Can't Move Through Dormers?

[LeuceDeuce]

I posted this question over on the official forums as well, but I know there are some ace builders here that could probably give me some insight as well.

So I'm working on a new starter home, and I've run into an issue during testing that I've never seen before.  Now I don't know if I've never seen it because I never tried walking into a dormer or not, but here goes...

Rooflines that I would like:



Bedroom looks fine (roof pieces are not visible in live play):



Can walk anywhere in the first 6x2 area on the dresser side:



Can't walk anywhere in the 6x2 area on the window side:



I've seen in roofing tutorials, that when the roof turns invisible during live play your sim should be able to move and interact with objects placed within that area.  Am I doing something wrong?

I have removed everything from the room, above and below, and my sim coudn't move through it.  Once I removed the two roof sections my sim could move around the room freely.  It is definately the roof pieces.  I could solve the problem with a tall half-gable, but unfortunately that doesn't exist.  Why it doesn't exist is beyond me.  How the game could have received so many updates and still a tall half-gable doesn't exist... baffling.  But I digress...

Anyone shine some light on this for me?  Am I trying to do the impossible?

[intl_incident]

The game is reading the ceiling as too low in your dormer.  You need to put a roof on the dormer on to cut out the portion of the gable roof below.  While it is true that sometimes roofs that encroach into the living space of a house won't interfere with the Sims during gameplay, as far as I know that refers to the overhangs of roofs that show up in the houses because the roofs are bigger than one tile.  If you build a giant gable through the room like that, the game reads the ceiling height from the gabled roof, and your Sim can't get to the edge of the room where the "ceiling" is short.  You solve it by making a true dormer -- in the sense that it has another roof on top.  See (very basic) images below:

DORMER WITH NO ROOF



DORMER WITH ROOF - note that you can see through the windows to the floor inside



Unfortunately, the flat roof does not work for this.   I used a very low pitched half-hipped roof for the next shots.  You can put plants on top of the roof and add your decorative edging, but you will see the ends of the roof on top. 

DORMER WITH ROOF, PLANTS AND EDGING



There are two possible solutions to this -- which one is better depends on what exactly you are looking for.  You can make the roof on top of the dormer one tile smaller than the actual size of the dormer, cover the rest with floor tile or flat roof, and place your plants and edging.  That will keep the rain out and look better from the outside, but it still leaves a one-tile rim of low ceiling inside your house, which you can see by looking through the window.  As far as I know, your Sims cannot route through that low ceiling, but you should be able to leave your TV in the corner, etc, by using moveobjects on.

DORMER WITH SMALLER ROOF AND EDGING



The other possible solution is to bump the dormer back by one tile, put a half gable in front of it, a half gable next to it, and then another half gable on top of it, a few squares back from the front of the dormer so that it matches up with the other piece.  That reduces the inside of your room by one tile, and your windows are either clipped by the roof or have to be much smaller, but it will give you a line of roofing under the dormer windows without putting a roof through the actual dormer, if that's what you're looking for.

DORMER WITH COMPOUND GABLE ROOF - plants and edging left off so you can see the roof structure better



Does all of that make sense, and do any of those solutions help?

[LeuceDeuce]

Thank you very much for the suggestions!  I'll give them a shot on Monday.

I did use a flat roof on the dormer, but maybe that doesn't work the same?  I may just use a regular roof on the dormer instead of the flat anyways.  The outside plants don't seem to work as planned.  Each time I load the game up, I have to go and "touch" the plants in build mode before they will disappear when hitting the end key (hope that makes sense).

[intl_incident]

Thank you very much for the suggestions!  I'll give them a shot on Monday.

I did use a flat roof on the dormer, but maybe that doesn't work the same?  I may just use a regular roof on the dormer instead of the flat anyways.  The outside plants don't seem to work as planned.  Each time I load the game up, I have to go and "touch" the plants in build mode before they will disappear when hitting the end key (hope that makes sense).

Yeah, the flat roof doesn't cut through the lower roofs the same way, which doesn't make much sense to me (otherwise, why have a flat roof at all, when floor tiles work just as wel?)   I was going to say something about the plants when I was writing the last post, but I forgot -- ground plants from build mode can be placed just about anywhere with move objects on, but they will almost always end up floating in mid-air when you drop the view from floor to floor, which sounds like what you're describing.  They will also sometimes end up sinking into the basement level and hovering around down there.  They are just not designed to go anywhere but the ground. :/

So you may be better off with a normal roof for practical reasons, which is too bad, because the rooftop garden that you have looks really great!

[LeuceDeuce]

Thank you so much for your help intl_incident!  Too bad about the flat roof, because that's exactly the problem I was running into.

Replacing with a normal gable roof clears up the issues right away.  I left the small balcony under the window on the (camera right) side of the house.  Some indoor plants would still look nice up there.

I made the concessionary changes an uploaded the home.  Great starter with tons of space to grow into.  I'll stick a spiral staircase to the 3rd floor where the dinning table is now.  I'm likely going to throw in an indoor pool and bar on the bottom floor inside the garage as well.  Replace the garage door with glass.  Just be careful parking the car!

Here is the final version if anyone would like to give it a go.

View/Get on Exchange!