How to Build an Island In 5 Steps

I am amazed by the overwhelming response to “Dolphin’s Leap Atoll”. (A lot that came about from being bored and playing with the elevation tool…). I have received a couple requests, and I have decided to do a simple tutorial to explain how it was done.

This should work in any neighborhood where you are able to build lots right along the coast. It does not work in the 3 main Maxis neighborhoods. It works best in Bluewater Village and in the neighborhood “Cape Of Good Hope” created by Patul.

1. Select an empty lot from the lot bin, I used 3x3 because the distance from the street to the coast is 3 blocks deep. (You can also use 2x3 or 4x3). Place it on a spot that slopes steeply away from the street.



2. Enter the lot and build an island. The centre of the lot must be elevated higher than the edges of the lot. When you are happy with the shape and size, save and return to the neighborhood view.




3. Use the Move/Rotate tool and move the lot you have just created to the coast and place it where you want it.



4. Enter the lot and it should look like this. If too much of the land is cover in water, use the elevation tool to shape it as you want it.



5. Add a bridge, decorations, house – anything you’d like – and now you have an island!



There are endless possibilities. (I highly recommend Patul’s Cape of Good Hope. It has more of a coastline and you can use larger lots. And also because it is a neighborhood based on Cape Town, South Africa – my native country!)

I hope my explanation is simple enough to understand.

Happy Simming
Eedgan

WOW!!! Is that all?? No Cheats to use?? Cool! I understand it right away and will try it next time ^^ VERY GOOD JOB!!! *bow*

greetings Made

Useful eedgan thank you.
Some more tricks !

- use the Boatana Change max slope value files to place have easily the sloped lots.
- you must know the altitude of your lot, I join an easy altimeter, need not to enter the lot you want to mesure.
- a lowered nbhood (as I do sometime) is between 8 and 15 clicks. ask in this forum if you want a list of them.

-I re-post this message because I think it will be more usefull here.

I looked some aspects on this subject. I discovered things which I was unaware of.
First in the .SC4 file
the minus level for a road is 1 click. But i spent one hour to lower and lower the ground in a small area. It is a blind job you see nothing in SCity4. An other thing, for the nb4 makers you can't see where the water will be exactly, and the level brush do not level the same on each place ( in ts2 it is about 2 clicks -perhaps because i have a smoothtalusangle of 35) .

Second, in TS2
- To have a beach. You must have a lot with the limits under the level of the road, depending of the road height, you don't need a slope cheat like my 89 !
- In TS2 the ocean is not made of water ! I think it is because you can't use it in the pastis So you can build under sea without cheat. And the sims do not consider this a water (underwater houses already exist)
- There is a graphic bug : the 1st time you reach the water in a lot here is a limit beyond which is no more water (i must say waterpaint). This limit (about 6nbh squares) disapear after ( I don't think it is my graphic card, a 7800 GT), it was funny
- The default level of the ground in SimCity4 = 9 stages in TS2 ! So if the nbh maker don't lower the level you never have these problems !

2 images to illustrate my remarks:




I hope i help you a little, as you help me a lot in this forum.

eedgan,

That's a nice and quick tutorial...
Thanks....

Just a linkage for related infos:
NL: Neighborhood Water Flowing onto Residential Lots [initiated. by Ellatrue]
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=107988
How To Build An Island In 5 Easy Steps [by eedgan]
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=184564
Lots on water
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=198261

Patul - please make a nice neighborhood with lots of coastline - so we can make lots of islands!!! I am so happy with the whole island idea, I think I'm going to make a series of beach houses!

I do a water lot so !. The dolphin fashion
For the nbh you have beach omax and topenlo. I prepare 1 may be 2 coastal & 1 island

eedgan...excellent tutorial & thanks for sharing!!
My mind is working overtime now......have to use this tutorial in a lot LOL

fev

PS: BTW, I looked at Patul's profile & cant seem to find the neighbourhood “Cape Of Good Hope” that you mentioned!

fev

List of my lowered neighbourhoods.

* topenlo island, I made the marina part for this purpose.
* venezia, perhaps a bit higher (about 2 levels).
* iAmelie plage, the 1st i do like that.
* beach oh max, not very beautifull but with plenty of beaches.
* lagoon, vahine..., well done to place low lots.
* cape of good hope, the one eedgan use (why ? )
* laray road , for swampy lots.
* lesbos, perhaps for V1ND1CARE or corvidophile2 future helenistic beach houses.
* Saint tropez, following the map for coasts ans mountains.
* Gator's cape, a cape with long beaches
* Boolprop Island, an island with many beaches
* Block Island, a flat island with beaches of course !

I stop this kind of nbhood for a moment !


and good waterflooding !!!!

WoW...thanks Patul

fev

I wasn't sure I wanted to share my 'secret' - but after all this is a community based on sharing - so now everyone knows how. You are welcome to use it in a lot - just make sure it's not better than mine! lol!


Patul - I downloaded Topenlo on a couple of weeks ago - but I deleted it becos it did not work for me. I could not place lots along the "marina". Cape Town is still my fave and not only because I'm proudly South African! I love different elevation of the landscape. I'm not fond of flat lots!

I submit the gulf of Saint Tropez it is with beaches and hill, following the map.

I'm looking forward to it. I have Sim City 4 but never really figured out how to play or build neighbourhoods with it. I guess thats your job now!

eedgan -- Thanks for creating this wonderful tutorial and for sharing it with the rest of us. Painted water is nice and everything, but I like the option to actually bring in the ocean and this provides an easy way in which to do so.

I totally agree! I love terrain paints - but not for water. I hope that in future expansions Maxis will give us more water options, I'd love to have water flowing onto the lot, with waves gently lapping against the coast... (and the wind my my hair while I sip on pinacolada's...)

btw - love your work!

You can enlarge the beach width :

2 values to increase in ...\EA GAMES\name of your current EP\TSData\Sys\neighborhood.ini



maxis values are respectively 4 and 2.

See pic 1 and 2 of bluewater nbhood.

If you increase too much you just obtain a desert.

Dont forget to first backup the file.

*** I have updated the list of my lowered nbhoods ***

thank so much for this!!!!!

In case this helps, I have made some artificial terrains with set angle slopes specially for making evenly sloping lots in order to bin and place near the water on other hoods. I used controlled greyscale heightmapping to get the angles right.

I have also made two terrains with roads placed suitable for making beach and lakeside flooded lots.

http://simlogical.com/dinnerbell/index.php?board=6.0

I have updated the list of the lowered nbhood, my scratch "beachmaker" is out of order for a time

Thankyou for this. I learned a little bit today, which I have been wondering about. Not that I quite understand the flooding and measuring thing yet but this sure give clear instructions, and is on the money!!!!

Moonlit

Eedgan-

When I first saw your tut, I couldn't wait to try it out. I tried it on a lot and it turned out fabulous! When I get internet I will touch up the lot and upload it... (if I can find it!:shock: )

Just wanted to extend my many thanks for this great tut! :D

I'm unsure the difficulty to achive this.
With V1ND1CARE's Tutorial on Wall Height Reduction Under 4 Clicks (for those who don't know it here ) and then use neighbourhood water tiles and/or these wavy tiles .

A wavy coast or lake or pond should be already been possible. Certainly, it's gonna be quite amount of work.



Let's see the above pic... the concept is to combine the neighbourhood water tiles (if necessary, I'll do one and release it if it works out within expectation. Lol, it's just a floor tile with neighbourhood water look, so users can place them around.) and/or the wavy tiles down to the ground terrain layer, so it looks like a wavy blue coast or lake or even make it swimmable with this concept of Making real lakes swimmable.
For the swimmable lake one, its glitchy problem on the tile-layer sides can be solved by burying the edges of the swimmable fake pool layer under the ground level with V1ND1CARE's Tutorial on Wall Height Reduction Under 4 Clicks.

So, what being asked may already be possible. We may not need Maxis to do the job for us. Yet, it's gonna be challenging... and quite amount of hard work and patience. Anyone is up to such challenge?

In a word NO. Sounds way too tedious for me.

I wish Maxis would allow more versatility in lot placement. For example, I would like to place a lot in such a way that a portion of the lot is situated over the sea. I would also like neighbourhood decorations (like waves) to be placed on a lot. So take my Dolphins Leap lot for example - when I enter the lot I want to be able to go to a Lot Decorations Catalogue and click on waves. And viola - animated waves at the waters edge. I do not think that this is too much to ask. It would also look awesome. Although if someone like Lethe_s could make a decorative fog - I see no reason why a talented creator could not also do waves, (I dunno if animated waves would be possible). Well... its an idea...

I tend to believe objects makers who knows how to play around with neighbourhood objects and normal objects should have no problem to do the conversion...
But, can those neighbourhood objects be placed near the lots to work out?

Or is it just some custom neighbourhood objects were enabled to work also ina lot?

There are also some lots in the dinnerbell forum of simlogical which are designed to give you plenty of places to build a flooded lot.