More Awesome Than You!

I'm curious if anyone else is seeing this problem.  I've downloaded a couple of beach front houses from insim and MTS2.  They're definitely flagged as beach front, because they won't place anywhere on land. But they're also very touchy about where they're placed on the water side, too.

For example, I found one that placed just fine on one of Sleepycat's new terrains (found here in Peasantry), but wouldn't place on Twikkii Island. Another placed fine on TI, but won't place anywhere on the SC terrain.  And two others won't place anywhere, period.

So did EAxis bork it up so beach front lots are highly dependent on the original terrain they were made on?  It wouldn't surprise me, but I'd like to know if anyone else has run across this.

the slope they were built on matters, thats why some won't place. I read about it over at mts2 in a terrain thread - Diamondbar Delta by Caupi

They have to be built on a very, very flat terrain to be share-friendly. And then, if you are placing on a highly sloped terrain, they still won't mesh. So yes, it's tricky, and it sucks if you're trying to build a bunch of matching beach houses in a 'hood, or if you try to move a lot around.

I think it is a throwback to the TS1 days, where you had to place a lot where it was built. I think, to share beach lots you'd need to show exactly where in the hood it was built so it can be placed in the exact same place. I have given up for now trying to share mine  :( It sucks.

Oh, and I used SC's uber-flat beach terrain to make mine and myself, and lots of people tried to place it in Maxis hoods such as Twikkii Island and it wouldn't work. I could place it numerous times in the original terrain it was built in though. Weird.

I DLed some beach lots that simply will not go anywhere.

Regarding placing lots in Twikkii Island, I found that I had to remove some neighbourhood decorations before I could place some empty beach lots there.

Yeah, you can move lots and decorations around in Twikkii Island so there is more room to place extra beach lots. I'm gonna try and make some that will place, but will not release them until they have been thoroughly tested.

Sharing beach front lots is epic fail, because beach lots tend to, by definition, be nonlevel. And as you all know, nonlevel lots will fuck up the terrain of anything you try to plop them in other than their original location on the identical terrain. So if you get a "shared" beachfront lot, you are liable to make your entire island do an Atlantis.

My point exactly. They need to be placed on the same spot on the same terrain it was created in-therefore beach lots are going to be extremely difficult to share.

Oh, and All Pescados Suck.

Ok, thanks -- so that confirms my suspicion that it's the lots, and not my game, causing issues.  Ah, well...

I sayd it before in the Satisfaction tread sharing beachlots is  not recommendet.

I have  put the bigger ownable Vacationlot in Twikkie in a Twikkie Template on the same spot and got bright blue gaps on the lotsides in Hoodview.

Okay, this thread supported what I have suspected.  I recently downloaded, tried to place, then deleted a bunch of beach lots.  Ah well, guess my sorry building skills will be put to the test. Also, I wish we could have 2x3 beach lots.  Apparently that's too small. 

You mean 2x5's? You know, I'm tempted to try that lot size changer on a junk 'hood to see if that can be done. However, I suspect we'd run into the same placement issues, even if the lot hasn't been built on. I discovered the hard way that you can't place a beach lot exactly in the middle of two existing reliably...totally FUBAR'ed a section of my 'hood that way.

I also wish we had some 2x5s and some 1x5s.  You're right though, that they probably wouldn't fit anyway.  Unless whoever made them maybe specified the slope steepness on each lot?  Like several 2x5s, one for each level of slope, flat, medium, or steep.  Who knows.  I hope someone figures it out though.

I just want to add to this incase anyone didn't already know...

In the neighborhood decorations there are now 2 kinds of "waves" to place along shorlines.  The original has the light & dark sand appearance to enhance the look of waves lapping the shore.  The new one doesn't have that sand and you can place it on lots.  With the original you can't do that.  Aside from slopes and all that jazz, which I am sure is important, I just want to point out that I opened a lot of previously unusable space on Twikki Island by deleting the shore lines where I wanted to put beach lots. 

Maybe it would help you, maybe it won't.  Just sayin.

No, it does help -- I didn't realize that there were two different types of waves now.

It helps with converting existing 'hoods, that's for sure. Not my issue...mine are all custom, but still...
Weird, I didn't notice the ones that don't go on lots when I was delving into the neighborhood deco. Those were the original type, weren't they?

FYI, most of the new deco rocks that came with BV can be placed on/overlapping rocks. They are darker and smaller in appearance than the originals. The peninsula deco object can also be placed on lots. When on the lot, the only issue is that sims don't recognize them as blocking anything and can go into the rock to build sandcastles and such. When possible, I apply fencing inside so that they can't do that. If you get too close to the water, that's not an option.

Yea, I noticed a sim sitting 'in' the deco rock on my community beach.  Kinda looked like he was sitting ON it, so I didn't care much, but I will have to block them off or move them.

I'm have a report that a lot I created for sleepycat's first beach terrain, that appeared to work fine in my game, is not placing well on someone else's hood, using the same terrain, and that terrain is nicely flat.

I will test it again, downloading from my own sims2pack file, but I'm beginning to be a bit pessimistic about the usefulness of sharing beach lots.  (here's my nice beach house - oh, by the way, it won't work unless you use xxx's terrain measuring in 42 pixels from the edge and placing it right on the end of the road, no not that road, the other road when you rotate the hood so that the big rock with the two little rocks are in the top left corner... - too bloody stupid.)

I guess I'll be building a lot of beach huts for my sims, rather than downloading lots.

As long as I can get a RV trailer on the beach, ala Lethal Weapon, I'll be okay. =p

I haven't tried your beach lot yet, but just in case it doesn't work for me, could you put up some pictures in this or the original thread?  I don't have much imagination for creating but I can copy just fine.

Well, I can happily report that your beach lot placed just fine on the SC terrain I'm using (I think it's the third one -- the one I put a picture of the beach comm lot I made in her thread).  I placed 3 of them along the 'center' of the U-shape, making a row of cheap beach houses.

Cool!  I think I have a comm lot in the middle of the U-shape at the moment.  At least logic would suggest that the lot itself is not borked.  Perhaps any problems are a matter of where on the terrain it's placed then.

You would think, but then Emma came out with a beach lot designed on Twikkii Island, and she gave exact instructions on where to place it back on your own TI, and it still didn't place.  So it's really hit or miss.

Joe, are you sure that you hadn't already borked your terrain with other lots?

I managed to bork a space so badly today that I can't place any lot on it.  ::)

Not Twikkii Island -- I didn't add any new lots near the spot where Emma's lot would go.  And never put anything where it goes, since you have to move all the hood decorations first in order to place it, and I haven't touched them.

And with the Sleepycat terrain, I've only started placing lots on one small corner of the terrain, yet the majority of downloaded beach lots won't place anywhere on it. Only one I got from MTS2, and jolrei's, which interestingly enough was made on a SC terrain, though a different one from the one I'm using.

Yeah, only lots built on SC's terrain can be placed there, and then you have to be careful, but I placed Emma's lot fine, not even knowing where it was "supposed" to go, and so have others, on Twikkii. It makes me think something else weird is going on there.

And Emma told me that lots of folks are having problems with it, too, so who knows -- maybe placing other new lots on Twikkii first (regular, not beach) messes with the terrain enough that it prevents hers from being added even though the other lots are nowhere near where hers is supposed to go.

You could be right, sometimes when I place lots on certain terrains, I see a 'shift' in another part of the terrain nowhere near where I placed the lot! The Bluewater terrain is notorious for it.

That was extremely helpful. I was really annoyed that there were these empty plots along the beach on Twikki island where you could place ordinary lots but no beach lots, because I wanted some families to own beach lot holiday homes. I had already started to think about creating another location, but I wanted the Twikki locals. After removing the waves I could place three beach lots along that one road. I am very happy.

I don't know how this would affect already built beach lots but:

I  too was pissed at the lack of beach front property on TI, so I tried the slope value change (at MTS2 by boatnana) files and this allowed better beach lot placement...well ok I didn't actually PLACE the lots, but I hovered over the beach front terrain (on several terrains too) and the beach lots turned green indicating I could place them.

I just had an issue trying to enter a lot from 3 Lakes, which had placed fine, in another vacation destination on another hood--hung the game until I finally had to 'end process' to get out.

Maybe sharing vacation lots is not going to work well?

Looks like placing a "house" is the same as dictating what the terrain looks like.

What they really *should* be doing is finding the outline of the house so that the house can be applied to whatever terrain you place it in. But maybe this is a case of nobody remembers how to code that because that's all SC4 code.  :P

I haven't had any trouble placing beach lots I have built on my flat terrains, usually I place multiple copies of them to save time. Some have been placed in different hoods (using one of my flat terrains) with no trouble either.


I don't usually download other peoples lots so I have no experience with trying other peoples beach lots. I wouldn't even try placing a downloaded beach lot that has any kind of slope on one of my flat terrains, it'd probably break/mangle them.


But... I do understand other peoples frustrations over this problem. I am planning on trying to make a couple terrains (or atleast one) soon that have different sections of beach, with different levels of terrain. maybe that will help?  not sure how well I'll do but I can atleast try  ;D 

I have no problems placing lots built on your flat terrain anywhere else on flat terrain. So I'd stick with those, instead of trying to make different slopes.  It's the sloped lots that bork the neighborhood in the first place, as Pes has long warned us about.  It's too bad EA didn't listen.  ::)

good! saves me from the headaches I would have gotten trying to do different levels for beach lots *laughs*   

I generally do what you do - build my own lots (apart from one or two EAxis houses that I use for "emergency move ins" when a house isn't ready when a sim graduates from uni).  If I want to keep the house, I generally make sure that it is built on flat terrain so it transfers nicely from hood to hood.  On the other hand, I have a couple of non-flat lots where I like the house enough that I use it anyway.  I have never managed to get beyond Gen3 on a hood anyway before I feel like seeing something and someone new, so the "your uneven lot will bork your hood" problem has not affected me so far.  Admittedly, the uneven lots are not beach lots, so I have not run into problems placing them. 

My beach hut and beachfront comm lot were built using your flat terrain and I have had no problem transplanting them so far.  On the other hand, I will probably continue to build other lots as I need them (all that mucking about with clean installer and finding downloadable lots is too much work, and I get more satisfaction from having sims live in something I have built myself).

Meh. Saish (community lot, two-story loft restaurant and a club up top) is my favorite lot of mine and it was originally built into a mountain in Urban Paradise. It completely screws the terrain when moved, but as I put it Downtown and never look at Downtown in 'hood view, who cares? My current Downtown has only six lots, and I haven't seen it since Gen 2. Queen's Cove is self-sufficient.

I'm on Gen 4 with this 'hood...two Gen 4'ers are children, the rest mere thoughts. UP got to Gen 11 of my Alphabet family, with a couple of others on Gen 3.

Oakenwald was my first real hood (after "orientation" in Pleasantview).  It's still on the drive and works (kinda - this was started before I came to MATY, so it may have some pre-apocalyptic "issues").  I use a couple of houses from there.  The sims are gen1-4 (gen 1 is headed for the last hula roundup and gen 4 is infants).

Mittelschmerz is my big clean-custom hood.  It has Gen 3 just starting now, and Gen 1 is edging into elderhood (I have an unfortunate tendency to have sim adults drink elixir like cool-ade, so they don't age up that fast).

I'm really into Pango-Pango, my beach hood.  This hood is about 2 RL weeks old and has only 1 playable family, started by my self-sim.  He's married now and "my" spawn, little Alex is at the bashing blocks into the logic toy and chewing on them stage.  I'm hoping to stick with this hood a bit longer.  I want to incorporate an alien overlord theme into whatever story is there.

I keep saying that I'll go back and play in Oakenwald sometime (I left it after I killed off 90% of a founding family for the crime of having weak chins and long noses - there was a terrible satellite crashing disaster...in the bathroom...and a bedroom...and right by the carpool).  Unfortunately, after 4 months, I have kind of forgotten all their names.  I cloned my favourite sims from there and they show up under different names in all my hoods, usually as townies.

Old hoods are, at the moment, a scavenging ground for houses/lots.  I tend to re-use comm lots that I build and like as well.  Building new ones has its drawbacks (eg. I always forget that there should really be a bathroom somewhere on the lot). 

With the beach hood and the problems with moving beach lots around, I thought it safest to build a beach comm lot, and so the Pango Mall was born, without a bathroom.  It was renovated quickly after the first peeing accident. 

The only community lot that has potties on QC is the public beach--which is technically a residential with a ticket biz $10/hr, 8am-8pm daily. They still don't use them much, preferring to spend their time slapdancing, passing out from heat stroke, and, in the case of Stella Young, kicking everyone's ass. When it gets truly terribly hot and I have someone man the lemonade stand, then they use the public toilets. At the 1x1 lvl 10 convenience store, 1x2 lvl 9 art store, and 2x2 lvl 3 "massage" parlour, no potties. Customers go in, do their business (or in the parlour, each other) and get the heck out. Of course, I've decided that the next sim who whines to Edmund Young about the unmade bed they just got done woohooing in, I'm smiting them.

I never reuse houses between 'hoods. I have a couple in the lot bin, but they were townhouses I had in Urban Paradise that I can't bring myself to delete. Most of Queen's Cove has very singular homes...some totally random creations and my favorite being from a houseplan site (pic below)...that's where the Alien Overlords are making their home. They are completely accidental natural abductions. I have the best pic of Tre as a toddler staring down a stray at night. So scary, but very dark. All my playables but one have either blue eyes or the grey-green geneticized recessive custom ones I'm trying to keep in play.

I really need to add a true shopping center (the convenience store only has magazines, frozen foods, cell phones, boom boxes, and souvenirs), but I want to do a farm first and don't have enough spares to start one. That really should be placed outside of Badger Square (affluent section) and be run by one of the affluent sims with all employees of the lower class. Meh. Might switch it around. Kennedy Young's branch has almost $200,000 in the hopper from the convenience store and Stella's novels.

Gen 1's already dead and gone. Gen 2 is halfway there, but prematurely since Logan's wife Laura's ghost scared him to death right after reaching elderhood.


(http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/6320/prettyhousevo2.th.jpg) (http://img519.imageshack.us/my.php?image=prettyhousevo2.jpg)

Yeah, I can't bring myself to cheat abductions.  I'm just sending my selfsim out every night to stargaze.  He needs the logic points for his LTW anyway.  Two birds with one stone, so to speak.

Just so as not to derail this thread completely, did I mention that the telescope is on a perfectly flat beach lot?  Very scenic.

* jolrei admires sleepycat's work on the terrain again. *