Problem with porch steps [Solved]

[Janna]

I moved a house from one lot to another and no problem there, went to a bigger lot and house was placed in the center.

The problem I am having is that I wanted to enlarge the porch, make it a wraparound type.  Took the stairs off, pulled the foundation out and went to add the stairs back.  When I put them back in, they punched into the ground.  Made an impression, had five steps instead of the three it had orginally had.

This has happened in some other homes that I had added porches to and it doesn't seem to matter if I level the lot or not, the area around the steps has been punched, or shoved down, creating a depression and went from the three steps to being five steps. 

What am I doing wrong, how can I fix it?  This doesn't happen all of the time when I move a lot.

[JudesSims]

Try putting floor tiles down in front of the steps first. Make sure you place the tiles down far enough that the steps will land on them. You can always remove them after the steps are set if you don't want a sidewalk.

[Janna]

Sorry to be so long in getting back.  No, that didn't work, the game seem to think I was putting up regular stairs.  No matter how I tried, I couldn't get it to accept it as just the regular porch steps.  I had thought it might be due to the porch being so short and made it wider.  But that didn't help.

I have put it aside as it has been frustating me, and am working on MF's, I want to find out what is going on, as I have had this happen in two other games.  All of them were in RV, so I don't know if that is a glitch in that town in my computer. 

I am going to try moving an earlier save to another lot, and see what happens there. 

[JudesSims]

Well, shoot! That always worked for me

[samoht04]

Try leveling the floor underneath the area you want the stairs, by bringing itup as far as it will go under the foundation. I'm wondering if perhaps your original lot was not flat or this new one wasn't and the smallest change in terrain levelling can cause glitches. It's odd that jude's idea didn't work and if my one doesn't then the only thing you can do now is try constrainfloorelevation false and level out any kinks or see if your foundation is at the right height and hasn't glitched and sunken into the ground or something.

[PolarBair]

hmm, I'm equally surprised that Jude's idea didn't work. It's exactly what I would have suggested except she beat me to it. It's always worked for me.

Maybe try a combination of the floor tiles on the ground around where you wand the stairs and moveObjects on in case is nit-picking about something else being in the way?

[Janna]

I was surprised it didn't work on using the tiles.  No matter where I moved the stairs, they stayed in the red showing there was no place to put them and they stayed at the tall one for second floors.  When I moved it over off the tiles it went back to green to  place but punched in the ground.

I am wondering if I go to a save before I moved the lot, level off the new lot and then move the  lot to it.  I had leveled off the previous lot after I put the house there.  I moved the house from a 30 x 30 lot to a 40 x 40 lot.  Decided to move to a larger lot,  64 x 64, so I could have an inside pool,  pond and sem-formal maze garden outside with a little area for lovers to meet   ,  a playground for the kids and plenty of room.  I love wraparound porches and balconies on houses.  Thats my plans, now I just need to create it. 

[donatello]

Ok, I would first of all have suggested you set constrainfloorelevation TRUE. Because the response of the steps suggest to me that it is set as false already. So that's my suggestion now.

[Janna]

Donatello,

It worked. (happy dance)  I typed it in, the constrainfloorelevation true, and then releveled the ground, redid the porch steps and they worked fine.  No punched in ground around them. 

I will definitely write this down to keep handy if this problem ever comes up again.

Thank You bunches, and also for everyone else, if it hadn't been the false on the elevation, the tiles would have worked. 

[samoht04]

So had you typed "constrainfloorelevation false" into the cheat console. I'm confused if you hadn't since the cheat doesn't automatically activate and shouldn't need setting to true unless you set it to false in the first place?

[Janna]

I don't think I did.  I hadn't typed anything beside the moveobject on.  I had moved the house fine the first time.  It was doing okay, no problems in creating porch steps there.  Then, I moved it to the lot and the problems started. 

It has happened to me once, if not twice before.  I don't know why or how it happened and didn't know how to fix it. 

I have hit keys accidently and ended up doing something weird; no idea of how I did what I did or how to fix it.  That is the only thing I can think of; that I somehow typed it in accidently, but I would have had to typed in the testingcheatsenabled true first to do that, right?

Grimlins, maybe?     I really have no idea why it was set to false, a glitch in my computer at that time? 

I just finished doing my indoor pool.  Created a foundation, cut out the pool and then added some porch steps to get to what will be a patio area, set up for cookouts.  No problems, the steps went in fine. 

[samoht04]

You don't have to type in testingcheats first to make it work. I use it quite a bit and I can hardly type it in on purpose without putting letters the wrong way around. It's a strange glitch. The way you fixed your issue, had you done that method before without turning CFE to true?

The reason this is confusing me and slightly worrying is that if CFE is messing up then that will be really irritating.

[Janna]

I was and I guess still am confused as to why it was on false.  I have a weird and quirky computer, it seems to do things that are confusing, my son is always fixing some small glitch - has no idea what caused it, but easy for him to fix it.

He says they are hichups, and mine seems to have more than normal.  What has me relived is I now know what to do when and if it happens again.  I figure it will as I like to remodeled  homes.  I have had that happen before, in one home it it did it with one step location but not others.   Now that was weird, oneside of the house wouldn't let me put th steps down normal, but the other side would. 

A software problem in the one that I bought?  It does seem to do weird things at times in a game.  Dog and cat fight?  Lots and lots of dogs and cats in one game, none of them could sleep and there was a fight once.  Gems and smelted ingots that keep dropping on the floor yet the money shows up and I can resell them again and again.  I checked once and it went on as long as I was selling, but as soon as I clicked to go back to the game, they vanished.   That just happened in this game.  I let it do it for three times, that let me add the inside pool and remodel the family room to add a fireplace.   
I'm always having weird things happen.  I just figured it was normal for games to do that; hicups. 

[Janna]

I wanted to add to this bacause I think my problem is connected to this one specific lot.  I was playing another game and also moved a house to this same lot.  As I was doing some remodeling, adding an inside pool, I  had the same problem, the steps punching in.

I think it somehow was accidently created when my game was copied; same as when the publishing company forgets and leaves a page out, or puts one in backwards.  Maybe something similar with this one; this same lot will always have this problem. 
Someone sneezed and hit a button without realizing it and thus my problem was created.

At least now I know how to fix it. 

[Jude525]

I know this is old, but I wanted to add what I've been finding helps me. When I am having this problem, I re-orient my view to 90* top-down. I've been having far fewer instances of the game arguing with me about the validity of my stairs or trying to force them into the wrong floors/directions.

I haven't tried the CFE trick yet. Will keep that in my hip pocket in case I do encounter a problem the camera angle solution doesn't work for.