Okay, I play the Sims 2 whenever I can. My most favorite thing to do is build and decorate houses. I haven't played an actual Sim through it's life since my first Sim. I plan to get one Knowledge Sim through her life and one college Sim through his life over the next couple of months. Sooner, if possible.

So, I'm building my first community lot and it's basically a dinner and dancing kind of place. I'd like for there to be a stage for a 'live band', but I can not figure out how to build a stage! Any tips? I have tried to use the foundations, but the game says 'can't level terrain'. I'm trying to build the stage on the second floor.

You can't use foundations on the second floor, so that is why it is saying it can't "level" terrain. Foundations can only be put on ground level. The game needs to be able to "raise" the ground up to the level for the foundations. You'll have to put the stage on the first floor. Or somehow build what you want like for a first floor, and then dig a basement to make the first floor the second floor. (And then lower all the ground around it??) You could also try raising the ground up to the second floor, and putting your foundation on that. It's kind of tricky because the foundation/floors have to be at least a certain number of "steps" apart from each other in order to use connecting stairs between them. Also, the game makes you enclose like the 2 different levels separately (it can't be 1 big room), so was the stage/dinner area going to be open air?

After messing around with my dinner/dancing community lot, I've decided to make is much smaller. LOL My game was lagging when I went to it on a date. Now, it's just a basic restaurant with a private courtyard for V.I.P.'s and a slow dancing area and then the club dancing area upstairs. There is an open area on the top floor. It's nothing fancy, that is for sure! LOL

Oh, I did find this neat tutorial with a link to one of the most beautiful Sims 2 houses I've ever seen! Check it out! I downloaded the house and I can't wait to move someone into it. :D :wub:

Cool tutorial Melanie! Now, I can try building a house like my house!

Well, I have another question about Sims 2. I had a family of 2 sisters, and each sister had 1 son. They were all supposed to be "family" relations... anyway, I had moved both sons out of the house (when they became adults), but then I moved them back in so that I could package the lot as 1 household. Somehow,one son became unrelated to the sister that is not his mother. I have no idea how to fix it. The other son still shows his aunt as a family relation, so I don't understand what happened. Do you have any idea how to fix it? I thought maybe one of the cheat codes might be able to "fix" my mess-up. And it's important that they are all related 'cause right now the one son keeps wanting to fall in love with his aunt! I can't have that!

Here's another of my many Sims 2 related links: More Awesome Than You This guy rocks! And he probably has a fix for that. I seem to recall reading something about that. Let me see if I can get you a direct link. And I'm sending you an inbox message.

Hey, 1ambie, does your no-relationship-to-aunt sim still have all of his previous memories?

Thanks Melanie! I will check out that site and see if I can find a fix.

I think he still has all his memories. I think the problem is that both boys became adults and I moved them both out of the house, but to package it, I needed them to be one household. So, I had one mom ask the son to move in and just had the other son move in "with" him, so that somehow seemed to "break" the family relationship? The mom still thinks that son is a relative and boy's cousin does too... just not the aunt! You'd think if the cousin was a relative, the mom still would be too!

Hmmmm, :huh: I know you can fix relationships with that SimPE program, but I don't know how to use it yet. I was hoping to learn how to recolour some objects with it and possibly create my own custom content.

I did find some really cool downloads this week. One in particular was called "Trashy Trailer" and boy was it gross! I ended up modding it so much that there is almost no resemblence to the original house! I did love the idea of a trailer park though, so I started building one and the next thing I know, I've moved on to a castle! LOL I have got to get pictures of it to show you!

Joyce, did you master that split level thing yet? I can do a basic one, but then I just end up messing my house up trying to put in stairs and stuff. :wacko:

Well, I haven't built any new houses yet with the split level tutorial, but I ended up "remaking" that family where the relationships got messed up.

I did figure out something about the family creator thing though... you have to create all the adults before you make any of the children (if you want them to all be family). I added an aunt after I created the children and then they didn't recognize her as family, but when I did all the adults first, the children knew she was the aunt. (Or maybe it was how you build up the family tree thing?) Anyway, you have to make the adults related before you make the children related to any of the adults.

*update* I followed the directions in the tutorial and got my "split level" house built!!! Actually I built 2... one like my childhood home and one like my parents place now. It worked great. I think it's still pretty basic... 'cause all I used it for was to build a garage and the family room. The weird part is that it doesn't look normal when I put in doors and windows in the room... 'cause that room technically ends up having 2 "walls" on slightly different levels. What I'd love to do is build a staircase with a turn in it inside the house ('cause that's how the stairs are in my parents house), so I have to see if I can do that with the cheat code.