More Awesome Than You!

 Last week, I moved my beach lots around in an attempt to make more space for additional beach lots. This didn't seem to affect the lots and they played normally for several days. Yesterday, all the lots had the same problem of the tide not covering the beach edge. The tide rolls in, but it stops short of moving over the sand. The beach lots function in all other respects. The sims can swim as before without any problems, so it really doesn't disturb gameplay, yet I do miss the charm of the tide "rushing in" over the sand. These lots are on a residential neighborhood. Moving each family out and placing them into new beach lots would be a large undertaking. I am hoping for an easier solution. This is no major problem, but it does defeat the reason for my playing this neighborhood to begin with.

I suspect that my moving these established lots around is to blame for this happening. Am I correct in suspecting this as the cause? Is there any fix for this, or am I stuck with the lots as they now are? Thank you for any assistance given.

Try using Igne Jones' Portal Revealer at ModTheSims2 to check where your wave portals are:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=251392

I believe that this tool will allow you to move them if you want.

Thank you for the very good suggestion and link. I will try this out tonight. Thank you!

Sounds like your land has risen by a couple of pixels!  Means the waves are coming in under the surface of the sand.  Have you been playing with the new terrain sculpting cheat?

Hi Inge, No I haven't been using the sculpting cheat. I don't have it in my game. I tried your Portal Finder. I had 2 different results. On the currently used lots, I find a series of portals along beach end facing outward to waters, and 4 portals in water facing inward towards land. When I place a new lot on the neighborhood and checked for portals, I did not have any portals on beach end pointing outward, I did have the 4 portals in water facing land. I made a new sim family and started a new lot, even though this one wasn't moved from an original spot, it too is not getting a proper moving tide. I need mention that I had previously moved lots on that edge at one time also.

After using the portal finder I picked the "hide" option and all tide was gone from lot, it was just "still water".  I was wondering if by trying to make as much room for lots on beach end, I did change the terrain as some lots were placed on edges that displayed, in part, water in neighborhood view. None of my beach lots on land or in bin will work with an incoming tide. I really messed something up here and it seems to correlate with moving those lots around.

I tried to take a side view to observe the movement of the tide coming in. The furthest reaching tide stops short by about one inch from sand. I did not see any movement going beneath sand edge. I may or may not be correct in saying that it does appear that the sand lot has "shortened".  That the lot is more inward than it should be. A reason for suspecting this is because I had an item placement on beach end, a place where the tide would reach and cover. I found it to be "underwater" when I entered that lot.

If the entire Cresent Island is "borked", and not repairable, I wondered if I could just package my sims and install a new Cresent Island, placing the packaged sims there. One thing concerns me about doing that, is that I have killed off most of the 'townies'. On a new neighborhood, these townies would be running around while my sims would have memories of their deaths, and could make more game problems.

Inge, I really appreciate your response to this problem. Thank you. If you have any ideas of what I need to do, I could really use the help.

You could move the wave effect holders towards the land by a tile each.  If that still doesn't help, then try lowering the sand by a click or two.

As for the waves not animating after having revealed the things and hidden them again, I would *hope* that would be fixed by exiting and reentering the lot.  If not, something's gone wrong lol.  :D

I've been having a similar problem with the waves not coming in at all. Sims can still sunbathe and build sandcastles on the beach, but they can't swim in the water, and I'm not getting any waves.

Well I do know that the waves get broken when you evict a family.  That's without any mods in.

I did have to move them in out to fix some bugginess. Do you know of any way to fix this?

I *think* (but I didn't actually check for certain) that the waves are sold with the rest of the furniture.  That was my theory anyway, so you'd have to buy some more.  Bought waves do seem to work just as well as the original waves, even on a non-beach lot.

Bought waves? Do you mean in neighbourhood view?

No, in this thread http://forums.modthesims2.com/member/showthread.php?t=251392 the buyable portal patches.  I included the waves even though they're not really portals.

Very useful! Thanks Inge. ;)

I have the same problem.
The waves are not going into the land, as you can see how they back off after reaching maximum, and it's not like the dissapier and then back off. They just never reach the shore.
I have one more problem with the same lot: sea color is light blue as you enter at the day light, but once the night comes and sea color changes to dark blue it doesn't change back to light when morning comes.
You have to exit and enter when it is day time, but then story repeats itself.
I don't know if those two are connected.
I have only one residential heavily played  beach lot.

No I really can't think of a way the two things can be related.  Maybe they remembered to do a Refresh (my graphic) at night time, but not at dawn.

Hi Inge, Nice of you to get back to me on this, thank you. I did move 3 of the wave effect holders one tile towards land, many of the others were going red when I tried to move them. For experiment sake, I went with the ones I moved to see if any difference in the movement. Nothing changed.  When the waves were not animating after clicking hidden, I was concerned with making things worse on an already messed up lot. I exited without saving, a bit too intimidated to do otherwise.

Which is normal for a beach lot, the 2 sets of water effect holders which oppose each other, or having only one set that appears at the bottom of the water going inward to beach? I've got 2 lots each with 2 different arrangements of these effect holders. If one of them is not set correctly, I guess the lot shouldn't be used.

I had no idea that beach lots were so touchy and needed to be handled so differently than regular land lots. So I should just point to the sand edge and give it a couple of clicks to bring it up. That would be wonderful should that "turn the tide" for me. lol. Okay, so its a rather weak attempt at a pun.

Thank you for responding to my problem. Inge, you have been a great help! (leaving internet to click on sand).

I always put my waves pointing the same way.  By careful adjustment of the land level and seabed level I tend to find the waves just break nicely onto the sand.  There should be exactly 16 clicks height difference between the sea bed and the beach.

I have the same problem as blackcat. But mine only started to happen when I installed the Castaway Converted Stuff in to my downloads and when I remove them the waves appear fine.

That doesn't surprise me.  The beach lots have changed significantly between Bon Voyage and Castaway Stories.  I think that the two games handle the water differently and the code for the CS objects is probably conflicting with the Sims 2.

So... just a guess from out in left field, but does this mean that placing buyable waves on a non-beach lot- on, say, a lake- would allow sims to swim in a lake?  Or am I misundestanding?  It would be nice to be able to make swimable lakes without a bunch of messing around with invisible floor tiles and such.

I haven't been able to get them to swim in lot-based water - not the sort you get fish in.  Only if you use hood water flooded onto the lot - or no water at all for that matter.  The swimming animation doesn't rely on water.

I think removing castaway objects actually helped, but I also moved lot to another place, so somebody else shlould check the matter too..

Hi Inge, I have some good news and bad news. I did get my tide to come in over the beach, the bad news is that the tide continues going to under the grassy area. lol! I didn't realize it, but the boxes with arrows along the beach are actually beach portals and is used by the sim to get into the water. They don't appear easily, as they lay under the sand at the point of sand touching water. The wave effects boxes are 4 boxes that sit in the water. If the line up of the beach portals is out of sync, the sim won't go in. It is easy to accidently move one of the portals if one is using move objects cheat and doesn't click the undo icon to put it back. I found these beach portals by clicking on the sand edge, the top half popped up, while the bottom lay beneath sand level. For experiment sake I moved the beach portals around, just one out of place makes the sim not want to go into the water. On one lot these portals were just there on top, on the new lot I used, they weren't.

As far as the tide wave affect boxes, I moved them about, and for some reason the tide has become a "tsunami". I have 8 tiles of beach area, but the tides/waves were going inland at a 12 to 13 tiles, with 4 tiles between the two waves appearing on land.

I tried clicking, using raise level tool to uplift beach end and it wouldn't work. Not knowing what is the normal appearance is a handicap. I may just make another neighborhood to see what it really should look like and compare it with the messed up one. It's been an education. I now know that one needs those beach portals at every space for them to swim. I wonder if anyone has stolen the beach portals from a lot and arranged them along an inland water area on another lot to see if the sims would swim inland. I may try that on the new neighborhood to see if it works. Unless, Inge, one you have already tried this and found it not to work. Can the beach portal boxes be purchased anywhere as are the wave effect boxes? I was able to put the beach portals into my sims inventory, given this, I imagine the sim could carry it to another lot.

EA Games should include a warning: "Beach lots are to be handled with more care than an inland lot." or something like that. I never suspected the complexity of beach lot use.

Inge, you really have been wonderful with all the help you've given me, answering all my questions and all. Thank you so very much for the time and energy given to the guidance of one who does her share of stumbling around SimWorld and saying "What the $&^*&(*(*$##"! is this happening for!" Thank you, you've really have been terrific and I do appreciate it.

Happy to say my beach lots are all back to normal! It appears that in moving the lots, the wave effect holders were moved, not only moved but also reversed. Instead of appearing at the beginning of the slope into the water, the big dip, and facing outward, the water effect holders were somehow moved to the second tile from the very end of the water lot and facing towards the beach.

When I moved the water effect holders to the place of where the water drops, with the big dip one tile away and placed the arrows facing outwards away from the beach, it worked!

I noticed the mention of the castaway objects being used and corefuncs files. I too have the objects and the corefuncs installed. Before ever installing corefuncs and castaway objects, I had a problem after moving a beach lot around, it included sims not swimming too. This why I am more inclined to blame my moving the lots around and causing the water effect holders to be improperly placed.

I just wanted to add how grateful I am that this site exists. The ability to post a problem and to get answers, guidance, and input from people who actually are so knowledgable is unlike other sims sites. Oh heck, I am beginning to sound all emotionally mushy. So I will just say thanks for being here.