A simple tutorial showing how you can easily add windows immediately beneath roof gables together with step-by-step guidance on using the roofslopeangle and individualroofslopeangle roof building cheats (requires Nightlife or later). Suitable for beginners.

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Contents

1.    BEGINNER: Placing windows under gable roofs with the roofslopeangle cheat         
(requires Nightlife or later expansion pack)

2.    INTERMEDIATE: Using the individualroofslopeangle cheat
(requires Pets or later expansion pack)

3.    ADVANCED: Adding more than one row of windows to a gable
(requires Nightlife or later expansion pack)

 

REQUIREMENTS:  

You will need Nightlife or later expansion pack for the main part of this tutorial.  
Section 2 is optional but requires Pets or later expansion pack.

CREDITS:

I'd like to thank Illiana for the idea and the go-ahead for this tutorial.

LINKS:

I’ve used TSR’s Alpine Windows for this tutorial, but you can use any windows you like.

SECTION 1: Placing windows under roof gables

(1) Build your lot and add a gabled roof.

 

 

I built a 2-storey house with a simple gabled roof.  The yellow wall was added by the roof tool, and from now on I shall call this type of wall the roof wall.

 Add some windows.  To be able to add a window to a roof wall, the wall must be at least the height of a standard wall.  Anything less, and the window cannot be placed.  Only the middle wall segment is tall enough beneath my roof – but I cannot place windows in the wall either side.

 

 

(2) Use the 'roofslopeangle' cheat to set your roof at a ridiculous 75°!

So, we'll use the roofslopeangle building cheat to make our walls bigger so that we CAN now add our windows!  The roofslopeangle cheat is traditionally used to change the angle of our roofs, but it does have the useful result of stretching our walls for us too!

(a) Open the game's Cheat Window by pressing the [CTRL]-[SHIFT]-[C] keys simultaneously on your keyboard.
(b) In the cheat window, type: roofslopeangle 75 (this is the maximum value)
(c) press the [ENTER] key to activate the cheat and close the cheat window.

 

 

Don't panic: your lot is meant to look like this!  We've simply set a new angle for the roof at the maximum pitch allowed (75°) deliberately to make the walls beneath the gable as tall as possible.  You'll be glad to know it's reversible!

 

 

(3) Add your windows to the roof wall

 

 

Now that the walls are much higher, you can add windows to your roof walls! However, it’s not possible to add windows to the very end walls marked red in the picture above).

 

 

However, if you place the windows with the moveobjects on cheat, they DO work!  Ordinarily, when adding windows to an ‘illegal’ place, the glass and hole in the wall won’t show, making the window look bricked up! But use the roofslopeangle cheat and the glass miraculously appears!

The top row of windows did not work on this dormer on the left, but I forced them into position with the moveobjects on cheat, and when I dropped the roof back to my chosen 45°, the windows displayed properly!  

(4) Finally, restore your roof to the default 45 degrees

Once again, open the cheat window with the [Ctrl]-[Shift]-[C] keys…

Tip: you won’t need to type in the entire cheat again.  Press the UP arrow key on your keyboard to display the last cheat entered, but this time change the 75 back to the default 45.  Press [ENTER] to enter the cheat and your roof will drop back to the normal height with your windows in place!

 

 

And that’s it!  A simple way to add windows immediately below a gabled roof.

I’ve added just one row of windows, but if you want to add more rows of windows because you have a taller roof, then you might want to check out the more advanced section on the following pages. More about the roofslopeangle cheat…

• this cheat affects all standard roofs on your lot
  
  
• the cheat DOESN’T affect special roofs (round and conical roofs)
  
  
• the UNDO button does not undo roof angle changes. You’ll have to use the roof cheat again to choose the correct angle.
  
  
• accepted degrees for the roofslopeangle cheat are numbers between 15 – 75, including decimal numbers 
  
  
• The cheat remains active until you change it back to the default 45 degrees
  
  
• A later cheat, individualroofslopeangle (see next section), came with the Pets expansion pack – this cheat only changes the roof piece you choose (not all of it)
  
  
• When trying to marry up the joining seams of different roof pieces, sometimes whole numbers (e.g. 60°) aren’t close enough. Try decimal values for improved accuracy (e.g. 56.3°)
  
  
• This cheat requires Nightlife or later expansion pack.  The cheat wasn’t included in the original game or the first expansion pack, University,
  
  

SECTION 2: Changing individual roofs

 A brief stop at the individualroofslopeangle cheat…

If you have the Pets expansion pack or later (Seasons, Bon Voyage etc) you will also have the most wonderful individualroofslopeangle cheat too, but it’s not quite so obvious to see how this is used.

The individualroofslopeangle cheat is used in the same way as the more global roofslopeangle cheat (that is, you type the cheat followed by the angle you want to apply: e.g. individualroofslopeangle 30).  But when you enter THIS cheat, nothing seems to happen!  Even if you add further roofs, they still seem to be at the height that was active before you entered this cheat…

That’s because your roofs are being globally created at the default angle (or the angle you set with the standard roofslopeangle cheat); this is correct behaviour.  We have to create our lot with default roofs and then select individual roofs to change afterwards.

 

 

Build a lot with gables. 

Using regular roofs, dormer windows often stand higher than the main roof pitch, which doesn’t look right at all.

Enter the individualroofslopeangle cheat.  I set mine at 60° ready to apply to the main roof.

 

 

Now select the roof tool.  Select the roof types button as shown.

 

 

Press and hold the [CTRL] and {ALT] keys together on your keyboard.  Now click the roof you want to change once with the left mouse button. It should raise to 60° (or to the angle you selected with the cheat).

Repeat for each section of roof you wish to change. 

 

I left the dormers at the default 45° so I didn’t do anything with these, but as well as increasing the main roof to 60°, I dropped the porch roof to 20°.

The dormers are no longer protruding far above the main roof, and the porch roof is less dominating too.

SECTION 3: Adding more rows of windows under roof gables

 

 

If your roof wall is taller than a standard wall, you could add an additional row of windows.

Look at the building on the left.  The ground floor has been built with ordinary walls, but the upper floor is roof space made from a large roof gable.  However, in the pictured roof gable, we have TWO rows of windows…

Normally, walls added by the roof tall are always single wall height. 

On the right, even though the yellow wall is clearly taller than a standard wall, the game treats this roof wall as a single wall, which will only allow ONE window. 

In order to add a second row of windows, we need to split this wall in two!

 

 

 

 

 

 

We need to replace tall roof walls with ordinary wall.

Delete any wall that is at least the height of an ordinary building wall (or higher).  The deleted wall will leave a hole right up to the roof, which we’ll fix later.

 Tip: if you’re using the default roof pitch of 45°, count 3 tiles from the outside edge of your roof.  Anything further in than 3 tiles will be of standard wall height or higher.

Now create a room to fill the roof space you deleted – shown here in blue walls…

“Seasons” owners: you should do this anyway.  Loft rooms made of roof walls will chill your Sims, but if you replace roof-made walls with ordinary walls, your Sims will be warm again.

Now you need to repair your roof… 

Deleting the roof wall left a gap, so you now need to add a piece of gabled roof on top of the blue room to fill the gap.

 

 

 

 

 

The finished roof wall replacement!

Replacing the roof wall (yellow) for ordinary wall (blue) means that the taller walls are now split into two, meaning we can now use the building cheat to add windows to both the blue and yellow areas of these wall segments!

Apply the building cheat roofslopeangle 75 and place your windows. 

You should now be able to place windows in the area marked in blue AND the yellow area above it.

 

 

 

 

 

To finish, restore your roof with the building cheat roofslopeangle 45 and paint!

 

 

 

 

And here’s my finished upper-floor on the left.  It’s still that same enclosed blue room although I’ve added a dormer to make it a bit more spacious (I used the moveobjects on cheat to place windows in the end walls).

The original blue walls at the front end of the upper floor are still there too, but because they overhung the open downstairs area, I decided to hide them with an invisible window rather than remove them, thereby keeping my upstairs room fully enclosed so that my Sims of the Seasons expansion pack won’t freeze!