Thought this could be a fun way to get inspiration to do creative things in build mode since there's so much you can do with debug items and cheats that involve no CC/mods. Feel free to share ideas that aren't your own either, just credit creators when necessary :) You can include CC as long as you can do the same thing with objects included in the game, so nothing that requires extra mods.
Here's mine. Sometimes the wall hangings and decor start to feel repetitive, so I love making photo collages to hang up in my Sims' homes to make their homes feel more personal. This is also a fun way to keep childhood photos up when a sim ages up and have photos of relatives through the generations. The poses in the second one are obviously CC, but the wedding ones in the first one are all ones I took before I had the pose mod downloaded so you can easily do this with regular pictures you can take in a vanilla game. All you do is resize the photos using the keys, and then with the move objects cheat on, you use the alt key (option key on macs) to drag them into the desired position to look like a connected picture frame.
Love your picture collages! I also did a similar thing in my legacy house!
My fav tip is probably using the ALT key to freely move items around, I also always put the koi pond from Get Famous in my lots as I love how it looks at night and my sims like to meditate next to it.
https://i.imgur.com/uywIcPB.png (Art by cork board is by Cribea9 and Sparklili, other photos by me. I also posted this pic in another thread so if you already saw it there sorry, I just love this room so much and spent so much time making it perfect)
"ShadyLady_DQ;c-17748880" wrote: Love your picture collages! I also did a similar thing in my legacy house!
My fav tip is probably using the ALT key to freely move items around, I also always put the koi pond from Get Famous in my lots as I love how it looks at night and my sims like to meditate next to it.
Your house looks fantastic! I love the color scheme and decor. It feels very home-y with the photos too! I can tell you really put a lot of time into making it perfect.
I don't have Get Famous, but I use the fountain tool and a debug pond with move objects cheats to make decorative fish ponds for lots. It's hard to tell in this photo, but you can see the fish swimming and occasionally jumping when playing in game. The rocks block it so it's not a functional fishing spot, but I like the idea of having a backyard pond.
One of my favorite small tricks is probably debug fences. You can place them on the actual edge of the lot, which just makes it so much more realistic. Plus there's also a lot more realistic styles of fence in debug like stone walls so you can have a much more realistic looking border!
Here's a lot I updated a few weeks back with a stone debug fence, it just makes so much more sense to me to have a wall like this around the house and it makes it fit much more naturally in the world.
Also another little build trick I've found with platforms is that if you have a high platform, and the room is just under the roof, delete the ceiling and adult sims will be able to stand up there!
Thanks for sharing! I love seeing all of these. I'm always trying to do new things in build mode and use items creatively. Here's a few more of my build mode tricks.
When making a tiny house in Tiny Living, fenced in areas add to the tile count, so you have to get creative when blocking off areas if you don't want to add to the tile count. For this tiny home, I used some windows from the Jungle Adventure pack and used the move objects cheats to make a fence so that my porch would not count as extra tiles.
With the move objects cheat on, you can put windows on pools, so if you build a basement room, you can get a cool water view next to your pool. This is a bar/dance floor I built in one of my mansions.
So there's a ton of cool debug items you can find if you turn on the bb.showhiddenobjects cheat, but there are TONS more things you can find if you turn on the bb.showliveeditobjects cheat (it's all the stuff that you see on community lots but don't show up in build mode without the live edit objects cheats - the more packs you own, the more hidden stuff there will be!), and they can really add some cool variation to your game decor if you want some new items without buying new packs. Here are some items I discovered while sifting through the many, many items. The last one is an hanging garden wall I built using debug and live edit mode objects and meticulously resizing, moving, and raising and lowering objects.
You can hold down Alt to precisely move objects? (Instead of in increments) Like those photos? Interesting. I'll try that. Obviously bb.moveobjects would have to be enabled.
"Admiral8Q;c-17749015" wrote: You can hold down Alt to precisely move objects? (Instead of in increments) Like those photos? Interesting. I'll try that. Obviously bb.moveobjects would have to be enabled.
Yes, you can move objects off grid if you hold down the alt/ option key! It’s a game charger (literally lol)
@Admiral8Q you actually dont have to have MOO on to use the Alt key to free place items, I use it around stuff where MOO would limit a sims ability to access the object but want to move it around more. It also works to freely rotate items on tables and other surfaces to get a more natural look. Of course it works with MOO as well. :)
I am not a builder. I like to find a plain house and sort of fix it up rather than building one from the ground up. My go-to is I constantly have my finger on the alt key :D . I live for clutter and I feel that you can't clutter up a place by sticking to the grid. And as ShyadyLady_DQ stated, you don't have to have MOO or testing cheats on (which is good for gallery uploads).
I love your picture collages. I have a traveling photographer that I embed in my sims home temporarily to take pictures and paint portraits so I can do collages like that. Her husband is my museum curator. When one of my sims' home get too full of custom art and photos, he moves in long enough to collect the art and then displays it in the museum he lives in.
Another trick I use for my tiny homes is to build a 3 walled room onto the home and extend the roof over the top of it. You can thus have all the benefits of a tiny home and still have gym equipment or a recycler or whatever. Just don't put that fourth wall up.
@permanentrose The debug items are SO useful in decorating/landscaping, especially for financially challenged Sims, such as when playing a Rags to Riches challenge. There's no need for them to live on a bare lot out in the open anymore. I once built an almost fully functional house for my Sim using nothing but free debug items. The 'walls' were debug fencing. Sadly, I didn't take a screenshot of it. :(
Anyway, just like you, I love using the debug pond to decorate my Sims backyards. Just add things around it, or even in it, and it can look very pretty. This is from a build I did for BuildnShare a long time ago.
As mentioned above, I love playing with Rags to Riches Sims and it can be especially rough for them starting out in Winter. One trick I learned to do to get them some shelter when they don't have a lot or any simoleans is to use a roof piece as a temporary 'house.'
Here's what it looked like on the inside after this Sim had a few simoleans to buy a few things. The 'floor' is terrain paint.
https://i.imgur.com/BStXKvc.png
My Sims love to display their family photos in fun arrangements using the alt key and/or MOO as well. But there's also something else they can do for cheap/free beautiful art for their walls if they can't afford to buy paintings or even if they can but consider themselves photographers. Have them go out into the worlds and snap some landscape shots, interesting Sims, plants, or any other theme you can think of for them to photograph. Play around with the filters too. I learned about doing this from a photography challenge and now do it all the time. Here's some examples from my Sim I used for the challenge displayed in her photography studio and her house:
One thing TS2 had that I wish we had for TS4 was the ability to have outdoor lights snap to fence posts. We have a fence with lights on the posts given in a free base game update, but I don't want to always use the same fence just to have the lights. So I use MOO quite often to place lights on fence posts. Two examples:
This is a tip/trick that maybe others already know about, but if you push the large wall of plants object from the EL pack a little bit into the wall, it looks like the different planters are 'on' the wall instead of connected to a separate piece. You'll need to have the MOO cheat on to do it.
This is another thing I learned just recently by reading about it on a thread here. It's a HUGE game changer for me since I love to have gardens in the game. With the new platform tool, you can now have trees in planters inside a greenhouse without the need to use the tallest wall. Just lower the room 2-3 times and voila!
I have many other standard things I like to do and have learned over the years when building, such as I always use MOO to put the cookbooks or other objects on top of the refrigerator, I like to create unique vanities in my Sims' bathrooms and I love using the wall stickers to create 'scenes' when decorating in children's bedrooms.
For instance using one of the height wall chart stickers with bunnies on it, I put the two bunnies sitting next to each other sticker on top of it and above that and a little to the side, I put the leaping bunnies sticker to make it look like they were jumping on top of the in-wall closet next to the chart.
Lastly, it's also fun to create 'shadow boxes' of outdoor scenes inside too. For instance I did an Autumn Forest Scene on a raised platform for my most recent witch in her basement bedroom and added her cauldron to it.
