Losing lot information with EIG

[buxcosim]

I'm using patch versions 1.29/2.17/4.10/6.5/8.0/10.0 and CAW version 1.13.7 (CompatVersion = 14, WorldBuilderCompatibilityVersion = 11). Whew, okay, that's out of the way...

I'm missing certain lot types (City Hall, Hospital, Theater are the ones that stand out) in EIG. If I set them properly in CAW, they change to "No Visitors Allowed" when I load them in EIG. If I create a lot description in EIG (i.e. "This building once housed..."), the lot description gets zapped when I fix the lot type in CAW.

I think that I was able to fix the "Science Center" lot type using the "kScienceCenter" option from the pull-down menu (and possibly "Hospital"), but the other lot types that are missing aren't available in the menu, even as "kLots."

This only started with the 1.29 (CAW 1.13.7) patch for me; before that, I didn't have problems. I'm not getting any version mismatch errors, and I've cleared my caches repeatedly. I do have one weird hex listing in my list of world objects - it's simsample's Riverview Distant Terrain; I read that version mismatches or old CC could cause that, but as far as I know, the game and CAW are current and the DT is the only piece of CC I have for CAW (and I need it, because this world is based on Riverview!).

Any workarounds or solutions? I'd rather not have to choose between correct lot types (set in CAW) and helpful storytelling lot descriptions (set in EIG) if I don't have to! :)

[simsample]

For the lot types, they are archaic- you don't need to actually set a lot type to hospital, city hall, theatre etc., as those are set by the rabbithole itself. I'm not sure why they are still visible in CAW; my guess is that it is an oversight or perhaps there's a reason they need those zonings available for testing. If you want to make a city hall, place the city hall object on the lot and zone it as 'visitors allowed' if you want townies to turn up there to hang out, or 'no visitors allowed' if you only want the people who work there to visit. Likewise you could have a rabbithole on a park zoned lot, for example, to give a multi purpose lot. So you could have a consignment store with a subway, a junkyard with a grocery store on it, or a multi-rabbithole lot like the mirabello plaza in Sunset Valley, which is zoned to visitors allowed (if I remember correctly) and which has a theatre, bookstore and grocery. If you look at the EA worlds they do not have any lots set to use the krabbithole zones, so I wouldn't worry that the function is not working correctly in your EIG. Those lot types don't really have a function at all in-game, you do not get a science map tag from zoning a lot to kScienceCenter, and sims will not use a lot that you build there as a science rabbithole, so as far as I can see they are of no use to a world builder.

For the distant terrain, that is usually the case if you don't have Riverview installed. The Riverview DT references STBLs in the DCCache, so you have to have Riverview installed for the DT to show up correctly, as explained in the download thread. If you do have Riverview installed then chances are the DCCache is corrupted, so try reinstalling Riverview.

[buxcosim]

For the lot types, they are archaic- you don't need to actually set a lot type to hospital, city hall, theatre etc., as those are set by the rabbithole itself. I'm not sure why they are still visible in CAW; my guess is that it is an oversight or perhaps there's a reason they need those zonings available for testing. If you want to make a city hall, place the city hall object on the lot and zone it as 'visitors allowed' if you want townies to turn up there to hang out, or 'no visitors allowed' if you only want the people who work there to visit. Thanks for getting back to me! Whew! That's what I've been doing - setting it to visitors allowed. I was just worried that if I didn't use the "correct" lot type, I'd lose some of the functionality, i.e. no protests at City Hall because of the zoning, etc. Not that those functions particularly matter to me, but some people like them, so I wanted them enabled in case I share this world. (I might not share it since it's based on Riverview, and needs RV + some CC installed in order to work right, and some people don't like that.)

Those lot types don't really have a function at all in-game, you do not get a science map tag from zoning a lot to kScienceCenter, and sims will not use a lot that you build there as a science rabbithole, so as far as I can see they are of no use to a world builder.I wasn't worried about having the Sims treat the lot as a rabbithole (since you need the rabbithole object for that!); I was more concerned that the rabbitholes might have functions tied to the lot zoning - you know how weird EA's coding can be! You'd think they'd just eliminate the unnecessary lot types so that they don't confuse people like me. I thought I was doing something wrong the whole time!

For the distant terrain, that is usually the case if you don't have Riverview installed. The Riverview DT references STBLs in the DCCache, so you have to have Riverview installed for the DT to show up correctly, as explained in the download thread. If you do have Riverview installed then chances are the DCCache is corrupted, so try reinstalling Riverview.Riverview is installed, and the DT was working fine up until the 1.29 patch and corresponding EP patches, so it's possible the cache just went corrupt. (The DT itself shows up fine both in CAW and EIG; the only problem is that it shows up as a bunch of numbers in the metadata.) Bugger. Looks like I have to reinstall RV.

Oh, well, at least I know I wasn't doing something wrong or missing a patch or anything!

[simsample]

No problem, I hope you get it all working! :)