Adding Ports and Houseboats in Create a World

Step One: Make Sure Your Sea Level is High Enough!

Just because you have miles of water everywhere in your world doesn't mean that you can start placing houseboats.  The reason is that your world has to have enough sea level depth; otherwise, you won't even be able to add ports, let alone houseboats. So, the first thing you have to do is make sure there's enough sea depth to place ports on. Below is a screenshot showing how deep the water should be:

To adjust your sea levels, you can go as high as you want--the higher, the better. So, if you find that the water in your world is too shallow, go to the sea level icon in Create a World and click along the edge of your shoreline to raise it in increments.

Question: What if you've pretty much built your world and are trying to add ports after the fact but your sea level is too shallow? You can still raise the sea level. However, keep in mind that this might mess up all the landscaping and lots on your shores. Chances are that you may be able to resculpt everything but if you have lots along the shore that end up underwater, you'll either have to relocate them or give up the entire affair of adding houseboats entirely.

Step Two: Create a Houseboat Lot in CAW

You can create and add houseboat lots to CAW like any other. However, houseboat lots behave differently in CAW. Unlike regular lots, you can't draw them in place in-world. However, this isn't a problem, because you'll be adding community lots, which your houseboat lots will attach to.

To create a houseboat lot, select it from the menu and decide whether you'd like it small, medium, large, with a curved bow or not.

When you successfully make the lot, it'll pop out onto a random spot of your world. Don't fret about this, because we'll be attaching it to a second community lot, designated as a port, later in the tutorial.

Step Three: Create a Community Lot

Your houseboats are hanging out in the nether regions of your world, because they need a place to dock to but don't have any. This is where ports come in. Port lots couldn't be easier to make. Just draw a regular community lot out in an area where you'd like the houseboats to appear--for example,  a marina or pier. The lot can be big or small, but the minimum size you can build is 20x20.

Another important step--your lot has to  be on part land, part water. The reason is that you need the dock steps to be on land, but enough of the lot on water to attach your houseboats to. It doesn't have to be exactly half. Just make sure that there's enough water in the front to place your dock entrance, and enough water for your houseboat.

Done? Good! Now let's fire up Edit in Game and get to the nitty gritty of houseboat placing and building.

Step Four: Give Your Houseboat a Name

Once in Edit in Game, go into Edit Town. Click on your houseboat and give it a name. It can be anything, like "Small Houseboat" or "Boat 1" or anything to help you keep track of it. This step isn't really necessary, but good practice for when you start building multiple houseboats at a time and need to be able to tell one from the other. I am calling my houseboat, "Little Tugboat Annie."

Step Five: Go to Community Port, Change to "Port."

Click on the community lot you built in CAW and change the lot type to port. You absolutely have to do this, or you won't be able to add your houseboat.

Step Six: Enter Build Mode of Port to Make Dock

Enter Build Mode for the port, select one of the stilted foundations, and draw out the dock that sims will be using to enter and exit their houseboat, but from the water going inland, not the other way around!

Why must you draw the platform from the water inwards? This makes sure that the port is exactly at the right level for the houseboat you'll add later. If you do it the normal way (land out towards water), you will get an error message when placing your gangway in Step #8.

Step Seven: Add Steps, then Decorate

You'll want to add steps, so sims can enter the dock. When adding them, make sure that you use "ALT". Otherwise, the port will have issues down the line. If using ALT pushes the land down too much, you can redraw the entrance of the dock to a part of the lot that's a little higher or lower or resculpt the area where you want the dock to land.

Step Seven: Add Gangway

You've got your port and your dock. Now is time to add a special object known as the "gangway." This is the little bridge that connects the dock to a houseboat. To get it, enter the  "buydebug" cheat (press Ctrl+Shift+C to bring up cheat menu). Enter Buy Mode, then click on the question mark tab [?]. Look for an object called "gangway." If you're having trouble finding it, use the filter on the right hand side of Buy Mode and filter by Island Paradise.

When you have it, place the gangway over a section of the dock, rotating if necessary. You'll know you've successfully placed it when the large colored rectangle the gangway is attached to goes from red to light blue.

If you get an error message that says that your gangway has to be attached to a dock at sea level, that means you forgot to draw your port from the water inland. If you get an error message that says "location out of bounds," that means you either have to rotate the gangway or that your lot size might be too small. Remember, the minimum size has to be 20x20. However, depending on where you've placed the lot, you might have to make it a little larger.

Step Eight: Go Back to Edit Town, Select Houseboat

You have your port perfectly set up, including your gangway. But what are we missing now? The houseboat you'd drawn in Create a World that is now sitting out in the middle of the ocean. We need to add it to this particular port. Here's how it's done:

Go back to Edit Town and select the port. Choose the icon that says, "Select Houseboat." You will have a choice of several sizes. Choose the one that matches the size of the houseboat you drew in CAW.

If you go back into Build/Buy Mode for your port, you'll see the foundation of a houseboat. So far, so good! But you'll notice that the floor is black. The reason is that there isn't a houseboat attached to the dock yet. This is where the houseboat we drew in CAW comes in. We need a way to attach it.

To do this,  Ctrl+Shift+Click onto the gangway to turn up a pie menu. This step can be a little tricky, so here's a tip--the key is to click on the back end of the gangway that's attached to the houseboat, not the one attached to the dock. The reason is that each half of the gangway gives you a different menu option. The front end allows you to create a new houseboat from scratch. We don't want that. We want the back half, so we can add houseboats in our world to it.

Select "DEBUG: Set Houseboat Lot." When you do this, you'll see the name of your houseboat. Click on the name and voila! The houseboat that was out in your world has now been added to this port. You will tell when you see a wooden floor with a steering wheel, mailbox and trash can.

Now you're ready to edit your houseboat.

Step Nine: Go Back Out to Town Map View, then Choose Houseboat Lot to Edit

This is where things get a little confusing. Although you can plainly see your houseboat has been docked to your port, you're not viewing it from inside the houseboat lot. You are still inside the port lot.

So, to edit your new houseboat, you have to exit back out of Build/Buy Mode into Town Map View, then select the houseboat lot from there. From inside Build/Buy Mode, you'll be able to edit the houseboat like you would a regular lot.

Step Ten: Save Your World in Edit in Game

Did you make it this far? Then congratulations! You have a houseboat in your world! But before you celebrate, make sure you save everything in Edit in Game.