I've finally arrived home after what seems like spending almost my entire life either on a plane or waiting for a plane.  Now looking forward to the onset of jet lag, oh joy!

I'll now attempt to answer some of your questions on build mode.  This is by no means a comprehensive run through, there were a lot of things that I just didn't get the chance to look at and some things may still change before the final version of the game is released.  We sure gave EA a few things to think about!

To start with the neighbourhoods are no longer customisable in that you can't create your own neighbourhood design like you can with Sim City 4.  To me the neighbourhood seemed to work more like it did in the Sims 1 days.  Lots are a pre-set size and already placed although you can move houses around the hood they must be placed on a lot of the same size on which they were built.

There is currently no stage tool and without the CFE cheat I would say that split level staircases are not yet possible.  There is also no ability to place staircases on a angle so diagonal stairs are out.  You can change stair direction just buy clicking and dragging the stairs although this is best used when placing stairs on terrain rather than between floors.  There are currently no shuttered windows in the game, window shutters are available as separate buyable objects.  The trashcan and mailbox can now be moved freely around the house and even recoloured however the door nearest to the mailbox will be treated as the main doorway and thumbnail that depicts your house will depend on the position of the mailbox.  There are no half walls in the game but there is a good range of new fences and even a nifty no maintenance hedge fence.  As you probably know, cars are included in the base game. Driveways are no longer tied to the road but can be placed anywhere at all on the lot.  There is no longer an animation for the car backing out onto the highway, it just 'teleports'.  You can also start building with the auto roof tool already enabled although I personally wouldn't recommend doing that unless you want roofs ending up in strange places!  There are also no pre-set dormer roofs.

You may have also read in Steve's blog about being able to grab walls and drag them.  Very useful if you want to add extensions to your house.  It even keeps items that are placed on/against walls in position as you drag the wall out and automatically keeps the decor - (wallpapers & floors).

I know that many of you were expecting many of the features of AL to be included here, however this is not the case.  Objects cannot be moved up and down walls for instance and it's back to one family per household although sims now have the ability to roam the entire neighbourhood and visit any house they choose.

Sims cannot yet run home business's.  You can still have/build community lots although these are quite limited and can't be owned or run by sims as in OFB.  The default hood comes with a town square area.  Many of the buildings here are not actual built lots but rather meshes instead.  You can't follow your sims into these structures although they can visit them to eat or learn skills.

Well that's about all my tired brain can think of at the moment.  As always if you have any questions feel free to ask me.  I'm sure there's still loads of stuff I've forgotten to mention!  I'm now going to sleep for a week!

ZZZZzzzzz