I'll start off by telling you that it's been quite a few years since I've allowed any sort of weather at all in my game, so pardon me if this post comes off as a bit dense... I'm just not used to dealing with climate issues.

The idea behind this lot was to create a "winter hunting camp" for my Native American Sims... a residential lot with enough small lodges to host several small family groups as they settle in for the hunting season, harvesting deer and ice fishing. They would move to the lot for the duration of the winter season, then move back to their permanent multi-family longhouses when spring came. The winter lodges are small, rounded frames covered with cattail mats (see my profile pic). So the first issue was building something with a domed roof, which was a bit less than satisfactory: the lodges - meant to be small to be able to be heated easily - are too small in the Sim world for the curvature of the roof to look right (the CFE method doesn't work so well with diagonal walls), so they ended up looking a little saggy around the edges, as you can see below. Now, it's true - I still at this point had the "no weather on any lot" package installed, but I also had an artificial weather controller running... which is why, although some deco objects are getting a bit snowy (to say nothing of the world beyond the lot borders), there's no accumulation on the ground within the lot - just ignore that for the purposes of this post.


Here's my real problem: the roofs aren't really roofs, but just curved upper floors, right? So, naturally, there's nothing to keep snow from building up INSIDE the lodge. You'll see that, in the lodge on the right, only one of the beds has snow on it... my duct-tape solution was to place some 2-story columns around the lodge exterior, and lay down some invisible tiles on top of them, adding a layer of floor ABOVE the curved upper "roof" floor... and then deleting the columns (but I only got halfway done with that project, hence the unequal snowfall). Perhaps there was snow piling up on top of those invisible tiles (or was there? I forgot to check), but... as long as I keep the view on the ground floor only, I won't notice that.


The odd part is, I only put up the invisible canopy over the one lodge... so how come there's no snow on the "roof" of the other one? Does snow only gather on the ground floor of roofless structures? (I genuinely can't remember if that's how it works) And... if the invisible tiles up above "roof" level blocked the snow from landing inside the ground-level lodge... why don't the curved upper-floor "roof" tiles do the same? And... is there a way to achieve that curved look with something that will actually repel weather?

Finally, just for entertainment purposes, a shot of one of my deco crows from PBK, which - unlike the worm you see him about to snap up - doesn't collect snow, but just turns gray. Spooky!


Although I've now removed the "no weather" package from my DL folder, which will make things look slightly more normal... my main problem persists. Basically, I don't want the snow inside the lodges, but it would be nice to have it land on the domed roofs... I have no idea if that's at all possible. I suppose I could find a snowy-looking floor tile to cover the "roofs", and just keep going with building lots of invisible snow shields... kind of a drag, but maybe someone out there has a more brilliant solution for me.

Thanks folks; I know how much you enjoy brainstorming my bizarre building issues.