Hi,

I'm going to build a big community lot (the biggest size) which is like a "little Venezia", with water in the center, and three-floor small buildings sorrounding the water, with a sidewalk between the water and the buildings. However, the sidewalk must have a riverfront-like wall to the water.

I know the WA EP introduced "riverfront walls", but I don't have WA, so I ask you the best way for doing so.

I don't like the idea of creating a pool, because a pool looks "too cyan". I want the water to have a more sea-like appearance, so I plan on using the water tool from the terrain tools in build mode. Or maybe the fountain tool would be better?

And how do you recommend to do the walls of the "riverfront", so that sims can walk on the sidewalk next to the water?

Using a foundation for the riverfront wall gives you the straight edge np. Then you just have the sidewalk on top of the foundation. If you want to use the pond tool you can make the edges of the pond very steep and cover it with a stone wall, or floor if you like.

Can't come up with a more brilliant solution at the moment. I'm not sure what you mean by riverfront walls from WA though. Perhaps I just miss the point totally.

Or perhaps the basement tool can be used if you make wall in the basement for the canal walls, you just have to get rid of the top of the basement. There is a few tutorials on how to remove the top soil to expose the basement. Actually thinking about it that would be a rather good idea. If you go back a while in this forum you will find a couple of good tips on how to do that. It may just be a bit complicated. The trick is to make the water stay there in the pond so to speak.

I need some food, good luck.

Thanks a lot. By "riverfront walls" I mean that I want to have a vertical wall from the water going up until arriving to the sidewalks. The vertical distance from the water level to the sidewalk level must be higher than a pool or fountain (I'd like it to be a height similar to one sim, for example).

After googling a while, I believe this can be done playing with the "constrain floor" console trick, because with it you can make foundations of any height.

However, I'm now facing a weird issue: Do you see reflections in ponds created with build mode? (I mean build mode, not CAW).

I've the reflections quality option set to maximum, and I can see reflections on swimming pools, on fountains, and on the see... but no reflections on ponds!! Is this correct?

I'm considering using the fountain tool for my Venezia-looking lot, because I want reflections on the water! Or even do it as a pool (I just found the pool can be redecorated and it doesn't look as cyan as a pool.

Ponds should have the same water surface as the ocean- with waves. Do you not see those?

There are some retaining walls here for download:
http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=483599
In case you're interested. Those are designed for CAW/ world editor mode though, as opposed to on lot.

Yes, I see waves on ponds, as well as the sun reflection on them. However, they don't reflect any building, tree, or sim. On the other hand, the ocean, pools and fountains reflect them...

Regarding the walls, thanks a lot, although I don't have CAW (as explained in the other thread), but I'll try the foundations approach.

I'm just thinking of lowering the terrain level, about half a floor, and create a pool there, and then create foundations from such level up the lot base level... I hope to be able to create walls of about half a floor from the water level until the sidewalks/terraces level, which is what I'm looking for.

Hello zeesit,

you mean something like this:


This is an old sims 2 pic of mine but same thing can be accomplished with Sims 3. As already mentioned you can use a pond and surround it with foundations. The pond can even reach into the foundation (you can see it at the bridge), leaving the foundation walls vanishing into the water.

With the cheat constrainfloorelevation false and terrain tool > level terrain you can give foundations any height you like as long as they are taller than 4 steps. You can uild your sidewalks an building on top of the foundation.
If you want the foundation - not the terrain - to be 8 steps high. you need to substract another 4 steps, because the foundation will bring a 4 steps height by itself. Hope you got all the numbers right ;-).

Greetings
lichtje


edit:
You don't need calculate in "about half a wall". You can lower (and raise) all thing exactly: Raise the terrain high (higher than 1 story). put 2 diagonal wall with the raised terrain in beween. level the terrain from one wall to the other. This shortens the raised terrain to 12 steps (16 steps for the level minus minimum distance between 2 levels of 4 steps). From this height you can lower the terrain with stairs in steps of the height of 2 steps... just drag the stair as long as you wish. For a half wall height you need to substract another 4 steps (12-4=8=half height of a wall)... so: place a common 4 step staircase and level the terrain again... its exaclty 8 steps high now.

Yes, thanks a lot!! Btw, do you think of any problem I can face if I do this with a pool instead of a pond? (I'm trying to avoid ponds because of the reflections issue I commented earlier)

I chose to try it with a pool, but I'm having problems. First, foundations were never friends of mine (neither on TS2, nor on TS3), mainly because I always wished to align the top of foundations with the street level, and always failed to do so (well, aligning the height is easy because you can do exact-height foundations... the problem is when you want to put it next to the street... a seam in the terrain is always there, you cannot make sims to walk from the terrain to the foundation). In this case it's even more important to have the top face of the foundation aligned with the street level, because I want sims can enter this "lot with a river" without any stairs. Finally I decided to go without foundations, because I can create the pool at a lower height, and later use the constrainFloorElevation cheat to align the border of the pool to the street level.

I suceeded with this... until... ...I realized TS3 wants to put the water height automatically, and so, when doing some work I realized I was getting non-uniform water height on the pool... quite a mess, I'm afraid.

The choice of a pool for the river is cool because it not only gets cool reflections, but also would allow sims to swim on the river (yes, the height from the water to the street level is too high to put pool stairs, but I was overcoming this by putting small lower floors at the pool level (just like you see on some rivers: those lower platforms where people leave the boat and then go "upstairs" to the street). It was getting really cool, but then I realized about the non-uniform water height I was getting...

Isn't there any way for constraining the water height of a pool, so that it no longer moves?

Hello zeesit,

okay I understand more and more what you would like to accomplish. Indeed foundations make stairs necessary.

Raising the pool raises the waterlevel of the pool as well and I don't know how to prevent this.

I tried to use basement walls to show as river side. But they connect to pools and can't be placed on different heights next to each other.

If you would take a whole level difference insteat of half you could build indeed a basement, rip the lot ground open above the basement to get a free view into this basement and build the pool on the basement floor. Basements can't be changes in height as common walls can... thus onyl full level possible.

What don't you like about needing stairs to enter a foundation? They would make your desired look so easy and make even bridges over the river possible.

Greetings
lichtje

What I was trying to explain is what I start this tutorial with: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lspho1pSnCo

Make a pond where you want the canal to be, remove the topsoil as explained here. The effect should be something similar to this front pool in this tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_Za...ture=plpp_video

... but as I said, it's fairly complicated. Perhaps Simsample see my drift?

The thing is you get the ground to walk on, as a sidewalk, and the water will still be visible. The basement will be your canal. You don't get the elevated hight that the foundations make, or the 1 tile useless "fence". Good Luck. I suddenly got a good idea though. You may have to lower the terrain and to cover up that gap you can do as Simsupply does in this tutorial from ancient times, 2:17 out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj8bO4vCGN0

Here simsupply has another option for you too, use the basement as a retaining wall and have the pond as a canal at the front.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjXsTr2O8M4

Because I want to create the feeling that this river scene is a natural extension of the world terrain. If you put stairs to enter this lot, it will look as an added lot rather than the natural extension feeling I wish to create.

I never understood why both TS2 and TS3 require foundations to have a minimum fixed height over the terrain which is too high for a sim to step there without a stair. It's absurd that you cannot align the foundation height with the terrain level on one side (or at least, make it a height as little as a step, so a sim could go there without stairs). Because of this constraint, I admit I've _never_ used foundations when building houses, because it's quite weird to need stairs to enter a house: Most buildings I know (in the real life, I mean ) have the entry at street level. As I said, TS2 and TS3 foundations were never friend of mine, as I considered them unrealistic.

The post by Volvenom gave me an idea: using foundations _only_ for the river perimeter (as can be seen in the last video), so the foundations would be the retaining walls. The consequence will be that such walls will be a bit too wide and too tall for my taste, but could work.

Another problem I may face is that foundations are a bit wider than the brick they are in, while pools are exactly sized to brick boundaries. Because of this, I guess a seam on the wall might be noticeable.

Thanks for all your contributions!!

Hello,


This is what I suggested with;

It does not matter if you build into or next to... problem is that you will have a full level difference from pool surface to street level. Because pools can't be connected to basements on half a level just on full levels :-(.



Thank you for your explanation. I'd like to add two comments:

First EA: They had to seperate levels somehow from each other to make lots of options like constrainfloorelevation and such possible and they obviously decided to do that at standard foundation level as minimum distance.

Second: entrys of houses. Over here in Germany many family home have foundations and of course stairs to enter the house. That's because they want to have sunlit basement with direct sunshine... quater of the level is above ground with small windows, rest is underground. To me those kind of houses are perfectly well known. See... it all about what one is used to.

Hope you find a matching solution for your idea. Maybe you can show us the result here? I would really like to see it :-).

Greetings
lichtje

Actually most houses should be built on foundation. It keeps the moist out of the main floor, and it can be used for storage. It also keeps insects and small animals out of the house if it's made of just lose stone on each square of the house. So totally realistic. Building houses on just the ground here would make them rot in a year.

Foundations and basements can be used together too. You just need to find the best solution. If you make a hole in the ground as I described earlier the game still think there is floor there, so you can just build a pond on top. It's all down to what looks good though.

It's true that basement always have default regular high walls, but they can be pushed down into the ground with cfe.

I got it working, as you can see the basement drops down on the left side. It just require some planning.

Venezia Canal by Volvenom, on Flickr

To drop the basement down if you want to do that, you just extend the basement with a new one, lower down using cfe.

Thanks for zeesit for the idea. I have some video for a tutorial I hope. Will be back.

More fiddling and I got this one:

Second Venezia Canal by Volvenom, on Flickr

Second Venezia Canal-355 by Volvenom, on Flickr

There is a missing pond surface on the sides, but I cover it up with plants.

Tutorial here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFcVGGG6wVg

Hello.

@Volvenom
Yes I know about shifting basement, actually I translated my Tutorial: Design your own rabbit holes (on small lots) without downloads to English today using cfe in combination with basements. Gonna make a video out of it soon.

btw... the reasons you mentioned for foundations are much more convincing than just sunlit rooms... those might be a nice sideeffect. Me living in a flat of a realtively new built house never really thought about wet basements.

Back to main topic:
I thought zeesit wants to have half a wall of height as waterfront (like Amsterdams canals) and pools for the water reflection. I have no idea left how to build this without foundations.
I now tried to build the pool in a basement, lowering the basement walls next to the pool and lowering the whole pool too. This worked but the pool water line won't bei lowerd es hoped. Otherwise it would have been the desired effect.

One step high would work with those stage foundations... if this is enough its done easily. You don'd even need to place the step, sims will walk up on it without. But thats not the desired height for a canal look and you can't stack them.

Still thinking about it.

Greetings
lichtje

A pool sides can be lowered, but it's useless if you wanna move the lot. It also create a rather nasty bug. If you want to lower a pool you can probably build a temporary pool at the level you want the surface to be. You make your pool connected and then lower the surface of the pool you want to keep by knocking down 1 tile in the pool you wanna destroy.

I wouldn't use a pool though, it's full of it's own bugs, and has it's own set of rules. You need a long study into the subject, and a family you don't perticular care about.