I am not sure where to post this and I went to game help and there is nothing there - so since it has to do with lot building I will try here.

The lot in question is 35 Hidden Grove Lane in Riverview. I had someone mention that it sank down when they placed it.

I went in and tried all my houses on that lot. The 2 that I had built there both sank down. Any of the houses that I had built elsewhere sat down perfect!

I even tried the two houses built at 35 Hidden Grove Lane in Sunset and they sank down there also. Again, none of the other lots had a problem.

Has anyone else had a problem with any of the lots?

Does anyone know how to fix this? Besides rebuilding!

Thanks!

I thought I had a fix but no...

Hi Romagi, I responded to your private message as well, but I thought I should post here since I had the same problem with one of my lots. I built it at 325 Oak Grove in Sunset Valley, but then moved it to 250 Redwood in order to package it. People who downloaded it reported a 1-tile slope edging the lot which made the house inaccessible to Sims. (It also looks pretty stupid.)

A friend of mine who had downloaded the lot helped me figure out that lots built (or packaged, apparently) on 250 Redwood will consistently have that 1-tile slope. You don't see it when building; only after packaging and re-installing, or after placing another lot at that location. I ended up repackaging my house at the original location (325 Oak Grove) and that has seemed to work fine for people. I myself placed it at several different spots and it didn't have the 1-tile slope anywhere.

Since Romagi is having the same issue with 35 Hidden Grove, it sounds like we might run into more of these "problem lots". Has anyone else had this issue on other spots? At any rate, I would avoid building anything on 250 Redwood in SV or 35 Hidden Grove in Rview if you plan on sharing it.

I've had this issue on this lot as well...but it prompts time for a Monty Python quote:

When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.

I had this problem too... However, I just CFE and leveled the floor, then I use the hammer to destroy everything, then hit undo to bring them back...

I do that because the house will then bring all objects back to floor level...

You do have to redo the roof though...

Houses with foundations are jacked up however... Foundations with CFE turns into full height walls after you level the floor

I forgot which lot was my original lot tho...

25 Hidden Grove Lane in Riverview has the same issue, as is 20 Hidden Gove Lane. My wife (Mrs. Flynn) and I are trying to find out which lots are having this problem as we've been beating our heads against brick wall trying to figure out what was going on.

So, from this thread, here's the list so far:

• 20 Hidden Grove Lane (RV)

• 25 Hidden Grove Lane (RV)

• 35 Hidden Grove Lane (RV)

• 250 Redwood Pkwy (SV)

Can we sticky this thread and keep it updated? Anybody else find a buggy lot, we can add it here.

Has anyone reported this to EA? With the number of patches lately, it could hopefully be fixed rather quickly.

Flynn

This sounds like an interesting issue (and yes, I can sticky it here if it turns out to be an actual build mode problem) – right now though I'm at a loss as to what you actually mean by "sinking". Does anyone have a screenshot of this? I believe that would be good to show people what the problem looks like.

Also, can you add the game versions you're running to your posts, and whether you're on Windows or OS X? I know I haven't seen "sinking" of any kind in my own game (I only have a Sunset Valley though, no Riverview), and it doesn't seem to be a *very* widespread issue (otherwise more people would have posted by now), so I suspect it could have to do with game versions or something.

I've noticed that many of the lots aren't flat – one that's noticably un-flat in Sunset Valley is 240 Sunnyside (or Sunnyvale?) Boulevard –, but I don't know if that's in any way related to the "sinking" you mention.


I'm running 1.2.7/OS X, and I've built plenty of lots and moved them around as well .. never saw any "sinking" that I could identify. I know that my lots are working fine for others as well (after packaging, uploadind, downloading etc).

I built a house on 150 ely road in riverview and when I moved that to another lot it didn't sink but it was raised instead. I'm not sure if this is the same problem as you all are talking about but it lead to that when placed on a new lot I wasn't able to place a car at the parking space cause it was placed on the slope. I play version 1.4.6.00002 and use windows XP.

These pics shows what my problem looks like.

Did you move it to 207 Cotton Branch Drive also in Riverview? My OH is playing a family just as it is in your screenshot and complained that he couldn't place a parking space because it is raised and neither 'flatten lot' nor placing floor tiles would help. He had to use the Move Objects switch to place it.

I tried several different lots and the same thing happened all the time so I guess the problem lies in what lot you first build the house on.

Hi there, I'm happy to find this open thread : I have the same issue of sinking lots.

I'm running TS3 v1.4 on Vista32.
I didn't save/load very big amont of lots but I think that this issue didn't happend before v1.4 upgrade.

@plasticbox : Thx to care 'bout that.
I'm not so good in English but I'll try to describe:

When one re-install a pre-saved lot in the "change the city" mode, even on a bigger place than the saved lot, the house isn't set at the ground level but a little underneath. I've calculated, it's a quater of a normal click down - hope you see what I meen. So there is a little slope all around the lot, not breaking the lot but anoying.

I'm gonna UL pics tonight when I'll be home.

And today, at work, I will look in EA sites for it.

Couldn't that be fixed – provided that there are no sloped/leveled walls on the lot – by turning on cfe and then flattening the lot? Doesn't eliminate the problem of course, but would get rid of annoying slopes.

LOL, I've tried that, but w/ CFE false: every objects on the ground had to be re-leveled and I lost some rugs in the ground
I'll try tonight w/ CFE true ...

In fact, my main concern is to know if those wrong datas are saved in Sims3Pack files or if it's just at re-install time that MY game messes it up. I'd like to share clean items, you know

When I tried that, it made all objects float above ground. So in that case you have to replace every object on the lot too. And also it made the roof of the house change slope angle a little.

So, here's my pics:
First exemple (pics 1&2) shows the less difference I found. And when picturing the original lot, I noticed a very very little up-slope in the other rear corner.
I didn't note the lot placement, 'cause I don't use an english game and the streets names are in my language, but it's in Sunvalley, the road in front of the beach, second lot from right viewed from the beach. I've used/buldoze this one 'cause they were no sims in. And this is also why I'm not realy pleased w/ jenba & Flynn Arrowstarr's solution, I don't have those streets names in my game.

I tried KAuss' trick and it worked well. I show in pics what NOT to do aka flatening from rear and forgetting fishpound
And I didn't take too much time to look at, but I found 1 window not at level.

And I didn't have time to try to re-save and re-re-install ... but I gonna test that after fix.

This afternoon I've watched over the bug room in EA/TS3 english forum, found no mention of that bug ... 'cause it's a bug, isn't ?

tchoa91, if you want to try translating the street names... I submitted a tool yesterday that lists all the lots in the game sorted by address, and you can choose the language to display in. If you find a lot in one language, then change to a different language you'll see the lot name/address in that language. I expect it should be up in the downloads section in a day or two, it's called "Little Lotte".

I'm keeping my eye on this thread for other reasons though. I've got a theory what is going on, and once I know enough about the game data I'll see if I can dig in and figure out what it is. However, my first thought is that not all lots in the game are flat or level, and trying to place a lot from one of these off lots onto a different lot will not be a perfect fit.

If TS3 is anything like TS2, each lot had an elevation associated with one point on the lot. When you moved a lot, TS2 would adjust that elevation so that the road associated with the lot was always at a relative elevation of 0. However in TS3, there is no road associated with a lot. This may cause the problem we're seeing, since the game has no way to determine an exact elevation to associate with a specific point on the lot.

This becomes much more likely to happen in TS3 because the lot edges are not flat, and are different for each lot location within the neighborhood.

@TigerM : Thank you very much ! it's needed.

So, I made some tests. TigerM & Mootilda are right: it happens when one build the house on a not perfectly flat lot. And if you fix a house on that kind of lot, the saved result will still be buggy.

So one have to find a "very perfectly" flat lot of your house's size, install your buggy saved house, use the "KAuss trick" (see above), loose and/or redo your leveled architectures, look very carefully every objects (some are not at right level: some windows, trash, postal bx), fix them and resave.

@Mootilda: the more I re-read your post, the more I'm depressed

Mootilda, the game actually does have a single specific elevation for each lot. I haven't looked into exactly where it lies relative to the road as of yet, but it does exist. If it's just a matter of it not lining up with the road properly, that might be fixable, probably in the form of copying and modifying the base .world file though.

Again, I haven't looked into the TS3 internals, but with TS2, the point on the lot was relative to the lot rotation, always one of the four corners.

Of course, fixing the elevation won't fix the fact that the lot edges will be different between the original and new locations for the moved lot. But, it should help, at least a bit.

Did the "fix" for this issue only work for non foundation houses? I built one in CAS world from here I believe, and when I put it into riverview it is raised up significantly. I tried it on several different lots and it's still raise up and probably not playable. I also tried it in CAS World and it was showing as raised. I'm not sure how this happened because I built a house in CAS World before and it worked fine and it looks perfectly flat. I tried the suggestion of leveling and deleting the undo and it didnt work, the house moves down but everything inside it stays where it was and I did a foundation garage which is messing up too. Any suggestions?

Edit: Ok I tried again leveling with CFE false and then deleting everything and undoing it and although the foundation turns into regular wall size (not usuable as walls :/ ) the house works