WHY?! Glitchy black "tiles" on castle lot-need help

[fragglerocks]

Hi! I have been building a castle for what seems like forever. It is a massive 60x60 lot and has tried my patience a few times.. :)

I'm having an issue with some black shadow-looking "tiles" showing up on my lot now. I'm figuring it may be because
1. My grid map looks insane in build mode. I'm wondering if it's because I have so many build layers inside the castle "wall". The errors are only on the inside of the walls, not the outside. Is this fixable?
2. There's at least 20 separate CC's used a few times each throughout the lot. Is this something you see often with bad CC?
3.Maybe I just have way too much on this lot. I have never played such a huge, overloaded lot before. But I didn't think it was so bad because there's hardly a lag when going from build to live mode.

Here's some pictures to help you understand my issue. (Problem circled in red on first photo) Thanks!

http://i56.tinypic.com/33bfjmw.jpg
http://i54.tinypic.com/2ijtg8k.jpg
http://i56.tinypic.com/i5qd0n.jpg
http://i53.tinypic.com/2564ndi.jpg

[armiel]

You haven't used ceilingtiles have you? Cause that's how they look from under if you have used them, and are not in the same floor with them (camera).

I had similar tiles few times, what I found out was that they are bottoms of floortiles that do not exist/ceilingtiles that don't have floor on top of them. I got rid of them in first option by flattening the levels with CFE, then placing floortiles on top of the problem spots, and finally deleting the just layed floortiles. And in second option I also flattened the levels with CFE, put floortiles on the problemspots, then added ceilingtiles to the problem spot, deleted the ceilingtiles, and finally the floortiles. Something like that.

I would asume that this is a problem caused by Ambitions/the patch that came with it.

[fragglerocks]

Thank you armiel!

I have not gotten around to putting any ceiling tiles in yet. I tried leveling what I could out with cfe false on and it didn't help. Then, I also tried your method of floor tile/ ceiling tile/delete, which worked until I went back into live mode, then the shadow tiles showed up again! But when I deleted the curved walls on the bottom two layers, and made them square, suddenly it worked. Does EA have some kind of hidden agenda against "curved" walls or something? I guess they can be glitchy. Anyways, here is a shot of my fix, and a shot with the grid on to show you the craziness.

http://i51.tinypic.com/2mdjkf6.jpg
http://i54.tinypic.com/msd3ea.jpg

Do the guard towers look "wrong" now that they are squared on the bottom layers? Any ideas on how to make it look better?

[armiel]

Did you try making the walls as they were again? Maybe it was a one time clitch....

[fragglerocks]

Thanks armiel!

Yes I did, because I had to recreate the issue so I could package the lot and send to candlelight82, who is so very kind to give me a helping hand in figuring out the problem! If this is a new glitch, it might make building castles a bit more challenging.

I certainly hope that I can maintain the original look I had for it, but if not, I'm sure I can think of something. At least I know I had some of the best builders helping me out, so that makes me feel like it was given the best shot possible.

:)

[candlelight82]

Just remembered:
It's a game engine problem,.. if you make big rooms like the inner court of a castle, these graphic glitches appear.
They don't make problems, they just look ugly.
How to fix it. Just add a gap somewhere on the lot. Hide it, cover it, use a fence,.. whatever.. just make sure the room is not complete.
The gap in the wall solves more than one graphic glitch, e.g. dark corners/objects,..

See pictures to see what I tried to say :D

[cutsocks]

Just a quick note, your portcullis is very creatively done. :D