Just a couple of relevant notes:

1) If we can reduce the water level using the GridAdjuster, then we should reexamine the idea of creating underground basements (level = -1) using the LevelAdder. The water level issue may be the thing which was preventing us from using this style of basement. [Update: Water is not the problem.]

2) The LevelAdder should avoid changing the elevation of objects with the main coordinate at 0, 0. I believe that objects which are sitting on top of other objects (such as table lamps and computers), take their coordinates from the object that they are sitting on. Question: do they also take their level from that object?

How to add a foundation to a house that doesn't have one:

First, you may want to prepare your lot by removing floor tiles on the ground outside of the house, since these tiles will move up a level during this process. If you don't remove them now, you should be able to remove them at the end, but it may be more difficult because some tiles may no longer be flat.

0) Backup your neighborhood and keep the backup until you are satisfied with the results of this tutorial.

1) Download, extract and run the TS2LevelAdder program (attached)

WARNING
This is a test version. Be sure to backup before using this program and to test thoroughly afterward, especially if you intend to share the lot. You have only yourself to blame.

2) Select the neighborhood. If you are using the AnyGameStarter, you can use the Browse button to navigate to the appropriate neighborhood package.

3) Select the lot.

4) Enter the information as shown in the screenshot:
New level number = 0
Elevation of new level = 0
Move objects (check)
Object elevation = 0

5) Click on the Finish button to add the level, then exit the program.

6) Run the game and edit your lot. Note that the lot may look a bit odd, because you have two levels at the same elevation; this is not a problem. If you are viewing the ground level, the lot will appear to be empty; remember that everything has moved up one level on the lot.

Place one piece of foundation at two opposite corners of your lot; this will act as scaffolding for CFE.

7) Open the cheat window and type in:
boolprop constrainfloorelevation false

8) Use the flatten terrain tool to flatten the entire lot from one piece of foundation to the other.

9) Use the foundation tool to add the foundation under the house. Unfortunately, the game will remove your floor coverings on the main level of your house; you can add these floors back in after adding the foundation.

10) Turn off CFE. Add porches and stairs. Move your landscaping back down from level 1 to level 0 and replace any ground-level floor tiles. If you are having problems placing things on the ground, try temporarily placing a column in the aread to raise the next level further above the ground; once the column is deleted, the ground level should be more accessible.

All right! I will first tell you I ran into no deadly glitches or errors while using the program.

My first test house was 70 Middle lane in Pleasantview. I followed your directions and up to step 5 no problems arose. However step 6 came out wonky for me. You said it would look funny and looking at the picture you meant the floor tiles would be a bit glitchy. I had put down some quick landscaping, a fence, a lawn chair, and a pool, but although the house was there in neighbor hood view the lot was totally empty when I opened it. I put down the first square of foundation and POP! every thing was back but the pool. I later put Cyd Roseland on the lot, the pool was there it was just hidden in the ground. I used the pool tool to un-hide it, as long as I was over a tile that had pool previously it was free.

I also successfully added a foundation to a house with an attached garage.

The whole program worked great, I loved it and can't wait to add foundations to some of my poor foundation-less homes.

Your problem with step 6 was that you were looking at the ground level, but everything from the ground up had been moved up one level. Just move up to the next level and you'll see everything. When you added the foundation, the game automatically moved you up to the main level. Of course, you will want to move all of the outdoor things back down to the ground level.

I suppose that I could let people specify a range on the lot where the new level will be added, so that the majority of their outdoor stuff would remain on the ground; shouldn't be that difficult to add, although the behavior for objects which straddle the boundary of the range may be undefined.

I'll take a look at the pool issue; I suspect that the program is accidentally moving the pool surface up to the next level. Oops.

I'm glad that the program was helpful for you, in spite of the problems that I've had trying to finish it.

Oh... I feel stupid now.

As for specifying a range if you skip the "scaffolding" and simply place the foundation where you know you want it, the house snaps up on top with out having to be raised first. When you do that only one square around the out side the house is affected.

eiram2006, would you please amplify on your comment re the scaffolding? Thanks!

Nice to know. I considered that technique after writing out the tutorial, but never went back to make sure that it works, so I didn't feel comfortable suggesting it. Does it work well even for non-rectangular houses (ie, houses which require multiple passes with the foundation tool)?

Not quite true. Everything on the lot is actually moved up one level. Things may appear to be on the ground, but they are actually one level up. This may affect your sim's environment score, and whether they can tend to the garden or use "ground-level" objects.

Yes, multiple passes work.

I thought of that after I'd navigated away from the forum... I need to think more

Important things to remember:
- Sims cannot travel from level 0 to level 1 without stairs, even if those two levels are at the exact same elevation.
- Sims can only interact with objects when they are on the same level.

Mootilda, is this still the most up-to-date version of LevelAdder?

I have built a very nice vaka, but now that it has been moved away from the road, it wants to be underwater. (I think I should have built it several floors up to compensate.)

I'm wondering if this is the time to try LevelAdder, or whether I should consider today's work a test run and start again.

Here's a webpage which is giving me inspiration on this...http://portal.charlamov.com/windleb...belladonna.aspx

(mine is pacific islander rather than medieval, but the aim is very similar)

Yes, it's the most recent version; I have made no significant changes since this version.

I assume that you're seeing the neighborhood water flooding your lot. Is your lot elevation at the water level, or under the water?

Did you build on the ground level, or up one from ground? If you didn't build on the ground, then you should be able to adjust all levels up some amount to clear the water, using either CFE or the GridAdjuster. You don't need multiple levels between the ground and the built-up area, just one very tall level, unless you need landings for the stairs. Note that it might be easier to move back to dry land before trying this.

If you built on the ground, then you have two options:
1) Use SimPE to adjust the lot elevation up (ie, the Z value in the Lot Description within the neighborhood package). This will work best if your ground level slopes down quickly from the built area.
2) Use the LevelAdder to add one or more levels between the ground and your building, then use CFE or the GridAdjuster to raise your building closer to water level.

After posting last night, I did use LevelAdder to add one level to the lot. That got the boat out of the water.

I was wondering if LevelAdder could add multiple levels at the same time. I only later realised I could have put in foundation instead of walls, and got down to the ocean floor with one level. I'll do some more fiddling with that lot I suppose!

I'm thinking I might still need to lower the elevation again slightly, so the boat has a bit of water displacement.

I did build on the ground originally. I should be able to lower the ship slightly with CFE. Is there any advantage to doing it with SimPE instead?

Apart from wonderig if there were other values that would be useful to enter into the LevelAdder fields, using the program went without a hitch. I didn't use scaffolding, but turned on CFE and used walls to trace around the shadow of the building which appeared on the sea floor. Worked fine.

I was a bit confused about what had happened to the roof of the cabin, but I spotted it eventually in its original (now lower) position. Stairs likewise - I thought they had just been deleted for some reason, but then I was not allowed to place new ones. Eventually I looked into the bottom of the boat, and there they were - not sure if sims would have used them, but the game certainly thought they were still attached to the right pieces of floor.

Another sterling program! Thanks.

...Just had a thought - if sims WOULD use those displaced stairs, could we align the levels (with GridAdjuster) and have them walk between levels without a visible staircase? Stair animations would probably still happen. Shame I deleted the old stairs without testing that.

SimPE adjusts the elevation of the zero point of the lot. CFE adjusts the elevations of the grid points on the lot, relative to the zero point. A lot should be easier to play if the elevations on the lot stay closer to zero, since the cameras tend to try to view the zero point. So, if you're having problems with the cameras, then you might want to raise the lot elevation in SimPE and lower the grid elevations a bit using CFE or the GridAdjuster. If you're not having any problems with your camera, then do whatever looks best.

You can specify any level that you want added. If you add level 0, then everything from the ground up will be moved up one level. If you add level 10, then you're probably just adding a new level at the top and the existing levels will stay put.

The new level elevation that I've shown (0) is the best one to use, but only because the LevelAdder still doesn't know how to determine the level of many of the objects on a lot. Once I've got that working, then you should be able to specify the actual elevation for any new level and the LevelAdder will move everything up appropriately.

Because I wasn't able to figure out how to find the level of an object, I added the ability to move objects based on their current elevation. So, if you only want to move objects up if their current elevation is > 16 clicks, then you can certainly try it. This is really a kludge until I can get things working properly, which is why the LevelAdder hasn't been released yet.

So, the LevelAdder doesn't allow level numbers or elevations below 0. Trying to use the "Adding a Foundation to a House" method to try to raise a pool above the -1 level removed the cutaway for the pool. Pool ladders and diving boards can be placed where pool walls are in the ground; the pool is still usable (it's just in effect invisible). Using the pool tool over the area fixes the cutaway, revealing the pool as normal.

Interestingly enough, you can still apply terrain paint to the ground, but not floor tiles. Still, I'm sure there is someone somewhere that could find a use for the illusion of a Sim diving into the earth with a splash. With the CFE cheat, I was able to place pond water. Although swimming didn't look right and no Seasons EP fish appeared, the reflective water and animated appearance of water lapping on the banks of the pond looked great.



I didn't have debug on or any cheat objects installed, so I had to take care of my test Sims. At some point, I lost it. The static pond water took over somehow. I don't know what (if anything) I did to make it revert back to blob water. (For clarity: when in top-down view, you could see the darker blue of the pond but at an angle you could see the light blue pool water.)

If elevated pools are impossible, so be it. I appreciate your insights and tools regardless.

If nothing else, this might be an interesting trick for animated and reflective ponds (assuming it doesn't disappear for whatever reason). I need to do some more tests to see what caused it to revert and if it'll stay after saving and reloading the lot.

Elevated pools may be possible, as long as I can change all of the appropriate records. It's certainly worth a try. As far as I know, pools consist of:
- floor tiles
- walls
- wall coverings
- invisibility flags for the ground level
- pool surface

Most of these things are already handled correctly. The invisibility flags logic needs to be changed for ground levels as well. So, it may be a fairly simple matter of allowing a -1 level to be added, fixing the invisibility, and adjusting the pool surface.

Unfortunately, I'm currently trying to finish a university subhood and I just found a problem with limousines on 1x1 lots, so it will probably still be a week or so before I can get to this.

Did you understand my explanation of why the GridAdjuster can't solve this problem?

No rush. I'm not in any hurry.



I believe so.

Pool accessories are what makes sims to perform the swimming actions and scoring. The swim-pool is actually only a graphical presentation of the box the sims are in and the swim-pool walls are the partition as barriers to limit where sims can "swim" to.



The human interface tool is made to access only the highest layer layers of graphics. Since the floor tile is a higher layer than the errain layer is, and since the paint is not set to paint on the floor tile layer, users cannot normally draw on the floor tile without engineering a terrain palette" mechanism into the game.



Neat idea,

An alternative you may try can be frillen's "triple magic" to get sims swim on object-based grid-plain.
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=253468

You may adit the pool layer file in lot package file to add in a swim pool layer.

Note, swim-pool reflection is actually only 2D mathematically designed at primary degree, so better not to expect a reasonably twisted reflection for uneven grid-based swim-pool surface added into the twisted swim-pool reflection by the swim-pool surface layer).



I guess "static pond water" may be the swim-pool swim-pool-surface-layer-based, right?

The original game terraiin water has at least 2 major gradient layers if I remember clearly enough. Look, it's been quite a long while, and I'm telling i may have made mistake on the gradient layer number.

Should you want the terrain water as the pond water, may try this terrain water mod to change that into the swim-pool surface.
http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=241878



What sort of "elevated pools" do you mean?
Can this be the sort you meant?
FatD's sort of fake pool approach:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=179719
Can it be frillen's "triple magic"-based elevated pools?
Can it be the sort by means of modding at the pool record file in lot package file?
Or else?



What sort of "animated"? like...
Sims? Sims swimming action? water surface rippling?

If you meant both rippling water surface and reflection, then swim-pool surface layer or EP6 BV's ocean water layer (lotskirt water layer) may be an easier choice to fool around with.

What might disappear?
Can you elaborate more, please?

I'm not competent in the technical details of the inner guts of the game. I pass my foolish questions onto and yield to those more knowledgeable than me.

Roof-top pools or perhaps even pools on a foundation...I suppose somewhat like FatD's approach. As you've pointed out, the pool surface tiles are not exactly duplicates of the more complex real pool surface. My hopes were to elevate the real pool surface above ground. While not as relatively easy as placing special floor tiles, it would be a perfect match if this were to work.


And now I see I've dragged yet another one of your threads off topic again.... Sorry, Mootilda.
Reflective and moving pond water (well, the appearance at least). I made a (WARNING! 20-ish MB) movie, but the water moves much faster in the movie than in-game. I have no idea why this is (perhaps just the video capture? *shrugs*). In-game, it ripples and moves at the leisurely pace of the normal pool water.

The pool surface. I believe I can confirm that saving and reloading the lot makes the pool surface disappear, replaced with the static pond water.

On the right is the pool effect captured as a still frame from the aforementioned movie, on the left is what is left after it reverted back to the normal pond. I suppose this pond technique would be better for storytellers who take pictures than for normal gameplay.


Back on topic:
Is this a bug or a feature?
Normally, I click "Start >" then, once I see "Pleasantview" highlighted, I click "Next >". I see the lots listed.

If I click "Lot Catalog..." or "Browse..." and cancel out of the file open dialogue, clicking "Next >" doesn't work like the above anymore. Rather than listing the lots, it reopens the file open dialogue that's normally seen after clicking "Lot Catalog...".

A bug. Thanks for reporting this. It's probably in a bunch of my programs, since they all use the same lot catalog source code.

Mootilda, I know that this is not a priority and it should be relatively easy to add it, just to know,. The most recent version when it gets in the screen that you should pick a neighborhood, I couldn't see my subhood. This may caused either because it is a subhood, or because it doesn't follow the maxis neighborhood name type (N001), I've used 4 characters though.I had to browse for it and it worked fine.

=) that's all, just to know!

MAB