Basements with no foundation? OK, before I drive myself crazy even further - is it even possible to build a house with a basement, when the house has no foundation? My floorplan has a built-in garage on the first floor. So, therefore, it needs to be level with the ground. It also has a basement and 3 stories total, and the other floors utilize the space above and below the garage. So I can't just put the rest of the house on a foundation, and the garage part on flat land, because then the other levels of the house won't be even. So before I try yet again, am I wasting my efforts?
Further to SBW's correct answer. If you start to build directly on the ground without laying a foundation slab the floor level you are working on is the lowest level that, whatever building you end up with, will be allowed to have. Without applying an intProp cheat the game permits a maximum of four floors to a house. So if you want a tall structure build directly on the Ground and you can get 4 storeys in. The idea of the foundation slab is that the wall may be buried in the ground. If you drag a partition wall into a slope it will force the ground out of its way so that the bottom of the wall is not covered by 'dirt'. A foundation wall may be buried in the ground except for the top 25% (equal to four steps of the connecting stairs) but you can lower the ground any number of time with the terrain lowering tool and the foundation will just keep pace with the excavation. If you lower the ground 12 times (12 steps of connecting stairs) you reach the level that is exactly one partition wall high and that means you can place walls and floor at that level and call it a basement. Of course you cannot then go deeper than that because you have built on the dirt and not on a foundation slab. Note that the maximum number of floors on a foundation slab is 3 because the game assumes the basement is there even if you don't build one. There are ways to build garages with foundations. Not sure if this meets what you need but see the various tutorials (including my fabulous one -- naturally I think that is the best of the bunch) but there's a host of others over at MTS2 here: http://forums.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=91504
OK Mirelly I have a question. You know that house downtown "the House of Fallen Trees" or something like that with that huge basement? It looks like the basement is two or three stories deep, then the house I think it like three stories. So my question would be does the game see that basement as being one story tall even even though it's actually more? But if you tried to break that up into multiple stories it wouldn't let you? So your basement could be down to the middle of Sim Earth as long as you didn't try to put ceilings in. I hope that made sense. Ruth
Uh yeah, I think so. To be honest there are many things that Maxis can do with the game that are beyond the ken of even some quite geekily cerebral modders and hackers. Some of those garages look neat in theory but trust me they look terrible in action or else cause 3rd degree brain melting to occur as you struggle to follow the instructions. Mine is utterly awesome of course, but NOT more awesome than you know who
I made a pit to, um, the fiery place (can we say that word here?) with ledges for marshmallow throwers at more than one level, though not full levels. It was meant to look like a pit. However, I think with some creativity you might be able to make a multi-story basement. Don't know how playable it would be. I don't like playing basements much. My vamps sleep there and that's about it. They're too hard to reach.
Thanks for the link to the tutorial thread. It will be helpful. I filled in the basement in my house of Fallen Trees. It's now only one level deep. Much easier.
