Sims2 Stairwell Tutorial 2

for creating 3-level walled spiral stairs on a house foundation

by Tiko

Here's a screenshot of the kind of stairs we'll be creating.  This is a 'working' house in the game.

There are earlier great tutorials for building 2-storey L-shaped stairs against a house wall, without foundations.  MikeInside then worked out how to build them on a house foundation.  Building a complete 3-storey walled stairwell is a little more complicated, but great fun.

Start with a patch of level ground.  Add a house foundation - this one is 11 tiles wide and 8 tiles deep.  It needs to be at least 8 tiles deep.   You can always build a larger house wrapped around the stairs afterwards.   We'll call this our 1st storey, with 2 more above it.

Add a wall around the whole area of the foundation.  Insert a 1x1 room in the corner, and make a 4x4 room in the same corner.  This will be our stairwell.

Now press PageUp and add a 2nd storey wall, and some floor.  Don't cover the stairwell area with floor, and also leave a 1-tile gap as shown here.

Repeat for the 3rd storey, again not covering in the stairwell.

And add a loft floor or flat roof, whichever you mean it to be.

Then make a one-tile mini-foundation as shown here and put a wall on it.  This is our control column for adjusting the first landing.  It needs to be 1 grid square away from the landing, and where it won't affect too much of the rest of the house.  Like this is fine.

Now bring in the floor-level cheat.  Hold down Ctrl+Shift and tap C.  In the white Commands window that opens at the top of your screen, type

boolProp constrainFloorElevation false

and press Enter.  If you've got the words right, the window will close.  (The capital letters don't matter - it's just easier to read with some in somewhere.)

We're now going to lower the control column.  You can use the lower-terrain tool, but this involves carefully counting a lot of clicks (!).  A more precise way is to use the 4-step stair tool (1 click down = one step of a stair).

Place the stair tool on the ground so that it digs down 4 steps near the column but not too close.  Repeat from that lower landing as shown here.   If you can, get this lower stair to land in line with the column - but that's just being fussy!

Then bring the column down.  You can either use the level-terrain tool or floor tiles.  Run the level-terrain tool from your lower step landing to underneath the column (press PageDown to view at ground level and check you're underneath).

Alternatively slide a row of floor tiles along the same route.   Make sure that you slide (i.e. not letting go of the mousebutton) rather than click them individually, or won't work.

Now we're going to lower the 1st landing of our stairs.  Again you can either use the level-terrain tool or floor tiles.  Press PageUp (twice if you were at ground level) and view from the 2nd storey.  

Place the level terrain tool on top of the control column, and drag it across until it's placed above the top of the 1x1 room inside your stairwell. as shown here.

That should give you this result.

Alternatively use floor tiles.  We're going to complete the build using them for two reasons.  It's easier to illustrate visually; and it gives you more control.  Place a floor tile on top of your control column.  Its reach of one grid square all around means it drags the house wall down too. 

Also place one behind it - it's not needed in the build, but if you make an "interesting mistake" and lose levels on the control column, this extra tile allows you to restore the level again.

Add a floor tile between the control column and the house wall, and the 1st landing flattens into place.

Put the floor tile of your choice for the stairs onto the 1st landing, and place another inside the stairwell at the height of the 2nd storey floor, as you can see here.

Insert a stair flight (of 8 steps) as shown here. 

Add another flight of 8 from the 1st landing to the ground, and you're halfway! 

Save and make yourself a sandwich if you want. ;)

When you get going again, PageUp to have a look at the loft floor or roof.   It's the only bit of flooring directly above the stairwell, and it's suffered!

So level it off.  In terrain-cheat mode it's easy - use either the level-terrain tool or a floor tile, and sweep carefully across the area.   (If you go over the roof too far and cover some ground tiles too, you'll be in trouble!  But just Undo or Ctrl+z if that happens.)  Presto!  it's levelled off.

Now we're going to tackle the stairs between the second and third storeys.   We need to place a control column near the opposite corner to the 1st landing.   Since the house foundation is in the way, take it out first.  Open the white Commands window again and type in

boolProp constrainFloorElevation true

Press Enter.  Remove the foundation as shown here.

The amount of foundation you remove doesn't matter, as long as you've got a 3x3 space next to the corner you'll be working on.  Then open the white Commands window again and type in

boolProp constrainFloorElevation false

Press Enter, and use the raise-terrain tool on a corner of the ground square one tile away from the stairwell corner, as shown.  Click carefully 8 times.

You can click on the other 3 corners in turn to raise the whole square, or place it more simply with the level-terrain tool as shown.  Click and hold down (don't let go of the mouse button), then drag the staff that appears from the top corner to the opposite one (indicated by a shorter stick).

It's a little tricky to master, but if you've managed it successfully you have a raised tile of ground ready for a new control column.  If it went wrong, Undo/Ctrl+z and try again - or get clicking on each corner.

Build a 1x1 foundation on this tile of ground, and place a complete wall on it.  This is our second control column.

Go up one storey by pressing PageUp.  Place a floor tile on top of the new control column, one behind it as an extra control, and one between the column and the stairwell wall.  You should have raised the walls as shown here.

Place the floor tile of your choice inside the stairwell as shown - this is the 3rd landing.

Then add the flight of stairs from this 3rd landing down to the 2nd.

Don't worry about all the unusual flooring!  Press PageUp and view from the 3rd storey.  Locate the grid square on the 3rd storey three spaces away from the 3rd landing, inside the stairwell.  here it's marked with an !important! arrow.  This is the 4th landing.  Place a floor tile on it.

And add the last flight of steps from this 4th landing down to the 3rd.   Almost there!

Let's level off all the floors.  With a house, it's best to start levelling from the bottom up, otherwise when you go down a level and smooth things out, the level above can get cross again!  So use the level-terrain tool or a floor tile (both work), and stroke gently across the raised area.  Aaahh!

Go up to the second storey.  If you do the floor first, and then notice that by smoothing the lower level you've jiggered (can I say that?) the third landing, you'll adjust the landing but then need to do the floor again!  So adjust the landing first ... Just click a floor tile on the top of your control column - I'm using black to illustrate.

With the landing back level again, you can smooth out the floor tiles ...

... to achieve this result.

Nip up again and smooth out the loft floor or roof.

Now remove the 2nd control column.  If you stay in 'false' mode, when you delete the mini-foundation the house foundation will jump around thinking it's playtime!  So type in

boolProp constrainFloorElevation true

Press Enter, and delete first the floor tiles on top of the column, then the walls and then the foundation

Level off the ground.

And put back the missing foundation.  You have a walled stairwell inside a house - of sorts.

There are actually a number of great possibilities for building in the space above this replaced foundation.  This version shows the second storey, with a rail before you reach the wall.  

The point to remember is that we can't take the floor right up to the stairwell wall - there has to be a one-tile gap between wall and floor, or else the rival floors just keep pulling one another up or down.

Two other possibilities are leaving the whole second-storey space open - gives a big, airy feel - and building a mezzanine floor.  We'll illustrate both of these quickly.  Type in:

boolProp constrainFloorElevation false

Press Enter.  Go up to the third storey and extend the floor as shown.  Initially the grid squares aren't all there for you to fill in, but as you start clicking floor into place, the missing grid gradually appears.

Add some railing and you have complete the third storey (well apart from windows, paint etc).  You would probably also have it like this for the first possibility in #35, giving you two nice roomy upper storeys.

Add the stair railing, and a door from the second landing to the second storey.

The ground floor / 1st storey door has limited possible positions.  A door placed where the wall slants will either get filled in with some wall, or will leave a hole, like the one on the right here!  Place a door or archway on one or both of the two complete wall tiles where the other door is ... or if you feel like it, strip away a wall completely.

The other possibility is making a mezzanine floor - i.e. in the middle, between the second and third storeys.  (You could also put a mezzanine off the 1st landing, and dig down underneath it for a split-level ground floor.  Cool!) 

If you just start clicking floor tiles into place leading off from the third stair landing, as here ... well, the two sets of floor tiles will pull one another up and down, because their 'reach' is always one tile all around.

This is because there's no protective wall for one of the floor tile levels as in the first possibility at #35.  We need a 2-tile gap.  So before starting on the mezzanine, strip away one more line of tiles from the second floor.

With a mezzanine, you can't have a third storey above it or a second storey below it.  (Maybe you can make it ... but not for normal Sims.)  So PageUp to the third storey and build a walkway round from the 4th landing to the main floor area.

You may find that the grid square 2 away from the 4th landing doesn't want to be filled in.  It thinks it's above a stair (which it is, 2 storeys below!) so you can either type in the

moveObjects on

cheat to place the tile, or in fact just click one square out into the stairwell space, and that creates a willing grid square where you want it.  (Remember to switch off the cheat afterwards if you use it.)

Now you can fill in the mezzanine floor.  As at #36, initially the grid squares aren't all there, but as you start clicking floor into place, the missing grid gradually appears.

Here's the floor completed ...

... and you can add a wall to it, and railings to the second storey (or the other way round, or whatever).

No surprise! - it's jiggered the floor above.

Level the main floor with a sweep of a floor tile or the level-terrain tool, then use a floor tile to gradually click the walkway back down into place.   (I've used a darker tile just to illustrate.)

And since everything above it was affected by the new mezzanine, smooth out the loft floor or roof as well.

Add railings or walls on the 3rd storey, and that's all the work done in elevation-cheat mode.

So type in

boolProp constrainFloorElevation true

and press Enter.

Now remember to remove the 1st control column, which actually you could have done when removing the 2nd one.  (I forgot.)

As with the doors, windows suffer from wall bleeding if placed on a slanting wall.  But you can place a few on the 1st and 2nd storeys of the stairwell, and it's fine on the 3rd storey.  Or maybe you like the slanted look?

The door into the mezzanine room also suffers from wall bleed (the wall is only half-height).

So you may prefer to remove that wall tile completely.  You can do this without reverting to cheat mode.

And that's it.  You have successfully built a wonderful little 3-storey walled spiral stairwell! 

Well done indeed - give yourself something even better than a sandwich.

Tiko