More Awesome Than You!

I really hate the fact that you can´t really make proper stairs in this game. With a lot of fiddling around it was kinda possible in S2. I made a few things for S2 and it was a mess to get things in the game with updates and everything.
Now I can model and map most normal non-curvy objects. Thats what I´m good at, and since I have some real life experience from the building industry I could probably make those stairs I want in 3D Studio Max, but there would be no point in it, if its not possible to make the actual code for it to work. Anyone who care to comment on that?

The stairs in my game seem proper enough, as far as stairs go.  My sims can even walk up and down them.

The game has enough stairs, what there should be are escalators and lifts.

Not sure what problem you're experiencing with stairs.

Yeah, that's what happens when they NEVER SAY.  It was just, "Stairs, man, stairs.  ARE YOU WITH ME?"

I warned you about stairs, bro.

I TOLD YOU DOG

I think what you mean is like spiral staircases, staircases that bend at angles, and staircases that at the bottom has another next to it going in the opposite direction to the next level?  I came across this irritation the other day when I wanted to make a staircase that went downwards to 2 levels with them next to each other, but the game wouldn't allow me to build another staircase so close to it.  A "floored" (flawed) design if you ask me. :P

This is the design I was trying to get:

(http://www.homesteadwoodworks.ca/images/gallery_rzr_staircases_01.jpg)

(http://www.mikebrennan.net/wordpress/images/stairs/stairs1.jpg)
I'm just thankful none of the stairs look like this.  Could you imagine trying to walk up and down these?  If you were left-footed you'd be stuffed and doomed to fall down.

But I wouldn't mind in real life a staircase that looked like this!
(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2352/1829879877_dc42282a8b_o.jpg)

You can do the first one!  You just end up with warped walls.

Ah you can?  I dunno how you managed it but I've tried even with moveobjects on cheat but nothing would allow me to build a staircase next to another.  Even so the fact you get warped walls as a result is definitely a design flaw. :P

Here is a video tutorial on how to do the split level stairs in the first photo.  There are others if you search, but this one works fine. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqLgaW2J728

Speaking of split levels, I hate that all of EA's houses are on foundations.  One of my sims was looking to buy a new home and found a bunch without garages or even driveways.  So I kept looking and found a few with detached garages.  Finally I found one with an attached garage.  Yay!  Not so fast, after buying it I found out it wasn't really a garage.  Just a driveway with 3 walls around it on foundations so it looked like a proper garage.  But the entrance was open with no garage door.  I used a tutorial similar to the one above to convert it into a garage with 4 walls and a garage door attached to the house.  Then today I was trying to add a stair case to go down a new basement in a premade house with a foundation.  But I had to basically tear down a quarter of the house to add the stairs since they can't be added next to foundations and whatnot. (Even though you can later add foundations to be next to stairs, go figure).

So yeah, their house making stuff isn't designed all that well.  Although the fact that they added basements is vast improvement from before.

Flabaliki over at Sim Supply has made a few really awesome and easy to follow tutorials on connecting garages to houses built on foundations.  I think there is also a tutorial on stairs.  Try this one:  http://thesimsupply.com/showthread.php?tid=38

If I can do it, anyone can...

Yes, the one in the first picture. Its correct you can make them if you arrange for the platform to be in a corner of a house. Otherwise you end up with this:

(http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/361/screenshot377h.th.jpg) (http://img190.imageshack.us/i/screenshot377h.jpg/)

However, if it was a static object to be placed this wouldn´t be a problem. Or like in one of the EPs for S2 there was a "stage" object that could be placed on top of a foundation. That would probably be more handy. Kinda like 3 objects 1/4, 2/4 and 3/4 of a floor in height, that would allow stairs to be placed from them, but Since this was never made for S2 I thought maybe a stair object would be easier to make.

I seem to remember the Vole mentioning a "place friezes" cheat that allows you to stack foundations, but I've not personally tried it.  Also:  Vole.

Friezes can be stacked but they are not foundations, they are unsuitable for stairs placement due to their height.

Friezes can be stacked but they are not foundations, they are unsuitable for stairs placement due to their height.

Incorrect.

Placefriezes does essentially make stages, but you can't build walls too close to them. They are also floors. Meaning There will be a  gap on the floor above where the floor would go, because it's too high for you to place a ceiling.

But, if you're willing to sacrifice one floor, you can make stairs with a landing. Maybe I should make a tutorial for it. This is not hte kind of landing discussed in this thread, but it's still a very common type of stairway. So I figure it's nice info.

For now, here's a quick one:

-Place foundation

(http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/7237/screenshot818.jpg)

-Turn on frieze cheat
-Place a frieze the length of a stair+1 (5 tiles)

(http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/3900/screenshot819.jpg)

-Place a stair to the floor

(http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/2352/screenshot820.jpg)

-Add walls

(http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/7011/screenshot821.jpg)

-At this point, if you want your main stairway to have the triangle walls, place a square of friezes on the top of the walls, a fully enclosed area. This is because the stairs ON TOP OF THE FRIEZE are technically ON THE SECOND FLOOR. So they aren't "enclosed" unless the second floor is enclosed- meaning you need to place the SECOND FLOOR, the friezes on top of the first floor, NOW to make them count as enclosed. If you DON'T want the triangle walls, you STILL need friezes, for the stairs to be placed.

(http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/8649/screenshot822.jpg)

-Add the main stairs

(http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/8239/screenshot823.jpg)

-If you didn't already, enclose with friezes.
-Continue building the house as usual.

(http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/6954/screenshot824.jpg)

There will be a gap between the first and "second" floors, because of the frieze. You can get creative with decks and roofs to make it less noticable.

(http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/8006/screenshot825.jpg)

When you do this, the stairs are raised up by one frieze height, so you have to compensate with another frieze on top of the wall. Since a frieze counts as a floor of it's own, you're basically lining up stairs on top of the first floor (the frieze) with the floor of the third floor (also a frieze).

Wow!  Thank you Claeric!  I always wondered how that partial wall was created.  I think you made it all look very simple and I can't wait to try it...    ;D

I was experimenting with stairs yesterday and found out that I can't create angled stairs. I can make angled walls and foundations but not angled stairs.

I suspect that has to do with animations. I know it took them forever to make spiral stairs because they had to animate people walking in a circle. They hate making new animations for anything so making diagonal stairs will be out until someone mods this somehow.

I suspect making the animations for diagonal stairs is much easier than making spiral stairs. You would only need to rotate the walking animation 45 degrees, right?

True, but look at each new expansion, the tendency to re-use animations shows a strong reluctance on their part to make any alterations to the base animations. I am not certain that its because its hard as much as they are terrified that sex mods using the new animations will instantly show up. No doubt,  they have their worst pervert on staff checking each new animation for possible X-rated usage. :P It could also just be sheer laziness on their part, something we have noted in the past seems endemic at EA.

I doubt the animations for spiral stairs would be that difficult.  In TS2 there were custom spiral stairs long before EAxis put them into the game, and no custom animations were required to use the spiral stairs.  I doubt TS3 would be that difficult to make spiral stairs, more likely EAxis is holding onto spiral stairs for some later EP/SP.

It's not really the modders' fault that TS2 pinball animations looked so much like buttfucking, EA.

Oh, c'mon, everything is the modders' fault. How often do we hear "Don't use mods/hacks; they break your game"? Which is usually followed by "Use this mod from MATY that fixes your game until we bother to make a patch for it. Don't hold your breath.".

Not quite: Friezes are 6 steps high. This makes them uneven, because a stair-tile is 4-steps. If you place a staircase leading off a frieze, it will extend over the length of a tile and take up two tiles. This can be quite a nuisance.

I just wish I could get proper one point click control on raising and lowering terrain. I swear they made it harder in 3 just so as to make me hate building even more. Took me half an hour to discover that I just can't do the basement in foundation with stairs going straight through trick - and another half hour to get a set of stairs to bend the old fashioned way because I couldn't control the terrain height properly.

Use a program like Xpadder to set a keyboard button to function as a mouse click. You can set the sensitivity and ensure that ONE press is ONE and ONLY one click, and then just use that instead of a mouse click when altering land.

Worth a try I suppose - now what to do about the fact that raising and lowering ground doesn't affect only one point at a time but that whole circle (even on smallest setting).