Trouble with Stairs

[Roobs]

I'm having trouble with some stairs in one particular household. There are two main staircases, one leading up, and the other directly under it leading into the "basement" (ye olde style basement). Here's a picture of what I mean:




The problem here, is that sims can't come up from the basement. They can go down the stairs, and they'll start to walk up the stairs from the basement, but when they reach the top they'll suddenly turn around and head down again. The other set of the stairs works fine, although it seems to be causing the issue. When I remove the upper staircase, sims can actually come up the lower one. When I put it back, suddenly the lower stairs are unclimbable again. I've tried changing stairs, adding and removing walls. Nothing seems to work here.

I have no idea why this is happening, as this stair setup seems to work everywhere else. I even built a similar setup elsewhere (with a foundation basement) on the lot and it works fine. Does anyone have any idea why this particular spot just isn't working?

[Tangie]

What an interesting way to do stairs - I've never seen them (or thought to do it myself) this way, but it sure looks like an efficient use of space. Do you have to lay the basement stair first, or the upper stair first?

I find stairs in general, along with roofs, to be very frustrating. It took a few weeks before I could get a double width stair to my basement; the game just wouldn't allow more than one stair width because I couldn't delete the foundation area to get them installed. This is after I deleted all the surrounding walls and floors, since it seems that foundation can't be deleted if the game things it's needed to hold something up. But it still wouldn't work. I gave up and tried again a few weeks later and it worked. <shrug>

I have no idea why your stairs aren't working, especially if you've used this lay out before and it works just fine. One thought I had, though, was deleting the half wall of the stair going upstairs to see if that helps. But I seem to remember one or two other people posting about similar behavior with stairs, and it had nothing to do with the way they were constructed - at least AFAIK. So it could be possible it's just another bug and not your stairs at all.

[Slymenstra]

I did the stairs the same way in a house and copied that house into the neighborhood 3 times.  With 2 houses the people go up the stairs then turn around and go right back down, but the 3rd house they go up and down just fine.  I have no idea why.  I'm sorry to not be of any help.

I killed one set of stairs on each level so they are staggered to fix it.  I tried everything to to see if it was a building mistake or item placement, and couldn't find any reason.  I also had one house work fine one day and then I went to play again and the stairs were broken.

[pbox]

The stairs are messed up like that - they sometimes don't work when they clearly should. I've seen the same thing happen in my game too - sims walk up, then turn around and walk down again. I've been able to fix it, sometimes, by nuking and rebuilding the stairs; in my experience rebuilding from bottom to top tends to be more successful than top to bottom. YMMV.

[J. M. Pescado]

This is actually some kind of math/clipping glitch. You will find, if you look at your ENTIRE neighborhood, that stairs oriented in ONE way in the global plane work this way, and stairs oriented the other way DON'T. In my neighborhood, north/south oriented stairs work, east/west ones do not. Stair transitioning appears to be handled deep inside the engine, and is not accessible to script. Otherwise I would have fixed this by removing the ability to turn around, and forcing them to always complete the trip.

[Roobs]

This is actually some kind of math/clipping glitch. You will find, if you look at your ENTIRE neighborhood, that stairs oriented in ONE way in the global plane work this way, and stairs oriented the other way DON'T. In my neighborhood, north/south oriented stairs work, east/west ones do not. Stair transitioning appears to be handled deep inside the engine, and is not accessible to script. Otherwise I would have fixed this by removing the ability to turn around, and forcing them to always complete the trip.

Ah that would explain it then. Yeah when I built a test setup on the same lot, I had it oriented north/south and not east/west. Tried it just now going the other way, and sure enough it doesn't work. Bizzare.

I suppose moving the whole lot further down the road, so the stairs face the other way, would make the stairs work?

[pbox]

You will find, if you look at your ENTIRE neighborhood, that stairs oriented in ONE way in the global plane work this way, and stairs oriented the other way DON'T.

O.o

This is just nuts.

Could that be the reason rebuilding sometimes works and sometimes doesn't? So that when I build the stairs in the nonworky direction at first, then nuke and rebuild in the worky one, it would work? Or is that another issue (i.e. do they also break in other, unrelated ways that can be fixed by rebuilding) and they will only ever work when they're *currently* facing the right way, as opposed to at the time they were built?

Also, I take it you're specifically taking about *stacked* stairs, is that right? Or are they even more messed up than that?

[J. M. Pescado]

Could that be the reason rebuilding sometimes works and sometimes doesn't? So that when I build the stairs in the nonworky direction at first, then nuke and rebuild in the worky one, it would work?

It's "building it in the worky direction" that is the key. Building them in the non-worky direction never seems to work no matter how many times you do it. To build a stacked staircase in the nonworky direction, you need to offset-stack it, so that the staircase above is one tile ahead of the staircase below. A perfectly vertical stack will fail if drawn EW.

they will only ever work when they're *currently* facing the right way, as opposed to at the time they were built?

This appears to be the case, although I have not conducted extensive experiments. Obvious test: Build a lot the "right" way, pick it up, rotate it, and see if it breaks.