My game is in swedish so I don't know the name of the roof I'm using but it should be someting like "shed roof". It's the one that's slanted on one side and has a wall on the other, kind of like this /|


Anyways, my problem is that I can only make it slant towards north or south (or up/down if you prefer), but not east/west.

Is there a trick to it? (If anyone understands what I mean...)

I have searched this site for a couple of hours now and have not found anything on the subject, does anyone else have this problem or have I just missed something?

Thanks in advance for your answers!

Generally, the direction of the roof depends on the where you start when you greate it (i.e. the first place you click is the highest). If you want it rotated 90 degrees, you can usually select a different roof type (i.e. the same roof type is listed twice, one goes north/south and the other is east/west).

But this only works with the "full roofs" that go from both sides to the top. The half shaped roofs work different (and usually turn into the wrong direction), and are only listed once.

Exactly

If you are patient, you can build a roof by making a roof 2 squares wide along the edge, then making another 2 square wide roof overlapping it and continuing the process until you finish the roof. (I don't remember if a 4 square wide roof will work or if it spins before that.) Either way, you can then go back and delete all the extra walls you made with the extra roofs. Just be sure to leave the external ones.

I'm not quite sure that I understand what you mean... Should I make it 2 squares bigger each time?

I am trying to make a slanted roof that is 2x2 squares big. At 1x1 it faces the wrong direction, 2x1 it flips to the right one, but at 2x2 it flips back to the wrong one again.
I'll try making them on top of eachother to see if that works.

The direction of the shed roofs depends on the orientation of the lot unfortunately, and that is hardwired into the lot when it's created. So if you haven't already spent a huge amount of time on this, best would be to start over on a lot that has a different orientation. As in: if your current lot faces North or South, use one that faces East or West instead, and the other way around.

If this is an existing lot that you don't want to lose, look into the tools that Mootilda makes – I lost track of it since I don't have TS2 anymore, but she's probably the most knowledgeable person on the inner workings of lots in the world of TS2. I don't know if she has a tool specifically for this, but if not she would probably know how to edit the lot in SimPE to change its direction or something. Look at her profile to see what tools there are; there's also private group for testing I believe.


(The same stupid principle of letting everything depend on something as obscure to the user as lot orientation is still alive and well in TS3, if it's any consolation. Not only for roofs, for stairs too. Urgh.)

Nope, it did not work to overlap the roofs.
I played around a little however and discovered that the default direction in which the roof turns is based on the orientation of the lot!
I placed an empty 3x2 lot along a road and made a slanted roof on the ground and it did not turn in the direction I wanted to. Then I exited to the neighborhood and placed another empty 3x2 lot by a road going in the other direction. This time the roof faced in the direction I wanted it to. I then moved this second lot and placed it right next to the first one and tried placing a roof. This time it again went in the direction I wanted it to even though I had changed its orientation.
So, apparantly it has to do with the original orientation of the lot to do.

But I wish there was something I could do to change the direction while placing the individual roof.

Heh, I think we crossposted =). I'm really impressed you figured this out so quicky! You're entirely correct, it's the lot orientation. It affects driveways too (which direction they'll turn) – I'd recommend you make a note of where the sun is in the lot, and then just look at the sun every time before you start building, so you know how it's going to behave.

OK, thanks for the tips!

Hehe, yes, we did. (Again!)
That's a good idea, checking for the sun.

What I have done to solve it is to place the lot on a spot where the orientation was right for the roofs and then move it to where I actually wanted it afterwards.

Thanks for the info! I've always gotten so mad I scream at the game when my roofs don't go the way I need them to.