strangetomato: (johnnynotamused)
Strange Tomato ([personal profile] strangetomato) wrote2010-05-02 11:47 am

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

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! ^_^

[identity profile] meetme2theriver.livejournal.com 2010-05-02 03:16 pm (UTC)(link)
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.

[identity profile] orikes13.livejournal.com 2010-05-02 07:10 pm (UTC)(link)
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. :}

[identity profile] samethana.livejournal.com 2010-05-02 09:37 pm (UTC)(link)
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)

[identity profile] pixelcurious.livejournal.com 2010-05-06 03:33 am (UTC)(link)
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.