More Awesome Than You!

Recently my game has started fouling up the neighborhood view representations of some of my houses when I save them. Sections of wall, and sometimes an entire level, are missing. I'm attaching a couple of pics to show what I'm talking about. Some of them correct themselves after I've played and saved them again, but I'd like to figure out what's causing it in the first place and stop it if possible. Anyone know?

(http://www.confoozled.com/futahouse.jpg)

(http://www.confoozled.com/gothhouse.jpg)

Hmm, my guess is that your video card can't handle it all at once and just 'skips' certain parts.
But hey, at least your neighbourhood looks better than mine.  In my game all trees seem to have fused into one green spikey object, and my community lots display as emty plots with some vague blobs on them.

Actually, these are artifacts caused by roofing. I'm noticing in many cases you're using gable roofings, and anytime those touch a wall, that entire wall is likely to simply disappear in the neighborhood view. In order to avoid this, you have to draw the roof into the house itself, then "overwrite" it with an overhead roof so that it doesn't block usage. Very complicated and stuff.

I agree with JM. Roofing should be completed so that it covers each floor where any roof is required and subsequent storeys are then added by building "through" the existing roof. Doing this prevents many of the otherwise disfiguring roofing artifacts from occurring and also makes possible the construction of some types of shed roof that are otherwise impossible to build. Some roof-related artifacts are almost impossible to avoid (without redesign of the underlying walls) and by following the principle of roofing each floor as you go helps you spot and (re)design out such problems before the house construction has advanced to point where correction is a major chore.

Isn't the house in the second photo an original one in Pleasantview or did we happen to download the same one?

It doesn't look like a Maxis design to me. For one thing the stairs appear to be in a sensible location ::)

LOL... no, it is a Maxis original, and I haven't altered it in any way.

Really?  I don't recognize it at all.  Must have been one of the expensive ones I bulldozed to make way for some cheaper tract housing. :)

LOL back atcha. So it is.

I just finished playing around with it. There's a definitive roofing glitch-artifact where the roof joins against the tower. The tower's roof causes the valley area, where the main roof meets the tower, to disappear. This is due to the way the game engine makes the uppermost roof supercede any lower level roofs. I don't know whether this the direct cause of the neighborhood view display problems. My instinct would be to say it isn't; but it probably doesn't help. I succeeded in getting a better design (in my opinion) but then had the problem of the main roof displaying inside the upper (clerestory) level of the tower/turret ... this may be due to the absence of a floor. Because I am not awesome and spend most of my time just sucking I failed to notice that problem until after I examined the screenshot (below) - I imagine that bunging in a floor would fix the problem and it wouldn't matter much since floors can't be seen from below anyway ... ::)

(http://www.mirelly.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/pvhk.jpg)

I've never seen that house before. I do recognize what appears to be the Pleasant house, but that would make this one in Pleasantview, and there are no turret towers in Pleasantview because it predates OFB and NL roofing.

That's the fancy house on Wright Way street. I believe Merelly said she redid the roof to appear as it does now.

Silly Pescado ...  ::)

OFB special roofs don't count as roofs in the same way, and will not overwrite a roof that is underneath it. Thus using it for the tower roof causes the regular roof to still be in the tower.

Silly me ...

Thanks JM. I have not used the OFB roofs much because, like so many Maxis' goodies, they are not as charming as they are mal-charmed. The news that they "don't count as roofs" is one more reason not to use them. Like I said I was just playing around with the roof problem on a Maxis designed house, which (by definition) was way beyond any effective fixing.

Looks like the one with the pagoda thing at the bottom of the garden to me.  Cassandra & Darren lived in it in my original Pleasantview, but nobody does in my second version.