Building Tutorials and/or Advice?

[ZephyrZodiac]

I hate the way some roofs continue below a window, it can look extremely odd!

I tend to build turning stairs in an open area, but I have one house which I've built (not uploaded anywhere though) which has stairs that turn at right angles and they're enclosed in a stairway section at the back of the hall.  The house which I have in a package file ( I redid it in a vanilla hood and just replaced custom content with Maxis stuff, checked it out in another hood which I created for testing, and it works fine. - someone wanted a copy of the house after it appeared in a picture, so I basically did it for them.  If I can find a way to upload it in Simfreaks Forum I'll do that, but so far I haven't been able to do that, so I may go and mess about with my Yahoo group and put it there - we'll see!)

[baratron]

I use graph paper and create the house to fit the furniture I want in it. Makes it easier to convert floorplans to sim scale. Plus it gives an idea of the traffic flow. When it comes to porches I find that placing a floor roof on them before the house roof and deleting the floor after leaves it open.

I agree. Right this minute, I just looked at the room I'm sitting in, and announced that it's a 6 x 8 tile room, based on the furniture that fits in it. It helps that all our furniture is from IKEA, so it's all standard widths. Believe me, this makes estimating sim sizes much easier .

I work on the assumption that 1 tile in the game is either 600 or 800 mm in real life. European kitchen units all use the 600mm standard, while IKEA bookcases and wardrobes are on 800mm. I'm crap with feet and inches, so without going downstairs & getting my calculator, I'm not exactly sure how they compare - but 600mm is just under 2 feet, and 800mm is about 2'7".

It's interesting that our real-life front room is actually pretty big by Victorian house standards. It's the largest room in the house, and supposed to be the master bedroom, but we sleep in the second (smaller) bedroom and use this room as the living room. It's about 5m x 4m. Using my 800mm standard, it would be 7 x 5 sim squares, and using my 600mm standard, it would be 8 x 6 sim squares - which is exactly what I estimated right at the beginning .

This is, by the way, why I always think that downloaded sim houses are way too big. Most people build bathrooms that are 8 x 6 squares!

[FatedCircle]

This is, by the way, why I always think that downloaded sim houses are way too big. Most people build bathrooms that are 8 x 6 squares!

Probably.  When I build, if my bathrooms get that big, I split them into two bathrooms.  Sims can never have too many, for practicality purposes.

[Pegasys]

I may start out with a house plan but more as a rough guide because there will need to be many adjustments. Sometimes I'm not sure whether something can be done (using building cheats or not) and I may spend a couple of hours to finally determine no, it can't be done. I was trying to make a house with a roof on the diagonal using the floor elevation/flat roof trick and it turned out absolutely pathetic, so I had to completely redo the house.

I haven't done a ton of building but I've found that going back to lots I haven't played in a while, where I had simply added on to the house willy-nilly with no sense of aesthetics, I can't play those houses anymore and immediately have to get my Sims new ones!

A quick question - I noticed a house I just uploaded to the Exchange has the yellow warning sign. I went into the house and tried to remove all custom content. I then restarted the game with custom content disabled. But then I couldn't upload it, my game crashed. So if I want to create houses in the future w/o custom content, do I have to *start* with no custom content enabled ?

[BlueSoup]

A quick question - I noticed a house I just uploaded to the Exchange has the yellow warning sign. I went into the house and tried to remove all custom content. I then restarted the game with custom content disabled. But then I couldn't upload it, my game crashed. So if I want to create houses in the future w/o custom content, do I have to *start* with no custom content enabled ?

Do you have custom terrains?  Those are a curse, and should be avoided at all costs.  But *if* you do have them, don't ever disable them or remove them from the game, or you'll corrupt the lot and never be able to package it and/or load it.  As far as everything else goes, I tend to just remove it all from the Downloads folder (or use a separate Windows user account) before I load the game.  Walls and floors, if they are made with Homecrafter, are OK and will not set off the yellow warning sign.

[Pegasys]

Thanks BlueSoup.

What's the difference between custom terrains and those made with Homecrafter?

[BlueSoup]

I don't know much about Homecrafter, but I think they are the custom terrains that are the problem.  Basically, any terrain that is starred, and doesn't come as part of the game, is evil and should be avoided, lest you create a BFBVFS.

[Sleepycat]

So if I want to create houses in the future w/o custom content, do I have to *start* with no custom content enabled ?

I just want to point out that "enabling or disabling custom content" dosen't do shit when you package up a house, some hacks/custom content will still get packaged up with it. The only way to be sure no hacks or any custom content gets packaged up with a Lot is to remove all hacks and custom content from your game before packing up the Lot

ie;

1, move downloads folder, load game, package Lot
or
2, create separate accounts on your computer, 1 "clean" one for building and 1 "with custom content" for playing


Homecrafter custom terrain is very bad, I hope one day Maxis fixes it *won't hold her breath*

[ZephyrZodiac]

Admit they're wrong?  You have got to be joking!

[Pegasys]

Homecrafter custom terrain is very bad, I hope one day Maxis fixes it *won't hold her breath*

Thanks Sleepycat.

I made some snow terrain and used it on one house, no other houses have it. But I also downloaded a house that had a water terrain and it was one of the things that leeched onto the lot I was uploading and wouldn't let go. This is kind of new to me; what happens with custom terrain, what are the symptoms of its corruption? Can it make a neighborhood become a BFBVFS?

[BlueSoup]

Terrain is OK, until you disable it or remove it from the game.  Once that happens, you can't load the lot without it crashing.  So, you fish out the terrains from wherever you deleted it to, and then put it back.  Your lot will probably load now, but you will never be able to package that lot.

And this goes for every lot that has custom terrain, or even if you just went into the terrain tool, even if you didn't use it.

Bottom line...terrains are evil.

[ZephyrZodiac]

And the other problem is that, if you want to use any existing lots that have the terrains in them and are working, that if you accidentally open the terrains menu (easily done, since the icons are close together) then the lot you're working on will also be affected!  And any lot you download that contains one cannot be properly cleaned with Clean Installer.

Perhaps if everyone who is offering Terrain Paints as downloads now was to take them off, at least new simmers wouldn't be able to download them and ruin their game.

And they do very little, if anything, to improve environment score, so the only one who benefits from them at all is the person playing the game!  Sims much prefer even the cheapest paving!

[BlueSoup]

Perhaps if everyone who is offering Terrain Paints as downloads now was to take them off, at least new simmers wouldn't be able to download them and ruin their game.

Problem with that is if they remove them, their lots become affected.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, they'd have to remove all the infected lots they have for download and scrap them.  They could take a copy of the floorplans first and recreated them, or simply replace them with new, unaffected lots, updated for NL.  I would imagine most of the affect lots are older ones since everyone who's been around the sims community a while knows about the problem.

[BlueSoup]

There are people who have been around forever, yet still use terrains.  Most, if not all, of the "so-called" top builders of the Exchange still use terrains, and while their lots look pretty, they will never find their way into my game.

[ZephyrZodiac]

They mustn't care about causing problems in other people's games!  If a paysite did that knowingly, there'd be an outcry - how come the Exchange is immune from criticism?

[BlueSoup]

It's not....criticize away. 

I will no longer upload anything to the exchange.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I never have done!  I hate the whole site really, it's nearly impossible to negotiate without tearing your hair out!  People complain about MTS2, but the Sims2 site is worse!

[agcons]

I've also had huge problems with the terrain paints in the past.  Generally I don't like them, except for a few of the EA-supplied ones, and I started out by removing them from downloaded lots with the Clean Installer.  Big mistake, as several of you have pointed out.  Once or twice I was able to enter the lot and remove those vast areas of the "blue ground of death" that appear where the paint would have been, but nearly always I've had to destroy the lot.

What I have had success with is this:  I install the lots I really want, without removing the terrain paints with the Installer.  Once I enter the lot, I remove the paint with the build tool, then save and exit.  I do this with all the installed lots, then I delete the terrain paints in-game at my leisure.  The edited lots have not caused trouble upon re-entering.  This process is very tedious, but I haven't found another way to remove them without screwing things up. 

I should note that I have not tried to re-package lots edited in this manner, so I don't know if doing this messes that up.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, I have several lots in the hood I'm currently playing (an old one I've revived) and there are a lot of houses in it I've built and rather like.  Now, I've packaged these, installed them into a vanilla game with no, absolutely no access to custom terrains.  Some have loaded with no problems, some have crashed and I've had to abandon the idea of refurbishing them.  NONE of them to my knowledge had any terrain paints in use when I packaged them.  Since none had been landscaped, it's unlikely I'd have opened the terrain paint menu intentionally, since I don't do the idiotic Maxis thing of using them in the basement (why bother?) and I put proper paths up to front doors.  However, it's possible if I went to use one of the other tools in that menu I might have clicked the terrain paint menu by accident.  I can think of no other reason why lots created around the same time (pre-Uni) played extensively since loading the game again with Uni and NL now installed , with quite a lot of remodelling and additional furnishings, shouldload fine with the Clean Installer in some cases, and crash every time I try in others.  (And I kept trying till I got sick of the helter-skelter slide back to the desktop!)

So, unless someone has further suggestions to add, I'd say, it's not worth the bother of trying if you KNOW there were terrain paints on the lot!

[Sagana]

People complain about MTS2, but the Sims2 site is worse!

Oh, the only reason I complain about MTS2 more'n the exchange is that I'm actually willing to go there. I won't go anywhere near the exchange - if I click on a link and it opens, I usually close it immediately. If I really, really want something (or want to read a story or thread) I might struggle through it a bit, but usually end up just quitting anyway. The exchange breaks my net computer. It's worthless. MTS2 is actually a good site, so worth complaining about ;)

There's quite a few lots on MTS2 and TSR (and everywhere else) that use terrain paints too tho. Mostly for water (swimmable lakes, canals in the middle of the lot) and other cool effects so I understand why, but my current neighborhood is desert and I'm shocked how many people's used terrain paints to color the grass :( That strikes me as pretty unnecessary. And it's harder to get rid of them, even if I'm not worried about repackaging and crashing them (I'm not clear on how to use the build tool to get rid of terrain paints <scuffle> <waits for point and laugh>).

[Kristalrose]

A showoff and another question.

Here's the Showoff:  I'm quite proud of this one, espeically the landscaping. 
http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/lot_detail.php?asset_id=289902&asset_type=lot&user_id=124521

Now, the quesiton:

Thanks Sleepycat for the "Remove Downloads Folder" advice.  I had been tearing my hair out with the piggybacked custom content until I learned that trick.  Now, say we have an inhabited house that we would like to share.  Is there a temporary way to move the family out, such as remove the Character File Folder, without causing neighborhood damage in the long term?

[BlueSoup]

Thanks Sleepycat for the "Remove Downloads Folder" advice.  I had been tearing my hair out with the piggybacked custom content until I learned that trick.  Now, say we have an inhabited house that we would like to share.  Is there a temporary way to move the family out, such as remove the Character File Folder, without causing neighborhood damage in the long term?

Nice house.  As for the characters...

What I've done in the past is package the lot to a file, and then installed the lot with Clean Installer, making sure to only select the lot package.  I get the lot, but not the family, and if I remove the Downloads folder first, I get a clean house and I package that one.

[Myth]

I just skimmed the thread so I do not know if this has been suggested, but one thing I do when building is to buy furniture and place them while building the room to make sure my scale and the look I'm trying for is right.  I just move the furniture room to room and then delete them when I'm done.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Thanks Sleepycat for the "Remove Downloads Folder" advice.  I had been tearing my hair out with the piggybacked custom content until I learned that trick.  Now, say we have an inhabited house that we would like to share.  Is there a temporary way to move the family out, such as remove the Character File Folder, without causing neighborhood damage in the long term?

Nice house.  As for the characters...

What I've done in the past is package the lot to a file, and then installed the lot with Clean Installer, making sure to only select the lot package.  I get the lot, but not the family, and if I remove the Downloads folder first, I get a clean house and I package that one.

That's what I do too, put the lot into an almost vanilla hood, check it through to see it's what I want, so only Maxis objects (though I have started to put some custom walls and floors from sites which are happy about their custom content being shared with houses (such as Juniper Sun), then I return it to my main game, and check it out in a test hood with test families.  If it still works fine, then I know it's good to go.