Hi.. i'm very new to this game, especially in building a house. anyway, here's my problem:

i've chosen the pre made "european townhouse", and after making some money, i decided to build another house with the exact design.

i had no problem in placing the stairs. my problem is that i can't place tiles "on top" of my stair. what i meant was that the pre made house has only 3 tiles of space on second floor. but after i place my stairs, i had 4 spaces. i can't place floor tiles on the spaces.

i tried to google the problem, but due to my stupidity, i still can't find the solution... =.='' can anyone of you help me?

thanks in advance...

I can't remember the name of the stairs offhand... not the modular ones but the whole staircase? Open the cheat box (shift+ctrl+c) and type moveobjects on, pick up the stairs, move them, lay the flooring, then move the stairs back. Make sure you don't add too much flooring or the simmies won't go up.

To turn the cheat off open the box and type moveobjects off.

3 open spaces is the absolute minimum non-floored space you can have open above the stairs with normal wall heights. It really isn't that good of an idea to force that open tile to be closed. You have to be careful what you put on that last square, some things seem to cause problems for your sims when they try to use the stairs.

Well the reasony ou can't cover p the spaces are because they are where the sims come up them in other owrds he can walk thru carpet.

There're 2 types of stairs in TS2:

1. the TS1-styled staircase stairs
1a. the portals are separated exactly 16-click-high/step-high and 5 grids away from each other.
1b. it takes away only 3 upper tiles to "avoid" sims from hitting their heads against the upper floor.
1c. the right stair.

2. connecting/modular stairs
2a. the portals are separated variably from 2 steps (half a grid)
2b. it takes away only 4 upper tiles to "avoid" sims from hitting their heads against the upper floor. Probably, its modularity has the fourth upper grid empty.
2c. the left stair.

thanks for the quick reply...

the stairs in the original home is the connecting stairs with the name of steadfast stairs. i believe that's the connecting/modular stairs right?

anyway, now i've managed to put the tile on the top floor, leaving 3 spaces for the sims to pass through, just like the pre made house. althought i've solved the first problem, now there's a new problem...

i've taken a screen shot.. here

the right stair is the original stair that i've talked about. as you can see there are only 3 spaces for the sims to go through, and there's a wall at the edge for the bath room.

after i've put my new stair, i can't create walls on that tile anymore. still can't figure out why...

May delete the wall first and build the stair before rebuilding the wall back.

May use the same stair probably along with the moveobject on cheat to place the stair.

hmmm i've tried first way... no use...

and i can't move the connecting stairs even with moveobjects on... am i doing anything wrong?

anyway i've continued my construtction, and now one of my bathroom has a wall missing.. :D

thanks for the help though...

I think it is an other "maxis secrets" like the academy non posted fences, The 4th tile above modular stairs is useless, you cant do any building actions except a diagonal wall or fence.
What about a previous version game ? (the EP the house come from), I have not the sims installed in my laptop to have a look with the BGS. If somebody want to test it...

You can't move modular/connecting stairs, you have to delete them, then
activate the cheat and put them back. I'm not sure if it'll work- but it's worth a try.

thanks for the advice... this is what i've tried this time...

1. delete the original modular stairs
2. moveobjects on
3. add floor tile on 4th space (leaving only 3 spaces for the sim to access to second floor)
4. add modular stair
5. try to add wall on the floor tile on 4th space, but failed... it said cannot intersect wall...

and i even tried to add diagonal wall or fence on that tile, but can't.

i've tried to add the wall first, then the stair, with moveobjects on, failed again...

actually it's not a big problem... i can always leave 4 space for my sim... although i really like to know how to overcome this problem.. =.=''

anymore suggestion? or should i try download some mod?

Thanks megativity13 for clarifying that. Sorry I didn't think of such ambiguity .

I should have used "build" instead of "place" especially most people would think the moveobjects on cheat is only to move and/or drop an object.

But, I'm afraid using a TS1-styled staircase is the easiest way to go presently.


As patul said, it's possible Maxis used an unlimited game version to build it.
In that case, you may destroy the old house from a copy except the stair and the above tile there, and then build your own there.

Yet, an another way is to mod the modular stair and use a modded default replacement to build first and then remove the modded.

guess that's the only option i have..

thanks for the help everyone... i'll find some time to learn more about modding the stairs...

katabana: in the base game pre-made lots, Maxis have sometimes used features that were not actually available in game --- one of them being the stairs you describe. You can't overcome that problem, I guess the game code was changed *after* those houses were built.

If I were you, I'd either use non-modular stairs as they onle need 3 tiles of space -- but I'd only do that if it's a house that does not have a lot of traffic, because the non-modular stais can only be used by one sim at a time, blocking them for everybody else.

Or use custom stairs: the "Ladder Stairs" and "Designer Ladder Stairs" by Targa here on mts2 are a great space saver while still realistic-looking, also Inge at simlogical.com has some custom staircases that take up less space. Those are non-modular but since the sims get from one end to the other very quicky (they sort of teleport), traffic is much less of a problem.

Or, like you say, use regular modular stairs and live with the one more tile of space they take up.

If you have OfB, and if the floorplan of the house would work for that, you can also use modular stairs with a stage (landing): then they only need open space above the first 3 tiles, not above the landing.

In any case, don't worry too much about the stuff Maxis have built. Most of those houses aren't very good anyway, to say the least.

try this tutorial:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=110440

You're not working with split stairs, but it might help. Also, a pic would help. I LOVE screwing around with stairs, so maybe I can help you make a different layout, or make them work again. You can trust me on this, THIS is my one thing have mastered. So I hope to help.