I'm trying to build a little harbour in my town and so want to build a couple of boats on community lots along the pier but I'm having issues getting the lot to blend in in CAW. The pics below show a test lot that I placed to see if it was possible (yeah, its a mess, I have no intentions of keeping it, I was just messing around to test out different things). If I could get the ground colour to match that blue that is under the terrain and sea texture it would work I think but I've played around with that colour for ages and can't get the right one. I even tried dropping a screen grab into photoshop and finding out the hex that way but as you can see from the first pic it comes out quite different.

Anyone know how to match this or a way to restore the sea fog in these lots?

I wonder if something has changed recently then? I made a world with some lots overlapping water, and I didn't notice any difference in the appearance of the water over them either in the game or in CAW. Is it possibly that the water is a very different depth in that area?

Are you able to find a setting for how quickly the transparency falls off below the water surface? That might address the problem.

After reading what you said I did wonder if the problem was that I didn't have any land above water, I want the boats to look like they're moored up against the pier so I placed another couple of test lots at various depths including one with land above water and I still seem to get the same thing. I even exported the world to make sure it wasn't just how CAW saw it. Pics below are in game.



I don't know how to find settings. Do you mean like a rule written in something like an xml file that I could alter? I have had a little play with xml files for the game but don't think I know enough about altering them or even where to find them for CAW (if that's even the sort of files CAW has).

I copied and pasted this from an earlier post;



Keep the water shallow, the deeper the water, the more distortion.

This is a pier I made for Spooky Town using this technique. It's not perfect, but helps.

I've had a quick little play around with those and so far I'm not very good at it, lol. I'm still having trouuble matching the blue. Thank-you very much for that link though, that thread is awesome! I was just thinking today that I hadn't seen any bridgeport textures or roads uploaded. Hope you don't mind, I'm gonna link that to the CAW resources thread here, with credit to you of course :p

BTW, love your pier, might have to take a look at Spooky Town :lovestruc

Wouldn't it be easier to shape a pier out of landmass? That's how I have done it, cause I was so annoyed by the way the water turned.

Wow, you even have a rusty old barge there!

Oh it's not the same thing at all! You need to be able to make wooden piers

It is!! That idea is GENIUS!!

He used terrain paint to make the "barge" hill look like a barge, and then he built on it. Missroxor could do the same thing with her boats :D.

Or, maybe have the "pier" shallow water and have a wooden terrain paint cover it. Of course you couldnt have poles but it may be an alternative.

However, since Missroxor wants boats and isnt having issues with the peer (as far as I can see?) I'd suggest making the boats in a smiliar way! :D


@Mikikitty: THANK YOU!!! That idea is EPIC!! My mind is blown, I never thought of that, and now you make me want to include boats in my world lol.

Damn that opens so many doors!!!

@auntielynds: There's no way that's terrain paint. I don't believe the water stops. However, I will believe you painted under the water for the cool sand effect :P.

I made a ferry the same way. I built the pier by shaping the land mass first and then putting a board terrain on top. I used fence pieces from CAW on the sides to make it look better. I think put a square of land a distance away from the pier. I used fence again on the sides in CAW to get rid of the stretched terrain look and then put a lot on top of the square of land. I used the board terrain and then when into Edit in Game to create the sides and seats in the ferry. For fun, I think used a splash object in CAW to make waves behind the ferry. It looks like a rather dilapidated boat, but it worked and I am happy with it. Its not the best solution and won't work for all boats, but for the ferry, it worked well.

Nice one!! :D

I love this idea. Does barnacle bay use it? Where did you guys get it from?

Definitely! Mikikitty I did consider doing a land mass pier at one point (and might still do that now that I’ve seen rian90’s awesome use of the little fences) but I like the small town feel of a little wooden pier. It works really well for your barge but I was hoping to attempt to build little fishing boats and tugs and I can’t see how it would work for them since with the exception of barges and some small ferries, boats tend not to be square. Since you can’t build right to the edge of lots all my boats would look like they’re on dry land which isn’t really realistic.

PS That being said I might borrow your ideas and build a ferry and barge anyway.....I still want moored fishing boats though dammit!

rian, where did you got the plank texture?

Actually, I found it on the net and created my own.

Hey Alundra, I think you misunderstood. I paint the blue on top of the sand, under the water, to simulate the water depth gradation.

The landmass as a pier is a great idea Mikikitty! I never even thought of that, and that old rusty barge is wonderful.

Rian90, I love the barge!

I decided to try to make a fishing boat. I have NO IDEA what a fishing boat looks like so I tried to make the one my boyfriends father has...one of those "I'm not made of wood" ones...cause I don't have wood terrain paint. I also don't have boat like terrain paint so it's asphalt, shale, and dark dirt LOL.

Also, to get rid of the big space of no water, I used "flattain terrain" on full, and started outside the lot, bringing it onto the lot (but not where my boat was). I had enough space to do it on all sides, a single swipe fixed the water. I also noted when I did it, the land mass I started with showed up....making me think maybe it's not putting water back there cause it see's the log BEFORE the editing.


Anyways, my boat! :D



I figure, for the red dirt being visible, some terrain painting would make it perfect. Otherwise it looks good to me .

Only other way is to build your own decorative world object I reckon.

Auntielynds up the page already provided some very useful terrain paints for that but that was my problem in the first place, getting the terrain colour under the sea to match the terrain colour of a sunken lot.

A land mass boat would be useful for completely avoiding the whole issue of have to use a lot in the first place and therefore the issue of having to mask the terrain but there's not really much point in building a land mass boat on a lot if you can build one like this on a lot. I wish I knew how to mesh for CAW but I've tried meshing and I guess I'm just too stupid or impatient,....or both


EDIT: Although....*lightbulb flicks on* I could make a non-tidal basin! That way I could start with a land lot and create a "pond" where I could build a few boats and it wouldn't matter if there was a wall all the way around the lot....would just have to figure out a way to replicate a lock....hmmm, when I get the chance to play with CAW I'll get back to you

Lemme know how that turns out .

I'm having a terrible time with trying the terrain paint blue method. None of the shades of water from the already made files worked, so I've been screen-capturing water on my island, thinking maybe it's due to the black sand. However, even with me screen capturing, the shade is always off a little once I convert it into a .png (I can't make .DDS) and blending with my other terrains doesn't seem to help much. Anyone know if it might be due to a png format not keeping colors right? Only other thing I can think of is GIMP having some oddball color preset that's unmatching the color from game.

Anyone have any thoughts on how I can better color match? Or for that matter have opinions on how 'off' the blues are winding up looking?

No I can't get my lot to blend in either, using the paints advertised for the purpose. What I did notice though is if you dig out a "pond" on the lot in game, then it *does* match. So maybe one thing to try is after going into the lot to edit it, raise the land back up again, then dig back down again with the pond tool. That should leave you with just about a single tile's width needing painting or disguising in some way.

I've made good looking pier (no buildings yet) from abandoned train bridges

inner space is about 64x64

That's a clever idea, Jacen! I'd like to see some pictures of it when it's finished, too.

I want to try to create a rabbithole theme park (smth like Santa-Monica Pier) over summer to place there. Maybe use a dinner as a base or if it's possible to create a new one (as an object sims go inside and disappear but without the red map tag) where they gain fun and couple of moodlets (the ones that are from sweats and fun activities). And it should have a lot of lights to illuminate the night (is it possible to add fireworks effect to an object to see them in the sky autonomously?)

I made the Santa Monica pier VTMB style. I'm quite happy how it turned out, especially after all the headache it gave me. The pier in VTMB is a bit different, so that's why it's not a realistic copy of the real one.

Wow, that's pretty impressive, varpunen! What is inside the buildings?

Well, the main large pier building is currently empty because in VTMB it isn't accessible but maybe after I get the Generations I can find use for it. Here's the other's:


The fortune teller's shop & the game arcade:




The corner building serves as a crime scene, like in the VTMB. I just added the public toilet into the otherwhise empty building:


The building in the end of the pier wasn't accessible either, so I made it a fisherman's style home:




This is from the VTMB game and what I had to recreate: