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

[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.