I added a custom neighborhood as the shopping district to my Strangetown. I replaced the roads with a transparent mod, so there are no roads visible in lot view. Sadly, the roads in the shopping hood still have their asphalt look when I am on a lot. Is there any way to fix that?

Road replacements are usually done by terrain-type so if your shopping terrain-type is different to your main neighbourhood terrain-type it might not work as you anticipated. For example, if I have one type of suburban replacement for the lush terrain, I can have a properly urban replacement for the concrete terrain (which is what I have in Little Carping and it's Downtown Sirencester).

Like Maxon said, are you certain that you're using the proper replacement for the terrain type you've used in the shopping district? (I'm assuming you're using a road default that's stand-alone, that doesn't replace both the terrain and the roads in one file.)

If you're certain the terrain types are matched properly, then there is something wrong with the invisible road replacement you're using. I've made a number of them now, and the way they're made is like this: You use empty, transparent images for all the neighborhood-view textures, which makes the roads invisible in neighborhood view. This, however, does not work for the lot-view textures. If you use transparent images there, you just end up with gaping holes in the terrain where the roads should be. So what you do, instead, is use textures that match the lot-view textures of the terrain replacement you're using. So then there ARE still roads there, but they match the terrain textures so you can't see where they are. This is why there are no universally-invisible road defaults for both neighborhood view and lot view. They can be "universal" in terms of neighborhood view but in terms of lot view they will only work on a specific terrain.

So, I suspect that the replacement you're using doesn't have textures that match the terrain, for whatever reason. Perhaps the creator made a mistake. Perhaps they didn't know that you could use terrain textures there. Perhaps they couldn't fix the problem so they just left the lot-view road textures as they were. Whatever the case, the way to fix it is to go into SimPE, open the terrain replacement you're using and export the appropriate lot-view texture from it. There are usually two, one usually larger than the other. If I'm remembering right, you want the one that doesn't have "detail" in the name of the texture and/or it'll be the larger one. (Or, if it's Maxis, you'll have to go into EA GAMES/The Sims 2/TSData/Res/Sims3D/Textures.package in Program Files, look in the LIFO resource, and find the textures you need. There's, like, 500 textures in there.) Then, open your road replacement and replace all the lot-view textures with the image you exported from the terrain replacement. That should make the roads match the terrain, thus making them "invisible."

Thanks for all your suggestions and ideas! I went and checked again if I have only one replacement (I do), thanks for the suggestion, Elddie, and I am fine :-)

Maxon, I believe that is the problem. The custom hood I use for the shopping district was lush, I think, and I managed to replace the terrain with a cheat, but this did not affect the road.

It is Mountainside Valley from here on MTS.

iCad, I am glad you chimed in, because I think I got the link for the transparent road files from a Tumblr post of yours. I am on a Mac and cannot use SimPE, sadly.

I use the invisible roads from Taylor´s Simblr.

I guess the problem is that the shopping district has a different terrain than the main hood, and thus the roads don´t get replaced.

If there is no cheat you can think of, would it be a solution to put the occupied houses in the bin, delete the hood and put in a new subhood with the proper terrain? Or does this create more problems, BFFVFS-wise? There are no townies in the subhood, just the Sims that came with the hood.

Thanks again for all your input, I at least now understand what the issue is.

I'm going to guess that having changed the terrain type (I'm assuming you used the terraintype cheat?) is what's gumming up the works. What terrain did you change the shopping district to? Desert, to match Strangetown, or something else? Whatever the case, the fix might be as easy as changing out your road default to the one that goes with whatever terrain you changed the shopping district to. I know Taylor made invisible roads for all of CuriousB's terrains, so if that's what you're using, it might be as simple as changing out your road defaults.

EDIT: Having a main hood and a subhood with different terrains isn't a problem, so long as you have invisible road defaults for each type of terrain used. So, if your main hood is desert and your downtown is concrete, then you'd need invisible road defaults in your Downloads for both those terrain types. You can have more than one road default in your Downloads, so long as they are for different terrain types. You can't have more than one default for each type, though.

Yes, this is exactly what I did. The formerly lush shopping district is now a desert terrain. I should have attached an image in the first place, but you can see it in the first image.



I put in Taylor´s road default for the desert terrain, which works fine in the main Strangetown hood.
If I put in an additional lush default replacement road, it becomes lush, which is not what I had in mind :-)
See the second image.

I am kind of stumped now, and willing to discard the whole hood. I hoped there was a cheat to also change the road somehow, but obviously there isn´t one.

Yeah, it looks like the terraintype cheat only changes the appearance of the neighborhood, not the actual underlying terrain category.

If you want to hold on to the neighborhood, I'm thinking that an invisible lush road default with desert textures (CuriousB's right?) replacing the roads would work, since the lush default IS actually working. I know you can't run SimPE, so I could put one together for you, if you like? It would only take me a couple of minutes. I'm heading off to bed now, but I could put one together when I wake up this evening. (I'm nocturnal. ) The only thing is, if you're currently playing any lush neighborhoods, you'd have to take such a default out in order to play it/them because it'll make the lot-view roads look really funky! (Kind of like your second pic there, only in reverse. ) Let me know if you're interested, but I can understand if you'd rather just toss the subhood and start over without changing the terrain type on it.

Oooh, icad, you are a darling! Sorry, I was not online yesterday, but I would be so happy to have that. And yes, I am using the CuriousB ones. This would be way easier than dumping the whole hood :-) And I only have that Strangetown hood, so no conflicts. Really, this would be great!

Not a problem at all. I will do it for you tomorrow and send you a PM with the download link.

EDIT, to clarify: You're using the "standard" CuriousB desert default, yes? I had made a higher-res version, too. The new default will need to match whichever version you're using, so just let me know which.

This is great! I believe it is CuriousB´s regular version, called "FAB_Neighbourhood_DesertTerrainDefault(Sns)". I use an old Mac, so your lovely high-res defaults were out of question, sadly. I look forward to your PM!