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.

It may need more CFE trick, but making it two-floor can help, I think. The walls of second floor should be lowered(more CFE trick, I said) for you don't want overly tall ceiling. Make sure to place invisible floor tiles over the first(ground) floor to make it weather-proof. By the way, maybe the game does not make a room weather-proof if its ceiling is not flat(and there's no roof over it)?

Yes, domed floor roofs do let in the weather. To make weather proof you need to build a second story and CFE it down to 4 clicks. Cover that with floor tiles and then build a third story about that and dome roof that.

So if the THIRD floor becomes the roof, do I "inverse-dome" the floor tiles of the second floor? Or still do that to the ground-level squares?

Also, will snow accumulate on those 3rd floor tiles, or should I make them just look snowy?

I think you would do that by drawing a wall parallel to your building, I think 1 tile extra on each end. So if your roof is 8 tiles your wall will be 10. Then you draw two more walls on top of that. You distort the ground under the wall then grab the terrain tool and go from that third wall you drew over to the third wall and tiles on your building. You might need to add some floor tile atop that 3 stacked wall if it doesn't want to draw across.

I am not the greatest CFE'R though, someone like Cat @CatherineTCJD would know better.

Cool; hopefully she'll see this and offer some advice. I've also just downloaded this tutorial on wall height reduction by @V1ND1CARE; I'm gonna try a few things from it and see if I glean any insights.

Fun!

Here's how I would build it...
Make a 2-story, floored on the first level only, frame.
Turn on CFE, and dig/reverse the dome.
Turn CFE off, and floor the upper level so it is flat - you may have to have added outer "edge" tiles in step one, and then add the tiles one-at-a-time to make it fill in/across.
So, at this point, you will have a scooped ground level, a reverse dome on the first floor, and a flat 2nd floor "roof".
Add invisible flooring to the underside of the flat 2nd-floor roof - so you won't have broken triangles inside later.
Turn CFE on - or use the grid-adjuster - and bring the flat 2nd-floor down to 20 clicks/4-steps above the first floor height. (If using the Grid-Adjuster, you could bring it all the way down to 17 clicks!)
Then - flatten your ground level, which will also flatten your 1st floor and bump up your roof.
Now that your 1st floor is flat, it will stop the snow - and it can be turned invisible so you won't even know it's there... except for lighting anomalies. *sigh*

Now: disclaimer... this was all off the top of my head, but I think it will work.
...If I remembered all the steps correctly - that is how I built this domed chapel: on my blog
And, if you want a completely invisible floor - use mine

Thanks for all that! I'll give it a shot... These lodges are basically the size of a large family camping tent. The one we put up at living history events is 9 x 12 feet, and maybe... 7 feet tall in the middle? I might need to make the Sim ones slightly larger, to make this method work, and besides, these folks (Sims) take up a ton of room when they're asleep... to get enough people lying down inside something that looks even close to the right size is pretty much impossible, but hey. Ideally, the curve of the "roof" would go all the way to the ground - see screenshot - which is theoretically possible (according to my v1nd1care tutorial), but might entail a whole bunch of trickery, and again, my dwellings are probably too small to make a really convincing dome on. If I can get even a decent, shallow dome on top of a straight wall I'll be happy enough.
Shaping the floor is the biggest pain in the process. Viewed from above, you can see where you're clicking, but not how deep it is... viewed from the side, you often can't tell either thing, and immediately adjacent to diagonal walls, it sometimes won't let you lower anything. Wish me luck!

Thanks Cat, I knew you would go about this in a better way than I would.

@CatherineTCJD -
Um, so I got to the point where I tiled the ground level. That made the floors on BOTH the upper stories dome up. Then I added the invisible tiles to the 1st story up. This flattened that dome, and the one above it.
When you said "add the invisible tiles to the underside" I began to worry... I've never dealt with undersides of floors before. In my game, floors viewed from below are see-through. I think you may realize where this is going, but... how exactly do you lower a wall's height? Even the tutorial just says "lower the wall by x clicks", it doesn't say which tool to use. Either I'm incredibly dense, or this is another case of my not having the right EPs to swing this. Some other folks who've helped me in the past are used to this, Cat, but... I only have Uni, NL and Seasons. That's it. Do I need M&G or something, to lower walls and tile undersides of floors?

Ohhhh... yeah, I think ceilings came with Apt Life?
Sorry - I didn't realize you weren't using the whole game. (You really should, you know - the UC is available, and was given for free by EAxis at one point. Osab's Starter Pack is the best, and fully supported... if you want to do that.)
I wouldn't have tiled the ground floor until I was finished... I'da just flattened it with CFE - but maybe CFE works differently without all the packs? I thought you were familiar with CFE from what you wrote. The "tool" you use for it is the CFE cheat, and then dig down with the terrain tool. (Or you can use the modular stairs to dig 4-steps at a time.)

I'm sorry I wasn't very much help to you! Please keep trying! I have to go to bed now... but I'll check back tomorrow, and see if I can say something that will actually help you.

I mean, I got a nice dome to happen. I just started to lose it with the invisible tiles. That's good advice about doing the ground floor tiles last. I guess I need to make a parallel wall outside the structure, lower the terrain on that, and then level off to the actual walls? Someone mentioned something like that. I've done CFE roofs before, I'm just... not very good at it. Tutorials with pictures help.

Another problem to sort out is despite removing the "weather removal" package, I can't get the snow to pile up. Just found some terrain paint though. Anyhow...

I have a problem where I can't install the UC with my current OS, but also can't upgrade that without making my life miserable. And... I'm on a Mac, so certain EPs were never made for my system in the first place. I get by.

Anyhow, I'm off for the weekend to actually live in the real-life lodge in the photo, and give history lessons to the public masses in Indiana. So I'll get back to simming next week. If anyone lives near Lafayette, IN, come on by - Feast of the Hunter's Moon. Ciao for now. And thanks! I always appreciate assistance, even if it doesn't click right away.

It was a good weekend! Not too chilly yet at night, which is always good when you're basically sleeping outdoors. Were this the 18th century, we would have had a whole bunch of cattail mats ready to go at all times, and could pile on as many layers as neccessary for insulation. We're limited by how many we can fit in the car, along with all our other baggage. If anyone is interested in a time-lapse video of us putting the thing up, SEE HERE (Vimeo link) (hope I'm not violating any forum rules).

Anyhow, I'm going to see what the effect of the terrain paint is. Truth be told, I don't particularly care if my Sims don't actually "feel" the cold, as long as it looks nice, and they can go ice fishing. Snow on the roof of the lodge would be a welcome bonus, but I don't hold out much hope. It would be nice not to have the snow inside the lodge, though. I'll give the previous instructions another shot, and maybe don't worry about the invisible tiles ON the roof... I can always resort to an invisible canopy on column-stilts (now that I have truly invisible tiles

I was looking at the pictures of the RL buildings again and I suddenly wondered if a retexture of the igloos here would work? https://hafiseazale.dreamwidth.org/14981.html#cutid1

They have the right shape and they work as a tent and Bon Voyage is the last EP made for Macs, right?

A little hard to tell from the picture, but I'm thinking they look a bit small. Still, they are more or less the right shape, and... I'm fascinated by igloos anyway. And, now that I actually own a copy of BV... maybe I should just go ahead and install it. Been quite a while since my last EP install. Like I said, let me try the terrain paint and see what's what after that. Thanks, Charity!

The terrain paint works pretty well, but in case screenshots will help diagnose where I went wrong, I've uploaded them for the four levels of build: ground floor, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.





I currently have invisible platforms built on top of 3-story columns (which I deleted after building the platforms). As they're invisible, though, it's sometimes tricky to get them to appear where I need them, and even trickier to delete them if I make mistakes. Furthermore, the actual roof tiles, which ideally I'd like to put a small smoke-hole in, seem to have their own, totally arbitrary rules about which tiles I can or cannot delete. So there's more work to do here. I just found some potentially better snow paint, which I'm going to test now, along with trying the dome-building steps again.

Still no snow accumulation on-lot, although - as you can see - in the hood view, it looks like there is. With the terrain paint, I don't really need it. The ponds did eventually ice over, so wintertime fishing is a go, and I've just downloaded a snowman DR so that Frosty's anachronistic silk topper won't show up. Or, I might find a mod that nixes snowman-building altogether. Snowmen were a thing in the 18th Century, although perhaps not among the indigenous population of America. Click HERE to check out the history of snowmen on Wikipedia, if you're interested. Now to (hopefully) winter-proof the lodges.

Because I have so many deco trees, etc. on the intended destination lot, I went back to a test lot and leveled it off to do some experiments. Pardon the many screenshots, but I wanted to document this.

After building a two-story walled enclosure, I proceeded to lower the UPPER story, so that there could be two "roofs" on top of each other, without the building actually being two full stories tall.
Digging a couple of 12-click-deep trenches, one on each side of the lodge, I built two-story walled things in the bottoms, set CFE=false, and leveled the upper wall height down to 4 clicks.


Now that each level of wall was at the correct height (or so I thought), I went ahead and put in the two layers of "floor-roof": the "nothing to see here" invisible tiles on op of the lower (supposedly standard 16-click) wall, and the "bamboo reed" texture on top of the upper (4-click) wall. The little red fences (later deleted) went along the diagonal sections to cordon off the tiles from going over the edge.


Setting CFE=true, I just used the largest terrain-lower brush to make a big inverse dome on the ground floor. Then I set CFE=false, and leveled the ground floor to bump up the floors above into domed ceilings. That is, I ASSUMED the invisible lower ceiling made a dome; in retrospect, I should've just used a regular floor tile to see what happened. The upper, bamboo floor did make a dome:


Here's where the weirdness set in. Before going off to make another test Sim, I attempted to place a door on the front wall, only to be informed that the ceiling was too low. As I was placing it on the lower section of wall, I figured there would be enough room for it... apparently not. Now, it's possible that I miscounted the number of clicks earlier when I was lowering the top wall section, but... it was the TOP section, not where I was trying to put the door. I built a wall just on the flat ground a square away, and yup... it was taller than my lower lodge wall. After bringing a test Sim in, he somehow got stuck inside the lodge, and despite my having knocked out two wall panels to make a "doorway", he wasn't able to walk outside. Finally I did manage to get a door in by again setting CFE=false... this just shoved up the section of the wall where the door was placed so it would fit.


After all was done, though, and despite the two ceilings overhead... still snow inside the lodge. Do I know for sure that the invisible tiles made a dome? No, I do not. But they are definitely there. So I attempted to utilize my 3-story column solution. Apparently there's something that doesn't really let you place flat floors over a round roof. You can see the curious pattern of where I was allowed to tile or not (using a visible tile for illustration purposes)... some sort of ancient Simlish hieroglyph, probably.

ANYhow, that's where I'm at. One moment I was all proud of my lowered 2nd story, and the next, it wasn't letting me put an archway in. So, I submit all that for your perusal.

BTW... it can be just a little confusing following instructions for using the CFE cheat. Some people will say to "turn the cheat on", by which they mean set CFE=FALSE. Others say "turn CFE on", which of course means CFE=TRUE. I tend to go with the latter method of describing it, as it corresponds to what you're actually telling the game to do. Is the floor elevation being constrained, or not? I always have to ask myself that when trying to decipher tutorial instructions.

The snow will only be deterred if the roof is flat. So the lower roof, the invisible one, is the one that needs to be flat - with the domed roof above it.

When using the invisible floor - I would use an outlandish flooring (like the disco tile in fluorescent yellow!) first, when building - and the change it to invisible when I'm done. Also don't forget to do both sides of the floor - ceiling and upper floor - with the invisible floor (unless your lesser-EP/SP set up doesn't need that?)

Yes, CFE is confusing! I have my commands aliased in my userStartUp file. I just hit "5" to do funky stuff, and "6" to build with the game's constraints.

Another helpful tool you might like is Psychosim's Default Wall with Scale. With it you can see at a glance if your wall is 16-clicks high. Also, did you know? You can use a modular stairs to "dig" with, they dig down 4-clicks at a time. Both of those tools help me keep my CFE clicks straight.

You are making progress! Good luck with it!

All good advice; thanks, Cat. I think using CFE would be less confusing if folks were more consistent in how they talked about it... something that can't really be helped. What makes sense to me might not make sense to someone else.

Re: the flat invisible ceiling... I should wait to put that in, I'm guessing, until AFTER the dome is created, and make sure that CFE=TRUE when I do it, so those tiles don't get bumped? If I use an obvious, visible tile to build it, I'll figure it out; just want to make sure I do it in the right order.

Re: the DR walls with the height markers - that sounds extremely useful! However, I tried using a DR floor-edge recently, and it crashed my game, so hopefully this won't. Thanks!

Finally, SUCCESS! My steps:

A. After building a new 2-story lodge frame (with the fancy new measure-marked walls; thanks, Cat!), I then proceeded to level down the upper story to 4 clicks, by digging a trench parallel to one of the lodge walls, and putting a similar 2-story structure in the bottom, before setting CFE to FALSE. This time I used the connecting stairs (x3) to get a 12-deep depression. For whatever reason, it wouldn't let me level the whole circumference at once, so I had to do the same on the opposite side. (shrug) When I get to building on the final destination lot, I'm going to go for an even shorter upper story.


B. Having got my lowered upper story, I turned CFE back to TRUE, got rid of the depressions and the temp structures, and slapped the roof tiles on the upper story of the lodge. In retrospect, I maybe should have left one tile out in the center for the smoke hole... what do you think? I guess I could've done that after the dome was formed... maybe. I certainly couldn't do it at the end, but I'm jumping ahead...


C. With the UPPER roof tiles laid (and CFE still TRUE), I dug my inverse dome on the ground floor - kind of blindly - then set CFE back to FALSE, and re-leveled the ground floor, pushing up the floor above into a dome...ish shape. Truth be told, I've seen some worse-shaped lodges at re-enactments, set up hastily by volunteers, probably in the rain. This shape would definitely NOT work for putting cattail mats over, but... I was just trying the process; I'll do it more carefully on the actual lot I'm building. You can probably see here that my previous attempt still lingers in the form of invisible floating tiles, which I can't seem to totally delete.


D. Now, to put in the lower roof - the flat, weatherproof one - I had to set CFE back to TRUE. After initially choosing the Maxis public lavatory tile to make sure it was actually flat, I switched it to "Nothing to see here". Then, I tried putting in a door, which worked this time (not really sure what I did wrong before), and covered the walls with the faux-cattail siding. Once, at a Black Hawk War (1830s) re-enactment in NW Illinois, a dude showed up with his lodge in tow behind his pickup... it was a duck blind on wheels, covered with something that looked a lot less like cattails than this nice bamboo texture. Genius... and horrible at the same time. Anyhow...


E. As you can see, inside the lodge, there is no snow... except for one square, corresponding to the hole that I tried to punch in the UPPER roof, but which would only appear in the LOWER one. I don't think I'd actually need the hole for the smoke effects to escape, and in actuality, a hole might not have been necessary in historic winter lodges, either... just a thinner layer of mats right above the fire would suffice. When I put the tile back in, the snow vanished from the fireplace, and my test Sim - who looks a lot like Ken Hamilton, a re-enactor friend of mine - can now warm himself properly by the fire. Ken! Not too close - you'll set your moccasins on fire!


SO, there you have it. Many thanks to @CatherineTCJD, @Charity, @joandsarah77, and @LFact for their advice and patience. @porkypine and @N8iveSims, maybe this thread will be of some use to others.

Now, if only I could get that penguin to stop loitering around... Wrong continent, buddy!

Aww, but he's so cute. Maybe he got blown off course in a terrible sea storm! XD

Yah it worked.

YAY!!! You got it!

I've run into a small problem... When I lowered the 2nd story to 4 clicks, I was able to place doors in the lower walls. When I tried making the upper wall only 2 clicks high, I could no longer place them, seemingly. I didn't get an error message, but the door was not passable - there was a frame but no opening. Does this make sense? ...in other words, is that further lowering preventing the door placement, or did I most likely do something else wrong? Since it seems impossible (or at the very least, a real pain in the neck) to fiddle around with wall heights once the "double roof" has been installed, before I end up re-building all the lodges on the lot three or four times, I think I should nail down exactly what the deal is with door functionality and CFE manipulation.

I had to walk away from it, as I was driving myself nuts, but maybe I'll try it out on the test lot to see if I can figure out the magic formula. According to that tutorial I mentioned, practically any wall height is possible, including negative numbers, but that doesn't mean doors and windows will be able to go there, is what I'm guessing. I'm not sure I understand what the relationship is between a shortened UPPER story and a door on the LOWER story, but maybe I'm thinking about this wrong. @CatherineTCJD, what do you think the problem is?

Okay, I did a little experimenting on a fresh lot so I wouldn't have to delete all my trees or accidentally erase my river. I wanted to see how much lower I could get the upper walls before the doors stopped working. For this purpose, I brought my test Sim, Natty Bumppo - in the form of Daniel Day-Lewis from Mohicans - out of storage.

First, I built four octagonal lodge frames (2-story, no floors), and four accompanying 2-story wall-things, in four trenches of different depths: 12, 13, 14 & 15 clicks, aiming for upper walls of 4, 3, 2 & 1 click high (sectors marked with a mini fence, and lodges hereafter referred to by those numbers).


After getting the wall tops leveled to their new heights and tiling the upper roofs, rather than go ahead with the dome creation, I tried putting doors (arches, actually) on the various lodges. On the "4" lodge, the door placed normally; on all the other ones, there was a section at the top of the doorframe where the wall protruded down below the frame, further down or up, depending on the upper wall height. You can see the difference between the "4" lodge on the left, and the "1" lodge on the right.


Whatever shape the top of the arch was, there was a matching "eyelid" of wall hanging down, which I thought was interesting.


To prepare the lot for Mr. Bumppo, I then added the domes and under-roofs. Here I ran into another issue: when trying to tile the under-roof on the three buildings with upper walls lower than 4 clicks, it wouldn't do the whole thing if there was a door in place. Because I had already placed the doors, I moved them out of the way, but then when I put them back after tiling the under-roof, only the fram showed up, not the door opening. So, for weather-testing purposes, I just left the tiling empty above the door, which allowed for at least a partially open doorway (minus the eyelid).


I brought Natty to the lot so I could try the lodges, using Nopke's weather adjuster to cause an artificial blizzard. The "4" lodge presented no problems, since it had been fully weatherproofed (minus a smokehole). This, as it turns out, is not needed - smoke from a fire will permeate roof tiles. On the other lodges, sometimes Bumppo would enter them easily, sometimes not. In a couple instances (see below on the "2" lodge) he entered the structure, but would not proceed much past the doorway, and stamped his little foot, shrugging at me. I don't know if this had to do with the door, or the incomplete ceiling tiles, or what.


So, my general conclusion from all of this is that the 4-click upper story is in fact a magic number of sorts, as far as doorways are concerned. Perhaps there's a perfectly reasonable explanation, and a way to overcome this problem. @CatherineTCJD, what do you make of that?

P.S. - my next experiment is to see what a negative-height upper wall looks like!