Houses on water help

[KrisVicious]

Ok I am having issues with this. I know which foundation to use, but what I need help with is how do I make part of the foundation higher then another part so I can have stairs going down to the "backyard" deck like the other houses in this expansion pack.

[Joria]

The only thing I can think of is use the terrain tool to raise the area you want to be higher and then place the foundation on it which "should" make it work.  Haven't tried it but it might work.

[intl_incident]

...stairs going down to the "backyard" deck like the other houses in this expansion pack.

Can you post a picture, or specify which other house you're looking at?  That would help me know if you need to use the constrainfloorelevation cheat or not.

[KrisVicious]

Like the vip om Hobarts Hidaway.. or like this

[intl_incident]

Ah ha. OK, there is probably more than one way to do this, but here's what I would do:

Drag a foundation all the way out to where you want the end of the farthest deck to be.
Delete one row of foundation to separate the part of the deck you want to raise up from the part you want to leave lower.
Use the "raise terrain" tool to raise some of the land (back on shore) up to the exactly the height of two foundations. (Six clicks.  If you are not sure how to do this, just let me know.)
Build a block or two of regular foundation on that raised up land.
Open the cheat console and type "constrainfloorelevation false"
Open the level terrain tool and drag from the raised block of foundation to the end of the part of your deck that you want to be higher.
Open the cheat console again, and type "constrainfloorelevation true"
Put steps between the upper and lower decks. Voila!
(You can now delete that extra block of foundation and lower your ground back to where it was.)

If any of that did not make sense, or if you can't get it to work, let me know and I'll see if I can get some screenshots for you.

[KrisVicious]

Ok cool Ill try it.. I sort of figured it out with friezes on, but it doesn't look right because i have like a tiny wall on top of the deck. Haha. But i'll try the way you just said and see if that works better for me

[KrisVicious]

Ok it worked but now I have another issue. I can't add stairs from the higher deck to the lower deck. I thought maybe I had the higher deck to high so i redid it lower and i am still not able to add stairs. If i turn the constrainfloorelevation back on i can add stiars but the poles pop up though the deck for some odd reason. BUT! i can add stairs just fine from the sand up to the main (higher) deck. So i don't know what i'm doing wrong. But here's the screen shot showing it worked.

[intl_incident]

Probably, the difference between the upper and lower decks is not an exact multiple of foundation height (e.g., they're "seven clicks" apart or something like that.)  It could also be that there is too big a gap between the upper and lower decks, if you deleted more than one row of foundation between them.

If you are able to place stairs with cfe on, try placing them, and then re-leveling the upper foundation going from the stairs you just placed, back toward land.  Then if the poles poke up, turn cfe off, delete all but the foundation row where the stairs join the two decks, and re-lay the foundation from that row back to land.  Turn cfe back off and if you need to, delete the steps, delete the row they were connected to, and then replace that row of upper deck.  Then you can place the stairs to shore, and soften the terrain there as needed.

If that doesn't work, you may have to level the shore to be even with the ground under your first row of foundation, before you them raise it six clicks. (What I mean is, after you lay the whole single-level foundation in step one, use the level terrain tool to drag a flat space from the first row under the foundation back onto the shore, so you are starting with a "clean slate" where the ground you raise up in step 3 is sure to start even with the foundation.  The lot you are using looks to be very sloped on its way to the water, so the ground you raise up by six clicks may have already been higher than the foundation, which would throw off the height difference,

[KrisVicious]

I did try it a different way (and failed) the house on this lot.. what i noticed is the higher deck is normal height of the foundation and the lower deck is actually lower if that makes sense. Now i didn't try to flatten the lot. I'll try that. I'm determined to get this to work.. It's bugging me so bad that i quite get it. but I'm sure I'll get it eventually

[KrisVicious]

I got it. What i had to do was make a normal foundation then I used constrainfloorelevation and lowered the terrain for the lower deck. I just kept messing with it until the stairs placed.

[intl_incident]

I got it. What i had to do was make a normal foundation then I used constrainfloorelevation and lowered the terrain for the lower deck. I just kept messing with it until the stairs placed.

Awesome!  I'm so glad you figured it out.  It can be a really fiddly process to get it right sometimes, so congratulations!