#buildingguide

Useful Tips

Because you’re using a community lot (if you choose a pool venue, that is) there are certain requirements that have to be met. Usually these are things you only place on a lot in the later stages of the building process. That’s why it’s useful to, once the base structure of the lot is in place, build a small basement containing the required items. If you prefer you can place the room above ground, in case you’re afraid you’ll forget about the basement. Now you can save, place, exit and visit the lot without issues - you need this if you want to play test bit by bit. Which can be useful if you’re building on a large lot (I used a 50x40 lot).

1. The Water

To make a waterfall the water has to fall off something, so the first step is to build a hill (which may look like a large rock eventually). To do this, build a reasonably large room that isn’t too close to the edge of the lot (a minimum of 5 squares away from it). You can of course build it on the middle of the lot if you want.

Move up a storey and select the custom pool tool. Use this to create an irregular shape, with lots of short lines. Once done, i.e. returned to the starting point, the game will turn it into a pool.

Go down a storey again and edit the room surrounding the pool, so you’ll end up with a larger irregular shape surrounding the pool. Make sure to not build the room around the side where the water will fall. There will now be rooms surrounding the new shape (you’ll have figured that this is the hill) you made, these rooms can be selected and deleted.

At this point you have to decide whether you want to use a foundation or not. It isn’t necessary, but if you want to build bridges over the rivers, a foundation looks nice. However, foundations aren’t necessary to build bridges, more on that in the relevant section below. If you want the top pool to be accessible, place stairs against the side of the hill and remove the wall underneath the stairs with the sledgehammer. If you want to be sure that Sims are able to use the top pool, now may be a good time to test this.

Get the custom pool tool again and start drawing a pool along the side of the hill where you want the waterfall.

Make another irregular shape, this one can be quite big. This will be the lake, or pond, depends on how big it eventually is. This is also the main pool where Sims will swim. You can also make a waterfall in a river, but as I used a pool venue, I made a lake.

Now it’s time to start building rivers. Build these next to the lake by using the custom fountain tool. You should always leave one square between the pool and the fountain, it’s a restriction the game imposes.

Make one or more meandering streams, again (not completely) irregular shapes with short lines, that lead to the the side of the lot. You can’t get to the side entirely because of game restrictions.

2. The Waterfall

We’ve now arrived at the part where the waterfall will be created. Main ingredient are water emitters. These can’t be placed on pools, so moveobjects has to be switched on. Place spraying water emitters on the side of the top pool, so that they appear to spray down. Sometimes the water emitters will sink a little too far in the pool trim. If you want an equal looking waterfall, try to avoid this. I don’t know what exactly triggers this, but if you place the water emitters again (a new one rather than the one you placed before), from a different position or angle, there’s a change they will end up where you want them. Don’t use the 9 and 0 buttons to effect this, the emitters won’t end up in the place they should, leaving you with a waterfall that is still unequal. You can also opt to make an irregular waterfall. In the bottom pool, right beneath the point where the water of the upper emitters lands, you need to place large jet water emitters.

Don’t use more water emitters than strictly necessary, these things are both in terms of graphics and audio quite heavy on your system/computer. Consider this before making a very large or a lot of waterfalls. Once done making the waterfall, turn moveobjects off.

After this, it’s time to work on the hill. Use the rocks from the outdoor plant menu and enlarge them with (SHIFT +) ] (I don’t usually have to use the SHIFT key though, not sure how it works, if it doesn’t work without SHIFT, then use SHIFT). You can place these rocks through the walls because the game doesn’t recognise the enlarged footprint and still sees it as 1x1 - in spite of displaying them bigger. Don’t enlarge the rocks too much, it makes them look artificial. If you have the Outdoor Retreat Gamepack, you can use the stone coffee table, end table and chair/stool from that pack to do this. If you enlarge these items Sims won’t use them for their original purpose and they look prettier and are bigger too.

Place the enlarged rocks around the hill, they can go through the stairs a little, but make it look as if the stairs are still useable (Sims can often route through enlarged objects, so they may be able to use stairs completely submerged in the rock, but that looks really weird). The rocks will also clip into the room surrounding the top pool, but you won’t use most of that space anyway. The rocks can also clip through the pool, this isn’t a problem, the pool remains functional and looks more natural. Place non-enlarged rocks on the side of the top floor of the hill (or enlarge them only once). You do need moveobjects for this, add a few plants for variety - images in the last section.

There is another way to make a waterfall, by making the water go over a few rocks before it falls down. Build a small “cave” into the hill and let the bottom pool reach in. Build a wall-less room on top of the hill (also a good idea for the other method) and make sure it goes over the “cave” next to the part of the top pool where the waterfall is going to be placed.

Turn on moveobjects and place rocks, that have been enlarged once, on the side of the waterfall. Use medium spraying water emitters so that they spray over the rocks.

Enlarged rocks are slightly too large when you place them on a non-diagonal part (non-enlarged rocks are still too small). Move them slightly over the edge, so the emitters don’t go through the rocks. This may even look nicer.

For the rest, this method  of waterfall making works the same as the one explained above.

Another possibility is to build a waterfall from the ground into the basement, without a hill. To do this, build a fountain or pool on the floor and build a basement next to it. The basement can be placed immediately next to the pool, but needs to be one square away from the fountain. Remove the basement’s ceiling.

Build another pool in the basement and you can make waterfalls according to one or both of the methods explained above. However, you can NOT have streams run from the lake, because fountains can only be placed directly on the ground, not on higher or lower levels. You can of course make streams with the pool tool, but those are a bit too deep. This method allows you to make a sunken lake from which the water can’t flow further. If you build something like this, make sure the lower pool level is accessible by a staircase or Sims won’t be able to reach it.

3. Bridges

Sims can easily walk around the water, but that really breaks the immersion (and takes more time). That’s why we’re going to build bridges, there are roughly three types. The presence of bridges doesn’t necessarily mean Sims will use them, mine often walked around the water anyway.

First is the high bridge, this is the prettiest if you ask me, but it won’t always fit every lot in terms of style and size. Place two columns on each side of the river, one square removed from the river and two squares apart. If you’ve used foundations somewhere on the lot, place the colums on a small wall-less room that measures 2x1. If you don’t have foundations, you do have to temporarily place a bit of wall-less room under/next to the bridge in order to proceed.

Go up storey and place a wall-less room on top of the colums. Shape this to fit the bridge. Remove the “rooms” underneath the bridge. if you use foundations, first draw a fence in between the colums (for example the “Smooth Keeper” or a more ornamental fence), then push the room back until only the columns and fence remain.

Next, place stairs on both side. This also makes diagonal bridges harder to make, because stairs can’t be placed diagonally. Remove the wall supporting the stairs by using the sledgehammer.

Next, add exterior trims, fences (one or more styles - use the “draw fences” option, not the “replace fences” option) and place four columns, at a slightly smaller distance from each other than the columns below. Place another wall-less room on top of this, with trim, this allows you to put a roof over the bridge - of course you can just leave it bare and roofless.

Place a hipped roof on top of the last placed wall-less room and pull it into the right shape. Make the roof more convex or concave if you want, choose a nice roof pattern and roof trim. You can even add a roof sculpture if you like. Don’t forget to add banisters to the stairs and apply floor tiles to the bridge.

The nice thing about a bridge with a roof is that you can use a ceiling lamp in it, which adds more light than the usual outdoor lighting. I usually use the “The Subtle Saucer Light” (potentially the best light the game has) because it’s a strong lamp that gives off a lot of light, even outside of buildings. If you (at a later point) go into test mode, you can change the light colour/intensity while in Live Mode. Do this by clicking the light and following the relevant settings (see image - I edited the steps into the same picture) - mind that you have headline effects on, otherwise you won’t be able to see the menu.

The second bridge type is the one you need the foundation for, it’s a simple one really. Use the custom fountain tool and hold down CTRL at the same time to remove a part of the river. Next, place a wall-less room on the lot and push and pull it to the right shape before placing it on its intended position - the game can be a bit annoying when placing rooms near fountains. Move the bridge to the right spot and add a nice looking foundation type, flooring, fences, steps and banisters.

You can leave it like this, or cover up this unnatural interruption of the water. Turn moveobjects on and place some plants and rocks next to the bridge, something that looks a bit reed-like. This makes it all look a bit more natural, you might want to test if the bridge is still accessible.

The last option is the “stone” bridge which isn’t really a bridge at all. Once again, remove a bit of river as described above. apply terrain paint to this little bit of land, something that looks like stone. Turn on moveobjects and place rocks closely together, just a bit over the side of the fountain. If you want to use a different colour for the rocks than the default, don’t forget to change it every time you return to the rock menu. You can also use multiple rock colours.

Again, you can place some plants next to this bridge, but the rocks themselves are quite enough cover. You might, again, want to test accessiblity, especially when you’ve made a tiny/narrow bridge.

4. The Space In Between

There’s a little bit of land in between the lake and the river(s). You may have used this as a bridge, but in case you haven’t, here’s a way to make it look like water.

Use the “Cool as a Cucumber Marble” floor tiles, they best resemble water. If you have Get Together and you’ve used a different water colour, you may need to use a different tile. Because the tiles aren’t exactly the same as water, it needs to be covered up a bit. One option is to, just like the waterfall, let water emitters spray over rocks. Don’t enlarge the rocks, they’ll take up too much space, also, use the smallest spray emitter.

Another way to cover it up is to cover it in plants, with the help of moveobjects. It is important to place rocks along the side of the river, in order to “channel” the water. You can use water plants (water lilies), found in the fountain decorations menu, but other plants will do as well. For example, the “Not-Grass Grass” shrub looks a bit like reed and the “Hedera Canariensis” flower reminds a bit of algae.

Use the same method on the ends of the rivers where they flow off the lot (near the side). Make it seem as if the water streams on, so don’t block it off completely. Mind that none of the items, even partially, stick over the edge of the lot - they’ll dissappear if you place the lot without MOO activated.

5. The Cave

You can build an underground cave/grotto underneath the hill. I’ve used it to put the required bathrooms in, but you can do whatever you want with this extra space. Free up a bit of wall on the outside of the hill (move/remove some of the enlarged rocks) and place some steps, if you’re using foundations. Make sure there’s enough room on the inside to get the (gap of the) stairs to fit and to walk towards the stairs. Build a small basement under this room and place the stairs in it.

Put a door in the side of the hill, allowing Sims to go inside. When placing enlarged rocks next to it, make sure they don’t completley cover the gap of the stairs, Sims may be able to route through, but it looks weird. The rocks can also block the door, so make sure to place the door last so you know it’ll stick. Hide the entrance behind a few large shrubs and test accessibility.

Once everything works as it should, you can expand on the basement. If you decide to put the bathrooms in there, you can now remove those items from the temporary basement you built at the beginning.

6. Making It Look Natural

Now the structures are in place, it’s time to make everything actually look natural. Use the pool trim, not the fountain trim, they’re too big, on the lake and rivers, preferably in a colour that blends well with the ground. Pick and apply a nice wall pattern for the rooms that contain water, I usually use “Rustic Riverstone” for this.

For the bottom/floor I usually use the “Rustic Slate Pavers”, but the “Bottom of the Basement” or the “Out to Pasture Grass” may prove decent alternatives, depending on the look  you’re going for. You can use the same wall pattern on the hill as the one you used in the water, but most options in the “Rock and Stone” category are suitable. The base game has only one nice stone foundation, the last colour option of the “There For You Foundation”. If you have Outdoor Retreat, you have a decent alternative, the “Packed Stone Foundation”. The stone foundations from Get Together are less suitable as they have trims.

To make the water look more natural, you should first turn on moveobjects. Then place some plants on the side of the water, just here and there, fill the rest up with rocks (mind to use the right colour, you don’t want to have to recolour them later on). Add a few water lilies as a finishing touch.

It is really simple, but there are some things you need to keep an eye on. This is something that takes up a lot of time, so try not to make mistakes (shouldn’t be too hard) and save often. (image below) Place the rocks a little over the edge of the water, so that it covers the trim (top left) - apply the same principle to the top of the hill as well. You can choose to place the stones that have a smaller stone attached to them with the smaller stone in the water, or the other way around (top right). Some rocks are perfect to cover up corners (bottom left), sometimes you have to turn them to do this. It is a good thing to turn the rocks anyway or they’ll all face the same way. You can also, place one of the bigger rocks in the water of the river, it’s a change from the water lilies.

(image below) The Hedera can’t be placed too far over the edge, or it’ll sink in the river (top images). If you just place the rocks on top of it, it’ll stick out on both sides (bottom left). You can place the rocks a little further off the riverside or enlarge a rock and put a few extra plants beside it (bottom right).

When you’re placing the rocks and you notice they don’t completely fit in between the previously placed plants, move the plant. You can also try turning the rocks so you can fit another one in, or use one less. The same may be achieved by using larger or smaller rocks.

Below are some images of the result. There are lots of plants under the bridge, as it’s harder to mow the lawn there. It may also be a good idea to place a few lamps in the pool. Water emitters emit not only water but also light, so the waterfall will already be well lit.

Make sure the lake is accessible, on multiple sides, via a pool ladder or leave a part of the side uncovered. This will allow Sims to go in and out of the water. Don’t make the uncovered sides too small, or they won’t be able to use it. If you have Get Together, you can put a diving platform in there somewhere and use the other pool items that pack adds.

Like I said before, it is important to test. Especially the accessibility of the pools is important (don’t send in eight Sims at once, that may still cause issues). It is also useful to test if Sims can route everywhere you want them to, especially if it’s narrow.

To finish the pool venue, you’ll also need four dining chairs, so place a barbecue and a garden set somewhere, don’t forget the bin, and you’re done. You can now remove the last of the temporary basement (see Useful Tips section).

1. Cheats

Probably the most important “tools” in terms of compact building are the cheats. You can’t really do without, I’ve listed the most important ones below.

F5 - Allows for items to be placed on a quarter square basis instead of the ordinary half square basis (press F5 again to switch off).

Alt - Allows for off grid placement of objects and free rotation of the object when using the TS3 camera. Hold key to use. When placing an objects on another objects, e.g. a stack of books on a table, move the cursor over the floor under the table and not the table itself. In the latter case your books will tend to snap into available slots, which may not be where you want them.

bb.moveobjects [on/off] - Allows you to place items in places they can’t normally be placed, basically on top of eachother. You can also use this cheat to move objects, that are normally tied to the ground, upward (and downward again). More on that in section 8. Switch this cheat off when you’re not using it!

Another important thing to remember, especially when using moveobjects, is to test if everything works as it should, more on that in the final section.

2. 3x3 Challenge

Of course I could have randomly built stuff and try a few tricks when running into a sudden lack of space somewhere. I haven’t done that (I rarely build anything without some sort of plan in mind, or on paper). I have deliberately used the 3x3-Challenge to force myself to do this. It’s not the version of that challenge where you put an entire house in a 3x3 room, but the one where all rooms are 3 squares wide.

I’ll partially write this guide based on my experiences with building this house (also for the sake of the Build My Dream assignment I originally wrote this guide for). If you search the Gallery for #3x3challenge you can find several houses built according to these rules.

The first tip is to use an open plan and/or L-shaped rooms. This gives you just a little more space to place items.

3. Under the Stairs

One of the nice things about Sims 4 is that you can use the space under the stairs, as far as I know, that’s something you couldn’t do in the previous iterations, or only to a lesser degree.

Most stairs are placed with a “supporting” wall underneath it. You have to remove this wall before you can put something under the stairs, do this by using the sledgehammer.

Once you’ve freed up the space, you can put decorative items here, but also dressers, bookshelves, desks and even dining tables (and chairs). As long as you have moveobjects turned off, the game will show how far you can place something under the stairs. Smaller items (like the shoerack) can be placed further under the stairs.

4. Bathrooms

Most of the default bathrooms in Sims 4 are 3x4 squares, occasionally 3x3, sometimes they’re much larger. You can, however, make a full, functional bathroom in a much smaller room. A toilet and a sink can be fitted into a 3x1 room, a bathroom with shower or bath doesn’t have to be bigger than 3x2 squares. There won’t be a lot of space for decorations, but let’s be honest, it’s a bathroom. One of the perks of small bathrooms is that there will be very few puddles when something breaks (because there isn’t any room for them). What’s less nice is that you don’t get a pile of rubbish after repairing something, so you miss out on free upgrade parts.

5. Chairs and Sofas

With the help of moveobjects you can make corner sofas. Those take up just as much space as two loveseats, but it does look pretty awesome.

To make a corner sofa, use moveobjects and Alt. You need the former to place the sofas in the same square (the corner), the latter is needed to let the sofas flow into each other. As you can see in the image below, it doesn’t work very well if you have both sofas placed exactly on a square or even a quarter square.

You’d best use two sofas the same size, so not a sofa and a loveseat together. Combining sofa and loveseat doesn’t work well for most types, because seats don’t flow into eachother because of a minor difference in seat height, or colours are just a tad darker or lighter. Experiment per style to see what fits and what doesn’t. Make sure the armrests aren’t visible through the back of the other sofa. If the overlapping area in the corner is flickering when you move the camera, then you’ve placed the sofas right. It means that it doesn’t matter which sofa was placed first because they’re in the exact same place and flow into each other perfectly (usually easier to see when using differently coloured sofas).

Corner sofas are fully functional, Sims can even sit in the corner. But they will sit as if they’re sitting on one of the sofas - that looks rather weird. Sims will sit there autonomously. Only one Sim can sit in the corner, so not one on each of the sofas.

Another awesome seating arrangement you can make is the “tête-à-tête”, also known as “conversation chair” or “courting chair” (very popular in the Victorian era). You run into these things in museums on occasion, basically they’re two armchairs that are connected to each other and both facing the opposite direction, but in a way you can still pleasantly talk to each other. You have to use moveobjects and Alt to make this one. And the best thing is, Sims can actually converse with each other when seated on the conversation chair.

When combining an armchair and an ottoman you can make something resembling a lounge chair. You only need moveobjects for this. It looks especially nice with the furniture set from Perfect Patio Stuff. Sims won’t be able to use the armchair, but they can use the ottoman.

Sadly, Sims can sit in a spot they actually shouldn’t, just like the corner of the corner sofa. I haven’t tested whether they’ll do this autonomously (probably, though), but they certainly will if you tell them to.

6. Beds and Bedrooms

A double bed can easily be placed in a room that is 3 squares wide. Sims only need half a square to route past anything, so it fits perfectly. Apparently it is possible to place the bed with one of the sides to the wall. If you click on the proper side of the bed with the Sim who goes to bed first, this Sim should scoot over to the part of the bed next to the wall. I haven’t been able to accomplish this when testing (I’ve had it work when Sims woohooed though).

It is quite easy to “attach” a desk to a single bed. Turn on moveobjects and pick a normal table that is 2x1 squares, place it over the end of the bed. You can place a computer on the part of the table that isn’t over the bed, and attach a chair to it. Sims can use everything, even is the chair is next to the bed.

Another space saving trick is to place items closer together. Do this by using Alt (and moveobjects). It may even look prettier when you do this (not applicable to the image below, where I managed to save an entire square).

7. The Punching Bag

The punching bag is an object that usually takes up a lot of space, 3x2 squares. You can put this thing into a corner with the help of moveobjects and even then Sims can use it. Make sure the arrows are pointing in the right direction. In the image below I’ve placed it diagonally, but you can place it aligned to either of the walls. In that case Sims might move through the wall a little with certain animations (mostly it’s just a boxing glove that goes through the wall a bit).

8. Up and Down

As mentioned before, you can use moveobjects to move items, that are normally tied to the floor, up and down. Small items from the “clutter” category can often be placed on counters and shelves. However, some of these items are “too big” to be put on a certain surface, this trick is perfect for those items. It also works nicely with some debug items that are tied to the floor.

Activate moveobjects and use the 9 (up) and 0 (down) keys to move the item in the desired direction, you can’t go through floors and ceilings.

If you want to move an item that can be placed on a surface onto a higher placed surface on which the item normally would not fit, the item will automatically get placed on the lower surface. There are two things that can be done about this. The simplest is to temporarily move the lower surface away and move the item upward from the ground (see image). Another option is to (temporarily) fill the lower surface completely with other objects,and then move the item upward. Because even with moveobjects on, there are slots where items automatically snap into. I haven’t really tried this method because the other mehtod works fine and is a lot less hassle.

Moving items up/down goes in small steps, other than the completely free movement that Alt offers. Even when using Alt, it still goes in steps. This can cause items to hover over a surface rather than be placed directly on it (left) or the lower part of the object goes through the surface (middle). That last method can work perfectly if you place a vase on a dresser, but doesn’t work well for smaller objects. You can use Alt to place an object in a way that it seems to be placed on the surface (right). It may however look different when you move the camera, zoom in or out, especially when using tab mode. It probably won’t disturb you during gameplay though as you’re probably at bird’s eye level.

The fact that items that have been moved up hover can also be seen when removing the surfaces underneath them. This isn’t particularly important while building, but if you renovate or remove things it might matter. Make sure you (re)move everything, also items placed on wall shelves.

9. Testing

When using cheats a lot, it is important to test. There are two tests you should do. First is place testing, checking whether a lot can be placed without the game removing items or resetting them to their default position (can happen with items that have been moved up). To do this, save the lot to your library. Then, go to an empty lot of the same size in build mode and place the lot from your library. If the lot value is the same as on the original lot, then no items have been removed (mind that the empty lot value may differ - and if the original lot was inhabited when it was saved the value will have been different). Check if everything is still in its original place and if that’s the case, the place test was successful.

Should place testing fail, locate the object that causes the issue and see if you can place it differently and test again. If it keeps going wrong, then you need to activate moveobjects when placing the lot. Always mention this when uploading such a lot to the Gallery! Some “combined items” simply can’t be placed without activating moveobjects. However, none of the things I explained in this guide need to have moveobjects activated.

If you’re working on a large build, it is a good idea to place test in phases, whenever you’ve used a lot of moveobjects on a certain part. This is also useful because it’ll be easier to track down problematic items (imagine looking for one thing on a 64x64 lot that has lots of MOO’ed objects...). You can also do it room by room, just by saving the room itself.

The second test is play testing, where you check if everything in your build is accessible and functional. You do this by, after saving your game, using the freerealestate cheat to move a household into the lot you just built (or sending Sims to the community lot you want to test). The you check all potential bottlenecks, by ordering your Sims to go places and use objects (especially objects combined by moveobjects). It is probably the easiest and fastest to do this with more than one Sim at the time, so you can also check group functionality.

If you know from a certain moveobjects trick that it will work, you don’t have to test it every time, but it won’t hurt to do so anyway. When you’re done play testing, you can exit without saving (or not, that’s up to you).