I found the highrise shells in BuyDebug, but was not able to place one on a residential-zoned lot (I get the message "cannot add, change or remove objects outside of your unit"). I'm guessing there must be a cheat, and probably the same cheat lets you modify the in-game highrises. Anybody figured this out yet?

Edit: OK, right after posting this it occured to me to look in the Readme, where new cheats are usually listed Here's what I found:

rbbb [on|off] or RestrictBuildBuyInBuildings [true|false]: Allows
editing of any lot with a public room marker on it.

Public Room Markers: For Residential Lots with Buildable Shells. Only
available in BuyDebug catalog and only visible in Build/Buy mode or
if RestrictBuildBuyInBuildings or BuyDebug cheats are on. A Public Room
Marker must be placed in all rooms that are supposed to be public except
for the "outside room."

Hidden Room Markers: Only available in BuyDebug catalog and only visible
in Build/Buy mode. Any room that these markers are placed in will be fogged
unless RestrictBuildBuyInBuildings or BuyDebug cheats are on. Any room that
contains one of these has the same Build/Buy restrictions as public rooms.
Doors leading into rooms with these markers do not have the Go Through
interaction.

Level Skip Marker: Only available in BuyDebug catalog and only visible
in Build/Buy mode. Any floor level that this marker exists on is skipped
with floor up / floor down actions, unless the RestrictBuildBuyInBuildings
cheat or BuyDebug cheat is active.)

Off to play with this and see what I can do :D

Edit 2: First result, "rbbb off" didn't work for me, but "RestrictBuildBuyInBuildings Off" did, and allowed me to delete exterior windows that I hadn't been able to delete before. THis would be they way to modify existing apartments that your sims are living in.

Edit 3: I was able to remove and add the hidden room marker (taking em out is a good way to expand your apartment if there's extra room on the same floor). Was not able to go up and down floors though... regardless of the state of RBBIB... so because I couldn't land on a "skipped floor", I couldn't remove the floor skip marker. Anybody else solved this? I must be missing something ><

I would love to be able to expand an apartment up or down a floor, to make it bigger as the sims get wealthier (after all, the butler needs a bedroom!)

Last edited by Srikandi : 27th Oct 2010 at 06:56 AM.

Thanks for this,i'll definately use it when i get LN

There is one apartment that you can see the different floors. It is a small brown one with a pool. Empty when you start the game. You could try the cheats on it. I don't have my game on right now so I can't tell you the address or name. sorry.

Succeeded in adding a public spa room off the lobby of the building my current sims are living in Funny thing is, those windows are invisble from the outside! (Not surprising since it's a shell, but it's nice to know they work so well from INside.)





... however, nobody but the sims I'm controlling seem to want to use the hot tub, or the bar I put in on the other side of the lobby, even though they're in public-designated rooms... hmmmm

Last edited by Srikandi : 27th Oct 2010 at 08:59 AM.

This is very useful, Srikandi. Thanks for testing and sharing.

Thanks for posting this I'm not sure if I'm doing it wrong but I can only edit/replace my windows and front door and drag pre-existing walls to make the apartment bigger. I don't seem to be able to see any hidden room markers even with all the cheats so I still can't see the other rooms....am I supposed to be able to? (If it makes a difference, I'm in one of the high rises)

EDIT: Ok, I realised if I go back to live mode then back into build I can see the hidden room markers but I moved one out into the lobby to test and it fogged the lobby but the fog didn't dissapear from the original room

Srikandi, is it possible to build buildings without shells? And, after you move a family in, the other units are occupied by npc neighbors or if you want to move another family to another apartment (in the same building, that is) you can?

I ask this because I only will install after AM is updated, but I'm making a world, and I've been postponing because I want an area of it to have apartment buildings, but only if they are not shells, or at least, can be home for more than one family...

Is anybody else unable to find a few of the building shells? I've only managed to find 4, and I've checked community objects AND buydebug.

I have tried the RBBIB cheat, and It is working fine, except for a few buy items, like hottubs.
The game continues to tell me that I can't place a hottub because of homeowner reasons.
I've tried moveobjects on as well, to no avail.
I am editing the glass wall? (I'm not sure of the exact name) penthouse.

Now, a quick tangent...
I really want to put in a hot tub because in the trailer of LN, it showed the couple on the penthouse roof overlooking the city.
Does anyone by any chance know what penthouse that was?
or was it just a random thing TS3 people made?

I moved to a new apartment and I was able to take over a small room next to my apartment, yay! With ref the hot tubs, I was able to place a hot tub in my new appt but only because it's a 2-storey appt (called something like Veranda heights, near to the film studios). It's because the hot tub takes up space below the floor like SriKandi mentioned. If you don't own two stories you can't place a hot tub. On that note you can't actually own the floor below your appartment because it doesn't exist (see pic below).

For anyone still trying to find the skip level markers, I managed to make a few more floors accessible by deleting all the floor tiles from the top floor and grabbing the marker underneath. After that, you can replace the floor tiles and move between levels. I built an apartment on a few floors this way, but I haven't had a chance to test it yet. I have no idea how you expand upwards, though.

Ahh, brilliant idea, thanks That would be the solution to the hot tub problem mentioned above... dig by removing floor tiles, and delete the skip level marker.

Still seems like there must be another way though :/

I was lurking through the Late Night thread over on the TS3 forums, and one of the EAxoid 'Gurus' explained how you could build your own apartment blocks and/or edit the shells that are available - which was quite interesting, to say the least. Once I get the game, I'm going to try my hand at building an apartment block from scratch so I thought you guys on the thread may find this informative anyway. The link is http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/po.../45/280497.page .... the Guru's name is Samedi (in case that link doesn't send you to the correct page, his explanation is on page 4 near the bottom)

i converted the vampire club to a residential building, since it already had two levels but i have one issue... the mailbox... i cant find anywhere. I looked trough the "buy debug" menu, but nada... any ideas?...

i guess its in the same place as the normal mailbox... btw i've tried to clone it, but it wont allow that...

....
...but you'll need to have hacks, cheats, a guide, and many hours of patience before you can make them yourselves.
Whats with all the obstacles?? :/

Yes I agree, where are the trash chutes and call box - essential items for creating an apartment?

Perhaps EA doesn't want it to be too easy for the CC community to show them up creating new apartments?

call box is under electronics i think... there has to some way to get these items in buy mode... EA did it...

Hmm, I make it that that there are 7 new building shells (not including career ones), of which only 2 are available in buydebug. The rest don't appear to be in any menu whatsoever, much like the Ambitions fire fighters jacket.
This is most frustrating. How is one supposed to get ones build on when the tools are not even in the hidden menus?

Well, you are correct that the call box is there - but what about the trash chutes? You know, I lived in an apartment all of this time too and I always just pay bills thru the alert I don't even know how my mail works! Better check that out...

Thanks for posting!
Has anyone tried to make an entire floor the apartment?
It would be sweet if you could expand the tiny little one bedrooms
they gave us!

I have been able to expand an apartment, I see no reason why it couldn't be the entire top floor... the issue lays in the start to finish creation. I tried using CAW to create an apartment and was limited by only being able to go up 4 or whatever stories it is and then that the shell did not share and export with the building.

I have managed to build from scratch inside the two shells in buydebug, and they appear to offer only 2 and 3 floors respectively. The green roof building has 3 floors.
The floors are always at the same height as the Bridgeport equivalent of it.
Your ground floor will always be a double height ceiling which doesn't allow for splitting in two.
I wasn't able to expand on the floors any further than that, but I could pretty much emulate what EA did on the inside with careful wall placement. The black spaces are all yours this way.
The ground floor can't really be used as apartment space due its odd double ceiling.
Its a poor system, with 0 room for maneuverability.

Once a new apartment shell has been placed, it cant be moved or deleted.
Awesomemod allowed me to nuke it however.

And what on earth is this about 'homeowners association does not allow this' when I am trying to build a second floor, on a building that I have had for months, in a completely seperate hood.

Last edited by tizerist : 28th Oct 2010 at 11:55 PM.

Thanks! This is very helpful.

Just in case there are issues accessing EA's forums (which are down a lot), and for easy reference, I'm gonna paste Samedi's info here:

Before you start, you'll want to enter the cheats for "testingcheatsenabled true", "buydebug", and "rbbb off". This will allow you to purchase the markers that allow apartment functionality, and allow you to edit the portions of a lot that are considered public space within an apartment.

When you create an apartment building, there are three important markers within buydebug that you'll want to use...

1. Public Room Marker - This marker should be placed in any room that you want any Sim who is visiting the lot to be able to walk around in, consider it as public space within a building such as the lobby. Unless cheats are entered, when you enter build / buy mode on a lot, any room that has a Public Room Marker can't be edited. The Public Room Marker is also the object that flags a lot as an apartment lot. Once one of these has been placed, any outdoor areas on the lot will automatically be flagged as public space. One special note: If you place a parking space in an area that is flagged as public space, your Sim can still purchase a vehicle and park it in that spot.

2. Hidden Room Marker - This marker is similar to the tomb room marker from World Adventures as some people have noted. It will turn a room completely black and hide the contents from the player. There is no way to unhide a room once this marker is placed inside it. You should place this marker inside the rooms that other Sims who will populate your building live inside, thus hiding it from view as your Sim can't visit their living area. If you hold CTRL + SHIFT and click on the hidden room marker, you can also set ambient sound for the building. You should only set this on one hidden room marker per lot, and it should be the marker closest to the player's apartment. Finally, any door that is connected to a room with a hidden room marker inside it should be flagged as an NPC door if you want another Sim to live inside it as if it was their apartment. Hold CTRL + SHIFT and click on the door, and select the "Make NPC Door" option.

3. Level Skip Marker - This marker isn't essential, but it can come in handy. For example, if you build a four story building, and your Sim's living area is on the top floor, you may want to add a level skip marker on the second and third floor if your Sim has no reason to ever visit those floors. When this marker is placed on a floor, moving the camera up or down a floor will automatically skip past a floor that this marker is placed on.

For your Sim's private living space, aka any room that makes up their actual apartment, don't place any markers in those rooms at all. Any room without a marker will be considered as a room that the Sim living on that lot owns, and they will be able to freely edit it in build / buy mode without cheats. Additionally, areas without a marker are the only areas that count towards the lot value or environment score.

On a final note, every building that you want to have function as an apartment should have the Callbox object placed in an area that is considered public space. This will allow other Sims to visit and to call the NPC Sims that live in your new building!

To conclude, I would highly suggest entering the necessary cheats and then taking a look at how the lot that was shown in the original post was constructed. If you look at how the markers were placed on that lot, you should get a good idea of what is necessary to build something similar. Obviously this can all be a bit complex to get working

This was off the top of my head, so if you have any additional questions about how it works, I'll do my best to help or answer questions. Happy building!

Forgive me if my question has an obvious answer as I haven't played Late Night yet (and won't until I get a better computer). But is it possible to create our own apartment building? As in modifying the external parts? Or what about making a row of houses together? Is that possible?

You can make your own apartment building, and I think the instructions are in the post immediately above yours