Sorry, I have another question... I have been building houses just on the ground, but I wanted to use a foundation. The thing is, I can't figure out how to attach stairs to my deck, so the people can get up to the house...?? My stairs I try to put on go into the ground. Please help! Sarah
I'm not quite sure what you mean. The top part of the step needs to be placed on the deck (which is on the same level as the house), and that allows you to connect to the ground. If you mean that you are trying to put a deck at one level and a house at an even higher level, I'm not sure how that would work. I've seen screenshots but I suspect that there is probably a tutorial on it somewhere, but I'm not sure where. There is another type of staircase (a "grand staircase") that someone made a tutorial on: http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=1769 Perhaps that will help.
Thanks for the the tutorial-I will try it. I was just trying to have a foundation with a deck on it and somehow I am not getting how to put stairs on. I'll go back into the game and try to figure it out again. Thanks again, Sarah
If I'm remembering correctly, I learned how to put stairs from a deck or porch using the tutorial that is part of the game itself. You'll find that on the screen which allows you to choose which neighborhood you want to play. It's at the lower left side of that screen. When I was first starting out, I found that tutorial to be helpful. (The button gets you to several tutorials. One is for gameplay and I believe the other two are about using the building tools.)
You are trying to use the full staircases... what you need is the connecting stairs. When you click the stair tool, there are three subcategories: full staircases, connecting stairs, and railing for the connecting stairs. I can't remember exactly what the icon looks like at the moment, but the one you want is the second one, the connecting stairs. Click that icon, choose the style of stair you want, and click the tile that will be the top of the stairs to place them. Then if you want, you can select the railing icon and click either side of the staircase to place a handrail.
Further to the above answer ... it has just occurred to me that the problem might be this: To place connecting steps they have to be placed from the top downwards. If you are trying to plop them from a deck they will want to land on the second square away from the deck. A deck is 4 steps high. If the ground is uneven the stair tool will try to find its own level and may well show itself digging deeper into the ground than seem necessary. One sure way to stop this is to place 2 floor tiles on the ground: DECK_______DECK DECK_______DECK DECK__X____DECK FT FT Where FT = A floor tile X = The starting point (top) of steps