More Awesome Than You!

If you've ever bulldozed and rebuilt on the lots where EAxis dropped its pre-made junkyards in Sunset Valley and/or Riverview (maybe Bridgeport, too, but I haven't been there), or if you've experimented with trying the junkyard somewhere else and later rezoned it to something more marvelous, you may have been plagued by random junk furniture appearing daily, as if the lot still has some junk-generating code in it. Accessing Buydebug mode doesn't generally reveal any junk emitters left behind, though, and sweeping the area with the cursor with MoveObjects On doesn't seem to indicate anything "invisible." The problem is the emitters have been buried by bulldozing.

The pre-made junkyard has a shallow pit in the rear 2/3 of its standard 20x30 tile area. The emitters sit on the this lowered terrain. Apparently when one bulldozes the lot, the terrain is leveled without deleting the emitters, so they still occupy their positions previous to the bulldozing. Yes, I know there really isn't any dirt to cover them so this seems kind of stupid, but if you go back to the former junkyard and lower the terrain about 4 clicks you can reveal a half dozen or so junk emitters and finally get rid of them. It should be easy enough on an empty lot, but more interesting if you've already built Simfallingwater there.

Or you can go on the lot with buydebug and moveobjects enabled and apply patches of carpet on the area so the emitters will magically show so you can delete them without having to do any digging at all.

Okay, I tried the carpet method posted by SendmeLies and it works for me too. This method is handier and it's easy to fix lots that have been rebuilt on, since you can undo the new carpet and the emitters are left visible at surface level. I tested this in a fresh Riverview by replacing the pre-made junkyard with the fire station; two of the original five emitters had been left behind, both in outdoors areas.

Another way to detect the emitters is to build a pool or use the basement tool near a suspected area and then drop the camera down a level; the emitters are visible suspended in the outer darkness (I forgot to test whether you can grab them from this view.)  I haven't tried building a basement or pool on top of a known emitter yet to see what happens; my test lot with an occupied hut on it in Sunset Valley keeps crashing the game.

One could also manually delete the emitters from the pre-made junkyard before bulldozing the lot, since the "all objects on the lot will be deleted" warning dialog is obviously a lie.

This happens because the emitters that get left behind aren't removed on "eviction" (moving the lot, , bulldozing, all that stuff).  There's a flag in the XMLs for it, but I've never cared enough to change it--Anything that modifies the ground tiles will reveal hidden spawners tied to the lot.

If I ever learn XML I will probably get as far as copying the "Hello World" tutorial before my eyes glaze over. Thankfully there are still brownies around that figure out all this stuff, since they stopped fixing my shoes for me.

Oh BTW are we all dead yet?