To Springfairy, ShelockHolmes, and Vanilla Twilight (and anyone too shy to say that they want to join) YES, you can register and be a part of the class! Welcome to Zoo U!
I have racked my brain to decide just how I should do this, so here is what I decided.
I am going to make a series of "reserved posts". If you guys will hold off for just the time it takes to put TEN reserved posts on here, then we will talk in the very next post, okay?
1. Optional: Before loading your game I recommend deleting these four cache files. You will find them in your Sims 3 folder. CASPartCache.package compositorCache.package scriptCache.package simCompositorCache.package
While this is optional, I find fewer glitches while playing my game if I always do this to start. The game creates fresh copied each time you play if you delete the old ones.
2. If you haven’t already done so, load up your game. Get to the Main Menu and proceed to the next step.
3. While in the Main Menu, open the cheat box by pressing Shift, Control, and c all at the same time. In the cheat box type in “testingCheatsEnabled true” just like this, but without the quotes.
By using this cheat, and by using it in the main menu, you will be able to use your Tester Sim to its fullest advantage without the necessity of feeding it or letting it sleep.
4. Open the cheat box again and type in “buyDebug on” just like this, but without the quotes.
This cheat will allow us to use a whole host of items that you normally could not access. How many items you have access to will depend on which EPs you have.
5. If you have a Builder’s Blank Sunset Valley, then choose that “game”. If not, choose a new game and use Sunset Valley as your neighborhood.
6. Choose “Save As” and pick a name for your new game (if you know the name of you farm, that would be a good name!).
7. IMPORTANT: From here on you will not be prompted to save. If I were you I would DEFINITELY save before leaving the game to go to the forum for more instructions (or to ask a question) and I would DEFINITELY save after anything major (getting the roof done, getting the stairs in, getting the exterior painted, etc.). If you have a crash or another problem, at least you minimize how much of your work you have lost. I like to save two versions of my games (using Save As). So I might have “Building a Barn A” and “Building a Barn B” which are the same game so that if one of them gets corrupted, I still have a good copy.
8. Look around the map until you find the lot shown here. This is where we will build our farm (but we can save it to the library and use it anywhere). The address of this lot is 10 Summer Hill Court and it is where the Landgrabs usually live. It is a 60 X 60 lot. It is fairly near the ocean.
To Springfairy, ShelockHolmes, and Vanilla Twilight (and anyone too shy to say that they want to join) YES, you can register and be a part of the class! Welcome to Zoo U!
9. Move in your Tester Sim (here you’ll see Julianna Tester who has helped me build MANY lots along with her various family members).
10. If your Tester Sim has things to learn from the standard books you can buy a bookcase and chair as sit her on the edge of the lot to study. My Tester Sim is quite expert in most skills and has the artistic trait so I’ll buy her an easel and when she isn’t helping me she can paint something that will eventually hang in a house I build for my farm.
11. Shift-click on the mailbox and choose “Make Needs Static” from the pie menu.
12. Make your Tester Sim use the phone and Call Services to stop newspaper delivery.
13. If you need money, use the cheat box again and type in Motherlode. Do this any time you are short of funds.
14. NOTE: I do the first 13 steps every single time I begin a new build (choosing whatever neighborhood and lot that I want each time). With the exception of steps 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 I do all these steps EVERY time, even with a build in progress (in a build in progress I would open the game and the lot that I was previously using after doing step 4, then I would proceed to step 10). Consider 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 11, 12, and 13 to be the PRE-BUILD STEPS and use them each time we build together.
15. Now we are ready and will start to build our barn.
16. Orient your lot as shown so that the barn will be built in the back right corner (if facing the street) of the lot with the front door of the barn facing toward the center of the lot. If you are looking at the orientation in the picture, the barn would be in the top left corner.
17. Go into Build Mode, use the Elevation Tools, and Hit the button to flatten the entire lot.
19. Put in some floor tiles as shown (if you have Pets this is the exact size for a horse jump, as you can see). If you don’t have Pets, you can use a piece of fencing and two columns to create the look of a horse jump. More on this after we are in the decorating phase.
20. Our barn is going to be big enough to have two Pets horse stalls. If you don’t have pets, you can use fencing or half-walls to make your stalls, but we want them the same size as the actual stalls in Pets so that someone with that EP could modify our barn for their use.
We are going to build as if this lot will be used with Pets. If you have Pets now, you can go ahead and add the items as you are told to do so. If you don’t have Pets, you will be able to easily convert this lot to use Pets if you ever buy it since the dimensions that we will use to build were chosen so that Pets horse stalls, horse jumps, dog beds, etc. will fit.
21. Build the first floor of the barn as shown. Please carefully note the dimensions and the placement in the corner. I think I counted 12 X 17, but go by the picture. THERE SHOULD BE THREE OPEN TILES BEHIND THE BARN AND SEVEN OPEN TILES ALONG THE SIDE OF THE BARN WHERE THE JUMP IS.
NOTE:
If you have Pets it's fine to leave your stalls right there for the rest of the build. If you don't you can wait to we are working on the inside of the barn to make your own stalls using half-walls or fencing. Don't forget to put a door in your stalls.
22. Build the top floor of the barn as shown. Notice that this top floor goes from front to back with no gaps. The top floor doesn’t go all the way across the barn. Make sure you leave the exact same number of spaces empty to the left and right of the upper story as shown in the photos.
23. Put in flooring for top story (leave gap as shown so that hay from the loft can be thrown down for the animals). There are THREE open tiles between the front door of the barn and the end of the barn flooring for the hay loft.
24. Put in the half-gable roof sections as shown. Make sure that you are not leaving any gaps between the wall and the roof piece on each side.
25. Add the long gable roof as shown.
26. Okay, we’re under roof, but does it look like a BARN roof? No. So, go to the roof section and choose the button to adjust the height and slope of the individual roof sections. Lower the middle section to get that flattened look for the barn roof.
27. If need be, adjust the two half gable sections in height as well, but mine looks to suit me so I’m not going to.
NOTE: i was missing some pictures and I had to go back and try to recreate my steps for the shots. That is why the spacer floor tiles don't look all the same and the barn roof is different colors!
29. Paint the barn and add the windows. The siding that I used did not come from Pets; it is from the base game. You do not have to make your barn red with white trim. Use your judgment as to what colors you’d like in your barn siding and barn doors. It IS important to use the same siding that I did (or something similar) in order to get the best effect on the fake barn doors.
30. Put in interior walls on first floor and put in doors as shown.
31. Put up the front barn door if you have Pets. If you don’t have Pets, you will make our “fake” barn door that we will use on the back of the barn in both front and back.
Note: They made the barn door in Pets such that it takes up a bunch of room on the left and right of the actual doors. I the game won’t let you place them because it conflicts with interior walls or items (more about this later) then we will use the MOO cheat to place the door. MOO is builder’s slang for the Move Objects On cheat. Open the cheat box and type in “moveObjects on” just like this only without the quotes. Now place the garage door. NOW TURN OFF THE CHEAT by typing “moveObjects off” in the cheat box (just like this except without quotes).
The MOO cheat is perfectly safe for your game as long as you don’t play the game with it on. It is known to cause possible routing issues for your Sim if you try to play with it on. So BUILD with it on, but PLAY with it off.
It is worth mentioning that anything that you use MOO on or near should be tested by a Sim to make sure that everything is still accessible by Sims and that usable objects (including doors and stairs) are still usable.
IMPORTANT: Don't use these shots for stair placement. I changed my mind and moved them. There is a photo later that says "use this for stair placement".
32. Put in a wall that cuts the second floor into a hay loft and a separate space. Add the loft railing as shown. Go to the first floor to add the spiral stairs. Place the stairs as shown (this is very important). Count for yourself in the picture, but I THINK the stairs (which cover four squares of floor space as their footprint) are five full squares back from the front of the barn and a half square away from the right-side interior wall.
33. TEST THE STAIRS. Since the Pets patch there has been an issue with the spiral stairs not working if a wall was too close. Sometimes the Sim can climb UP the stairs, but not back DOWN. Always test with your Sim after placing stairs. After you are sure that the stairs work (in both directions), put you Sim back to doing whatever you have her doing and continue your build.
34. Add flooring on first floor and lights. There are some nice lights in the base game (they are overhead lights, very simple ones that hang straight down and have a simple shade) and you can use those.
I really like these that I used for barns and garages and workshops (I think they came with Ambitions). Make sure NOT to put ceiling lights in under the area that is the hay loft (I don’t think the game will let you since there is no ceiling there, but even if it will it will look very odd). I chose a nice stone pattern for the floor, but you can choose whatever you find appealing for the job. Remember that you are making something that animals will be walking on.
IGNORE THE STAIRS IN THIS SHOT (use for wall placement and stall placement only!)
HERE is where you want the stairs!
35. Add lights and railing (as seen in the picture above).
36. Use the photos as a guide and add the fencing shown. It should be 38 tiles long and 20 tiles wide. You may use any color you wish. This fence doesn’t look realistic if you just put it in as shown and leave it as there would be loooonnng stretches of cross pieces with no vertical posts. We don’t want that.
37. The easiest way to get you vertical posts is to delete sections as shown (I like to use the fencing tool and control key to remove the pieces, but you can use the sledgehammer is you prefer).
38. Now just move your fencing tool the complete length of the fence and it fills in the gaps but leaves you the vertical posts.
39. Now I edited out most of my mistakes so that you wouldn’t have to build it wrong and then fix it, but of course you WILL have to learn to fix mistakes, so I left one in. Look at how our door looks from the inside when it is opening. That is not what I want. It works, but looks ugly. I wouldn’t have a problem if the door opened behind objects (it would be as if it slid behind things because there was a space left for it), but sliding through a wall like this bugs me. Let’s fix it. Use the pictures as a guide to reconfigure the interior walls as shown.
NOTE: I caused myself this problem to start with. Remember how we had to use MOO to place the barn door? This is a good lesson that we don’t ALWAYS know better than the game (though we often DO know better)! I will certainly use MOO to be able to put stuff (objects) on either side of these huge barn doors in the future, but I will avoid doing it when walls are the issue. Lesson learned! I am an experienced builder and I still learn new things with nearly every build.
40. You should delete the floor tiles that we used to help see where to place the barn if you have not already done so.
41. Add whatever decorations you want in the corral.
42. Add exterior lights to your barn. Depending on where you put them, you might need to use MOO. DON'T FORGET TO TURN IT OFF!
43. OPTIONAL: Change the terrain paint inside the corral to make it dirt instead of grass. Use floor tiles of any type to surround the corral fence on two sides (the other two sides are the lot’s edges). This is a mask to keep the terrain paint from getting into our grass. Now use the biggest size square shape for the brush for your terrain paint and make it be as opaque as possible. Cover the corral from edge to edge in all directions.
Now change to a DIFFERENT “dirt” paint and choose the medium round brush and a medium or low setting for opacity to go lightly over the corral in spots so that the ground has an interesting and realistic look to it. I like to make marks of different colors of dirt around objects, particularly the horse jumps and such (the horses would surely mark it up with their hooves, don’t you think?).
44. Add stalls (either the ones from Pets or make your own using half-walls or fencing. Don’t forget to make a stall door.
45. Pretty everything up, changing colors of stuff as desired.
46. This lot is going to hold horses (if you have Pets), so you should add one to your Tester family if you started with a family that had no pets. I found this lovely unicorn on the Exchange and I used her to check my stalls to make sure a horse could enter and leave easily.
47. She also tested my jumps. Oooohhhh, preeettttyyy!
Comments
https://graceymanorsims3.tumblr.com/
Also I will be here later today, just after the class.
I have all expansions and no stuff packs
If not then register me please
Saturday hair? :shock: Check.
Water? Check.
A bowl of LIFE cereal? Check.
Game running in Windowed Mode? Check!
Zoo, you already know I have all EPs and SPs. :oops:
Thanks for doing this, Teach! See you in about 42 minutes!
Nice!
and im in pajamas like everyone else!! wooooo! We have a uniform aha
*I want to hear an in unison "helllooo, Profffeessooor!"
I am going to make a series of "reserved posts". If you guys will hold off for just the time it takes to put TEN reserved posts on here, then we will talk in the very next post, okay?
While this is optional, I find fewer glitches while playing my game if I always do this to start. The game creates fresh copied each time you play if you delete the old ones.
2. If you haven’t already done so, load up your game. Get to the Main Menu and proceed to the next step.
3. While in the Main Menu, open the cheat box by pressing Shift, Control, and c all at the same time. In the cheat box type in “testingCheatsEnabled true” just like this, but without the quotes.
By using this cheat, and by using it in the main menu, you will be able to use your Tester Sim to its fullest advantage without the necessity of feeding it or letting it sleep.
4. Open the cheat box again and type in “buyDebug on” just like this, but without the quotes.
This cheat will allow us to use a whole host of items that you normally could not access. How many items you have access to will depend on which EPs you have.
5. If you have a Builder’s Blank Sunset Valley, then choose that “game”. If not, choose a new game and use Sunset Valley as your neighborhood.
6. Choose “Save As” and pick a name for your new game (if you know the name of you farm, that would be a good name!).
7. IMPORTANT: From here on you will not be prompted to save. If I were you I would DEFINITELY save before leaving the game to go to the forum for more instructions (or to ask a question) and I would DEFINITELY save after anything major (getting the roof done, getting the stairs in, getting the exterior painted, etc.). If you have a crash or another problem, at least you minimize how much of your work you have lost. I like to save two versions of my games (using Save As). So I might have “Building a Barn A” and “Building a Barn B” which are the same game so that if one of them gets corrupted, I still have a good copy.
8. Look around the map until you find the lot shown here. This is where we will build our farm (but we can save it to the library and use it anywhere). The address of this lot is 10 Summer Hill Court and it is where the Landgrabs usually live. It is a 60 X 60 lot. It is fairly near the ocean.
Yay! thank you
10. If your Tester Sim has things to learn from the standard books you can buy a bookcase and chair as sit her on the edge of the lot to study. My Tester Sim is quite expert in most skills and has the artistic trait so I’ll buy her an easel and when she isn’t helping me she can paint something that will eventually hang in a house I build for my farm.
11. Shift-click on the mailbox and choose “Make Needs Static” from the pie menu.
12. Make your Tester Sim use the phone and Call Services to stop newspaper delivery.
13. If you need money, use the cheat box again and type in Motherlode. Do this any time you are short of funds.
14. NOTE: I do the first 13 steps every single time I begin a new build (choosing whatever neighborhood and lot that I want each time). With the exception of steps 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 I do all these steps EVERY time, even with a build in progress (in a build in progress I would open the game and the lot that I was previously using after doing step 4, then I would proceed to step 10). Consider 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 11, 12, and 13 to be the PRE-BUILD STEPS and use them each time we build together.
15. Now we are ready and will start to build our barn.
16. Orient your lot as shown so that the barn will be built in the back right corner (if facing the street) of the lot with the front door of the barn facing toward the center of the lot. If you are looking at the orientation in the picture, the barn would be in the top left corner.
17. Go into Build Mode, use the Elevation Tools, and Hit the button to flatten the entire lot.
18. Turn off the auto-roof as auto-roof is evil!
20. Our barn is going to be big enough to have two Pets horse stalls. If you don’t have pets, you can use fencing or half-walls to make your stalls, but we want them the same size as the actual stalls in Pets so that someone with that EP could modify our barn for their use.
We are going to build as if this lot will be used with Pets. If you have Pets now, you can go ahead and add the items as you are told to do so. If you don’t have Pets, you will be able to easily convert this lot to use Pets if you ever buy it since the dimensions that we will use to build were chosen so that Pets horse stalls, horse jumps, dog beds, etc. will fit.
21. Build the first floor of the barn as shown. Please carefully note the dimensions and the placement in the corner. I think I counted 12 X 17, but go by the picture. THERE SHOULD BE THREE OPEN TILES BEHIND THE BARN AND SEVEN OPEN TILES ALONG THE SIDE OF THE BARN WHERE THE JUMP IS.
NOTE:
If you have Pets it's fine to leave your stalls right there for the rest of the build. If you don't you can wait to we are working on the inside of the barn to make your own stalls using half-walls or fencing. Don't forget to put a door in your stalls.
23. Put in flooring for top story (leave gap as shown so that hay from the loft can be thrown down for the animals). There are THREE open tiles between the front door of the barn and the end of the barn flooring for the hay loft.
24. Put in the half-gable roof sections as shown. Make sure that you are not leaving any gaps between the wall and the roof piece on each side.
25. Add the long gable roof as shown.
26. Okay, we’re under roof, but does it look like a BARN roof? No. So, go to the roof section and choose the button to adjust the height and slope of the individual roof sections. Lower the middle section to get that flattened look for the barn roof.
27. If need be, adjust the two half gable sections in height as well, but mine looks to suit me so I’m not going to.
NOTE: i was missing some pictures and I had to go back and try to recreate my steps for the shots. That is why the spacer floor tiles don't look all the same and the barn roof is different colors!
29. Paint the barn and add the windows. The siding that I used did not come from Pets; it is from the base game. You do not have to make your barn red with white trim. Use your judgment as to what colors you’d like in your barn siding and barn doors. It IS important to use the same siding that I did (or something similar) in order to get the best effect on the fake barn doors.
30. Put in interior walls on first floor and put in doors as shown.
31. Put up the front barn door if you have Pets. If you don’t have Pets, you will make our “fake” barn door that we will use on the back of the barn in both front and back.
Note: They made the barn door in Pets such that it takes up a bunch of room on the left and right of the actual doors. I the game won’t let you place them because it conflicts with interior walls or items (more about this later) then we will use the MOO cheat to place the door. MOO is builder’s slang for the Move Objects On cheat. Open the cheat box and type in “moveObjects on” just like this only without the quotes. Now place the garage door. NOW TURN OFF THE CHEAT by typing “moveObjects off” in the cheat box (just like this except without quotes).
The MOO cheat is perfectly safe for your game as long as you don’t play the game with it on. It is known to cause possible routing issues for your Sim if you try to play with it on. So BUILD with it on, but PLAY with it off.
It is worth mentioning that anything that you use MOO on or near should be tested by a Sim to make sure that everything is still accessible by Sims and that usable objects (including doors and stairs) are still usable.
IMPORTANT: Don't use these shots for stair placement. I changed my mind and moved them. There is a photo later that says "use this for stair placement".
33. TEST THE STAIRS. Since the Pets patch there has been an issue with the spiral stairs not working if a wall was too close. Sometimes the Sim can climb UP the stairs, but not back DOWN. Always test with your Sim after placing stairs. After you are sure that the stairs work (in both directions), put you Sim back to doing whatever you have her doing and continue your build.
34. Add flooring on first floor and lights. There are some nice lights in the base game (they are overhead lights, very simple ones that hang straight down and have a simple shade) and you can use those.
I really like these that I used for barns and garages and workshops (I think they came with Ambitions). Make sure NOT to put ceiling lights in under the area that is the hay loft (I don’t think the game will let you since there is no ceiling there, but even if it will it will look very odd). I chose a nice stone pattern for the floor, but you can choose whatever you find appealing for the job. Remember that you are making something that animals will be walking on.
IGNORE THE STAIRS IN THIS SHOT (use for wall placement and stall placement only!)
HERE is where you want the stairs!
35. Add lights and railing (as seen in the picture above).
36. Use the photos as a guide and add the fencing shown. It should be 38 tiles long and 20 tiles wide. You may use any color you wish. This fence doesn’t look realistic if you just put it in as shown and leave it as there would be loooonnng stretches of cross pieces with no vertical posts. We don’t want that.
37. The easiest way to get you vertical posts is to delete sections as shown (I like to use the fencing tool and control key to remove the pieces, but you can use the sledgehammer is you prefer).
38. Now just move your fencing tool the complete length of the fence and it fills in the gaps but leaves you the vertical posts.
39. Now I edited out most of my mistakes so that you wouldn’t have to build it wrong and then fix it, but of course you WILL have to learn to fix mistakes, so I left one in. Look at how our door looks from the inside when it is opening. That is not what I want. It works, but looks ugly. I wouldn’t have a problem if the door opened behind objects (it would be as if it slid behind things because there was a space left for it), but sliding through a wall like this bugs me. Let’s fix it. Use the pictures as a guide to reconfigure the interior walls as shown.
NOTE: I caused myself this problem to start with. Remember how we had to use MOO to place the barn door? This is a good lesson that we don’t ALWAYS know better than the game (though we often DO know better)! I will certainly use MOO to be able to put stuff (objects) on either side of these huge barn doors in the future, but I will avoid doing it when walls are the issue. Lesson learned! I am an experienced builder and I still learn new things with nearly every build.
40. You should delete the floor tiles that we used to help see where to place the barn if you have not already done so.
41. Add whatever decorations you want in the corral.
42. Add exterior lights to your barn. Depending on where you put them, you might need to use MOO. DON'T FORGET TO TURN IT OFF!
Now change to a DIFFERENT “dirt” paint and choose the medium round brush and a medium or low setting for opacity to go lightly over the corral in spots so that the ground has an interesting and realistic look to it. I like to make marks of different colors of dirt around objects, particularly the horse jumps and such (the horses would surely mark it up with their hooves, don’t you think?).
44. Add stalls (either the ones from Pets or make your own using half-walls or fencing. Don’t forget to make a stall door.
45. Pretty everything up, changing colors of stuff as desired.
46. This lot is going to hold horses (if you have Pets), so you should add one to your Tester family if you started with a family that had no pets. I found this lovely unicorn on the Exchange and I used her to check my stalls to make sure a horse could enter and leave easily.
47. She also tested my jumps. Oooohhhh, preeettttyyy!