grass turned to sand, can this be fixed?

[pixiejuice]

So I guess I messed this up pretty bad and I'm wondering if this house can be salvaged or not.  I downloaded a house that had a basement and placed it in my hood (based on the bluewater template, low floodplane) and the basement flooded and turned the neighboring house to sand outside the lot.  See pic here: http://s61.photobucket.com/albums/h46/darceemichelle/?action=view&current=snapshot_53685518_f4efe67c.jpg

I have long since bulldozed the offending house, but this other house never went back to normal.  I have a family living here and don't really want to go through the hassle of moving them.  There are several other houses in this immediate area, and none of them are having this same problem.  They all have grass outside the lot, just as they should.

I've tried the terraintype cheat.  I can't think of anything else to try.  Anyone have any ideas?

[Kyna]

You could do some neighbourhood terrain surgery.

[jolrei]

I have had something similar happen in one of my hoods.  Can you move the house/lot to a different part of the 'hood (do not put it in the lot bin, just shift it's position, which you can do with your family still in it).  You might find that the grass reappears then.  As for the sand in the lot, this is likely damage to the terrain itself - as Kyna suggests, use the neighbourhood terrain surgery tutorial to try to fix it.  It is likely better to try to fix this with the house not on that part of the terrain at the time anyway, which is why I suggest shifting its position.

[Mirelly]

Or get Freetime and edit the terrain elevation with the modifyNeighborhoodTerrain cheat. It worked for me when I finally got the cheat to work.

Incidentally as I didn't see it anywhere else, stupid Eaxis sold the game* to us Brits without changing changing the pause key from US keyboard position so I play the game with my keyboard set to a US board so I can play with `123 for speed control with the left hand. When the new terrian modification cheat came in I read that \ was the key for levelling the selected area ... only it didn't say which one. My Brit keyboard has a \ next to Z and that still works, as a backslash, even with Windows set to use the US klayout. I rarely bother to change it to UK settings any more. However after quick search I discover that US keyboards have the \ next the square brackets. Imagine how I laughed when I found that out. I haven't got a key next to ] (unless you count the extended 'serif' on the CR key).

Then I found that the key below ] (on my confused keyboard) produces a backslash (it is signed ~#) and this produces the desired levelling action with terrainmodify cheat.

* I mean the original base game, of course.

Failing availability of Freetime, Jolrei's excellent suggestion is the best option. I've done a lot of simple terrain surgery by placing empty plots and bulldozing them to take advantage of the terrain levelling which occurs after 'dozing a lot.

[jolrei]

I keep forgetting about the modifyNeighborhoodTerrain cheat.  I will have to use this to fix some elevations in a flat neighbourhood I have.  I want a higher plateau level for some houses with basements, now that I'm planning to put a vampire or two in who might want a basement coffin room.  It's a bit silly if they're under water.

[pixiejuice]

I have had something similar happen in one of my hoods.  Can you move the house/lot to a different part of the 'hood (do not put it in the lot bin, just shift it's position, which you can do with your family still in it).  You might find that the grass reappears then. 

Yes, that did the trick!  I figured I would try out the simplest sounding option first   Thanks!

I haven't tried out the new terrain cheat yet either.  It might be useful though since most of the land on the neighborhood template I'm using is too low to use basements.  I don't suppose it allows you to add new roads?

[jsalemi]

Can xiaoping be killed please?  Likely this is just a one-off post, so there's probably not much that can be done.

A three-of, actually.

I haven't tried out the new terrain cheat yet either.  It might be useful though since most of the land on the neighborhood template I'm using is too low to use basements.  I don't suppose it allows you to add new roads?

No, it only allows you to change terrain elevation.