[NEEDS INPUT] Basement Split Level Rooms: Irremovable Basement Floor (1.66) [ Edited ]

[milliemcintyre]

Product: The Sims 4
Platform:PC
Which language are you playing the game in? English
How often does the bug occur? Often (50% - 99%)
What is your current game version number? 1.66.139.1020 (64-bit)
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? All EXCEPT, Eco Lifestyle, Fitness, Jungle Adventure, Journey to Batuu, Nifty Knitting, Spooky
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Create a large basement on two or more levels and remove the flooring on the 2nd floor. Create rooms either against the edge walls or freestanding in the middle of the basement room. I also had half walls and fencing. Go to paint the higher level wall and it creates a floor in between the two levels.
What happens when the bug occurs? Removing the flooring creates a dirt terrain. Trying to use the sledgehammer or remove floor/ceiling tools doesn't remove it. I'm now stuck with a very dirty floor I do not want.
What do you expect to see? No dirt floor. Just a very tall basement.
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Not now. I've removed them.
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system?

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I found this, it had apparently been patched out but I think it's come back.  

The game was also extremely laggy in build mode just while in the basement, but on upper levels it ran fine. I assume that was because of the scale of the build. 

I have a save where the issue can be easily replicated here. 

This save will open saying build/buy/cas items are missing + removed but even on vanilla the bug still appears (tested but not saved) The problematic build is located on Hounds Head in Brindleton Bay with 8 sims. The basement level is a underground town that is definitely not being created for nefarious fallout shelter experiment purposes. Construction is currently on-hold whilst the dirt floor issue is being resolved. As you can see, the split-level part is supposed to be the 'outdoors' of the town, with multiple buildings and a garden inside. Trying to paint one of the 'buildings' creates the dirt floor, the save is just before you do that so you can replicate the issue with ease. 

Edit By Crinrict: Added Tag to Title, Adjusted Title

[CGrant56]

@milliemcintyre 

I tested this both by doing a test build and downloading your save.

In my test build in a vanilla game, I could not make it happen.  No dirt floor appeared for me.  I was able to paint the upper level walls with no problems

However, in your save, also in a vanilla game, it did happen.  But at first it didn't.  I entered the lot in build mode straight from the map and painted the upper walls with no problems No dirt floor appeared.  But after reloading and going into the lot in live mode then going into build, when I tried to paint the upper level walls, the dirt floor appeared and you are right, once it shows, it can't be deleted any way I tried.  But I was able to make it go away.  After I figured out that I couldn't delete the dirt floor, I used the undo arrow to back completely out of everything I had done and started over.  This time though, the dirt floor did not appear when I tried to paint the walls.  After that, no matter what I did, the dirt floors did not reappear.  

So there is some type of glitch on that lot but it might be fixable.  So I suggest you try again and see if using undo will fix it for you like it did for me once the dirt floor appears.  

Hope this helps.

[milliemcintyre]

@CGrant56 Thank you! And yeah, after posting this I did test on another lot and I wasn't able to reproduce it again, a bit weird but quirks happen. I'll definitely try your method of undo'ing until it complies. ty!

Update: So the undo method isn't working for me. Luckily I have another save now where I've squished it down into one floor (I hope the sims dont get suspicious of the very low sky) but I'd love to see this fixed  It's really weird how I haven't been able to recreate it on another lot though. 

Edit - I did a fresh save and built something similar on the same lot (default house) and it happened whilst changing a full wall to a half wall on the upper level. This lot had the pool on the lower level and half wall AND full wall rooms on the upper. The undo method still isn't working. 

I removed all the inner rooms on the upper floor so it's just one massive square. Painting the walls then didn't create the dirt flooring. However as soon as I any room that isn't attached to the outer walls, the bug appears. If a room IS attached to these outer walls, the bug doesn't appear. I have a feeling it has something to do with how the game identifies rooms, especially at basement level? 

Update: Okay! Using this same theory that it has something to do with an 'inner' room, I was able to recreate it on hindquarter hideaway! 

The bug persisted with and without a pool, and without an inner room on the lower floor, as long as the upper floor has a room that ISN'T attached to the very most outer walls, the game breaks and creates this irremovable floor. Bug officially persists on multiple lots~ 

(CM: Multiple posts merged. Check out this post for tips on how to edit and add more to a post.)

[CGrant56]

@milliemcintyre 

Ok.  That's interesting.  I'll take another look and see if I can replicate what you did and see what I get tomorrow.  You might be right about the game and how it recognizes rooms.  Makes sense to me anyway.  Build mode can be weird at times in what it lets you do.

Another thing I thought might be connected is cc.  When I loaded your save, the first time I entered the lot it said that it removed 672 build items and substituted 31 more.  That's a lot of cc on that lot and cc can cause problems even after it is removed as it sometimes leaves a stray bit of data attached to a lot or in a save.  I know you said you tried it in a vanilla save without any cc, but did you leave any build related mods in like T.O.O.L. or something else?  Could be something like that is interfering somehow.  Just a wild guess though and probably not since it did happen in a vanilla game for me without any mods or cc in but you never know.  Doesn't hurt to consider it anyway. 

Another thing you might try is deleting the localthumbcache.package file if you haven't done that yet.  That sometimes clears up problems, especially when you have a lot of cc and take it in and out of the game.  The game will generate a new one so it doesn't hurt anything.

Hope this helps.

Edit:  Ok.  I took another look at this today and was able to reproduce the issue.  But I did it a different way than you did.  But ended up with a dirt floor that could not be removed short of deleting the entire build and starting over.

I went to the same smaller lot in my test save as you did in yours and built a 2 level basement then deleted the floor in between and added rooms in the lower level.  One against the wall and one in the center of the floor.  I deleted the floor of the upper level and the ceiling of the lower room.  Then added rooms right above the lower rooms below.  Not a problem and I didn't get the dirt.  Then I added floor tile back to the upper level.  Since you can't tile a space that way, to get a floor so I could tile, I had to add the ceiling back in the room below, then place floor tiles on the upper level.  The usual concrete floor showed up and I tiled over it.  Then I deleted the floor and the dirt showed up.  After that, I could not get rid of the dirt no matter what I did.  Adding and deleting floors and ceilings again did nothing and the dirt floor remained.  So there is definitely something now quite right about how it works.  But it does seem that the order in which you do things does matter as I could get the 2 story space at first. It was when I put the floor back via adding the ceiling below was when it showed up.

Hope this helps.

[milliemcintyre]

@CGrant56 Yeah so I just renamed my folder so when I loaded the game it created a clean Sims 4 folder and tried again now on Sporting Space (we movin~) and the issue still persisted so it does appear on pure vanilla versions of the game.

ALSO, I was just typing that ^^ as you added the edit, we're in sync. I just tried what you did in the edit too and the same results. I've also tried this in Willow Creek to see if it was an issue on other worlds besides Brindleton Bay, and changed the order of how I did things and no matter what, it still came back.

I did notice something when I was trying it in Hallow Slough, after I removed the floor of the upper level, it stops seeing it as a room. I think that may be it. I accidentally clicked on one of the outer walls and noticed it didn't highlight the whole room and I was able to delete the wall. Here's a video of that. I think I found the issue~

[CGrant56]

@milliemcintyre 

I went back again and looked to see if I could reproduce what you did.  I couldn't.  No problem with selecting the space without the floor as a room.  Only thing was that I couldn't put a floor back in without adding the ceiling back below and that brought the dirt floor back.

My test build still sees the open space as a room.  The entire space gets highlighted normally.  

Tried something else too.  Since you can't delete a single section of a basement's perimeter walls without deleting the whole thing, I built a one tile wide room all the way around the basement by building rooms outside of each perimeter and deleting the intersection walls so it made those 4 separate rooms into a single one tile wide room, sort of a box within a box type of thing.  Then I tried breaking the original perimeter walls and redrawing them.  Dirt floor appeared immediately when I did that.

This is very much like what happens in apartments as you cannot change the exterior walls in them other than by painting on the inside.  The perimeter walls are fixed and can't be altered.  Basement perimeter walls work pretty much the same way so I wonder if there is a connection.  There are a number of posts here that can give you an idea of the problems that has created as all kinds of problems editing apartments in build have been reported including not being able to place floor tiles, change interior walls or even place rooms from the Gallery.  I see a lot of similarities with this issue from testing a number of them along the way. None are quite the same though. 

Hope this helps.