Thursday 12 August 2010

How to add residential objects to community lots in Sims 3

I thought I should post this here, as I haven't found sufficient information on the web so far. As many of you know by now, the guys at EA set some limitations on what items we should include in community lots and decided we couldn't add residential objects (stoves, microwaves, laundry machines, etc). However, they have managed to bend those rules and presented us base camps with stoves (just to taunt us, of course). So, how did they do it?

While trying to work out the answer to this, I accidentally found a way to get past those sneaky developers! However, in other to achieve this, you will need to run the program Create a World Tool.

So here's what you can do:

1- Build your lot on a residential home and after you are done, save it to your library.
2- Open Create a World (CAW) tool:
2.1. - Under File -> Open a World -> Pick a file from a pre made world (it can be whatever you like really, as long as you have zoned areas to work with).
2.2. - Click on the Plumbbob symbol to edit the world in game;
3- After your game is loaded through CAW, pick your lot from the library and place it, as you would in a normal game. Then save your changes and exit the game;
4- CAW will at this point be updated with your lot placed in it. Click on your lot and you will see lots of information on it, including the type of lot;
5- Edit the categories and change your residential home to any type of community lot you want;
6- Repeat step 2.2. to access again your lot in game. You will notice that it now has successfully turned into the type of lot you wanted;
7- Save your lot to the library or package it according to your choice and use it as you like.

Note: Although you can create base camps with all the residential items you want, you won't have the option to export them and share them with others. You can always resort to rezoning in this case, but all those residential items will be lost in the process. As base camps are the only lots that do not have that option, it should work fine with everything else. I have tested a few of my lots successfully, but have not tried every single type of community zones, but I'm assuming they work as well.

2 comments:

  1. This is brilliant! I always wanted to just upgrade my base camp lots with better beds, stoves, showers, and everything, but never knew how to do it without the stoves disappearing. Thankyou for sharing this tip!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Can't wait to build some new base camps! Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete