Your technique sounds correct. I believe that the water level on the lot is causing the problem with earlier EPs. Unfortunately, the GridAdjuster doesn't change the water level (yet).

Try this: before placing the invisible tiles or using the GridAdjuster, move the ground level inside the basement down, so that it is below where the basement floor will be. What you want is something similar to what you would do to create a normal sloped basement.

Then, add the invisible tiles on the (lowered) ground and use the GridAdjuster to lower levels 1 and above. If necessary, you can then move the ground level up using the GridAdjuster.

Explanation: When you lower the ground in-game, the water level moves with the ground level; if you subsequently raise the ground using the GridAdjuster, the water level is not raised.

In the interim, I'll try to get the code to change the water level into the GridAdjuster. Sorry that it's taken so long.

The suggested methood worked like a charm.

I'm seeing so much in the way of possibilities with this Mod and I thank you for it. No worries on any delays. I'm happy to have the new toy and will be putting it to good use within my downtown lots especially.

Happy Simming!

Great. I'm glad that workaround helped. It also helps to confirm my suspicion about the water level, which puts a higher priority on completing the GridAdjuster water level changes.

In the interim, I added this info to my tutorial post.

One more thing to note about the water level is that the destination menu will not work properly in the basement. Even with the water level properly lowered, sims cannot "go here", "run here", etc. Instead, they only have the option to "fish using...".

This isn't much of a problem since they can fully interact with any object placed in the basement, but it does present a bit of an issue when transporting babies, toddlers, kittens or puppies. Since these sims can't navigate stairs, they have to be picked up, the carrying sim has to "go here" and then "put down". In those cases, I've used moveobjects, but for anyone sharing their lots widely, this should probably be acknowledged.

I also noticed that although you can eliminate fish in the basement, you can still hear them jumping.

All,

May choose whichever way one feels comfortable with.

Would you please attach your lot here, so that I could take a look at it and try to figure out what's happening? Thanks.

Unfortunately, I'm travelling for the next few days so I'm unable to give this the proper attention, but I'm uploading what I believe is the lot in question. I have several saved versions, so I'm sure I'll be able to find the right one if this doesn't serve. I'm sorry it's so packed full of extraneous garbage; I can easily get you a trimmed down version if you're willing to wait a few days instead.

Of note, I didn't make any structural changes to the basement after this save, but the lot I'm playing is shrunken to within one tile of the walls at the right and the back.

Another factor may be that I didn't lower the water level enough. It was purely an accident of laziness when I lowered the terrain under the basement before beginning to build. I only lowered it 2 storeys so the water level must be at -32 clicks, but in order to get access to the corners of the basement, I had to lower the ground tiles to -40 clicks. I didn't anticipate that it would cause any problems since the basement floor is only -10 clicks deep, but perhaps that's the issue after all.

OK, I've got the lot. Thank you.

The shrinking of the lot shouldn't affect this issue, since the LotAdjuster only changes the grid elevations and water level at the very edge of the lot. However, if I can't reproduce your problem, I'll try shrinking it, just in case.

Have a nice trip.

Thank you, I'm no longer in transit so I can now ferret out my other saves, if necessary. Does that lot show the effect I described?

As I said, for me it's a small price to pay for sunny basements and prettier lot impostors, but I thought it should be mentioned.

Sorry, I haven't had a chance yet to look at it.

Oh no problem. Let me know any time if it doesn't work for you.

Sorry for taking so long to get to this issue. I'll admit that I'm stumped.

I was able to reproduce the "'go to' becomes 'fish for'" problem with your lot. I checked the water level and it looks OK. I removed all CC, except for the required invisible tile, and it still has the problem.

However, I haven't been able to reproduce this issue with a newly-created lot, so I'm still trying to figure out why your lot has the problem and mine doesn't.

Has anyone else seen this issue?

I didn't, but I have only made a couple of basements this way (been distracted with islander theme which doesn't require basements at all).

I was thinking of making a cave/dungeon for the island though, perhaps I should give it a try.

Maybe some more information about my building process will help, because I have this problem on all my no-slope basement lots, about half a dozen. One of my habits is that I always start building in my mac game with very little CC. It has EPs up to BV only. All but the smallest details of the physical structure are completed there.

Sometimes, the lot is later brought into my Windows game, which has all EPs. That was the case with the lot I sent you. It may well be that the water level fix doesn't work in BV, or the updating process does something to change it.

At the moment I don't have any no-slope basement lots in play on the mac side. I'll build a test lot in my BV game though, to see what the destination menu there looks like.

Hmm... interesting. Let me keep working on this. I'm sorry that you can't use the technique for now.

Yes, it would be good to know whether this occurs with BV lots, or only with BV lots subsequently upgraded to all EPs.

I don't suppose that you've tried using the original method (the one that doesn't use the GridAdjuster)?

I've just flooded my basement, not with this kind of method but apparently by shrinking the lot. The basement was the old-fashioned kind. Maybe it is the shrinking after all?

Now I'll have to trawl through old posts and see if I can work out how to fix it.

EDIT: okay, not the shrinking, although for some reason the trouble only showed up after that. Oh, I know why - because I picked up and dropped the lot to finalise the shrink. And the reason for the flooding was simply a high water table - I modified a section of the terrain, and the same lot is not flooded when placed on high ground. Phew.

Alarm bells off again.

I considered that the "no go to" problem might be caused by the neighborhood water table, so I moved the original lot to high ground and still had the problem.

The LotAdjuster doesn't change the in-lot water level (except at the very edge), so shrinking shouldn't affect things. Plus, I checked the in-lot water level on the problem lot and it seemed fine. However, I must admit that I didn't try actually creating a no-slope basement then shrinking the lot myself, since I assumed that the shrinking had nothing to do with the problem.

I'll try it and see whether this allows me to reproduce the problem.

To be honest, I never did try the original method because it was confusing to me. The first such basements I made were from your simplified tute using the grid adjuster.

I tested in my BV game, and the destination menus there are the same as in AL. I don't know if updating just to FT is enough, but that wouldn't help mac players since EA never bothered to port those later EPs to OS X.

You are gravely mistaken though, if you think this little issue would prevent me from building these lots in BV for my mac game! I think I probably would not share them because of this, but for me it's an inconsequential price to pay for good-looking lots with basements. I'm grateful to you for the time spent developing the Grid Adjuster.

Just a thought,

What will that be if there is a grid point of the ground terrain layer lower than the corresponding grid point of the terrain water layer for a given region?

May that be a check for the game to define the presence of a lake or a pond?
May that in turns permit the visualisation of the destination menu?

Yet another thought,

Anyone interested in getting 2 copies of the same blank lot saved at different times? one before making a pond and one after such... Lot z value is unimportant in this case, I guess, so copies of neighbourhood packages may not be necessary.

May attach the resultants to this thread?

thanks alot for the tutorial. I would really like to learn to use this kind of building but usually it's too time consuming. Arched bridges are usually my limit lol!

Good point. This might explain the presence of the option to fish. It might make sense to have a separate tool which will set the ground level, underground level and water levels, all at the same time. It might even be possible to have the tool decide which walls are "outside walls" and set the width and depth ranges accordingly. Hmm... might be an interesting project.

I'm not sure what you're suggesting here. Where exactly are you considering adding a pond? Under the basement, or elsewhere on the lot?

In any case, it's fine to attach test lot packages to this thread.

Yeah I tried this, it doesn't work, after returning the ground level to it's normal form, I still can't see or access the bottom floor, at all, putting tiles doesn't do anything and there are a few craters in through the ground each time. that can only be fixed by distorting the basements floor.

The new version of the TS2GridAdjuster V1.2 now has the option of making a no-slope basement. You specify the range and the elevation and it will do everything else for you, including adjusting the ground and water levels and making the ground invisible without any CC. A tutorial is included in the GridAdjuster download thread. (Post # 62)

Thanks for this! I'm going to go try it now! :D

Okej Nice <3