game designating the type of mod!

Line № 2, reading “Mansion Fortification” is just the name of the mod, so for what you want it to appear as, this is where you name it! So, if you really are dead set on naming it “Red Hot Chimichangas,” you can do that here!

Line № 3, reading “0” just has to be a number between 0 and 255. For simplicity’s sake, I always just use 0. I haven’t tried with other numbers, but I’m sure they would work. You can create large LotPacks using just the 0 number, so I haven’t particularly figured out its use.

Line № 4, reading “1” is the same thing as Line № 3

Line № 5, reading “LessThan16symbls” is supposed to do exactly as it says. You have to create a random string of letters that will be unique amongst the LotPacks. Given the relative size of the market, that should not be too hard. You can probably name things like “bukavsmansfort” and that will be valid. The only catch is, is that you cannot go above 16 symbols. So, for instance, if I labeled this line as “bukavsmansionfortification” then it would not load, and I’d be busy scratching my head trying to figure out why this mod would not load.

Line № 6, the final required line, reading “0 ; mansionfortification ; Mansion Fortification ; FORTIFICATION ; 0; 1.0 ; 1.0 ; ; ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav” designates the “flags” and modifiers for the lot. I will not go into too much detail here for what each of these numbers and strings mean, but I will tell you that this will be the primary topic of § 4 infra. I will tell you that the second string, reading “mansionfortification” should never be changed. That’s the identifier to the .lot file we put in the folder next to this “Mansion Foritification.txt” document, and any modification of this particular line will make an unreadable LotPack. If you are curious for an additional glimpse of this, you can also see the vanilla file alluded to, two screenshots ago.

So, remember, since the computer does NOT read the “#” symbols when executing the program; in the original vanilla file, what the Developer has done is, he basically created a LotPack that looks like:

LOTPACK
Voxel Turf Vanilla Lotpack
0
1
Vanilla
[all of the strings in the base vanilla game appear here]

Lastly, if you do go into the actual vanilla folder to see all of the .lots, you will notice how many of them there are. This is because this is the true definition of a “pack.” Each of these files correlate to one of the № 6 string lots designated in the vanilla.txt file accompanying it. Later on in this Guide in § 4, I will teach you how to upload multiple lots in an actual pack!

So now with our Mansion Fortification.txt file it essentially follows the same structure, and thus rounding out this Section!

The last thing to do for it to be truly done, is sadly get rid of the mansionfortification.txt file. Remember the original one? The one that had all of the #s inside of it? We are going to delete that one as it is no longer necessary. You could choose to leave it here, but it’s not necessary for the mod to be completed. At this point, we actually have a completed mod as it stands! The last step will be to test it. And with that, you will have finished your LotPack mod! Congratulations! ☺


See? There it is!

So after creating your LotPack to your satisfaction, the next step will be to upload it to the Steam Workshop.

But before we get there, we have to give the mod a little bit of life and take a Screenshot to represent your mod (technically it does not have to be a screenshot, but those are generally what’s used). In order to do that, we just need to go back into Voxel Turf, and when the screen looks exactly how we want it, we just have to hit F12 on our Keyboard and a picture will be saved to your computer. In order to access this picture, you just need to open your Steam Desktop App Library and click on “Voxel Turf,” scroll down to the bottom of the Voxel Turf game page, the one where you would launch the game from, and lastly click on “VIEW SCREENSHOT LIBRARY” --> “SHOW ON DISK”:


Afterwards, the game will pop up the file explorer window relative to your Voxel Turf Screenshots. Oh look! The building screenshot I took is at the bottom!


Next, we will have to copy this image over to our Voxel Turf/mods folder back under: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Voxel Turf\mods

Once there, we just need to drag this file inside of the directory, which we have called “Mansion Fortification”

Once copied, your folder will look like:


Now we just have to rename this image “thumbnail” so that it will be easier to upload when it reads as “thumbnail.jpg”

The final version of a pack ready to upload will look like:



So, going back to your mod file (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Voxel Turf\mods), you first need to drag and drop your completed “Mod” folder, the one reading as “Mansion Fortification” into the “upload” folder


Now we should access the actual upload folder, which should now look like this:


Here we are now going to have to access “upload.txt” and begin the process of editing the file:


This should be the default view that you see when you open this document for the first time. At its core, the upload file actually consists of these 11 lines of text, highlighted in Red, because as mentioned in § 2, the computer program ignores the “#” symbols for lines of text.

Before proceeding, take notice that everything here is Case Sensitive. So, if you have to type the word “YES” (such as in the Red 2) Line) the computer will not be able to read “yes” or even “Yes.” Case names MUST match exactly, and therefore we MUST write “YES”

Since, we are creating a new upload file, we are going to have to set the Red 1) line to a “0” because we are uploading a NEW mod to Steam. If you have previous mods, you can find them in the top left corner of your Steam Desktop app when browsing the Workshop. You can use this number for going back and modifying future LotPacks. For instance, here is the Voxel Winery’s identification number. I’m showing this as an example, so that in the future, should you want to edit an already uploaded LotPack, you replace the “0” with the relevant Id number. In the Voxel Winery’s case, my first line would actually read “1150505297”

However, since we are uploading for the first time, we will keep this digit reading as “0”

For the Red 2) Line, this line designates if we want to upload the mod to Steam, naturally we should therefore set this line to read: “YES”

For the Red 3) Line, this line will determine what it is we want this title to appear as on the Workshop. This really doesn’t matter, because you can go back and edit Title names on the workshop anytime you wish, but for now let’s keep it simple and title this “Mansion Fortification”

For the Red 4) Line, this line relates back to the original title we gave it. Remember in § 1 when I was joking about naming it “Red Hot Chimichangas” the one that would have contained the /lots/packs/Mansion Fortification structure? Well, that’s what this line does. Since we were being convenient in naming it “Mansion Fortification” then we will also write on this line, “Mansion Fortification”. Just remember that this line is for that initial mod name. This does not relate to the interior files, only where everything is stored. Further, this is all relative to the location of the Upload folder, so that’s why we had to drag the whole “Mansion Fortification” into here. It’s so we can type in this name to tell the program where to find this mod file!

For the Red 5) Line, this line is your visibility line. Since we want to share this mod with the world, we will set this to “PUBLIC”. The other options presented in this file are “FRIENDS_ONLY” and “PRIVATE”. These essentially mean that publishing will be just as they say, where either only you can view it, or where it can be shared with you Steam friends. This also does not matter so much since you can change the visibility automatically from Steam. So, since we want to share this with the world, I will label this as “PUBLIC”

For the Red 6) Line, this line is where you can put your description. It can be anything you want to describe the lot. This is something that can also be changed via the workshop page on Steam

For the Red 7) Line, this line should be left alone. This tells the program that you have ended the discussion section, and now wish to proceed to the next actual line of text. The reason this line exists is because you are able to use multiple lines of text in the description, and so if the computer just kept reading, theoretically your description might become jumbled with the other # symbols, and that would just be a mess. As such, we will always leave this as “END_DESCRIPTION”

For the Red 8) and Red 9) Lines, these essentially function in the same way as the Red 6) and Red 7) Lines. So, if you want to add a change log, you may. Generally, these lines will only ever be used should you desire to go back and update your mod multiple times. Otherwise, these lines should just be left alone, or you can just type “V.1” on the Red 8) Line if you just want to keep it very simple.

For the Red 10) Line, this is where you put all of the “tags” that help to identify your mod when it is being searched/filed on the Steam Workshop. This is crucial for LotPacks in particular because if you do not have the tag “lotpack” then this will never be visible as a LotPack when checked and the only way your Mod can ever be found is through someone rummaging through every single mod that’s ever been uploaded to Voxel Turf. In fact, the profile picture for this Guide uses the check box for Lotpack to illustrate this point for LotPack creation. As such, this line MUST at a bare minimum feature the word “lotpack” at least. I will not lie, when I say should you forget, the omittance of this line will not cause your mod to fail to upload, but it will make it nearly impossible to be seen and shared. You also need to add the tags here to this upload.txt document because as of the time I am writing this, Steam does NOT let you edit the tags from the Workshop page.

In addition, you can add other random tags to help your mod stand out. For instance, you can add things like “house” or “residential.” These tags can help your mod appear when players search for these terms on the workshop. An example for how this will look side by side would be:

lotpack ; mods ; house ; residential

For the Red 11) Line, we have reached the full circle. Here is where you place the directory of your thumbnail. Since we dropped the thumbnail immediately inside our first “Mansion Fortification” folder, we would therefore have to make this look like:

PICTURE ; Mansion Fortification/thumbnail.jpg

Once all of this is completed: we should have a final product that looks like this (of course, the Red numbers are there only for your guidance, and are not actually written there):


Now save this file.

With this, there is now one more step, and we will be completed.

You are about to do the most difficult step… Are you ready? This will be the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do, requiring many hours of labor and complex work in order to succeed. Some of you will not succeed in your trials, and will never be seen or heard from again… With that being said:

Go to the Voxel Turf page on the Steam App, and click “Play”

☺

That’s it. You’re done! Congratulations on uploading your first LotPack! The finished product can now be viewed on Workshop, under “Your Files” and shortly will appear Public

This is how it should look:

Work in Progress:

In this section, we will be discussing conversion of lots from the basic designations as Residential (HOUSING), Industry, Office, and Fortification; and thus will be focusing on the true modification of these lots into Parks, Ruins, Bandit Bases, and Commerce lots. Additionally, we will focus on special designations that can be used within these lots in order to spawn things such as Cars, Helicopters, Merchants, Security, and Trolleys. Even further, I will teach you how to create “Zone” designations for the purpose of creating Trespass areas and Bank Vaults. Lastly, I will show you how to use specialty lot flags to tag your buildings as having basements, not requiring road access, or being the equivalent of a road.

As such, a lot of this building will take place inside the strings part of the .txt file. Remember that this is the .txt file that appears on the inside of the folder. For simplicity, I'm also going to place the lotpack file back in the mod folder, because this will still be done during the modification stage before it would be finalized and ready to upload:


LOTPACK
Mansion Fortification
0
1
LessThan16symbls
0 ; mansionfortification ; Mansion Fortification ; FORTIFICATION ; 0; 1.0 ; 1.0 ; ; ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav

The focus for this section will deal entirely with the last string of text:

0 ; mansionfortification ; Mansion Fortification ; FORTIFICATION ; 0; 1.0 ; 1.0 ; ; ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav

I will now begin to dissect for how this is structured between the semicolons. Everything we do from here until Skyscrapers will be branched off of this string of text.

The following is a quick walkthrough of what each mean:

ID number within LotPack ; Interior Filename ; Lot Name ; Building Type ; Population Occupying the Building ; Base Cost Multiplier ; Income Yield ; Type of Business Category ; Population Required for Capacity ; Residual Subcategory ; Possible Special Effects ; Author of the Lot ; Zones / Options

Quickly note how after "Author" I do not have an additional semicolon for zones, because the Fortification has no added zones - Further note how in the original saved string of text there are semicolons that are empty and don't have indicators even though there is a description for what could be there.

So what do these mean?

ID number within LotPack
The first number, in the Mansion Fortification's case, the 0; is a sequential list indicating the number of lots in the lotpack. You'll always start at 0, but if you add another lot beneath this, then it will be listed as a 1. The next lot beneath that, will be the 2, etc., etc.

Interior Filename
This is the name that will match whatever filename you have on the inside of the folder. I mentioned this supra § 2, and thus will state if the lot you want to tie this string to is named mansionfortification.lot, then you will leave this as mansionfortification. Of course, if you rename the .lot file, then you would have to rename this part to whatever you named said file.

Lot Name
This is the name that will appear in the "Build" menu of the game. Generally it will be what you chose to save it as when you decided to save it as a template, but you can change the name here if you so choose. My example is left as just "Mansion Fortification"

Building Type
Now we get to the fun stuff! In Voxel Turf, there are the following template save building types: 1) FORTIFICATION, 2) HOUSING, 3) OFFICE, 4) INDUSTRY - any of these will be the default, but there are additional ones that will require special tweaking should you add them as labels: 5) COMMERCE, 6) DECORATION, 7) PARK, 8) MOBBASE_VACANT, 9) MOBBASE_HILLS, 10) MOBBASE_SEA, 11) MOBBASE_BIG, 12) MOBBASE_SPECIAL, and 13) RUIN

I'll discuss each of these in their respective sections infra § 4.1

Population Occupying the Building
Although not present in Mansion Fortification example, this will denote the number of workers occupying the lot. Let me pull up the string for the Vanilla Warehouse #2 as an example:

55 ; warehouseold ; Warehouse #2 ; INDUSTRY ; 4 ; 1.0 ; 1.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Twigz

The population occupying the building, AKA the workers working there, is marked as 4. This means 4 workers will work there. In theory, you could make an open plaza and if it's set to industry, you can change that number to say... 10000 and you would never have to worry about demand again, but where's the fun in that? As a quick review, the 55 at the beginning means this is the 56th (since 0 is counted) lot in the vanilla lotpack.

Base Cost Multiplier
This denotes the base cost. Using this you can make something more or less expensive based on the base value of the number of blocks used. So say you have a lot made entirely out of 100 units of steel (minus grass blocks for simplicity). Then, the rate will be 100x($400/4) where 100=number of blocks, and $400 = costs of each individual block, and the /4 is since placement costs are quartered the value of the lot. As such, at 1.0 the base cost should be $10,000 to place counting just for those steel blocks. If you change that number to 2.0, then the base cost will be $20,000. At 0.25, it would be $2,500, respectively.

You can see an example of this in the previous warehouse example. By default, this is set to 1.0 but you can get very creative. For instance, the Nuclear Power Plant looks like:

0 ; npp ; Nuclear Power Plant ; INDUSTRY ; 750 ; 0.9926245 ; 1.0 ; ; ; ; ; N_Bukav, itsJeras, FinHart09, AV, Aimsii

I have it set to 0.9926245 because that will make the base cost an even $4,500,000!

Income Yield
Similar to the logic above, but in the reverse for making income. By default, the game calculates income at full capacity at being able to break even at 400 ticks. So if a building cost $400,000 - then every tick it would make exactly $1,000 by default when set to 1.0. You can get very creative here too, and if you wanted to create a super OP building, you can do that. For instance, setting it to 10.0 would mean that the $400,000 would now make $10,000 every tick. I personally always try to keep it at a default 1.0, unless I'm doing special buildings. For instance, the sawmill has a special tick modifier like this:

30 ; sawmill ; Sawmill ; INDUSTRY ; 30 ; 1.0 ; 1.4 ; ; 0 ; ; HILLS_NEAR ; Twigz

Ignore the HILLS_NEAR for now, but focus on the 1.4. That means that by default this building makes 1.4x the income it otherwise would have made by default!

Type of Business Category
I'll discuss this more in the Commerce section infra § 4.1(c), but generally it denotes what type of Commerce building this will be. - for all other buildings that are not commerce lots, leave this and the following two blank.

Population Required for Capacity
Again, this will also appear in § 4.1(c) because this is important for determining how many people need to be in the building's build radius to be at full income making potential. - You don't actually have to put a number here, but Snapper tends to put the number 0 to be extra sure. You can see this above in the sawmill example. Normally I just leave it blank, as I've never actually seen it have an adverse effect in leaving it blank vs. leaving it at 0.

Residual Subcategory
Again, to be discussed in § 4.1(c) - but this is the fun section where I'll give a minor spoiler and state this is about defining your markets, for very specialized business types ;-)

Possible Special Effects
There are 4 possible special effects that can be denoteed in the game: 1) GRAIN, 2) GRAIN_NEAR, 3) HILLS_NEAR, and 4) WATER_NEAR. What these do is denote if the building requires special inputs, or is in itself an input. For instance, a lot labeled GRAIN, will tell the game it's a grain lot and thus serve as an input for something labeled: GRAIN_NEAR. I believe you may also label things as 5) WATER, and 6) HILLS, but I have yet to try and use them, since I'm not sure what that purpose would particularly be - except maybe reforestation... Regardless, this section is rarely used, but here are three examples: grain, silo, and oil rig

Compare and contrast the following examples:
28 ; wheatfield_grown ; Wheat Field (Small) ; INDUSTRY ; 0 ; 0.5 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; GRAIN ; Twigz
33 ; silo ; Grain Silo ; INDUSTRY ; 24 ; 1.5 ; 1.4 ; ; 0 ; ; GRAIN_NEAR ; Twigz
0 ; oilrig ; Oil Rig ; INDUSTRY ; 350 ; 1.0 ; 1.66 ; ; ; ; WATER_NEAR ; Nikolai_Bukav

Here, the wheat field and silo work by denoting one another as being GRAIN and GRAIN_NEAR. This means that the Grain Silo will look for those lots labeled GRAIN (and they don't even have to be called wheat fields or have wheat, but rather just need the string label GRAIN), and then use them for its output. In a similar manner, the Oil Rig will look for adjacent water lots, per the WATER_NEAR label to obtain its max output. Last time I checked, I believe the ratio required for max output is 66% of the surrounding lots in the building's "near" radius needed to be of those denoted types of lots whether it be Grain, Water, or Hills.

Things like OFFICE_NEAR or INDUSTRY_NEAR or even something like say... GOLFCOURSE_NEAR do not exist in the game even if you labeled something in this section as GOLFCOURSE or OFFICE. So, currenlty the game is limited to using GRAIN, WATER, HILLS, and their respective NEAR variants.

Author of the Lot
Technically called "Creator." But by default this will be your player name. You could of course change it to be longer, or shorter, or even some really funny name. You can add commas to it to denote multiple authors, but those will have to be input manually, and will not appear even if the player contributed during a game. For instance, see the above labeled Nuclear Power Plant to see a general example for how to input multiple authors. Just be advised space will be limited as they appear in the bottom right of the lot building preview menu in-game.

Zones/Options
This is the heart of special building. In the previous examples, I omitted some of these special designators so you can see how they look like similar to being saved as the template lots. These strings can get, very, very massive. For instance, here is the complete Oil Rig String from the "Oil Industry" Workshop LotPack:

0 ; oilrig ; Oil Rig ; INDUSTRY ; 350 ; 1.0 ; 1.66 ; ; ; ; WATER_NEAR ; Nikolai_Bukav ; YOFFSET, -7 ; HELIPAD, 1,1.0, (41,39,11),(43,39,9) ; NOSPAWN ; NO_REQUIRE_ROAD_ACCESS ; NOCANALBARRIER ; PLAYER_UNIQUE

Everything starting at YOFFSET and ending at PLAYER_UNIQUE are the Zones and Options. I will explain these alongside other options later infra § 4.2. But in general:

Zones are those that allow you to spawn things like cars, boats, hovercrafts, helicopters, security, and merchants. They also can denote crime zones such as when and where characters commit trespass and signals loot to spawn in chests within the trespass zone. This will be a focus for why we always build facing North/Up.

Options include things like being able to designate basements, or limit the number of buildings that can appear. These can include things like also being to specially label the lots as counting as Roads such as in the Decorative Roads LotPack, or not requiring roads such as in the case of the Oil Industry LotPack.

Again, both of these designations will be discussed in detail infra § 4.2.

So this is going to be the part where we actually start messing with the special strings now that you've had an overview. Taking our "Mansion Fortification.txt" File as an example, we can mess with these strings in order to make it turn into different things, namely DECORATION, PARK, RUIN, BANDIT (variants), and COMMERCE:

:I'm combining both of these because realistically they are almost the same thing. The only true difference is one appears under decoration (and can be converted into a base), and the other appears under fortifications. Coincidentally, however, it is the PARK that appears under the build tab's "Decor" menu, and the DECORATION that appears under "Bases".

So what do these lots do? The Parks provide the decor buff that increases the value / multiplier of surrounding lots' income. So the 1.0 may be multiplied to 1.03. Anyway, to create these lots, you merely need to label the lot as a park, and I would recommend dropping the income, since these designations do not actually cost you any income to maintain per hourly tick. Here's an example of the vanilla sculpture lot:

29 ; sculpture ; Sculpture ; PARK ; 0 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Twigz

and here's a comparison for the Construction Yard, also in vanilla:

13 ; conyard ; Construction Yard ; DECORATION ; 0 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Twigz

so, if we wanted to change the Mansion Fortification, then it would look like:

0 ; mansionfortification ; Mansion Fortification ; PARK ; 0; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav
(Note though, that I dropped the income multiplier to a 0.0 as discussed infra § 4, since I do not want the park to produce any possible income)

and here is how it will appear in game with that exact string:



:Substantively, the same logic as the DECORATION designation. These are built into the land, and they do not actually do anything except take up space, or make for fun hideaways. They cannot be placed, but rather can appear randomly throughout the map. Examples of this type of lot include the destroyed houses, or the old farmsteads with wells. They can be bought, and you can convert them into a base if you wanted, but here's how they look:

90 ; ruin2 ; Ruin 2 ; RUIN ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Twigz

Note though the change to the population: the "1" after "RUIN ;". I would probably change this to a 1 as well, but I do not believe it will have any substantial effect on its actual spawning in or not. I would only keep the "1" for uniformity in occupation, since you probably do have some person living there to count for some type of population!

and here is an example of the string for the Chichen Bloxa LotPack (Also in the Workshop) as a Ruin:

1 ; chichenitza ; Chichen Bloxa ; RUIN ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav

If you are subscribed to this particular LotPack, you could see this string inside the Workshop folder at:


and here is how it would look in game if we changed the Chichen Bloxa.txt file at the bottom of such workshop mod to read like:

LOTPACK
Chichen Bloxa
0
1
chichenbloxa
0 ; chichenitza ; Chichen Bloxa ; RUIN ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav


Note, the Ruins will only appear when you initially spawn them in the world through a new world generation, and for the most part function exactly as a decor lot except are not able to be placed. The only reason I have the missing LotPack identifier, is because this photo is from an older world spawn I did Ruin testing in, and then I subsequently decided to remove it as a world spawn since it made building very difficult should I have to tear one of these down to build roads!

Creating a Bandit base takes some planning - and they can only be built in Build Mode, or on a cheat enabled server. In building a bandit base, there are two things that will be required to keep with the theme of the game. First, you will want to have burning barrels, which will allow you bandits to spawn around you. Second, you will want to have chests for loot to spawn in upon being captured. Since, this isn't a building guide per se, I will keep the main building portion short, and rather focus on just the string aspect.

To give yourself spawners: you will want to type the following into the chat, "T"
/give "[bandit spawning item]" [number you want to receive]

It will look like this if I want 80 of each, but I strongly encourage you to just use 1 at a time, because they can be very, very difficult to place when choosing what type of bandits/goons you want to spawn and then accidentally place another barrel.


"Grey Burning Barrel"-s are the common spawners. These barrels will spawn 3-5 bandits depending on the level of the base.

"Red Burning Barrel"-s are half spawners, so they will only spawn 2-3 bandits (I think).

"Yellow Burning Barrel"-s, I believe are quarter spawners. These are the ones you should probably use if you want to create rocket bandits, because otherwise, it would be pure chaos.

The "Single Spawner"-s, are just what they say they are. They will serve to spawn single bandits (think guards). I strongly encourage you using /give "Single Spawner" 1, because they are invisible, and you can easily lose track of them as you place them, especially if you accidentally place mulitple on top of one another!

Ok, so let's turn this Mansion Fortification into a bandit base:
But that's the overview for the bandit bases. The latter portion, doing the chests are entirely up to you, and they can be found under Build --> Mechanisms

For this example, I'm redoing my Mansion Fortification base. It's the same redone as a "bandit" base. For this example, I added a grey barrel, a single spawner, and two chests. Here's a quick rundown, and it's virtually following the same steps as above:

The above image is an example of a placed single spawner. See how it's invisible?

Above are two images of what I did this lot as. I placed the previous lot, and used "/lot free" while standing in the South West Corner to free the lot, then I bought it and started remodifying it. You wouldn't have to do this if you just want to do a Bandit base from the get-go, but I want to keep it simple using the same lot again and again. I saved the new lots as a fortification lot, so I had to go back and change the last string. I took the string from where I save the template lots, and then I copied it and added it to my already existing Mansion Fortification.txt file. There, I added in MOBBASE_BIG, and I used the same structure in the vanilla.txt file, which is again found at: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Voxel Turf\lots\packs\vanilla.txt I copied the structure of the MOBBASE_BIG text, but edited it to fit this lotpack as you will see below:
Above is the now updated .txt file to reflect that there are two buildings - one a Base, the other, the new Large Bandit base.
Above is the new interior of the sub-Mansion Fortification folder holding the actual lots.

Now to test - starting a new world:

So, continuing where we left off, it's safe to say it definitely worked uploading as the MOBBASE_BIG, which means it loads into the map in the same way as the massive Bandit fort uploads, so there should only be one per map if you're playing on a small city. But that's not all. There's more! We actually could change it up to get it to spawn more frequent by changing out the tags! There are four total tags defining Bandit Bases:

1) MOBBASE_BIG
2) MOBBASE_VACANT
3) MOBBASE_SEA
4) MOBBASE_HILLS
5) MOBBASE_SPECIAL

The BIG is the Bandit Fortress, the 2x3 lot. There will only be 1 or two per map depending on the size of your city if you're playing in vanilla
The VACANT is the most common type. There are many per map, and they are all the 1x1 lots yousee
The SEA are the ones that spawn on the ocean/water. In vanilla, these look like small platforms.
The HILLS are the ones that spawn in the Hills. In vanilla, these are the bunkers

If for some reason the previous pictures did not load, the text used to make the Bandit Base looks like:

1 ; mansionfortificationbandit ; Mansion Fortification (Bandit) ; MOBBASE_BIG ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav

(note the first (1) is there only because it's now the 2nd lot being defined in the lotpack, after the original fortification lot (seen 3 pictures previously). If you're just uploading the pack as just the pure bandit base with nothing else, this would be a 0 for you)

But let's have some fun. Suppose we want multiple to appear, and lower the spawn rates to be just that of the smaller bandit bases. Although the Voxel Turf Wiki says small bandit bases must be limited to 1x1, I like to break the rules a little bit.

So if you change it to:

1 ; mansionfortificationbandit ; Mansion Fortification (Bandit) ; MOBBASE_VACANT ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav

then this lot will spawn multiple at the same rate the 1x1 bandit bases spawn. If you change to:

1 ; mansionfortificationbandit ; Mansion Fortification (Bandit) ; MOBBASE_SEA ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav

then the lot will spawn on the water as a Water Bandit base. However, you may not want to do this quite yet until you read § 4.2(b)(1) infra regarding basements, because there is a method to get water to spawn underneath it to where the lot is not magically floating above the water (although that would look really awesome if it spawned on air - Avenger's Hovercarrier, anyone?

The same idea as the MOBBASE_SEA works for HILLS such as when you change it to:

1 ; mansionfortificationbandit ; Mansion Fortification (Bandit) ; MOBBASE_HILLS ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav

Generally, the MOBBASE_SPECIAL, is the one that spawns relatively close to the world spawn, and the vanilla version has a helicopter and hovercraft spapwner: Here is an example for that one:

103 ; mobhelifield ; Bandit Helifield ; MOBBASE_SPECIAL ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Twigz ; HOVERCRAFT, 1,1.0,205, (23,11,14),(23,11,14) ; HELIPAD, 1,1.0, 180, (7,11,22),(7,11,22)

And here are comparisons to some of the vanilla bandit lots in the game:

83 ; mobbase ; Bandit Base ; MOBBASE_VACANT ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Twigz
84 ; mobhouse ; Bandit House ; MOBBASE_VACANT ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Twigz
85 ; mobhouse2 ; Bandit House 2 ; MOBBASE_VACANT ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Twigz
86 ; mobbunker ; Bandit Bunker ; MOBBASE_HILLS ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Twigz ; YOFFSET, -5
87 ; seabase ; Bandit Platform ; MOBBASE_SEA ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Twigz ; YOFFSET, -1 ; HOVERCRAFT, 1,1.0,90, (3,15,4),(3,15,4)
88 ; mobfort ; Bandit Fort ; MOBBASE_BIG ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Twigz

For now, I would recommend ignoring the text after Twigz on the HILLS, SEA, and SPECIAL versions, because that text will be discussed infra §§ 4.2(a)(3), (b)(1). Also, since you now have an understanding of what *most* of the digits 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; mean since they were discussed supra § 4, then there shouldn't be a need to entirely discuss further. I'm certain you can definitely change these numbers, but I'm not sure what the effects of changing them would be. Again, see § 4 supra should you want to experiment and change them.

I'm placing this here, because technically the logic follows the same as the bandit bases, in that you cannot place them. However, and unlike in a bandit base, these do not need the barrels or spawners, but rather goons will automatically spawn there.

This designation will cause enemy NPC factions to develop their bases using these types of lots. So say the Countryclub or Neo National Front is expanding, then this will be the type of base they use. Here is an example from the base game:

91 ; playerbase1 ; Faction Base 1 ; FACTION_BASE ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Twigz

The only designator is that FACTION_BASE is used. The same economic indicators in the 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; should generally apply. I haven't experimented with changing these numbers, but I doubt it would make a real difference. Beyond this, there's not really much more to say, except the other factions will now use these as possible bases.

I have no idea what would happen should you attempt to give the NPC Factions something that's not a 1x1 base, so my knowledge here is very limited, but can definitely be experimented with should you so choose.

I'd like to start by stating these are probably some of the most moddable lots that Voxel Turf has to offer, and they can get confusing very fast. So, I'll do my best to keep it simple, but there will definitely be multiple types of commerce lots, and it takes a bit of modding to really get them to work.

So, what is a commerce lot? They can be identified by COMMERCE flags, which tell the game that this is a commerce lot. The COMMERCE flag will go in the same location as with the other types like OFFICE, INDUSTRY, FORTIFICATION, PARK, MOBBASE_BIG, etc.

So, for the start of the commerce lot, you'll want to structure it like:

0 ; mansionfortification ; Mansion Fortification ; COMMERCE ; 0 ; 1.0 ; 1.0 ; ; ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav

We're going to likely want to change the lot name, but for now let's change FORTIFICATION to COMMERCE, and set employees to 0, and base cost to 1.0, and base income to 1.0

Now this is where the fun begins. Notice the ; ; ; ; ; after the 1.0? We can now start filling them in:

Remember!!!!!!! A lot is structured to read as:

ID number within LotPack ; Interior Filename ; Lot Name ; Building Type ; Population Occupying the Building ; Base Cost Multiplier ; Income Yield ; Type of Business Category ; Population Required for Capacity ; Residual Subcategory ; Possible Special Effects ; Author of the Lot ; Zones / Options

The semicolons immediately following the Income Yield -- and are the most relevant for Commerce Lots -- are: Type of Business Category, Population Required for Capacity, and Residual Subcategory. The following is a description of each:

Business Category
In the game, there are Eight (8) different types of categories recognized by all capital letters. These designate certain businesses to by classified as one another, but do not directly impact competition. Instead, these will be used to provide certain buffs like desirability when residential and office buildings are placed near them. So, the eight types are:

EDU - Education
ENT - Entertainment
GOOD - Good*
GROC - Grocery Store
HEAL - Health
SERV - Services
TRAN - Transportation
VEH - Vehicle

(* the label GOOD is needed to be used in conjunction with trespass zones if you want to use Trespass Zones effectively. See infra § 4.2(a)(1))

Here's an example of one of these flags using the Education building:

72 ; school ; Education Facility ; COMMERCE ; 150 ; 1.0 ; 1.0 ; EDU ; 1600 ; Education ; ; Twigz

see how it has the EDU? it means it will be flagged as an Education Building and provide the (Near Education +) Bonus!

Population Required for Capacity
This is the required population that needs to be living in the radius. So, let's say a building needs 200 customers to reach maximum population --> you would write 200. Taking the same education building in the previous example, I will change the 1600 to 200:

72 ; school ; Education Facility ; COMMERCE ; 150 ; 1.0 ; 1.0 ; EDU ; 200 ; Education ; ; Twigz

The change in the 200 now means I only need the radius to be surrounded by 200 people to reach maximum capacity!

Residual Subcategory
This is my personal favorite, and is best used in making Entertainment and food based buildings. This is the one where you can define your markets for competition against other buildings. For instance, here is Hairy Bogans:

14 ; hairybogans ; Hairy Bogans ; COMMERCE ; 16 ; 1.0 ; 1.0 ; ENT ; 800 ; Fast Food ; ; Twigz

What "Fast Food" means, is that it will compete with other businesses labeled as "Fast Food." So if there are two "Fast Food" labels in the same area, then customers will be apportioned among them. You have A LOT of flexibility here. You can create completely unique businesses like "Hotel", "Gas Station", "Luxury Food", or "Industrial Port." Literally, your mind is the only limit for the type of business you can make. You can even make the business look like: "afosdhfoahdfoiasfoj" and that will now be recognized as a valid market type for competition!

No Commerce lot would be complete without a seller... unless, like me, you just like making explorable Tourism buildings☺... But if you want to add a Merchant to sell goods, then see the Merchants Infra §4.2(a)(2)

So now that we have covered all of the basic parts of the main strings, it's time to edit off the grid. (⌐■_■) This is the most advanced part of this Guide, and formatting will be key. A missing or extra comma is enough to be the the difference between a working spawn and a non working spawn. In general, this section will teach you how to spawn the following:

Zones, for denoting Trespass areas, which are useful for gun raids, jewelry heists, and bank heists.

Merchant spawning, which is a special subdivision of zones,

and

Cars, Hovercraft, Helicopters, Boats, Trolleys

I've organized it like that based on level of difficulty for each.

What this Guide will NOT be able to teach you is how to spawn tanks, or the Speedy Car, since those are hard coded, and are not inside of the base files used for spawning.

You will also learn how to add flags to make Basements; Special Characteristics - such as when built next to canals, if it does not need road access, or is itself a road; and some form of Spawn Amounts.

Let's get started!

Build with the Entrance Facing North.
Build with the Entrance Facing North.
Always Build with the Entrance Facing North if you want to make it easy to place Zones, Spawns, and Vehicles

I cannot stress that enough for this section, because this is where some math comes in. Let's say you've built the perfect lot, you have a helipad that you really, really want to place. Well, to do that, you're going to need to add a zone to the end of your lot. Remember a basic lot will look something like:

0 ; mansionfortification ; Mansion Fortification ; PARK ; 0; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav

Zones, Spawns, and other Options will be those that follow the author's name, Nikolai_Bukav in my case. So how do you start making a zone? you start by adding a semicolon (;) after the author's name. So if we want to start adding zones, we're going to want to make that string look like:

0 ; mansionfortification ; Mansion Fortification ; PARK ; 0; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav ;

So why Build with the entrance/road direction facing North/Up? It's because of how the game calculates the lots. Remember way back in § 2, I was discussing the Southwest corner? The same logic applies when the game looks for where to place those zones inside the lot. A lot initially facing East or left will have its coordinates messed up by the game upon an attempt to place the zone. To start, I'll give you an example of a zone, a merchant spawn, and a vehicle spawn:

Zone (from the Bank)
BANK_VAULT, 0, (12, 10, 19), (4, 14, 27)

Merchant Spawn (from The Cube Pub):
SHOP, 2, FOOD_SHOP, (5, 12, 14), (5, 11, 10)

Vehicle Spawn (two from the Bandit Helifield):
HOVERCRAFT, 1,1.0,205, (23,11,14),(23,11,14) ; HELIPAD, 1,1.0, 180, (7,11,22),(7,11,22)

So, if you want to build zones, again. Please, build facing North, otherwise you're going to run into some difficulties. If you've already built facing a certain way. Save your lot, and build a copy of it facing North. You would only have to do this for getting Relative Lot Coordinates, and you would not have to save the Lot again. In this section, I will explain what those coordinates are, and how to use them to create Zones.

By default, there are two "true" types of zones. Invisible zones, and spawning zones. This section will talk about the invisible type of zones, and (a)(2) will talk about the spawning zones.

The invisible zones also contain three (3) possible zones, but I only know of two (2) that are actually used. That would be the "Trespass" or TRESSPASS Zone, and the "Bank Valut" or BANK_VAULT zone. Now, I do realize "Trespass" is spelt T-R-E-S-P-A-S-S, but the code has this command listed as T-R-E-S-S-P-A-S-S. So it's a little awkward, but the TRESSPASS is the way to get these zones to spawn.

Real quick, TRESSPASS is used to denote places inside of jewelry shops, or gun shops that you are not allowed to pass without tipping off the authorities. They also allow the specified type of GOOD (weapons or jewelry) to spawn there, since this is meant to be used with commerce buildings labeled as GOOD. BANK_VAULT is used to show where the bank's vault is located. This will allow special spawning of the important documents, money, and other types of jewels.

So how do you create a trespass zone? Let's start with the Gun Shop as an example:

60 ; gunshop ; Gun Shop ; COMMERCE ; 8 ; 1.0 ; 1.0 ; GOOD ; 600 ; Weapons ; ; Twigz ; SHOP, 1, WEAPON_SHOP, (11,11,2),(5,12,3); TRESSPASS, 0, (1,10,1),(3,13,15) ; SECURITY, 1,1, (5, 11, 2), (10,12,15)

I chose this example because it features 3 different types of zones. The Security Guard, the Gun Merchant, and The Trespass zone. I'll discuss the security and merchant later, but for now let's focus on the part that says: TRESSPASS, 0, (1,10,1),(3,13,15)

Also, notice how a semicolon (;) separates these flags. You're going to want to have a semicolon to separate out the more strings you add for zones!


So here's how this works. The Southwestern Corner of the lot. Bottom-left relative to the map direction is the coordinate are the start of the coordinates (0,0,0) The lot then extends like an X-Y grid up until (15,Z,15). (I forgot the actual height, so I left it as a Z).

But in the same way the game goes North and then to the East when using the "/lot merge" command, the same essentially applies with the coordinates. The first number is how many blocks north the lot extends, and then the 3rd number is the relative coordinate for the blocks to the East. When two sets of these blocks are combined, they will create a "Zone" or just a range of all possible blocks that exist within that zone. So to make these, you're going to have to think in the third dimension for how you want this to appear.

It's a lot easier in-game, when you're building with the entrance North Facing, and you use F3 on your Computer's Keyboard to get a relative idea of where the coordinates are. The Relative lot Coordinates, after hitting F3, will be visible on the first row of yellow text that appears.

The following is a visual representation for how the Trespass Zone in the Gun Shop actually looks according to the game.


So, how to make these zones in game, and what kinds of zones can you make. Merchants and Security are zone based, but they are discussed in the section below. So, for now, we are going to focus on the TRESSPASS and the BANK_VAULT.

To make a Trespass zone, you first want to measure the coordinates for where you want the trespass to be. Once you have written down your set of coordinates. Here's an example:


Above, and in blue, I highlighted where you can view the relative lot coordinates. In the first image, I'm a bit above ground since that was already a working building, but ground level has a Z axis of 10. So, for this example, the proper starting point would be (1,10,1) since I want to start at the first block north, the 10th block above the complete bottom, and the 1st block to the East. This matches how the description for this lot is in vanilla.txt! Second, I want to find the ending for my box by going to the other set of coordinates that I wrote down. Together, these will make my zone when I write: TRESSPASS, 0, (1,10,1),(3,13,15)

I'm not sure what the 0 in between TRESSPASS and the start of the coordinates means. But I would just leave it in there. I think it's more relevant to the other spawns, but this is the same model I would use.

Before reading this section, please get caught up on Zones. If you have already read the section on Zones, please continue!

There are two types of NPCs that you may spawn into the game. First, is Security / CDF guards, and the second are merchants.

Security and Merchants work by spawning NPCs within specified zones. So for instance, here is the Hirt Clothing Store as an example:

61 ; hirt ; Hirt Clothes Store ; COMMERCE ; 8 ; 1.0 ; 1.0 ; GOOD ; 800 ; Clothes ; ; Twigz ; SHOP, 1, CLOTHES_SHOP, (11, 12, 13), (10, 11, 10);

Your focus should be on the: SHOP, 1, CLOTHES_SHOP, (11, 12, 13), (10, 11, 10);

The word SHOP designates that this will be a merchant zone.
The 1 states how many merchants are to spawn inside of that zone.
The CLOTHES_SHOP designates the specific type of merchant that will appear
And the latter half gives the relative lot coordinates for where that merchant is to spawn. If you build facing North, you can actually see those coordinates by hitting "F3" on your Computer's Keyboard. They'll be in the top part of the screen, in yellow and read something like RelLotCoordinates: X, Z, Y

Here is a list of all possible default merchants:

JEWELRY_SHOP - These are the Jewelers. They buy and sell Jewelry
WEAPONS_SHOP - These are the Gun Store sellers. They buy and Sell guns
GENERAL_SHOP - These are the guys you find at the general store, they sell pistols and pills
METAL_SHOP - You can actually find this guy inside the Smelter. They sell metal
BUILD_SHOP - You find this merchant in the junkyard. They sell Building items
BANK_SHOP - This is your banker. They buy and sell ingots and money
CLOTHES_SHOP - This is your Hirt Clothes store person, selling clothes decals and hats
DEPT_SHOP - This is the merchant you would find in the Department Store
FOOD_SHOP - This is the person you'd find in Hairy Bogans. They sell food decals
WOOD_SHOP - The Rarest merchant, I think. They spawn in the sawmill and sell wood.
BOAT_SHOP - They spawn at marinas, and they sell boats
CAR_SHOP - They spawn in Car Yards, and will sell you basic cars
MEDIC_SHOP - They spawn at hospitals. They will sell you pills.

Security is similar, but slightly different since the structure changes. The basic structure is kind of similar to the vehicles, in that you do not have to define a secondary argument like Shop --> Gun Shop... All you have to do in this case is type "SECURITY". Here is an example of the working Security spawn taken from the Jewelry Store:

SECURITY, 1,1, (5, 11, 2), (10,12,15);

It's not a really good example, but it means that this will spawn SECURITY, the "1" that immediately follows security is the number stating how many security guards will spawn in that zone. The second 1 is for something that I have no idea what its actual purpose is, but I do know that if you change it to the matching number, that will guarantee the spawn of that number.

SECURITY, 4,4, (5, 11, 2), (10,12,15);

This would cause 4 guards to spawn in.

Reminder to Build with entrance facing North to avoid running into trobules placing!

To the extent of my knowledge, vehicles are actually one of the things I do not have 100% figured out quite yet. I have a basic understanding of how to get them to spawn, and with that I’ll explain the game’s logic.

Assuming everything is built with North facing in mind, and assuming you hit "F3" on your keyboard to find relative lot coordinates, then you're going to have to experiment with what the following examples mean:

HOVERCRAFT, 1,1.0,205, (23,11,14),(23,11,14)
HELIPAD, 1,1.0, 180, (7,11,22),(7,11,22)
VEHICLE, 4, 0.6, 90, (12,11,13),(12,11,13)
AMBULANCE, 1,1.0,0, (35,10,48),(36,11,49)
TROLLEY, 1,1.0, (10, 10, 2), (11, 11, 14)
BOAT, 3,0.14,180, (3,8,40),(3,8,40)

Each follows the following same pattern:

[Type of Vehicle] , [amount to completely appear on the entire lot] , [% chance to spawn 1.0 = 100%] , [direction], ([Xstart],[Zstart],[Ystart]),([Xend],[Zend],[Yend])

I think Amount, and Spawn Chance are what the first two numbers mean. But I am not 100% since I've seen it somewhat contradictory. But I do know direction and coordinates are correct.

HOVERCRAFT - spawns a hovercraft
HELIPAD - spawns a helicopter
VEHICLE - spawns a car
AMBULANCE - spawns an ambulance
TROLLEY - spawns a shopping cart/trolley
BOAT - spawns a yellow Lamborghini Gallardo complete with turbo charge. Just kidding. It spawns a boat!

Your directions will change based on where you want to place the vehicles. Generally, a vehicle's start point goes from the driver's door. So, if we were in Australia, the Driver's door would be on the right-hand side of the car as viewed from above, with car facing forward/up. This serves as the default start location for spawning. Same with Ambulance, Hovercraft, and Helicopter.

Direction is the fun part. Direction operates anywhere between 0 and 359. The reason this is, is because the game focuses them on a compass, starting by facing East. (Not North in this case). So, when you spawn in a vehicle relative to a lot facing North, the game will start it facing east, and based on the number of degrees entered, between 0-359, the game will rotate counter clockwise. So East --> North --> West --> South; or Right --> Up --> Left --> Down relative to the game's map.


So in the Bandit Helifield example, down below, the Helicopter will spawn in facing WEST relative to the entrance when it was built north. Here's an explanation:


Pay very close attention to the direction, I got lucky finding one perfectly facing North, because it's easier to explain. But once you put in the proper coordinates in the North-facing lot, it will not matter then if you face it a different direction. It only matters for the initial lot creation that we start facing North.


so, in the vanilla.txt file, the Bandit Helifield lot reads:

103 ; mobhelifield ; Bandit Helifield ; MOBBASE_SPECIAL ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Twigz ; HOVERCRAFT, 1,1.0,205, (23,11,14),(23,11,14) ; HELIPAD, 1,1.0, 180, (7,11,22),(7,11,22)

See how the helicopter is facing West at 180? compare it to the compass image. In addition, pay close attention to my relative lot coordinates (the blue highlights at the top, and accessed by clicking "F3" on my Computer's Keyboard) in this North-facing building. I'm only two above where the helicopter is listed it should spawn in the mob helifield. By default, when you're on the ground, you are at 10. I would recommend placing at 11 to make sure the vehicle spawns in.

As another example, compare the first image description of the Hovercraft spawn location at 205, and notice how it has that additional tilt on it. It's because of the 205.


Now you should have a rough idea for how to stylize vehicles for your builds! (I'll wrap around to this back when I discuss basements)

Ok, so let's bring back our Mansion Fortification. I'm going to use the exact same file that we've been using, the one that is an actual fortification. So let's bring up our text document, and start planning:


0 ; mansionfortification ; Mansion Fortification ; FORTIFICATION ; 0; 1.0 ; 1.0 ; ; ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav


I placed this here, because this is me attempting to place cars in-game to get an idea for size. What I want to point out, is I want you to see how by default the cars are facing East when they are being placed. This is for the exact same reasons mentioned earlier that it starts on a compass grid with 0 as the start facing East, and then it moves around in a circle. But anyway, here is me placing and using this car to get rough ideas for what I want. What I want my end goal to look like is to have this fortification lot spawn in the following:


Now here's me placing the vehicles to see where I should place them. The focus now should be looking at their positions relative to the North Facing lot, as well as to their general centers for where the vehicle is defined as starting. You can reverse engineer finding the start location by looking at vanilla.txt while being in game, such as at the Marina. But here's me finding coordinates!


Ok. So now to add some strings to get these to spawn!

0 ; mansionfortification ; Mansion Fortification ; FORTIFICATION ; 0; 1.0 ; 1.0 ; ; ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav

let's start with adding a car. Well, a car is a VEHICLE, so after Nikolai_Bukav, I want to start by adding my semicolon (to tell the game there are going to be zones present should it see text after this name) and then write:

0 ; mansionfortification ; Mansion Fortification ; FORTIFICATION ; 0; 1.0 ; 1.0 ; ; ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav ; VEHICLE, 4, 1.0, 225, (41,11,18),(41,11,18)

It's written like this, because I want it to match the structure in vanilla.txt. I also want a 100% chance of it spawning, facing 225° relative to the Eastern default vehicle facing in a Northern entrance-facing building. Again, it's a little confusing at first, but it's relative to moving counterclockwise starting with the vehicle facing East. And then the numbers in the parentheses are the coordinates of the Driver's Door. Notice how in the image for the car, I actually am standing at block 12. Well, that's because I'm measuring it out. Realistically, I'm standing one block above the approrpiate spawn, and that's why I adjusted the middle number from 12, to 11. The Middle number is the game's height identifier. Also... minor disclaimer. The vehicles that will spawn in will be random. It won't be the pretty blue sedan, but it will be some type of vehicle!

now to add the ambulance. An Ambulance is AMBULANCE. So after defining our VEHICLE, let's now add another semicolon (to tell the game we are done defining the vehicle and are ready to move on) and write:

0 ; mansionfortification ; Mansion Fortification ; FORTIFICATION ; 0; 1.0 ; 1.0 ; ; ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav ; VEHICLE, 4, 1.0, 225, (41,11,18),(41,11,18) ; AMBULANCE, 1,1.0,90, (24,11,7),(24,11,7)

Again, the same logic above applies, except now I want my ambulance facing North, so I use 90 to represent 90°

Now for the Helicopter. The Helicopter's spawn point is in the cabin, but is actually written out as HELIPAD. It's nice that I planned it to already be facing East, which is marked as a 0, so to add this, we add another semicolon and write:

0 ; mansionfortification ; Mansion Fortification ; FORTIFICATION ; 0; 1.0 ; 1.0 ; ; ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav ; VEHICLE, 4, 1.0, 225, (41,11,18),(41,11,18) ; AMBULANCE, 1,1.0,90, (24,11,7),(24,11,7) ; HELIPAD, 1,1.0,0, (3,11,16),(3,11,16)

Let's save it and test. It should now look like this:


And now to test and place our fortification.


It works! I even placed it East facing to try and show you how once you have them for the North-facing build, it does NOT matter which way you face the lot upon placing it, but rather the vehicles will still spawn relative to these perfected relative coordinates.

So. Three final notes:
1) I've noticed a maximum of 4 vehicles can spawn at any time on any given lot, so plan accordingly with the idea that only four will likely be able to spawn should you set all of them to have a 1.0 chance of spawning.
2) If you are puzzled as to why some of your vehicles may not be spawning in. Go back and check the comma structure. I've been very annoyed at times missing the comma between the sets of parentheses, and between the ending degree° number and start of the parentheses. So just remember commas are there!
3) I completely forgot what happens if you omit the directional spawning number. I know they will be able to spawn in, but I'm not sure if they face randomly. You can see this in the vanilla.txt for Trolleys at the General Goods store.

Before proceeding with Basements, I'm going to start with the first case to tell you, these are complicated from a building level. So, I will try to walk you through creation of basements and subterranean features with a few more pictures explaining how to go about designing them. As for the other options, these will be strings that you can add at any particular point after your author name so as to create special functions for the lot. I've listed them below so that you may see the available additiona options for what you can do with your lots.

NON APPLICABLE AS OF LATEST TURF UPDATES WHICH AUTO INCLUDE BASEMENTS

You're going to want to plan out your basements before building, otherwise it can get rather difficult. There is no escaping building a basement without using commands. Typically the two commands that will likely be used for building a basement, will either be:

/lot save

and/or

/lot import

I've found these two to be the easiest to use when construncting basements and other subterranean features. So how do begin building? Let's start with a hypothetical, and a rather simple one. I've done the math based off a building I want to do, that there will be an extra tiny layer land directly underneath what I want to appear as fountains:

NOTE TO SELF: CONTINUE THIS § AND ADD PICTURES

The YOFFSET command is the key to basements. This tells the game to either lower, or raise your lot a certain height limit upon being placed in the game. This flag will be executed during world generation, and when you place buildings manually.

vanilla.txt refers to this function as follows: YOFFSET, Val -- Moves the lot up or down by Val. Eg, use "YOFFSET, -6" to move a lot DOWN 6 blocks when placed. Use this, for example, to create basements. So for instance, the Bandit Fortress, the one with the huge underground storage: actually looks like:

88 ; mobfort ; Bandit Fort ; MOBBASE_BIG ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Twigz ; YOFFSET, -6

What this means, is that the present lot, will be moved down six (6) additional blocks. Other variants can

The other flags that may be added to the end of the strings include the following. Before I list them, remember you can have combinations of multiple flags. The Marina, for instance is YOFFSET and NOCANALBARRIER. Anyways, the following are the other possible flags:

NOSPAWN -- Makes the lot not spawn in Random Generating Cities or Maps. Very useful if you want to place things as reward buildings, or do not want random marinas and beaches spawning next to an inland downtown!

NOCANALBARRIER -- Makes adjacent Canals not create a concrete barrier against this lot. Useful for marinas, docks, oil rigs, beachfronts, etc. if you are planning on building waterways next to them.

COUNTS_AS_ROAD_ACCESS -- This lot will count as a "road" tile for the purpose of determining Road Access even if its another lot. Useful for creating things like plazas and decorative roads, and even large alleyways. Use this if you want to place buildings off of the beaten path when they still require a road to bring in income!

NO_REQUIRE_ROAD_ACCESS -- This lot doesn't need a road connection to obtain its full capacity. Useful for building things hidden amongst the hills, in the water, or way out in the distance without requiring road connections.

MAP_UNIQUE -- Only one of these allowed on the map, at any given time. Only applies to lots that aren't "vacant lots" when built. Strongly recommended solely for use in singleplayer, as it can make multiplayer very unbalanced depending on the stats of the lot.

PLAYER_UNIQUE -- Only one of these are allowed to be built by the player, per player, on the map. Only applies to lots that aren't "vacant lots" when built. Essentially makes the lot a minor Special Building, since you would only be able to have one. It's recommended to beef up that reward!

This is more of a building guide for this portion, but parts of skyscraper construction do involve useful lot commands.

Let’s face it, you do not want to go and place every single block of that skyscraper by hand. It would be great if there was a simple way to just take bits and pieces and move them right on top of one another.

Ok, so now I am going to give you some examples to help you think out the logic of how the game works for strings. I'll give you an example of a building, and I'll hide the string answer in a spoilers label so you can try to work out for yourself what strings or flags a lot might need to properly appear in the game :-D

1) I want to create a house with a basement that is presently built four (4) blocks above the ground. My name for this lot is "House" with file house.lot on the interior of my folder. I want the house to cost the default amount of money, and I want it to make the default income. In total, I want 10 people to live inside of this house. How should this string look if this is the first lot in my pack?

0 ; house ; House ; HOUSING ; 10 ; 1.0 ; 1.0 ; ; ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav ; YOFFSET, -4

1b) Same question, but I don't want it to spawn in on world generation.

0 ; house ; House ; HOUSING ; 10 ; 1.0 ; 1.0 ; ; ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav ; YOFFSET, -4 ; NOSPAWN

2) I want to create a park where only one (1) may be built on the map. Currently, I have it saved as "massivebeachfront.lot" with name "Massive Beachfront" I want to keep the height level exactly the same, but I do not want any canals to ruin my beach's look. I do not want this lot to produce any income because I want it to be a free park, but I want it to cost 1.5x the default amount to build it. Further, I do not want any population occupying this lot. I also want this to be the second lot in my LotPack. What should I do?

1 ; massivebeachfront ; Massive Beachfront ; PARK ; 0 ; 1.5 ; 0.0 ; ; ; ; ; Nikolai_Bukav ; NOCANALBARRIER ; MAP_UNIQUE

3) I'm feeling crazy. I just built a large strip mine that I want to use to destroy these beautiful hills around. Presently, I have it saved where it's a whole ten (10) blocks above the ground, and I want it placed 10 blocks below ground upon being built. The name is "Mining Facility" with lot name "miningfacility.lot". It's going to be an Industrial Building, and I want to keep it like that, but I want to change it to have 400 workers. I do not want this building to spawn naturally, and I only want it to be built at one (1) per player. Since I want it built in the hills, I want it to require having hills nearby to reach full capacity - but at the same time, I do not want a road to have to be built out to reach it. In addition, I want to place a helicopter facing South/down on top of a massive tower I built inside the lot. Currently -- while built on top of this lot with the 10 blocks above ground -- I have the proper coordinates set to where I want it to spawn relative to the following pre-subterranean zone 40,50,40 and 42,50,38. Lastly, since it is rather unqiue, I want it to cost 6x the base amount to build, and produce 6.5x the base income. How should I stylize this lot to look if I want it as my 3rd building in the lotpack?

2 ; miningfacility ; Mining Facility ; INDUSTRY ; 400 ; 6.0 ; 6.5 ; ; ; ; HILLS_NEAR ; Nikolai_Bukav ; YOFFSET, -10 ; HELIPAD, 1,1.0,270 (40,40,40),(42,40,38) ; NOSPAWN ; NO_REQUIRE_ROAD_ACCESS ; PLAYER_UNIQUE

Explanation for 3)
Remember that ordering of the zones and flags doesn't matter, so it could be any particular order after Bukav, and the ending zones are only one possible order you could have done. As long as you listed all of those zones, you were spot on. The Helicopter Spawn needed to have been lowered -10 as well to account for the YOFFSET, -10 movement, and the 270 is the cardinal direction to face it south

Your guess is as good as mine!

# DUNGEON_CONNECTION -- Used by dungeon pieces. Assuming a north facing lot, the first argument is the postion of the entrance on the southern side of the lot from the left. Then the arguments take the form N, 1, E, 2, etc, for exits on the 1st to the east on the north wall (N, 1), 2nd from the top on the East side (E, 2)
# DUNGEON_CONNECTION Example: DUNGEON_CONNECTION, 1, N, 2, S, 1 makes S2 the entrance, N2 and S1 the exits
# +- N1 -- N2 -+
# E2 W1
# | |
# E1 W2
# +- S2 -- S1 -+
#
#

Examples

# Bandit Dungeons
#
104 ; obelisk ; Obelisk ; DUNGEON_ENTER_TOP ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Twigz ;
105 ; obelisk_base ; Obelisk ; DUNGEON_ENTER_BOTTOM ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Twigz ;
109 ; dungeon1_j ; Dungeon Piece ; DUNGEON ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Twigz ; DUNGEON_CONNECTION, 1, N, 1, E, 1, W, 1
110 ; dungeon2_j ; Dungeon Piece ; DUNGEON ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Twigz ; DUNGEON_CONNECTION, 1, N, 1, E, 1, W, 1, E, 2, W, 2
112 ; dungeon22_j ; Dungeon Piece ; DUNGEON ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Twigz ; DUNGEON_CONNECTION, 1, N, 1, N, 2, E, 1, W, 1, E, 2, W, 2, S, 1
# 110 ; dungeonj ; Dungeon Piece ; DUNGEON ; 1 ; 1.0 ; 0.0 ; ; 0 ; ; ; Twigz ; DUNGEON_CONNECTION, 1, N, 1, E, 1, W, 1