A Guide to Apartment Building

Introduction

Ok, so you’ve excitedly rushed out and grabbed a copy of Apartment Life, taken a look around and gasped in awe at all the new features and items and now you want to build your own apartments.  However, this EP like many before it comes with its’ own set of new pit falls, challenges and opportunities.  In this walkthrough I hope to guide you through some of the most common mistakes, teach you how to deal with some of the strange quirks that this EP throws at you and hopefully help you achieve your goal of building your dream multi-family residences!

Planning

An important part of any lot building and with apartments being semi-communal there’s a few extra things to consider before plonking down your building!

First of all choose an appropriate sized plot for you apartment.  Perhaps even sketch something out on some graph paper before you start building.  There’s nothing more frustrating than getting half way through building a row of houses and not having enough space left to place that last wall!  Similarly it can be awkward to fill acres of empty space with a small building stuck in the middle!

It might also be tempting to build huge skyscrapers busting at the seams with apartments, but keep in mind that only 4 playable families can move into any apartment lot.  Although any remaining unoccupied apartments would be taken by NPCs your game might well slow down to a crawl!Any open area will be considered a communal area.  Once the lot is zoned and occupied you will be unable to add or move any items in this space (without resorting to cheats) so plan these areas carefully and decide exactly how you want them to be used.

Some basics

To start building an apartment lot it is best to choose a residential zoned lot.

Don’t forget that the main door into the apartment needs to be the ‘Unique Separator’ apartment door with the door mat facing outwards. 

To rezone a lot to an apartment, once it’s built to your satisfaction open up the cheat menu (shift + ctrl + c) and enter the cheat changelotzoning apartmentbase.  Save your lot and return to the neighbourhood screen.  When you re-enter the lot it should have the apartment mailbox and most of the build tools will now be disabled.

Here are a few examples of enclosed and unenclosed areas and how they work.

This picture shows the ground floor of a multi storey apartment block.  The blue indicates a main front entrance.  This can be any type of ordinary door, NOT the ‘Unique Separator’ door.

The red indicates an apartment door.  Notice there is no other entrance into the apartment itself.

The communal area to the rear may appear to be enclosed by fencing but there is a gate causing a break in the fence leading to the street area so this would be considered by the game to be an open communal space.

This is the upper floor of the same apartment block.  Again the red indicates the apartment door.  (Note the doormat always faces outward)  This time the apartments have another opening onto a balcony.  This works because the balcony is fully enclosed by fencing with no breaks or gates etc. and so is seen by the game as just another room to the apartment.

Beach Lots and Home Business’s Noooo!

Unfortunately beach apartments are a no no.  Rezoning a beach lot to an apartment can cause serious corruption so DON’T DO IT!

Another limitation of apartment lots is that they’re not intended for business use.  Building a row of shops with apartments over might seem like a great idea but unfortunately won’t work.  Bummer! We’re back to the principle that the shop door would be treated as an unenclosed 2^nd entrance to the apartment and therefore the shop treated as a communal area, not associated with the owner’s apartment.

While it’s not really possible for your sim to run their own business at home, it is possible to have some community based items on an apartment lot in the communal areas and they will work such as the diner.  To do this you need to rezone your lot to a community lot – changelotzoning community, add the items you wish to use then rezone the lot back to an apartment – changelotzoning apartmentbase. 

I did try to add a shop building with the intention of having it operated by a townie by installing the cash register but to my dismay that didn’t work out.  The townie failed to appear behind the counter and I was left with an unattended shop!

Apartment lots cannot be placed into vacation hoods or a university campus.  I guess dorms will have to suffice!

On the Level

As we saw earlier one of the quirks with Apartment life is that there can only be one unenclosed doorway into each unit.  Not usually a problem unless you also want a door that leads to a back yard.  If your property is built without a foundation then all you need to do is enclose the back yard entirely with fencing or a half wall (no gates).

Things become a little more complicated if your property is built on a foundation and you want a door into the back yard.  Enclosing the yard with fencing will not work in this case as the game sees the fencing as being on a different level to the doorway and thus the back door is seen as a 2^nd unenclosed entrance into the building which is not acceptable and you may get this error when you try to rezone the lot:

One work-around to this problem is to enclose the back yard with a section of foundation and add a 2^nd enclosure of fencing on top.  While this method works ok, it can look rather bulky and unattractive and cause the back yard to be cast into darkness.   

Using the stage tool will allow in light but still looks rather unappealing:

We can take this method a step further though by removing the foundation from beneath the fencing on top and replace with another fence type to produce a more attractive combined fence.  It is the upper section of fencing that is providing the necessary enclosure.  Again don’t add any gates.  *Note - If you have used the stage tool to enclose the backyard you will be unable to remove the stage from beneath the fence on top so it’s best to use the foundation for this method.

This game sure does have its little quirks and I’ve found that sometimes if you have several detached houses in a row built on foundations only one of the houses needs to be fenced in this way.  The others can be fenced normally without causing any problems.  However you may lose this setting if you decide to rezone the lot again after zoning it as an apartment.

Garages and car ports

If you’re building a row of properties with garages then the entrance to the apartment needs to be on the same level as the garage associated with it and share a common wall with that garage.

Annoyingly garages built underneath apartments whose doors are on the 2nd floor will be treated as communal areas and rendered unusable.  However, this also has a work-around.  You can insert a stairway from inside the garage directly into the apartment above and the garage will be functional so long as there aren’t any other doors leading out of it.  I’ve found this method to work quite well and doesn’t appear to cause problems with visiting sims using the wrong entrance or strangers wandering into the apartment from the stairway.

Garages on foundations also prove to be problematic.  The apartment door is seen as being on a different level to the garage door so when rezoning the lot it becomes invalid.

As car ports and open driveways are generally unenclosed these will also be considered as communal areas and so be unusable.

Eeek! Where did all my lovely furniture go?

I’m sure many of us have experienced this by now.  You’ve built a lovely apartment block, got it all beautifully decorated and landscaped and spent the last umpteen number of hours carefully and lovingly furnishing each and every apartment.  You’re so excited when your 1st sim family moves in; you can’t wait to see them applauding all the neat things you’ve filled their new home with when shock horror – all you’re left with is a few measly kitchen counters and the odd light fitting!

While it is true that many apartments in real life are rented out fully furnished many are not and Apartment Life takes it upon itself to decide that unfurnished apartments are the way to go!  But do not fear, all is not lost.

Once you’ve moved in your family open up the cheat box and enter boolprop testingcheatsenabled true.  Hold down shift and click on the door of the apartment you want your sims to occupy and select ‘rent furnished apartment’.  Let your sim sign up with the landlord then open up the cheat box again and enter boolprop testingcheatsenabled false to deactivate the cheat (very important to do this).  What would you know, all that lovely furniture has re-appeared!  Yay!

Living on the Ceiling and Up the Wall

Finally we have ceilings so for goodness sake use them!  It’s very easy to forget when you’re building lots with uneven walls that the bits that stick out will look a whole lot better from the inside if they have ceiling tiles applied and don’t forget the area directly underneath the roof too.

Another nice new feature is the ability to move objects up and down the walls, very handy for creating interesting picture collages and multiple shelving.  However, this ability does not apply to all wall based objects such as windows, mirrors, curtains and wall based TVs’.

To move an object up a wall 1^st place it against the wall and use the ‘[‘ key to move the object upwards or the ‘]’ key to move the object downwards.  To place more than one object on the same section of wall hold down the Ctrl + Alt keys together and place the object.

Odds and Ends

Just a couple more things to bear in mind before you run off to create your architectural masterpiece. 

First of all be careful if you’re considering dividing rooms using the ‘Great Divide’ fence tool.  A friend of mine used it to separate her living room from her kitchen and accidentally turned the kitchen into a communal area!

Also be careful of placing walk-in closets against external walls:

Looks fine on the inside... But looks silly on the outside!

Another thing I’ve seen asked about is whether the pipe work/air shafts are required to make the air conditioners/radiators & garbage shoots work.  The simple answer is no, they are decorative items only.

Summary of useful cheats

Credits and stuff

I hope this little bit of guidance has been some use to you in planning your apartments/duplexes/condo’s etc and helped with a few of the ‘why doesn’t this work?’ moments you might have been experiencing.  Of course I couldn’t have done it without a little help myself and a huge plate load of cookies goes to estatica for pointing, no, shoving me in the right direction.  Some jaffa cakes go to swmeek for the dresser tip and a bar of chocolate goes to sww for not nagging me too much to get the job done!

Happy building!

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