Building Your Own Apartments: Late Night

[myskaal]

I was incredibly disappointed with the "apartments" of Late Night. Fortunately, we can build our own.
The following was ripped directly from some random SimGuru on the official BBS.

Before you start, you'll want to enter the cheats for "testingcheatsenabled true", "buydebug", and "rbbb off". This will allow you to purchase the markers that allow apartment functionality, and allow you to edit the portions of a lot that are considered public space within an apartment.

When you create an apartment building, there are three important markers within buydebug that you'll want to use...

1. Public Room Marker - This marker should be placed in any room that you want any Sim who is visiting the lot to be able to walk around in, consider it as public space within a building such as the lobby. Unless cheats are entered, when you enter build / buy mode on a lot, any room that has a Public Room Marker can't be edited. The Public Room Marker is also the object that flags a lot as an apartment lot. Once one of these has been placed, any outdoor areas on the lot will automatically be flagged as public space. One special note: If you place a parking space in an area that is flagged as public space, your Sim can still purchase a vehicle and park it in that spot.

2. Hidden Room Marker - This marker is similar to the tomb room marker from World Adventures as some people have noted. It will turn a room completely black and hide the contents from the player. There is no way to unhide a room once this marker is placed inside it. You should place this marker inside the rooms that other Sims who will populate your building live inside, thus hiding it from view as your Sim can't visit their living area. If you hold CTRL + SHIFT and click on the hidden room marker, you can also set ambient sound for the building. You should only set this on one hidden room marker per lot, and it should be the marker closest to the player's apartment. Finally, any door that is connected to a room with a hidden room marker inside it should be flagged as an NPC door if you want another Sim to live inside it as if it was their apartment. Hold CTRL + SHIFT and click on the door, and select the "Make NPC Door" option.

3. Level Skip Marker - This marker isn't essential, but it can come in handy. For example, if you build a four story building, and your Sim's living area is on the top floor, you may want to add a level skip marker on the second and third floor if your Sim has no reason to ever visit those floors. When this marker is placed on a floor, moving the camera up or down a floor will automatically skip past a floor that this marker is placed on.

For your Sim's private living space, aka any room that makes up their actual apartment, don't place any markers in those rooms at all. Any room without a marker will be considered as a room that the Sim living on that lot owns, and they will be able to freely edit it in build / buy mode without cheats. Additionally, areas without a marker are the only areas that count towards the lot value or environment score.

On a final note, every building that you want to have function as an apartment should have the Callbox object placed in an area that is considered public space. This will allow other Sims to visit and to call the NPC Sims that live in your new building!

[Rubyelf]

Thank you for this, however I am experiencing a slight problem. When I CTRL+SHIFT click a door to set it as an NPC Door, I do not get the option to do so, any clue as to why?

Also on another note, I cannot for the life of me find the mailbox that you see in most of the other apartments (the wall mailbox).

[Claeric]

Thank you for this, however I am experiencing a slight problem. When I CTRL+SHIFT click a door to set it as an NPC Door, I do not get the option to do so, any clue as to why?

Also on another note, I cannot for the life of me find the mailbox that you see in most of the other apartments.

NPC doors have to open into an enclosed public area. Are your NPC doors external? If they do not open into an enclosed area (like a hallway, or a fenced in external hallway), it seems they cannot be set as NPC doors. The only non-shell apartment building has doors enclosed by fences- every single door is in an area that is enclosed, and when I built an apartment building, the doors wouldn't give me the option until I enclosed them inside a fence and marked the area inside that fence as public.



See how each door opens into a fenced off area?



And each fenced off area has a public marker.

If your doors ARE enclosed, remember that the hallway or whatever they open into may need a Public Room Marker.

Edit: Sorry, I thought you were looking for the callbox, but I now see you said mailbox. I don't know the answer to that one.

[Rubyelf]

Thank you for that Claeric, that wasn't really clarified anywhere I could find, managed to fix my apartment to work with the doors now. The Callbox is not the object however that I am looking for, I am looking for the wall Mailbox, the one which is seen in other apartments.

[Claeric]

The Mailbox looks like it's completely hidden, just like all the trash chute and all the skyscraper shells. So for now, use the one that sticks around on the lot when you build from a residential lot.

I've tested it in the past, and Mailboxes work in a very particular way. When there's one on the lot, the game notices it. When there's two, only the first works. If you delete the original and replace it with any other kind of mailbox- for example, one of the World Adventures mailboxes- the game realizes that it is there, and it takes on the functionality that it should. Because of that, the original mailbox functions properly on an apartment lot- the game doesn't know the difference.

So once someone unlocks the mailbox, placing it should be as simple as deleting the normal residential one and placing one down. Despite how complex mailboxes are and how deleting them can explode your lot, they work really smoothly this time around.

[Rubyelf]

Yeah, for now I am using a cheat method. I am going to clone a current apartment lot, remove all the "crap" that I dont want, put the mailbox and chute to the side, build it up and place them where I want them. I am guessing to destroy the original mail box (for when someone manages to unhide the chute and apartment mailbox) you have to Nuke it using AwesomeMod?

[Claeric]

I've got apartment building down, but has anyone managed to get other people living in a custom apartment? Nobody seems to automatically move in. Is there something special you have to do to get someone going in and out of those doors?

[Rubyelf]

I've got apartment building down, but has anyone managed to get other people living in a custom apartment? Nobody seems to automatically move in. Is there something special you have to do to get someone going in and out of those doors?

I don't know, I spent a good 2 hours playing around with it last night. Of course my issue was trying to find a spot to actually FIT the apartment lot. Your apartment is using the Communal Mailbox right?

[Turd Ferguson]

I'm just rather annoyed that we can't have multiple households in a building. You really can't add in a couple of lines of code EA?

[Claeric]

It's pretty asinine to imply that adding other households to the building would just be "a couple more lines of code". The game is not set up, in any respect, for lots to function as anything but one household locations. Lots themselves are an object. Two families on one lot, as separate, loadable save files would be pretty complicated. It would split that one object into two. It's really unlikely the reason there's only one household per lot is due to laziness.

As apartments are right now, that whole apartment is still "owned" by your sim, but the markers use fancy tricks to make it look like it's a separate area that they're a small part of. The markers are what makes your apartment the only thing you pay for when moving in, the markers are what keeps the rest of it black and invisible, the markers are what makes NPCs move in and out of the doors- it's not as simple as "The lot itself is the apartment", because that's untrue. The whole lot is still the whole lot. And splitting one lot into two is probably a huge deal coding-wise. It goes against how the game is built at a basic level.

[wizard_merlin]

It's pretty asinine to imply that adding other households to the building would just be "a couple more lines of code". The game is not set up, in any respect, for lots to function as anything but one household locations. Lots themselves are an object. Two families on one lot, as separate, loadable save files would be pretty complicated. It would split that one object into two. It's really unlikely the reason there's only one household per lot is due to laziness.

Given that TS2 apartments could contain multiple playable families, I would say it is just laziness on the part of EAxis to not do the same thing for TS3, even if they games save differently.

[Inge]

I disagree. Look at how apartments in sims 2 were implemented.  The other apartments were in seperate lots that overlaid each other.   The other "playable" sims were not really living their lives while you were playing one family.  In fact they were acting the same as the NPCs in the new apartments.   And although you could visit their apartments and go inside, didn't you notice that when your in-play sim was there, *he* could use their fridge etc as if he owned their apartment, while they could not!   It really didn't work lol.  Under those circumstances it would have been better if they didn't allow visiting.   At least the new way keeps some sort of realistic synchrony.

[wizard_merlin]

With a special lot type and maybe an apartment marker, I don't see why they couldn't make each apartment appear as a separate lot.  If someone who has read the coding and says impossible to do, then so be it, but I wouldn't put it past EAxis to have just taken an easy option rather than apply a little extra effort.  While there was alot wrong with the apartments in TS2, at least they were reasonable, these ones just seem like a high rise house on rather an apartment block.

[Rubyelf]

Well I've been playing around with this for awhile now. So far I have only used the apartment pictured by Claeric above to make my own, however they just don't function the same. No idea what is missing here, but I have everything set up correctly the apartment is priced right, public and room markers set, however the issue is what was mentioned a bit earlier. NPC sims do NOT move into the apartments that you make yourself, which beg's to ask why? What have EA done? I am wondering if perhaps it has something to do with the doors, they are set as "Make Usable by NPC" etc, but no NPC's ever move in, so there has to be something hidden here.

[brownlustgirl]

I wonder if the expense could be a problem for my apartment complex. Just finished building one and it seems to be working fine, but I furnished all the apartments the same as my active sim. Her apartment cost a little over 26k simoleons (two bedrooms and one and half bathrooms), so I might not have any sims able to afford the apartments.

[Claeric]

Apartments don't work that way. NPCs either pay nothing or they pay the full price of the lot, because the only thing that makes YOUR apartment cost *anything* is the fact that it is neither hidden or public. Any apartment room that is not hidden or public applies to the cost of rent, nothing else is considered. NPC rooms are hidden, and are intended to be empty, so I doubt they pay for the contents.

[Rubyelf]

I wonder if the expense could be a problem for my apartment complex. Just finished building one and it seems to be working fine, but I furnished all the apartments the same as my active sim. Her apartment cost a little over 26k simoleons (two bedrooms and one and half bathrooms), so I might not have any sims able to afford the apartments.

By "working fine" you mean that NPC's are moving into empty apartments correct?

As for the cost issue it could be due to the fact that you may not have set a public marker where one should be one, or hidden room markers too. If it is those excess objects, try removing them from all the "spare" apartments and then seeing if the price drops.

[brownlustgirl]

I figured out the public spaces and no need to provide cars for NPCs, they will add to the cost for my active sim. When I removed the other cars, the cost of the active apartment was around 18k.

No, don't have any NPCs yet, I hope the doors to the NPC apartments are set right. "Working fine" meant that my sim can move around the apartments well and nothing is blocking their way. I will be play more today and hope NPCs will move in.

[OmegaStarr]

The apartment mailbox and trash shoot do show up using S3OC, but even with new room/function tags they are still not showing up in game. Unless I'm doing it wrong, I'm assuming it would be as easy to clone object, tick new function tags and save.

[brownlustgirl]

Jynx released the hidden 31 shell buildings and the hidden mailbox and trash chutes.

http://www.customsims3.com/smf/index.php?topic=3044.msg27730;boardseen#new

[Claeric]

Oh thank god.

Note that the shells, like WA shells, can't have fences built through them. So you may have to do some planning before placing them. This one, for example, fits on a 20x20 foundation.



Unfortunately, I can't seem to build on the first floor, rendering the lot useless. Maybe they can't go on foundations. :\ A more likely solution is that I used the alt key to precision place it on the foundation, and it resulted in a useless insides- since, of course, the walls can't line up with the door properly.

[brownlustgirl]

I think for newly built apartments to have neighbors, you need the apartment mailbox. I just plopped the one Jynx unhidden on my apartment complex and the regular mailbox disappeared, then my sim had neighbors move in.

[Claeric]

Yep, that immediately calls new neighbors.

I've got an apartment completed except for the first floor. I can't figure out how you do the door. I tried putting a wall in front of it with a door on it on the inside, but it wasn't routeable. I ended up removing the walls in front of the door and it works, but it doesn't look right.

[wizard_merlin]

The apartment mailbox and trash shoot chute do show up using S3OC, but even with new room/function tags they are still not showing up in game. Unless I'm doing it wrong, I'm assuming it would be as easy to clone object, tick new function tags and save.

Do you think you could get it right?  Somehow I don't think there is a gun range where you get to shoot trash in the game.

[Rubyelf]

I think for newly built apartments to have neighbors, you need the apartment mailbox. I just plopped the one Jynx unhidden on my apartment complex and the regular mailbox disappeared, then my sim had neighbors move in.

Unusual maybe I did something wrong, I did have the chute and the apartment mailbox down in my apartment but it still did not allow neighbours to move in. I will try the unhidden ones and see if it works