Help Needed: Northland Diggers into Sim Settlements

[Rudy]

I sent the author of Northland Diggers a PM on Nexus for permission to adapt his mod into SS. His reply:

Sent Today, 12:34 PM
Ludvig08
Fan
Supporter
410 posts
hey hey
been working on it on and off :P just finished up code issues.
sure push it into the simsettlement, just give me some credit and link to my mod site.
you have my permission :D looking forward to see it.
good luck​

I'm so excited! But in way over my head. If anyone feels up to the challenge of helping me get Northland Diggers into SS, I would greatly appreciate the help. I'm not a programmer but I do have a few smarts left.

Thanks and yippee!!

 

[LeopoldKain]

You can do it. Sorry words of encouragement is all I have T-T But I BO-lieve in you.

 

[kinggath]

There's a guide in the Builder's Toolkit called Extra - More Legos to Build With, it gives you a few different methods for integrating other mods into Sim Settlements plots.

There are likely a few things that have changed since then though, so I'd recommend you request access to the Builder's Toolkit discord channel (if you haven't already - can't recall..). There are a lot of add-on pack authors hanging out there who can probably advise you on this, especially in regards to any easier methods or specifics that might have changed since I wrote that guide originally.

 

[Rudy]

Thanks!
I will read the guide (haven't gotten that far yet but will skip ahead. Shh. don't tell anyone.) Once I get learned-up enough to ask more intelligent, focused questions,guidance will be easier to provide.

 

[Rudy]

I read the guide and understand how to get the assets from one mod to the other (Northland Diggers into a SS Mod).
Once I can get the assets built for 1 ND / SS plot, I will likely run into scripting issues (read: ignorance). My hope is that looking at the ND examples will allow me to translate into SS Industrial plots.
ND stations provide an excellent 30 / 300 of a base junk item (ceramic / concrete for example). This will work perfectly for Tier 1 = 10 / 100, Tier 2 = 20 / 200 etc. Personally I thought ND was a bit generous, so this will keep the real payout at Tier 3.

I wish I had more time though. This project excites me but I only have an hour or two a night, if I'm lucky, to put into it.

 

[kinggath]

There are a couple of things you can do to speed up your development so you can get more done in less time.

1. Feel free to re-use SS buildings as your base, and just change out the furniture and clutter.

2. In the same vein, I keep all of the SCOLs for the original buildings in the base mod, so if you wanted to put one on your building stage, fragment it, and start designing from there, you could use the general structure of a building and swap out individual pieces to make it look noticeably different. For example, if you select a piece and hold Alt while scrolling the mouse wheel, you can rapidly test what new pieces will look like in that exact same position - which is awesome for swapping out the walls to different styles.

3. Once you have a few building plans under your belt and understand the process, go through the extra pdf Extra - FO4Edit - Working Faster. This will show you how to automate some of the more time-consuming steps of making building plans. It's important that you understand how the different pieces go together first though, which is why I recommend people only do it after completing a few plans the "hard way".

 

[Rudy]

Very helpful. Thank you!