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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 14th Aug 2011 at 4:15 AM
Default The Quintessential How to Make a Tomb Thread
So after spending rougly 5 hours between searching google, various forums, the sims 3 website itself, and youtube I still had a ton of questions regarding tomb building that I believe I now have answers for, and in the hopes of helping other skip all the nonsense that I went through Im going to try and compile a list of not just essential tomb making knowledge but also the crap thats not covered elsewhere.

Tomb Building 101 -

A tomb can essentially be built anywhere. Community lot, residential lot, vacation world, whatever. The only thing that classifies something as a tomb is the Tomb Room Marker found in the debug menu.

To begin building you first need to pick a location, after you've found it enter build/buy mode and enter shift+ctrl+c to open the cheat window. In the cheat window enter the following 2 cheats exactly as they appear.

testingcheatsenabled

buydebug

These 2 cheats will grant you access to the debug menu found in shop mode by sorting by function and clicking on the question mark and also give you the ability to enter debug mode on objects by entering shift+crtl+left mouse click on an object. The first tab of the debug shop are your tomb objects.

Tomb Building Basics -


The basics are pretty straight forward, build it as you would any other house or community lot. Its fairly important to choose your theme if you want one and layout your pathing at this point since it becomes a real pain in the ass to edit later sometimes. Save decorating for later as you may need to make changes to the pathing if a puzzle doesnt work the way you want or a door becomes sticky or something. After laying out your dungeon/tomb the fun begins and you can start wiring everything up. Im going to break down the tomb objects and give a brief of what they each do.

Doors - These are your bread and butter, doors can be locked and unlocked by various switches and in the case of the secret rotating door (found in build mode NOT buy mode) invisible until discovered or a switch is activated.

Lights - Namely the torch object can be tweaked by shift+crtl+left clicking and set to enable lever. Once this step is done it can function as any other switch would by clicking it and selecting Pull Lever. Regular light objects can be set to change color or turn off/on as a reaction to switches but more on that later.

Switches
- Theres only 2 types of raw switches, the hidden switch and the floor switch, but after tweaking certain objects such as the dive well, torch lights, and floor/wall holes these can function as switches as well.

Traps - Traps are exactly what they sound like, they can be set to harm or befuddle your sims. They come in various flavors such as Electricity, Fire, Dart, Steam, and None. They can be set to be Hidden or Visible, and Armed or Dormant. You can also wire them to switches so they fire when certain circumstances are met such as walking through a door or pressing a switch. Set Trap Fire Rate determines how long it will fire and how long it will turn off in between fires. 1,7 being off for 1 second and firing for 7 seconds. Those numbers might be reversed as Im not currently logged in the game and cant verify.

Treasure - Either by placing Treasure Boxes, Treasure Spawn Points, Ancient Coin Piles, or tweaking Dive Wells and Floor/Wall Holes you can add loots to your tomb. Ctrl+Shift+Left Click on these objects and click Set Treasure Component to add the items you want adventurers to find

Tomb Room Markers - These handy things are what black out the rooms you havent discovered yet, just place one in every room of your tomb and by default these will black out the room until it is entered.

These are pretty much going to be your most used objects in your first few tombs until you can get the hang of it. The learning curve is pretty steep as theres a ton of redundant info given that you have to weed through but after you play with it for about 5 minutes or so you can really stop thinking about it and your tomb will start to fly together.

Wiring 101 -

This is the most essential part of tomb building and sadly the one area I could find the least about on the internet. Wiring can be broken up into 2 steps in the simplest of cases. You might read about cause and effect and its a decent explanation but it doesnt really get into the nitty gritty that I had to find out the hard way.

To Wire a Floor Switch To Unlock A Door -

First ctrl+shift+left click the door and set it to Lock
Second CSL (ctrl+shift+left click) the floor switch and say Link Triggers - Step On
Third CSL the door again and say Link To Activated Behavior - Unlock

Thats it, your door is now locked and by stepping on the switch it will unlock it, but this is just a small portion of what you can do with the wiring. See my Advanced Wiring Section for further details.

Advanced Tomb Making -


This will be less of advanced tomb making and more of my explaining the additional things you can do through wiring or various other settings not covered by the other guides Ive read. I will not be covering how to make your tomb prettier or how to layout the floor plan to do what you want it to, consult a building tutorial for that.

For a cleaner feel to your tomb try not to repeat the same process to unlock door after door unless that is what youre specifically going for. Try to make puzzles work a different way everytime and try tweaking everything to get the correct look and feel you want. Colors of lights can be changed as well as the brightness. Be sure to test your tomb after you feel it is completed to ensure there are no hiccups in the layout and that all of your switches are wired correctly. See below for a more in depth look at how to achieve the desire you want from switches, traps, or puzzles.

Advanced Wiring -

This is THE most difficult thing to explain as its not really complicated but must be done precisely to get the desired effect you want. The basic design is choose your switch, CSL it, click Link Trigger - "Desired Trigger", then choose your object, CSL it and Link To Activated Behavior - "Desired Effect." It only starts getting difficult when you have multiple things happening at once or when you have multiple things happening off the same switch as you can get lost in the green and purple lines.

Ill run through a few scenarios and things you might want to do in your tomb to give a basic idea of how it needs to be wired in order to work.

A Pushable Statue Switch -

The main point of adding a pushable statue to your tomb is to have it hold down a switch that turns off once you step off of it. These are usually signified by the gears on the switch instead of the feet. To set that CSL the switch and Toggle Visual Style. Now that you have your switch decorated appropriately you can get to wiring it. CSL the door and Lock, CSL the switch and Link Trigger - Step On, CSL the door Link To Activated Behavior - Unlock, then CSL your switch again Link Trigger - Step Off, CSL the door Link To Activated Behavior - Lock. The final piece of the puzzle will be to CSL your statue and Make visably moveable: True and Able to toggle switches: True.

Making a Secret Rotation Door Reveal, Open, then Disappear -

As I said above youll find these doors in build mode under the doors section, not buy mode in debug. Let's say you want the door to be undetectable but open if you pull the torch lever. Start by CSL the torch and Enable Lever (this will always have to be done when using torches as switches.) Next CSL the door and well want to make a few changes here, first set it to be Undiscovered, then Undiscoverable, then finally Link To Activated Behavior - Open. I turn always Turn Autoshut : On but it may not be mandatory. Finally CSL the door and click Link Trigger - Walkthrough, then CSL your door AGAIN and Link To Activated Behavior - Hide. You could always use hidden switches to do these things too after youve walked through the door but by the end of your tomb you may have lines going everywhere with all your switches so the more concise you can make it the better. Either way your adventurer walked through the door and not only did it close behind him but disappeared back into the wall dooming him to procede further into your tomb instead of backtracking out.

A Room On the 2nd Floor That Reveals the Treasure Room -

This particular problem is exactly why I decided to write this guide and try to compile all this tomb crap in one place. The basic rule of a switch is that you may have any 1 switch trigger any number of objects, but to have multiple switches trigger a single object youll have to use the Processor which Im not going to get into, it deserves its own guide and Im not qualified to write it. Anyway, after your tomb is all created, laid out and functioning the final step before cosmetics will be to place your Tomb Room Markers, these are the objects that darken out the rooms you havent discovered yet. By default all you have to do is place one in every room youre calling part of your tomb and they take care of the rest. They dont have too much added functionality to them but they can be triggered by switches if you want to have a switch in Room A reveal Room Z. To do so just CSL your switch and Link Trigger - "Desired Action", CSL the marker and Add the Ability To Be Triggered or whatever it says, then CSL it again and Link To Activated Behavior - Unfog Room.

Additional Tips and Tricks -

You can add switch and effect options to tons of other objects in the game, not just doors and traps. With the testingcheatsenabled turned on try experiment with the CSL on other stuff in the game, for instance to enter into my tomb you have to Flush 2 toilets upstairs to reveal the entrance to the tomb.

Dive Wells - Dive Wells may be used as switches by not making them Warp Wells, wire them up the same way you would a floor switch, but additionally they can be used as Warp Wells or Uber Warp Wells. A Warp Well is Dive Well you can explore and come out another well somewhere else. These are pretty great at confusion since you can make them move a small or a very large distance away, even between floors of your tomb. Uber Warp Wells are absolutely disgusting. Id really recommend using them if you use more than 2 in your tomb, even if the others are just switches. But the added bonus of an Uber Warp Well is that you can make them go to different places. For instance you can jump into Well A and come out Well B, but when you jump back into Well B, you come out C. Just be sure you give EACH well a name AND a destination.

Keystones - If you use keystones or keystone panels as locks be absolutely sure that you CSL them and Set Shape to make sure you are giving the correct key for a door, and that door is set with the correct lock. Its not very fun to watch someone testing your tomb completely bypass all your traps and puzzles because you gave them the key to the final door instead of the first door. For a little added flavor you can also lock treasure boxes with keystone panels so they have to go even further out of their way if they want all the tasty loots you hid.

Ancient Coin Piles - Just as a guideline, when you place ancient coin piles instead of Treasure Spawn Points the coins DO NOT respawn, they are one time collectable. Using the Treasure Spawn Points you can have treasure reappear periodically and Ancient Coins are one of its treasure options. Also, you can CSL a coin pile to set its worth, changing this setting will make the pile larger as the default setting is a very small coin pile.

Traps - Setting the firing rate on traps can be a win or lose scenario when you weigh all the options, in my tomb I have fire traps bursting for 5 seconds then off for 5 seconds. This gives the sim time to skirt over it without getting burnt if timed correctly. However a trap that bursts too often will become impassible or will cook your sim as they try to cross. Fire and Electricity traps will be hazardous to your sims and getting hit by them will give you the singed debuff while Dart traps will knock your sim unconcious. Steam traps are mostly just an annoyance but can be used to extinguish fires. Experiment to see how you can get them to work against one another or together in beuatiful trap harmony.

The Processor - As I said above I wont go into great detail about the processor as I dont fully understand it but from what I do know it is far more powerful than anything I could describe in a small paragraph anyway, for a full description on how it works id google a guide specifically for it. The one function I do know how to work is its AND feature. For starters the processor is found in your tomb objects under the debug shop area, and while it looks like a sandy computer it will be completely invisible when in live mode so feel free to plop it anywhere. By default the processor is set to the AND function, what this essentially means is that you can wire 2 switches to control one object. In my tomb I have 2 paths you can take from the start, each ending in a small room where you can grab a keystone, and the final door is locked by both keystone panels so you have to run both paths and have insert both keystones before the door will unlock. To wire it up to do so its almost exactly like any other switch with a couple small exceptions. CSL Keystone Panel A, Link Triggers - Insert Keystone, then CSL the processor and Link To Activated Behavior - In 0, CSL Keystone Panel B, Link Triggers - Insert Keystone, CSL the processor and Link To Activated Behavior - In 1, the CSL the processor again and select Link Triggers - Out 0, CSL the door and Link To Activated Behavior - Unlock. The only additional info I can give you on the processor is that all inputs start at In 0, and the Outputs start at Out 0. You can have your processor unlock multiple objects on the completed inputs but they need to all be wired from Out 0, dont ask me why as I dont know but thats how I got it to work in mine.

In closing I hope this has helped someone understand the ins and outs of tomb creation a little further instead of me just wasting a couple hours of my time compiling all this crap. If you have any further questions feel free to PM me or reply to this message and I will do my best to figure it out or find the answer youre looking for or the same goes if you have some vital info I left off.
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Banned
#2 Old 16th Dec 2011 at 6:13 AM
Quote:
to enter into my tomb you have to Flush 2 toilets upstairs to reveal the entrance to the tomb


That is awesome. Thanks for the guide, I'd like to make my own tomb sometime.
Test Subject
#3 Old 21st Feb 2012 at 10:02 PM
Thanks for the info! This is very helpful!
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