Most recent update - stairs and fences acting weird, and camera movement?

[Saramel87]

I just downloaded the Sims 4 from Steam yesterday. I built a house with a porch, which had stairs from the ground to the porch and a banister made of fence.

Today when launching the game, steam performed a game update. Now when I go to build a new house, I cannot connect stairs to the ground - they won't auto resize, and only turn green for possible placement as a full story staircase going upwards from the porch. Also when trying to place a fence banister, there doesn't appear to be the option to drag the banister to size, the fence just automatically fills the whole edge of the porch.

Another random thing , when I move my cursor to the bottom of the screen, it will not move my camera view further away - the feature works in all three other directions, though.

There are probably more weird things that will happen during building, but I'm just trying to get past these. I've exited and restarted the game, same thing.

Thanks for any help on this issue! I've included a screenshot of the stairs and fence issue, can't really screenshot the camera movement issue, though.

[JonaO703 · Accepted solution]

@Saramel87 Hello!  Based on the images you shared I have a few suggestions.

1. It looks like you just need to rotate the stairs.  On PC, you would select the stairs you want then click and drag your mouse up or down or left or right, to change the direction of the stairs.  You want it so the top of the stairs is facing the top of the porch or whatever level you're trying to place them. 

2. For the porch fencing, it looks like you're using the Replace Fences option.  You want to select the Place Fence Enclosure option in order to drag and size the fence to fit.

3. For edge scrolling, it doesn't work in the down direction of Build Mode if you have a menu open.  Try closing the menu and then see if you can scroll at the bottom.  In these examples, I first have the Walls and Empty Rooms menu open.  When I click on the "porch" on the left, the menu closes and I can use the down edge scroll.

Open menu; note the wall and porch on the left are highlighted.

Closed menu; by clicking on the porch, the menu closes, the wall and porch are not highlighted.  Once you've closed the menu, try scrolling toward the bottom.

I hope this helps.  Please come back and give an update if it did or didn't work for you. 

[JonaO703 · Accepted solution]

@Saramel87 Hello!  Based on the images you shared I have a few suggestions.

1. It looks like you just need to rotate the stairs.  On PC, you would select the stairs you want then click and drag your mouse up or down or left or right, to change the direction of the stairs.  You want it so the top of the stairs is facing the top of the porch or whatever level you're trying to place them. 

2. For the porch fencing, it looks like you're using the Replace Fences option.  You want to select the Place Fence Enclosure option in order to drag and size the fence to fit.

3. For edge scrolling, it doesn't work in the down direction of Build Mode if you have a menu open.  Try closing the menu and then see if you can scroll at the bottom.  In these examples, I first have the Walls and Empty Rooms menu open.  When I click on the "porch" on the left, the menu closes and I can use the down edge scroll.

Open menu; note the wall and porch on the left are highlighted.

Closed menu; by clicking on the porch, the menu closes, the wall and porch are not highlighted.  Once you've closed the menu, try scrolling toward the bottom.

I hope this helps.  Please come back and give an update if it did or didn't work for you. 

[Saramel87]

Oh my gosh, thank you so much!

Everything worked great with your suggestions! The fence and camera movements seem obvious now, but the strange thing is I didn't have to do that click and drag with the stairs when building yesterday, it just automatically figured out what I wanted based on where I placed my cursor. It's weird that the workaround is needed after the update, but I'm glad I have a way to do it now.

Thank you so much!

[JonaO703]

@Saramel87 You're welcome!  I'm glad I was able to help. :-)

I wonder if maybe you just happened to get the stairs facing the right way before?  I can't be sure but I really don't think the patch update caused any issues with the stairs.  I tested it out and didn't have any issues.  I think it just depends on where your camera is positioned when you click on stairs for placement.   Maybe you could test it as well?  Click on some stairs and see what direction they're facing.  Then cancel, spin the camera around to a different angle and see what direction the stairs face at that point.  I think you'll find that sometimes they're positioned correctly and sometimes you have to turn them.