Sinking apartments are driving me crazy

[Lion]

Like you see here in the picture: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,12828.msg366049.html#msg366049

It's not the terrain that is not flat. When I move in a family to the lot when it is zoned as residential, the street is flat. But when I rezone it to apartment, the lot sinks and the blue gaps appear for surrounding lots when I move the family in. The only safe way is to build the lot and never move it. If you move to another spot in the neighborhood, or install the lot from the lot bin, it will sink - but there are exceptions. I did have a basement lot functioning fine moving around or in and out of the lot bin, but when I build a serious apartment bunker for my apocalypse challenge, it always sinks after I move it, whether I move/install it as residential or apartment.

I mostly build basement/bunker lots for the challenge.  I don't know if it is because of the basement, or the height of the terrain where you build the lot. These two factors are not conclusive in my testing. So are you having this problem?

[jolrei]

Try raising the elevation of part of the terrain.  You can flatten the new "plateau" to ensure you get totally flat lots.  It is not critical that the whole terrain at one elevation.  I often find "sinking lot" problems if the whole terrain is flat at "sea level".  Houses with basements, for example, are impossible to place because the basement will be below the water table.  Raising the level of part of the terrain (not right next to the beaches of course, but inshore) solves this.

[Mootilda]

A very stupid EA bug: when they clone the apartment building, they change the elevation unnecessarily.

Here's a simple fix to this problem:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=302405

[Lion]

Thank you thank you for the fix! I can't thank you enough. And this also fixes the beach lot. How marvelous!

[Mootilda]

Glad to help.  Surprisingly easy to find and fix, once Inge Jones got me looking into the problem.  I had (foolishly) avoided beach apartments because of the readme.

[Inge]

Which in turn was thanks to Peter noticing those Unk new fields looked like an elevation matrix, which I hadn't spotted when I specced Format 0x0B for him and just handed them to him as new Unks

[Mootilda]

The apartment sinking problem isn't related to the new data at all.  It's just the standard old Z (elevation) field which has been changed unnecessarily and incorrectly when a sim moves into an apartment.

[Inge]

Yes but it was his drawing my attention to those that prompted me to ask you about it which prompted you to find out about it.  So it was still consequential.