More Awesome Than You!

Hubby bought me a book of Colonial and Southern Floorplans for Christmas! (Hubby's stock is on the rise in my book, hehehe) Anyway, I want to build Sims homes, and I thought if they were good I'd make them available for upload. I've read MikeInside's tutorials and did a search of his message board, and learned some things. The biggest piece of information I was able to find to suit my needs was that there really is no conversion of real life square foot to Simmy Building Squares. I guess this explains why when I convert them by three the rooms are two small, and convert them by 2 they are too big. 

So, the question is for all you accomplished Sims Archetects: Got any advice for me? Good links?

I'm by no means an architect, but I've found it's easier for me to just build the house with no set design, and floorplans that I've tried to follow usually go right out the window when making it useful for the game.

I've heard Reggikko say (well, seen her type  ;)) that she also just builds as she goes, without following plans either.

I use plans and/or photos sometimes, but I have the same trouble with scale.  I try to retain the flavour of the house but make it useful for game play.  Other times, I just start building without a plan or a photo in front of me -- often they're houses in my area of the city that have caught my eye, and I guess as to what the interior layout is like.

I use floorplans myself, but I don't go by the scale on the plans because as you noticed it doesn't really work out. I mostly do it by guess, and rough conversion, comparing like objects (windows, doors, arches) to get a rough estimate of about how big one square would be. I also keep in mind some general rules for building a house that sims will live in - hallways must be at least two squares wide, bedrooms with double beds must be at least four by four squares, dining tables really need two squares on either side to make room for their chairs, and so on. I actually try to stay away from building cheats because they tend to cause weirdness with my game and with decorating - if I have a split level house I can't use patterned paint or wallpaper without it looking weird, and if I need to knock out a wall to expand I'm shit out of luck.

There are some really good tutorials at MikeInside's :

http://mikeinside.modthesims2.com/#mike

Psssssst...Brynne.

She said she was reading MikeInside in the original post.  ;) That was my first thought too, although SimMasterRalph has some pretty good tutorials on the official exchange, as does SimSherry (it might be SimSherry2, not positive).

I like to look at pictures and floor plans as ideas and to get a general layout but don't think you can follow them too closely. Another reason why you wouldn't want to follow them too closely: playability. Thinking about how the sims move (especially when they complain someone is on the stairs they want to use) or about how many spaces an item takes up (every bedroom in my house has a clothes dresser but do you really want to take up that kind of space in the bedrooms?) really alters how you build things. In a real house would it take 45 minutes to walk up to the third floor? There is also visibility issues - does that staircase block the player's view from most angles? A hallway might look good only one tile wide, but sim doors will get stuck if it's not two or more tiles wide.

I usually make two kinds of houses: ones that look good and ones that play well. I like to download houses that look good AND play well.  ;D

Oh. 'Scuse me. I was skimming. :P

I usually have an idea in my head when I start.  Some of the houses I build are traditional and tend to follow a similar pattern, with variations, but othrs are ones I've created more for something to fit in with a theme.  I have several bits of space debris converted to houses in my current game, plus a converted church and othr odd buildings.  However, if they don't play well, I either alter them so they do, or I scrap them.  I've never used a Maxis house yet that played well without extensive alterations!  (They can't even put front doors on which will close, but stay open and prevent sims from getting past!)  And as for windows, they're nearly always the wrong way round, so you get the window sill and the exterior mouldings inside!

Yep! When I reinstalled and started from scratch, first thing I did was nuke the Maxis houses with the exception of a couple of the new 2x2 lots that came with Nightlife.

My husband got me Mediterranean Home Plans and Japanese Modern - fun hm? :) Husbands can be cool when they want to. I only build for me, so I don't really have anything productive to add. I like the plans and don't bother to worry about scale - just try to make it look right compared to the other rooms and if it's rectangular not end up with a square or something :) And make it the size the sims need it to be. I love split levels - I think they're easy to play as both levels show up well from a 3/4s view and most of the connecting walls are hallways and the like where I don't mind a plain wallpaper (especially with the California/Med. type homes - plain stucco colors work great :) So, just really saying Merry Christmas :)

I almost always use floorplans when building my sims homes b/c I suck at being creative building houses most of the time lol

Like you noted..there is no way to really make convert them to sim scale...err more like any set rules...it's just trial and error. 

You just need to remember that sims are stupid when it comes to navigating their way around their homes so you have to build them to their IQ level.  For example small hallways are not a good thing b/c sims don't realize they can walk around another sim lol

I also almost always use connecting stairs in my two story homes instead of the one piece staircases pretty much for the fact that more than one sim can go up/down them at a time.  With the one piece staircases they cannot and so they stand there complaining that something is in their way if they need to go up the stairs and somebody else is already using them.

In fact, about the only advantage the one-piece staircases have apart from being easy to use when you first start building, is they take up one tile less floor space upstairs.  Oh, and they come in more than one colour, although thanks to Numenor, this is much less of an advantage than it was!

I tend to build about one to one, however I place furniture as I go so that I am sure that the spacing is usable. I used floor plans for a bunch of victorians I did over the summer, I also used some as a rough idea for a few starter homes. I sometimes get in a rut and start placing rooms in the exact position over and over so thats when its time to look at a few plans to break out of the same old same old.

Trouble is, of course, that most Victorian town houses (at east here in the UK) tend to follow very similar patterns.  You can find houses all over the country that are almost identical in design.  So it's very difficult to make a Victorian house different - except when you get to the upper end of the price scale.  I tend to use different colour-schemes, or decorating styles, to get a different look, and often I "modernise" the interior, since that's what people do!

Wow.  :)  Thanks y'all.  I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one with these problems with scale.  I worked 3 hours last night on this house:  http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/lot_detail.php?asset_id=288281&asset_type=lot&user_id=124521

I can't get the roof to look right, and I didn't use the connecting staircase.  :-\  I need more practice, I think.  But, yeah, I found myself building the rooms one at a time, and thene adjusting the floorplan as I went.  I think that, except for the weird looking roof, it looks fine.  Moved a family in it before I quit last night, so I haven't tried it out for playablitiy yet. 

Hmm, I easily can put 5 or more hours into a house getting it just right. I can throw them together in less if I have to, but I prefer to take my time with the details, but I love building so its easy for me to loose track of time. Sometimes I will get stuck on a house design and have to come back to it the next day or so.

I use plans from a magazine since I noticed that my own designs all look the same.  Like skandelouslala said, it's trail and error.  I use different styles, my favorite being Italian.  My main hurdle is how roofs work.  I don't even bother trying to put rooms in roofs.  And how many times have I had a second floor porch surrounded by a strip of shingles, only to discover that the game thinks the porch is inside and thus keeps it in permanent shade.  Also, what's with the  roofshape in empty lots vs. occupied lots?   Either you have a mountain slope roof or a pancake roof.  Bleh.

It looks very nice.

I have a problem with the roofs as well. That's why the houses I've built so far have flat roofs.  :P

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.

Slope angle values add a nice change to building roofs. I usually put an auto roof on classic homes before adding any doors or windows, and look at all the different auto roof choices. I may find one I kind of like and then I take off parts that I dont. I then use the regular roof choices to fill in the pieces I took off with what I want. For modern homes though I dont bother, I usually already have a roof type in mind and build it myself.

Can you get slope roofs to give different angles for different pieces? Or are you stuck with the same angle for the whole roof?

Slope angles apply to the whole roof. I WISH you could do that!

I totally agree about using dormers - they are definitely not the simplest part of building, but with practice they can be mastered.  At least, unlike basements, they can have windows!  And in big cities you often have a whole family living in a basement flat, so it would be pretty dismal for them if they didn't have windows!

Oh, me too!  I would love to be able to have different roof pitches on the same house.

I use floor plans too, but I tend to stick to smaller houses, as they are generally quite simple.  I look for ones that seem possible, with the building tools available, including the roofing.  I have found that if I see something that looks cool, but I know that I won't be able to do that with what is offered in the game, I'll just be unhappy with it.  The biggest problem I've encountered is with stairs though.  There is no easy way to do stairs with landings or turning stairs, although, I'm getting better at it.  I wish Maxis would come out with a mesh for stairs with landings, so I don't have to spend hours trying to shrink walls to get them to turn.  Plus I get annoyed when the walls look funky, so I tend not to do houses with turning stairs, unless I'm prepared for a battle.

The other thing that gets me is there seems to be a problem with roofs, when the ends of two roofs intersect.  If the trangular wall portions cross, it creates a piece that sticks up above the roof, which is utterly annoying.  I've only noticed this post NL, and I'm not sure if it occurred before....  It's weird, and makes building all the more frustrating.  But when it comes out right, it's loads of fun.  I love building as much as I love playing. :)

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!)

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 :D.

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. ;D

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 ?

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.

Thanks BlueSoup.

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

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.

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*

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

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?

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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?

It's not....criticize away.  ;)

I will no longer upload anything to the exchange.

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!

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.

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!

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>).

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?

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.

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.

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.

the same way you apply it except you press an hold the Ctrl key on your keyboard while doing it *just recently figured that out*


side note: I think almost everything can be removed in build mode using the Ctrl key but in my game atleast if I'm deleting stairs I must first select "the same type" of stairs in the catalog.

Yes, it's basically the same method as in sims1, but in sims 1 you could remove a whole room's walls in one go, but now you have to do it in sections if they were put in in sections. Useful most of the time, but a nuisance when you forget and leave one wall with the wrong wallpaper!  (Or none at all)

That must be the stair removal trick I haven't known about!!!  Dare I say, "thanks!".

I just used it to remove a set of stairs - and it was really annoying, as not one simoleon did my sims get in their coffers!

your welcome   :D



Its the only way I can delete stairs...I demolished alot of Lots before I figured it out *sigh*

Some of us read the instructions! LOL!

I think alot of us do, that dosen't mean the directions give you all the information you need...


/from the TS2 directions booklet

To delete most architectural elements press "CONTROL" in combination with the selected tool. Architectural elements return their purchase price to your Sim's coffers no matter how long they have been in use.

and it says for staircases

To remove staircases, pick them using the Hand Tool and press DELETE

I'll have to check that sometime, but the instruction I remember was the first one, and I think I may have used delete as well, just found control was easier.

I don't think I was ever able to delete staircases without using the control key, though of course I don't remember exactly....damn it!  I'm going into the game to find out!

Think I'll alt/tab too!  Maybe the control key is the one that means you don't get any money back!

Got it!  Control to remove modular stairs, delete to remove ordinary stairs.  (You only get the hand tool for those, the others you get a blue circle type icon.)  Guess Maxis didn't realise when they wrote the booklet how many of us would prefer the modular stairs!


This is definitely a false statement!!!!!!

I think the CONTROL vs DELETE has to do with the type of stairs, theres two types with different stairs under those two types. To remove any stairs I have to first select the exact stairs (not just which type)


The stairs I had the most trouble deleting were the nasty green ones in the pre-built lots in the pleasantview n'hood (when I first started playing TS2) because I could not figure out what stairs they were  ::)  I couldn't delete those stairs even using "moveobjects on"  Once I figured out which stairs they were (by selecting each kind) I was able to get rid of them without having to demolish the lot *laughs*


edit - ZZ beat me, takes me forever to get my thoughts together  :P

Well, it helped that my game was running at the time, and on a lot which had both kinds of stairs!