A can of worms, and how I have opened it.

[strangetomato]

Thank you for all your helpful suggestions on my last post about the Summerdreams lot. It turns out that the problem is indeed that the lot slopes downward to the back and is, in fact, far below the water table. And even though Orikes mentioned something about the actual water showing up if you moved the lot, that wasn't enough to stop me from trying it for myself, resulting in the same flooding. Thus a minor irritation became a huge problem. Go me.

So I dug deep and found some building skills I didn't even know I had and successfully modified the terrain, even the part that was under the house, leaving all but the very edge of the lot above water. Now I'm stuck. Is there any way to modify the very edge of the lot? Is "flatten lot" my only hope? I've done so much decorating to the Summerdream house, I really want to salvage what I have rather than start over (I just flat out refuse to start over, actually, so my other option is to creatively disguise the edge of the lot with more trees and brick walls and maybe more height).

My final question is, who designed this lot and why on Earth did they think it was a good idea to create such a slope when the house was not on a hill of any sort? Argh!

ETA: Yeah, so flattening the lot does nothing. Maybe I'll check into the lot adjuster and see if that offers any hope.

ETA2: The lot adjuster did the trick! ^_^

Comments

[meetme2theriver.livejournal.com]

I have never tried this myself, but perhaps the Lot Adjuster could be of help. It does say that it can fix the edges of a lot. I know it's been used to fix the House of Fail lots over at MATY, without screwing up the structure of the house.

[meetme2theriver.livejournal.com]

...Sorry, I didn't see your edit until just now. :P

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Haha. No problem. Great minds think alike? :P

The lot adjuster crossed my mind before, but it's more than a little intimidating, so I didn't really consider it until it was a my last and only hope. I've gone this far, so it's hard to turn back now. I'll take my chances.

But first, a backup is in order...

[meetme2theriver.livejournal.com]

I agree, it is a little intimidating, which is why I never got around to trying it out, either (I sort of wanted to make a custom terrain with smaller areas between roads than what you get with SC4). If you just backup it should be okay, though. Backups are good.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I'm doing it right now, and wonder of wonders... it appears to be working! All I did was set the properties to keep elevation as it is (my fixed version) and then allow the edges to align with the neighborhood. I'm still entering the lot to see the final results, but it seems to have worked from the neighborhood view! :D

Now I'm thinking aout other Maxis lots that could use a little extra space. I might have to do some fiddling around later.

[meetme2theriver.livejournal.com]

Awesome. :D

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't use the lot adjuster on a populated lot, or at least make sure you've got a back-up of the game before you do.

I know when I had this problem, I ended up building the lot from scratch again. Nothing I did seemed to fix it, so I said screw it. You can pick up the lot and move it elsewhere and then fix the terrain where it belongs, but the moment you put it back, you end up with the same problem because the lot slopes downward below the waterline.

It really is a poorly designed lot. I mean, who starts the foundation of a house lower than the sidewalk?!? You can't even properly put down a sidewalk leading to the front door. The idea of the house is pretty cool, but... feh. I rebuilt it from scratch. :}

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I checked with the documentation on the lot adjuster and it didn't seem to discourage its use when there are sims on the lot. Some odd things might happen, like them snapping out of whatever activity they are performing, but it didn't sound like anything serious. When I tried it, nothing at all happened to the sims. Everything stayed the same, including the loading screen.

Of course, I did make a backup first. That's always a good idea.

I did exactly what you did, with the same results, until I manually shifted the terrain of the lot to above ground, set the edges of the lot to a setting that allows it to flatten to the surrounding terrain with the lot adjuster, moved the lot, adjusted the terrain with the modify terrain cheat (to make it around the level it should be to the road), and then moved the lot back. You can see how it turned out in my comment below.

You could always make a path to the house with a terrain paint instead of tiles. I liked the idea of the slopping lot, but it doesn't make any sense unless the surrounding terrain is also a hill. Beach lots are like this, and it really does pose an interesting building challenge. It's possible, though.

[samethana.livejournal.com]

Maybe you could use the modifyterrain cheat to make the terrain a bit higher, so the lot isn't as close to the water level. (I hope I'm making sense here, technical explanations in english are not my strong point and my head's all foggy-like at the moment)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Good point! I forgot to mention that I did attempt to use the modifyterrain cheat. It was one of the first things I tried, but once I moved the lot back to the same location, it would just form back to the way it was.

In the end, I used a combination of the modifyterrain tool and the lot adjuster to set the edge of the lot to flatten to the level of the surrounding terrain, which was slighting higher than the new ground level for the lot.

Here's how it looks now:

[pixelcurious.livejournal.com]

I played the Summerdreams for a bit today and their lot is such a mess. I put some steps on the front so they don't walk all the way around the house to go to school/work, but other than that I despaired at the enormity of the task.